Halloween “Hell Crab” Salad

 I tried this crab salad recipe for Dungeons & Dragons night for Halloween and it was very tasty, so fresh and light! I made slight modifications, I halved the recipe and used vinegar instead of lemon juice because…well… I misplaced my lemon somewhere!

https://www.dinneratthezoo.com/crab-salad-recipe/

Ingredients:

• 1 pound imitation crab meat flaked style, or sticks cut into slices
• ▢ 1/2 cup celery finely chopped
• ▢ 3 tablespoons red onion finely chopped
• ▢ 1/2 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
• ▢ 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• ▢ salt and pepper to taste
• ▢ 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• ▢ 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh dill chopped, plus more for garnish

Frenchish Salads

Six plus attempts later…I am not there. Still…these were tasty!  I’m still on a French food obsession phase. Mostly just the salad and bread.  There’s a creme fraiche salad in there too. Loving https://www.pardonyourfrench.com/ for inspiration 

Best salad I’ve ever had

 I ate the best salad I’ve ever had in my life at the restaurant at Musee D’Orsay. Also look at this restaurant!!! Doubt I can reconstruct this at home, but I’ll give it a few tries. 

Christmas Eve Lasagna

 Hadn’t made lasagna in eons….so decided to make it as a family activity on Christmas Eve. As usual, I messed up some steps, but it still turned out delicious!

Look at those layers! Even better on Christmas Day!

December 2003

 Damn. I finally made a Chocolate Peppermint Ice Cream Cake Bon Appetit recipe I clipped back in 2003. This recipe is almost 20 years old. How insane is that??

A couple of things: 1. I’m amazing at creating a gorgeous cheesecake type crust. Thanks to the small measuring cup hack  2. Making this cake during winter time in Minnesota is ideal. I didn’t need to clear a space in the freezer, just tossed the work in progress out in the deck (12F) throughout each step. 

Here it is:

How did I do? It was tasty, but definitely not worth the effort!  Better off grabbing a cake from Dairy Queen.  

Team building

Just participated in a super fun work team building event! We grabbed a bunch of products from our natural and organic brands and put together an amazing dish. Everyone was a winner, but behold, fried chicken marinated in Annie’s BBQ sauce served with Annie’s Homestyle waffles with strawberry coulis flavored with Annie’s summer strawberry fruit snacks, topped with Cascadian Farms strawberries.  Sooo delicious!!  

Boba Problems

Addicted to Boba tea lately. 

Boba at work, boba in MN, boba at MOA, 2nd boba at MOA, boba in chi town, boba in bean town. 

So many more bobas that didn’t get photographed. 🙃 

Happy Chinese New Year!

 Our neighbors invited us over for some yummy hot pot to celebrate Chinese New Year. 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year

 Yesterday kicked off the beginning of baking season. Despite a massive tree trimming this past winter, one of the apple trees was still quite bountiful. Most of the apples went to the animal shelter/neighbors/compost, but we save 10 sweet little apples for a pie. Relied on good ole store bought pie crust with sweet sweet pork fat along with the recipe on their box. Delicious flaky crust. 😍

Don’t call the fire department!

This cake was freaking epic. Best cake I’ve ever had since I can remember. Way Cool Cooking School delivered. Yes, there was tons of smoke after the candles were out. 

You and the captain make it happen

 OMG. Nostalgia!  Bought some captain crunch cereal it is a hit of sweet sugary heaven straight to the brain. 

Cinco de Mayo

Decided to have some Mexican inspired food today. The Fronterra beef taco sauce is a solid meal helper.  In fact most of the products I’ve tried from them are pretty solid offerings. Had some lovely beef taco meat with peppers and salad. Pretty easy to put together. Yea, had to sneak the pool into the shot. 

Followed by a delicious dessert. First time trying these popsicles and they brought some joy to my heart. 

