Chicken Thighs, Brown Rice, Mushroom Gravy & Broccolini

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When Jesse tells me a dinner I cook on my cleanse is as good as any regular dinner, I know I’m doing something right.  Here’s proof that you can cut these 10 inflammatory food groups out of your diet and still eat like a queen:

dinner

1) Brown rice: I always have a pot of this in the fridge or out on the stovetop even when I’m not cleansing, so this was a no-brainer.  I use brown rice as everything from salad filler to a substitute for the bread in a breakfast bird’s nest, so there’s at least 1-2 servings of this already cooked and on hand at all times.

2) Chicken: I shop at Costco once a month and splurge on 1 type of meat to keep in the freezer.  They usually come in packs of 3, so after the first few months we’ve always had a rotation of yummy, organic, easy proteins on hand.  This month we have big 3-lb. packs of boneless skinless chicken thighs, which I defrosted the day before and marinated in a tupperware overnight with olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, salt, pepper, some dried spices, and basil from the garden.  Heated our cast iron skillet on high to sear them, and then once the chicken had released some of its juices, turned it down and threw in half a bunch of…

3) Broccolini: I splurged this week and went to New Seasons, which seems to be the only place in town that carries broccolini.  With all the juices and seasonings from the chicken, I didn’t need to do a single thing to the broccolini.  Just set it in the skillet for the last 5 minutes of chicken cooking, put a lid on top so it would steam and cook everything fully, and stirred it around a bit halfway through so all the sides would get nice and caramelized.

4) Gravy: This was actually totally Jesse’s idea.  We had a handful of mushrooms in the fridge on the verge of going bad, and I asked what he thought we should do with them.  Gravy!  So I sliced them up, sauteed them in olive oil and salt, and then sprinkled them with a few spoonfuls of white bean flour.  Once it thickened and started to get gummy, I added a small amount of coconut milk, to give it creaminess, but I didn’t want it to taste too coconutty, so I thinned it out with water and let it re-thicken to the right consistency.  Even with some fresh basil it was still missing something, and I didn’t want to keep adding salt (which is a hard crutch to shake when my usual vices of soy sauce, hot sauce, or chili flakes are all off-limits) so instead I added a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, and it was perfect.  I’ve been eating this gravy on everything all week!

mushroom gravy



Corn Pasta with Broccoli Pesto, Button Mushrooms, and Lemon Chicken

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Here’s a super easy weeknight meal, inspired by this dish from Smitten Kitchen!

I’ve spent the past year dabbling in the gluten free world, which lately has sort of gone by the wayside because I decided to run a half marathon in May (yes, really!), and now that I’m running 4+ times a week, my body doesn’t seem to care whether I eat bread, pasta, or even pizza.  It’s pretty awesome, and honestly, worth all the miles I’m putting on my shoes.  I made a breakfast sandwich the other day…on an English muffin!  After 13 months of corn tortillas and chickpea-flour pancakes, that was pretty revolutionary.  Not to say I don’t still love brown rice (and let’s face it, I’d eat a corn tortilla quesadilla for lunch every single day if I weren’t such a stickler for variety), so a ton of meals I cook still happen to be gluten-free, but I can be a little less strict about it these days and still feel healthy and clear-headed.

Which is all meant to say, we still have a lot of corn and brown rice pasta in our pantry.  Which is why this meal happened.

Corn pasta with broccoli pesto

I started by quartering some mushrooms and sauteeing them in my skillet.  We made slow cooker collard greens for a dinner party last weekend that used an entire pound of bacon — that fat of which I saved and have been cooking pretty much everything in this week, including these mushrooms.

Corn pasta with broccoli pesto

I chopped up some frozen chicken tenders for protein, but wanted a little extra texture to go in there so after defrosting them, I coated them in a simple batter of flour and dried herbs.  Then I fried them up next in the skillet, and set both them and the mushrooms aside on a plate.

Corn pasta with broccoli pesto

Meanwhile, I had been steaming an entire bunch of broccoli in my fancy bamboo steamer (using the pot of pasta-water-to-be as the steaming liquid), which I now removed from the heat (and added the corn pasta to the water to begin cooking it.  Corn pasta — at least this brand — takes about twice as long as regular pasta to cook, so get started on it before you think you’ll need to.

Corn pasta with broccoli pesto

While all that sauteeing had been going on, I’d chopped up a couple shallots and a few cloves of garlic, which I sauteed in the empty-again skillet for a few minutes before adding the steamed broccoli, some red pepper flakes and salt, and a bit of half and half.  This made a nice mushy mess, but looks aren’t important here, because it’s all about to go into the Cuisinart anyway.

