My holiday gift to you

I spent a large chunk of today looking about the web for a good way to corral the recipes I find online, add my own and have access to all of it on my phone. Since I’m a nice person, I shall share with you the fruit of my labors.

First and foremost, I spent a worthwhile bit of time consolidating and organizing my bookmarks in Chrome so that it syncs them all and everything is in easily identifiable folders on all the computers I use. AMAZING. There is no proper reason for me to feel as smug about this as I do.

Some time ago I purchased the Real Simple android app and it was worth the $5. You get to choose the amount of time you have to cook as well as a protein and then it gives you a list of options to choose from. Every recipe I’ve ever made from Real Simple has been fantastic and the app is a collection of those.

Today I added OurGroceries (free), so that Spouse and I can avoid duplicating purchases at the grocery store. It syncs the lists so we each know what we need and can check them off as we go.

But what about the initial premise- adding stuff I find online and my own recipes? I attempted My Cookbook first but when you attempt to add a recipe from a webpage, it’s rather a shit show as to what will actually import correctly.

Through a vast amount of googling and some trial and error, I tripped upon ChefTap (free). I tend to be skeptical of anything that claims to be “the first” to do anything but I’ve got to tell you this app is the shit. I imported recipes from no less than 5 websites, all of which look vastly different in structure, and where MyCookbook failed ChefTap kicked ass. They imported brilliantly and formatted exactly as desired. The only downside to this app: no desktop, so you’ll have to do the browsing from your phone or send yourself links to add the recipes from webpages. On the other hand, it’s vastly superior to me having to type in ANYTHING on my own.

As a second bit of awesome, ChefTap will also sync and import any recipes from epicurious.com and allrecipes.com (neither of which have mobile apps that sync across all platforms). This has persuaded me to open an account at epicurious and the sync feature is pretty brilliant.

In related free apps, I also got Sweet and Spicy Indian Food so I’m pretty stoked to try that out as well.

I’m starting to add my frequently made/favorite recipes/recipes from mom on Epicurious and then searching out other faves online so that I’ve got them with me all the time.

I also took a bit off the BrokeAss Gourmet’s Cranberry-Zinfandel Brownie Bites and adapted them for fresh cranberries and high altitude. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, thought I think I might want a mini-cupcake pan since I made mine in regular cupcake liners.

Incidentally, this was all prompted by making a fantastic General’s Chicken recipe for lunch today and wanting it on my phone for a shopping list. Spouse is working out and I’m couched in the basement with a bottle of Snow Day and Dr. Who Netflixing on my TV.

Hppy

Hausfrau Dinnerblog

I know. Dinner is wicked exciting.

This week there was a kind of awesome post over at ForeverYA about traditional Sunday dinner, which made me want to make a pot roast. Instead of using chuck roast, I bought top round and baby carrots instead of having to cut things up and I also chucked in some sliced mushrooms.

The recipes also include one for brussel sprouts which I’ve eaten exactly TWICE and liked them (once I made them myself, with bacon). It has a prune (gack) and balsamic reduction but I think I’m going to use some thick cut bacon, balsamic vinegar and medjool dates. That sounds way more tasty. The roast is currently cooking with veg in the oven, basted with New Belgium’s 1554. I’m dorkishly excited about blanching the sprouts because I think the key is to not have them too mushy. Plus, bacon. How can I possibly go wrong? Add the sweetness of the dates and the tart of the balsamic, I’m stoked about seeing how this concoction turns out.

Link to the Forever YA article. Aside: I love their LadyNerd series.

Thanksgiving prep, part deux

Thus far I have obtained:

a turkey (already thawing) 11 lbs

brine and aromatics

ingredients for one cranberry sauce recipe

ingredients for most of a second cranberry sauce recipe

ingredients for mulled wine

ingredients for mom’s stuffing

fresh green beans

things I still need to obtain:

more cranberries

an orange

ingredients for my mother-in-law’s mac and cheese

ingredients for pumpkin torte

things I should probably delegate:

rolls

another side dish

pumpkin pie?

Thanksgiving prep

I could have sworn I posted my Cranberry Sauce recipe last year but I can’t find it. And then, whilst trolling the internet, I found a NEW recipe that I may have to make instead (or possibly in addition to).

Spicy Cranberry Sauce

Ingredients

• 3 to 4 jalapenos, finely chopped
• 8 cups cranberries
• 2 limes, zested and juiced
• 2 oranges, zested and juiced
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup water
• Salt and fresh ground black pepper

Directions

Cheese dip for your sandwich

A couple weeks ago I made some amazing Paula Deen chipotle cheese dip. This week I found a way to make it amazing on sandwiches.

