pinterest – My Urban Pantry

this is not my summer bucket list

June 8, 2014Leave a comment

I’ve been listening to a podcast lately by Joy the Baker and Tracy from Shutterbean.com and on a recent cast they talked about their summer bucket lists. In fact at Shutterbean right now it is list mania. I love lists and am also terrible at bucket lists. There is something about grouping disparate things together in such a way that they make sense and/or the satisfaction of checking the things off once they are a. procured b. completed or c. dismissed for their sheer ridiculousness. It can be anything–a grocery list, a to do list, a wish list. I even write things on after the fact if I completed them with the rest of said this just for the sheer joy of checking them off. Oh the humanity! All that said, I haven’t even done a great job at my new years cookbook and fill me up lists although I’ve made a whole lot of new things and been busy at doing all sorts of things. I’m working on one cooking project that should be wrapping up soon and that I CAN”T TALK ABOUT which is both so wrong and so right all at the same time and has taken a lot more time and work than I had expected.

On another totally unrelated note. We have been eating a summer (could be on a bucket list but isn’t) staple for the last month or so in various forms–corn. In Florida the season is earlier than say, Iowa, and we start into corn mid-May and finish before we wolf down much more (at least at the 12 ears for $2 price point.) We have eaten quite a few really delicious dishes. We had summer corn chowder from Food 52. We scarfed Grilled Corn Chipotle soup from the Blue Corn Cafe cookbook and we also ate something totally new from pinterest – corn and bacon pancakes with sorghum butter. Wow! I was totally scared that they would be terrible and wouldn’t turn out but they were awesome. I followed the recipe pretty closely except for swapping the chives with scallions (I had a huge package from the farm stand.) and probably doubling the bacon. We also made sorghum butter instead of regular butter because I had a couple of jars in the pantry I was itching to break into. They turned out perfectly and are a wonderful vehicle for my favorite bottle of bourbon barrel aged maple syrup from Blis that I got for Christmas. Crunchy corn, salty bacon, sweet syrup, and tangy sorghum with a bit of spice and the best brinner a girl could ask for. Do you have a summer bucket list? What’s on it?

Pinterest for the win!

February 10, 20141 Comment

if you follow my ‘that looks good’ board on Pinterest you will mostly find things that appeal to me for two reasons. The ingredients and the photo. Of course the photo. If the picture is bad and there is a total lack of styling and there is ugly text you can just forget it. So, really the fact that I pinned this at all is a total laugh. I pinned a recipe for a Big Mac. That’s right. Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. I used to torment my parents from the back of our VW Rabbit singing this song as they drove my friends and I to camp. TORMENT. We didn’t even go to McDonalds often-only the occasional burger if my parents were going out for dinner somewhere fancy or we’d pick up nuggets on the way out of town in our motorhome. But, the reality is this. For all the finer foods that I love I also really like some of the dodgiest ones too. Home. Made. Big. Macs. We usually use turkey but I went ahead with beef. Delicious. I don’t like sesame seeds and I figured we didn’t need ten buns of bread so I chose slider buns and used two bottoms-one for the bottom and one for the middle to get that authentic Big Mac thing going on. I made the special sauce too instead of picking up some thousand island dressing. It was just so good. Sharp cheddar instead of American cheese. Pulling out all the stops here. Sliced spicy McClure’s dills I got in a pickler bucket from my sister for Christmas. That’s another story. Z insisted on wrapping one up so it would come out of the paper all squashy and real. That was the picture I liked best. I baked some restaurant style fries in the oven and we just went to town on that stuff. Seriously, I’d make this for guests and they wouldn’t be sad about it. Pinterest for the win on this one. Accessible things because you have a veritable encyclopedia at your fingertips.

botham burger

July 15, 2013Leave a comment

jamie oliver calls all burgers botham because his dad called them that in the pub they own. Here is a botham burger I made from pinterest from a blog called cherry on a cake (right.) It is loaded up with curry mayo, caramelised onions and a fresh tomato. I didn’t really follow the recipe for the burger – fail for me. But the curry mayo was fun and I loved it. I’ll use it as a dip for future potato-based things when it fits with what we are eating. I could totally see using it for roasted Spanish-style potatoes. Anyhow, we served this with Colmans curry sauce for roasted garlic Alexia tots. The British are coming!

chowder-hound

June 23, 2013Leave a comment

I usually reserve the majority of my soup eating to the fall and winter because I hate to be hot. Once the temperatures outside breach 80 degrees I fall back on quicker meals – burgers, salads and things that cook in under an hour. Somehow this soup sneaked past my internal thermometer and we ate it for dinner a couple of weeks ago. It is the product of a pin from the blog, eat, live, run and can be found here. She mentions that it is made better by bacon grease and in general that seems to be the way of things. I don’t shout bacon from the highest mountain but we do seem to eat it in a variety of different ways. I think it would also do well with butter if you are not inclined to eating pork. This chowder is differentiated by roasting poblano peppers (another thing that should be most eaten in the fall when they are fresh from New Mexico) and then cooking down the potatoes. We ate this soup for a few days and it was pretty good if not a bit standard. I’m not really jonesed for summer and am already glad to have crossed the summer solstice and heading for fall. I am planning some Southeast Asian soups for this summer that I am looking forward to though-Tom Ka Gai and Malaysian Laksas. I think their spicy heat will be cooling and right for the dog days of summer.

absurdly addictive asparagus

June 16, 20133 Comments

well, that’s what food52 said. I don’t know if that was exactly true or not but this recipe is really great and I am already planning to make it again so you decide… A changeup from our usual oven olive oil tossed oven roasted asparagus, this one is pan fried and has lots of simple little add-ins that bring on flavor in a new way. We had this veggie with another pinned recipe for cacio e pepe – which is a pasta dish with exactly 4 ingredients (water, pasta, romano cheese & pepper-soo easy!!!) so I cooked up the veg while Z made the pasta and dinner was served. I am fairly sure I could eat this asparagus dish on it’s own too for lunch and be a perfectly happy camper. It is filled with good things like pine nuts, prosciutto, leeks. orange and lemon zest. Even if it feels a little absurd – it is awesome!