Julie and Julia

I went to see the movie Julie and Julia today. If you haven’t heard of it, it is based on a book by Julie Powell who undertook cooking through the entire “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in one year. 365 days – 524 recipes – and blogging about it each day. It is a charming book especially if you are a foodie or just someone lost in the world and trying to find their way. The movie takes the book Julie and Julia and combines it with Julia Child’s memoir of her time in France. Meryl Streep is brilliant as Julia Child as is Amy Adams as Julie Powell. There are laugh out loud moments and moments of pure tenderness as the men in each of these women’s lives try to understand and support their wives in the world of food and self exploration.  As a food blogger, the book and the movie are both inspirational. I don’t know if I will ever work my way through “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” but it definitely reaffirmed my love of food; not just the eating of the food, but more importantly, the preparation and sharing of food. If I dare speak for all foodies, I would say, what draws us most to food is the sharing of it with friends and loved ones.  I encourage everyone to try a new recipe and share it – don’t test it first – just go for it, call a friend and enjoy the whole process.

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Food Confessions

We get a lot of responses to the food blog and I personally think its a fun way to share ideas, recipes, and successes and failures. What I also hear a lot is that I am “fancy and creative” as said in the mocking somewhat jealous tone of someone who just knocked out the left over pizza or finished the latest in a long line of stouffers frozen dinners. Well – if it will make you feel better – tonights gourmet dinner for me was half a subway sandwich (from the fit menu at least) and snack pack of doritos – all capped off with a coffee from Starbucks…yeah I am living the gourmet food life style for sure.

So..what are your food confessions??

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Historic Day!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIMI!!! EAT WELL, LIVE IT UP and ENJOY IT ALL.

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Tandori Chef saves the Day

I’ve been so busy lately – adding another job to my already busy life. I have not had too much time for cooking so I have endeavorded to find healthy pre-packaged food. I came across a yummy Kofta Curry (vegan friendly) put out by Tandori Chef. For less than $4 you get a yummy Indian meal. They also make a fantastic Naan you can serve along side the dinner – its also great for sopping up the extra yummy sauce.

  

The also have a paleek paneer and a couple of other yummy sounding flavors so there may be more of this in my future – at least until I can figure out my schedule and manage my time a bit better. In the meantime – I feel pretty good about eating this – its very healthy and very tasty. What’s your favorite pre-packaged food??

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Sunday Dinner

Sunday dinner was all about comfort food.

I made smashed potatoes which I find much lower maintenance than mashed potatoes. I just boil some chopped red potatoes with a few garlic cloves and a bay leaf, then remove the bay leaf and smash the potatoes and garlic with some butter, a little salt and pepper and about 3 tablespoons of cream cheese.

I also had to use up a few calabacitas I had in the fridge, so I diced half an onion, 2 calabacitas, a yellow squash and 2 roma tomatoes and sauteed them in a little olive oil and red pepper flakes. I added a few cups of sweet white corn kernels towards the end.

And the main course was My Momma’s Salmon Patties. This recipe has been around forever. When I was a teenager and had braces, whenever I would get the bands tightened and my mouth was sore, Mom made salmon patties and mashed potatoes.

The recipe is pretty simple:

Weezy’s Salmon Patties

1 can red salmon (picked through for bones and skin)
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 c. quick cooking oats
1/4 c. sauteed onion
1 egg, beaten
3 t. lemon juice
1/3 c. milk
2 T. mayo
Cracker Crumbs
butter flavored crisco

This makes me laugh because I know my Mom never measured ANYTHING- so I don’t when I make these.

Drain and debone the salmon; set aside. Mix 1/4 of the can of soup, the oatmeal, the onion, the egg, the lemon juice (she probably used bottled- I used fresh) and the drained salmon. Make sure to blend all ingredients well. Make small patties and roll in cracker crumbs. Fry until brown.

I used panko bread crumbs instead of cracker crumbs. I also formed the patties and put them in the ice box for about 30 minutes to firm them up and help them hold together better in the skillet. I also used a little olive oil instead of butter flavored crisco.

You can make a sauce out of the remainder of the soup, the milk and the mayo. I used yogurt instead of mayo and added a shot of vermouth at the end to kick it up a bit.

I’m not sure that Dev thought these were very good, but I loved them. I took one to school today for lunch. And since I doubt he’ll eat any, I’ll probably be doing the same thing for the next 4 days in a row!

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Yeah-What She Said

I would like to clarify a few terms used in Diane’s last post.  When we say “Cavalcade of Fun,”  what we really mean is lying around on the couch watching tennis, or lying around on the couch watching “Friends” reruns, or lying around on the couch waiting to find out if the baseball game has been rained out.  I just didn’t want people thinking we were out doing productive things.  We avoid that whenever possible- at least I do.  But hey- I’m on vacation.

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Country Bob Cook-off

Admitedly, Mimi and I have been slack as the cavalcade of fun has overtaken the time that we would normally spend cooking. We do have a project on the horizon. We received an offer from Country Bob to try his special sauce free and then blog about it. We got 2 bottles and we are in the process of planning our use for the sauce. I think Mimi has decided on pork and I have decided on chicken so stay tuned for that exciting cook-off.  We’ll be sure to have lots of pics of the process – so just hang tight – we’ll eventually pull ourselves away from televised coverage of Wimbledon and get back into the kitchen.

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Key Lime juice should cost $1 million

Key Limes

Originally uploaded by lyricalmezzo

Continuing to use the goodies brought to me by my parents from the DeKalb Farmer’s Market, I decided to make a key lime pie for fathers day dinner tomorrow. If you have never seen a key like and can’t quite get the scale from the picture – those tiles are 2″ square – so you see, they are very small.

I have so far juiced about 1/2 of them – there were double what’s in the picture now and I have a grand total of 1/3 cup of juice and I had to stop because one of my thumbs is now much larger than its normal size from all the squeezing. I need to get to a 1/2 cup to make the pie and I was planning to make 2 pies, but I don’t know if I can get to a full cup of juice without some sort of trick.

Any ideas on how to make the job easier – I don’t have a juicer, obviously and I did already discover they are easier to juice at room temperature.

All I have to say is – this pie better be good!

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Feeling Stuck

I love the dinners I make and I think, overall I am very successful in the kitchen, but I definitely have a “menu” from which I draw my ideas. I think part of that is that pretty much the same ingredients are available at each store in town – nothing really different from the next except more expensive mushrooms and good sushi quality seafood and the local Fresh Market, but still – the ingredients remain fairly unchanged throughout the year. That is perhaps the blessing and the curse of living in such a temperate climate. So – what I am looking for is things to expand my current menu of foods I keep lodged in my brain. Seafood is easy to get as are most fresh vegetables. I am not a big sweets eater and don’t have red meat or pork in my diet.  Browse the blog for my cooking tendancies and help me get out of the bubble.  Granted, its a well fed and satisfying bubble, but its a bubble none-the-less.  I’m going out tonight, but will hit the grocery store tomorrow…inspire me!

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I’m back! (Hopefully)

I am so thankful that Di has been able to single handedly keep this blog going.  I don’t even remember the last time I posted.  I’ll save you the long version of the story and just say that I have not been feeling well since right before school got out.

Hopefully I’m on the road to recovery, and I’m going to post 2 experiments Dev and I have been working on this last week.

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