Community Garden

My street is awesome. My neighbors, more specifically, are awesome. We grill together, play cornhole in the street, have each other's backs... you catch my drift. I like living here.

One of my neighbors, Meeg, had this great idea about making a garden in this big open grassy area on the street that we affectionately call "Dogland." She planned everything & put it all together, and we all threw some money at her, and voila, we had a garden.

4-2-11

We spent a day filling our beds with Leafgro (pictured above), then we spent another day shopping for plants & then had a little planting party. It involved beer. Aww yea. On that day (err, night), me & Dennis' bed looked like this:

4-30-11

So tiny. After a couple more weeks of gratuitous watering, our bed looked like this:

5-17-11

Not such a great comparison picture, but you can see that our plants have started sprouting up.

5-29-11

Why I keep taking these pictures at night, and at weird angles, I don't know.

Yesterday (6-8-11) I finally decided to go out with my camera (not my phone) and take some pictures during the day. I got some great shots of developing plants that are just starting to bear fruit. Yay!

Banana peppers

Purple Trinidad coffee peppers

Cayenne peppers

Zucchini

Carrot

And finally, one wide shot of the whole garden, taken today.

6-9-11

What a difference! We haven't eaten anything from our garden yet (except that little carrot, which tasted... like a carrot) but hopefully we'll be able to harvest soon. Stay tuned for updates!!

Green Monsta

So I dunno if you picked this up from my last post involving mushrooms, but I am attempting to go vegetarian. Emphasis on the word attempt. I've been doing it for about 3 weeks now and I've only had 3 or 4 slip-ups! That is, if you even call them slip-ups - my vegetarian coach Brett told me that turkey is a vegetable and bacon is a fruit, so except for that Buffalo Chicken sandwich I had last weekend, I am in the clear!

Anywho. I was looking for some vegetarian recipes and I found this website called Oh She Glows. The author, Angela, is vegan, which is a little too hardcore for me, but I am still interested in trying some of her recipes. She has this smoothie drink called a Green Monster that piqued my interest. She had a recipe for a basic one on her site, but I kind of just used her recipe as a jumpoff point. She has a ton of different recipes that I want to try, but my first one was just kind of basic.

Ingredients
spinach
1 banana
frozen berries
coconut milk
ice

No amounts, except for the banana. Yea, so sue me. I just eyeballed it, and added more stuff as it blended. Let your hair down already geez.

Maybe this visual will help.

Or this one.

Basically throw it all in the blender and hit blend! Then drink.

My first attempt - not so green.

Second attempt. Greener!

 

Much better! And you can't taste the spinach. It is supposed to give you a ton of energy. I'll be putting up other recipes with different variations as I make them. To look for more recipes yourself, check out her Green Monster Movement.

Grilled Portobello Sandwich

Aight. This one is a little tricky. I have made it twice so far, and of course no pictures - but I do have one portobello mushroom left so maybe I will remember to take pictures on the 3rd try. *Update - I finally took pictures on the 4th mushroom. Go me!* This tastes awesome and it is really filling. It is a great dinner idea for someone who is trying to go temporarily vegetarian (me). Dennis even ate one. Amazing.

Ingredients

1 red bell pepper

salt and black pepper to taste

1/2 cup olive oil

2 portobello mushroom caps, cleaned

2 slices onion

2 Kaiser rolls, split

4 tsp mayonnaise

1 tsp roasted garlic

2 ounces mozzarella, thinly sliced

2 slices tomato

First step - roast the red pepper. Put it on the grill and turn it until the whole thing is blackened. Should be around 15 minutes.

While your red pepper is roasting, mix the olive oil with the salt & pepper. Brush the mixture on top of the mushroom and then on the underside, including the...gills. *shudder* Man those creep me out.

 Gills are less freaky when you have a super helper dog in the kitchen.

The first time we made these sandwiches, we used the grill but it was kind of difficult and annoying, so the 2nd time I used the broiler. I put the portobello and onion on my pizza stone in the oven and put the broiler on low and let them sit for a few minutes. I flipped the portobello, left the onion alone, and let them sit for another few minutes on low. Then I flipped the mushroom again and placed a piece of mozzarella cheese on top, then put the broiler on HIGH. YEAAA!!

