Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘food’

The George Foreman panini maker

Posted in Eats, Family, Home, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 3, 2011| 2 Comments »

In cooking, imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery. I love it when someone else tries to replicate one of my dishes. I love it even more when that someone is my mother.

The husband and I have owned a George Foreman Grill for the better part of our marriage. (Actually, we’re on our second grill. The cats broke the first one about 10 years ago.) We used to cook burgers on it; its sole use lately has been to sear the occasional hot dog.

Last year, I saw a couple of comments on food blogs recommending the Foreman Grill as a fast, cheap panini maker. It makes sense: The device is, after all, simply two heavy sheets of metal that press together.

I made grilled cheese sandwiches with it. Blah. The only bread I tend to keep around is some brand or another of wheat bread, the kind that doesn’t go bad in four days since I don’t actually EAT bread every day, and the husband tends to like a PB&J on the weekends. It didn’t grill very well, Foreman Grill or not, partially because it didn’t really fit on the grill (it’s a smaller model).

Enter Earth Fare. Heading to the checkout one day, I saw a display of bread that stopped me in my tracks, bread that looked like it had been freshly made just to fit on the Foreman Grill.

I made an experimental sandwich when I got home, smearing honey mustard on two slices and bundling a small bundle of ham and cheese in between. Best panini ever.

When Mom was here for Christmas, the only kind of bread Earth Fare had left was two loaves speckled with pieces of olives. Best panini ever. (And I realize I have to stop saying that or my credibility is going to be shot.)

For lunch today, I grilled the last two pieces with a couple of slices of Havarti from Costco. Perfection.

More perfection: Mom texted me yesterday to let me know she had switched the plates out on her waffle maker to make sandwiches like mine. Ingenious.

Read Full Post »

Christmas cookies, properly aged

Posted in Christmas, Eats, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 26, 2010| 2 Comments »

My first thought when I saw the recipe for tiny Glittering Lemon Sandwich Cookies on Serious Eats, one of my favorite food sites, was that I would rename them Princess Cookies and present them to my princess-crazy nieces, thus fulfilling their royal aspirations without giving any money to the manufacturers of inane, princess-themed junk.

Now, I’m convinced that these cookies are much too complicated for toddler tastes. No offense to toddlers.

The end result of a dough heavy on powdered sugar and corn starch (we’re talking 2/3 cup of corn starch) is a crumbly cookie that, to me, resembles shortbread.

I found them much too tart right after I made them, so I figured the recipe was destined to be forgotten. But when I popped open the box Wednesday morning for another taste (first person to ask why I was eating cookies at 9 a.m. gets blocked from comments), they were simply delectable, with just the right amount of lemon flavor and a light, satisfying crunch from the sugar coating.

I’m still not convinced they’re entirely worth the effort (it’s outrageously difficult to balance the cookies after you’ve spread on the filling so that they don’t slide apart), but they’re on the list of favorites this year, at any rate.

Read Full Post »

The joys of destination dining

Posted in Eats, Photographs, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2010| 6 Comments »

From Jean Georges in Manhattan: Warm sweet potato cake with a cranberry compote and cranberry foam.

 

When the husband and I go on vacation, we tend to plan our itinerary around food. We’re not the only people who do this, but I get mixed reactions from a few folks, some of whom apparently expect to hear more about the shows we’ve seen in New York City (most recent count: 0) than our sake-tasting and evaluation of the freshly made tofu at EN Japanese Brasserie (evaluation: awesome).

Some people get it: After a recent photo documenting our pilgrimage to the Doughnut Plant, one Facebook friend noted, “You take the best doughnut vacations ever!” Indeed, we do.

So what’s with our vacation food obsession? Honestly, we eat like monks at home. We have old-fashioned oatmeal (or steel-cut oats, if there’s time) with walnuts and raisins for breakfast every day. I almost always have a fresh salad and quinoa or hummus for lunch, while the husband consistently has a ham-and-cheese sandwich. Dinner might be homemade lasagna or something easy, like a cheese sandwich pressed into submission on the Foreman Grill with a bowl of leftover Cowboy Stew. We rarely go out to eat. We’ve found that one of the consequences of cooking your own healthy, delicious food at home is that your average restaurant food doesn’t measure up anymore.

What does measure up, however, is your above-average restaurant food. And this is what turns our vacations into the pursuit of destination dining. So while I can’t be bothered with a 10-minute drive to Krispy Kreme for Hot Doughnuts Now (trust me when I tell you that growing up with a Krispy Kreme within easy driving distance makes their doughnuts way less of an attraction later), I am perfectly willing to make a 15-minute hike to the subway station, stand on a crowded car for five minutes, make a 10-minute hike to the Doughnut Plant and stand in a long line for a Valrhona chocolate doughnut. I deem the calories worthwhile.

And that’s how my photo albums end up filled with pictures of doughnuts, ice cream, cheeseburgers and steamed shrimp, while we forget to take pictures of ourselves. Sorry, Mom.

Read Full Post »

Instant chocolate fix: surprisingly satisfying

Posted in Eats, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It should not be this easy to satisfy a chocolate craving, and yet it is.

It’s not pretty by any means (thus the lack of a photo for this post), but this recipe for Gooey Chocolate Mug Cake actually makes a pretty passable one-serving instant brownie, using only powdered sugar, cocoa and an egg. Best of all, you mix it and microwave it in a coffee mug, leaving little mess behind.

