Mmm Salad

For as much as I love food I always seem to have trouble putting together a good lunch for myself. For some reason when I go grocery shopping I tend to neglect the middle of the day meal. I have plenty of food for breakfast and dinner, but it all takes time and thought which is not something I like to apply to lunch.

Yesterday I managed to find the perfect lunch hiding in my fridge. If only I could manage to be creative every day at noon. The problem is at that time of the day my brain is usually focused on cake. But not yesterday! I scavenged and found some pancetta left over from a gnocchi dish I made last week, red bell pepper I had just roasted, gorgonzola, and some dill. I cooked the pancetta and bell pepper with some olive oil and garlic then tossed it in with the dill and cheese in some spring salad mix. I made a dressing with some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, shallots and pepper. Yum! It was a very happy lunching indeed.

Tomorrow I will be writing about the bacon brownies I will be making this afternoon.

Food and Friends

Saturday evening David and I had a lovely dinner party with some of our dearest friends. It was a blur of food and laughter, impressions and speech therapy. Not to forget some pictures of the most amazing bangs I have ever seen (I can't go in to any more detail than that, to protect the innocent ,you know). I also had one of the most lovely conversations about secret eating, a club that I am proudly a member of. Trust me, there will be much more on that topic later.





The theme of the dinner was "Monica trying to cook with soul". Soul food happens to rank among my favorite culinary experiences. I LOVE fried chicken. I LOVE pecan pie. I could go on for days. The menu consisted of Grilled Pork Tenderloin, Collard Greens, Caramelized Onion Corn Bread, Baked Mac N Cheese, and Hello Dolly Bars. I stuffed my face until it darn near exploded.





If only I had pictures to share of the yummy things we ate. Soon I will be borrowing a quality camera and will be posting as many pictures as possible. It will give me a great excuse to have a baking extravaganza. Not that I ever really need an excuse.





Anyway, back to the meal. Here are the recipes, I hope you try and enjoy them.





PORK TENDERLOIN


1 pork tenderloin


1/2 C light beer


3 Tbsp Tamarind paste


1 Tbsp chili powder


1 Tbsp garlic powder


1 Tbsp onion powder





Put the first 4 ingredients in a Ziploc bag and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. Remove the tenderloin from the bag and rub the garlic and onion powder on the meat. Grill for about 40 minutes and let rest for 10 before slicing into this baby.








Collard Greens


I buy pre-cut pre-washed bags of greens from Safeway or Trader Joes. It makes life easy and less gritty.





1 bag of collard greens (roughly 6 cups)


2 Tbsp olive oil


1/8 C champagne vinegar


2 tsp garlic powder


dash of cayenne pepper


hot sauce (my preference is Tabasco chipotle sauce)





Add the olive oil to a large pan or stock pot over medium heat. Add the greens and vinegar, stirring constantly. Cook the greens until they are slightly wilted and bright green in color. Add the garlic powder and cayenne before giving a few last stirs and turning off the heat. Add hot sauce to taste (this can be done to each individual portion or the whole mess of them if everyone who will be eating likes the heat).

Caramelized Onion Corn Bread

For this recipe use your favorite cornbread recipe or mix. I use Marie Calendar's mix (I get a big bag from Costco) that you just add water to.

Cornbread mix and needed ingredients

one vidalia or other sweet onion sliced thin

4 Tbsp butter

Melt the butter in a sauce pan. Add the sliced onion and cook on low for about an hour, stirring occasionally to make sure they don't burn, until the onion take on a nice brown color. Mix the cornbread with ingredients and pour into pan. (8x8 is what I used) Add the onions on top and then bake the cornbread according to the instructions.

Baked Mac N Cheese

I happen to be lactose intolerant so I only get to treat myself to delicious mac n cheese once in a while when I take my Digestive Advantage lactose intolerance pills. It's a good thing to because otherwise I would probably eat it every day and be as big as the moon.

2 Tbsp butter

3 Tbsp flour

1/2 C cream or milk

1 C sharp cheddar cheese

1 C fontina

1 C gorgonzola

1 box macaroni noodles.

