So I struck out with Blue Apron. Week after week I read the selections, and week after week I just wasn't interested in paying $60 for any combination of three items that were available to me that week. Then Facebook, as it does, started telling me I should try all these other meal services. Facebook is really good at telling me what to buy. Sloth tee shirts, meal kits... you name it. Suddenly my suggestion sidebar was full of banners that said "$30 off this meal delivery service", and I decided it was time to try some others.
Martha Stewart's new service, Marley Spoon, seemed like an obvious one to try, given my new-found love for Martha that developed when she decided to do a hilariously entertaining cooking show with Snoop Dogg on VH-1. I had no idea this celebrity ex-con dynamo was also hilarious. What a pleasant surprise. Take my money, Martha...
Greek Poutine - This dish was VERY tasty, but it gave me heartburn. It was also pretty basic - potatoes with ground pork and a sauce that was just feta whisked in a bowl with some water, then all topped with arugula. I would unquestionably make this dish again, with ground chicken instead of pork.
Pan Seared Wild Salmon with French Lentils and Cucumber Salad - This was a good dish, but I didn't love it. I almost always love lentils, so it was disheartening to feel this way.
Cauliflower and Beet Grain Bowl - I loved this, but it's basically oven roasted vegetables topped with not really that spicy Greek yogurt. I can reproduce this dish for $5. I couldn't taste the harissa at all, short of adding a large amount of harissa powder from my own collection. It was similar to Blue Apron in that way. It definitely increased my awareness of how amazing golden beets are when you roast them. I will always be grateful to Marley Spoon for this piece of information.
The truth of the matter here is that I definitely considered Marley Spoon a step up from Blue Apron in a lot of different ways. There was a bit less waste, there were more options, and I was not limited in which options I could choose together and thought the food was really good. My main complaint here was that I thought the meals were simple enough that I didn't really need a meal box to make them. I also thought that, once again, the spice and seasoning level did not measure up to what I was hoping to get. Also, the recipes called for a lot of oil. Like, A LOT OF OIL. At this point I just knew not to use it (I would have been taking a bath in the stuff if I'd followed directions)...
On the other hand, there was not a single thing on this plan I could not have made for significantly less money. These dishes are basic and lovely (though someone should really talk to the people making the recipes about not drowning their food in cooking oil), but I see this more as a place to find ideas than a service to order. I can do the same on Pinterest, and it does not cost $60 a week...
Sorry, Martha. I still love you, though.
Recipes here, in order of love. Make them. Use less oil. You're welcome.
https://marleyspoon.com/archive/10279-greek-poutine-with-spiced-pork-creamy-feta-sauce - Very delicious. Needs a tone-down on the grease, so I would reduce the EVOO and substitute ground chicken for the pork if I made it again. If you like grease, then we're good here.
https://marleyspoon.com/archive/11942-cauliflower-beet-grain-bowl-with-harissa-yogurt - Best vegetarian dish I've had in awhile. Needs significantly more spice than provided in the meal box. Luckily I am the type of person who keeps personal containers of harissa on hand, so this did not turn into the disappointment it otherwise might have been.
https://marleyspoon.com/archive/11943-pan-seared-cod-with-french-lentils-cucumber-salad - Not my favorite, but not bad, either.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Meal kits services are not for everyone, Part 1, a.k.a. Why I am only a Blue Apron member to read their free recipes online...
Everyone has been going nuts on the internet over these meal kit delivery services lately, and in some ways I can see why. They're more interesting than eating pasta for the third night in a row, they take the effort out of grocery acquisition and they teach us new cuisines and cooking styles that we might not have otherwise tried. This is why I have been drawn to them, as a foodie and someone who loves to cook, but I realized in one shot that Blue Apron is probably not for me.
Why was I not a fan of this service, when so many other people love it? Well, there are several reasons:
1. Waste, waste and more waste. This is far and away the thing that bugs me the most about these meal boxes. Any of my readers who know me personally know I can be kind of a hippie about these things. Excessive use of K-cups can fill me with a sudden blind rage, and I won't drink bottled water unless I am in a part of the world where drinking the tap water might literally kill me (even then, I might use my steri-pen if it's not chunky or smelly water, so as not to put one more plastic bottle into the landfills). So, there's some bias here. But the waste is definitely an issue, and moreso with Blue Apron than the others I have tried since. There is a box with two or more large ice packs (which are great once, because now you have giant ice packs for your cooler when you go camping, but once you have enough, are simply waste). There are 3-4 or more small one time use bottles with condiments, oils, etc (I saved them to bring salad dressing in my work lunches, but, again, there are only so many tiny bottles a person can use). There are plastic bags or other packaging for all the other ingredients as well. None of the packaging in my Blue Apron box was of a nature intended to save waste. (Others I have used since have been much better at this.) I can justify it once, maybe twice, but I cannot convince myself that this service is a good idea as a once weekly delivery. And there are other reasons...
2. Blue Apron is sooooooo fatty. I've pretty much never eaten anything that greasy at home that was not takeout. All three of the Blue Apron meals I prepared left me thinking to myself, "This is why we're fat." Every recipe contains far more fats than required for what you are preparing. A little plastic container with oil here, a little plastic container with mayo there, a little foil wrapper with butter on top of it all, served with meats that do not even need oil to cook because they make their own. Maybe some people like greasy, 800 calorie dinners, but I am not one of those people. Some meal services offer some variety in this capacity. This one does not.
3. There just isn't that much spice in their "spicy" options. Now that I know they use too much fat, I can just reduce the amount of oil, butter, mayo, etc. that I use from my package (though that is wasteful, it does improve my overall meal experience). However, the trace amount of harissa paste or gochu jang in my package does not help much if I do not have my own harissa paste and gochu jang in my kitchen (I totally do, but I'm using these services to try NEW flavors, not use the ones I already own, and I suspect their other customers are, too). Include larger quantities of the things we are buying this service to try, Blue Apron, not more oil and mayonnaise. Everyone who cooks has oil and mayonnaise!!! Throw enough seasoning in there for people to actually taste it. I am referring to all of the unique flavors, not just the spicy ones. I might not have enjoyed my Moroccan and Korean choices nearly as much if I did not have Moroccan and Korean ingredients already in my pantry, and that is not how this service is supposed to work.
4. The choices are pretty limited. I like that there are six meals and you can choose three. I do not like that they black out which things you can choose together. Other services I have looked at and tried do not do this. When trying to assemble my weekly order, only one time was I able to choose the three things I wanted the most. Did you wonder why I never ordered again, Blue Apron? This was a big factor. I'm not paying $60 a week to only get 1 or 2 of my 3 choices...
5. The final and probably most obvious reason is that I already know how to cook interesting flavors from all over the world that I like, in the way that I like them. Why fix something that isn't broken? I have already been exposed to a lot of these ingredients, seasonings and techniques. For someone who has not, Blue Apron might be an amazing service, and, other than imploring the company to try and find more environmentally friendly packaging and offer a few lower calorie options, I don't have any real complaint about them at all. The vegetables in my Blue Apron box were truly beautiful, and I think they are a good value for ingredient quality.
What it comes down to is that there are three reasons that I cook for myself instead of going to a restaurant: 1.) I like cooking. 2.) Because restaurant food has too much fat and makes me feel icky and 3.) Because it saves money. Blue Apron gives me one out of three in this regard. On the one hand, I love going to their website, reading the week's menu and saying, "Ooooh, I should have harissa chicken with carrots tonight"... On the other hand, when I ordered that menu item from Blue Apron, I was left with a meal that had 300 more calories per serving than if I had made it my way, cost $10 more to make and had significantly more packaging waste than my trip to the store left me with. There was about as much hot sauce in the package of a 1500 calorie meal as I would personally use on one cracker, and as much oil as I would use for a 6 serving casserole.
