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


Vietnamese Vermicelli Beef Salad

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This is one of my favorite quickie weeknight meals.  The only tedious part is chopping up all the veggies (which I do in a big batch and keep in separate containers so I have enough to last me for lunches later on in the week), but this takes about as long as it does for the beef to brown, so if you do those two things at the same time, you’re golden.

My favorite veggies to use are the following, but any crunchy, colorful vegetable will do:

  • carrots
  • cucumbers
  • lettuce
  • radishes/daikon
  • fresh herbs: cilantro, mint, Thai basil

Slice up the cucumbers very thin, and shred the carrots and daikon in the Cuisinart to save some time.  Boil some water and pour it over a handful of vermicelli rice noodles in a bowl, let that sit for about 5 minutes, then drain the water and let the noodles cool.

In the meantime, brown 1 pound of ground beef in a skillet, and once the pink is gone but the meat still has some moisture in it, pour in some Le’s Kitchen stir fry sauce, then continue to cook until liquid has evaporated and beef is slightly crispy.

As this is finishing up, make the dressing by whisking the following together in a bowl:

  • 4T brown sugar
  • 3T rice vinegar
  • 4T lime juice
  • 2 pressed garlic cloves
  • 1 inch minced ginger
  • 2 minced chiles (jalapeno, green bird, etc.) or 1T chili paste

To assemble the bowl:

Put a handful of the vermicelli noodles in the bottom of the bowl.  Then, arrange all the veggies in little pods around the circumference.  Put a big spoonful of the beef right in the middle, sprinkle with herbs, fried shallots, and crushed peanuts, and then pour a healthy dose of the dressing over the top.

Thai Beef Salad

 


Sausage Sweet Potato Hash, Asian Style Green Beans, & Brown Rice

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sausage sweet potato hash

Well hello there!  Yes, it’s been awhile, I know.  I sort of slipped into a funk there about what this blog is about, and I’ll tell you why: Living by myself, keeping up with what I was buying, cooking, and eating was super simple.  I did all my own grocery shopping, cooked nearly every meal for myself, and always knew what was in my cupboards, freezer, and fridge.  And, sticking to my $6 a day budget really was a challenge.  There were some months there where I had $6 left in the last week of the month and had to invest it in greens, making brown-rice-black-bean-collard bowls for the rest of the month.  (Which, honestly, is not a bad way to go.  It’s actually one of my favorite weeknight meals!  Especially if you have some good hot sauce on hand.)

But, moving in with Jesse has been a whole different ballgame.  I still do almost all of the grocery shopping, kitchen organizing, and cooking, which I certainly can’t complain about.  If that’s the way our division of labor shakes out and I get to sit back and knit while he fixes an emergency leak in the upstairs shower, or cleans the gutters on Saturday morning, I’m a lucky girl.  But, it does complicate things for the purpose of this blog.  For instance:

  • Jesse is a fantabulous cook, but he goes about it waaaaay differently than I do.  He simply wakes up in the morning, decides he wants to eat beef stroganoff for dinner, and then goes to Fred Meyer on his way home and buys every single ingredient, including most of the spices and pantry items we already have.  I’m grateful to have a delicious meal waiting for me when I come home from work, so this is not the battle I pick, but while that’s still part of our shared grocery expenses, it’s certainly not the way I roll!
  • I can scrupulously save receipts from every purchase and catalog them at the end of the week, but asking that of Jesse is a losing battle, so my weekly tally of grocery spending never felt totally accurate, and that bugged me so much!
  • Jesse eats at home way less than I do.  Whether it’s picking up a sandwich from Subway for his work lunch, or Mexican takeout after a late night of bowling, or just the fact that he doesn’t eat breakfast OR leftovers, the fact of the matter is, our household consumption is pretty skewed.  I eat 3 different meals at home (or bring them with me wherever I’m going) most days out of the week, and while they’re inexpensive and made using simple ingredients, the fact of the matter is I’m consuming about 70 percent of our groceries these days, which makes it really hard to really figure out the math of whether we’re truly supporting two grown adults (one of whom can put down three burritos in one sitting…and it’s not me!) on six dollars a day.

So, while I certainly haven’t stopped cooking, shopping frugally, or getting creative with my leftovers, I did stop blogging about it for about eight months!  But, recent requests from certain friends and customers have convinced me to get back into it, realizing that maybe this blog will just have to revamp its purpose.

So, I probably won’t be taking snapshots of all my receipts, keeping a running total, or showing you the breakdown of what each ingredient costs.  But, I will keep taking pictures of meals that I’m proud of, and telling you how I made them!  And you’ll just have to trust that I’m still scouting out the best deals at the grocery store, buying for the future, and getting creative with what’s already taking up space in our freezer/pantry/fridge/cupboards.

This one was a wonderfully collaborative meal, totally by surprise, and was actually precipitated by an argument about Point #3 above.  Every once in awhile, when it comes time to reconcile the monthly bills (which includes all the groceries we put on our shared credit card), Jesse gets all grumpy-pants about it, huffing that he pays for half the groceries, even though he barely eats any of them.  Which, I believe, is really not my problem.  Whether or not you choose to partake, you have a healthy, home-cooked meal waiting for you every night, plenty of leftovers for us both to take to work, and I even make most of our dinners with you in mind (i.e. usually featuring meat and/or cheese, Wisco-style!)

Being able to to share fridge space, grocery costs, cooking, and mealtimes is supremely important to me — and a requirement for me even with a regular old roommate, let alone a life partner.  Even in college, I entered every roommate situation making it clear that I did not want to have the kind of fridge where we each have our own shelf, shop independently, and label our own milk with our names in Sharpie.  Being able to share in each other’s nourishment is one of the most loving things we can do together, and I have been adamant since day one that if we are going to split the mortgage, water bills, and 50-lb. bags of food for our pup, then we should be splitting groceries too, because they are (and should be) part of our life together.

For me, part of sharing groceries also welcomes open conversations about what we’re eating, what we’re spending, what we want to cook together — whether it’s a savory midweek crockpot meal or a gigantic smoked brisket for a party.  It means that if our grocery bill is too high one month, let’s talk about it and figure out why and decide ways together to pare it down.  It means that even though you may not ever eat any of the cottage cheese that I make my morning Israeli salads with, you also get that entire package of Oreos to yourself, or if you want to eat a frozen pizza for dinner one night, go for it!  I’ll split that with you too even if I’m not having any.

I came home from work that day armed with all these arguments in mind, ready to make my case, only to find Jesse had already worked all this out in his own head over the course of the day, and was agreeing with all my points before they even finished coming out of my mouth — the best kind of frustrating.

And, on that note, I dug some random veggies out of the drawer that I thought would complement each other — zucchini, onion, and sweet potato — and a package of chicken sausage out of the freezer where I like to keep random protein on hand just for occasions like this, pointed to the pile and said, “Okay, why don’t you make a hash out of that.”

This is one thing I love about cooking with Jesse: he is refreshingly compliant and capable.  Sometimes I’ll have a vision for dinner, and instead of trying to handle all the components I’ll pull up a recipe for one of my ideas, set up his tablet on the kitchen counter, and tell him to “make that.”  He’s really good at following directions.  The other side of this is that I can trust him to chop up whatever I put before him, add it to a skillet, and season it well by improvisation.  I honestly can’t even tell you what he put in this hash, but I do know he cooked the diced sweet potatoes first since he knew they’d take the longest, then added the onion and sausage, and cooked the sliced zucchini separately so it wouldn’t get too mushy.  Swoon.

In the meantime, I trimmed the ends off of a big bag of green beans I bought last week, heated up some peanut oil in the smaller skillet over medium heat, and tossed them in.  After they’d sauteed for about two minutes, I added some store-bought stir fry sauce — nothing fancy, just some Vietnamese-style bottle of something-or-other that’s been in our fridge for awhile.  While I probably could have whipped up a homemade version of this blend, I get antsy when there isn’t regular condiment turnover, and I’m sure I bought this at Grocery Outlet some time back because it was on crazy-super-sale, so I went for it.  This added some liquid to the skillet as well, which sped along the cooking process by adding the element of steam.  I ground up some peanuts (yes!  I have  nut grinder!  It’s one of my favorite appliances, probably because I love cooking Asian food and about 60% of my meals involve chopped peanuts), and added them to the pan, causing them to get nice and toasty and also caramelize in the sauce.

I almost always have a batch of cooked brown rice already on hand in the fridge, so we just nuked some of that, spooned Jesse’s hash over top, and ate the green beans on the side.


Curried Coconut Carrot Soup

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Well, I totally forgot to take any pictures leading up to the completion of last night’s dinner, but that’s probably okay, since this is one of the easiest soups you’ll ever make.  I’ve made many variations of carrot soup before, but this one had a few new elements to it — inspired by the Esalen cookbook which I’ve been slowly working my way through all the bookmarked pages of, I also added an apple to the mix, and roasted this along with the carrots instead of simply throwing them in to the pot to boil.  I don’t know how much of a difference that really made, but this soup was delicious so let’s just go with it.

The first thing I did was chop my carrots into thirds — nothing too labor-intensive here — along with a cored apple.  These got coated with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted in the oven for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, I did the usual soup-prep thing: chopped up an onion and a few cloves of garlic, and this some some ginger, too.  I sauteed these all in some olive oil, along with a few spoonfuls of my Indian curry powder.  Once the onions were translucent, I filled the pot with broth (using Better Than Bullion these days, since until last night, we haven’t roasted a chicken in ages!), and let that simmer until the veggies were done.

