I am not the biggest fan of Valentine’s Day. It could be the years of working for one of the companies that made it up. It could be that I despise all commercialism. Or it could be that I don’t need an excuse to tell my sweetie I love him. Whatever it is, we don’t do Valentine’s in this house.
So when some good friends asked us to join them for dinner on Valentine’s Day (at one of Tacoma’s most expensive restaurants) it wasn’t just the price that made me say no. Instead we elected to invite their whole family to our house for a nice dinner (and a just a little kitsch).
For the meal I served:
Avocado Seafood Cocktail with Chipotle Adobo Dressing
Cabbage Slaw with Orange and Pumpkin Seed Dressing
Black Pepper Honey Steak
Melting Greens
All of the recipes were out of the Splendid Table cookbook and I settled on them because of their (somewhat) seasonal nature. Granted, the seafood cocktail did include grape tomatoes and bibb lettuce (avocados are never in season here) and Cabbage isn’t 100% in season, but close enough.
Just the thought of spending a nice evening with good friends and sharing a meal is what makes the day special.
The first time I was offered fish tacos I thought my Grandfather was joking. I had just finished my junior year in highschool and my grandparents took one of my brothers, my oldest cousin and me on a trip to their winter home in San Felipe, Mexico. My cousin and I spent our days sitting by the pool and seeing how much baby oil we could slather on ourselves before we burned to a crisp. At the pool there was a little cantina that served drinks and the occasional taco. Growing up I didn’t have much of an adventurous palette when it came to food. To us tacos were served in hard, often stale, shells with shredded iceberg lettuce and orange cheese. Based on the restaurants in the US, Mexican food is not my favorite. So when my grandfather asked if we wanted to try the fish tacos I thought he had lost his mind. Lynn and I didn’t want to be rude so we gave them a try.
The tacos were like none I’d ever had before. They were small fillets of whitefish, lightly breaded, and served on a soft corn tortilla with a little bit of fresh salsa. It was heaven. I came home from that trip in love with Mexican food only to find out that real Mexican food was nowhere to be found.
Years later I took a group of high school students to Tijuana to build a house. As part of the trip the organization took us to a roadside taco stand for lunch. It was our “authentic Mexican meal.” A week in Mexico and we only ate cafeteria food. That one afternoon at the taco stand brought back the memories of my previous experience sitting by the pool with my cousin and I remembered how much I loved true Mexican cuisine. Back in the US I was left with greasy cheese laden enchiladas and stale taco shells.
Recently my husband and I had happy hour at a local Mexican restaurant. Then again at another. Both of these establishments seeks to put an end to congealed cheese and cheesy mariachi music. Masa and Matador serve up Mexican food as it is supposed to be cooked. With my re-found love of Mexican food I set off to create a dinner for my family that was worthy of eating.
Fish Tacos with corn salsa and avocado cream
2 tilapia fillets (or other flaky white fish)
Salt, pepper, cumin to taste
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly oil a baking pan. Season the fish with the salt, pepper and cumin. I like more cumin so I put more on. Bake the fish about 15 – 20 minutes or until cooked through. (we had to bake the fish because our grill is currently out of commission)
Corn Salsa
1 cob of corn (cut the kernels off)
1 can black beans
1 medium tomato diced
1/2 sweet onion diced
2 cloves garlic minced
Handful chopped cilantro
Juice of 1 lime
salt, pepper and cumin to taste
oil
Heat oil in a pan over medium high heat. Saute onions and garlic until fragrant. Add corn and black beans. Cook 2-3 minutes. Add Cilantro and lime juice. Cook 2-3 minutes more. Season with salt, pepper and cumin. You can add chili powder or peppers if you like it a little spicy. Remove from heat and stir in tomatoes.
Avocado Cream
I make this and put it in a squeeze bottle in the fridge and serve it on everything
2 avocados
2 cloves garlic
handful chopped cilantro
1/2 c. cream
2 T. butter (I never said the cream was healthy)
Salt to taste
Puree the avocados, garlic and cilantro in a food processor. Heat butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add avocado puree and heat through. Add cream and combine. Season.
To assemble the final dish: heat soft corn tortillas in the oven (wrap a stack of them in foil and throw them in the oven while the fish is cooking). Flake fish apart and put on tortilla. Top with salsa and cream. You may want to double the tortillas since the salsa can get a little messy.
