Next-Door Eggs

"I do, I like them, Sam-I-Am!"

Remember that line?  We do, and we like them too.  Green eggs, I mean.

Our neighbor has the most adorable flock of four hens, all well-loved by her two boys, and all very tame.  They're pretty, they're fun, and they're very productive!

Her Ameraucauna lays the greenish eggs and they're lovely next to the speckled ones.  Sadly, they're not green on the inside!  If you haven't had a really fresh fried egg recently, we'd suggest find some local chickens and try them out.  A warning: once you've had them, it's hard to go back to runny grocery-store eggs!  Next thing you know you'll be contemplating a coop of your own.

If you're lucky, you'll turn up a neighbor who will let you hen-sit when they're out of town!

Low-Country Boil

Who wouldn't love a meal with no dishes afterward?  Or silverware?  We spread newspaper, strained the boil and dumped the boil on the table: shrimp, corn on the cob, red potatoes and andouille sausage.  Seasoned with the traditional boil packet from the grocery store and voila: casual dining.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. 

Add 15-20 small potatoes (red) and cook for 10 minutes

Add the shrimp boil seasoning

Add 4 andouille sausages cut into 1/2 inch disks and 8 corn cobs (small, frozen) and cook another 3-5 minutes until the corn starts to get tender. 

Last, add 1.5 lb medium shrimp (about 30 shrimp) and cook for just 1 minute, until they're heated through and no longer translucent.

Drain and serve.  

Serves 4.

Cardamom - Rosemary - Chipolte Roast Chicken

This was either going to be great, or a total waste of a chicken.

I love a simple salt and pepper roasted chicken, but it's been grey and rainy out lately and I felt the need to spice things up a little bit.  There wasn't going to be a tango class on a Wednesday, and no friends were lined up at the door, so we spiced up the chicken instead.

With it's powerful, musky-sweet-exotic flavor, a little Cardamom goes a long way.  It's found in chai tea, Christmas cookies, Scandinavian dishes and middle-eastern cooking and I've always liked the savory-sweet combinations it stands up to, so we decided to try a few out on the chicken.

We rubbed equal amounts (about a 1/4 teaspoon) of cardamom and chipolte powder on the chicken, followed by salt and pepper.  Then we stuck a stalk of rosemary in the chicken's cavity (about 4 inches long) and stuck it in the oven.

After about an hour, it had reached 160* and smelled fantastic.  (4 lb chicken)

It's not often we get to serve up a yellow main course, is it?  Complemented by my Grandmother's knife and fork serving set - bakelite still has it's place at our table!  I'm curious now about what other typically sweet spices could be combined with savory or spicy to make interesting combinations or other ways to use cardamom.  Anyone have any ideas or recipes to share?

Oatmeal with Milk

Technically, it's not cooking, but we're not that picky, right?

Oatmeal, covered with milk (and a sprinkle of sugar, if you like).  Let it stand for 5 minutes and voila: a snack.

It's just like those parfaits at the airport or fast-food places, minus all the ick.  Turns out there's more to oatmeal than we thought. 

Garlicky Crumb-Coated Broccoli (French Fridays with Dorie)

I'm going to admit it up front.  I don't really like broccoli.  In fact, I remember including this fact in a letter to our first president Bush - my best friend and I were lacking on world policy specifics to discuss with him, but we'd heard he didn't care for the green veggie much either.  It's one of those things any decent adult is supposed to like, right?  Sunshine, ironic political comments, doing your taxes early, getting regular exercise and.....broccoli.  They're good for you, a sign of sophistication, satisfying and wholesome.  So now you know, I'll eat it, but you can't make me like it.

Apparently though, this is a recessive gene and everyone else likes it in my house.  So, we made the Garlicky Crumb-Coated Broccoli and you know what?  I still wasn't crazy about it.  (you thought I was going to say I liked it after all, didn't you??)

But it was okay.  And the kids loved it, so it's a keeper. 

The recipe in Around My French Table says to steam the broccoli first, then toss it with butter, garlic, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper.  Our first alternation was to microwave the broccoli, instead of steaming it.  I don't get it - if you have access to a microwave, I say go for it!  There's no waiting for water to boil (and we all know how long that can take!) - no steamer basket to clean, plus pot and pan., and the nutrient loss is less than steaming.

So we microwaved.

The second alteration was the butter.  I simply cannot bring myself to use 1/2 stick of butter for two stalks of broccoli.  French women might not get fat, but I sure can!  So I used a pat of butter (less than a TB) and olive oil. 

Mixing oil and butter is a tried and true french approach to cooking (and Italian, for that matter) - it stretches the butter flavor without stretching your pants, and it raises the smoke point of the butter - so it doesn't burn as easily.  No brainer.

Once the butter/oil mixture was warmed, we added minced garlic, breadcrumbs and seasoning (including lemon zest), toasted the bread crumbs and added the broccoli. 

It looked great and, as I said, everyone else thought it was fantastique!

Monkey Gets the Beets

My daughter was insistent on peeling the beets.  A little too insistent...and that's when I realized she didn't have a burning desire to spend quality time with her mother in the kitchen - she wanted to use her monkey peeler!

Oh yes, this is one of those "just for kids!" items you see tucked onto the ends of the aisles in kitchen stores, where they keep all those cute impulse buys.  Egg separator?  Pot holder that looks like a cow?  Kid tools?  That's where you'll find them!

The thing about this peeler though, is that it works.  It's easier for her to hold than the usual ones, and she loves it, even after the Ouch! episode.  She peeled those beets in no time, holding them close against her shirt.  One of those "maybe you'd better get your apron (because I want this to be fun, not an occasion for me to fret over the cost of replacing your beet-gold wardrobe!!)"  Smile.

We roasted them in the oven with the chicken, taking about 20 minutes for 3 large beets in 1/2 inch chunks.

I believe I'm overcoming my aversion to beets, and enjoying the fact that everyone else seems to gobble them up.  The sweet, simple beets were a delicious counterpoint to the spicy chicken (coming soon!) that we ate alongside it.

Roasted Golden Beets

3 yellow beets, tops removed, peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch chunks
Toss with 2-4 TB olive oil, season lightly with kosher salt.
Line a baking dish with tinfoil for an easier clean-up and spread the beets on the foil.
Roast at 400* F for about 20 minutes until they begin to turn golden brown.

Stir once midway through the cooking.

The tender, mild flavor is a nice accompaniment to spicy foods, and they can stand in for a starchy side dish.

Simple Soup

Last week was a busy week.  There was a leftover pizza night and a soup and grilled cheese night, each preceeded by a 'what am I going to serve for dinner' moment.  It was one of those weeks.  The only bright spot was that I didn't run out of milk, but only because I'd bought way more than the sleep-over boys could drink.  (Because really, mom, why would they drink milk when you had cans of root-beer and ginger ale on hand?  sigh.  Yes, a better mother would have had only milk and sliced fruit to go with the pizza, but I was just winging it.)

There was one small, shining moment of decent eating in the middle of this work-life-unbalance.  Pasta soup.  This was winging it to the max - no recipe, no plan, just making the most of two frozen italian sausages, some slightly dehydrated carrots rattling around in the bottom of the crisper, dried pasta, boxed broth and some frozen duxelles. The sausages were sliced and browned, deglazed the pan and added the carrots and broth, brought to a boil, added duxelles and pasta and cooked for 8 minutes.  Done.

I put it on the table and, glad it wasn't pizza, dished it up.  Nothing fancy, but it was hot and satisfying.  It felt good, in the middle of all the chaos, to remember that sometimes simple is the better balance to busy.

No recipe tonight, since this was mostly about making a little bit of peace from the chaos.