Corn pasta with broccoli pesto

Here’s where the true improvising begins.  After a few pulses in the Cuisinart, it looked like super thick cream of broccoli soup, but then I started adding odds and ends from the fridge to make it creamier — some random soft cheese wedges that were left over from said dinner party, a little more cream, spices and salt to taste, and then to thin it out and turn it into more of a sauce, I took a dips into the pasta water with a measuring cup (though I can’t tell you at all how much!).  Regular water probably would have worked fine here, but pasta cooking water gets nice and starchy, especially from corn pasta, so this helped to give the sauce some body.

Corn pasta with broccoli pesto

Once I was satisfied with the taste and consistency, I drained the pasta, mixed in the sauce, and then topped it with the mushrooms and chicken.

Easy and healthy (minus the bacon fat) one-dish meal!


Pork Chops in Garlic Red Wine Reduction, Roasted Broccoli, and Tzatziki Potato Salad

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All right, back in the swing of things.  After a fantastically fun housewarming party on one of the first super hot, sunny days of the summer, and then a relaxing evening of Papa Murphy’s and Redbox movies on Jesse’s couch, I finally had an old school, productive Monday/Tuesday “weekend,” where I knocked out a slew of errands like getting my car cleaned, oil changed (and Jesse even changed my brake pads for me over the weekend!  Little Ford Focus is getting in shape!), taking my work computer up to Jantzen Beach to have the hard drive replaced, going to the gym, getting ahead on my transcription for the week, picking up my new car title from the post office, making a yarn deal out in Lake Oswego, and compiling a comprehensive list of everything in my house I need to pack — either now or later — before the big move.

And then I cooked all my food for the week!

I’ve started a Pinterest account — not because I actually like Pinterest as an addition to the social media landscape, but because my old method of cataloguing recipes I want to try with Delicious was just too dang obsolete.  I’m totally ambivalent about whether people follow me on here or not, because the sole utility it poses to me is that while I’m perusing my food blogs (this is what I do whenever I’m eating alone), when I see something I want to make, I just click a little widget to pin it, and then trust that it’s being saved somewhere.

Then, on an afternoon like Monday, when I want to cook something but don’t know what, I can visit my board and see what I’ve been hanging on to, make whatever I choose, and then delete it when I’m done.  It’s kind of like a big visual to-do list, divorced from my actual to-do list that makes my world go round.

This week, I knew I had a little extra money to spend on some good meat, so I decided to try out The Pioneer Woman’s pork chops.  I’ve never made pork chops before, so this felt sort of exotic.  I also knew that, despite living in a basement, it was summer outside, so I also took a stab at Smitten Kitchen’s Taztziki Potato Salad.  And then some roasted broccoli, because I needed something green in there.  And I love broccoli.

I took Deb’s warning and got the potatoes boiling first, so that they’d have time to cool before going in the salad.


This is about 3.5 pounds of baby reds.

A little proud of myself for having purchased my first ever pair of pork chops, I seared them in some butter and olive oil (after salting and peppering both sides), while those potatoes boiled and cooled.

I was only making two chops instead of Rhee’s recommended six, so after browning both sides and removing the meat from the pan, I threw in six whole peeled cloves of garlic, as well as half a yellow onion, slivered, which was my own personal touch.  Once these had cooked for a few minutes I added about a cup of red wine and a bay leaf, letting this mixture reduce down.  Then, I added a little spoonful of Better Than Bullion’s beef paste and some water to turn it into broth, and added the chops back in.

Meanwhile, I was throwing together a quick base for the potato salad.  It all revolves around this.

I love Smitten’s idea of using yogurt as the base rather than mayonnaise, because even though I can totally get behind mayo on a sandwich or even in an aioli, I still have a hard time using it as a legit ingredient in dressing.  But yogurt?  Yogurt continues to amaze.  Like eggs, yogurt seems to be able to impress in a myriad of forms, meals, and context.  Salty, sweet, savory…whatever you’ve got going on.

In this case, it forms the creamy foundation for this summery salad dressing, starting with 2 full cups of thick Greek yogurt.  I don’t usually buy Greek yogurt, which seems to be a new craze as of the last year or two, but I can see why it’s perfect for this recipe: even after adding 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of cider vinegar, the dressing is still thick and rich, not runny.  After that, I stirred in half a bunch of chopped dill, 2 teaspoons kosher salt, the rest of my jar of capers, some garlic powder, and black pepper.

Then I took those potatoes from awhile back, cut them into nice little wedges, and let them cool some more while I tossed some big broccoli pieces in a bowl with olive oil, salt, pepper, and curry powder, and then spread them on a baking sheet and roasted them at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Back to the pork chops.  Once they were fully cooked, I removed them from the pan and continued to reduce the sauce, adding 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and my remaining little square of butter, until it was a thick, rich sauce to spoon over the top of everything.

