suburbanplayground

Ok, I know I have totally slacked off on this blog. I admire everyone who can keep up with theirs…

BUT, my plan (haha) is to start writing more. So watch for new recipes, and coming soon (I hope!) a cook book give away. Stay tuned.

I thought it was going to be a bad day, or at least a long dragging one. I took the day off, planned it weeks before I knew Greg’s car was going to crap out on us. The plan had been to spend the day shopping for something to wear to Erik’s wedding, followed by an obligatory trip to the neighboring Central Market. Yes, early, but I already have the outfit staked out from the Anthropologie catalog (It’s much too expensive, but this is a special occasion, and how often do I get to wear a snazzy dress?). I just need to try it on, because my shape is nothing like the model in the catalog. Instead, I’ve spent the day housebound.

Well, not totally. About a fourth of the way into my morning pages I decided to go for a bike ride around the lake. It was really nice, everything is still green and the lake is still up from the flooding. I was the only person out there which was a bit creepy at the part where the trail veers into the woods out of the view of civilization. No serial killers waited there for me though, just a bunch of beautiful black and white dragonflies (I have never seen black and white ones before – they looked like they were getting ready for the prom). When I returned home I finished the pages and then worked on a short story I have been meaning to finish. I emailed it off to Literary Mama, although not before debating whether or not to hit the send button. This will be my first short story submission to anywhere. My luck is good now though – this summer I had a book review accepted at Critical Public Health, my essay is in final stages for publication in Mama, PhD, and I just had an article accepted at Chest: The Cardiopulmonary and Critical Care Journal.

My vita is nothing if not diverse.

After that I ate left over dal curry with naan and a couple of mini 100,000 dollar bars and rented The Number 23 on pay-per-view. I never get to watch creepy grown up movies, so this was a treat. I enjoyed it, despite its predictability (Spoiler: I wished the wife had written it, it would have been creepier that way, although why she would want him to find it would be tough to explain). I’d like to write something like that. As I think of what I would like to write, I realize more and more that I like the literary thriller.

With the rest of my time alone I plan on making biscotti and a chai latte. Here’s the recipe for the biscotti:

First, line a cookie sheet with foil and spritz it with some olive oil Pam. Sift together 1.5 cups of flour, a teaspoon of baking powder, and a half a teaspoon of salt in a medium bowl. You can use whole wheat flour if you want, it just depends on what consistency you like.

In a large bowl, beat two eggs, a cup of sugar, and a teaspoon of vanilla until very pale and thick – about three minutes. Stir in the dry ingredients about a third at a time. The dough will get really stiff.

Divide it in half. Get your hands wet and shape each half into a smooth, 12 inch long log on the cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until the loaves spring back when lightly touched in the center.

Take them out of the oven. Carefully transfer them to a cutting board. Use a serrated knife and cut the logs into ½ inch slices. Put the slices back on the cookie sheet, about a ½ inch apart. Bake for 10 more minutes, or until they are crisp.

This is the basic recipe; there are all sorts of ways you can snaz it up. Like use almond extract instead of vanilla. Or toss in some ground anise. Or some crushed hazelnuts. Or you could add cocoa. You could also try dipping the final product in melted dark chocolate, let it dry on a piece of wax paper.

It’s time for Hatch Chilies!!!

We went crazy at the Hatch Chili festival at the Central Market. Greg picked up 5 one-pound packages of fresh roasted chilies. There was a roaster out front of the store, the smoke smelled of peppers and burned the back of my throat. Inside, we picked up another pound of fresh peppers. We also found Hatch chili hot dog buns (which we devoured sans dogs), Hatch queso and jack cheeses, and a wonderful Hatch corn salsa. The Hatch scones were already sold out, as were the Hatch tamales. When we got home, I made Greg help me rinse the char off the roasted peppers and we froze most of them.

I found a recipe for Hatch Tortilla Soup at the store, and bastardized it a bit. It came out great, perfect for a hot day (of which we have had many recently).

