Pickled Vegetables

Posted on

I had the girls over on Monday night for dinner and drinks — Jesse has his bowling league until late on Monday nights, so it was the perfect time to have a little ladies’ night soiree, cook up some dahl and a Thai tofu cabbage salad.  Without even trying, everyone else brought the perfect mix of food to accompany — an edamame tofu salad, veggie enchiladas, Rice Krispie treat fondue, and of course, wine.

Which also meant that I have had leftovers to enjoy all week!  But, I have been wanting to get back on track lately with my non-meal food projects, like fermenting, pre-making sauces and dressings to have on hand in the fridge for the nights when we don’t have as much time.  So I came home from work (still daylight out!), walked down to Grocery Outlet and got a load of some basics we were in need of, came home, cleaned the kitchen, and pickled some veggies.

Luckily, I had this guy to help me.

IMG_0334

This was a super simple recipe that I’m just trying out to get the proportions down, but it started with a quick mixture in my big fermenting jar of: half a cup of rice vinegar;

IMG_0335

a quarter cup of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, and some sliced jalapenos and ginger.

IMG_0339

I scored this whole box of peppers at Grocery Outlet last night for two bucks!

IMG_0337

Then, I sliced up some carrots and red onion…

IMG_0341

And some cucumbers, radishes, and green cabbage, tossed them all into the jar, shook it up, and capped it off with my super fancy fermenting lid, which keeps the air out so my concoctions won’t get moldy as they’re fermenting.

IMG_0344

I love having stuff like this in the fridge to add as a condiment or side dish to my meals when I feel like they’re not quite veggie-laden enough, or when I’m feeling too lazy to make a salad!

 


This Week’s Groceries

XE5XW1363881154

XE5XW1363881187


Smoked Brisket Pot Pie and Horseradish Lemon Cream Brussels Sprouts

Posted on

This past month has been insane, and I am so lucky to have such an awesome partner to help out with cooking at home.  It’s been the kind of month where I haven’t had an actual day off in over 3 weeks…not that my days off ever ever really “days off,” but I usually have my Mondays and Tuesdays for running errands, sleeping in at least a little, doing work from home in my pajamas, and getting house stuff done like laundry, cleaning, organizing, and working on my own personal projects like reorganizing my podcasts and iTunes, rather than being at the store.

But, I recently hired a second employee, and officially opened up the shop 7 days a week!  Which, because of my penchant for delayed gratification, I know will eventually lead to more time and freedom for me, as our training progresses and I can slowly hand off to her the parts of my job that take way more time than they should, leaving my own projects as the ones that I can focus on, uninterrupted, from my home office (which is a way sweeter deal now that I live in a home that I absolutely love spending time in, with free delicious tea, coffee, and food whenever I want it!), and whittling my in-store time down to one or two days a week for the to-dos that require me to be in front of my work computer, Z-reports in hand, or actual cones in front of me to catalog.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that in addition to the temporary time stresses of training a new employee on my days off, family drama, acquiring a new dog, overhauling Yarnia’s class system and hiring new instructors to teach instead of myself (also–will result in much more free time eventually…but way less for now!), I am damn lucky to have a handsome chef in the kitchen to have dinner waiting for me when I get home from work.

Oven roasted Tandoori chicken, saffron rice, steamed veggies with lemon-butter-dill-coriander sauce

Oven roasted Tandoori chicken, saffron rice, steamed veggies with lemon-butter-dill-coriander sauce

That was last week — and he made enough Tandoori drumsticks so that we’d have leftovers for him to make butter chicken with later on in the week!  And he says he doesn’t like to plan ahead.  Ha!  When it comes to savory meats, that is a big fat lie.

marinading drummies

marinading drummies

This week?  Well, we had a smashing, semi-impromptu St. Paddy’s Day barbecue at our place on Sunday afternoon, the result of which was a handsome hunk o’ smoked brisket.  I managed to save a yogurt’s container worth of leftovers before it was annihilated, so that later this week we could make our favorite leftover pot pie that I overheard Jesse suggesting to himself around hour 3 of smoking.

IMG_0313

He took care of pot pie filling, as has become our routine, while I whipped up a quick dough in the Cuisinart (just butter, flour, salt, cold water…and rosemary!), and some Brussels sprouts for the side.

He’s made this filling enough at this point that he can pull it off gracefully, from memory.  Some chopped onion, carrot, and celery, sauteed.

IMG_0320

Chop up all the leftover meat, whether it be smoked turkey, brisket, what have you.