This time of year is spent canning, freezing and generally preserving the harvest we’ve worked so hard to create. I also scout out deals on produce at the local markets to fill in what I don’t grow. Apples are a prime example of this. We will head down to Portland, OR for our annual trip to Portland Nursery’s apple tasting and come home with hoards of apples that will need to be made into applesauce.
Another bit of fruit I happen to have an excess of is Black Currants. Somehow I got talked into planting a Black Currant bush in our garden despite having no clue what to do with the actual currants. The first year we had a small little crop that the birds ate. The next year I got a slightly larger crop that I picked and then let go bad in the refrigerator. Last year I grew quite a decent crop and made sure to rescue the harvest before the birds had their fill. I managed to freeze that batch. This year was much the same, only my yield was huge. Well, if you consider 1 lb. 10 oz. huge. After all, it is one small currant bush.
I carefully picked off all of the stems and flower end bits and froze the berries on a sheet pan so they didn’t stick together. I did the same with the Blueberries we gathered from Blueberry Park.
Yesterday I had grand intentions of making a grand batch of mixed berry jam with the blueberries, black currants, strawberries (from the freezer) and the blackberries my son and I picked. Sadly, I didn’t get to the blackberries before the fruit flies and mold did. That left me with one less berry. I didn’t think that strawberry/blueberry/black currant jam sounded all that delightful (not that adding blackberries would have made much of a difference) so I scrapped the strawberries. They are now thawing in the fridge and hopefully I can get back up the hill to get a fresh batch of blackberries.
I did some looking for what to do with blueberries and black currants and oddly enough it was mentioned that they can make a nice jam if mixed together. Might as well.
My pantry is in a state of disarray and I’m short on a few things. Sugar happens to be one of them. I only had about 1/2 of the sugar I needed, but somehow it worked out.
Blueberry Black Currant Jam
(These are the weights I had to work with)
2 lbs. Black Currants
3 lbs. Blueberries
1 1/2 lbs. sugar
little over 8 ounces of water
1 whole cinnamon stick
Combine the water, sugar and cinnamon stick in a large pot. Heat over medium heat to dissolve the sugar. Add berries (fresh or previously frozen). Cook fruit down until it is syrupy. I let mine go about 2 hours. Remove cinnamon stick and mash the remaining whole fruit. I put the mixture through a foley mill with the largest size screed on. Transfer the mixture back into the pot to keep warm.
Sterilize 12-13 4oz. jars. I do this by washing them thoroughly in hot soapy water and then placing them open side down in a skillet of simmering water for 10-15 minutes. Bring a small pan of water to a boil and then turn it off. Put the clean lids in the pan. Heat a large canning pot of water to a rolling boil. Remove the jars from the skillet and dry with a clean towel. Fill the jars with the hot jam mixture. Leave about 1/4″ of head space and run a small spatula around in the jar to remove any air. Clean the rim of the jar with a clean wash cloth and place a lid and ring on each jar. I can fit about 6 jars in my canning pot so I only do 6 at a time. Put the jars in the boiling water (using a jar lifter) and process for 10 minutes. Remove jars from boiling water and place on a towel on the counter to cool. The jars have sealed correctly if the lids get sucked in.
I happened to only do 12 jars and had enough left over to fill another 9 ounce jar. I could have processed that one too, but I just put it in the refrigerator to enjoy now. The jam is not super thick, but more like a fruit preserve spread. It tastes delicious on toast.
The hustle and bustle of every day life is standing in the way of family. It seems to me that the divorce rate went up with the invention of TV dinners. I’m sure the guys behind Freakonomics could find a way to support that theory. What’s missing in today’s society? If you ask me it’s simply sitting down at the family table and having a meal. It could be breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Our little family is a bit out of the norm. We have all 3 meals as a family. We are fortunate enough that my husband is able to join us for lunch and I am currently a work at home mom. Even if circumstances were different we would make sure that at least one meal a day was done as a family. This is where the opposition says, “but I don’t have time to cook dinner.” I disagree.
