Roast beef success! and 2 with no photos

We've started buying the majority of our meat from the butcher shop. We're doing this for 3 reasons. First, there is a butcher and a small grocery store about a 5 minute drive from our house. I can go there unshowered, with my hairy legs and spit-up covered yoga pants and no one notices. And the chance I will run into anyone I know is very slim, unlike the other day when I was dancing and singing to Paxton while pushing his stroller in Costco and looked up and saw someone I knew staring at me. Second, price. If I need only one chicken breast, I don't have to buy a pack of four. If I need only a pound of ground beef, I don't have to buy 2 packages of 3/4's of a pound each. And third is quality. This stuff is gooooood, much better quality than the grocery stores.

I was there a couple of days ago and they had some little tenderloin roasts on sale. I picked one up and regretted it right away, as I am crappy at cooking roasts. But why be negative, so I gave it a go.

First I took the roast out 30 minutes before cooking and unwrapped it and let it sit at room temperature.

I made a rub of
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp black pepper

and rubbed it on the roast. I heated 2 tb of vegetable oil over medium heat in a pan and browned the roast on all sides.


Then I put it in the oven at 400' for 30 minutes.


It came out around medium-ish. A little more done that I would like, but about what Scott prefers.

It was delicious; the roast was tender and the rub added nice flavor. I was pretty proud of myself and will feel more confident with roasts in the future.

I cooked a recipe from one of my notebooks. This is from Bon Appetit, Grilled Chicken Thighs. I marinated the chicken for a couple of hours before I broiled them. I love anything teriyaki, and these went over very well.
Recipe: Grilled Chicken Thighs.

And from my del.icio.us recipe list I made Mongolian Beef and I agree that this is quite a wonderful dish. I sauteed a sliced up orange bell pepper and a sliced zucchini to the pan for the final simmering. It was fabulous and quick and full of yum.

Roast beef success! and 2 with no photos

We've started buying the majority of our meat from the butcher shop. We're doing this for 3 reasons. First, there is a butcher and a small grocery store about a 5 minute drive from our house. I can go there unshowered, with my hairy legs and spit-up covered yoga pants and no one notices. And the chance I will run into anyone I know is very slim, unlike the other day when I was dancing and singing to Paxton while pushing his stroller in Costco and looked up and saw someone I knew staring at me. Second, price. If I need only one chicken breast, I don't have to buy a pack of four. If I need only a pound of ground beef, I don't have to buy 2 packages of 3/4's of a pound each. And third is quality. This stuff is gooooood, much better quality than the grocery stores.

I was there a couple of days ago and they had some little tenderloin roasts on sale. I picked one up and regretted it right away, as I am crappy at cooking roasts. But why be negative, so I gave it a go.

First I took the roast out 30 minutes before cooking and unwrapped it and let it sit at room temperature.

I made a rub of
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp black pepper

and rubbed it on the roast. I heated 2 tb of vegetable oil over medium heat in a pan and browned the roast on all sides.


Then I put it in the oven at 400' for 30 minutes.


It came out around medium-ish. A little more done that I would like, but about what Scott prefers.

It was delicious; the roast was tender and the rub added nice flavor. I was pretty proud of myself and will feel more confident with roasts in the future.

I cooked a recipe from one of my notebooks. This is from Bon Appetit, Grilled Chicken Thighs. I marinated the chicken for a couple of hours before I broiled them. I love anything teriyaki, and these went over very well.
Recipe: Grilled Chicken Thighs.

And from my del.icio.us recipe list I made Mongolian Beef and I agree that this is quite a wonderful dish. I sauteed a sliced up orange bell pepper and a sliced zucchini to the pan for the final simmering. It was fabulous and quick and full of yum.