IMG_0318

Add that to the pan, sautee it up, and sprinkle some flour in and mix it around to thicken up the gravy-like sauce that’s about to happen.  Add a little broth (we used beef broth for this one), salt, pepper, and frozen peas…

IMG_0323

And then he lets me know it’s time to roll out the dough that’s been chillin’ in the fridge.

Into the pie pan it goes, sealed with a lid of rosemary pie crust.

IMG_0325

And out it comes, 50 minutes later.

IMG_0329

Now, look at those gorgeous Brussels!

IMG_0316

I kept it simple — I wanted to whip these up in the 10 minutes that it took the pie to cool.  Into the skillet: olive oil and butter.

IMG_0321

Here’s all the seasoning I used: horseradish, fresh lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and “GOG” — a term Jesse picked up from his favorite Roku cooking show, for ginger/onion/garlic, a huge batch of it he whipped up in the food processor and that we keep in the fridge to start just about every meal we cook in the skillet.

I got a few spoonfuls of GOG sizzling in the skillet, then placed the sprouts all face-down in a single layer, and didn’t touch them, until they had browned.

IMG_0327

I sprinkled a chopped shallot over top, and then stirred in some horseradish, cayenne, and lemon juice, along with about a half cup of stock from the freezer (I think this was our smoked turkey stock from when we had our last big smoker feast!).  When the broth had just about absorbed, I added a few splashes of cream, salt, and pepper.

IMG_0330

Teamwork, baby.

IMG_0331


This Week’s Groceries

(really this month’s groceries — I’ve got some catching up to do!)

3

Those circled items are shampoo and conditioner — not part of the grocery total!

1 2 4

 

 


Crab Louie and “Crash” Potatoes

Posted on

Well hello there!  I know it’s been awhile.  I like to think that I can juggle 3 different businesses, a social life, family drama, gigantic yarn-related events, cooking delicious and healthy meals for myself and loved ones, and taking pictures along the way, but…apparently one of those has to fall off the radar every once in awhile.  Sorry ’bout that.  The good news though is that I just had a record breaking weekend at Yarnia, thanks to the Rose City Yarn Crawl (and I was on TV!!), and then Jesse and I got to go soak in some hot springs for 36 hours — one of our favorite annual traditions and getaways, a much needed treat for both of us since I was drop-dead exhausted, and Jesse hurt his shoulder over the weekend and was in need of some anti-gravity heat therapy!  Our timing couldn’t have been better. Back on the home front, Jesse and I have been poring over cookbooks for weeks while we eat take-out pho and super simple meals that can be thrown together by a guy with only one functioning arm, and a lady working 14-hour days…fantasizing about a time when we’ll actually be able to spend an evening trying out a new delicious recipe or crafting a new meal.  I think that week is upon us!  On my way home from work last night I picked up the ingredients for some pretty incredible looking cabbage rolls that we spotted on a mysterious new channel that just popped up on our Roku recently, featuring a stout Polish woman cooking a Christmas meal for 50 that, for some reason, enticed us to action. But we’re making those tonight after work, so you’ll hear about those later.  In the meantime, I got to whip up a quick and easy meal for myself last night while Jesse was out trying his left hand at bowling (apparently he’s more ambidextrous than he thought!).  I was at a business class until 7:00 and still had a conference call and a newsletter to finish, waiting for me at home, so a super simple meal was just what I needed. IMG_0242 First, a refreshing, protein-alicious Crab Louie salad with iceberg lettuce, cucumber, radish, a little red pepper, and some fake crab that the Woodstock Safeway always has a great deal on in their seafood section. IMG_0243 Not even feigning homemade here, I bought some lite blue cheese dressing, the one that had the fanciest jar. I was craving something starchy and fried, like grocery store JoJos or something, but then this recipe for “hot crash potatoes” popped into my head after reading it earlier last week, and I grabbed a bag of waxy yellow potatoes at the last minute.

IMG_0241 I got these boiling while I chopped the salad ingredients, and once they were soft enough to mash, sliced them in half, set them on a baking sheet, and “crashed” them with a fork. IMG_0244 I probably could have cooked them for a few minutes longer, so they would really be the consistency of ready-to-mash potatoes, and I would have ended up with less craggy, crumbly piles.  But hey — we’re talking about potatoes, oil, and salt cooked at high temperatures…you really can’t go wrong. IMG_0245 Atop these potato piles, I basted some olive oil, salt, paprika, and pepper — that’s all it takes to make a good potato — and stuck them in the oven at 400 degrees until they were brown and crispy.  The skins totally submit and fall off without provocation, crisping up to perfection. IMG_0247