june 30, 2012 dinner

it stopped raining late saturday afternoon, and turned into a beautiful evening. here is the scene just below our campsite.

our thoughts and stomachs turned away from the beautiful last day of june sunset, and we set about making dinner, cod cooked with a lime-cilantro-parsley-garlic butter. divine!

we also made campfire pig greens, although given that we had purple cabbage, they turned out campfire pig purples. these were amazing. we cut a half head of purple cabbage into eighths, wrapped each with a slice of bacon, dotted it with butter, salt and pepper, wrapped it up in three sheets of heavy duty aluminum foil, and set in in the campfire coals to cook for about an hour, turning occasionally. the result was cabbage tasting like "i didn't think cabbage could taste", according to matt. definitely give this a try if you're camping and have these ingredients!
(you can also do this in the oven - see link above.)

bacon-y, cabbage-y goodness!

june 30, 2012 breakfast

after a refreshing night's sleep (sleeping to the sound of rain is so relaxing), we rose and cooked breakfast. i didn't have a plan, but we'd packed just about every vegetable in our fridge (hence my friday meal challenge!), so i made an omelet filling of bacon, onions, yellow bell pepper, zucchini, and mushrooms, and somehow managed to cram it into a three-egg omelet cooked in grass-fed butter. oh yeah, and i mashed up some avocado and spread some of that inside as well. i sprinkled plenty of green onions on top.. and then realized i'd forgotten to add the garlic i'd minced. oh well, i'm sure we'll use it tonight!

june 29, 2012 dinner

when we rolled into our campsite at sequim bay, it was already after 9pm. we managed to get the tent, pop-up, and just-in-case tarp all set up just before the sky opened up. it pretty much rained for the next 16 hours or so, but camp set-up was complete, so we were snug and dry. it was so late, we didn't feel like firing up the stove, so dinner was leftover green eggs and turkey. easy, portable, and pretty darn good eaten cold, actually!

june 29, 2012 breakfast

 i took friday off of work, got some badly needed housecleaning done, and caught up with friends who were in town. when i finally got around to eating breakfast/lunch, it was already 2:00pm! there was really nothing in the house, as we'd packed the car for camping this weekend, and the car had left for work with matt. so the fridge was pretty empty, and various staples, like pepper, garlic and butter had left the premises. i decided to get creative with what i could find. there was a jar of homemade mayo in the fridge, and four eggs, so i settled on egg salad. i chopped up some celery and green onion to add texture, and served it atop a bowl of baby spinach, with the last of the frozen asparagus. hey, it worked in a pinch!

june 28, 2012 lunch

lunch is leftover chicken breast chopped over a salad of romaine, spinach, tomato, cucumber, and the other half of that breakfast avocado. i drizzled a bit of extra virgin olive oil and blood orange balsamic over the top, and topped it all off with some pepper. commence chowing!

june 28, 2012 breakfast

today is all about avocado! we have a couple that are just right (seems to always happen when we buy them on sundays!), so i topped my green eggs and turkey frittata with half of one. makes it look like this is supposed to be a st. patty's day-themed meal, but i declare, the humble gator pear makes just about anything more delicious!

june 27, 2012 dinner

sitting on the grass in the sun, taking in jake shimabukuro and leo kottke at the zoo. say, this calls for a picnic! there was a big group of us, and we all contributed to the spread. i grazed on salami, olives, pickled hot peppers, strawberries, rainier cherries, almonds and baba ghanouj, with bell pepper and carrot for dipping. i also broke out the leftover kohlrabi, beet and walnut salad.

watching the swallows overhead darting after insects, to a ukulele soundtrack - a perfect summer evening!

june 27, 2012 lunch

can something as everyday as tuna salad be called luscious? today's version can! wild planet tuna mixed with homemade olive oil mayo, celery and green onion, atop a bed of romaine, spinach and tomatoes. a simple but delightful lunch!

june 27, 2012 breakfast

wednesday breakfast is a slice of green eggs and turkey frittata, crammed to the gills with various veggies, as well as some leftover kohlrabi and beet salad (dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, cilantro and walnuts). the salad sounds and looks a little weird, but it totally rocks my socks! maybe i'll pack some for our zoo concert picnic tonight..

june 26, 2012 lunch

today's lunch is leftover shrimp salad with hard-boiled eggs, purple cabbage, cucumber, tomato, and red onion in a lemon-dill sauce. it is easy and inexpensive and delicious, and just the right amount of food. it may not look like much, but it's filling!

june 26, 2012 breakfast

here is another slice of the green eggs and turkey frittata, stuffed with goodies like artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes, broccoli, spinach, and walla walla sweets. i like it with the turkey, but i think the same base would work well with bacon and asparagus and maybe some other stuff. maybe i will try a variation next week!

june 25, 2012 dinner

dinner is roasted lamb, served up rare. in the background is a mash of parsnips, turnips, onions and olive oil.

also, this was an interesting experiment - roasted beets and raw kohlrabi, tossed with lemon juice, olive oil and cilantro. the texture was a strange mix, but it was a refreshing and light dish to complement the richer flavors above.

