Chicken Yakitori

It's that time of year again!

The weather is getting warm. Our days have been in 70's and 80's this whole week. Our forecast shows nary a night under 40º. It's those days when the sun is beating down on your shoulders and you have an ice cold beer in your hand that grilling is just... the best.

I mean, who wants to stand over a hot stove when the weather has just begun to break? I don't. The garden is just starting to grow and flowers are in bloom. If I can sit outside in a lawn chair and flip dinner every once in while, oh yeah, I'm gonna do it. 

Lamb Ragù

-with Orecchiette and Sautéed Garlic Broccoli Rabe

Oh, you guys are going to love me. Actually, let me rephrase that- if you have some ground lamb on hand or can find some at the store, you are going to love me. 

This sauce hits it out of the park! It's savory. It's spicy. It doesn't taste like my usual pasta sauce, thanks to ingredients seldom used such as lamb, coriander, and mint. I always, always, always think that I hate mint in savory foods. I think that's because mint has always tasted overpowering to me. I remember one year when the hubby and I were in Cincinnati visiting his cousin and his wife, and I ordered lamb chops with mint jelly at a fancy steakhouse. The lamb chops? Amazing and to-die-for. The mint jelly? It tasted like toothpaste on top of my lamb. Sick. Have no fear friends, there's not enough mint in this recipe to evoke any images of a masked man sticking sharp tools into your uncomfortably stretched mouth while simultaneously trying to engage you in conversation. 

25 Rice Recipes

Rice. I love rice. It's a simple, affordable, and versatile grain product that's very familiar to most Americans. You can fry it, and come up with fried rice or even pan-fried rice cakes. You can bake it inside stuffed peppers, or casseroles loaded with veggies. You can serve it with a saucy stir fry with the sole intention of using it to soak up that sauce. One of my favorite ways to eat rice? In a bowl with a little soy sauce drizzled over it. Simple. Yet delicious. I credit rice with helping our budget when we first moved to Kentucky. Due to its low price, I added rice to a ton of dishes and served it often in our first years in the bluegrass state. We still eat a lot of it, even though things are much different these days. I wish I could get the hubby to enjoy brown rice, but you can't win all the battles :-)

Creamy Chicken, Potato, & Kale Soup

This is truly one of those soups that came about by me throwing stuff in the pot. I'd picked up a rather large rotisserie chicken after getting a steroid shot one day. Because who feels like cooking after that, am I right? It's pretty much routine for me to throw the chicken carcass into the crockpot and make broth out of it the night we have it. So there I was. I had leftover chicken. I had freshly made chicken broth. It also happened to be the day after the Super Bowl, which meant I also had a bunch of potato innards on hand from the Potato Skins the hubby and I had devoured on our holiday. 

Chicken. Chicken broth. Very soft, almost mashed potatoes. What would you do? 

I chose soup!

Enchilada Stacks

-with chicken, black beans, spinach, and pepper jack cheese

Just call me "The Globetrotting Eater"!

I'm doing pretty good this month. An Asian recipe, a Greek recipe, a cupcake recipe (you gotta throw one of those in every now and then), and now a Mexican recipe. I'm spanning the world over here! 

Variety is good, yes? I think so. I know lots of people who eat the same foods, day after day, year after year, for their entire lives. Never getting outside the box. While it's true, I could and do eat certain foods everyday (hello turkey sandwiches!), I need diversity. There's something amazing and life-changing about discovering a new food that you've never tried before. It's almost like falling in love.

Greek Pizza

Happy Friday all!

I really did try to blog yesterday, to ensure I got my normal 3-a-week in. However, yesterday was a morning (or rather afternoon) that I got one of those steroid shots in my back. And I'm not allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight before the procedure. That includes coffee. 

So I sat down to write yesterday and was heartily displeased to see all the existential, angsty sentences that my caffeine challenged-creativity managed to cough up. Whiny, here. Gloom and doom, there. All because Jessica's brain was without it's normal amount of coffee. Eventually, I erased everything I wrote and said, "Tomorrow then!"

Kung Pao Chicken Zoodles

I'm joining the zoodle craze.

