Keep Clam!

Posted on June 13, 2011 by chatty

When family come out to visit, for some reason they all want to go to Ivar’s. Could it be the ideal and scenic location on the north end of Lake Union? No. It’s the clam chowder in the sourdough bread bowl. Two separate visits from my sis’ family and my parents, two separate trips to Ivar’s Seafood Bar, two orders of this Ivar’s specialty.

(Dinner for Emily, age 10). Keep your hands off my soup, Dad!

1150 calories, and 3100 mg of sodium goodness, right there! Oh yah! You betcha!

Sigh. Guess I’ll just have the Shrimp Caesar:

Only, it’s missing something … what could it be … Oh, that’s right. Deep-fried anything! Chomp chomp. Yay lettuce.

Hot dog? Hot dog!

Posted on June 13, 2011 by chatty

“Lily, what do you want for dinner?”

“Hot dog?”

“Really? Do you know what a hot dog is?”

“Pizza?”

“But last time you didn’t eat the pizza.”

“Hot dog. Hot dog! HOT DOG HOT DOG HOT DOG HOT DOG.”

Come to think of it, hot dogs sound pretty good. Only we don’t eat hot dogs in this house. How does she even know what a hot dog is? How about some sausage instead? With some grilled peppers and maybe some sweet potatoe fries on the side? Yeah. That’ll do.

For anyone curious as to how Lily learned about hot dogs, I suspect this book may have had something to do with it (the dramatic ending includes a huge hot-dog shaped blimp).

May Day

Posted on May 10, 2011 by chatty

Anniversary dinner with the husband was a few weekends ago. Grandma and Papa watched the toddler and we hightailed it to the Hi-Life in Ballard. We miss the casual setting and good food at Atlas Foods since they close their doors at University Village. So when I suggested this other ChowFoods restaurant the husband immediately agreed. As has become custom these past few weeks, we set aside our SBD ways and enjoyed ourselves. I started off the evening with a fun cocktail, a Violet Pearl. If something can taste violet-y, this did.

Small plates included onion rings and BBQ pork sliders. The husband had a salad and I enjoyed the Salmon Burger with sweet potato Jo-Jos.

As it was a Sunday night, most of the other customers were partaking in the Family-Style Fried Chicken Supper, complete with mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, and green beans. We’ll have to come back on another Sunday and try that out.

I could get used to more nights out without the toddler, that’s fo’ sho’.

When life gives you lemons … make lemon chicken

Posted on May 1, 2011 by chatty

I was going to title this one “Lemony Chick’net”.

Well, the hunt for a good lemon recipe went beyond desserts, I also began looking for something I could lemon-ize for dinner as well. There are a ton of lemon chicken recipes out there, and most call for a pan-fry, which I was trying to avoid. While I had a recipe onhand that I printed from food.com, I chose instead to follow the husband’s basic chicken instructions instead. The instructions are, more or less, the following.

Season chicken.
Sear chicken over medium high heat using canola oil.
Place chicken in baking dish. Add olive oil. Add whatever other accoutrements you would – or as they would say in the web world – “Personalize this dish!” (in this case, fresh lemon juice and rosemary with a little oregano)
Cover with foil and bake at 350 deg for 20 minutes

Voila.

It turned out very well, I’m pleased to say. It is hard to go wrong with chicken, but I had one bad incident with not cooking it for long enough and that turned me off from trying new poultry recipes. And now, years later, I still find myself a little skittish for some silly reason, to cook chicken, and grill my husband (pun intended) for instructions each time. I think I’ve got it down, now. Plus this time I took notes which are conveniently stored on my phone.

Steamed broccoli and mushrooms sauteed in the seared chicken remnants, along with some brown rice finish the dish. The b.r. was a little mushy. Rice is another dinner staple that surprises me when done well, because there have been many times when I haven’t done it well (this, I believe, is because I grew up as all Chinese families do, using a rice cooker. I don’t know how to cook rice on the stove. It’s an enigma to me).

