Fajitas

Chicken fajitas popped in my head one day so I picked up some ingredients and have been waiting to put it together!  I found a marinade online ~ about 1/2 cup beer and juice of one lime, to the side mix 1 Tbs each brown sugar, oil, and Worcestershire sauce and then add to beer mix.  Toss in some chopped garlic, cilantro, salt, and cumin.  I let my cut up chicken marinade about 5 hours.

Fast forward those 5 hours and I started with the rice.  Sauteed some onion in oil and added rice (about a cup and a half).  Once coated in oil, toss in chopped green pepper, frozen corn, can of diced tomatoes, water (about 3 cups), and seasoning.  Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer until rice is cooked.  This was my first time making a Spanish rice from scratch like this...yum!

Time for the chicken!  I warmed a skillet and then put in the chicken and disgarded the bag of marinade.  After the chicken was cooked, I threw in some onion and peppers, covered and let them steam cook.  Then added some mushrooms and did the same.  In the meantime, I warmed a can of black beans that I seasoned some.

What a wonderful meal and lots of leftovers!!!

Not so Teriyaki

Well, Jim is working over an hour north of the area we live so I'm only seeing him weekends.  Now I have to fend for myself for dinner!  Eek!  So this is my first "alone" dinner post.  I needed to use up this chunk of pork so I decided to try a teriyaki...it didn't turn out to really taste like teriyaki but it was still good!  I added a side of sauteed onions, carrots, and napa cabbage for a wonderful dinner!

I cooked the pork similar to how I made carnitas a week a couple weeks ago.  Heat up oil in a skillet and brown the chunks of pork.  Mine were about 2 by 2 inches each (the smaller the chunks = the quicker it cooks).  While those were browning I attempted a teriyaki sauce which turned out to taste good, it just didn't taste like teriyaki.  Next time I am going to use more of the add-ins to bring out their flavors.  So it was just soy sauce, sugar, chopped garlic, and chopped ginger.  I added some water, poured over the pork, brought it to a boil then lowered to a simmer.  I ran off to Jazzercise and when I returned about 90 minutes later, it was ready to shred.  After the initial shredding, I added a little more water and let it cook about 20 more minutes.  Definitely something I'll try again and I'm loving to cook meat in this manner...think of all the different sauces, marinades, and seasonings that could be tried!

Welcoming in 2014

This was our first New Year's Eve together so we decided to just stay in and celebrate with some champagne and tasty appetizers!  For starters, Jim just had to impress me with some fresh homemade bread and a creamy and delicious artichoke and jalapeno dip.  He whipped the dip up so quick!  Just made a little rue, added some milk, Parmesan cheese, cream cheese, artichoke hearts, and chopped jalapeno.  This was just cooked up in a pan for awhile and then put on the bread!  Yum!!!  We also had some smoked salmon so this just got mixed with some cream cheese for another wonderful option to enjoy on the bread.

And what is New Year's Eve without shrimp cocktail?  To me, nothing!  I decided to kick it up by making my own cocktail sauce with ketchup, horseradish, lemon juice, and a bit of hot sauce.  With some fresh shrimp it was divine!  What a great way to bring in 2014 even though we were in bed before midnight...

Pancakes and Bacon!

Ahh! I get so busy with life that I haven't been doing this as often as I wanted (I'm a full-time online student as well as work full-time...time just slips away from me!).  I just need to get into a routine with it!  Anyway this post topic is a little different because it was made in someone else's kitchen by someone else!  It's a delicious late night/early morning breakfast my friend Sandy made.  You know how it is - hanging out with friends, drinking some beer, playing games, and the munchies hit!  Sandy impressed us all last night with these pancakes!

Cut up some bacon and fry it on up.  In the meantime, mix up some pancake batter.  Gotta love Sandy...she mixed up some from scratch!  No Bisquick for this woman!  A couple cups of flour with a little baking powder, sugar, add some milk, an egg, and melted butter.  Fold in the bacon and cook them babies up!  The perfect combo!  Thanks Sandy for feeding your friends!  And thank you Hollee for your wonderful photo.

Something a little Italiano!

Sorry, I meant to post this the other day and all of a sudden a couple days had passed!  Eek!  Oh well...  Jim and I obviously have diverse likes and tastes in our food choices...which is awesome because I personally have rarely met a food I wouldn't eat.  Anyway, this night (Monday, I believe) was a delicious and simple Italian dish.

We just cooked up some Italian sausage links (we used Johnsonville) and then sliced then.  Throw these back in the pan with some chopped onions, minced garlic, a can of diced tomatoes, a can of tomato sauce, and seasonings!  The diced tomatoes had sweet onion and roasted garlic in them and the seasonings included basil, oregano, garlic salt, and onion salt.  Cook this up & it makes a delicious sauce...and a lot healthier than a jar of pre-made sauce (well, other than the Italian sausage...)!  We ate this on some cheese ravioli topped with chopped parsley.  So good for dinner and lunch the next day!

Bread!

As you have seen, Jim makes bread...and it is sooo good!  And this is coming from a sweets girl who can live without bread.  Well, his bread skills are not just for "regular" bread, the other day Jim made some delicious pumpkin bread!

We had some leftover pumpkin (half a large can) and some evaporated milk so he decided to make a healthier bread.  He mixed oats and flour (about 50/50), a stick of butter, 2 eggs, some sugar, the pumpkin and evaporated milk along with some regular milk....oh and some traditional pumpkinisque seasoning of course.  It was so delicious and moist!!!