Beans R Good

Things are going pretty well over here. I recently had a doctor's appointment and all was proclaimed good, including that I don't have gestational diabetes (YAY), and my blood work was all good, except that my iron levels are "acceptable but low". I did a search on the internet yesterday before work for some iron rich foods but was coming up with only creepy lists that included whale and seal meat. I twittered (of course I did) what I was looking for, and when I got home that night I saw I had some responses from some very helpful people, suggesting leafy greens, red meat, beans and beets. So we had a big salad for dinner and after dinner I checked out the cupboards for what would be for dinner the next night and we had about 10 cans of beans, and I knew right away what to make -
Mexican Black Bean and Roasted Pineapple Bowl from Everybody Like Sandwiches.

Now who wouldn't like rice and beans and pineapple and salsa all layered together? Only a fool, I tell you.

We made the salsa with tomatos from the garden.

How good does this look?


The iron rich beans were sauteed with onion and bell pepper and spices. The pineapple, which should have been fresh and roasted, was canned and warmed in a pan. But still good. We topped the beans rice and pineapple with the fresh salsa and sour cream. I skipped the cheese on mine.


So delicious and good for you! Give Jeanette's recipe a try, you'll love it.

Beans R Good

Things are going pretty well over here. I recently had a doctor's appointment and all was proclaimed good, including that I don't have gestational diabetes (YAY), and my blood work was all good, except that my iron levels are "acceptable but low". I did a search on the internet yesterday before work for some iron rich foods but was coming up with only creepy lists that included whale and seal meat. I twittered (of course I did) what I was looking for, and when I got home that night I saw I had some responses from some very helpful people, suggesting leafy greens, red meat, beans and beets. So we had a big salad for dinner and after dinner I checked out the cupboards for what would be for dinner the next night and we had about 10 cans of beans, and I knew right away what to make -
Mexican Black Bean and Roasted Pineapple Bowl from Everybody Like Sandwiches.

Now who wouldn't like rice and beans and pineapple and salsa all layered together? Only a fool, I tell you.

We made the salsa with tomatos from the garden.

How good does this look?


The iron rich beans were sauteed with onion and bell pepper and spices. The pineapple, which should have been fresh and roasted, was canned and warmed in a pan. But still good. We topped the beans rice and pineapple with the fresh salsa and sour cream. I skipped the cheese on mine.


So delicious and good for you! Give Jeanette's recipe a try, you'll love it.

A Tale of Two Burgers

We've been grilling fools over here lately, and I wanted to share 2 fabulous burger recipes with you. They are so good. You should make them.

First up is a burger from the latest Food Network Magazine. The lead story on the cover is Best Burgers From Bobby Flay, promoting his new book Burgers, Fries and Shakes. I saw enough reviews on blogs to know that this is a book worth owning. I was drawn to the recipe for his Dallas Burger, a burger with homemade bbq sauce, dry rub, and coleslaw. It's a recipe he created for his wife, who loves bbq'd brisket. We love brisket too, so this was the one to try first.

The burger is a little time consuming - if you go whole hog you make not only the burger patties from scratch, but also the dry rub, coleslaw and bbq sauce. But not an awful amount of time. Be patient, it's worth it.


This burger is SO GOOD, and it's the bbq sauce and coleslaw that really make it fabulous.


Look at that! We had them 2 nights in a row. I think I'm drooling a little right now.....

Dallas Burger

_______________________________________

The other burger is also from Food Network, from their Ultimate Recipe Showdown show. I've only seen the show once, but luckily for me, it was the Burger episode, the episode that brought this burger into my life.

Sorry if I sound a little dramatic, but damn, this Vietnamese Bistro Burger rocks.


You may recall my recent post about how much we love and miss Vietnamese food. This is another easy flavorful Vietnamese recipe that we will be making a lot of. The patty is made of ground pork seasoned with lime, ginger, soy and fish sauce. Make sure you make the pickled carrot and daikon salad, it's fabulous on the burger.


I could go on for days about how wonderful this burger is. I won't though. I'll just say one more time it's easy and delicious and hopefully you are going to try these, cause you'll love them.


Vietnamese Bistro Burger

A Tale of Two Burgers

We've been grilling fools over here lately, and I wanted to share 2 fabulous burger recipes with you. They are so good. You should make them.