While I loved preparing the supposedly two (but really three) portion Korean pork bun meal to share with my Korean roommate and his wife, literally none of us enjoyed the fancy mayo that was included in the recipe, and there was barely a trace of spice (even to Min, whose face pours sweat at even a small amount of hot pepper) in the meat or the slaw. Fortunately, having a Korean in the house, there is a perpetual supply of gochu jang paste and cocktail sauce with which to top these items, and the meal was a big success with those additions and subtractions.
In short, if you are looking for the most white person friendly Korean or Moroccan dish you've ever come into contact with, Blue Apron is a one-stop shop. If you like your Korean or Moroccan dishes to taste a little more like Korean or Moroccan dishes, coordinate a trip to your local international farmer's market for sauces and pastes with the delivery time of your Blue Apron Box...
The seared salmon dish was very flavorful, but, again very very greasy.
The recipes I tried are below.
https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/seared-salmon-fall-vegetable-hash-with-apple-brown-butter-dressing
https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/harissa-chicken-carrots-with-dates-crispy-chickpea-rice
https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/roasted-pork-steamed-buns-with-black-garlic-mayonnaise-spicy-cabbage-slaw
These things being said, I think Blue Apron is great for people who have not really cooked much and want to learn about new techniques and ingredients, who are looking to try a flavor they have never tried before, who don't have time to go to the grocery store or just plain don't like going to the grocery store, who can find something to reuse the packaging for so we don't fill 1,000 new landfills with Blue Apron waste alone, who have spare seasonings on hand in case the meals are too bland, who need to bulk up a little for a race training, etc. There are definitely a lot of reasons to like this service and this company, hence the thirty posts per week from my friends about how much they loved this week's Blue Apron selections. I will probably never stop looking at the weekly recipes they email me and using them as suggestions, but this is definitely not something I would ever consider as a weekly service. I wasn't even excited enough about this food to post it on Instagram, y'all.
Why was I not a fan of this service, when so many other people love it? Well, there are several reasons:
1. Waste, waste and more waste. This is far and away the thing that bugs me the most about these meal boxes. Any of my readers who know me personally know I can be kind of a hippie about these things. Excessive use of K-cups can fill me with a sudden blind rage, and I won't drink bottled water unless I am in a part of the world where drinking the tap water might literally kill me (even then, I might use my steri-pen if it's not chunky or smelly water, so as not to put one more plastic bottle into the landfills). So, there's some bias here. But the waste is definitely an issue, and moreso with Blue Apron than the others I have tried since. There is a box with two or more large ice packs (which are great once, because now you have giant ice packs for your cooler when you go camping, but once you have enough, are simply waste). There are 3-4 or more small one time use bottles with condiments, oils, etc (I saved them to bring salad dressing in my work lunches, but, again, there are only so many tiny bottles a person can use). There are plastic bags or other packaging for all the other ingredients as well. None of the packaging in my Blue Apron box was of a nature intended to save waste. (Others I have used since have been much better at this.) I can justify it once, maybe twice, but I cannot convince myself that this service is a good idea as a once weekly delivery. And there are other reasons...
2. Blue Apron is sooooooo fatty. I've pretty much never eaten anything that greasy at home that was not takeout. All three of the Blue Apron meals I prepared left me thinking to myself, "This is why we're fat." Every recipe contains far more fats than required for what you are preparing. A little plastic container with oil here, a little plastic container with mayo there, a little foil wrapper with butter on top of it all, served with meats that do not even need oil to cook because they make their own. Maybe some people like greasy, 800 calorie dinners, but I am not one of those people. Some meal services offer some variety in this capacity. This one does not.
3. There just isn't that much spice in their "spicy" options. Now that I know they use too much fat, I can just reduce the amount of oil, butter, mayo, etc. that I use from my package (though that is wasteful, it does improve my overall meal experience). However, the trace amount of harissa paste or gochu jang in my package does not help much if I do not have my own harissa paste and gochu jang in my kitchen (I totally do, but I'm using these services to try NEW flavors, not use the ones I already own, and I suspect their other customers are, too). Include larger quantities of the things we are buying this service to try, Blue Apron, not more oil and mayonnaise. Everyone who cooks has oil and mayonnaise!!! Throw enough seasoning in there for people to actually taste it. I am referring to all of the unique flavors, not just the spicy ones. I might not have enjoyed my Moroccan and Korean choices nearly as much if I did not have Moroccan and Korean ingredients already in my pantry, and that is not how this service is supposed to work.