Once they were soft, I took them out of the oven, added them to the broth, and brought this to a boil.  I was too lazy to get out the blender, so I mashed the carrot and apple pieces directly in the pot with our potato masher (an immersion blender is #1 on our list when we go to Kitchen Kaboodle to spend the Hanukkah/Christmas gift cards we received from Dad and Kathy this week!), and added half a can of coconut to give the soup some creaminess.  And because coconut milk is delicious in just about anything.

DSCF5936

For the rest of this meal, I have Jesse and Hollis to thank — Hollis, who brought over some kale which I quickly sauteed in the skillet in a bit of coconut oil, slat, some Balti seasoning from Penzey’s, and a few squirts of my favorite lemon juice — a perfect green side dish to accompany this meal; and Jesse, who swung by New Seasons on his way home from work and already had the chicken roasting in the oven by the time I got home in time for a nice Thursday night dinner with two of my favorite people.

Oh, but this wasn’t just any chicken roasting.  It was a chicken slathered with this.

photo

He also injected this directly into the breast of the chicken with a syringe, if you want to really know how this went down.  This rub is courtesy of one of my vendors at the Urban Craft Uprising, and it is amazing.  I mean, I even though it was amazing when I sampled it off of a wooden stick at the show, as well as smeared onto a crust of some leftover baguette and topped with brie while impatiently waiting for the carrots to finish roasting for the soup.  But hot damn, rub it all over a chicken and pop it in the oven at 400 degrees for an hour, and you will never be able to eat a regular roasted chicken again.

DSCF5937

This is but one of half a dozen different flavors that we acquired from One Screw Loose at last weekend’s show, and be warned: this may be appearing on most meat we consume for the next few months.

DSCF5938


This Week’s Groceries

Portland Fruit Company 10/4

  • Garlic
  • Milk
  • Eggs
  • Chard
  • Red onion
  • Globe grapes
  • Orange bell pepper
  • Asparagus
  • Cilantro
  • Broccoli

TOTAL: $23.74

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $276.26

 

An Dong Market 12/6 — Jesse’s World-Famous Curry!

  • Sorry, folks.  Every item on this receipt just says “grocery.”  I’ll have to get him to blog about this sometime.  It’s outta this world.

TOTAL: $41.23

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $235.03

 

New Seasons 12/13

  • 5 lb. bag of carrots
  • 1 apple
  • Bulk popcorn
  • Dozen eggs
  • A whole chicken
  • Whatever else Jesse decided to buy…?  We’ve got to have a talk about saving those receipts!

TOTAL: $27.54

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $207.49


Roasted Chicken with Grapes and Kalamata Olives

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Sorry guys, my bad.  I totally meant to post about this last week, and the week got away from me.  Between prepping for our big housewarming party last weekend, and wanting to clear my work schedule for a longtime friend who was coming to town, it never happened.  BUT, this meal was still delicious way back a week ago, and it will still be delicious when you try it out yourself.

Although probably 70% of the recipes on this blog are inspired by Deb’s Smitten Kitchen, this is the very first recipe I’ve tried out of her actual hard copy cookbook, which just came out, and which I got a signed copy of last Monday when Andrea and I stood in line for 2 hours after her talk at Powell’s.

It was about that time of the month for a roasted chicken anyway, and even though this made such fabulous leftovers that it prevented me from doing my usual rip-the-meat-of-the-bones-and-make-stock routine, we’re surviving on Better Than Bullion, and I’m sure we’ll have plenty of turkey bones left over after this weekend (yep, that’s right!  We’re hosting Early Faux Thanksgiving at the new house this year!), so I’m not sweating it.

It all starts with browning a variety of chicken pieces in a pan.  Well no, actually, it starts with me biking home from New Seasons with my hand rummaging behind me in my pannier, eating half a bag of “holiday grapes” (read: gigantic) before I even pulled in the driveway.  Then it continues with Jesse trying to show me how to butcher a raw chicken, using the best chef’s knife we have, which is so dull that it wouldn’t even cut through the skin.  For real.  Thank god for friends who listen, and who buy you the most awesome chef’s knife ever for a housewarming present.  The next time I make this meal, things will go differently.

Anyway, then you brown the chicken pieces in a pan.  I added some coconut oil first to get it going, but once they start cooking, there is more than enough chicken juices to keep things lubricated.

That looks gross.  This looks better.

So while you’re doing this, preheat the oven to 450.  I was working with a whole bird’s worth of chicken here, so it took me a few batches, but once it was all browned, I put them all back in the skillet, and dumped in 1 cup each of pitted kalamata olives and harvest grapes, and a whole sliced shallot.  I put the entire skillet in the oven and roasted for about 40 minutes.

