Hummus and Cucumber Quick Tip

Just a quick tip post, I went to a holiday party, and the hostess served cucumber spears with hummus. I loved the combination of the cucumber with the hummus. I don't know why I never thought of doing this before. I served the same at Christmas dinner, and it was a hit. 

Now to learn to make my own hummus recipe! That will have to be a project for the near future. 

Catching Up and the Ah-ha's of Life

I think about this blog on occasion. It seems like it's been forever since I've come over here to write an entry. But the other day I cooked dinner, and I realized something. I have actually improved as a cook. I'm not completely sure when that happened.

The thought that I had improved came to me as I was cooking up some "faux" fried chicken. I had learned to make a baked version of fried chicken from a recipe I'd found online a long while back. I have long since lost the recipe and the link to whichever web site it was on, but the basic idea of the chicken stuck in my mind.

So when I went to my refrigerator looking for something to cook for dinner, it just popped into my head. And surprise of all surprises, I  knew how to do it, no recipe needed. I added my own seasonings from what I had on hand, no exact measuring, no web site telling me to do this or that. And then came the moment of truth... how did it taste?

Excellent! My chicken, and it truly was MY chicken because it was all my own concoction came out great! It was crispy and flavorful and juicy. I can't say I know exactly where I learned. I just know I learned. I guess all of those recipes and dinnertime failures have been paying off!

This little culinary revelation has made me begin to think that I really can grow in the kitchen. And it has also made me think that I should start blogging about the journey again. Perhaps then, my next culinary ah-ha moment won't catch me so much by surprise.

Pork Loin Stir Fry

Once again, it's been awhile since I posted. I'm not very good at keeping up on this whole blogging thing.
But alas, there was a success in the kitchen today, and I decided I better blog about it before I go and forget what it was that I did that turned out so tasty!

I've been following a budget lately.... the master plan... save money, pay off bills, buy some freedom from the daily grind. But that's another topic for another blog perhaps. The short of it is that I had boneless pork loin steak in the freezer, and have been hankering for a stir fry. I tried looking up some recipes online, but every recipe called for a bunch of ingredients that I didn't have. Given said budget, I have exactly $0.00 spending dollars for the next few days. So going to the store for the extra ingredients just wasn't happening.

So I decided to improvise. Now this is a decision that more often than not leads to tragedy in my kitchen. But just maybe, I am getting better at cooking.

What I did:

I sliced the pork loin into strips (cutting against the grain).
Then I put them into a ziploc plastic bag, and poured in a few tablespoons of soy sauce.
Next I used a microplane to grate some fresh ginger into the bag.
I stirred it all around so that the soy sauce and ginger evenly covered the meat,
and I let the whole thing marinate for the afternoon (about 4 hours by the time I was ready to cook dinner).

I took the meat out of the refrigerator and heated some corn oil in my wok.
Once the oil was warm I cooked the meat over medium heat until it was cooked through.
Next I took the meat out of the pan, and set it aside, leaving the juices in the pan.
I poured a package of frozen stir fry veggies into the pan and put the head to high.
I stir fried the veggetable until they were soft (about 5 minutes),
Then I put the meat back into the pan.

I served the stir fry with white rice, and edamame which I seasoned with some roast red pepper, kosher salt, and chilli powder.

The meal was a hit! I'll definitely be doing this again. It was a definite bonus that it was really inexpensive to make, and didn't take much time to pull together at all (well provided I remember to do the marinade ahead of time).

My boyfriend even told me it was good enough to make for the Sunday dinner I've started having with a small group of friends, two of whom are excellent cooks who I get a little intimidated cooking for. I think I'll practice it a few times more before I serve it to company, just to make sure I can make it consistently good, but for now, I think this one's a winner! Kitchen Success!!!

New Year Goals

It feels good to welcome a new year. I am excited to see what 2012 will bring.

I've never been much for New Year's resolutions, but each new year does feel like a chance for a fresh start. My goal in cooking is really just a continuation of a seed that started to grow in 2011. 

The thing that I really want to do in 2012 is to bring friends and family closer over shared meals. Yes we all routinely share meals as much of eating is a social activity, but over the past few years, I have grown tired of only sharing restaurant meals with my friends and family. The few times I have had dinner parties it's been so great. People just relax and there's no time limit for clearing the table for the next group of diners or for figuring out where to go next.

So my cooking goal for 2012 is to have friends and family over for more shared meals, even shared preparations, rather that's cooking together or having potluck style meals.

I haven't been blogging a lot recently.
I have been cooking a lot, and I am rather proud to feel that I can actually see some improvement in my cooking skills. But I just haven't had anything that I felt was just right to blog about.

So what have I made recently...?
A lot of beans. I'm recently in love with beans. It sounds odd, but there is really quite a lot one can do with a bean. No really, I'm serious! The key for me was learning that when properly soaked and rinsed you don't have to worry about the whole, "the more you eat the more you toot" factor of that old children's song. That's a relief!

I discovered how much I enjoy beans after I discovered a vegan version of red beans and rice about a year ago. (Here's the link in case you're curious.) I made this recipe a few times then worked up the courage to venture out into the wonderful world of beans. I've been going non-stop since then. I really enjoy red beans, and made a great turkey chilli with leftovers from Thanksgiving. Recently I had some red beans cooked in the refrigerator, and my boyfriend took them out and made re-fried beans with them. We've been cooking those a lot lately. We make them with pinto beans also, which is more traditional, but I was surprised to find that red beans work well too.

