Headed to the Fair!

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Bailey and I will be competing at the Monmouth County Fair in East Freehold, New Jersey this weekend.  We drove up for the Fair’s opening night Wednesday and Bailey jumped 22’6″… not a bad way to kick things off!  I’ll post the event recap next week.

This photo of a lab named Blazer from the 2010 Big Butler Fair in Butler, PA gives you an idea of what a Dockdogs event at a fair looks like.  Pretty cool, right?

Please remember to comment on my Tomato Salad post.  One commenter will win a digital kitchen scale next week!

Bucatini with Sausage, Asparagus and Tomato in a White Wine Sauce

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Last week we paid a visit to our local farmer’s market and we were pleasantly surprised to discover a man selling fresh sausage!  He seemed unfazed by the 95° temps and was happily browning up pieces of sausage on a tiny griddle and offering samples to potential customers.  We are not ones to pass up free sausage so we eagerly tasted some and it was amazing!  We promptly purchased a package of chicken provolone sausage and started brainstorming for potential summer meal ideas to highlight the local fare.

The recipe that Matt came up with definitely did the sausage justice.  The white wine sauce was flavorful without being overpowering (it actually smelled like “real” Italian cooking!) and the firm asparagus and super-tasty tomatoes (from our garden, of course!) complemented the sausage nicely.  This recipe made enough food for the two of us to eat dinner and then enjoy hearty portions for lunch the next day.

Oh, and before I get to the recipe, please remember to comment on my Tomato Salad post to win a free kitchen scale!

Bucatini with Sausage, Asparagus and Tomato in a White Wine Sauce

You will need…
1 bunch Asparagus, chopped into 2 inch pieces
Olive Oil
12 oz. Sausage (we used Maiale’s Chicken Sausage with Spinach and Sharp Provolone*)
4 cloves Garlic, minced
1 Shallot, minced
1 cup Dry White Wine
1/2 cup Low-Sodium Chicken Broth
2 tablespoons minced Chives
2 tablespoons Butter or Olive Oil Spread
Bucatini Pasta
Salt and Pepper, to taste
1 cup Cherry Tomatoes

Directions:
Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the chopped asparagus.  Blanch the asparagus for 2 minutes (or more if using thicker spears) and then use a slotted spoon to transfer the asparagus to an ice bath.  Allow asparagus to cool completely before straining and setting aside in a bowl.

The sauteing garlic and shallots smell wonderful!

Heat a wok or large skillet over medium-high heat and add 2 tablespoons olive oil.  Remove the sausage from its casing and brown it in the oil, breaking it up as it cooks.  Remove the browned sausage from the wok and set aside.  Lower the heat to medium, add another tablespoon of olive oil and the minced garlic and shallots.  Saute until shallots are translucent.  Add the white wine and chicken broth, stir, and allow to simmer over low heat until mixture is reduced to approximately 1/3 the original volume.  As the sauce reduces cook the pasta according to package instructions.

Toss all of the ingredients together in the wok.

Add the sausage to the reduced white wine mixture, stir to combine, and bring the heat back up to medium.  Stir in the blanched asparagus, chives, and butter and add salt and pepper to taste.  Finally, add in the cooked and drained pasta and the cherry tomatoes and toss well.  Serve with a garnish of finely chopped chives.

*If you’re local to the southeastern PA / DE region, the delicious sausage was made by Maiale (“may.all.ay”) in Wilmington, Delaware.  We’ll definitely be going back to the farmer’s market next week to get more sausage!!  🙂

Pink Zinnia!

Posted in Adventures at Home by

We grew this lovely pink zinnia from seed and it now resides outside our front door amidst a volunteer squash patch.  Isn’t it pretty?

Also… don’t forget to leave a comment in my Slimkicker Giveaway post to be eligible to win a digital kitchen scale!  🙂

Tomato Salad with Guajillo Chile Dressing AND a Giveaway Contest Sponsored by Slimkicker!!

Posted in Challenges, Recipes by

I’m excited to announce that the team over at Slimkicker.com has asked me to host a Giveaway on my blog!  Slimkicker is an online “game” that helps you reach health goals by setting a series personalized challenges and rewards for yourself… but more on that in a moment.  First, I want to share a recipe for a healthy meal that Matt and I enjoyed last week.

