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. 

Sincerely... me...

I am going to do my best to get some more new content up here shortly... This summer has been kind of an odd one for me, as I have had a herniated disc in my back, so it's been harder for me to cook and stage photos and climb on chairs and sit long enough to upload blog pictures & content.  So I'm just saying that to excuse for how sad it is that I have not updated anything in a while.

But ... if you're new here, please check out some old favorites -- might I recommend a fall and Thanksgiving favorite:  Pumpkin Ice Cream Pie ?

... or perhaps a cozy and warm Acorn Squash Soup ?

... maybe you're in the mood for a good side dish, like this Potato Leek Gratin...(great with steak or grilled turkey or chicken on the side.)

... Would you like another good comfort dish, like this "Confetti" Turkey Meatloaf ?

Well, those are a few you might have missed! I'm working on coming up with some new ideas, and I'll gladly take suggestions.  Perhaps you have some puzzling veggies that you're never sure what to do with! Leave comments and I can maybe use those for inspiration recipes next time!

A Worthy Cause

If you have a few minutes, please click this link:  http://www.indiegogo.com/perspiration4education, & watch the video... Greg is a very good friend of my brother up in Seattle and he is running from Washington State to Florida to raise money for two young inner city kids from Louisiana, that he met while volunteering at a shelter. 

So if you can spare $5, or more, pitch in, & if you know someone at a local paper along the route, or if you're a blogger who can help spread the word, please join me in making this guy's run a success! We're so quick to donate to our favorite Kickstarter rock-groups who want to make a new album, but this guy just wants to put two disadvantaged kids in a better school than the one they currently go to.   He has already made it as far as Colorado!  That's quite a ways he has come, but he has so far to go yet. 

So please help out!  He has a registered non-profit organization & your donation is tax deductible.

Sockeye Salmon with basil-yogurt dressing

Sometimes I actually say something out loud before deciding if it sounds like a good meal idea.  Today I said "basil-yogurt dressing" and a light bulb came on! 

Zucchini-Blackberry Pancakes

Didn't I say I had zucchini coming out of my ears the other day?  Yes.  So today I thought I'd make a zucchini breakfast option.  With a grated yellow zucchini (although green would be fine, too) and some blackberries, and a modified whole grain pancake recipe from my own arsenal of recipes, I came up with a fairly quick and delicious morning meal.  Bonus for the fiber, vitamins and garden-freshness!

Holy Guacamole!!

I'm a major guacamole fiend.  I can easily justify eating half a bowl myself, because hey... it's a vegetable, and it's the "good fats" and has tons of fiber, too. Plus it's so excellent with tortilla chips, or over a quesadilla or slathered on enchiladas, on a toasted bagel,  or even just on a spoon.

Quinoa Risotto with Chicken, Zucchini & Bacon

I was in an experimenting mood tonight, and I have so.much.zucchini from my veggie garden that I'm trying to come up with interesting ways to eat it.  I have both tiny little baby zucchini, and bigger ones. As I am learning in my foray into vegetable gardening, the best zucchini shouldn't get too big or they get dry and seedy.  So I'm happy to have some of these little tender ones, because they are so delicious!

A long while back, I made an almond-fig brown rice risotto which was very delicious, and I thought I'd try something in that vein but with quinoa instead, and feature the zucchini, along with some left-over bacon, and my go-to chicken tenders. 

Fudge and Peppermint Ice-Cream Cake

Many, many moons ago, in 1984, which was the first year my family moved from Sweden to the US, we stayed a night or two with some acquaintances during a road-trip, and they served up this amazing ice-cream cake.  I dutifully hand-wrote the recipe down from their index card, making sure to spell everything correctly, since I was still learning English, and for the last 28 years, this has been one of our favorite desserts.   I just spent a half hour scouring Google for an identical recipe and did not find one.   Even the official Nabisco website does not have this recipe. Alas, I cannot credit an original source other than the Crandall family in Iowa.  If anyone out there knows the source, please message me, and I will gladly put a link in. 

Last week for my birthday, my mom asked what I wanted for dessert, and of course, I said "Oreo Mint cake".  Since she was the one who prepared it, I only have just the one photo of it sitting there on the fancy plate.  I do have the recipe, still hand-written in the back of my old childhood cookbook, so I will type it up for you, despite the lack of prep-photos.

Please make this.  It's so good. And, oh yeah... it has TWO sticks of buttah in there... Please consult your doctor if you have any sort of heart-disease history. 

Chicken Enchiladas

All right, all right, all right... I am a total slow poke.  It seems the last few months have just slipped out of my fingers, and into the great abyss of "History."  Have I made some meals?  Yes.  Have I had the time to make anything worth blogging about? Not so much.  (In fact, I have relied on many of my old recipes the last few weeks and months.)

But I just remembered that maybe a month or so ago, I did take the time to photograph the steps in making these yummy enchiladas, so now I'm going to backtrack and write up a recipe that is also loosely based on a recipe of my mom's.  So I'll do a little updating here, and at least you can also backtrack and go try some of my old recipes if this one doesn't interest you.

I'll make no claims to this being some authentic Mexican masterpiece.  But it sure is good comfort food! Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

Sharks, Part Deux

Ahem! Introducing www.paperplatesharkjaws.com ... I'll be implementing more in-depth step-by-step photo instructions shortly.

Also, I have a recipe for Chicken enchiladas on deck, so stay tuned for that, everyone!