Tomatoes

This is all I'm gonna say-- do not store whole tomatoes in the fridge, never-ever-ever-ever.  If you've pre-diced some for your chili or salsa, or pasta, okay, fine, because they're cut up and you need to keep them from spoiling. But the whole ones? Room temperature.  Always. 

They will be so much more sweet, pleasantly textured, and not mealy, gritty and cold. It's an actual fact that cold temperatures make the cells in tomatoes burst, which is why they change texture.  I'm pretty sure most people who think they don't like tomatoes are basing that belief on having eaten mealy, pale, and unpleasantly bland tomatoes from a fridge.  Think about the peachy-pale colored ones sliced on top of the average hamburger, and you'll know what I'm talking about.  So remember: Tomatoes stay at room temperature. 

Otherwise, stay tuned for a yummy couple of recipes when time allows-- on deck, I have a potential recipe for eggplant-pork stir fry, brie-stuffed chicken breasts with cranberries and fresh herbs, as well as a segment on kitchen organization that I have been wanting to do for a while. 

Oven-Baked Salmon

 

Have I mentioned how much I love salmon? I love salmon.  This time of the year, if you happen to also live in the Pacific Northwest, you can get Chinook, or Copper River Salmon-- the latter is especially amazing, and almost a deep burnt orange color.  I love preparing salmon in several ways, and this is a quick, and easy prep method for a whole fillet of salmon.  If you're a novice to preparing whole fillets, try it this way, and then experiment with some of the ingredients.

Swedish Quick-Pickled Cucumbers

This is a quintessential "taste of summer" for me, that always reminds me of growing up in Sweden, and smörgåsbord.  It is not a true pickled cucumber, and will only keep for about a week in the refrigerator, but it only takes five or ten minutes to whip up a batch.  It's great with seafood or fish such as my oven-baked salmon), grilled chicken, or my Swedish style potato salad, for example.

Household tip: Non-Skid rubber liner and its uses

About a year ago, I found a bunch of remnant pieces of rubber shelf liner that my husband had used in his tool chest drawers in the garage.  This is the stuff I'm talking about here:



(Click the image link to access it on Amazon.com)

I have found multiple fun uses for it in the house.  For starters, I have cut some circles to size to put underneath my utensil-jars to keep them from sliding around on our counters.

I also keep a couple of 6" diameter circles in a drawer to help me open stuck jar lids.  It helps you grip the lid and get better traction.  I sometimes even use one for my left hand to grip the glass jar, and one on the lid to give me a little extra oomph. 

I cut a couple of these things to put inside drawers under those plastic flatware organizers so they don't slide back and forth either.

GF Pizza with Pumpkin-herb sauce, chicken, and caramelized onions

I can't make my own crust anymore.  Waaah.  Okay, at least not for another 6-8 weeks of this trial gluten-free diet that my doctor put me on.  So I decided to try a gluten-free pizza crust mix.  This particular mix is manufactured by Gluten Free Mama, (coincidentally in my old highschool-era hometown of Polson, Montana-- GOOOO PIRATES!!) and while I followed the directions closely, I'm not sure I hit the sweet spot exactly.  Maybe I let the dough sit for too long or not long enough or maybe my kitchen was too cool.  I did not get quite the pizza-crust texture I had hoped for, with springy, stretchy, and bready air pockets.  But it tasted quite good otherwise, so the flavor was very similar to a pizza dough-- and I'll experiment a little with it next time.  Or maybe it's just impossible to get that kind of puffy artisan yeasty-airiness in gluten-free flour mixes.  I'm still learning here.  Either way, my husband even thought it was good -- or at least a good stand-in for regular pizza dough.  I might experiment with rolling some garlic, and herbs into the dough next time, too.

I also was so busy trying to follow directions that there are no step-by-step photos of this process, but I did take a picture of the finished pizza.  Errrhm... I mean, a picture of the half-eaten finished pizza.

There are really only four components on the pizza-- the pumpkin-sauce, sauteed onions, and skillet-fried chicken, cut into chunks and grated mozzarella.  I tried to caramelize the onions but got impatient and forgot to babysit them so they ended up a little bit brown in some parts, and just had the consistency of regular-sauteed onion in general, so rest assured: I will admit my own mistakes when I make them!

For the sake of brevity, then, I'll just tell you what went into the sauce and you can fill in the gaps. I know you can do it.  You're smart readers.