There are rare circumstances when I slave over a hot stove all day long. Sure, we have the occasional dinner where I’ve spent a few hours making pasta or I’ve puttered with a focaccia bread for a good part of the day. Many of our meals are thrown together at the last minute. I do try to plan out a weekly menu to eliminate frequent trips to the grocery, but if I am busy with work a weekly menu can be overlooked.
In another post I’ll cover the basics of our pantry. The jist of this post is to say that you don’t have to have your dinner from a box or the freezer. A quick and easy supper can be prepared in 45 minutes and GASP! it’s healthy*.
In the typical American household mom and dad probably work, kids have homework or after school activities. It seems as if there isn’t time to cook. I will prove you wrong and create a family building exercise in the process.
The first in our new weekly series “Tuesday Night Supper” is dedicated to one of our all time favorite dishes. I featured this dish in the flyer I put together when I did the Tacoma Reads Fresh and Simple, Just Add Kids lecture. The key to this dish is family involvement. All three of us spends time chopping vegetables, cutting meat or measuring spices. Yes, even the 4 year old chops veggies. The lovely part about this recipe is that you can add whatever vegetable you happen to have on hand. Give it a try tonight. You might just like it.
Moroccan Chicken
1 boneless skinless chicken breast cut into bite sized pieces
2 teaspoons salt
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 carrots, sliced
2 celery stalks, sliced
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon paprika
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne (or to taste)
1/4 teaspoon ground tumeric
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 cup diced tomatoes
1 can chickpeas, drained
1 zucchini, sliced
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Season chicken with salt and brown in a large saucepan over medium heat until almost cooked through. Remove chicken from pan and set aside.
Saute onion, garlic, carrots and celery in same pan. When tender, stir in ginger, paprika, cumin, oregano, cayenne pepper and turmeric; stir fry for about 1 minute, then mix in broth and tomatoes. Return chicken to pan, reduce heat to low and simmer for about 10 minutes.
Add chickpeas and zucchini to pan and bring to simmering once again; cover pan and cook for about 15 minutes, or until zucchini is cooked through and tender. Stir in lemon juice and serve.
Serve over steamed rice.
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*we’ll cover getting your kids to eat real food in another post also
A major heat wave has struck the West coast and most of us are sweltering away. Many of my friends poo-poo our heat, but those are the same friends that live in the Southwest, South, Midwest or Southeast. Basically anywhere outside of the Northwest. Listening us complain about the heat is much like listening to you complain about the rain. Only trouble is those outside of the Northwest forget that we don’t have air conditioning here. Or at least most homes don’t. This girl, who doesn’t sweat, doesn’t think the heat is good for much of anything besides making me cranky and growing tomatoes.
Last year the tomato crop was dismal. The cold spring and summer kept the plants from setting fruit and once they did not a single fruit would color. At the end of the season I harvested about 5 pounds of green tomatoes. It took 2-3 weeks for them to fully ripen.
This year I was optimistic. I planted my hoards and hoped for the best. So far I’m not disappointed. My plants are so overloaded with fruit they are falling all over.
(These are the plants grown in 100% Tagro, an experiment this year)
I knew I had to be patient when it came to my little fruits. Some plants were slower than others to set fruit. Some set right away. It wasn’t until yesterday that I actually picked my first tomato (and a wee little pepper too). I planted Snow White cherries and 3 were showing signs of being ripe. I was tempted to snatch it off of the vine and gobble it up on the spot. However, being the good gardening blogger that I am I took a photo first. I don’t think I set down the camera before eating one.
This afternoon I picked an Azoychka and sliced it for my salad. By Thursday I should have about 50 pounds of ripe tomatoes.
My son is from Russia and somehow the little fact has been encoded into his DNA to like any and all Russian food. He’s lived in the US longer than he lived in Russia and what he was fed in Russia was something more akin to dog food rather than some of the wonderful yumminess found in Russian cuisine. However, whenever we make anything that we had in Russia that kid is all over it. Did I mention that he’s only 4?
A favorite in our house is “Purple Soup,” aka Borscht. Sadly, I never had Borscht in Russia made by an actual Russian. We did have a potluck one night and my dear friend Suzanne fixed a lovely Borscht. It was near the end of our stay so I didn’t have the time to taste the rich soup in every restaurant I came in contact with. Had I known it was so good I would have been on a one woman mission to find the best Borscht in Khabarovsk.
