Day Twenty-four--Calzones

It's Friday! In our home, we love Friday nights. Friday means pizza and movie night. We are watching Jaws: The Revenge. Good times.

We switched from having pizza to making calzones.

I made the dough early in the afternoon so it had plenty of time to rise. I then cooked up some spicy beef italian sausage. Chris and Amanda gave us a couple of samples of the grass fed sausage and we decided to give it a try tonight. It was very good and very spicy. Perfect. After the sausage was cooked, I fried up an onion, a red pepper and a green pepper. While those were cooking, I mixed some ricotta cheese, some mozzarella and some parmesan cheese.

I had enough dough to make four individual calzones. Aidan just had the cheese mixture in his. Tim, Connor, and I had the sausage and pepper mix. I pulled out the extra tomato sauce I had from earlier in the week and used that for dipping. It was delicious. They were really easy to put together and we have lunch for tomorrow too. It was also nice to have a switch up from pizza, although a calzone is basically a pizza pocket.

I don't have much else to report for now. I'm reading Animal, Vegetable and Miracle still and I will have a lot to "talk" about when I get done with it. I am really leaning towards eating seasonally though. It will be interesting to figure out what is really in season. When you go into the grocery store there is always a great variety of every fruit and vegetable. I never really thought too much about what was really in season. I'm happy with where we are right now with the eating of real food and not processed food. Sure, there is a little extra work involved, but it's worth it to be able to pronounce what is in my food.

I have a menu to do for next week, so until tomorrow...Happy Cooking!

Day Twenty-three--Greek Salad

Sorry that I'm posting a day late. I was beat after dinner last night. Actually, I was in bed most of the day yesterday because I felt pretty darn crappy. I'm pleased that I was still able to get out of bed and make dinner. I have Tim to thank for help though. He went out and got a loaf of ciabatta bread and toasted it up for croûtons.


Greek salad

This dinner was tasty! I wasn't sure how it was going to taste as I was putting it together. This recipe (do you really need a recipe for a salad?!) was from my Jamie Oliver 20Minute Meal app. It was several stages and I kept asking Tim "But when does the lettuce come into play?" The dressing was olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and oregano. He also says to slice a red onion and pour a splash of red wine vinegar over the slices for a little bit. This made the onions taste fantastic. The only thing I didn't like, and will leave out next time, are the avocados. It called for 2 avocados and I only used one and I didn't feel like it went well with the salad. The lettuce and onions and everything were crisp and crunchy and then I would get a bite of avocado and nearly gag. I've made another salad of his with avocado in and loved it...just not this one.

The kids didn't really like this recipe. Connor and Aidan ate the croûtons, and a couple of bites of the lettuce but they really didn't like it. Tim and I really enjoyed it. It was nice to have something really light for a change. Tim was also joking that we had Mexican on Cinco de Mayo and that we were having Greek salad to commemorate the collapse of the Greek financial status. He's a riot, no?

Well, I hope I'm able to get more accomplished today. I am going to go start a loaf of bread and I need to start pizza dough this afternoon for tonight's dinner. I'll try and post tonight. Until then, happy cooking!

Day Twenty-two--Fajitas!

I'm a dork. I had to have Mexican today in honor of Cinco de Mayo. Not that I really need an excuse to eat Mexican food. It's one of my favorites!

Of course, dinner had to start out with one of these:

Good 'ol Corona.

I had pondered drinking one while I was cooking up our dinner, but then thought better of it. I just can't drink like I used to. That is probably a good thing.

Chicken Fajitas with roasted peppers and onions

Dinner tonight was delicious. I just chopped up 3 organic chicken breasts and cooked them with a Simply Organic Fajita flavor packet. I also had a pan with onions, green peppers and red peppers frying up along side the chicken. Connor came home from karate and helped me stir the veggies and chicken while I made the guacamole. Connor also shredded some cheddar cheese for me too. He's quite the helper in the kitchen. It's interesting because Connor likes to do cooking on the stove and preparing meals and Aidan loves the baking side of the cooking. He's always helping with the breads, cakes and cookies. I'm very lucky to have two little helpers who enjoy playing in the kitchen.

Dinner was a great success. We each had two fajitas and then we were stuffed. It was thumbs up all around. I have to say that it's been pretty easy to keep up with the cooking so far. I'm happy because I know we are all eating real food and that is going to keep us healthy. I hope everyone has had a great day. Until tomorrow, happy cooking!