8 oz lt cream cheese
2 chipotle chili peppers in adobo sauce
Juice of one lime
1/2 c low fat mayo

Blend in food processor

Without the mayo it’s got a thicker texture which is great for crackers. With the mayo, it’s spreadable and AMAZING with lunchmeat. I had it with roast beast yesterday and turkey today.It may be my new favorite thing ever.

Sunday update

Watching SNL’s weekend update and the Tyler Perry portion is reminding me of conversations with my friend Fatima. Funny.

I’m making chili today because it’s a perfect day for chili, football and beer. One of our friends is going to join us so I’m making an effort to get some homework done. We attended a beer tasting last night and let me say there are worse things to do on your weekend. In fact I may have to make a run to pick up some 1554.

We took a slight roadtrip to get lunch yesterday and I stumbled into an excellent hair cut. A lovely woman named Beverly gave me a spectacular cut for the rock-bottom price of $15. I may have found a new favorite place. Also, it doesn’t hurt to have an excuse to visit BV once a month for lunch with some friends. Accidental awesome is some of the best kind. She was also tickled to find out someone had left her a nice review on the internet so I made sure to leave her another on both Yelp and Google Places.

In TV news, I saw the Haven finale and HOLY SHIT that show impressed me ALL SEASON. It doesn’t hurt to have smoking hot leads but the writing has been tight and is continuing to make the overarcing mystery interesting rather than tired or played out. It’s one of my summer surprise favorites. If you want info on where to catch the episodes online, leave me a comment.

Sons of Anarchy is also kicking a lot of ass, as expected. It’s making me even more eager for the return of Justified and what I can only hope will be a season 2 marathon (as I haven’t seen it) before the Season 3 premier.

I’m stoked, by the way, that my Defying Gravity love posts inspired my friend mesoterica to check it out and that she loves it too. I may have to rewatch them AGAIN this week. Never have I been so tempted to write fanfic.

Books: The Night Circus is great so far and while I’ve stalled a bit on Wildwood, I have been enjoying it.

In movie news, watched Hanna and fucking loved it. Loved it.  Eric Bana is incredible and the whole movie is far better than the trailer.

Week ending (books, tv, food)

This morning we started the day by watching the Food Network, which is never a good idea. Why? Because instead of relaxing at home, practicing guitar, doing homework or washing the dishes, you’re suddenly at the grocery store to buy ingredients for whatever was just on Paula Deen’s Best Dishes.

We had the Turkey Black Bean Burgers with Corn Salsa for lunch, accompanied by Lemony Slaw and with Chocolate Milkshakes for dessert. It was all delicious and all DIRECTLY from the tv show.

I finished The Very Thought of You the other day and I’ve been wrestling with how to talk about it. The cover is what first caught my attention and I was heartened by the description on Amazon (though I will admit to not reading the reviews) and I believe that I heard something about it on Books on the Nightstand. Then when the price dropped to $9.99, I bought it. I loved the book, even if I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as my typical fare. It’s a contemplative read, which doesn’t mean boring so much as nuanced, and an amazing story about love and complicated relationships in difficult times. It doesn’t have a barnburning pace but I found I had a hard time putting it down because I wanted to know where it went (which was, incidentally, thoroughly satisfying). My mission is now to find other people who have read it.

Speaking of love: I spent yesterday and today re-watching Defying Gravity which was a purchase with birthday money. It’s maybe the best series to never get a full first season in television and seeing it again just made me sad that shit like the Charlie’s Angels reboot is going to air and probably be wildly successful. I’m hoping that Ringer is going to satisfy my interesting/smart tv niche for the fall but it’s on the CW so my hope is limited. Defying Gravity was great because it was smart and touching and challenging about topics that make me unsurprised that it didn’t get picked up but is just so goddamn good that I bought the DVDs. It’s the kind of fiction I love.

State of Wonder and Supergods are both topping my wishlist currently but my $10 ceiling prohibits them. I’m going to settle for digging into Wildwood. If you want to see what else I’m interested in, the list is here. It’s not entirely up to date as I’ve taken to sending samples of the books I’m interested to my Kindle and using that as a list of sorts.

It’s going to be a long week.

I’m traveling at the end of this week and it would be a lie to say I’m looking forward to airports, airplanes and rental cars.

Lately I’ve been on a mad Buffalo Chicken kick. Once upon a time I was a vegetarian for a couple of years and the thing that got me back in the meat wagon was the Buffalo Chicken Sandwich at Hooters. Ever since then, good buffalo sauce has been my Kryptonite.