Birthday Fun

Posted on April 17, 2011 by chatty

Some of the fun food/activities during birthday celebration time, then see below for some photo highlights:

Blue C Sushi. Now, I know it’s not exactly gourmet stuff, but it is a lot of fun and easy to bring the kid. Of all the things she could have pointed out that went by on the conveyor belt, what caught her eye? The Mighty-O Donuts. Wow. Good thing we were heading to the next item on my list right after lunch…
Trophy Cupcakes! I’ve been looking forward to this since my office moved from The Bravern to Lincoln Square. No easy access to Trophy, you see. It was also fortunate that my birthday fell on a Thursday … Chocolate Peanut Butter day. Yay!
Shopping. I told the husband that for my birthday I wanted to go shopping. By myself. So yesterday I hopped the bus to downtown and spent a quality few hours with my debit and credit cards. Nordstrom Rack was my main destination, but also toured the Gap, Old Navy, Pacific Place, among others. My main goal was to try on a bunch of pants to figure out what size I am. And what I learned it it all depends on where you go. Great. It was really enjoyable to walk in and out of stores, to try on clothes without having an entourage (i.e. family) waiting for you. Bliss!
Zoo! After shopping I took the little one to the Zoo. We mainly just hung out at the Family Farm and we finially got around to checking out the “habitat discovery loop”. Carousel, too. The only drawback to the Carousel was that I took her twice. That’s $4. Which meant four fewer dollars for …
Red Mill Burgers. We haven’t been to RM for a while (used to go more frequently when we lived in Ballard, and/or before we had the kid). Sorta forgot that they are a checks/cash only establishment. So I had them ring up 2 burgers, and was there anything leftover I’d buy some fries. Nope. Had we just sprung for one carousel trip instead of two … but how can I not splurge for the little girl? Definitely made the right decision.
Cake from Metropolitan Market. No picture. Because I ate it too quickly. Since I came home fries-less, the husband went hunting for something more at the store and came home with (among other things) a slice of chocolate mousse cake. Since I opted out of baking a cake this weekend, this slice definitely hit the spot. Even if it did give me a sugar headache immediately afterwards.

If it’s not obvious from the above list, I’m taking a break from the usual SBD (sort of) while birthday week celebrations go on. It’s the year of the rabbit! I’m a rabbit! So take a guess as to how old I turned on Thursday. Does the littlest one understand birthdays? Not sure, though I don’t think so. We aren’t exactly the “happy birthday to you” song kind of family. I do wonder if she understands that she gets a tasty cupcake when someone’s birthday comes along. (though she often calls the banana muffins I’ve been making “cupcakes”, so maybe not).

Chocolate Peanut Butter to the left, Red Velvet on your right. The toddler picked out the “Samoa” for herself, but I’ve had the Samoa and I didn’t want her bouncing off the walls. So I chose the domesticated Red Velvet for her. She didn’t put up much of a fight:

Here are a few other pics from the birthday festivities:

A Red Mill Burger (just a cheeseburger), which I split with the toddler. That I only had $10 cash on hand (RMB takes cash or checks only) made the decision to forego fries, onion rings and a shake pretty simple:

My birthday beer. Courtesy of the husband:

I originally planned to make Chocolate Guiness Cake. Bought the ingredients and everything. Then yesterday had a change of heart and decided I really didn’t want an entire cake hanging around the kitchen while I return to those SBD times. I told my husband my decision and then said something like, “So you can have that Guiness that’s in the fridge.” He just looked at me as if to say, “Duh”. Ha ha. But, he did find this fun beer for me. Better enjoy it before the weekend festivities are over.

BTW, check out in the background of the beer pic, to the far right, a glimpse of the cute Chuck Taylors I got for L at the Rack. They’re velcro and they are awesome! She’ll have to grow into them but I’m super excited. Why is it I’m buying the toddler stuff on my birthday? Because it makes me feel gooood!

Do the mashed cauliflower (Do the twist)

Posted on April 12, 2011 by chatty

No photos from dinner this weekend. On Saturday night the husband had some buffalo meat defrosting. Combined with some lamb he made a wonderful meat loaf. We’re learning that the toddler is really into ground meat. She eats meat loaf. Turkey chili. Pork dumplings. I think we’re on to something here.