Then comes the fun part.  I transferred all the goodies from inside the skillet to a serving platter with a slotted spoon, and then got to deglaze the pan.  I love deglazing the pan.  Basically, this is just adding half a cup of wine, some fresh rosemary, and a little bit of chicken broth to the cooking juices that remained, heating it up and letting it reduce and thicken, and then spooning it over the chicken and everything as a tasty sauce.  Oh, and on the side I made a pan of cornbread, and some sauteed brussels srpouts.  I’ve been eating it as leftovers ever since.


This Week’s Groceries

New Seasons 11/7

  • Lentils: $6.46
  • Cashew pieces: $10.77
  • Black beans: $3.01
  • Whole wheat couscous: $7.00
  • Farro: $6.59
  • Hazelnuts: $6.49 — I was doing some serious bulk aisle stocking up today!
  • Leeks: $0.65
  • Holiday grapes: $6.61
  • Fresh herbs: $0.57
  • Shallot: $1.20
  • Free range roasting chicken: $11.26
  • Kalamata olives: $5.09

TOTAL: $65.65

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $234.35

 

Grocery Outlet 11/7

  • Oatmeal cookies: $0.99
  • Gamesa: $1.49 — WTF is this??  In case you haven’t noticed, I started having Jesse save his receipts…
  • Brussels sprouts: $3.49
  • Whole milk: $1.99

TOTAL: $7.96

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $226.39

 

Fred Meyer 11/10

  • Spearmint: $1.99
  • Butternut squash: $3.18
  • Penne pasta: $2.79
  • Limes: $4.25 — Yes, this is a lot of limes.  Our signature cocktail for the housewarming party revolved around a homemade key lime syrup
  • Avocado: $0.88 — for a veggie sandwich I made on Dave’s Killer Bread, to present to a famished friend when she got off the bus from Vancouver
  • Garlic: $0.34
  • Apple fritter: $0.69 — for Jesse, who was feverishly finishing the paint job in the dining room when I got home, with T minus five hours to go until the party started
  • Pears: $3.87
  • Panko breadcrumbs: $3.69
  • Sherry vinegar: $2.69
  • Red onion: $0.73

TOTAL: 31.96

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $194.43

 

Portland Fruit Company 11/12

  • Kale
  • Yellow onion
  • Fresh dill
  • Cucumbers
  • Brussels sprouts
  • Roma tomatoes
  • Red cabbage

TOTAL: $11.31

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $183.12

 

Grocery Outlet 11/13

  • Strawberry yogurt: $1.49
  • Half and half: $2.39
  • 2 cans artichoke hearts: $4.58
  • Cottage cheese: $2.39
  • Mozzarella/Parmesan cheese blend: $1.99
  • Goat cheese crumbles: $2.99 — to make Smitten Kitchen’s butternut squash salad, which was a huge hit at the party.
  • 2 blue brie wedges: $5.98
  • 2 bottles Santa Cruz sparkling orange juice: $3.58

TOTAL: $18.70

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $164.42

 


Homemade Ginger Ale

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So, this happened.

It’s not technically a SodaStream…but it pretty much is.  It’s a knockoff brand that was a featured deal on LivingSocial a few weeks ago, and while I’ve been holding out to buy the real deal until I could justify spending the $80, this was only $30, and way more palatable.

Okay guys, I think between this and my ice maker at work, I’m finally going to succeed at keeping myself hydrated this winter.  I’ve been drinking at least 4 extra bottles of this stuff a day, and am loving always having room-temperature, super-carbonated water on the kitchen counter.  Sometimes the commercial stuff just isn’t bubbly enough, except the second after you open it!  This seems to hold its charge, even up to a day later.

Obviously, the other reason I’m stoked about having this in the house is that we’re going to make some crazy-awesome cocktails.  And when your go-to drink is whiskey ginger, well, then the obvious first step is to make some serious homemade ginger ale.  Like with cardamom.  And anise.  And allspice.

Inspired by this recipe, I bought a pound of fresh ginger, and set to work.  The only part of this process that requires even a modicum of effort is peeling the ginger.  I had found a pretty huge root, so there weren’t too many knobs to navigate around, but 4 oz. of peeled ginger is a lot more than you’d expect.

I sliced this up and added it to a pot of water on the stove, boiling it together with 1 cup each of white and brown sugars.

I know we’re making simple syrup here, but this felt like a lot to me and the end result was too sweet for my taste relative to all the other spices, so next time I’m going to take it down a notch.

Next, I toasted the spices.

In this pan resides:

  • 2t cardamom (whole)
  • 1t allspice
  • 1t peppercorns
  • a few anise stars (mine are all broken up at this point but I tried to aim for about 3 total)

These got toasted on medium-high until they started to brown, and then were thrown in the simmering mixture for about 15 minutes.  After that I turned off the heat, and let the mixture cool together, before straining it into a jar and discarding the spices.