This is my quick and dirty fix : (I’m partial to Frank’s Red Hot but you can use whatever you like in this recipe.)

1 boneless chicken breast, cut in pieces and cooked

Buffalo/hot sauce to taste

Palmful of precut cabbage mix

Diced tomatoes

Lt. Blue Cheese dressing to taste

Whole wheat tortillas

Heat the chicken and add hot sauce
Warm the tortilla and fill with all ingredients

Why I love cooking

Unlike baking, recipes can be more of a guide than a ‘you must use these measurements’ step by step.

My latest favorite thing is the Hungry Girl books. Yes, they’ve got a fairly hideous name that was probably cute when she started the blog/website/email but now rather unfortunately pigeonholes her product. No chance my husband would even pick UP one of those cookbooks, let alone BUY THEM.

To be clear, that’s the only downside I’ve found with these cookbooks. The design is pretty great, kind of a fun retro font and my absolute favorite thing is the “pantry list” of frequently used items in the front of each book (200 under 200: 200 recipes under 200 calories & 300 under 300). They’re basically the same list, but the latest cookbook (300) has some updates with new brands available.

Here’s the story of why I bought the books:

The Spouse and I are just looking for healthier ways to eat things we already like, rather than dramatically changing our diets. We’re both active and neither of us have a TON of time to cook. I picked up the 200 book and the very first recipe was for Banana Wheat Mini Pancakes. If you remember my post about The Delectable Egg and their AMAZING Banana Wheat Pancakes, you can imagine that I was pretty intrigued. I picked the book up and put it down about a half dozen times. Then I picked up the 300 book and saw that it had an entire “International Favorites” section – including a Chicken Pad Thai recipe. SOLD. I did something I NEVER do; I bought both cookbooks at the same time.

I started with the Egg Mugs. Basically, egg substitute and a variety of vegetables/cheese/bacon added to a large mug and cooked. Takes less than 5 minutes and means I get a hot breakfast on my way to work (in a nearly non-spillable container). Spouse has also gotten on board with these in a big way.

The Banana Wheat Pancakes are just as awesome as I’d hoped – I made them Saturday AND Sunday morning. I double the recipe and it makes about 7  palm-sized pancakes, which is perfect for us (4 for Spouse, 3 for me) and instead of using the sugar-free maple syrup we have agave syrup. They’re delicious and VERY easy to make.

The Chicken Pad Thai was fantastic, but this entry is about tonight’s adventure with Fish Tacos.

I used the recipe for the marinade/rub and purchased vacuum-sealed frozen Mahi Mahi. After my workout, I made the marinade and threw it in with the thawed fish while I got the other stuff ready and heated the grill. Instead of making the Avocado Cream according to recipe, I used an entire avocado and a matching amount of fat free Greek yogurt (rather than sour cream). I was a bit more heavy handed with the chili powder and garlic powder, but it was DELICIOUS. Add chopped tomato, coleslaw mix cabbage and wheat taco-sized tortillas and it made a pretty excellent dinner.

The absolute best part of these cookbooks is that the recipes are designed for 1 or 2 servings: no having to shrink the recipe OR leftovers for a week. I suspect this is designed to help with portion control (smart) but if you don’t have kids, it’s wicked awesome to have MY family-sized recipes.

The author states pretty clearly that the recipes are not designed for extreme caloric limitation/dieting. They DO however make it easy to combine several dishes for a larger meal or to have several small meals throughout the day.

Everything has been very easy to prepare and the only really esoteric item (I live in a rural area) was pasta-shaped Tofu noodles that I found at Whole Foods. They’re kind of an awesome substitute for regular pasta, though pricey enough that I wouldn’t probably use them in place of all pasta recipes.

So that’s my latest  schedule addition and it’s been pretty good for the budget. Cooking this many meals at home has saved more money than I’d have expected.

In related news, I had a Coke Zero for the first time in over a week and it turns out I didn’t really miss it. I didn’t have any crazy caffeine withdrawal – in fact I haven’t ever since the first big caffeine boycott when I was in college (now THAT was miserable).

In thoroughly UNRELATED news, I’m kind of looking forward to SyFy’s new Legend Quest show.

Reading material

I’ve been reading quite a bit lately and I’ve got to say my latest guilty pleasure is the Magic series by Ilona Andrews. Just finished the latest book and they are well- written, fast-paced, kick ass protag, and have interesting world building. Two thumbs up, highly recommended. Reminds me of what Anita Blake could have been before she became a magic-induced nymphomaniac without principles.