Oh… and I have to brag a little here – those perfect little rosy red tomatoes are from our garden!  They were delicious.  🙂

Tomato Salad with Guajillo Chile Dressing (from Mexican Everyday by Rick Bayless)

You will need…
3/4 cup Olive Oil (can also be a mixture of Olive Oil and Veggie/Canola Oil)
2 Dried Guajillo Chiles or New Mexico Chiles, stemmed and seeded
2 Garlic Cloves, peeled and quartered
1/4 cup Balsamic Vinegar (also try Sherry Vinegar or White Wine Vinegar)
Salt, to taste
6 Green Onions, wilted leaves and white root tips removed
1 1/2 cups Cherry Tomatoes, halved
Handful of Watercress Leaves
2 oz. crumbled Queso Fresco Cheese

Directions:
To make the Guajillo Chile Dressing, pour the oil into a large skillet and place over medium heat.  Add the chiles and garlic and saute, stirring constantly, for approximately 30 seconds until the chiles become fragrant.  Remove from heat and carefully transfer the chiles (leaving the garlic and oil) into a blender.  Add the vinegar and salt and blend for 30 seconds.  Once the oil and garlic have cooled, add them to the blender and blend until smooth.

Return the unwashed skillet to medium heat.  Brush the green onions with oil and place them in the skillet, turning occasionally, until wilted and browned.  Remove from skillet and slice into 1/4 inch pieces.  Reserve a few of the smaller onions as a garnish if desired.

To assemble your Tomato Salad, arrange a layer of watercress on a small plate.  Next, add a handful of the tomatoes (sprinkle some coarse salt on the tomatoes if desired) and add the green onions.  Add the crumbled queso fresco and drizzle on a few teaspoons of your Guajillo Chile Dressing.  Enjoy as a healthy main course or as a satisfying appetizer.

And now on to the Slimkicker Giveaway!  One of my readers will win this digital kitchen scale simply by commenting on this post!  Cool, right?

Slimkicker is an online “game” that helps you track your calorie intake and exercise.  Why is it a game, you ask?  Well, with Slimkicker you set a series of fun challenges (things like quitting soda for a week or cooking your dinner five days in a row rather than getting takeout) and you earn “points” if you complete your challenges.  After you earn a certain number of points you are eligible for Slimkicker giveaways and the program encourages you to reward yourself with a self-selected “perk” like indulging in something really tasty, taking a day off from your workout routine, or (if you earn a lot of points!) buying yourself a new iPod.

Since creating and sticking with fun challenges is an important part of the Slimkicker program, the folks at Slimkicker would like to read YOUR ideas for a Healthy Challenge!  To enter the contest and be eligible to win the digital scale, simply leave me a comment below with your own idea for a Healthy Challenge.  Slimkicker will select one person who leaves a comment in this post (pretty good odds, right?) as the winner of the digital scale.

My personal healthy challenge is to sit with good posture at work for one hour every day for a week.  Other challenges that have piqued my interest are to drink a glass of water before every meal (helps with feeling fuller sooner) and to replace juice with unsweetened iced tea for a week.  What are YOUR ideas for a healthy challenge?  Please share!

Contest ends at 11:59PM EDT on Wednesday, August 1st.  Comment before then for your chance to win!

Disclosure: The Ozeri Professional Digital Scale and all information about the program have been supplied by Slimkicker.  I downloaded the Slimkicker App but haven’t used it yet… I’ve been too busy sitting with good posture!

Recipes, Consolidated!

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Woohoo!  My recipes are now organized into a single user-friendly index.
View my consolidated recipes here!

After nearly six months of blogging, this site now features more than 35 recipes ranging from homemade meatballs to pork tinga tacos.  But guess what?  Up until now these recipes have been hard to find unless you knew the exact keyword or date that the recipe was published.  If you wanted to browse my recipe offerings your only option was to keep scrolling down on the home page forever until you reached a recipe that sounded good, but who has the patience to do that?

Frustrated by my inability to easily view all of my recipes in one place at one time, I set about creating a complete recipe index.  I had a vision of this index having two columns so that you could see twice as many recipes at a time (I’m not a fan of continuously scrolling down, can you tell?) but I soon realized that simply “making two columns” involves creating an HTML table which is no small feat for an HTML-illiterate blogger such as myself.