Cut three chicken breasts up into one inch pieces (if you like the dark meat, use that too, I just don’t care for the texture). Marinate them in the juice of two limes for at least a half and hour. All afternoon would be better. Pour the chicken with all of the lime juice into a skillet along with a chopped up sweet yellow onion and a couple of cloves of garlic. Cook over medium high heat until the chicken is done.

Meanwhile, in a large soup pot, mix the following ingredients: a cup and a half of diced roasted Hatch peppers, a cup and a half of diced tomatoes, a big handful of fresh cilantro, and ½ a teaspoon of cumin. When the chicken is cooked all the way through, pour the chicken mixture and 6 cups of vegetable stock (I use Knor vegetarian cubes, but as a warning it is pretty salty so don’t add any more salt). Bring it up to a boil and then reduce the heat to medium low. Let it simmer for an hour.

When you serve it, pile on some corn tortilla strips. That’s what makes it tortilla soup. Or you can do what I do and just dip corn chips into it.

This recipe is a bit of a pain, but it is good, and Renn will eat it. Rory refuses, but one out of two is not bad. Most of the time it is none of the above.

Chop up a couple of chicken breasts into one inch pieces. Put them in a bowl. Add the juice of 2 limes (you can zest one of the limes if you want it really limey). Chop three cloves of garlic and a 2 inch piece of fresh ginger and stir them in as well. Cover it with plastic wrap or foil or whatever and put it in the fridge to marinate for at least 30 minutes. Pour yourself a glass of wine and try to read while the kids watch Spongbob. Do your best to tune it out and forget that you could probably recite the words along with it. Resolve to make salmon patties at a future date and call them Crabby Patties in the hopes that they children will actually eat them (they won’t, but you’ll get credit for trying).

Ok, get your chicken out of the fridge and pour the whole she-bang in a frying pan. Cook it over medium high heat until the chicken is cooked all the way through. Pull it off the burner and set it to the side. Prepare a package of very thin rice noodles (sometimes called vermicelli, but you want Asian noodles not Italian). Just follow the directions on the box. While they are cooking, rinse of a bunch of fresh spinach leaves (you can use some other salad if you don’t have spinach on hand). Also rinse some fresh mint leaves. Pull the mint off the stems. Shed the chicken into bits. Just keep it in the frying pan while you are doing this, but be sure it has cooled a bit so you don’t burn your hands. When you are done give it a good stir to distribute the garlic and ginger throughout it.

Once the noodles are ready, start heating up the rice wrappers. I had a hard time finding these. I could find wanton wrappers and wheat egg roll wrappers in the grocery store, but I had to go to the Central Market for the rice ones. They were down on a bottom shelf and all the text was in Vietnamese. Ok, funny story needlessly inserted in the middle of the recipe: we met this couple at the park playing with their kids. They were really cool and they invited us to dinner. The mom asked us if there was anything we didn’t eat. “We’ll try pretty much anything,” my husband told her. She says, “I don’t like ethnic food.” How random. So is it fried chicken and hot dogs every week? I cannot relate to this. She cooked stromboli for us, which was excellent (and, um, ethnic). She kind of shrugged me off when I asked her about it, not going to share the recipe, that one! Oh well. We had fun.

Anyway. The rice wrappers are kind of a bitch to work with. Here’s what I do. I fill up a Pyrex pie pan with water and nuke it for about a minute. When I take it out of the microwave, I put it on the still warm (but turned off!) burner from the chicken. Then put the wrapper in and let it sit for about 30 seconds. Because I cannot leave well enough alone, I tend to fondle it until it is soft. I know, it’s usually the other way around, fondle it and it gets hard, but not in this case! Get your mind out of the gutter! Ok, when it is soft, put it on a plate. Put in some noodles, chicken, spinach, and mint and then roll it up like a burrito. Keep making them until you are out of ingredients. If the wrappers are too sticky, you are not letting them soak long enough, give ‘em a few seconds longer. Serve them with tiny bowls full of your favorite peanut sauce.