Read Full Post »

When salad became more than iceberg lettuce

Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 4, 2010| 2 Comments »

I still remember the moment I discovered that salad could mean something more than iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, croutons and dressing. I was at a fancy mountainside restaurant in Birmingham, Ala., with my future husband, probably around 1995, when the waiter brought out our small starter salads. They were filled with … leaves. And no hint of the crunchy, flavorless iceberg lettuce my fiance and I had both grown up thinking was the foundation of salad.

I learned that the leaves were baby arugula greens, and suddenly a new culinary world opened for me: Salad was no longer that bland bit of crunch existing only to carry dressing or serve as a low-calorie, tasteless diet option, but a real opportunity for nutritious, delicious creativity in the kitchen. Non-iceberg greens could be sweet or bitter and carry their own weight in a salad without relying on the dressing to make up for lack of flavor.

How did America get so obsessed with iceberg lettuce? Probably the same reason that grocery-store tomatoes and apples taste like mushy cardboard: According to Practically Edible, iceberg lettuce is easy to grow, easy to ship and lasts a long time in the fridge compared to other greens.

Through the early ’90s, it was nearly impossible to find any other kinds of greens in your average suburban grocery store, at least in Mississippi. I only had to remember one lettuce code during my entire six-month stint as a Jitney Jungle cashier in 1990.

I’m working my way through a big batch of Sylvetta Italian arugula mixed with other fresh greens this week, thanks to a winter CSA split with MrsDragon over at Mrs Dragon’s Den.  I even had to wash the dirt and a couple of tiny worms off, since my greens had just been plucked from the ground only two days earlier. Best salad ever.

Read Full Post »

No Place Like Home

Posted in Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 20, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’m finally back home after eight days of running. We drove to Atlanta, drove back to Huntsville, then flew to Chicago and back. I actually woke up yesterday morning slightly puzzled as to what city I was in.

I sort of feel like a jetsetter, only I don’t think jetsetters fly coach. Or make special iTunes playlists and assign car occupants individual singalong duties.

Anyway, more to come on some delicious food in Atlanta and how awesome it is to reconnect with old friends.

Read Full Post »

One roast, many different meals

Posted in Eats, Photographs, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I love it when a plan comes together. Or, more specifically, when a half-baked idea actually works.

One of my go-to slow cooker dishes is Pepperoncini Beef, which is pretty much a 2- to 3-pound beef chuck roast stuffed with a few cloves of slivered garlic, topped with a 16-ounce jar of pepperoncini and simmered on low for eight hours. We make roast beef and pepperoncini sandwiches on sub bread; topped with cheese and baked in the toaster oven for about three minutes, these are more than mere sandwiches.

Problem: 2 to 3 pounds of roast beef leaves us with WAY more leftovers than we can possibly stand to eat in one week, and it doesn’t freeze well.

Yesterday, while filling the grocery list with ingredients for another slow cooker recipe, I found the solution. Household fave Cowboy Stew, from the Year of Slow Cooking blog, calls for a pound of browned hamburger meat.

In the end, what’s the difference between a pound of ground beef and a similar amount of shredded roast beef once you mix it all up together and cook it for eight hours?

It was delicious, plus it saved me nearly $5 and the guilt of tossing out perfectly edible food. Kitchen WIN!

Read Full Post »

Now serving: disappointment cake

Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

We don’t eat a lot of cake in the Haggerty household. It’s just the two of us, and we don’t particularly eat a lot of anything, especially sweets. Which is too bad, because I love to bake and can be quite good at it.

So when I DO decide that a cake is forthcoming, it needs to be out of this world.

This cake, alas, was not that memorable.

I found myself with zucchini remaining in the fridge last week, despite the fact that the CSA ended a few weeks ago. (I actually found more zucchini in the fridge yesterday. I fear it has become sentient and is reproducing at will.) I decided to end the season with a bang after I found a recipe for Zucchini Cake With Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting at Seriouseats.com. The recipe promised me a “triple-threat of complementary flavors,” including zucchini, chocolate and cream cheese.

It was … OK. The cake itself was kind of dry, and the chocolate frosting couldn’t make up for it no matter how rich it was. I would have been better off making plain old zucchini bread and wrapping it for the freezer while I made a more fabulous cake.

The cream cheese frosting is pretty delicious by itself, however. After I took the photo above I scraped it off, ate it and threw the cake away. Baker’s prerogative.

Read Full Post »

As Pictured Below: That Smell

Posted in As Pictured Below, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Freshly toasted pine nuts: I don’t believe anything else makes the kitchen smell better, except maybe cookies baking in the oven. Cookies that someone ELSE is baking in the oven. Right before they wash their own dishes.

Read Full Post »

Rings in the drawer, pants on the ground

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday, I discovered that I can no longer safely wear my wedding rings. Four weeks of stress has led to weight loss, and my fingers are too skinny. I haven’t seen this weight since I had a tonsillectomy at age 20.

Lucky me, I guess, except I hate shopping for clothes and don’t want to get these rings resized.

It’s not that much weight, mind you. Just enough that pants fall a little farther than they should on my hips and the rings slip right off my finger. Not that they’ve ever wanted to stay on my finger. I’m forever finding myself in the car, halfway to a destination, with the realization that the rings are back at home in the knife drawer. My ring finger, apparently, longs to be free of the bonds of matrimony, even if my heart does not.

Now that I’ve gotten used to tiny portions, my body doesn’t want much more. Add to that the fact that I work at home by myself and consider eating more of a social activity than a physical necessity, and you’ll see that I have my work cut out for me.

The journey back to ring-wearing starts today: I’m having lunch with a friend. Tomorrow, perhaps, I’ll work on getting my pants off the ground.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »