Jan 4
I've been intrigued by the sea food mix at one of our local grocery stores for quite some time. I seem to walk by it on almost every trip to the store and even from time to time pick it up and peer into the clear plastic window. So, when I ran across this recipe from Self.com, although not exactly the same ingredients, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to finally buy the seafood mix and give it a try. I simply substituted 3/4 of the bag for the seafood called for in the recipe. The results were quite tasty.
Thai Seafood Hot Pot
Serves 4
INGREDIENTS
- 4 oz dried rice stick noodles
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 2 shallots, thinly sliced
- 2 cloves garlic, smashed
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 2 1/2 cups chicken stock
- 1 can (14 oz) diced tomatoes, with juice
- 1 cup light coconut milk
- 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
- 2 tablespoons fish sauce
- Zest of 2 limes (about 1 tbsp)
- 1-2 Thai red chiles, thinly sliced
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 stalk of lemongrass, minced
- 6 sprigs cilantro, plus more for garnish
- 2 sprigs basil, plus more for garnish
- 1/2 cup canned straw mushrooms
- 12 large shrimp, peeled and deveined
- 4 large sea scallops, cut in half
- 1 cup frozen calamari rings, thawed
- Juice of 1 lime
PREPARATION
Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Stir in noodles; remove from heat. Let stand until noodles soften, 7 to 10 minutes; drain. Heat oil in a large pot over medium heat. Cook shallots, garlic and onion until soft, 3 to 5 minutes. Add stock, juice from tomatoes, coconut milk, vinegar, fish sauce, lime zest, chiles, sugar and lemongrass. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Add cilantro and basil; reduce heat to medium-low; simmer 10 minutes. Remove garlic, cilantro and basil from pot; add tomatoes and mushrooms. Return to a simmer. Add shrimp and scallops; cook 2 minutes. Add calamari and lime juice. Season with salt and pepper. Divide noodles among 4 bowls; top with broth and seafood; garnish with remaining basil and cilantro.
Dec 29
Made graham crackers tonight for the first time. The recipe came from the same book that had the instructions to make bacon.
Dec 27
Zach got me
this great book for Christmas and I decided to jump right in with making bacon. It's a 7 day process, but now all I have to do is wait and flip the bag in the fridge once a day. Once the meat has cured, I'll smoke and then slice the bacon. So far the process is really easy and makes me wonder why I didn't make my own bacon sooner. Next up, graham crackers.
Nov 22
With a holiday next week and a busy week at work, today I cooked all of our meals through Wednesday. I like making our meals in mass for the week ahead. It's nice not to worry if you have all the ingredients and will have to make a last minute run to the store; plus it frees up a lot of time in the evenings both in prep work and clean up afterwards. I also baked a couple of loaves of bread, rye and wheat, so we can have them to go with our meals or to make sandwiches for lunch. You'll see from our menu that we've got pork curry for tonight, mushroom ragout with polenta for tomorrow, then clementine pork stir fry and squash risotto to round out the short week. We've also got beef stew to mix things up for lunch.
Nov 18
Today we finally had success. One of our chickens laid an egg. You're probably saying, of course, chickens lay eggs, its no big surprise. But, this endeavor has been challenging with two chicks falling victim to Honey, the chick that became a rooster and was later attacked and butchered and finally the cold and relocation of the chickens into a portable coop in the heated garage.
Below are pictures of the lovely ladies. It was the buff that laid the egg. (Our chickens are not named as they'll likely end up on our dinner plate one day) Also there are some pictures of the egg. We put it in the egg carton and found it interesting how much smaller it was compared to the organic free range commercial eggs we buy. I called my friend Karen who is also raising chickens and assured her that "yes, although we were doubtful, eggs really do come from chickens."
Oct 24
Zach and I did our usual Saturday grocery shopping this morning, but decided since it was so nice out that we'd go by bike. While we've run errands to the store on bike, we've never done full fledged grocery shopping. Zach hooked up Frodo's bike trailer and off we went. About two and a half hours later we were done, only about a half hour additional time with the biking (we also stopped to eat some spring rolls by the duck pond at the library). If you read Zach's previous post from our food blog, here, about our grocery shopping habits, you'll see why it took so long. Today we went to Natural Pantry, mainly to comparison shop organic veggies vs. our CSA box, New Sagaya, the new eastern European market, International Market and finally Fred Myers.
Oct 18
On Friday Zach and I went to Charlie's Bakery for lunch, which reminds me of the kinds of places we ran across in Taiwan. There I had two new dishes, which I thought was very adventurous, especially since I wasn't feeling well. First, since I was starving, I had a chicken and vegetable bun. That was followed up by shrimp wonton noodle soup. Both were delicious and sorry no pictures, I was so hungry and busy eating I didn't think to pull out my camera.
Oct 1
I am in the middle of a two week tour of the west spending some time in Denver with my friend Karen. I have tried a few things, mostly food - duck confit sandwich, blueberry lavender lemonade and a sea salt dark chocolate bark. All of these were wonderfully tasty.