Sure, February doesn't seem like the right time of year to start, um, zoodling, but it cannot be helped. I was catching up on reading the blogs I follow last month, in the evening and after a couple of glasses of wine. One of my favorite bloggers, Lindsay from Pinch of Yum, featured a recipe using spiralized veggies and that was all she wrote. I've had a spiralizer on my Amazon wishlist for months, but something clicked.  I had to have it. I wanted spiralized bell peppers, and cabbage, and most importantly, zoodles. The wine clearly muddled my thinking, and before I knew it, I'd already clicked "purchase" on Amazon.

Does this happen to anyone else late in the evening when they have a nice wine haze going on? I swear. Luckily, the contraption was only $30. It could have been worse :-)

Plus, the zoodles! Ohhhhhh, the zoodles...

Spicy Sesame Beef Rice Bowls

What, what? It's January, and I've already posted as many Asian-style recipes this month as I did all of last year? (That would be 2!)

I told you guys I was going to get more Asian dishes on the table, and what do you know? Another for the books! You are going to love these rice bowls. There is soooooo much delicious flavor, and guess what? A ton of veggies! I have to ask myself, what's not to like about these bowls? Crisp red and yellow peppers, tender spinach, flavorful marinated sirloin, plus crunchy wanton strips, sesame seeds, and plenty of dressing? 

Sign me up! 

Chopped Kale & Brussels Sprout Salad

-with garlic croutons, pomegranate arils, asiago cheese, fresh lemon zest, toasted almonds, and poppyseed dressing

Boy, my timing on this one is sure off, huh?

Tucked away here in my Northeastern corner of Kentucky, the weather forecasters aren't sure what we are going to get here. Right now, they think the line may be south of the Ohio River. As in, north of the river may only get 2-4 inches. Well, we live basically right on the river as we are about 3-4 miles away. We are either going to get a normal 2-4 inches or we are going to get 2 feet. Personally, I'm hoping it's only a couple of inches. The chihuahuas hate when the snow is taller than them, and I hate waddling through it all to feed the birds out back. At any rate, salad is not the name of the game for this weather.

The Best Homemade Poppyseed Dressing

-plus 5 recipes to use it on!

What, what? Poppyseed dressing in the hizouze! That's right, I can talk extensively about something as boring as a simple salad dressing.

It's true, salad dressings are pretty effortless. They're just a mixture of a few ingredients, emulsified together ambitiously to create an effect hoping to make people forget that what they are chomping on is indeed nutritious but most likely, not delicious. Or at least, not the filet-mignon-and-roasted-garlic-mashed-potatoes-all-covered-in-cheese kind of delicious. But sometimes, you run into a salad dressing that takes you far away from the norm. That makes even lettuce taste good. That doesn't taste like any dressing you've bought at the store before. I'm here to tell you, this Poppyseed Dressing has managed to maneuver its way to the top of my list in about 2 years. I discovered the recipe, yep, 2 years ago and a bottle of it has been in my fridge ever since. I keep it on hand 100% of the time now, and I'll tell you why-

Shrimp Pad Thai

It's the first recipe post of 2016! Yahoo!

You guys. Do you know how many Asian recipes I posted last year? 

This is embarrassing...

It was 2. Yep, you read that right. A Ginger-Soy Glazed Mahi Mahi in January of last year and a Shrimp and Broccoli Lo Mein in March. This is just crazy to me. When I was first learning to cook, Asian was my mainstay. But last year was a bonafide melee of Mexican and Italian. That just has to change. 

Top 15 Recipes of 2015

Happy New Year's Eve!

Unbelievable that it's the last day of the year. I feel like I have been on vacation this week (much needed after Christmas Cookies) with my slacker posts. Indeed, it's much easier to post round-up's and articles about reading and summing the year up. I was going to post this yesterday, but alas, it was my birthday friends! Yep, this ol' girl turned 29 again... Or maybe a little more than that. Haha.

Spinach & Mushroom Stuffed Peppers

Hello friends! Up on deck today, a vegetarian stuffed pepper. Filled to the brim with marinara sauce, rice, spinach, mushrooms, panko, and of course, cheese! These are a great alternative to the standard stuffed pepper that is usually filled with a meat mixture. Use leftover rice, and you've really got yourself a meal that seems like it would take a long time but actually comes together very fast.