Apple-Butternut Squash soup with lemon zest

TWO recipes in less than THREE days.  That's just craziness.  Can you guys take it? And this one is also gluten-free, since it's pretty much just made with vegetables and a little bit of dairy.

It's been kind of foggy and cold here the last few days so a soup sounded good.

I have made another acorn squash soup in the past, and also a roasted eggplant soup which borrows some of the same principles of oven-roasting the main vegetables first before making the soup.  If you read the acorn squash soup recipe, you'll see that I stole the whole-squash roasting technique from The Pioneer Woman, Rhee Drummond, who instructed her readers that a squash or gourd does not need to be cut up or peeled prior to roasting and that it in fact is much easier to do it after the fact.  Not only that, but the result is caramelized and savory and sweet, and far more pleasantly textured than a steamy, water-logged squash might be.  Now where *she* got that method from, I have no idea, but at least it saves me from any future trips to the emergency room because I can't think of very many kitchen-related tasks that are more dangerous than trying to cut open a squash or water melon.

Gluten Free Kale and Pepper lasagna

Happy New Year.  I don't make resolutions in general, but I hope to get my recipes rolling again.  So it's more of a hope, and not a resolution!  I'm happy to say I have recently hit 12,000 page visits since I started this blog and they just keep a-rollin' in, despite my failure to generate new content on a regular basis.

Excellent Hot Cocoa

Merry Christmas readers!

Once upon a time, Christ the Savior was born, and even though the Christmas season is a fabricated time to commemorate his birth, it sure doesn't hurt to have cozy times with our loved ones.  I look forward to this every year.

About the shortage of recipes... since our rotisserie chicken give away, I have been insanely swamped with a variety of things, and it's been dark, rainy and not particularly inspirational for me to cook or take good photos (even on a sunny day I have a kitchen on the darker side of the house which makes it hard to get nice exposures w/o a little Photoshopping.)

But since it's Christmas now, I will just tell you I made some really yummy hot cocoa tonight, off-the-cuff style.

Take a small pot and pour in 1 1/2 cups milk (preferably whole, but you could probably also do rice milk, almond milk, or soy milk if you have a dairy issue.)

Scald the milk until hot, but not boiling.  Vigorously whisk in 3 teaspoons cocoa powder, 2 teaspoons granulated sugar (or other sweetener to taste) and a pinch of sea salt. 

For a little extra grown-up flair, add a splash of Kahlua, Frangelico, Peppermint Schnapps, or Baileys.

I don't have any photos, because I left my camera at my parents while we were decorating their Christmas tree.

Curry (Rotisserie) Chicken Soup

This chicken recipe brought to you, courtesy of Olympia Local Foods who generously supplied me with a kosher, pastured, organic rotisserie chicken from Tachira Farms, in Olympia, Washington.  If you live in the South Puget Sound area, please support our local farms by shopping at Olympia Local Foods store.

My most recent recipe was for two side dishes to complement the rotisserie chicken.  I was also excited to run my first ever contest for a free rotisserie chicken and a $10 gift card to their store.  You can still enter this contest, by following the directions from that last blog post, up until October 23, 2012.  Local entries only.

Today I'm going to show you how I used up the left over chicken to concoct a spicy, hot, healthy and flavorful  curry soup from scratch. And when I say 'From Scratch' here, I mean FROM SCRATCH.  We're even going to make our own broth... no bouillon required.

Rotisserie Chicken, Mashed Potatoes and Cardamom Roasted Cauliflower

 

I'm excited to announce my first ever give-away contest! For this meal-blog I'm plugging Olympia Local Foods and in exchange, they are offering a give-away of a hot, juicy rotisserie chicken and a $10 gift card at Olympia Local Foods.   More rules and details about this give-away can be found at the bottom of this page, below the recipe.

Olympia Local Foods is a business which I support, nearly weekly.  They are family owned by local farmers, who work in conjunction with other local farmers to offer area residents a convenient way to shop for locally grown and produced food items, with weekly in-store pickup.  You can even pay a nominal fee to have them deliver to your house. One of their signature items is freshly rotisserie-prepared, kosher, organic, pastured chicken by the owners of O.L.F. who also run Tachira Farms.

So for this recipe, I picked up a hot, savory bird, and also an organic head of cauliflower,  some red potatoes, and went home to come up with a recipe for an autumnal comfort food with a bit of a  sophisticated twist.