kitchen catch-all

If you haven’t been reading this blog very long, you may be noticing by now that I basically only cook vegetarian and seafood dishes, with the occasional hint of bacon or chicken stock.  This is because we radically changed our eating habits about a year ago, after seeing the film “Food Inc.” and reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. This involved a shift toward eating more locally grown, and, when not local, organic produce, and giving up most meat at home because we cannot afford to buy, nor can we find as readily, the type of pastured, sustainably grown meat we have committed to eating. So, we mostly eat vegetarian and seafood dishes when we cook at home, flavoring our foods with certified humane all natural bacon, which is readily available at our usual grocery store, and organic free range chicken stock, which we find at Costco. We also eat a lot of pastured eggs. Anyway, I just thought some folks might be starting to wonder why they almost never see chicken or beef dishes around here, and that’s why. For the record, while we try to mostly frequent restaurants that serve food that fits in with our values, we don’t hold hard and fast to our “rules” when dining outside our home. Onto what we ate this week:

eating in

We mostly ate at home this week, so I did a lot more cooking. This week we ate:

• 

  Rachael Ray’s Tuna Orzo Salad.  This is a really colorful and tasty dish, full of veggies and sprinkled with feta cheese, one of my favorite things.  It made good leftovers for me to take for lunch at work this week, because they don’t have to be reheated. I recommend using less red onion than called for unless you are just really a big red onion fan. Sometimes I don’t have the suggested red wine vinegar, so I use balsamic instead. I also don’t bother to buy tuna packed in oil, so I just make my own vinaigrette using regular olive oil, rather than the oil from the tuna.

• Real Simple’s Skillet-Poached Huevos Rancheros.  Though this recipe says it serves four, it served the two of us for exactly one meal. Maybe we’re just hungry hungry hippos. We love Mexican flavors, and we love eggs, so this recipe hit a real sweet spot for us.  I’ll definitely be making it again. I’ll note that I forgot to buy scallions, so I sauteed some onion in the pan before putting the salsa and beans in. This would also be yummy with the addition of pepper jack or cotija cheese on top.
• Real Simple’s Creamy Shrimp with Corn and Bacon. This is basically like a corn chowder, plus shrimp, served over rice. It’s pretty tasty, but definitely not one of our healthier dinners.
• Hummus! I started making hummus a while ago, because we eat so much of it, and it’s much cheaper to just make it myself. I follow this recipe from The Kitchn, for the most part, though I always add more lemon juice than called for, as well as lemon zest, because I like my hummus to have a real lemony kick. This week I followed that recipe but made two different types. With one batch, I threw in a can of artichoke hearts, which makes for very creamy hummus with a subtle artichoke flavor. With another batch, I threw in some sundried tomatoes and a little bit of smoked paprika– this batch was AMAZING. I’m going to be making more sundried tomato hummus in the future for sure. It was an especially yummy treat when scooped up with red bell pepper slices.
• Fried Rice. At the end of the week, when I have some leftover veggies in my fridge, I often make a big thing of fried rice (a lot like the frittata method I used the other week). This week’s batch featured brown rice, bacon, egg, squash, celery, carrot, red onion, and green peas.

eating out

• Only ate out once this week. Friday night, I met up with some friends and ate at WOK (World Oriental Kitchen) on King St. for the first time. I described WOK to Jon as “the Chipotle of stir fry.” You basically get to choose noodles or rice, a protein (tofu, shrimp, beef, or chicken), a few veggies, and a sauce, and they fry it up in a wok and bring it to your table. The service was a little slower than I expected, but the food was tasty. The entire place is very eco-friendly, with reclaimed wood tables and other “green” touches, and all local, organic ingredients, all of which I LOVE. My only suggestion would be to ditch the paper straws. They turn soggy and useless halfway through a drink. Why have straws at all if they’re useless?

food for thought

• So, the other day, when pondering my stove-top popcorn obsession, I mused to Jon that maybe popping popcorn in a pan I’d just fried bacon in would make for lovely, bacon-flavored popcorn. He thought that sounded insane. But then, what to my wondering eye should appear on The Kitchn but “How to Make Bacon Fat Popcorn.” I’ve yet to try it, but I think I might have to, since I invented it.