The Year of Magical Thinking is pretty fantastic. I thought about picking it up for ages and finally did. Didion’s memoir of the year after her husband’s death will resonate with anyone who’s lost a loved one. This bit especially:

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shck. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be “healing.” A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to “get through it,” rise to the occasion, exhibit the “strength” that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able to even get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and the meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absecne that follows the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness.

I also finished the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It is precisely as good as you’ve heard it is.

The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman is a recent release and it’s beautiful and touching and wrenching and honest. Love her work.

All the recipes I’ve been making lately come from Dana Jacobi’s The Essential Best Foods Cookbook. Unlike Rachael Ray, they don’t promise you’ll be done in 30 minutes but I haven’t run into anything that takes much longer. The food HAS been fantastic, including the Salmon with Coconut Curry Chutney that I served for dinner on Friday. P.S. Cookbooks on the kindle are THE WHIP.  Easiest way to ever shop for groceries. I’ve also discovered that the rice which cooks perfectly at 10,000 feet is Basmati, properly soaked.

I also read the latest Mercy Thompson book by Patricia Briggs – she’s a consistently good storyteller, period.

I can’t remember if I mentioned it previously but I THOROUGHLY enjoyed Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It’s one of those books whose cover design grabbed me but I didn’t pick it up. Finally got it on the kindle and it’s great. An interesting mystery with compelling characters, and a dose of social commentary thrown in. I’m very much looking forward to the next one.

I keep finding free books for the kindle, so I’ve got a mess of things in the TBR list. Probably I will not do much reading while Mom is in town and I’ve been keeping track of the books as I finish them on my facebook page. I believe I’m in the high 30s so far, which means hitting 50 by year’s end shouldn’t be tough.

High Altitude Cornbread

First attempt and it turned out pretty well. I kind of bastardized a recipe from somewhere else, but here’s what I did:

1 c all-purpose flour

2 c corn meal

1 c creamed corn

1tsp salt

2.5 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

2 T sugar

1.5 c milk

Baked at 425 for 35 minutes in a 9×9 pan.

It baked up really well, good texture and color. Next time I’ll add more sugar but that’s all I’d change.

Today’s adventure involved big rocks

I was in Glenwood Springs for most of the day. Nice city, really bad parking. On the way HOME from Glenwood Springs, we were on the Battle Mountain Pass and suddenly being waved over to the oncoming lane by a county sheriff. There was a chunk of mountain, bigger than the sheriff’s SUBURBAN, in the middle of the right lane. It had just fallen off the side of the mountain and landed in the road. It was ENORMOUS. It would have squashed Spouse’s truck. Luckily it had fallen before we arrived and it didn’t appear that anyone had been hurt. I expect that Battle Mountain was a BEAR during rush hour tonight.

In Glenwood, I picked up light fixtures to replace the really old (really ugly) ones in our kitchen/dining room. Once this section of the house is done, I think this place will finally feel like home. The pot rack shows up next week and then I’ll have the befores and afters.

There was also a great health food store which carries Greek Yogurt (though they were out) and I got some fantastic premade vindaloo sauce recommended by the owner. We had it for dinner tonight and it was GREAT. I picked up ingredients for meals the next couple of weeks and I’m looking forward to the house stuff being done and being able to actually just cook and look for work. Go bison burgers!

Piper got into the garbage yesterday and has had bowel distress since then. We’re hoping she worked her way through it because we had to leave her in the garage all day today – not my favorite thing. I also picked up a trash can that locks, so we won’t be having a repeat performance.

I also learned that City Market – a big chain of western grocery stores – is owned by Kroger – a big chain of midwest grocery stores. That provides a little cushion of familiarity, at least with regard to SOME of the more esoteric things I like to buy. No guarantees, obviously, but it provides a little reliability with regard to staples. Interestingly enough, I’m going to have to keep a cooler in the back of my car in case I have spontaneous trips over the hill. That way, if I pick up some grocery items I can be sure they stay cold on the way back to town.

When we got back to town, I dropped Spouse off at a meeting, came home, put away groceries,  cleaned up after Piper, and caught up in GoogleReader. I haven’t transferred my pics of the day yet, so that’s probably the last task before bed.

Samosa recipe roundup

Madhur Jaffrey’s.

Mamta’s.

Samosas baked in puff pastry.

Chutneys

Mint Cilantro

Cilantro

Mint, part two

I’m going to be testing these out (and maybe making my own variations – sweet potato samosas sound delish) over the next week.

eta:

Chicken Vindaloo, for good measure