hurrah! We have a new fro-yo joint close to our house. This might sound like nothing but we really live in the psuedo-boonies. It is called Menchie’s and you pull your own yogurt and then add toppings as you wish. I had chocochella (like nutella I think) with marshmallow fluff, mochi, fudge and sprinkles. No joke. Cute spoons too. Welcome to the neighborhood!
stuffed zucchini
went over to Freshfields for our produce shopping and saw some fairly good sized zucchini. Z suggested we take them home and stuff them. I had no idea what he was talking about but figured I could find something online. I found a recipe at cooks.com for sausage stuffed zucchini.
I more or less followed the recipe but made some subtle changes which are here.
- 3 med. zucchini (2 lbs.)
- 3 links hot turkey sausage opened up and casing discarded
- healthy sprinkle of red pepper flakes
- 1/2 diced med sweet onion
- 4 oz reduced fat cream cheese, softened
- 1 (8 3/4 oz.) kernel corn, drained
- 1/2 c. shredded Cheddar (2 oz.)
Cut ends off each zucchini; halve zucchini lengthwise. In covered skillet cook zucchini, cut side down, in a small amount of water for 5 minutes. Drain. Scoop out pulp leaving 1/4″ shell. Discard watery guts.
In skillet cook sausage and onion until meat is brown and onion is tender. Drain fat. Sprinkle in red pepper flakes. Add cream cheese; cook and stir until cream cheese is melted. Stir in corn. Sprinkle with Cheddar cheese. Place the zucchini halves in 13x9x2 inch baking dish. Fill each zucchini with some sausage mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.
4-6 servings
chilled soups
forgot to mention one other thing I love about cruises. Chilled soups for dinner. I forwent most of the starters in favor of the chilled soups. I love them. Strawberry, Mango, that type of thing. The first one I ordered was a total newb laugh on us. I ordered the strawberry and they only brought a large shallow bowl with a molded strawberry thingy in the middle and a scatter of lime zest. I thought-that’s not what I was expecting. At that point I thought, that’s more hoity toity than I think it should be and only a tablespoon of gelatinized strawberries. The server then came back with a tiny pitcher of soup to pour in my bowl. I felt ridiculous and then happily spooned up my soup.
leap year
well, we made it to our first real anniversary. Happy Leap Year! We got married on February 29th 2008. Quite a lot of things have happened in this short time. Everyone asks, did you know you were getting married on leap day and what does that mean? Um, yes. And, we get to go big every four years! So this year we took our first cruise. We booked a five day cruise to the Bahamas and visited Half Moon Cay, Nassau and Freeport. We weren’t sure how we’d like cruising and how healthy it would be for Z so we stayed relatively close to home while we tested the waters.
It was super relaxing. I made my way through 3 books and 8 magazines over the course of my vacation week. We laid on the beach at Half Moon Cay (cold water only fit for northerners but we went swimming out to the buoys.) I don’t know when my blood thinned out.
The food. Being relatively foodish I wouldn’t say cruising stands up to my general food expectations but there sure was a lot of food. It actually really borders on ridiculous. By the last day I was passing up appetizers and desserts because it was all just too much. We never hit the midnight taco buffet and only ate lunch at the buffet twice when we were docked and then ate the fresh cooked Mongolian stir fry. I never could pass up the raspberry danish and croissants though. I think my favorite meal was a vegetarian pot pie filled with pumpkin. We tried most all of the didja options where you try things you’d never buy for fear of spending too much or being grossed out. The only one I couldn’t stomach were the frog legs but Z seemed to enjoy them. The other items tended toward conch, alligator, sushi and that ilk. We had tried most of them before but it was fun to try new preparations.
We had fun walking in Nassau and found a good Indian-Euro cafe where we had some butter chicken curry and jerk chicken wraps along with Goombay punch – a super fruity Bahamian soda. The butter chicken was really good and made a perfect dipping sauce for my fries! When Z ordered the server asked how how he’d like it and the man behind the counter says, ‘I am looking at you. I know how hot to make it.’ How can you say no to that? We also found a grocery store, which is my favorite thing to see on vacation. I love seeing how local people live, eat and shop. It makes me know that I could live and cook there-be local.
The last docking day was in Freeport where we took a bus tour to a local outdoor market and toured around the city seeing everything from local government buildings to local neighborhoods. We saw conch fritter stands, produce similar to home and clearly home bottled hot sauces.
We found cruising to be fun. We would probably try a different cruise line – Carnival being a little more over the top party than we tend to be. I was a little disappointed that the smoking deck was also the pool deck. I don’t know that we would have swum there anyway but it didn’t appeal. I would probably also look for a slightly bigger ship with more dining options than we were offered as we mostly were relegated to the main dining room. Our little room was nice (& tiny!) and the staff were excellent-singing to us twice for our anniversary and showering us with attention. Here’s to another four years!
pile
I have a friend in Denver who often called her mom’s cooking pile. I am not 100% sure why although I have come to love the term and define it not as something bad, but as a pile of yummy grub that I can’t help but love eating as a flavorful mix instead of as distinctly different dinner items. We made this pile of black beans with apple salsa, rotisserie chicken and brown rice upon our return from vacation. It is out of the January issue of Bon Appetit and part of the traditional January healthy eating the New Year spurs. It was so refreshing and comfortable-also filled with complementary flavors, savory chicken, bright apples and creamy beans. My photo looks so like theirs it is uncanny. I changed out the chili powder for cayenne because that was what we had.
My Urban Pantry 