4. The choices are pretty limited. I like that there are six meals and you can choose three. I do not like that they black out which things you can choose together. Other services I have looked at and tried do not do this. When trying to assemble my weekly order, only one time was I able to choose the three things I wanted the most. Did you wonder why I never ordered again, Blue Apron? This was a big factor. I'm not paying $60 a week to only get 1 or 2 of my 3 choices...
5. The final and probably most obvious reason is that I already know how to cook interesting flavors from all over the world that I like, in the way that I like them. Why fix something that isn't broken? I have already been exposed to a lot of these ingredients, seasonings and techniques. For someone who has not, Blue Apron might be an amazing service, and, other than imploring the company to try and find more environmentally friendly packaging and offer a few lower calorie options, I don't have any real complaint about them at all. The vegetables in my Blue Apron box were truly beautiful, and I think they are a good value for ingredient quality.
What it comes down to is that there are three reasons that I cook for myself instead of going to a restaurant: 1.) I like cooking. 2.) Because restaurant food has too much fat and makes me feel icky and 3.) Because it saves money. Blue Apron gives me one out of three in this regard. On the one hand, I love going to their website, reading the week's menu and saying, "Ooooh, I should have harissa chicken with carrots tonight"... On the other hand, when I ordered that menu item from Blue Apron, I was left with a meal that had 300 more calories per serving than if I had made it my way, cost $10 more to make and had significantly more packaging waste than my trip to the store left me with. There was about as much hot sauce in the package of a 1500 calorie meal as I would personally use on one cracker, and as much oil as I would use for a 6 serving casserole.
While I loved preparing the supposedly two (but really three) portion Korean pork bun meal to share with my Korean roommate and his wife, literally none of us enjoyed the fancy mayo that was included in the recipe, and there was barely a trace of spice (even to Min, whose face pours sweat at even a small amount of hot pepper) in the meat or the slaw. Fortunately, having a Korean in the house, there is a perpetual supply of gochu jang paste and cocktail sauce with which to top these items, and the meal was a big success with those additions and subtractions.
In short, if you are looking for the most white person friendly Korean or Moroccan dish you've ever come into contact with, Blue Apron is a one-stop shop. If you like your Korean or Moroccan dishes to taste a little more like Korean or Moroccan dishes, coordinate a trip to your local international farmer's market for sauces and pastes with the delivery time of your Blue Apron Box...
The seared salmon dish was very flavorful, but, again very very greasy.
The recipes I tried are below.
https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/seared-salmon-fall-vegetable-hash-with-apple-brown-butter-dressing
https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/harissa-chicken-carrots-with-dates-crispy-chickpea-rice
https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/roasted-pork-steamed-buns-with-black-garlic-mayonnaise-spicy-cabbage-slaw
These things being said, I think Blue Apron is great for people who have not really cooked much and want to learn about new techniques and ingredients, who are looking to try a flavor they have never tried before, who don't have time to go to the grocery store or just plain don't like going to the grocery store, who can find something to reuse the packaging for so we don't fill 1,000 new landfills with Blue Apron waste alone, who have spare seasonings on hand in case the meals are too bland, who need to bulk up a little for a race training, etc. There are definitely a lot of reasons to like this service and this company, hence the thirty posts per week from my friends about how much they loved this week's Blue Apron selections. I will probably never stop looking at the weekly recipes they email me and using them as suggestions, but this is definitely not something I would ever consider as a weekly service. I wasn't even excited enough about this food to post it on Instagram, y'all.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Travel Cooking... A quick stir fry because restaurants around here don't serve enough vegetables...
Travel cooking. It's definitely a different experience, because your ingredient list is different than what you would normally have at home.