First up is a burger from the latest Food Network Magazine. The lead story on the cover is Best Burgers From Bobby Flay, promoting his new book Burgers, Fries and Shakes. I saw enough reviews on blogs to know that this is a book worth owning. I was drawn to the recipe for his Dallas Burger, a burger with homemade bbq sauce, dry rub, and coleslaw. It's a recipe he created for his wife, who loves bbq'd brisket. We love brisket too, so this was the one to try first.

The burger is a little time consuming - if you go whole hog you make not only the burger patties from scratch, but also the dry rub, coleslaw and bbq sauce. But not an awful amount of time. Be patient, it's worth it.


This burger is SO GOOD, and it's the bbq sauce and coleslaw that really make it fabulous.


Look at that! We had them 2 nights in a row. I think I'm drooling a little right now.....

Dallas Burger

_______________________________________

The other burger is also from Food Network, from their Ultimate Recipe Showdown show. I've only seen the show once, but luckily for me, it was the Burger episode, the episode that brought this burger into my life.

Sorry if I sound a little dramatic, but damn, this Vietnamese Bistro Burger rocks.


You may recall my recent post about how much we love and miss Vietnamese food. This is another easy flavorful Vietnamese recipe that we will be making a lot of. The patty is made of ground pork seasoned with lime, ginger, soy and fish sauce. Make sure you make the pickled carrot and daikon salad, it's fabulous on the burger.


I could go on for days about how wonderful this burger is. I won't though. I'll just say one more time it's easy and delicious and hopefully you are going to try these, cause you'll love them.


Vietnamese Bistro Burger

I have never felt more like Paula Deen than I do right now.

You'd assume that a recipe that starts off the ingredient list with bacon and butter must come from Miss Deen y'all, but not this one.


These yummy bacon cookies - yeah I said bacon cookie - are weirdly wonderful and come from Cookin' in the 'Cuse. If you're feeling wacky and have a half pound of bacon sitting around, give these a try.

I have never felt more like Paula Deen than I do right now.

You'd assume that a recipe that starts off the ingredient list with bacon and butter must come from Miss Deen y'all, but not this one.


These yummy bacon cookies - yeah I said bacon cookie - are weirdly wonderful and come from Cookin' in the 'Cuse. If you're feeling wacky and have a half pound of bacon sitting around, give these a try.

Bites v 6

Back in June I posted a Wordless recipe for toast with peanut butter and bacon. An anonymous reader left a comment on that post with instructions on how to make peanut butter bacon spread. When Scott read that, there was no stopping him.



It was really really good! I was skeptical, but was won over. Salty smokey bacon and creamy peanut butter are a match made in heaven.
_________________________________________________

We saw Jamie Oliver make this relish on his new(ish) show Jamie at Home - Jalapeno Avocado relish. At least, that's what I call ours. His is called something else similar, but the book is alllllll the way in the other room right now.


I first served the relish with some chicken breast I'd smoked in an old smoker bag. That bag had to have been 5 years old. About time to use it. The chicken and relish paired well together. The smoked pineapple, not so much. Grilled pineapple rocks. This smoked pineapple just tasted oily and weird. A waste of perfectly good pineapple!
______________________________________________

Here's a del.icio.us recipe for you from La Mia Cucina. I bookmarked this recipe in January 2007. Lisa made this for Weekend Cookbook Challenge, and even though I'd saved it, I was never sure I'd make it. Until I was faced with 3/4's of a large head of purple cabbage leftover from a salad recipe. I still had coleslaw in the fridge from the pork sandwiches, so we tried Lisa's stew


Kielbasa Stew.
This received good but mixed results. I'd had a choice between 3 kielbasa's at the store. I personally don't think I chose the best one. I enjoyed the "soup" part (I didn't cook it as long as the recipe recommends, so it was soupy, which is what I wanted), but wasn't crazy about the sausage. I found it too firm. Scott just loved the whole thing, and ate 2 bowlfuls that night. I divided the leftovers into lunch for Scott for the next day, and the rest for my parents. And mixed reviews from them too - my Dad enjoyed the veggies and soup, my mom thought the sausage was the best part.
_______________________________________________________________