After eating off of it for a week, I found out the arugula I had been snacking on had been recalled for salmonella contamination. I threw it out, well, what was left of it. Fortunately we didn’t get sick. The salad I had made with it was fabulous, and I will do it again when my arugula is back on the shelves. Apparently my neighbors don’t care for the stuff, because the only way my grocer sells it is in pre-washed packages (contaminated ones) and even then haphazardly.

Cook a cup of orzo pasta according to the directions on the package. My kids don’t believe orzo is pasta, and there is really nothing I can tell them to make them think it isn’t rice. When it is done, drain it, and stir in a tablespoon of olive oil and the juice of one lemon. Set it to the side to cool.

Toast about ¼ a cup of pine nuts. To do this, just put them in a small skillet and turn the heat on medium. Stir and toss them gently. Watch them closely; when they start to turn golden pull them off the heat and put them in a large bowl. Add a handful of dried cranberries and a bunch of (washed!) arugula.

Now for the cheese. I have made this with whole milk mozzarella (please by the nice kind and not that dry part-skim Kraft crap, it is so much better and totally worth it) or with feta. If you choose the moz, chop up as much as you want in one inch cubes. If you go for the feta, just crumble it in the bowl. Toss it all together.

Make sure the orzo has cooled – if it is still warm it will melt the cheese, which is not a disaster, but it is better un-melted – and toss it in with the salad. Serve with a nice merlot. Maybe some crusty bread. Maybe some crusty bread with the rest of that mozzarella melted over it. Oh, how about crusty bread, sliced, slathered with Tex-A-France pesto and a slice of mozzarella? Yes. Fabulous.

The fresh corn pyramids over the other vegetables at the grocery store. This dish takes 3 ears, will be a nice side dish for 4 people. To fully get in the mood, pop Ani Difranco’s latest in your CD player, open the windows and be cooled by the fan instead of always relying on the air conditioner. Pour a large glass of red wine and cook up your favorite meat, or some other main course (we did London Broil with a little Jardean’s steak seasoning). Shuck your corn (take all the leaves and crap off it of it). Get a big ole butcher knife and cut the kernels off the cob. The easiest way to do this is cut it over a large saucepan, that way you can catch all of the milk too. Squeeze in the juice of one lime and add about 2 tablespoons chili powder. I have this great smoked New Mexico chili powder, found it at the Central Market. Over medium low heat, get the corn nice and warm. Give it a stir often. Once it is hot to the touch, pull it off the heat and put a lid on it. Let it sit like that until your meat dish is done, 10-15 minutes will do nicely. Just set it on the side of the stove to wait patiently for you (Hyponitzed on repeat, it’s mellow and we are not in a rush here, let’s just enjoy things for once). The corn will still be pretty firm – if you prefer it mushier, just cook it longer. Stir it again before you serve it.

It has been a long time since I have written. My secret hope is that someone subscribes to my RSS feed and will ecstatically read this post and make the recipe this weekend.

It has now rained for at least a month – we probably are not into the whole 40 days and 40 nights thing, but I suspect we are closing in on it. We have not flooded where I live, but a lot of homes near us have had to be evacuated. Fire department pulling people out of trees with helicopters and tractors. Our fireworks celebration was moved to mid-July. Hopefully the rain will stop by then – that will be something to celebrate.

On the positive side of things, my 3 tomato plants are producing tons of tomatoes, and yesterday I picked three peppers off my Anaheim plant. The lavender I planted last year is a bush, and I actually got lavender flowers. I love that plant. If you run your fingers over the leaves your hands will smell like lavender.

Ok, but this recipe has nothing to do with gardens. Sorry. But it is summery. It’s my version of an Indian fruit salad.

Nuke a cup of water to boiling. Toss in 3 tablespoons of raisins (or just use one of those individual serving boxes if you have those on hand). Let them soak while you chop fruit.

Now, you can pretty much use any fruit you like for this. I found that raspberries don’t hold up too well, although it tastes good. Best bet, use strawberries, banana, apple, and grapes. Quarter the berries, slice the nana, cube the apple (skins on or off, whatever you like), cut the grapes in half. While you chopping things, chop up some almonds as well. Or just buy the slivered kind. About 3 tablespoons of those.