Tonight after work, Jesse and I (and Dory, who’s visiting for the weekend!) are going to hop on our bikes and head over to our friends’ house for some drinks before one of our favorite bluegrass bands plays at the Tabor — an early Halloween celebration since true Halloween falls on a Wednesday next week.

My plan: 2T homemade ginger syrup, 1 cup soda water, fresh muddled ginger, 1 shot Bulleit Bourbon, and some ice.

I’m into it.


This Week’s Groceries

Fred Meyer 10/22

  • Radishes: $0.50
  • Beets: $1.99
  • Roasted chicken: $5.99
  • Spring mix: $2.28

TOTAL: $10.76

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $138.62

 

Portland Fruit Company 10/23

  • Onions
  • Collard Greens
  • Roma tomatoes
  • Carrots
  • Celery
  • Brussels sprouts

TOTAL: $8.19

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $130.43

 

Fred Meyer 10/25

  • Chocolate hazelnut bar: $2.69
  • Dark chocolate: $2.69
  • Cubed ham: $4.79

TOTAL: $10.17

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $120.26

 

Grocery Outlet 10/25

  • Ginger root: $1.49
  • Half and half: $1.99
  • Coffee: $5.99

TOTAL: $9.47

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $110.79

 


Tomato Chicken Stew with Israeli Couscous

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All right, we’re getting down to the wire here.  I’m clearly already over-budget for the month, and so trying to keep the shopping as skimpy as possible for these last few days of August.  Spending last weekend in the woods certainly helped — after a super cheap trip to Grocery Outlet ($37, two people, five meals!), we spent a lazy Saturday along the Salmon River eating pepper-egg-provolone-pesto wraps, fresh plums and carrots, TastyBites Indian meals, spicy chicken sausages, and jalapeno-watermelon cocktails.  Not too shabby.

So cooking this week, I’m really trying to just use what I’ve already got on hand.  Which never really takes too much effort, given what an apocalyptic-ready stockpile I have in my pantry, but it’s the fresh veggies that always provide a challenge.

Fortunately for me, I had some serious peppers on hand — still a ton of jalapenos from my last Fubonn run.

And also some leftover bell peppers from camping (one of the few fresh vegetables I’ll pack, even when backpacking.  So sturdy, hearty, and refreshing, with very little waste to pack out!).

So these got sauteed with a small yellow onion while I browned some chicken I had in the freezer…

And once those were all softened, I added some homemade chicken stock to make things a little richer.

In contemplating what grain would go along with this the best, I was itching for something in between rice and pasta.  Which, scanning my pantry shelves, inevitably led me to…

Israeli couscous.  I really think this is just plain old pasta in a novel shape, but it does the trick.  And, while you can totally cook it separately, in a dish like this, I figure why not just throw it directly into the skillet and turn it into a one-pot meal??

So once some liquid had melted off of my chicken stock brick, I added 1 cup of Israeli couscous, and enough V8 juice to submerge all the ingredients, to turn this into a nice tomato sauce.

I covered this all to let the couscous absorb most of the broth, after adding some salt, pepper, and green herbs (in the family of Italian seasoning).

20 minutes later, this dish was ready for the final ingredient — the remainder of my bag of fresh spinach.

I did also make a pit-stop at Fred Meyer the other night, after a 4.5-hour Ikea marathon (I think Jesse and I may have set a historic precedent for being the first couple to emerge form 4+ hours at Ikea together, not fighting or crying), to get some crucial ingredients to get me through the rest of my week: some fresh salad veggies and a roasted chicken.

Between this for lunches and dinners, a visit from my dad taking us out to the Sunshine Tavern for dinner last night, and some yogurt, cottage cheese, and fruit that I still had in my fridge for breakfasts, I can make it to Saturday, no problem.  And then the month resets and I can get back on track with my budget!  Jesse officially moves in in October: last month of single livin’!


This Week’s Groceries

Fred Meyer 8/28

  • Mixed greens: $2.28
  • Radish bunch: $0.50
  • Cucumber: $0.50
  • Red onion: $0.65
  • Roasted chicken: $6.99 Truth be told, this is one of my favorite “take-out” meals.  Some shredded roasted chicken atop mixed greens and crunchy vegetables, some blue cheese crumbles or whatever other cheese I have in my drawer, flax or sunflower seeds, and a yummy dressing.  It’s perfect post-workout, or when I’m craving a satisfying, fresh-tasting meal and want to skip right over the gluten altogether.  I prefer when I can dip into my stash of home-roasted chicken that I keep in my freezer, but in a pinch, a whole roasted and seasoned chicken from Freddy’s for seven bucks is a pretty sweet deal.

TOTAL: $10.92

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: -$57.21 — Yikes!  This leaves me with only about $100 to spend in September…

 

 


Tilapia Yakisoba

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I came home on Monday from 5 days out in the woods, living out of a cooler (though a very methodically-stocked gourmet cooler, if I do say so myself), and the only errand I could come up with that seemed appealing on my 89-degree day off was a trip to Fubonn.  Oh man, do I love Fubonn.

Even though at this point I like to think I have a handle on it — which items I’m looking for, their approximate location in the store, I prove myself wrong every time, and even if I think I’m just going to pick up a gigantic $3 bottle of sesame oil, I end up wandering the aisles in a daze for at least 2 hours, comparing brands of coconut milk ounce-for-ounce, wondering whether it’s worth it to get the bamboo shoots in the glass jar rather than the can, and marveling over how the Indian curry paste is clear across the warehouse-size store from the Thai curry paste!  And then, just when you think you’ve wrapped your head around it all…here comes a whole new aisle of soy sauce.  It looks just like the first aisle from 75 minutes ago, but here it is again!  Why?!

I always begin with a Vietnamese iced coffee from the deli counter-esque area right at the entrance which is served over the most finely crushed ice you can imagine, and with a vacuum-sealed plastic cover.  How do they do that?  I ponder this while I snake up and down the aisles with a gigantic shopping cart and just let it take me where it will.  This usually lands me in the checkout line with the most random assortment of foods you can imagine, and an absurdly low total bill.  I regret not having taken a picture of my loot, because truly, it carpeted the entire register area and somehow came to only $50-something.

And it is also how Tilapia Yakisoba became a thing.  I didn’t think I wanted to actually end up cooking anything Tuesday night, on what had been a swelteringly hot day.  But you never know…after the sun goes down in Portland, the temperature really plummets — enough where I was even able to go for an evening run, shower, change into pajamas and decide I was done sweating for the night.  And then cook a meal on the stovetop.

This was definitely a “get rid of all the veggies that are about to go bad” kind of meal, especially the ones we’d chopped up for the weekend and brought in the cooler but had never used in the chicken masala Sunday night.  And, I was curious what dirt-cheap tilapia from an undisclosed location tasted like.  It was already frozen, and not going to be the main star of the show, so I fried it up in the skillet, letting it defrost as it cooked.



These mushrooms and green onions had already been sliced and stored — ready to go, there was no clearer option than to toss them in with a little salt and chili flakes and let them sautee up with the fish.  I also sliced up a red bell pepper and added this into the mix.



Then, of course, my favorite green to throw in the mix when I don’t have anything fresh is some wakame seaweed, perfectly salty and chewy once it gets a little dose of whatever juices it’s cooking in.



Maybe this is a misnomer, because I didn’t actually use soba noodles for this, but rather those wonderfully light Asian noodles that come curled up in these little balls and loosen up into wavy kinks like ramen once you cook them for just a minute or two.



I didn’t even use a colander to strain these, since I wanted a little extra water to loosen it all up, so I just drained them using the lid and then added them to the skillet with everything else.


I already had some sauce on hand that I’d made a few nights ago when I had made a delicious garlicky Asian green bean salad, comprised of soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, ginger, honey, and garlic, which I added to this skillet-of-everything, and then augmented by adding a little more of the soy, vinegar, and oil.

By this point, the fish had broken up and distributed throughout the dish, so a few quick little stirs was all I needed to mix the sauce in, let it rest for five minutes, and then dish it up with a handful of bean sprouts on top to give it a refreshing crunch.  It was, after all, still 80 degrees outside by the time I took this out to my (new!) back porch to enjoy in my camping chair.  Someday soon I’ll have to get an actual table to eat at.




This Week’s Groceries

Grocery Outlet 8/4

  • Chopped walnuts: $3.99
  • Bagged cole slaw: $1.19
  • Tortillas: $2.09
  • Eggplant: $1.29
  • Bacos: $0.99
  • Ground turkey: $1.99
  • Almond milk: $1.49
  • Onion: $1.00
  • Tomatoes: $2.99

TOTAL: $17.02

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $110.44

 

Trader Joe’s 4/7

  • Fruit leather bits & pieces: $2.49
  • Bombay simmer curry sauce: $2.49
  • Turkey bacon: $2.99
  • Red pepper spread: $2.49 — my favorite condiment in the world!!
  • Cottage cheese: $1.99
  • Sliced black olives (x3): $3.57
  • Crumbled feta: $2.79
  • Orange peach mango juice: $2.99
  • Firm tofu (x2): $2.58
  • Tricolor radiatore pasta: $3.98
  • Salt & pepper potato chips: $2.99
  • Light champagne salad dressing: $1.99
  • Basil in a pot: $2.99 — I don’t live in a basement anymore so now I can plant this in my kitchen!!

TOTAL: $36.33 (split with Jesse, as these were ingredients to prep for camping, so really $18.17)

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $92.27

 

Fred Meyer 8/7

  • Red onion: $0.95
  • Green lettuce: $1.50
  • Cucumbers: $1.00
  • Crimini mushrooms: $4.19
  • Spinach: $0.99
  • Cheez-Its: $2.50
  • Garlic: $0.34
  • Collard greens: $1.39
  • Coffee beans: $6.63
  • Bell peppers: $4.18
  • Deli ham: $6.09
  • Deli turkey: $5.82
  • Deli salami: $2.75
  • Shredded cheese: $2.29
  • Pork sausage: $3.99
  • Limeade: $1.25
  • Grapefruit juice: $3.29
  • 1% milk: $2.99
  • Half & half: $2.49
  • Sliced provolone cheese: $3.00
  • Sliced gouda cheese: $3.00
  • Dozen eggs: $2.99

TOTAL: $63.57 (split with Jesse for camping supplies, so really $32.29)

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $59.98

 

Grocery Outlet 8/7

  • Spring greens mix: $4.99
  • Strawberries: $1.50
  • Eggplant: $1.29
  • Avocado: $0.99
  • Blue cheese crumbles: $2.49

TOTAL: $11.26

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $48.72

 

Fubonn 8/13 (detailed list coming soon)

TOTAL: $57.31

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: -$8.59 — Okay, a little bit over for this month, but just you wait.  I’m going to be making yakisoba till the end of time.


Poached Salmon with Ginger Honey Cinnamon Glaze, Coconut Collard Greens, and Red Rice

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I love when I can make a delicious dinner entirely out of what’s already in my kitchen, and all that is required is stopping on my bike ride home to pick up some fish and a head of collard greens.

I can’t even believe how busy this week is, and relish in the fact that with all that’s going on, I still take the time to cook myself a delicious meal on a Wednesday night.  Really, at a time like this, I should be eating take-out or leftover pizza from UCU last weekend.  I mean, seriously.  After driving back down to Portland on Sunday night, I spent all day Monday unpacking from the show and reorganizing the shop, prepping for the coming work week, especially because my wonderful employee is on vacation and I’m flying solo for the next 2 weeks.  Awesome timing.

Then on Tuesday morning, I signed about 1,000 pieces of paper, and agreed to a bill whose final payment is due in 2042.  Yep, I bought a house.  NBD.

Then, I’m working all week, getting the keys to the house, spending the evening with my best friend who just got back from 3 weeks in Hawaii, hosting old high school friends from out of town Saturday night, and then quickly washing the sheets so I can host my business partner for a 24 hour debrief of last weekend’s show.  And we’ll treat ourselves to a fancy dinner in there somewhere.

Oh, and then Monday I had to buy a fridge.  And a bed.

And then Tuesday I move.  Into my new house.

And then Wednesday I will go to work and spend the whole rest of the evening prepping 4 days worth of food to bring with us to String Cheese at Horning’s, the festival we’ll be at the whole following weekend.

And yet, last night I came home and still felt compelled to cook this.

As soon as I walked in the door and poured myself some iced tea, I got a pot of red and brown rice started on the stove.

A lot of times when I make a teriyaki-esque type of sauce, it involves stir frying veggies or noodles or meat first, then incorporating an Asian sauce concoction into it.  But for some reason this time, I just wanted a nice thick, bubbly sauce, so I started with that.  Pus, I have about 9 half-used bottles of red wine that I’d really love to not transport with me to my next residence, so this seemed like a good way to tap into that.

First, some minced ginger.

This went into the big skillet on medium-high heat with some honey, soy sauce, chopped garlic, and a hefty amount of red wine.  It smelled disgusting at first, but once the sauce bubbled together and reduced and the alcohol cooked off, it became deliciously sweet and dark and syrupy.

I put the salmon directly into the skillet, still frozen, and let it thaw and start to cook from the steam as the sauce continued to reduce and the water evaporated off the fish.

When it was about half cooked, I was able to remove the fish and peel off the skin with my fingers, removed the sauce from the heat and let it all sit there while I worked on the greens.

Have you ever had to deal with collard greens before?  There are few veggies out there that I won’t use in their entirety, but collard and chard stems are one of them.  I mean, if I’m making a soup the next day then sure, I’ll toss them in, but really other than that, I don’t force it.  I compost now so it’s all good.

What I like to do here is take each leaf, and quickly slice out the stem, making diagonal cuts right along each side of the rib and plucking the stem from the middle.

After doing this to each leaf, I stack them all on top of each other, roll them up like I’m chiffonading basil, make a slice lengthwise down the middle, and then again perpendicularly into strips — this makes perfect little rectangles for sauteeing.