Preheat the oven to 375. Prepare the noodles according to the directions on the box. In a sauce pan melt the butter on medium heat. Whisk in the flour until a paste forms. Add the cream and continue whisking, then add the cheese. Whisk until just melted. Add the noodles to the pot and stir to cover. Pour the mixture into a greased 9x12 dish . Bake the mac n cheese for about 45 minutes to an hour or until the top has a nice brown around the edges.

*I recommend adding copious amounts of bacon if you are serving this to carnivores.

Why I will NEVER be a vegetarian

First I feel it is only right to apologize to Roslyn, my cat, for kicking her off my lap so I could have room for the computer.

Any who. So I think that it goes without saying that the reason I could never be a vegetarian can be summed up with one word. Pork. Add hunger/enjoyment sounds here. Yes pork, you lusty lady of goodness. I never tire of your succulent goodness, you who can be bathed in bbq sauce or slow roasted with a simple blend of spice. You haunt my dreams and give new meaning to my days. Pork, I think I might just be in love with you. Sorry David, you understand.

My love of pork has not always been so. Growing up I remember the disappointment at hearing that pork chops would be served for dinner (that is all I knew of the pig, besides bacon, as a child). I would groan and complain and and yet still found myself having to swallow the dry chop. I love my dad but he could sure over cook his meat product. It wasn't until I became an adult and started cooking for myself that I became swept up with pork fever (very different from swine flu, no worries). I realized that pork could be tender and amazing and that the natural flavor is suitable with almost any dish. Now adays I have a hard time not having pork for dinner. Who needs chicken when you have pork tenderloin as an option.

Today I had the chance to taste an amazing pork sandwich. I was walking to the bus stop after getting my hair colored when I meandered past a lunch truck shaped like a pig. Of course natural curiosity led me to walk over and immediately get in line before knowing what was on the menu. Come on, you can't pass up what could be cooking inside a pig shaped truck. The options were slim, pork sandwich with spicy or sweet sauce, a vegetarian sandwich, and chips and slaw. I ordered one of each of the pork sandwiches and brought them home to share with David. They were amazing. The flavor of the sauce was out of this world, though I would prefer a little more spice to my spicy sauce as it was not all that different from the sweet sauce, and they were covered in a flagship cheese and cilantro. I happen to be part of the percentage of the population who totally digs cilantro so that was fabuloso for me. The name of the truck is Maximus-minimus. Find it. Look it up on line, sell your soul to the devil to take you there, then devour at least two sandwiches. You will love yourself for it.

Go team pork.

The Beginning and a failed cake

Here is my feeble attempt at joining a world that I love. I feel like I'm in high school, a dorky kid so longing to fit in with the cool kids of the blog world. But alas, my style is not so cool and I my be destined to hang by myself unless I can fin some way to inadvertently cry out "I'm here, I'm cool in my own way".Maybe I will resort to being a class clown or a smart ass, all the things that got me through awkward childhood. Or maybe my obsessive love of food and life will spill on to these pages bringing pleasantries and wittiness, and of course lots of amazing foodgasm inducing dishes.


It might be strange to start my very first post with a failure but I figured I could only go up from here. Or fail again, which is bound to happen, but we will wait and see.

I recently purchased a bag full of kumquats from the lovely Pike Place Market and finding myself not in the mood to pop the lovelies directly in my mouth, I wanted to find a way to use them before they went bad. What better way to use fruit than to make a cake, right? Since I have recently been attached to my lap top (I have discovered my love for food blogs and cannot be parted from them) I decided to scour the internet for the most delicious sounding recipe. I came across a recipe for infused vodka, I really should have stopped there. But then came a recipe that seemed to scream to me; Coconut kumquat tea cake. Hubba hubba. After wiping my mouth to remove the stream of drool on my chin I gathered all of the ingredients called for. Lucky for me my kitchen is like a grocery store so I didn't need to run out for any ingredients. I put it all together and waited as it baked. It smelt soooo good. That was as good as it got. The cake was gummy and flavorless and left a horrible after taste in my mouth. Such sadness and disappointment.

After all that I decided that what I really wanted was a few kumquats to munch on.


*Sorry for no picture. It was far more sad than the cake!