In a large serving bowl, combine the following: 1 cup of plain non-fat yogurt, ½ cup sour cream, 1/3 a cup of honey, ½ teaspoon ground cardamom, 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon, and ¼ teaspoon ground coriander. Stir in the fruit and serve. It keeps ok for 24 hours, but not any longer than that.

We spent most of yesterday afternoon planning this year’s garden. The sage and the lavender from last year made it through the winter – both doing very well. The lavender doesn’t have any flowers, but when you touch the leaves you have the scent of lavender oil on your hands. The thyme and the rosemary survived as well, but just barely. Both are tiny. I almost yanked the thyme thinking it was a weed. We also had a few onions. I added peppermint and cilantro to the herbs. We also started basil, mint, dill, and chives from seed in tiny pots to be transplanted to the ground after they sprout. We’ll see how that does. I also planted a couple of tomatoes plants, two Anaheim pepper plants, and a zucchini plant. We put in two strawberry bushes and two blackberry bushes a couple of weeks ago. Both are native to the area, so I hope they do well (although the guy from the extension office says it takes two years before the blackberry bushes will produce). We also planed some marigolds in a big planter in the middle of the garden and in a planter hanging on the fence. The mosquito guys claim marigolds will keep the mosquitoes and other pesties out of the yard. And I planted some aloe in a pot. All said and done, it was a lot of work. If any of it grows I will be happy.

Today we have spent the day relaxing. I baked some cookies. Here’s the recipe:

Beat together ¼ a cup of walnut oil, ¾ a cup of ground flaxseeds, and ¾ a cup of brown sugar (remember to always pack the brown sugar when measuring it). Add in one egg and a teaspoon of vanilla and beat it some more. When all that is well mixed, mix in ¾ a cup of whole wheat flour, ½ a teaspoon of baking soda, and ½ a teaspoon of vanilla. Finally, stir in 1 ½ cups oats (not the quick cooking kind — the old fashioned) and ½ a cup of dark chocolate chips. Smash the mixture into either an 8×8 square pan to make pretty bars or a pie pan if you don’t care about how it looks (you could cut it like pizza slices). Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes. When you are gorging yourself on them, justify it by the fact that you are getting loads of omega-3s, antioxidants, and fiber.

We’ve spent the last week vacationing in New Mexico. Well, actually Greg and I both had papers at the Southwestern Social Sciences Association meeting (we’re such nerds!), but it was a good excuse to get out of town. The last time we went there I was just barely pregnant with Rory – didn’t know it at the time though and partook in many a micro brew. I don’t remember the altitude bothering me then, but it may have later been written off as morning sickness. This time it KILLED me. We took the tram up Sandia Peak and I thought I was going to puke the whole time. Put a damper on the fantastic view.

We had been looking forward to the culinary delights of Santa Fe, but we must have been going to the wrong places, as the food we got was not all that great. I did get to eat green chilies every day, which did not help the altitude sickness at all, but good Lord I love them. Occasionally we get Hatch chilies in the grocery stores here, and once a year the Central Market does their big Hatch chili festival. They roast ‘em out front, and you can get Hatch chili bread, scones, and cheese. Wow. This recipe is really intended for roasted Hatch chilies, but if you can’t get those you can use Anaheim. Roast them just like you would red peppers.

Get yourself 2 pounds of pork, cube it, and sauté it in olive oil over medium heat just until the outside is browned. Add one chopped onion and a couple of cloves of minced garlic. Cook for 4 minutes. Now for the fun part. Toss in ¼ a cup of flour and stir, stir, stir! Don’t stop stirring for 2 minutes. Then quickly add four large tomatoes (that you already seeded and diced), 2 cups of chopped up roasted Hatch chilies, and ½ a teaspoon of sugar. Mix it all together and then pour in 3 cups of veggie broth. Cube 3 Yukon Gold potatoes and put them in as well. Let it come to a boil and then turn the heat way down and let it simmer for at least and hour. Serve it with corn tortillas and your favorite liquid refreshment.