Jim spread peanut butter on his and I enjoyed mine with cream cheese.  It's also quite tasty plain and we had a discussion of how wonderful it would be with chopped nuts and Jim even mentioned dried cranberries!

Leftovers!

A busy night means leftovers and an early post the morning after!  This post is about the first things Jim ever made me for me.  So a little background...I have pretty much always used a recipe and measured other than a few dishes that I have made regularly.  Jim on the other hand, never uses a recipe or any type of measuring device.  NEVER!  I've started to follow in his footsteps and have been enjoying it.  Anyway, the first dish Jim ever made for me was mole chicken tacos - he just cooked chicken breast tenders in mole sauce.  It was wonderful but this is about the second meal he made me.  This was the night following the mole chicken tacos...I was starting to feel spoiled!

It was a delicious pork stew with a Mexican flair.  He used both dry hominy and beans, so these had to soak.  Side note: I tried a "quick soak" once I found online that worked quite well - boil beans in water about 2-3 minutes, remove and let soak for 2-4 hours.  I changed the water a couple times to cool the water and beans a little.  Anyway, back to Jim!  Brown pork and then add broth and with carrots, parsnips, hominy, beans, cilantro, and seasonings.  I believe there was cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne...  Let this simmer for a couple hours and serve!

 We ate it with baked tortillas, chopped cilantro, and sour cream.  This was divine!!!  And it made so much we had leftovers for days...even a couple freezer servings!  It tasted just as good reheated weeks later!

Mexican...Trying something new!

First, I want to start off saying for those who don't us, both Jim and myself work full-time jobs so we aren't just home cooking all the time.  We have had a few more complex meals but most of what we have done just needs a little planning and can be fairly quick.  Like tonight...had some pork in the fridge to use up so I did a little Google search on pork dishes and decided to try my hand at carnitas with some excellent results!  I used an electric skillet for the whole dish but a regular skillet combined with a crock-pot would work too.  Use smaller pieces of pork like 3 oz or so each otherwise it will take longer.  Brown them up in some oil in the skillet, sprinkle with salt.  Pour contents of the skillet into a heated crock-pot, if using one.  Season with garlic powder, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, and a little cayenne.  Squeeze in about half a lime and add about half a cup a water per pound of pork.  Bring to a boil then lower heat and simmer until meat shreds.  About 2 hours or so depending on how much pork.  Shred it up with a fork and eat!!!

At first we were going to fry up some corn tortillas and eat these with a side of black beans and rice but we ditched the tortilla idea.  Jim made some black beans and rice and we just topped it with the carnitas, homemade salsa (onions, garlic, tomatoes, cilantro, lime), and of course, sour cream!  I think my first attempt at carnitas turned out pretty darn delicious!

Reminiscing from almost a week ago...

Just had a quickie dinner tonight of baked seasoned chicken breast tenders, steamed broccoli and carrots, and tater tots (seasoned with chipotle...dipped in ranch...YUMMMM!)  so I thought I'd mention a dinner from late last week.

Jim makes bread...like mix it up, knead it, let it rise bread.  I told him I would make some broccoli cheddar soup if he would make bread bowls, so we did with awesome results!

Now this soup is completely done by scratch but don't let that deter you, it is super easy with such good results.  Just chop up a head of broccoli, cover with water and boil about 5 minutes or so.  Add to that a shredded carrot, chopped up onion (just a small one), 4-6 chopped green onions, about 2 Tbs chicken soup base, parsley, and some garlic powder.  Bring back to a boil for a few minutes and then stir in a quart of half and half.  Again boil for a few minutes and in the meantime mix up a few tablespoons of flour, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and half a cup or so of water.  This will thicken the soup so mix it into a runny paste adding more flour or water as necessary.  Mix this in and boil a couple more minutes before squeezing in half a lemon and throwing in a couple cups of shredded cheese (fresh shredded melts much better than bagged...) and let sit a few minutes.  See, not too bad!  I threw a little shredded cheese and fresh parsley on top in the bread bowls for a little sophistication.

Welcome with an Asian dinner

This is officially the first post...tonight we are enjoying a pork ginger dumpling soup with smoked salmon wontons.  I had some wonton wrappers in the freezer from a good deal at the store and we were trying to decide what to do with some pork.  Hmmm...the wonton wrappers had a recipe and we took that idea and ran with it!  What a delicious dinner! 

It started off with some pork cooked with fresh ginger, garlic, and salt.  Remove from the heat and add a little more salt, fresh chopped parsley, cream cheese, and nutmeg.

Then start to make some broth with veggies in a pot...Jim used Napa cabbage, carrots, and mushrooms.  Add some seasoning and cook together to soften the veggies.  In the meantime, just stuff about a tablespoon of the pork filling into a wonton wrapper, wrap and wet with water to close!  So easy!!!

Drop these into the soup and simmer/slow boil about 4 minutes and you are done!!!  This was so good, the soup is wonderful and once a wonton is bitten into, WOW!

As a side dish (or appetizer) we also had some yummy smoked salmon rangoons.  I just mixed up some cream cheese and smoked salmon and wrapped about 1 Tbsp size balls in wonton wrappers.  Heat up some oil and cook evenly on all sides...so tasty! 

We had leftover salmon from Christmas and New Year's but of course you can use crab or even just cream cheese.