However, if you're me, you will probably carry an arsenal of "can't live without" items that make this task a little bit easier (though still creative). I have a small bucket weighing down my backpack of teeny tiny containers of hot sauce, olive oil, salts and spices and herbs... (the actual contents varies depending on how low the circumstances require my pack weight to be). At the moment, I have garlic salt, cayenne, a couple of spice blends, dried rosemary and thyme, several varieties of olive oil in very tiny containers (maybe 1 oz. at the most - I got them when I ordered to-go nutrition shots at Arden's Garden), two tabascos in the same containers, and a sriracha to-go key chain.
So, there's that. If I had to narrow it down to three, it would be olive oil, garlic salt and cayenne pepper, but I've splurged because this is the longest trip I've ever taken and I want to ease into it with some comforts of home.
But I digress...
Today I am in Cartagena, Colombia, where you can't just go to a grocery store and get all the ingredients you want to cook with. The full-sized supermarket I went into today had very little produce, because most of it is sold in outdoor produce stands. What I ended up with, as a result, was some yogurt (eaten as an afternoon snack prior to cooking, because the hostel refrigerator is broken) and a mango. Then, I walked by food stands until I saw some red bell peppers (with some swirly green spots where they hadn't fully changed) and bought two of those.
Tonight's dinner was a major win for me, as I stir fried the two bell peppers with small strips of ripe mango, sriracha, olive oil and garlic salt. Really, this hodgepodge only occurred because the refrigerator in my hostel is broken and I knew none of the items would be in good shape if not used immediately, but WOW. Stir fry your red bell peppers with very ripe mango and sriracha. Seriously. Do it. And to think I almost left the sriracha at home....
Again, ingredients:
-2 red(dish) bell peppers, sliced into stir-fry sized strips
-Olive oil
-Slices of super ripe mango (just a few, because you are also eating the mango as you cook. To not do so would be a travesty.
-Sriracha
-Garlic salt
Instructions:
-Throw peppers in pan with olive oil. Add mango as you slice and eat it. Garlic salt and sriracha to taste (in my case, a lot of both).
-Cook it to the desired texture.
-Take a picture, because it just looks so good.
-Eat.
However, if you're me, you will probably carry an arsenal of "can't live without" items that make this task a little bit easier (though still creative). I have a small bucket weighing down my backpack of teeny tiny containers of hot sauce, olive oil, salts and spices and herbs... (the actual contents varies depending on how low the circumstances require my pack weight to be). At the moment, I have garlic salt, cayenne, a couple of spice blends, dried rosemary and thyme, several varieties of olive oil in very tiny containers (maybe 1 oz. at the most - I got them when I ordered to-go nutrition shots at Arden's Garden), two tabascos in the same containers, and a sriracha to-go key chain.
So, there's that. If I had to narrow it down to three, it would be olive oil, garlic salt and cayenne pepper, but I've splurged because this is the longest trip I've ever taken and I want to ease into it with some comforts of home.
But I digress...
Today I am in Cartagena, Colombia, where you can't just go to a grocery store and get all the ingredients you want to cook with. The full-sized supermarket I went into today had very little produce, because most of it is sold in outdoor produce stands. What I ended up with, as a result, was some yogurt (eaten as an afternoon snack prior to cooking, because the hostel refrigerator is broken) and a mango. Then, I walked by food stands until I saw some red bell peppers (with some swirly green spots where they hadn't fully changed) and bought two of those.
Tonight's dinner was a major win for me, as I stir fried the two bell peppers with small strips of ripe mango, sriracha, olive oil and garlic salt. Really, this hodgepodge only occurred because the refrigerator in my hostel is broken and I knew none of the items would be in good shape if not used immediately, but WOW. Stir fry your red bell peppers with very ripe mango and sriracha. Seriously. Do it. And to think I almost left the sriracha at home....
Again, ingredients:
-2 red(dish) bell peppers, sliced into stir-fry sized strips
-Olive oil
-Slices of super ripe mango (just a few, because you are also eating the mango as you cook. To not do so would be a travesty.
-Sriracha
-Garlic salt
Instructions:
-Throw peppers in pan with olive oil. Add mango as you slice and eat it. Garlic salt and sriracha to taste (in my case, a lot of both).
-Cook it to the desired texture.
-Take a picture, because it just looks so good.
-Eat.
 |
| I mean, just look at that sh*t. Yum. |
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
On the theme of cleaning out the pantry... I also make smoothies.
"Cleaning out the pantry" smoothie recipes
One day, when I was in college, a guy showed up at the door of my apartment from a party across the street and offered to trade one of my roommates a bottle of coconut rum he had taken from the party for a cigarette. This was obviously a major score for us, except that we had nothing to mix the rum with. After raiding the refrigerator and pantry, I discovered some canned fruit, which we threw into the blender with rum and ice, creating delicious alcoholic fruit smoothies!
Since that day, I have been throwing random, cast-aside pantry items into blenders and making them delicious, from soups to smoothies to dips. This past week, I have discovered unused items like applesauce, cranberry sauce, crystallized orange, cocoa powder (sweetened) and peanut butter and turned them into delicious treats instead of throwing them away.
This week's major victories in the smoothie department are as follows:
Orange/cranberry/ginger smoothie
- 1 individual container of greek yogurt with some kind of fruit (or just a cup of yogurt)
- 1 individual container of applesauce (or 1/2 cup from a jar)
- 1/3 can of cranberry sauce
- 1 - 2 packets of crystallized orange (http://www.truelemon.com/true-orange-cooking)
- Minced or powdered ginger, to taste
- Any frozen fruit
Blend these things. Add liquid of choice if needed (I use green tea by the spoon with this one, but not much is needed because most of the ingredients aren't solid.)
Banana/PB/Mocha smoothie
This one is ice-creamy and wonderful
- 1 chopped frozen banana
- Peanut butter (1-2 tbsp)
- Dutch cocoa powder (or whatever cocoa powder is in YOUR pantry), to taste. I used 1 spoonful, but 2 would not be crazy.
- about 1/3 cup of coffee, or a little less for thicker, more ice creamy consistency
Blend it. Love it.
One day, when I was in college, a guy showed up at the door of my apartment from a party across the street and offered to trade one of my roommates a bottle of coconut rum he had taken from the party for a cigarette. This was obviously a major score for us, except that we had nothing to mix the rum with. After raiding the refrigerator and pantry, I discovered some canned fruit, which we threw into the blender with rum and ice, creating delicious alcoholic fruit smoothies!
Since that day, I have been throwing random, cast-aside pantry items into blenders and making them delicious, from soups to smoothies to dips. This past week, I have discovered unused items like applesauce, cranberry sauce, crystallized orange, cocoa powder (sweetened) and peanut butter and turned them into delicious treats instead of throwing them away.
This week's major victories in the smoothie department are as follows:
Orange/cranberry/ginger smoothie
- 1 individual container of greek yogurt with some kind of fruit (or just a cup of yogurt)
- 1 individual container of applesauce (or 1/2 cup from a jar)
- 1/3 can of cranberry sauce
- 1 - 2 packets of crystallized orange (http://www.truelemon.com/true-orange-cooking)
- Minced or powdered ginger, to taste
- Any frozen fruit
Blend these things. Add liquid of choice if needed (I use green tea by the spoon with this one, but not much is needed because most of the ingredients aren't solid.)
Banana/PB/Mocha smoothie
This one is ice-creamy and wonderful
- 1 chopped frozen banana
- Peanut butter (1-2 tbsp)
- Dutch cocoa powder (or whatever cocoa powder is in YOUR pantry), to taste. I used 1 spoonful, but 2 would not be crazy.
- about 1/3 cup of coffee, or a little less for thicker, more ice creamy consistency
Blend it. Love it.
Monday, October 26, 2015
"Cleaning the pantry" soup #2356 (or something comparable, as I make soup every time I clean my pantry)
Asparagus, tomato and goat cheese soup
I'm getting ready to go traveling for awhile, and one of the elements of my impending move into storage is the cleaning out of pantry ingredients. Today I needed to get rid of a jar of white asparagus (asparagus in a jar makes better pureed soup than fresh, due to its texture), a can of tomatoes and one refrigerator impulse buy, sweet hot pepper goat cheese.