Determined to realize my dream of a beautiful columned recipe index, I started learning the (very basic) basics of table-making in HTML.  Ultimately I was able to create a no-frills spreadsheet table in Excel, save it as a web page, open it in Firefox, view the page source code, copy out the specific section of code dealing with my table, paste the table into WordPress’s “text” editor, and re-size the columns so that they fit within my page’s formatted size and look good on a mobile device.  Whew!  All of that learning was totally worth it though because now I have a wonderful recipe index!  Go check it out!  🙂

Voila! My vision of a two-columned recipe index has been fulfilled!

Summer T.B.M. Pizza with Corn Relish

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Last weekend as I was paging through this month’s volume of Martha Stewart Living I came across a delicious-sounding recipe for Grilled Pizza with Cheesy Corn, Fresh Tomatoes, and Basil.  I was already planning on making pizza for dinner on Sunday and happened to have some extra frozen corn, garlic, and Parmesan, so I decided to mix up my standard Tomato-Basil-Mozzarella pizza and make this recipe instead.

Since I made this on short notice I had to improvise a bit.  I didn’t have any fresh corn so I used frozen corn which I rinsed and drained before blending into the relish.  Although I’m sure corn freshly sliced off the cob would have been even better, I thought that the corn was pretty tasty.  I also cheated by baking the pizza in the oven rather than grilling it because it was waaaay to hot out to stand over a grill (we’ve been having a major heat wave here on the east coast) !  All in all I thought the pizzas were quite yummy.  Thanks, Martha Stewart!

Summer Tomato-Basil-Mozzarella Pizza with Corn Relish (from Martha Stewart Living)

You will need…
15 oz. store-bought Pizza Dough (I used Trader Joe’s dough, of course!)
1 1/3 cups Corn Kernels (from two ears of corn or just measured out if using frozen)
1/4 cup Parmesan Cheese
1-2 medium Garlic Cloves
4 tablespoons Olive Oil, divided
Salt, to taste
2 Tomatoes, thinly sliced (I used small plum-sized “on the vine” tomatoes)
4-6 oz. Mozzarella, thinly sliced (this worked out to 12 of TJ’s small marinated mozzarella balls)
1/2  cup Basil Leaves

Directions:
Make the corn relish by combining the corn, Parmesan, garlic, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a blender and blend well.  Stretch the pizza dough into two pizzas and place them on a greased baking pan.  (For best taste let the dough sit at room temperature for 1 hour beforehand.)  Season the dough with a few pinches of coarse salt, then bake in a 425° preheated oven for 6 minutes.  Remove from oven, flip the dough, then top with the corn relish (spread it on with a spoon), tomatoes, and mozzarella.  Bake the pizzas for another 6 minutes until the mozzarella has melted.  Top with the basil leaves and enjoy!

Mexican Tortas with Chorizo and Black Beans

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This recipe for tasty tortas comes from our Mexican Everyday cookbook by Rick Bayless.  A torta is a Mexican-sandwich that features a smear of mashed beans and a wide variety of toppings including cheese, lettuce, sour cream, or salsa.  For these tortas we garnished our sandwiches with Queso Fresco, avocado, and Cholula hot sauce.  The resulting tortas contained the perfect combination of warm beans, spicy chorizo, and savory cheese and avocado, all nestled between golden-brown pieces of crusty bread.

Tortas de Chorizo y Frijoles Negros (from Mexican Everyday by Rick Bayless)

You will need…
8 oz. Chorizo Sausage, removed from casing
Olive Oil
2 – 15 oz. cans Black Beans, undrained
Salt, to taste
2-3 Crusty Rolls, approx. 6 inches long (we used a French Baguette and cut it into three 6″ sections)
6 oz. Queso Fresco cheese, cut into 1/4 inch slices
1 ripe Avocado, cut into 1/2 inch slices
Cholula Hot Sauce, or other bottled sauce or hot salsa

Directions:
Brown the chorizo and break it up in a large skillet over medium heat.  After the chorizo is completely cooked through, add 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the black beans.  Bring the beans to a simmer and mash them with the back of a large spoon.  (You can also use a bean masher or potato masher if you have one but the spoon worked fine for us.)  Continue to cook the bean mixture, stirring almost constantly, for about 10 minutes.  Taste the mixture and add salt if needed.  Cover the beans and leave on the stove over low heat.