Onion and mushroom chillin on the pizza stone.

Ok so at this point, your mushroom and onions should be doing well. Also at this point, your red pepper should be blackened. Put it in a bowl and cover it with a lid, then leave it be for a few minutes. Now go put your kaiser rolls (open-faced) in the oven under the broiler so they can get nice and toasty. One more thing - real quick like, go mix up that mayo and garlic to make a sort of, what do you call it... oh right, garlic mayonnaise.

 My garlic mayo. Mmm.

Do you see how tough it is to juggle all of these ingredients!? Yikes. Check on the roll and the mozzarella. Don't let the roll get burnt, but wait until the mozzarella is melty or else it will be cold and taste weird. Once you have found that happy medium, take everything out. Spread the garlic mayo on the roll, then pile the rest of your ingredients on. Don't forget the tomato! Nomnomnom.

Here is the original link from Allrecipes.com.

Leftover tip: I roasted a whole red pepper and put the leftovers in the fridge, so the 2nd time I made this sandwich I tossed the red pepper on the pizza stone at the same time as the mushroom and onion to heat it up. Works like a charm!

"Cilantro Lime" Pork

Notice the quotes? Well I got this recipe because I thought it sounded awesome. I became obsessed with making salsa last summer, mostly the mango/pineapple variety, and 2 ingredients that were in all of the recipes were lime and cilantro. So I saw this recipe and I was all like, whaaaaat? Well it turns out, the pork is still really tasty (can't go wrong with a crock pot), but I did not really get the cilantro-y limey flavor I was looking for. Boo!

Ingredients

1/2 cup olive oil

2 garlic cloves minced

2 tablespoons lime juice

1 tablespoon white vinegar

1 1/2 teaspoon adobo seasoning with cumin

2 tablespoons chopped fresh (or 2 teaspoons dried) cilantro

1 (4 pound) bone in pork shoulder

1 medium onion, sliced

2 cups beef broth

Mix the first 6 ingredients together with a whisk. That will be your marinade. Easy peezy.

 

marinade + pork = mmmm

Get your pork shoulder out and make shallow cuts all over it, then put it in a big Ziploc bag with the marinade and shake it all up so the marinade covers the pork entirely. Then put it in the fridge for at least 6 hours. I left mine overnight. It made the fridge smell yummy (even though the bag was supposed to be completely airtight, what the hell?). When your pork is done marinating, put it in a big pan and sear it on all sides until it is brown. This is going to make your kitchen smell fantastic.

Now lay the sliced onion along the bottom of the crockpot and put the pork inside with the fat side up. Pour the beef broth and the rest of the marinade in the crockpot. I got 2 small cans of beef broth and just used all of that, without really measuring. I also poured the beef broth into the Ziploc bag first to dry to get all of the marinade out. Cover the crockpot and cook on low for 8 hours.

There are some other instructions after this but basically, once the 8 hours was up Dennis and I started eating it. We made sandwiches with Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce and this awesome pepper vinegar my dad made and gave us. Basically it is like... jalapenos soaked in vinegar (not sure what type of vinegar). I always fish some jalapenos out and put them on my sandwiches and OMG they are the bomb.

I can't remember how I found this recipe. It may have been on foodgawker's most favorited recipes of all-time where I found the last 2 recipes (Nummy Mozzerella Sticks & High Class Mac & Cheese). Not sure. Anyway, I think this recipe was sort of a bust because it didn't have the exact taste I was looking for, but the taste it did have was still really good, so I dunno what to think about this one. The meat was awesome, it made the house smell terrific (can I talk about how good this pork smells a little more?), and I did it all by myself with no help from Dennis, so in my book it is a success!

I have no pictures of the finished product because I have not been on top of my game lately. Sorry dudes.

Thank you to Des at Life's Ambrosia for this recipe. It looks like she's got a ton of other cool recipes on her site so check it out sometime!