Two years ago I started creating our weekly menu and posting on my personal blog. During the summer we have “market night.” This meant I go to the farmer’s market and pick up a bunch of stuff and make dinner out of it. One week I found beets, carrots, potatoes, onions, dill and ground beef. Hmm, sounded like a certain soup I’d had in Russia. When I got home I searched the internet for recipes that looked easy. I didn’t find any that I particularly cared for so I combined a few and made it up as I went along. What resulted was the best soup I’ve ever made. It was a hit with the (then) two year old crowd.
Ever since my son has begged me to plant beets in the garden so we can make “Purple Soup.” Beets are so easy to grow and I don’t know why I didn’t plant them in years past. What we are finding now is that summertime is a little too warm to be eating hot heavy Borscht. I love the flavors, but the idea of standing over a hot stove when it’s 80 degrees in your house is unimaginable. To make up for that we created a summer version, Borscht Salad. The best part is the whole salad is grown in our garden.
Borscht Salad
Various lettuce (we use oak leaf, red leaf and butter crunch)
Various salad greens (arugula, cress, escarole, whatever is on hand)
3-4 baby beets (I grow Choigga) cubed
2-3 carrots sliced
Dill
blue cheese crumbles (purchased from a local cheese maker at the farmer’s market)
Throw all the salad fixings into a large bowl and top with a balsamic vinaigrette (my husband makes our vinaigrette so you’d have to ask him what is in it).
Perfect salad for a hot summer day.
The harvest season is gearing up in the Sprouting Off Garden. We’ve been enjoying fresh salads daily and the strawberries have started to show their true color.
Unfortunately, the seed company didn’t ship my order until quite late in the season so there are a few things that didn’t get planted on time. Lettuce was one of them. I ordered 5 different varieties and received one free sample variety. I planted them all as soon as they arrived, April 9th to be exact. This is way too late for early salads. My expected bountiful harvest of salad greens just did not materialize like I had envisioned. Of the 6 lettuce varieties planted I only got sprouts on 2 kinds. I have an abundance of cress, but a pitiful selection of lettuce. I replanted last week and hopefully the second go will produce something. Growing lettuce isn’t rocket science.
What little bit I am getting is making fantastic salads. I combine butter crunch lettuce, cress, dill, blue cheese crumbles and dried cranberries. I top it with my husband’s home made vinaigrette and have a lovely lunch.
Strawberries are also showing up. The daily picking has begun and I portion them out between the three of us. My son gets his snack portion and the rest I cut up and serve with vanilla yogurt for our “child is sleeping time for dessert.” It’s almost better than ice cream.
I’m seeing signs of life on other plants too. There are a few snap peas growing on the vine and one Bulgarian Carrot Pepper. The beets are almost ready to harvest to add to our salads.
Within no time I’ll have so much that I won’t be able to give it away fast enough.
Today has been marked on my calender as a special occasion for months. Today the Downtown Tacoma Farmer’s Market opened. Last year my son and I made it a weekly excursion. We would ride the “train,” wander through the market, pick up lunch and mini donuts and head home. By mid season my arms would get tired from carrying my basket it was so heavy with treasures I would find.
Our market isn’t the biggest in the world, but it is growing. When we lived in downtown Tacoma it was a seldom visited little market with more craft vendors than actual produce. Today it is over flowing with the bounty of spring. Sure there are a few handmade goods to be found, but there is more food.
When I told my son that today was market day is first response was, “can we get some fish?” He is referring to Rolf’s Smoked Salmon. We indulged and purchased a package that will likely be consumed mostly by me (only because I hoard it).
In addition to our fish we picked up a few herbs (including 2 cinnamon basil plants), Walla Walla Sweet spring onions, asparagus, 2 kinds of cheese (from 2 different vendors), baby lettuce and a bowl of West African Peanut Soup (for my lunch). My son opted to not have lunch at the market, but was sad when I didn’t get him soup. Next week baby.
I was quite excited to see the variety in the produce available. There were more plant vendors than usual and the choices in prepared foods has grown as well. My favorite Indian place (Gateway to India) even has a booth.
To make life easier we were gifted a beautiful new wagon over the winter. This will make hauling my produce from the market to the car much easier. I apologize if I run over any toes.
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