Day Twenty-One--Ravioli

Hello to all out there in cyber world. I'm happy to report that tonight's dinner was a success again. There was a lot of work in this one, but Tim helped and we had fun bumping into each other in the kitchen and giggling over the ridiculous reports on NPR.

Tonight's dinner is from a cookbook I picked up for Aidan over the weekend. I ran into the book store to get my book and had to look at the kids' books. Honestly, I can't be let loose in a bookstore. I blame my mother for this. Anywhooo, I picked up a cookbook for Connor and a cookbook for Aidan. I want them to feel at home in the kitchen too. I want them to be able to feed themselves and perhaps future girlfriends in the very far off future. For Aidan, I got The Silver Spoon for Children. It's a really great cookbook. It's nice and sturdy which is nice for working in the kitchen. Tonight we made ravioli from scratch.

Fresh Ravioli with Jamie's Awesome red sauce

I used the pasta recipe in this book instead of the one from The River Cottage cookbook. I think the recipe in the River Cottage cookbook was easier to work with. Tim made the filling and filled the little rounds of dough. I made the sauce and it simmered while we were working on the ravioli. The ravioli were supposed to be vegetarian, but Tim found the chunk of mozzarella that was wrapped with prosciutto and basil. He used that with the ricotta. It was a long process, but like I said, we had fun. The worst part was when the boys started cruising through the kitchen and snagging the ravioli as it was coming out of the water. The dinner all came together at the same time. We had the raviolis with the sauce and just a simple side salad. Aidan said it was the best dinner yet. It's funny. He's said that a couple of times already.

There were no left overs from this meal. The boys pounded the ravioli down like there was no tomorrow. There is a lot of the sauce left over. There was filling left over too. We've decided that since we had pizza just a couple of days ago, on Friday we're going to try and make calzones instead of pizza. I know, it's pretty much the same thing as pizza, but it will be a little different.

Tim made drinks for us tonight to go with our dinner. I turned mine into dessert. We've been having a cocktail every night lately. My favorite is the Sand in Your Shorts. Tonight we had White Spiders. It was minty and refreshing. I sipped it through dinner, but decided to throw a small scoop of vanilla ice cream (from our favorite dairy) into it and make it a dessert drink.

White Spider

I think that is all I have for tonight. I'm tired and can't really think right now. I hope this post makes a little sense. Until tomorrow...where we will be having Mexican for Cinco de Mayo...Happy cooking!

Day Twenty--Steak with beans and zucchini

Wow. Twenty days. That's pretty cool. I know that for the most part we are all feeling better and I'm happy because we aren't throwing our money at crappy fast food places any more. How many days left? 345. Hmmm, I don't have a problem with cooking for all of those days. I'm kind of enjoying the cooking process now. What is killing me is trying to come up with menus. Also, the cost.

Ok, here comes my rant that I've been working on for two days. Produce. I was mentally keeping track of my produce as I weighed and put my labels on my produce. Two red peppers=$4.51. Four or five small sweet onions=$6.37. My produce consisted of: cabbage, potatoes, romaine lettuce (not pre-cut and bagged), red peppers, organic lemons, avocados, asparagus, organic tomatoes, onions, organic carrots, a red onion, and organic apples. Cost for said produce: $58.40. Granted, I did get a couple of organic things. The apples were only twenty cents a pound more for the organic. The bag of organic carrots was only 2.39. What killed me were the avocados and the asparagus. Come on, asparagus is in season now. Shouldn't that be cheaper? I can't wait until our farmer's market is up and running again. It will take some getting used to with making menus and shopping lists out earlier, but I am hoping things will be cheaper. I'm also planning on buying extra in season items so that I can freeze or can them to enjoy in the off season.

Tonight's menu was supposed to be grilled tuna steaks on top of beans and zucchini but again, the cost issue made me mad. The ahi tuna was $20.99 a pound. I needed four tuna steaks and they looked to be good sized steaks and I figured it was going to cost me close to 80 dollars for tuna steaks. Uh, no thank you. I left the seafood counter disgusted. I'm thinking we aren't going to be eating a lot of fish. I didn't pick anything else up to replace the tuna and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Tim suggested that we get one of the many steaks out of our freezer and grill that up. That is what we did.

Steak with beans and zucchini

The recipe was a Jamie Oliver one and super duper simple. The cannelloni beans were just cooked with a little bit of olive oil and a clove of garlic. The zucchini was grilled and then tossed with a tiny bit of olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. It was delicious. Aidan liked the steak, but said the beans were too "beany" and he took one bite of the zucchini and gagged. Connor, on the other hand loved it all and ate most of the zucchini. Tim and I both liked it all. I can't really remember what the rest of this week holds as to menus. I'm hoping they are mostly vegetarian because I'm kind of getting sick of meat. Tonight was supposed to be tuna, but we made the best out of it. Thanks to the grill master Tim for the grilling duties again and a huge thanks to Dad B and Laurie for the most impressive grill. We are using it a lot. Happy cooking!

Day Nineteen--Pizza

We spent the day at the zoo today. We drove 2 hours and 40 minutes to get there, spent 4 hours there and then drove 2 hours and 40 minutes home. We got home at 6. I actually made pizza dough. I waited one hour for the dough to rise and then Connor punched it down. We waited 35 more minutes for the second rise and then made pizzas.

Margherita pizza

We are eating pizza a little after 8 but it's delicious. I was only able to eat two pieces because I'm tired and frankly, I'm full of water. It was hot out again today and being in the sun for four hours wiped me out. I have been drinking water non-stop since we've been home. The good thing about that is that I have a TON of pizza left over for lunches for the next couple of days.

The dough is the normal one that I make. The sauce I used is the left over tomato sauce from the Martha meal earlier in the week. I bought balls of mozzarella and just threw chunks of that on the pizza. I will not buy the pre-shredded crap anymore. I had a bunch of organic tomatoes that I needed to use up before they went bad so instead of my usual topping fest, I went simple. Cheese, tomatoes and basil. My poor basil plants have been picked clean.

I wish I had more to say right now, but all I want to do is crawl into bed and read my new book. I got Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I tried to read it last night in bed and didn't make it through the first page before I was asleep. I'm going to shoot for two pages tonight. I still want to complain about my shopping trip yesterday, but not now. Let's just say that I can't wait until our farmer's market is up and running again. Until tomorrow, happy cooking!

Day Eighteen--Burgers!

This will likely be a short post because, well, I'm tired and cranky. I'm trying to cool off too. It's hard to believe two days ago it was a high of 49 and I had the heat running and today it was 92 out while we were out shopping. Not a happy camper.

I didn't put up a post last night because we were at a fantastic presentation by a friend of mine. Pizza was served after the presentation. I had one piece of it and then had to come home and suck on the Pepto bottle. Yes, I drink it straight out of the bottle. After that we went back over to another friends house and hung out until almost 11, drinking margaritas and just chit chatting under the stars. It was fun. I didn't feel the need to post the dinner because it wasn't home made and it was most certainly not good for us.

Tonight though, we are back on track. I knew that I wanted to do something on the grill because it was supposed to be nice out. I just didn't realize it would be that hot. Tim did the actual grilling and it only took him a couple of minutes, so I say I had the worst end of the stick. I had to make a Mississippi Mud cake for Connor. That was his choice for his 10th birthday. It's funny, because it's the third year in a row he has chosen this as what he wants for his cake. Thankfully, we only make it once a year. It is crazy sweet. It's good, but almost too sweet, and I'm a sweet eater. So, I made the cake, I made potato salad for dinner, and I made burger buns from scratch. I was in the kitchen all afternoon and it was hot.

That leads us to dinner:

Burgers, grilled asparagus, and potato salad

The asparagus was easy. I just used a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper on them and threw them in a grill basket and Tim threw it on the grill for a couple of minutes. Some of them got a little crispy because he made himself a martini while they were grilling. The potato salad is just a typical potato salad with potatoes, eggs, mayo, mustard, salt and pepper. I didn't put any onions or celery into it because of Aidan. He did eat the asparagus. He had a few pieces and then said he wasn't sure he liked it or not. I was cool with it because he had already had a bunch before he came to that realization.

I think that is all I had for now. I want to rant about my shopping for groceries today but I will save that for tomorrow. I'm not sure how tomorrow's night dinner is going to get pulled off. We will be spending the day in Syracuse with some friends, going to the zoo. I have do it yourself pizza planned, but I don't think I have the gumption to go make the dough right now. I suppose I'll have to wait and see what time we get home in the afternoon and if I'll have two hours to spare for the process.

Ok, now I'm done. Happy cooking everyone. I'll leave you with a picture of Connor's cake.

Mississippi Mud Cake