Nummy Mozzarella Sticks

This recipe is actually kind of hard. It is easy to get the ingredients set up, but then it all goes straight to hell from there. Seriously though, you should still try it.

Ingredients

12 sticks of string cheese or 12 pieces of mozzarella cut into 4 x 1/2 inch sticks

1 1/2 cups breadcrumbs
4 tsp Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp salt
pepper to taste
4 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour

The first time I tried this recipe, I used fresh mozzarella. Mmm. Have you ever tried it? It is so effin good. Those Italians really know what they're doing. I ate a decent amount of it while I was making the cheese sticks. I couldn't help it!

Usually fresh mozzarella comes in sealed plastic packaging and it is about the size of a baseball. I was going to grab one of those, but then I saw one that looked elongated so that it looked great for my cheese sticks!!

 

Like this.

So I got it. It actually turned out to be really annoying to cut up cause it had some pre-made cuts that made it fall apart really easily. It wasn't too TOO difficult, but I just made a second batch and I used individually packaged cheese sticks. The first step is to "dredge" the mozzarella sticks aka. drag them through all of the ingredients, beginning with the flour. I thought that the flour wouldn't stick as well to the cheese sticks, but I was wrong. I couldn't really tell a difference.

Ok so for this first part, the dredging, I used pie plates and cake pans. I set up my little workstation like an assembly line and it worked pretty well. The first pan is just straight flour. The 2nd is the eggs, slightly beaten. The third pan is the breadcrumbs, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper mixed together. So do all of that.

 Voila.

Remember at the beginning when I said this recipe was hard and it went straight to hell? It was somewhere around this eggy portion.

 

Right about....meow.

See how there are little random bits of flour throughout the plate? I'd think the pieces were entirely coated in the egg and then I'd turn it once and the egg would just like.... evaporate! Yea that sounds right. Eggs are known to evaporate at will. So yea, I had to keep turning and turning the pieces in the egg and then there were still bare spots. So I had to rub some egg on there with my fingers. It got messy.

After the egg, dredge the cheese in the breadcrumb mixture. Easy. Then once you have done this with all of your pieces, repeat the whole process. UGH!!! This measure is to make sure that the cheese is entirely coated, because otherwise the cheese could seep out while you are frying them and you end up with an empty shell and some cheese floating around in the fryer. And that would be a waste of all of your hard work!!

My near-finished product. Prettay prettay prettay good.

Now sadly, you must put your cheese sticks in the freezer for at least 2 hours. I know. It'll be ok.

After 2+ hours, you may cook your cheese sticks. We have a deep fryer, so we used that on 350. If you don't have one, you can cook them in a large pot with Canola oil. The instructions for that are on the original website here. They also have a buttermilk dip that goes with the cheese sticks, but I made it and it didn't taste that great. Then again I substituted about half of the fresh ingredients with crappy seasoning so that might have... everything to do with it.

Sorry there are no post-fryer pics. They just didn't last long enough. We dipped them in marinara and it was heavenly. Bellissimo!

Also, in case I haven't sold you yet, maybe a review from Senior Food Critic Meredith "BigJugs" DeViney will do it - "Delicous [sic] yes melty." Well you heard it straight from the Hawk's mouth! Now go out and get you some!!

Update: I was able to take a picture with Dennis' phone of my awesome 2nd batch. I cut the mozzarella sticks in half before I dredged them. Here they are on a plate with some marinara sauce. Mmm...

High Class Mac & Cheese

Or as Dennis calls it, "Mac & Chee." Saves so much time.

I got this recipe from a website called FoodGawker. I don't know anything about it, except that judging from the name and the part of the site I was at, that it has a lot to do with looking at pictures of food. Or judging food by how good it looks in those pictures. Either way, I saw this page that was the "Most Favorited All-Time" of FoodGawker's picture/recipes. The pictures are fantastic! They make mine look like dog food. Delicious dog food!

I call this high class mac & cheese because it uses cheese other than Velveeta. Not that there's anything wrong with Velveeta, but I am a cheese connoisseur (I wish) so I love getting "nice" cheeses when I can afford it. This recipe calls for some specific cheese that I don't even know how to get, so I made some substitutions. It's cheese, for cryin out loud! It all tastes great and gets melty when you heat it up so I say if it tastes good, I can substitute it.

