Awesome Food News

http://boston.grubstreet.com/2009/07/el_pelon_to_rise_from_the_ashe.html

Plus I like that the link ends in "ashe".

Thoughts

1. I am going to Minnesota in SIX days! I'm so excited! Someone (guess who?) thinks this deserves a full blog post but I really don't have much else to say yet!

2. I can't believe I didn't update in almost two weeks. I really don't have many stories lately! Someone else gave me a hard time about my lack of updates (again, guess who?) so my plan is to take some awesome photos of his daughter tomorrow for my next post.

3. Meghan's hydrangea is gorgeous. If I saw this a few weeks ago, I'd be jealous...but now that my hydrangea is a wilted, watery disaster, I'm GREEN. I'll post a picture of mine tomorrow.

It's pathetic and requiring stakes to keep it upright.

Little Burgers with Greek Salad

Recipe #3 - I pretty much stole this from Real Simple magazine but I took out stuff I didn’t like and added other stuff (ummm, cheese).

Box of couscous
1 pound ground beef (or turkey)
Salt and pepper
Other Mediterranean-like seasonings
4 plum tomatoes, quartered
1 cucumber, sliced into half-moons
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Hummus
Feta Cheese
Pita chips (cut up some pita and stick in oven at 350 for 5-10 min)


1. Start making the couscous.
2. Mix the beef, salt&pepper and any other seasonings together and make little patties.
3. Stick the little patties in a glass dish under the broiler for 5 min; flip them over for another 5 minutes. Apparently it’s impt to keep a close eye on this because the fat in the burgers can catch fire under the broiler. Thank you, Google. I used 93% lean so I figured I might be ok.
4. Mix the couscous, tomatoes and cucumbers together. Dress with olive oil and lemon juice.
5. Serve salad with mini burgers and pita chips and hummus.
6. Throw feta all over everything.

Fish Tacos

As most of you know, I'm OBSESSED with a certain Mexican place that has burned down and I obsessively have been looking for a fantastic steak burrito or fish taco since the fire. I never even thought about MAKING it on my own until last week.

Also, Mike has a tendency to buy random protein products and stick them in the freezer. He's really good about cleaning out the freezer (whereas I usually forget to even look in there) but he would be happy with a random George-Foreman-ed piece of meat/fish and I like something a little fancier.

Anyway...Mike bought some Mahi-Mahi from Trader Joe's a while ago and it inspired me to find a recipe for fish tacos.

Mahi-Mahi (dude, if I knew how much, I would have my own cookbook)
Olive oil
2 limes
Taco seasoning (we have A LOT of taco seasoning in this condo – we make a lot of tacos)
Handful of chopped fresh cilantro leaves
Sliced red onion
Tortillas (we use the low carb ones – SO yummy)
Shredded white cabbage
Salsa
Sour cream

1. Mix together oil, the juice of 1.5 limes, some taco seasoning and some of the chopped cilantro leaves. Cover the fish with this marinade for 20 minutes (NO MORE THAN 20 MINUTES or you risk making seviche).
2. Grill the fish and the red onion (you’ll have to look up specific grilling instructions; I have no idea).
3. Place the fish and the red onion in tortillas and top with cabbage, salsa and sour cream.
4. Enjoy but realize it’s not as good as a certain Mexican restaurant.

Beet Salad

Here is the first of three recipes that I love:

Beet Salad - this is a Mamma original and takes about 30 seconds to pull together. It's nothing fancy...
- can of beets
- olive oil
- red wine vinegar (balsamic doesn't taste as good)
- one clove of garlic - minced (should be fresh if you can)
- oregano or Italian seasoning (which includes oregano)
- salt and pepper

1. Drain most of the beet juice and place the beets in a serving dish. It's best to do this in a wide dish so that the beets aren't resting on top of each other.
2. Drizzle with oil and vinegar, scatter garlic, oregano, salt and pepper.
3. Let it sit out for a few minutes (20 min would be ideal for the flavors to seep together).
4. If you're worried about garlic breath, you can pick them out now (the flavor is already seeped in).

Thoughts

1. I am SO happy that Mike is now a follower. I feel very cool.
2. I am waiting for before/after pictures of Meghan's hydrangea. I saw the cell phone pic and it was dangerously impressive.
3. I have three great recipes to post...but I've since found out that one of my recipes is actually a dirty word (according to the SW at work).

Hydrangeas

Everything else in my garden looks awful but the hydrangeas look awesome.
May 18:

July 6:
Also, I made a beet salad for lunch and fish tacos for dinner. I should post the recipes.

Maine-y is Rainy

I had two days off before I had to work on the holiday wknd (boooooo) so Mike suggested that we head up to Maine for an overnight visit. He has a friend who LOVES Portland so we figured it would be a fun city plus we could catch a Seadog (minor league) game.

Anyway, the game was canceled (apparently it's been raining a lot here in New England - maybe you've noticed) so we went to the hotel bar on the roof which is supposed to have an awesome view of the area. As you can see from the picture, the view was just a tad limited! They did have wine though so we were all set until our 930 dinner reservation. By the way, 930!! Who eats at 930?!?!?! Gange, that's 2130 for you.

Also, Mike looks cute in a blazer. :)

Anyway, we woke up to sun the next day so we walked around Portland for a while and then headed to Kennebunkport for "the best lobster roll in Maine". Since I don't eat lobster, this was wasted on me but Mike said it was good...and the exploring was awesome!

I'm off to take photos of my water-logged plants for future blog postings. Sadly, I think only KLG and Gange are excited for that post.