Chicken Fajita Casserole

Chicken Fajitas? In casserole form?

You mean, no screaming hot plate of peppers and chicken to burn my hands on? No constructing-every-portion-as-you-go? And, if you aren't constructing fajitas along the way, does that mean no extraneous plates of toppings lying around that you will eventually have to wash later that night?

If all that hasn't convinced you, how about this? Layers of tortilla, Spanish rice, smoky chicken, and sautéed peppers and onions, all tied together with a super-cheesy queso sauce?

Yep. You had me at queso :-)

Grown-Up Tuna Salad

Admittedly, it's November. That time of year when the weather is turning chilly, and everyone is craving food that's warm and comforting. Lasagna. Chili. Chowders. Meats slow roasted in the crock pot. Beef stews with potatoes and carrots. You get the idea. This salad is none of those things. But, if you are going to have all that comfort food for dinner, what are you going to have for lunch??

Chicken, Spinach, and Mushroom Melts

I love sandwiches. Love, love, love them. Before this summer and my guacamole-a-thon, I had been on a sandwich kick for a long time. A long, long time, eating a sandwich every day for lunch. I can't explain this behavior, it just is. I get stuck on something, and then I eat it. And eat it, and eat it, and eat it. Pretty much until I'm sick of it. So happened with my turkey sandwich. Here's the thing about my sandwich kicks- they last a long time and they always come back. When I lived in Oregon, I spent most of 2009 on a sandwich kick. The building I worked at had a cafeteria where I found the most magical turkey sandwich. I ate it almost every day that year. Yep, I'm that weirdo. 

Lasagna Soup

Ah, a recipe other than chicken. It warms my heart.

In all seriousness, it does feel like the hubby and I have been on a chicken rampage. We already don't eat a lot of red meat, we rarely eat pork, and all the other animals are not nearly as affordable and easy to buy at the store as chicken. Plus, our local grocery store has a pretty decent selection of organic chicken. The free-range kind with no hormones or antibiotics type of chicken. It's 100% more expensive, which might be why we've cut down on all others meats, but it's better for everyone. 

Except maybe our wallet.

What I Learned In My 2nd Year of Gardening

Well, I think it's time.

I officially put the garden to bed yesterday. Actually, I did most of the work on Friday before our first heavy frost. I was at the gym, walking on the treadmill, minding my own business when the local garden guy came on the news. He advised getting any vegetables you might have in the garden, out of the garden before the cold weather. I still had a few tomatoes and peppers on the vines, so I got to work. 

I pulled the last few green tomatoes, and put them in closed paper bags in the basement. They'll be ripe in a couple of weeks, and that will be a nice treat. I pulled up the tomato and pepper plants, and added them to the compost. 

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Garlic Butter

What?!

It's Friday, and I'm going to talk about Brussels sprouts? That most odiferous, often chucked-through-the-air-by-a-toddler, root-type vegetable that everyone seems to hate?

Yep. I sure am. Because Brussels Sprouts are one of my favorite things. I'm one of those weird people that has always liked Brussels sprouts. Especially when crispy from the oven with a smidge of salt and melty garlic butter for dipping.

I even got the hubby to eat these. He is one of those aforementioned vegetable-throwing people. We've been together almost 10 years, and I can count on two fingers the amount of times I've seen him eat Brussels sprouts. One of those fingers was this recipe.

Bean and Rice Burrito Bowls

Y'all know I love Mexican. You should also know that burrito bowls are one of my favorite things ever. Ever. I love tortillas, so I love my burritos, but let's face it. A bowl full of the good stuff you usually cram inside the burrito can feel so much healthier than chowing down on a burrito-sized tortilla.  And, if you like lettuce in your burrito (call me Rabbit, cuz' I sure do!), it's almost like having a salad. Only the dressing is a combination of guacamole, salsa, and creamy beans which intertwine into the best possible partnership. Break out your tortilla chips, peeps, and let's talk burrito bowls!