Avocado toast trend is dead

 When Pepsi gets into the avocado toast game, it’s no longer hip and cool. Which means, it is perfectly suited for me!  It was pretty tasty, added scrambled eggs and some cherry tomatoes to give the experience a little more. 

How to make microwave scrambled eggs: Break egg in bowl, add teaspoon water, beat, microwave 1 min, give it another stir. Done!

Grocery store gyro meat is great!

 I’ve been totally craving gyros and haven’t been to a restaurant in ... gosh... a year? Low and behold the local grocery store sells sliced gyro meat.  Amazing.  Whipped up a grain bowl with creamy also store bought tzatziki sauce. It was heaven!  Definitely going to have to do that again. 

My mouth is watering just thinking about this:

Pearled barley with mini cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, chopped parsley, shallots, olive oil, with gyro meat and tzatziki sauce. 

So corny, it’s fun(gi)

I was craving something familiar and decided to make egg drop corn soup with ham and shiitake mushrooms.  Wow. It’s been a while and just like I remembered as a kid, but maybe better because of the mushrooms and shallots. I have been in love with shallots lately. They are just so much more manageable than an onion. 

Here is the bowl of warm nostalgia with a twist:

Sauté shallots, ham, and mushrooms in oil until slightly caramelized. Add can of creamed corn, fill empty can with chicken broth. Add an of broth to pot. Beat two eggs in empty can.  Wait until soup is almost at a boil and slowly pour scrambled eggs into pot while stirring. Season with salt and white pepper.

Kettle Corn

 I wanted trying to make kettle corn from scratch with kernels and turns out, it’s super easy. Just don’t try making it in the microwave and you’re good. 

1/4 cup of kernels

3T coconut oil

2.5T sugar

1/2t salt

1. Put everything into a pot, cover with a lid and heat over med/high heat. 2. Shake the pan to keep everything moving and adjust the heat as needed to prevent burning 3. Let the corn do it’s thing and pop away!

Instant Pot Korean Beef Chuck

 I had some leftover beef chuck from a beef carnitas dish I made a couple weeks ago, so I made spicy Korean beef in the instant pot. I served it with brown rice and green beans.  Here’s the recipe: https://damndelicious.net/2018/02/21/instant-pot-korean-beef/  Not bad, but definitely not the best. Could not beat how easy it was to prep though! 

Thai Red Curry

 Continuing the meal prep plus microwave trend...I prepped one of my go-to order at Thai restaurants. 

I grabbed a recipe from McCormicks website and used it as a guide.

Marinate the chicken in the red curry paste and brown sugar. 

In serving container, put in chicken, snap peas, red pepper strips, and bamboo shoots.

Blend up coconut milk and pour into each serving, add 1t soy sauce and a splash of fish sauce.

Top with rice and microwave for four min. Top with fresh cilantro.  Yum!

Scallion Pancake for Chinese Lunar New Year

 Decided to try making some scallion pancakes after the kids raved about scallion pancakes that were delivered. Grabbed a recipe off the web, I feel like this is one of those dishes that is hard to mess up. That being said, I was a little lazy and I messed it up.

Letting the dough relax

Rolling out the dough

Fried and ready to eat. 

Fish Stew

 I tried a fish stew recipe this week and made the stew in the instant pot and ladled it on top of portions of raw cod. 

I haven’t had Old Bay seasoning in sooooo long, that when I went to pull it out of the pantry, I found it had expired in 2015.  I still used it, but increased the dosage. The recipe called for diced tomatoes and I used a can of diced tomatoes.  When the stew was completed, it was very watery.  I ended up fishing (haha) out most of the potato chunks and using an immersion blender to purée the tomatoes and shallot bits. I ended up with a nice, thick stew to ladle over the cod.  Prior to consuming, I microwaved it for 3 min and let is sit to allow the heat to thorough cook the cod.  There were a couple times where I had to pop it back into the microwave for 30s.

This is the second recipe I’ve tried from the book “Dinner in a DASH” by Nancy Hughes.  Pretty good and worth making again!