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 chow
der 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.
down in lunch lady land
excessive ingredient alert! This is only an alert. I was seduced by the cover and heft of a cookbook a year or two ago by Guy Fieri. You know him, bleached blond spikes on dark roots, bling for miles and host (former?) of Minute to Win It! He wrote and/or inspired a cookbook called Food, Cookin it, Livin it, Lovin it. It has spin of fun graffiti style art and lengthy ingredient lists and is kind of bar food that tastes good because it’s fried or has cheese in it. I have been on a only cooking stuff that is easy kick and somehow I diverted into this. 10 hundred (copyright that!) ingredients and deep frying. For the love of all that’s holy.
Anyhow, I made Guy’s Sloppy Joe’s with Maui Onion Straws. Spicy-spicy and faintly sweet ground meat simmered down to a thick paste and topped with fried sweet onions. We used Vidalia’s instead of Maui’s-it being Florida and all. We used Martin’s potato buns and the recipe fed us 3 or 4 times. We could have easily halved it but since you are going the distance on measuring and pouring ingrediants you might as well be all in. I guess all those ingredients melded together in the pan to create something better than the sum of their parts. Deep frying isn’t really my favorite and to cut down on the process I used a stovetop pot and shallow fried just to ease the mess. The onions were seriously awesome. I think that adding fried onions is roughly the same as adding bacon. Anyway, I have had the song by Adam Sandler in my head for days now and you would be well served to not go watch this link but run to the store and get the ingredients for slop-sloppy joes.
*this is my four hundredth post-who would’ve thought?
absurdly addictive asparagus
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!
derailed
I don’t know what it was or is. I don’t feel like writing or even reading the blogs I really enjoy. Just easily distracted and …meh. I don’t know if it is the heat of impending summer or the business that preceded vacation coupled with the hit the ground running post. I started two posts and had drama. One deleted on accident somehow. One never came together. Then I just gave up. I’ve variously heard – ‘just give it 12 minutes.’ ‘Go home and write a blog. So, here I sit, gin and tonic with an extra squeeze of lime in hand and four or five topics I could write on. I guess I’ll pick up where I left off.
I met Robert Irvine. You know, of Food Network fame. Restaurant Impossible? He was the host of a fundraising event for Florida Hospital called the Gourmet Soiree and we were graciously given a pair of tickets to attend. The event kicked off with a silent auction – we bid on some cooking classes but were outbid. They also had a live auction where the apparently wealthy bid on thousands of dollars of vacations and BMW’s. It was fun though. The event centered around the idea of living to a healthy 100 which is an initiative of Florida Hospital and each table was honored to have their own chef. Our table had ‘chef’ Mark of a local(ish) butcher shop called the Meat House. If you are looking for quality and rarer cuts and proteins, you should check it out. Each table worked with their chef to prepare a healthy dinner, sort of in a Iron Chef Quick Fire kind of way. We had to rush to the Whole Foods supply tables and pick up the other ingredients for our dishes. We had something like 47 minutes to prep and cook dinner for 8. Mark made us chimichurri marinated steak, lemon chicken and we all attempted zucchini cakes that ended up as zucchini …hash browns. Only two pans and two burners at each station complicated the cooking and the room was FILLED with smoke. Everything was tasty though and we were treated at the end to a Robert Irvine recipe of panna cotta with an interesting mango and avocado salsa on top and some funny black bean (I think) chocolate thingies on the side. Each table snacked on hummus, tapenade and flatbreads and veggies while they made their own shallot vinaigrette for salad. It was a fun night and we were glad to have gone.
star wars weekends
we met Boba Fett! Well, we met Jeremy Bulloch, the actor who originally played Boba Fett and he signed a Lego base plate for Z. Anyway, Boba Fett was always his favorite because, ‘Everybody loves a bounty hunter.’ So, long story short, we got to the park at 6AM and got in line for a wrist band that entitled us to get in line for a fast pass. We were like in the last five or ten people in line to get one. The upside to this is that if you are at the park that early you are in like the second row and don’t have to pay
to park. 🙂 Then we got a fast pass for 5:05 PM! We made our way back to the Star Tours ride checking out a speeder (I sat on it) and a giant AT-AT. So we spent the morning riding rides -walking on one after the other with no lines until we stopped for lunch. We went to the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater for lunch. A big dark cave with a starry ceiling and you sit in booths shaped like old cars and watch 50’s B movie about aliens. It is supposed to evoke old drive-ins and it was actually pretty good. I had a Reuben with fries and it was a little too meaty for me but it had fresh buttered grilled bread and fries. The best part, they serve Cokes with syrup, like cherry or vanilla. I had a sugary sweet vanilla Coke. Awesome. It was a great way to cool off and wait out the afternoon for our turn in line. Well, we got our signature from the kindly Jeremy Bulloch. Soft spoken and very sweet. He told us it had been a long day and posed for a photo or two. We later wrapped up our day with a Darth Vader chocolate peanut butter cupcake. It was surprisingly moist and giant and had a whipped sweet peanut butter frosting under a layer of rich chocolate ganache-it had a bit of Disney tax but we were easily and happily able to split it. A sweet end to a very long day.
My Urban Pantry 