Back in the summer Scott's sister, brother in law and our nephew came to visit. That kid survived on a diet of ribs, skinny cow fudge pops, peas, and goldfish crackers the whole weekend. (The adults ate pretty much the same thing, with a few cocktails in the evenings.) One day I sat with my nephew as he ate his snack, and he was kind enough to share a couple of his goldfish crackers with me. They were good! A month later on holiday, a bowl of goldfish crackers turned up at the bar we were having a pre-dinner drink at, and when we went home, I added them to my grocery list. The bag sat untouched for a couple of months until I was trying to figure out what to do with some chicken for dinner. Cheddar Chicken Fingers were born.


The little crackers were so happy to go swimming in my mortar. Or pestle.

A massacre! Avert your eyes!

I lightly spread the chicken strips with mustard, and breaded them with the ground up flesh of hundred of small cheesy goldfish.

Then they were baked and eaten. The end.
_________________________________________________


This was a Nigella recipe for Risi e Bisi - Rice and Peas. Basically a soupy risotto. It was ok.
________________________________________________

Bites v 6

Back in June I posted a Wordless recipe for toast with peanut butter and bacon. An anonymous reader left a comment on that post with instructions on how to make peanut butter bacon spread. When Scott read that, there was no stopping him.



It was really really good! I was skeptical, but was won over. Salty smokey bacon and creamy peanut butter are a match made in heaven.
_________________________________________________

We saw Jamie Oliver make this relish on his new(ish) show Jamie at Home - Jalapeno Avocado relish. At least, that's what I call ours. His is called something else similar, but the book is alllllll the way in the other room right now.


I first served the relish with some chicken breast I'd smoked in an old smoker bag. That bag had to have been 5 years old. About time to use it. The chicken and relish paired well together. The smoked pineapple, not so much. Grilled pineapple rocks. This smoked pineapple just tasted oily and weird. A waste of perfectly good pineapple!
______________________________________________

Here's a del.icio.us recipe for you from La Mia Cucina. I bookmarked this recipe in January 2007. Lisa made this for Weekend Cookbook Challenge, and even though I'd saved it, I was never sure I'd make it. Until I was faced with 3/4's of a large head of purple cabbage leftover from a salad recipe. I still had coleslaw in the fridge from the pork sandwiches, so we tried Lisa's stew


Kielbasa Stew.
This received good but mixed results. I'd had a choice between 3 kielbasa's at the store. I personally don't think I chose the best one. I enjoyed the "soup" part (I didn't cook it as long as the recipe recommends, so it was soupy, which is what I wanted), but wasn't crazy about the sausage. I found it too firm. Scott just loved the whole thing, and ate 2 bowlfuls that night. I divided the leftovers into lunch for Scott for the next day, and the rest for my parents. And mixed reviews from them too - my Dad enjoyed the veggies and soup, my mom thought the sausage was the best part.
_______________________________________________________________

Back in the summer Scott's sister, brother in law and our nephew came to visit. That kid survived on a diet of ribs, skinny cow fudge pops, peas, and goldfish crackers the whole weekend. (The adults ate pretty much the same thing, with a few cocktails in the evenings.) One day I sat with my nephew as he ate his snack, and he was kind enough to share a couple of his goldfish crackers with me. They were good! A month later on holiday, a bowl of goldfish crackers turned up at the bar we were having a pre-dinner drink at, and when we went home, I added them to my grocery list. The bag sat untouched for a couple of months until I was trying to figure out what to do with some chicken for dinner. Cheddar Chicken Fingers were born.


The little crackers were so happy to go swimming in my mortar. Or pestle.

A massacre! Avert your eyes!

I lightly spread the chicken strips with mustard, and breaded them with the ground up flesh of hundred of small cheesy goldfish.