june 25, 2012 lunch

monday work lunch is a yummy salad of shrimp, hard-boiled egg, purple cabbage, red onion, cucumber, tomato, spinach, and romaine, tossed with a sauce of olive oil, spicy brown mustard, cayenne, garlic powder, dill and lemon juice. it is adapted from everyday paleo's shrimp flying saucers recipe.

june 25, 2012 breakfast

i tried a new recipe (green eggs and turkey from the cookbook paleo comfort foods) for breakfast - a frittata with turkey sausage, broccoli, artichoke hearts, sundried toms, a couple of walla walla sweet onions, spinach and eggs, seasoned with salt, pepper, fresh basil and paprika. a splash or six of cholula and i'm off!

june 24, 2012 lunch

post-zoo, our stomachs and our fridge were pretty empty, so we made do with what we could scrounge up. thai sweet potato soup from a tetra-pak, and three roll-ups of deli turkey slices around half an avocado. not the most elegant of lunches, but this should hold me through an afternoon of errands and the weekly cook-up!

june 24, 2012 breakfast

breakfast on a lazy sunday morning, pre-zoo jaunt. homemade bearnaise sauce (egg yolk, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and cayenne) atop an over easy egg (plus the orphan egg whites from the egg yolks) and steamed asparagus. on the side are two isernio's chicken breakfast sausages. this was my second attempt at bearnaise, and it turned out better than the first. a little too thin, but it tasted nice!

june 23, 2012 lunch

we slept in and skipped breakfast, since we had to leave at 10 to head up to burlington for lunch with matt's mom and grandma. we went to the train wreck - good pub food with lots of options. i opted for the seared salmon salad, which came with a hunk o' coho atop mixed greens in a lemon-dill vinaigrette, with corn-shallot relish and toasted hazelnuts. fantastic!

june 22, 2012 lunch

lunch is deliciousness in the form of leftover spicy chicken sausage scrambled with roasted broccolette and red bell pepper, plus a greek salad.

june 22, 2012 breakfast

friday morning breakfast was eaten kinda late, because i tried to kill my dracaena. well, not on purpose, but i managed to knock it off a tall cabinet in my office. it sheared off two tops when it landed, and scattered dirt everywhere. oh well, at least i got to use the industrial vacuum, which just makes me want one of those for home. anyhoo, i am attempting to rescue the tops by floating them in water. perhaps they'll start new roots, perhaps not. the stumps left behind may well branch into new growth, so that's another exciting possibility.

attempting some dracaena healing

feeling a bit melancholy about the plant massacre, i dig into a cheerfully odd breakfast of rainier cherries, toasted sesame seaweed, and a rough mash of two hard-boiled eggs and half an avocado, topped with cholula. actually pretty good!

june 21, 2012 dinner

my sis and i made a belated father's day dinner for my dad and stepmom tonight. (on actual father's day, ungrateful daughter number one was camping and ungrateful daughter number two was hiking.) i decided to go with tried-and-true well-tested favorites.

here is a wilted arugula salad, topped with bacon, chopped walnuts, and shallots cooked in the bacon grease, a little olive oil, and a drizzle of blood orange basalmic. drizzled a bit on the tablecloth too. oops. a small cat toy was on the table for some reason, and also made it into the shot.

i repeated the shrimp recipe i did a couple of nights ago (baked in a sauce of pureed olive oil, shallot, garlic and red pepper flakes, with a few splashes of chicken broth). i suppose it would have been nice to have mixed it with some veggies or put it atop a nice bed of something or other, but we had four dishes going at once in the kitchen, and were trying to time them. it kind of felt like we were on an episode of top chef.

the spanish tortilla with rutabaga i've done a couple of times now turned out great. on top are some chives and the purple blossoms of the chives, which lend it a nice peppery, floral flavor.

and this was sheer awesomeness. my sister made these raw, vegan, gluten-free, grain-free brownies, using only ground nuts (walnuts and pecans), raisins and dates. the frosting is coconut oil brought to liquid state, then whisked with cocoa powder. it's then chilled to give it that shellacked frosting crust. top that with some fresh peaches, raspberries and strawberries tossed in lemon juice, lemon zest and mint, and i have a new favorite dessert.

we then sat out on the deck and watched anna's hummingbirds at the feeder. a pretty perfect evening all around!

june 21, 2012 lunch

towards the end of the week, we start to move into "eat what's in the fridge" mode. here is a quick fry-up of spicy chicken sausage, leftover roasted broccolette, and red bell peppers. pretty tasty for being an improvisation on what was in the fridge/freezer. rounding out the meal is baba ghanouj with a couple carrots (looking a bit like legs dangling in a creek), greek salad and coleslaw with homemade mayo.

june 21, 2012 breakfast

matt picked up some rainier cherries (just coming into season - so tart and sweet and good!) at the renton farmer's market for a song, so i decorated my plate of egg loaf with them this morning.

june 20, 2012 dinner

dinner is chicken fajitas (sans tortilla), a simple stir-fry of chicken, onion, and green and bell peppers tossed with in homemade taco seasoning, topped with half an avocado, a scoop of salsa, and a few cilantro sprigs. just right for a wednesday night.