Ingredients
8 oz penne pasta (half a box)
2 cups of cheese sauce (see recipe below)
1 oz cheddar, grated
1 oz Havarti, grated
1/2 tsp chili powder

The way this recipe is set up was kind of confusing to me. I had to scroll back and forth which I despise (!) but never fear, I am going to try to fix this issue. Maybe. I'm just going to try to write it the way I wish it was written. Don't get your hopes up too high though.

First, cook your pasta. Get a pot of water boiling and pour half of the box into the pot. Stir it a little, set the timer for 9 minutes, then start your cheese sauce. Here is where I interject that now would be a fine time to preheat your oven to 350!

Ingredients for Cheese Sauce
1/4 c butter
1/3 c flour
3 c milk
14 oz cheddar, grated
1 oz gorgonzola, grated
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp chili powder

Melt the butter on medium heat in a large saucepan. And I do mean large - you will be adding all of your ingredients to this pan. In hindsight, a pot might be better. Once the butter is melted, slowly add the flour and stir for 2 minutes. This mixture is called a roux aka a thickener for sauces.

Add the milk one cup at a time, stirring constantly until it is thick, about 10 minutes. The mixture is now called a béchamel sauce, which is a white sauce used in many Italian dishes. You didn't know you would be learning today, did you!?

 

Béchamel!

Remove from heat and stir in the cheeses, salt, garlic powder, and chili powder until it is all nice and melted together. Set aside.

 

Cheese sauce. Nomnomnom.

Now hopefully this process did not take longer than 9 minutes. Otherwise, your pasta will have overcooked! This is why you set the timer. Well, I dunno about you but this is why I set the timer, anyway. So you should drain your pasta and rinse it with cold water. Then mix 2 cups of the cheese sauce in a medium bowl with the pasta.

 

You wish you could multitask this well.

BEWARE! I say 2 cups! The whole mixture is 4 cups. Why the recipe says to make 2x the amount needed, I don't know. But I made the mistake of pouring it all into the bowl. This is what I was talking about with the recipe being confusing. I didn't want anyone else to make that mistake and have to fish 2 cups of cheese sauce out without getting any penne. It was really hard, man!

Ok so now you butter your 8x8 Pyrex pan and pour your mixture into it. Sprinkle the rest of the shredded cheese and chili sauce on top and pop it in the oven for 20-30 minutes. I picked 30 and it was awesome.

Pre-oven.

 

Post-oven. What a difference 30 minutes makes! (at 350)

Thanks to Joe at My Cooking Quest for the recipe. Here is the original link. Don't forget to lift your pinky when you eat it.

My Very First Banana Bread

So I went grocery shopping this past week and bananas were on my list. I should have seen a red flag when there were hardly any bananas left, but I picked some that looked pretty good to me and moved on. When I got home and tried to put them up on the banana hook, one just fell right off. Oops. Then another one had already broken open. Then Dennis just said to hell with them and that he doesn't want to eat them, so I decided to make banana bread.

I have never made banana bread before, but I have made pumpkin bread a lot so I thought I could handle it. The ingredients were quite simple, as was the recipe.

Ingredients
3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

The recipe says that you don't even need a mixer for this & that you can just use a spoon, but that sounds like more work. So I used my hand mixer.

First preheat the oven to 350. Then mix the bananas and butter together, then add the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Once they are all mixed together well, add the baking soda and salt, and lastly the flour. OMG wasn't that easy?

Pour the mixture into a buttered 4x8 loaf pan and put it in the oven for 70 minutes. I just tried a little piece and it tastes great. The recipe is hard to screw up though, so that is not saying a lot about my cooking. Seriously though, I am a great cook and this bread is going to feed Dennis for a week. Also, I can't find my camera right now you'll have to settle for this terrible picture I took with my computer:

And yes there is a piece missing. So what?! Leave me alone!!

The original recipe from SimplyRecipes.com.