First foray into pork chops?  Success!


This Week’s Groceries

New Seasons 6/18

  • Plain organic yogurt: $2.99
  • Greek yogurt: $3.99
  • Cottage cheese: $2.19
  • Corn tortillas: $1.49
  • Pico de gallo: $3.69 — this is how I solve the tomatoes-are-prohibitively-expensive conundrum.
  • Dozen eggs: $2.89
  • Red potatoes: $4.87
  • Collard greens: $2.49
  • Fresh dill: $2.99
  • Yellow onions: $1.28
  • Bananas: $1.30
  • Roma tomatoes: $1.05
  • Pork chops: $5.03
  • Chorizo sausage: $5.09

TOTAL: $41.34

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: -$12.26 — bummer 🙁  Went over for this month.  The good news is, I have tons of leftovers still in the fridge, so with another, say, $5 worth of veggies, I can definitely sustain for the rest of the month.


Tofu Broccoli Yakisoba

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This is one of those weeks where there needs to be a variety of ready-to-eat food at the forefront of my fridge, so I don’t have to even make any food choices once my Monday/Tuesday is over and my work week begins.  

Not only am I still making up for having taken last weekend off to go up to Seattle for a family weekend, but I had Knit Night after work last night until 9:30, am teaching a Continental Knitting class after work tonight, and am manning the shop all on my own this weekend while my employee is out of town (which means getting there early and staying late so I can still get all my work done while juggling customers).



Plus, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks trying out Crossfit, which I bought a Groupon for last fall that’s about to expire.  Crossfit actually takes the least amount of elapsed time than any workout I’ve ever pursued, so this shouldn’t be such a hardship on my schedule, but just adds another element of advanced planning, given that I bike to work and everything I have to carry for a workout is now just additional weight to juggle on my ride along with whatever food and layers I’m bringing with me for the day.  Sometimes when I leave the house I feel like I should be sporting a frame pack and heading out into the woods for all the supplies I have packed on hand.


BTW, the outcome of dabbling in Crossfit is that it’s had the unintended (and ironic) consequence of making me want to join a gym.  More on that later.


So as a result, my lunches this week feature hard boiled eggs (on bagels left over from family weekend) and soft cheeses, a tofu broccoli yakisoba, a chickpea salad, and a huge pot of the easiest and yummiest soup ever — this time adding little slices of sweet apple chicken sausage.


Also, given that this past weekend was also a faux birthday celebration, I got to bring this home with me, for a little afternoon treat before this week’s classes (or dessert to eat in bed while I watch Parks & Recreation before passing out from exhaustion, whichever the case may be).


 

Key lime pie from The Hardware Store on Vashon Island

I also treated myself to this, which I will chop up and bring to work in Tupperwares once it ripens.  


 

I usually stick to a pretty strict rule of “my produce can only come from the west coast corridor,” but make an exception for tropical fruits.  It’s one thing to buy bagged spinach from Mexico when you can grow it bountifully in your own back yard; it’s another to appreciate an explosively delicious fruit that could never make it through the New Seasons door without transport.  I’m not wholeheartedly against commercial transport, I just like to keep it logical.


So, for the winning trifecta of volume + protein + veggies, I whipped up a quick and easy yakisoba.


A chopped brick of tofu, browned in the wok with salt to draw out the liquid, and a little bit of vegetable oil…


 

a huge head of broccoli sauteed in coconut oil…


 

and some Chinese egg noodles (not technically soba, but I was craving the ramen-like texture of these for some reason).  I tossed this all with a simple dressing of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, and sweet chili sauce, topped with some sesame seeds, and finish it off with Sriracha whenever I’m ready to eat it.  Delicious hot or cold.


 

Oh, totally unrelated, but you know when you buy beans in bulk and bring them home to fill a jar you randomly grab from the shelf, and then sometimes the bag you’ve randomly filled with whatever amount of beans fills that jar just perfectly to the top?


 

Yeah, it’s like the universe is in order.




On to this week’s groceries…


New Seasons 3/20
split peas: $2.38
1 brick firm tofu: $1.99
dozen eggs: $2.89
pint whipping cream: $3.69 — for making butter next week
bunch of kale: $2.49
1 pineapple: $3.78
celery stalk: $0.92
head of broccoli: $2.71
large sweet potato: $2.20
grapefruit: $1.97
bunch of parsley: $1.49
sharp cheddar cheese: $2.05
TOTAL: $28.56
REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: -$0.48 — bummer!  Half a dollar over for the month.  Okay, I can live with that.  I came out $7 ahead in February, so let’s see if I can make it on just $6.50 worth of veggies next week to last me through the rest of the month!




How did the rest of my Project: Food Budget-ers do?