Super Sloppy Joes

I have never made Sloppy Joes before, but I had volunteered to make the main course for a lunch meeting at work and needed something easy that could be kept in a crock pot. Though I generally follow a self-imposed ban on all things Rachael Ray because I find her annoying (and any chef whose cupcake recipe starts off with cake mix is NOT a real chef), I chose her recipe for these because it got a lot of good reviews.

I tripled the recipe to feed about ten people, and that made plenty with leftovers for a few sandwiches the next day. I used about half a cup of brown sugar down from 3/4 cup, and skipped the bell pepper because of food allergies in the crowd. I also only used 4 cups of tomato sauce and that was plenty. These were pretty good, didn't knock my socks off but what Sloppy Joe has? I think this would be a good recipe for a family with kids, but I will happily stick to my usual foodie-type recipes for the two of us.

Orzo with Roasted Vegetables

I have made this one a few times and it is one of our favorites. It's not a quick meal, but not horribly labor intensive either. I usually use zucchini and/or summer squash instead of eggplant, and sometimes I just use green bell peppers instead of red and yellow to save money. I also skip the green onions and don't even notice a difference. The feta really makes the dish, so don't skimp on it!

I have been trying different olive oils in the past month to find a cheap one that tastes good. I bought some Colavita olive oil from the grocery store and it has a nice flavor - not too strong. I've tried the Walmart brand and it is a little off smelling. The Carapelli brand is okay. I have to start tasting the oil from now on and compare the flavors. We use olive oil all the time and I want to use a good one without breaking the bank.

Mellowed Fresh Tomatoes for Pasta

I subscribe to Weeknight Kitchen, a weekly e-newsletter from The Splendid Table. I was planning on just making spaghetti tonight - and today's recipe was for pasta and fresh tomatoes, which was perfect! I had a few homegrown tomatoes that I needed to use today, which were great. Local tomatoes are so much better than store bought. I also have a basil plant at home and just plucked off a few leaves for the dish. This was easy and delicious. It was a nice departure from the usual spaghetti and Walmart pasta sauce combo. It actually made spaghetti feel fancy!

I picked up a couple of boxes of Barilla Plus spaghetti for this - it is a new multigrain pasta which was actually pretty good. I've tried whole wheat spaghetti and didn't like the texture, so this was a nice alternative that is a little more healthy than plain old spaghetti.


Mellowed Fresh Tomatoes for Pasta
Copyright 2007 Lynne Rossetto Kasper

Serves 6 to 8 as a first course, 4 to 6 as a main dish

* 1 clove garlic, split
* 3 pounds richly flavored tomatoes (if possible, one-third cherry type, one-third mellow-tasting, and one-third low-acid), unpeeled, unseeded, cut into 1/2-inch dice
* 2 generous pinches hot red pepper flakes
* 1/3 cup good tasting extra-virgin olive oil
* 1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
* 1 pound spaghetti, or linguine
* 6 quarts boiling salted water
* 1/8 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper, or to taste
* 3 tight-packed tablespoons fresh basil leaves, torn
* 1 cup fresh-grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (optional)

1. Vigorously rub a pasta serving bowl with the garlic and discard the clove. Add the tomatoes, red pepper, oil, and the salt. Gently combine. Let stand at room temperature from 30 minutes to 3 hours.

2. When ready to eat, cook the pasta in fiercely boiling salted water, stirring often, until tender yet firm to the bite. Drain in a colander and turn it into the pasta bowl. Quickly add the black pepper and basil, and toss everything together. Taste the pasta for seasoning and serve. If you like, pass cheese at the table

Pepper Chicken with Hummus

Since I already had some fresh hummus at home, I decided to try this recipe for dinner tonight. I didn't have any red bell peppers or Cubanelles, so I just used one large green bell pepper instead. This was great and pretty quick. The chopping is minimal, and I only broiled it for about 8-9 minutes and it was done. This tastes like you worked hard on it, but it's very easy and doable for a weeknight dinner. I would even serve this to company. We'll eat this one again.

Hummus

We love hummus, but it gets so expensive to buy it at the store. I decided to try my hand at making it from scratch, and it was awesome! And very easy. The recipe I used calls for canned chickpeas, but I had dried ones at home so I just used those. I soaked a cup of them for a couple hours (boil water, then pour it over the chickpeas and cover it for a few hours until twice their original size). Then I simmered them for an hour and a half. When they were soft, I threw everything into my food processor, and voila! Homemade hummus - so easy. I halved the recipe and it was plenty. I used a little more lemon juice, used Joyva tahini, and skipped the parsley oil and the pine nuts. This was great and I will make my own hummus from now on.

Creamy Turnip Soup

One of my coworkers got a bunch of homegrown vegetables as a gift and was giving them away this week. There were a lot of turnips, and I figured I would give them a try. I have never eaten a turnip before, but since they were free I thought I would experiment with them.

Well, now I know why I have never eaten them. It's because they are bad. I found this recipe for turnip soup, and made it last night. I confess that I did have to make some substitutions (sweet onions instead of storage onions, soymilk for milk, evaporated milk for cream), but even if I didn't do that, I think it still would have been awful. These turnips just had the most bitter aftertaste - I couldn't eat it. I think I forced three spoonfuls down and then I gave up. My husband tried to eat a bowlful to be nice, but I told him he didn't have to eat it if he didn't like it, to which he breathed a sigh of relief. I don't like to waste food but this pot of soup went directly down the drain. It was the worst meal I have ever made. Thankfully, we had also made corn on the cob and biscuits (and had a container of Rocky Road ice cream in the freezer), so we did not go hungry last night.

Now, I have read online since that smaller turnips tend to be sweeter, and summer turnips when it's really hot out tend to be more bitter. So, perhaps someone somewhere makes turnips and they actually taste good. I am willing to eat them again if someone else makes them who can tell a good turnip from a bad one. I, however, will never make them again. There are plenty of other good vegetables out there to eat.

Grilled Chicken, Basil Mashed Potatoes, and Greasy Beans

I have been on a self-imposed cooking hiatus, and it's about time to resume cooking again. I decided to get a little more creative in the kitchen today. Usually I follow recipes, but today I just looked at what I had and made things up as I went along, with a little help from the Joy of Cooking.

For the grilled chicken, I took two boneless skinless chicken breasts and sprinkled Penzey's Singapore Seasoning on it. I grilled them outside, and basted them with some Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce as they were cooking. The seasoning adds a little more depth to the flavor than just using barbecue sauce alone.

For the potatoes, I boiled six or seven russet potatoes until they were soft, coarsely mashed them, then added soy milk, a couple tablespoons of butter, a handful of chopped fresh basil leaves, salt, and pepper. They were tasty, and the basil was a nice addition to your standard mashed potatoes. I used soy milk because that's what we had (I was planning to use buttermilk, but realized we were out at the last minute).

I went to the Johnson City farmer's market this past weekend and picked up some fresh green beans. They had a few different varieties there, and I had no idea what the differences were between them. I had seen the greasy variety before (an heirloom variety), and decided to try those this time (they were fifty cents more a pound than the other ones, so they must be better, I thought). They take a little more work than regular green beans because you have to string them, but they are way better than your average grocery store bean. I boiled them in salted water for about 6-8 minutes. My husband said they taste like a cross between a green bean and edamame. Yum.

So, my home cooked meal tonight was nothing fancy, but I've come to realize that it doesn't have to be. It was yummy and we were happy.