june 20, 2012 lunch

a seat-of-the-pants wednesday lunch. greek salad, with baby heirloom tomatoes and all the usual fixins, plus a turkey patty, cooked with paprika, cayenne, italian seasoning, garlic powder and pepper, smothered in baba ghanouj (weird combo, but it grew on me), and a generous helping of our daily coleslaw with homemade mayo. yum squared!

june 20, 2012 breakfast

happy first day of summer! from here on out, the days will just get shorter.. but at least up here in the mossy north, those days are plenty long. the official time of sunset today through july 2nd is 9:10 pm, although the sky stays dusky much later. on a cloudless evening, you can still see touches of pink and orange on the horizon until past ten pm.

that's all well and good, but the rubber chicken filed in my office is more interested in egg loaf.

june 19, 2012 dinner

greens on the right are nutty and crunchy and wonderful roasted broccolette, while asparagus spears, also roasted, fill in on the left. baked shrimp in the middle, in a sauce of garlic, olive oil, crushed red pepper and shallot.

 i found the shrimp recipe here and it's big flavor and payoff for little effort!

june 19, 2012 lunch

lunch was leftover taco salad (plus the standard-issue dressing of black olives, avocado, sliced red onion and cilantro) paired with the requisite and AMAZING coleslaw with homemade mayonnaise..

june 19, 2012 breakfast

i admit it, the baba ghanouj looks like it was piped onto my plate. but even though it looks watery and insignificant, i can't lie, it has a flavor you can't refuse. 

and, as seen on tv! egg loaf, featuring bacon, spinach, zucchini, roasted red peppers and sun-dried tomatoes!

june 18, 2012 dinner

it's a rainy seattle night, and it's cozy listening to the cars and buses driving through the standing rain on the road outside, while i am inside in my pajamas, eating taco salad.
 tomatoes, avocado, red onion, black olives and cilantro complete the picture.

june 18, 2012 lunch

a hearty lunch. tuna salad (wild planet tuna with red onion, celery, and homemade mayo) atop romaine, cucumbers, and baby heirloom tomatoes (a trader joe's find), coleslaw (with more of that homemade mayo), plus collard greens and curly kale from my boss' garden, fried up in bacon fat, with bacon pieces for good measure, and smashed garlic. so good!

june 18, 2012 breakfast

it's a corner piece of egg loaf, this time with sun-dried tomatoes for extra fun and games. of course, it's going to be thoroughly doused with cholula before consumption, but the unadorned version is much more photogenic.

june 17, 2012 breakfast

a hearty camping breakfast of sweet potato, bacon, red bell pepper, and onion hash, topped with two eggs over medium, half an avocado, and a handful of green onions.

june 16, 2012 dinner

good company warrants a good spread. alex and rachael came up from portland, and we met them halfway at potlatch state park on the hood canal. most of the campground is nothing to write home about, but we secured a sweet, secluded spot (93, if you're interested), way up in the trees and ferns. nobody around but jays and chestnut-backed chickadees.

this is alex's dinner, chicken grilled in foil, with tomatoes, zucchini, onions, and lemon-thyme from their garden, plus some fresh baby heirloom tomatoes and a few sheets of toasted sesame nori for good measure. looks delish!

rachael follows suit a bit later with the addition of roasted potatoes and a chicken sausage from otto's sausage kitchen in portland. quite good! (i ate the other half of that sausage, btw.)

we roasted some radishes in the campfire coals, a technique that my sister taught me when we were camping over memorial day weekend. radishes become quite mellow and slightly sweet when tossed with a little olive oil and folded up in some foil, then left to their own devices in the fire..

in the meantime, rachael broke out the strawberries, dipped them generously in marshmallow creme, and grilled them over the fire, s'mores-style..

we grilled up some asparagus, managing not to char them too badly..

..and set some lamb skewers on the grill shortly thereafter. they'd been marinating in olive oil, lemon juice, chopped fresh parsley and thyme, and so on. note the bay leaf still clinging to the lamb.

the super-yummy finished product. served up slightly rare, and still a bit mouth-scalding, but tender and juicy and all that grilled lamb eaten while camping should be!

june 16, 2012 breakfast

saturday morning quick breakfast. we need to skip town for a camping expedition by noon-ish, so as we pack the car, we throw together a speedy version of what we call 'godzilla eggs' - why is it called 'godzilla eggs'? it's the green avocado (godzilla) plus the red salsa (breathing fire). add a couple eggs, scroddled (broken directly into and scrambled in the pan) in some grass-fed butter, and a few chicken and sage sausages, and we're good to go.

june 15, 2012 lunch

soup! out to lunch with my dad, at vios in third place books (ravenna). this was the soup of the day today, vegetables (not specified, but tomatoes were certainly present) pureed with a roasted red pepper relish, and some haphazard arugula scattered on top. cheers!

and yay! meat! a skewer of lamb, coupled with braised greens, and roasted beets in walnut oil and cumin-red wine vinaigrette. what? yes, it's good.