teacher by day - chef by night
School has officially started! I have now seen my students for 2 days and am glad to be back (even with all the start of the school year stresses). Last week we had 3 fun-filled days of school preparations and I knew that I was …
Having two dogs is much like having two kids sometimes! Early weekend mornings I am reminded of this more and more. When you normally get up for work during the week between 5 or 5:30 or 6 or so, the dogs (or kids) think that …
Salsa…. one of my FAVORITE foods – always has been & always will be (if I had to name my top 2 foods it would be salsa & chocolate, hands down… just not together – although I do have a gourmet chili-chocolate bar that I love, so maybe I could make a chocolate salsa!). When we got fresh tomatoes from our gardens (some from our garden, some from Rich’s current landlord’s garden – he has lots of heirloom tomatoes which have a fantastic taste, maybe next summer here) I just had to make salsa.
Before I did anything, I just had to snap this photo of the bounty – it was too pretty to ignore. All I did for this salsa was chop up tomatoes, different heats (and amounts) of hot peppers since my mom likes it mild, I like it medium hot, dad likes it hot, & Rich likes it burn your face off… so I made two bowls to try to make everyone happy. To the tomatoes and peppers I added chopped onions (scallions), lime juice, cilantro, and some salt & pepper. I do have to say that it actually is not my favorite salsa that I have made, but the freshness of the flavors was absolutely amazing and there were no complaints.
The other night we went out for wings at a local bar that has a million (ok, maybe like 100+) different beers from around the world. I love going there for wings, but unfortunately it is very close to the college & therefor during the …
I promised you that you would see that goat cheese & the tomatoes again – so here we go! We had a few beautiful looking tomatoes & the goat cheese (which honestly, not sure if I will buy again – it was fun to work …
Rich called me the other day from work & asked if we could have bruschetta as an appetizer when he got home from work. Since I was home all day, making something to be ready as soon as he walked in the door wasn’t a problem. But then I realized that I needed to make Italian for dinner! It was one of those rainy days so off I went to FoodGawker to get inspired 🙂
After looking around online for a bunch of different recipes to try to find “the best” (even though I am not good at following a recipe, I always play too much with the “original” recipe & try to make it my own) – but I finally decided on “Olive Garden’s Bruschetta” from Good Morning America (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/recipe?id=7270885). The bruschetta was ready for Rich when he walked in the door & made it to the kitchen (after greeting the dogs first of course)!
Then I decided to get “adventurous” and found a fun recipe for Goat Cheese stuffed Portabellas with tomatoes (again from the garden) and some bacon (http://www.howto-simplify.com/2010/08/portobello-mushrooms-stuffed-with-goat.html). These ended up not being our favorite – but they did taste exactly like something we would get from a restaurant so they were not a let-down at all!
Finally we were onto the main course. I picked up a bag of the frozen “mixed seafood” while I was at the market ($5 for the bag, not even on sale – I was pretty happy.) To create my Garlic Seafood Pasta I started with some butter & olive oil in the pan and then added an onion (1 small) and garlic (5? cloves – we love garlic). Then I put in some clam juice, chicken stock, & lemon juice. Once I had the flavor I wanted I threw in the (defrosted) seafood & let it all cook for about 5 minutes. Then I tossed in the cooked pasta (oh yeah – I started the pasta before I started my seafood stuff) & served it up. I thought it was great (Rich is not the biggest fan of seafood, but still really liked it).
So – that was my “Italian Inspiration” for that night, just wait to see what I did with the leftover goat cheese the next night……