Sliced up half an onion…


Then, in a separate pan, I heated up some coconut oil, and let the onion caramelize with some salt for a few minutes.

In went all the greens, and as they cooked down to the size of the pan, I added some jerk seasoning, a splash of cider vinegar, and some black pepper.

I wanted to add just a bit of chicken broth, but I’ll let you in on a secret.  You know those recipes that tell you to add like half a cup of chicken broth?  It’s like, who has that?  Any commercial liquid broth that’s open in the fridge will go back long before I get a chance to use half a cup of it, and any bullion requires a separate pot to make the broth in…for half a cup?  Here’s what I do: I make my own chicken stock each time I roast a chicken — about once a month — and keep the stock in serving-size containers in the freezer, usually cottage cheese-sized.

Then I use these the same way you’d use a stick of butter to grease a cooking pan: take out the fist-sized ice cube, and place it in the pan of whatever needs a little extra richness.

Not for too long — maybe 3 minutes, until just a few layers (or about half a cup!) melt off.  Then, put the broth cube back in the cottage cheese container and replace in the freezer.  No harm done, no broth wasted, no extra pot to clean.

Did I mention that I don’t have a sink in my kitchen?

Yep, 4 years and approximately 3,800 meals cooked…without a kitchen sink.  Just one of the many things I’m really, really excited about in my new house.

So anyway, I took the greens off the heat and let them absorb the rest of that broth while they cooled, and returned the salmon-and-sauce pan back to medium-high heat for another five minutes or so until the salmon had finished cooking and was wonderfully warm and caramelized.

OMG.


This Week’s Groceries

Trader Joe’s 7/9

  • Sockeye salmon fillets: $6.69
  • Cod fillets: $4.39
  • Roasted plantain chips: $1.69 — for the bike ride home.  
  • 2 cans tuna: $3.38

TOTAL: $16.15

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $72.70

 

QFC 7/11

  • Roma tomatoes: $1.00
  • Green pepper: $0.94
  • Half & half: $2.29
  • Cottage cheese: $2.99
  • Red onion: $0.55
  • Cucumber: $1.79

TOTAL: $9.56

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $63.14

 

New Seasons 7/11

  • Collard Greens: $2.49

TOTAL: $2.49

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $60.65


Black Bean, Corn, & Pineapple Pasta Salad

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I’m in serious clean out the pantry mode right now.  The same way that I’m sure I’m going to challenge myself to a serious closet sifting process once I do end up moving (which may not be in the too distant future — I made an offer on a house yesterday!), just the thought of packing up my house and transporting it is making me want to completely evacuate my freezer and pantry.  Which, if you’ll recall, is no small feat.

So I’m challenging myself with this weird game of taking one item each week out of both the freezer and pantry, and playing my own little version of Iron Chef with it.

This week yielded a yogurt container full of corn that I froze from last summer, and a can of pineapple.

What could possibly marry these two items?  Black beans, FTW.

Luckily this thought occurred to me early enough in the day to get these puppies soaking for a few hours, so that all I had to do when I got home from a crazy day of errands and appointments and house-hunting was boil them up and toss them around with a few other ingredients.

Understandably, the eight-month-old corn was looking a little sad, so I sauteed it in my new skillet until it was a little caramelized, and then supplemented it with some fresh kernels off of an early summer ear of corn that I incidentally had drifting around in my veggie drawer.

This salad really can’t get much simpler.  I cooked up a cup of elbow macaroni, opened the can of pineapple, and tossed this all together with some olive oil, red wine vinegar, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, and the last little bit of jalapeno that I saved from some chili vodka I’ve been infusing this week for a fancy-pants cocktail party my friend Kate is throwing on Saturday.

Oh, and then threw in a handful of soy Bacos at the end for a little bit of a smokey flavor.

A quick dinner before biking back down to the Southeast for an evening campfire at a friend’s house, plus lunches for the rest of the week!


This Week’s Groceries

New Seasons 5/28 (on June’s grocery bill)

  • Jalapeno kettle chips: $2.00
  • Mango juice: $3.99
  • 2 dozen eggs: $5.78 — I’m in charge of the breakfast casseroles for Kate’s cocktail/sleepover party this weekend
  • Hazelnut half & half: $2.99
  • Cottage cheese: $2.69
  • Kale: $2.49
  • Carrots: $2.06
  • Red cabbage: $4.87
  • Green cabbage: $1.96
  • Red onion: $1.04
  • Free range roaster chicken: $15.33
  • Yellow onions: $1.99
  • Jalapenos: $2.50 — All of the following were destined infusing chili vodka for spicy mango-cucumber martinis on Saturday!
  • Red chiles: $1.90
  • Habanero chiles: $0.90
  • Horseradish root: $0.45

TOTAL: $52.94

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $97.06