Meanwhile, slice each roll in half lengthwise.  Use your fingers to pull out some of the soft bread in the center to make room for the bean mixture.  Use a spoon or brush to spread approximately 2 tablespoons of olive oil onto the inside faces of each roll.  Place the rolls face-down on a preheated heavy-bottomed skillet and toast the bread until it turns golden brown.  We had to do this in batches since only one roll could fit in our skillet.  Press the rolls down as they cook so that they toast evenly.

To assemble your torta, spread a liberal amount of the chorizo-bean mixture along the bottom half of each roll.  Top with the sliced queso fresco and avocados, then add a few drops (or many drops… your choice!) of hot sauce.  Cut the torta in half and enjoy!

Victory! Vine-Ripened Red Tomatoes

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Last week I wrote about how I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of Red Tomatoes in my garden.  Well, the waiting has come to an end and I am proud to say that my hanging and containerized tomato plants now have a few dozen perfect little red tomatoes on their vines.  Here are some photos… enjoy!  🙂

Tomatoes after the rain this morning (the first rain we’ve had in weeks!)

Tomatoes ripening from the top down.

OK… not a tomato, of course, but also red! Our green jalapeño peppers are ripening to this beautiful red color.

These green tomatoes will be red soon!

Future tomatoes

Perfect!

These tomatoes will be making an appearance in our dinner on Monday.  We’re having Spicy Steak and Potatoes with Roasted Chile Salsa and Tomato Salad with Guajillo Chile Dressing.  Look for a post sometime later in the week!

Easy Chicken Fajitas

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This is a quick and easy weeknight recipe that we enjoyed last week.  Besides the basic pantry items, all you really need is a chicken breast, red pepper, onion, and tortillas… simple!

Easy Chicken Fajitas (from Food and Wine)

You will need…
1 teaspoon Chile Powder
1 teaspoon Salt
1/2 teaspoon Cumin
1/2 teaspoon Onion Powder
1/4 teaspoon Garlic Powder
1 tablespoon Cornstarch
1 Chicken Breast (about 1 pound), cut into 1/2 inch strips
1 Red Bell Pepper, cut into strips
1 White Onion, cut into 1/2 inch slices
3 tablespoons Olive Oil
1/4 cup Water
2 tablespoons Lime Juice
6-8 corn Tortillas, warmed
Sour Cream
Hot Sauce, such as Cholula

Directions:
Combine the first six ingredients (chile powder through cornstarch) in a small bowl and stir well to combine.  Place the chicken, pepper, onion, olive oil and water in a large ziplock bag and sprinkle in the dry ingredient mixture.  Close the bag and mix/flip well so that the chicken is covered.  Allow to marinade in the refrigerator for at least 15 minutes.

Heat a large skillet or wok over high heat and add about a tablespoon of olive oil.  Add in the chicken mixture and stir occasionally until the chicken is cooked through.  Stir in the lime juice and serve in the warmed corn tortillas with sour cream and a few drops of hot sauce.

Frozen Strawberry Margaritas

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Here’s a tasty little frozen drink recipe that we whipped up this afternoon after a long day at work.  We’ve been having a heat wave here (today the weather has ‘cooled down’ to about 90°) so anything involving ice sounds good to us!  This recipe is a blended, fruitier version of my Margaritas on the Rocks.

Frozen Strawberry Margaritas  (makes 2 drinks)

You will need…
5 cups Ice Cubes
5 oz. Silver Tequila
1.5 oz. Triple Sec
3.5 oz. Lime Juice (I use Nellie & Joe’s Key Lime Juice)
2 oz. Simple Syrup (1/2 part sugar and 1/2 part water that’s been boiled together and cooled)
12-15 Strawberries, leaves removed
Lime, to garnish

Directions:
Place the ice cubes in a blender and blend until the ice is partially chopped.  (My blender has an “ice crush” setting that does a good job of breaking up the ice so I use this setting.)  Add the tequila, triple sec, lime juice, simple syrup and strawberries and blend until the strawberries are completely incorporated.  Pour into a glass and garnish with a lime wedge.  Enjoy!