No pics of the loaf. I’m actually shocked that there isn’t a previous post about meatloaf. I promise to take a pic next time. I did, however, provide the sides. A big salad, no surprise there. What was a surprise, was a popular South Beach Diet recipe known as “Surprise” Mashed Potatoes. Why the surprise? Because it’s actually mashed cauliflower. I’ve seen this recipe a few dozen times but really couldn’t believe it would fool anyone. However, last week I downloaded a sample of Rocco DiSpirito’s cookbook “Now Eat This” and saw that he had a mashed cauliflower recipe as well. Because Rocco thinks it’s okay, I decided to try it out. I bailed on the “butter spray” that the SBD book recommends, and used, you know, butter. And instead of fat-free half-and-half I used fat-free milk. The results were interesting. They tasted like …

… Well, it tasted like cauliflower. But, with butter. And that is some tasty butter.

It was a good recipe. Extremely simple, though you do need to drag out the Cuisinart. I’ll be sure to add it to my repertoire.

Sunday was taco night. Again, no pics. My apologies, but on the other hand, there isn’t anything photogenic about ground turkey mixed with taco seasoning. So maybe it’s really for the best. The meal was pretty tasty, though.

Stir fry with a twist

Posted on April 5, 2011 by chatty

No doubt all that Chinese cookbook reading and eating inspired Sunday’s dinner: chicken and green bean stir fry. I did try to be a little daring, and added a whole bunch of orange zest and peel for taste. The result was a sort of tangy orange-ginger chicken & green bean thingy.

It wasn’t bad. Maybe a little too much oil on the beans. I’m so used to steaming and am out of touch with stir frying. But I love the crunchiness of the beans that you can’t match with the steam.

Ideally would have been great with some white or even brown rice. But we skipped the grain and I did a big salad instead.

Saturday night’s all right for cooking

Posted on April 5, 2011 by chatty

I’ve added Saturday to my cooking schedule. This past Saturday was a rerun, turkey chili.

sweet onion
ground turkey
celery
yellow squash
diced tomato
tomato paste
great northern beans

The secret ingredients (that I used last time as well): cinnamon and cocoa powder. They really do make a difference

I guess not so secret anymore!

The toddler digs this dish on night one. Not such a fan of leftovers, though.

Pizza Fail

Posted on March 27, 2011 by chatty

Some Sunday dinners are better than others. This one, while not actually a failure, was definitely a “surprise”. I decided to do homemade pizza, but wanted to create a crust that adhered to SBD rules. So, no white flour, basically. I chose whole wheat and oat. Should have added some type of gluten, I guess, because what came out of the bread machine was not your typical pizza crust. Not gluten-y enough. Couldn’t toss it or shape it like your standard pizza pie. So instead of pizza night, it was flatbread night.

Sauteed mushrooms and onions; chicken sausage; kalamata olives; fresh mozzarella cheese and goat cheese on a half tomato/half olive oil base.

It wasn’t bad by any means and in fact was very edible. More than edible, though the dough was very obviously a “whole grain” bread. It’s just when you have visions of pizza in your mind, and the end result isn’t pizza, it’s a “surprise”.

I made enough dough to freeze a second batch, which I clearly labelled “WHOLE GRAIN FLATBREAD DOUGH” on the ziploc. So no surprises when we take it out next time.

“Winning” Wontons

Posted on March 20, 2011 by chatty

One of my favorite things that I learned from my dad was how to make wontons. We’d sit there watching basketball and making wontons. Tough to do these days because it does take a while to prep and make. I prepped while the husband took the toddler out on errands. Then made while she napped, and listened to the game on the radio in the background (Michigan vs. Duke, I think. They’re all running into each other). I even ran out of wrappers and literally ran to the store to get more.

I made two packages of wontons worth, enough for dinner tonight, and 3-4 future dinners. Or nice gifts for friends & family (they are so impressed when really they’re pretty easy to make). Once the manual labor is done it’s a cinch to throw the frozen wontons into some boiling water to make an easy meal. I season the water with soy, sesame oil, some ginger root and scallions. Not exactly SBD-friendly (the wrappers aren’t, but everything else is legit), but I was pretty good the rest of the day/weekend that I approved this breaking of the rules.

I added a quick vegetable stir fry to complete tonight’s meal.

I cooked two dinners in a row! When was the last time THAT happened?

Chatty Cha

dessert first

Category Archives: dinner