Boil the jar of asparagus and the can of diced tomatoes in a saucepan for a few minutes with about a cup of water and some garlic salt and ground red pepper to taste. Then puree it all, put it back in the pan with the burner on medium-ish. Crumble in 1/4 to 1/2 of the log of goat cheese (depending on how badly you need to get rid of the goat cheese) and stir. After about 5-10 minutes, split it into two generous servings and eat it with other things you need to finish. In my case, that was two pieces of rye toast with EVOO and garlic salt.
Then give me a big hug because that was so good.
I'm getting ready to go traveling for awhile, and one of the elements of my impending move into storage is the cleaning out of pantry ingredients. Today I needed to get rid of a jar of white asparagus (asparagus in a jar makes better pureed soup than fresh, due to its texture), a can of tomatoes and one refrigerator impulse buy, sweet hot pepper goat cheese.
Boil the jar of asparagus and the can of diced tomatoes in a saucepan for a few minutes with about a cup of water and some garlic salt and ground red pepper to taste. Then puree it all, put it back in the pan with the burner on medium-ish. Crumble in 1/4 to 1/2 of the log of goat cheese (depending on how badly you need to get rid of the goat cheese) and stir. After about 5-10 minutes, split it into two generous servings and eat it with other things you need to finish. In my case, that was two pieces of rye toast with EVOO and garlic salt.
Then give me a big hug because that was so good.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Cleaning house!
So, in my attempts to clean out my food supply, which includes tomato and basil, I made this: American fusion caprese salad: 1 piece of toast with cream cheese, topped with massive amounts of basil, a huge thick tomato slice, topped with 1/3 shotglass full (yes I use shotglasses in my apartment for food measurements rather than drink measurements now that I'm old) of fig balsamic blended with the world's greatest olive oil from Portugal... So good (even though it's less than authentic, it's fresh - basil picked right from plant - and amazingly delicious)!
Friday, July 27, 2012
Crack Soup
Crack Soup (aka Tomato Hot Wing Soup)
*I wrote this in May and forgot to post it...
I came home from work yesterday and created something I deem "crack soup." I am so sad right now that I didn't make a bigger batch due to its experimental nature. I almost started licking the bowl in the office I share with five other people...
Anyway, crack soup is my cross between buffalo chicken soup and tomato bleu cheese soup, two recipes I glanced at on the internet when trying to find vegetable-based soup ideas using bleu cheese. I've never liked bleu cheese, but it makes me sad that there is a whole spectrum of cheeses I have been ignoring for 32 years, so I've decided I will build an affinity to it by gradually introducing it into my diet. So far, this has been a big success.
Ingredients:
1 can tomatoes with chiles (rotel or store brand)
1 small can sliced carrots (should be half the height of the tomato can)
2-3 cloves garlic, roasted first
onion powder, to taste
2 tbsp hot wing sauce (any kind, I use Kroger's spicy garlic)
2-3 tbsp crumbled bleu cheese
1 chicken tenderloin
1-2 cups tomato juice (optional)
To Make:
Throw canned vegetables in a saucepan on medium. Cut cloves of garlic into thin strips. Roast garlic with a couple drops or spritz of olive oil. Add garlic and onion powder to vegetable mix. Stir. Add hot wing sauce and bleu cheese. Stir. Throw in frozen chicken tenderloin. Leave sitting on medium while you sit in your room chatting on the phone and Facebooking.
After a fair amount of time (15-30 minutes with occasional checks to make sure it's not overcooking), remove the chicken and put the rest of the stuff in the blender on "puree." Shred the chicken with a fork and mix back in in the saucepan. Add a cup or two of tomato juice if it's too thick.
If you like bleu cheese, garnish with some. I am still easing in, so not this time...
Even though I've now written it down for prosperity, I'm still sad to no longer be eating it...
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