Then they were baked and eaten. The end.
_________________________________________________


This was a Nigella recipe for Risi e Bisi - Rice and Peas. Basically a soupy risotto. It was ok.
________________________________________________

del.icio.us recipe of the week - my take on Michelles Beanapaloosa

This is possibly the fastest that a del.icio.us recipe of the week has made it from computer to plate - the same day. I saw this recipe on Tuesday morning before I left for work, picked up what I needed from the store at lunch, and made it that night for dinner.

When we packed up our house in Calgary to move here, cleaning out my pantry was the hardest part for me. I gave away a fair amount of spices, sauces etc, but some stuff I just couldn't part with, and a jar of garlic black bean sauce was one of the things that came with us. But what to do with it? No idea, which is why it was still in the pantry unopened until my Tuesday morning visit to Je Mange la Ville, where I found her Chicken and Green Bean stir fry.

Doesn't it look and sound delicious??? Or del.icio.us (ha! sorry.). Yes it does. But when I was at the grocery store I had a change of heart. We've eaten a lot of chicken lately, to the point I don't want to eat chicken again any time soon. Maybe I should save the recipe, and make something else tonight. OR, I could make a switch and use beef instead of chicken! Am I brilliant, or what?


This was ohmygod good. As I said, I used beef instead of chicken. I also used about 1/2 lb each of the beef and the beans - I am trying to cut down on leftovers around here - but left the sauce amounts the same, as we do love sauce. Scott was pretty uninterested in this when I started cooking it, but practically knocked me out of the way to get at it when it was done, then ate 3/4's of it, and said that anytime I wanted to make that again, it was ok with him.

The only thing I would do differently next time would be to cut back on the amount of garlic I used. Michelle's recipe calls for fermented black beans, and I used garlic black bean sauce. As fabulous as it was, I swear we radiated garlic out of our pores for the next two days.

Recipe: Chicken and Green Beans with Fermented Black Beans

del.icio.us recipe update, as of today 267 recipes. After I hit 300 in May I had to go through and delete recipes I knew that there was little chance I would actually make. And then I severely cut down on how many recipes I added to del.icio.us during the summer. Instead I just bookmarked them to my favorites, or wrote them out instead. So I really got ahead there.

del.icio.us recipe of the week - my take on Michelles Beanapaloosa

This is possibly the fastest that a del.icio.us recipe of the week has made it from computer to plate - the same day. I saw this recipe on Tuesday morning before I left for work, picked up what I needed from the store at lunch, and made it that night for dinner.

When we packed up our house in Calgary to move here, cleaning out my pantry was the hardest part for me. I gave away a fair amount of spices, sauces etc, but some stuff I just couldn't part with, and a jar of garlic black bean sauce was one of the things that came with us. But what to do with it? No idea, which is why it was still in the pantry unopened until my Tuesday morning visit to Je Mange la Ville, where I found her Chicken and Green Bean stir fry.

Doesn't it look and sound delicious??? Or del.icio.us (ha! sorry.). Yes it does. But when I was at the grocery store I had a change of heart. We've eaten a lot of chicken lately, to the point I don't want to eat chicken again any time soon. Maybe I should save the recipe, and make something else tonight. OR, I could make a switch and use beef instead of chicken! Am I brilliant, or what?


This was ohmygod good. As I said, I used beef instead of chicken. I also used about 1/2 lb each of the beef and the beans - I am trying to cut down on leftovers around here - but left the sauce amounts the same, as we do love sauce. Scott was pretty uninterested in this when I started cooking it, but practically knocked me out of the way to get at it when it was done, then ate 3/4's of it, and said that anytime I wanted to make that again, it was ok with him.

The only thing I would do differently next time would be to cut back on the amount of garlic I used. Michelle's recipe calls for fermented black beans, and I used garlic black bean sauce. As fabulous as it was, I swear we radiated garlic out of our pores for the next two days.

Recipe: Chicken and Green Beans with Fermented Black Beans

del.icio.us recipe update, as of today 267 recipes. After I hit 300 in May I had to go through and delete recipes I knew that there was little chance I would actually make. And then I severely cut down on how many recipes I added to del.icio.us during the summer. Instead I just bookmarked them to my favorites, or wrote them out instead. So I really got ahead there.