Once you have the cooked beans, re-frying them is super easy. We just head up some olive oil in a pan, add the beans, fry them around for 40 minutes or so until they are mashing up nicely with a fork, then we take a potato masher and smash them into a smooth paste. I'm not sure if that's the "right" way to make re-fried beans, but it's a tasty way. We eat them with heated tortillas rubbed in lime and salt, or sometimes just with cheese on them. They go great with any type of beef you've cooked up as well.

So I guess I've just dedicated my "Christmas Blog" to beans.... I'm not sure what that means, but we'll go with it! Happy Holidays!

Tea Remedy

I have a cold.... sniffly, neeezy, yuck yuck. Anyway, one of my coworkers told me to mix up a tea recipe that another coworker gave him. The recipe includes ginger which he said contains zinc. Zinc is said to do good in helping the body fight off the virus that causes the cold. I have to say, it is pretty tasty. It really reminds me of chai tea.

Steps:
Prepare a cup of green tea
Add 3/4 tsp ginger
Add a dash of cinnamon
Add a dash of clove
Stir all together and enjoy!

"Let your food be your medicine." Hippocrates
Hmm... good idea Hippocrates. I'll give it a go!

Canned Tomatoes

Fresh from the garden.

 I've been slowly making changes to my diet and
cooking habits over the past few years. This cooking blog is part of that effort. The basic idea - learning to cook - leads to eating out less - leads to more say in what's in my food - leads to eating fewer processed foods.

I never had an interest before in cooking and definitely no interest in canning, preserving, or avoiding the store bought goods. But I guess I'm getting older, or maybe interests just change in your lifetime. My grandmother has canned food for our family as long as I can remember. Cherries, peaches, tomatoes, all set up during summer and eaten over the winter.

Sure I always helped her when I was around for these canning sessions, but this year I decided I wanted to really learn how to do this. I decided that I want to know exactly what's in my food and not have to try to decipher the chemistry lingo in most of the foods you buy at the store. So earlier this year she helped me and a friend can cherries, which are absolutely delicious, and I'm excited to enjoy all winter long when the other fresh fruits are dwindling down.

This last weekend she helped me can tomatoes. And I mean A LOT of tomatoes, 56lbs to be exact. But you can't beat fresh from the garden tomatoes. And one thing about fresh tomatoes, when you have them, you better either use them or store them because they go fast. And thus the canning fest commenced.

Here's what we did:

• Washed and heated canning jars (the dishwasher dry cycle works great at heating up the jars so they're ready for canning)
• Filled the steam canner with water and set it on med-low on the stove
• Put 7 lids in a pot of water, and heated them to boiling
• Peeled the tomatoes (Some people say to blanch them first, but if you have fresh garden ripe tomatoes you can get the skins off fairly easily without doing this. I do like to cut a small x at the top of the tomato though to get the pealing started, then I peal down in quarters.)
• Fill the jars (which have been heating nice & warm in the dishwasher) almost to the top, leaving a little space below the lowest ring. 
• Push the air out of the jar (you can use a special made canning tool for this, or carefully use a butter knife)
• Put 1 tsp of lemon juice in each jar (This adds acidity into the tomatoes. My grandma said her mother in law told her that you have to do this because too much of the acidity has been cultivated out of the tomatoes over the years. I prefer to use fresh squeezed lemon juice, just on the idea that fresh is better for you and if you squeezed it, you know 100% what's in it and how it was derived.)
• Carefully pull a lid out of the boiling water and place on the top of the jars (There's a special canning tool for this that has a magnet on one end. It's a real finger saver!)
• Securely tighten a heated ring over the lid (you can heat the rings in the dishwasher with your jars, or you can sit them around your steamer while you're filling the jars. 
• Place the lid over the steam canner and turn the heat to approximately medium. 
• Once you see steam coming out of the holes in the steamer canner, you can set a timer for 35 minutes. (You want a steady, but fairly light flow of steam coming from the canner. If it's too much or too little, adjust the temperature slightly, but avoid big shifts)
• Once the jars have steamed for 35 minutes, carefully remove them from the steamer (There another handy dandy canning tool for this. I highly recommend buying a general canning kit. They're inexpensive, and well worth the investment since you can use them for years)
• Sit the jars on a towel in a safe area where they can be left for a day or so. 
• Cover the jars with another towel to wrap in the heat
• As the lids seal, you'll head a "pop". (This is such a happy sound to me. It's a little "ding" one more successful jar!)
• After you've let the jars sit for a day or so check them all to make sure they've sealed. (If they've sealed there won't be any movement when you push the center top of the lid.)
• If any of your jars didn't seal, use them immediately. (They won't stay fresh long.)
• Take all your successful jars, and store them up somewhere handy for a winter full of great tomatoes!

 

The finished product!

I am so excited to use my fresh made tomatoes this winter. I made some attempts at more mashed up tomatoes to use in sauces and spaghetti's this year. The ones that I left more whole I plan to use to make tomato soups and salsa sauce to eat with eggs.