CanYouFind.Us

You read it right, cherry burgers. And they were great. Since the weather here in Miami is just beautiful, I wanted to be outside on the grill. After digging around a bit for something new to try out, I found this beauty. The beef and cherry combination had Karen and I intrigued, so we went for it.

Unfortunately for us, we ran out of propane the minute I fired up the range. As is usual for me, I was ready to scrap the entire thing. As is usual for Karen, she suggested an alternative-the microwave. We gambled on the cherry ketchup, and it worked. I gave it a few 3 minutes bursts in the microwave, stirring after each session. While it was in there, I fired up the grill and prepped the burgers. The to-be ketchup mixture cooled while the burgers were thrown on the grill. After the mixture stopped steaming, I gave it all a whirl in the food processor…and we now have cherry ketchup! A lot of cherry ketchup, in fact.

The burgers did great on the grill. They held together very well, and cooked nice and evenly. The toasted English Muffin was great at not overpowering the burger. A thick heavy bun would stand a good chance of masking the cherry, and by soaking the onions you are able to remove a bit of the bite that they pack. This was certainly a hit for us, and I’m sure we will repeat it in the future…with a working stovetop.

Here are a few quick meals bites that we’ve managed lately. With our 1600 miles of traveling this week, it’s all I could do to get any food on the table. I have, however, made this Cheddar-Scallion Panini a few times. I’m sure you know a grilled cheese is very quick to make. This one was given a massive makeover with the strong flavors of the rye, and the distinct scallions, you can’t help but love this one. We tried this with a nice mug of soup. Sadly, the soup was horrible, so I won’t waste your time with that. The sandwich, however, will be great any time I can remember to have scallions on hand.

Another great hit this week, was the Asian Shrimp Stew with rice. I knew I was taking a bit of a gamble when I put this on the table. Typically Karen is not the biggest fan of seafood, and this didn’t look like it would be a very filling meal. I did actually add another spoonful of shrimp and sauce, after I took this picture. Add a bread or roll to this, and you will have a meal that does stick with you for several hours. The most time consuming part of this one, was chopping everything, and even that wasn’t bad at all.

First off, last week I tried a homemade dog-friendly ice cream-talk about a hit. If you’ve ever bought FrostyPaws, then you know what I’m talking about. Willy is lucky enough to get one of these nearly every day, especially now that I can make them myself. It only takes a few minutes to throw the ingredients in a food processor, blend, and then pour them into something to freeze. I’ve heard of people using ice cream trays-but that’s just way too small for our dog! We bought tiny gladware containers at the store, and I can get 8 servings out of one batch! That’s for less than the cost of 4 of them in the store.

After that I made a Chicken Piccata with Mushrooms. This dish was a big hit for us. We’ve been eating a lot of heavy red sauce foods lately, and it was great to enjoy a pasta dish that felt a lot lighter. This also gave us an excuse to grab a few bottles of wine. We went with a Fetzer Gewurztraminer. The gavurtz ended up working great in the sauce, and as the beverage of the night. There were a few steps involved in this dish, but none of them were complicated at all.

After a few days, we realized we were out of food. Dying to get back into our routine, I grabbed Karen’s favorite cookbook-EverydayFood. She flipped through it quickly, and had a slew of requests. Her greatest find, was a “12 items for 5 days” section. This jewel laid out everything for a week of menus (nothing unique, I know!) however what was different about this-was that it didn’t require a ton of ingredients, and it DID include side dishes. They also happen to all be quick and easy meals. While we are trying to get back into a normal rotation (and still having a not-so-normal schedule) this was perfect for us. Yesterday I went and stocked up for the week, and here was our first experiment..

We tried quite a few new and different ideas for this one. The Balsamic Skirt Steak with Polenta and Roasted Tomatoes was the perfect way to use up our pomegranate balsamic vinegar. It would have been great to have a larger skillet, but we managed to cook up 2lbs of skirt steak in 2 batches. The redolent finished earlier than I had planned, but still tasted great once we had it all on the plate. I do want the record to show that I did try tomatoes again. I also want the record to show that they STILL do not agree with my palate. However, the skirt steak and the balsamic sauce definitely is a keeper that we will use again.

Now I’m finally caught up with what’s happened in previous days/weeks. I will end this, with tonights dinner! The weekly menu still had some good choices left, so I farmed things out for help. A good friend, with a dinner menu of fish sticks and french fries, said that the pork is the dish she would want tonight. Sadly, she didn’t make it up for dinner (and this does serve 4) but thats good for us! The Pork Tenderloin with Garlic-Orange Vinaigrette and Sauteed Spinach flew together in record time. While the pork cooked in a skillet, I had plenty of time to make the vinaigrette and prepare the spinach. The garlic and orange flavors really did enhance the pork and spinach.

Since we had so many recipes in this update, here they are all at once!

When I hit a lull in my cooking inspiration, I hand Karen a magazine and requests that she picks something. This week…she took it much farther then I ever could have expected. By time our shopping list was set-she had pulled ideas out of one magazine, and 2 books. I couldn’t have been more impressed.

The one that I was most excited about was the Pork Tenderloin Crusted with Green Onion, Jalapeño, and Ginger. This was very typical of the Bobby Flay style-full of bold flavors. The marinade is very thick so it really holds to the tenderloin on the grill. While the jalapeño added a small amount of heat, it certainly wasn’t overbearing. If you really want to kick it up you could use half of a habanaro. Sadly, I didn’t save the other half after I made the Grilled Tuna Salad with Lemon-Habanero Mayonnaise for lunch last week. The lime juice really lightened the flavor and texture of this dish quite a bit. By reserving part of the marinade mixture and using it for the sauce every bite is great.

And of course what goes better with pork…than pineapple? This is one that K had marked for a while. The Pineapple Cabbage Saute was a very quick and easy side dish to go with the tenderloin. Forgetting that our grill likes to take it’s time with everything, I had started the cabbage entirely too early. It turns out, that the cabbage can really hold it’s own while hanging out on the back of the stove.

We do have some good looking recipe lined up for the rest of this week, including a chocolate cheesecake brownie, some more home made dog treats, and even a nice lamb chop or two for the grill.

First up we have the weekly explanation for why we had a low weekly update count. I blame the blogger software this week, haha. I spent literally 3 days trying to get the pictures to work with this, because nobody wants to read about food and not see a picture! Also, we had a few dishes that just aren’t worth talking about (bland bbq ribs with grilled sweet potatoes and an overly basic steak taco) and we also went for a few quick and easy grilled meals this week-(jerk seasoned chicken served over sweet potatoes with honey, red peppers and green onions, as well as a steak, potato, and mac and cheese night)

To get our week started, I dug out a classic Cappuccino Brownie recipe that Gourmet magazine first published in 1996. The worst part about these brownies, was that they required 2 cooling stages-and Karen just wouldn’t have any of that. The brownie layer is cooked first, and then you let that cool (about one hour) before you put on the spiced layer of a cream cheese frosting. Then you put on the glaze and have to give that a full 3 hours to set. We, of course, cheated and cut off a piece to try right away. While it WAS good, these are best served chilled. We managed to cut our 9X9 pan into 25 small brownies, and each one was certainly rich enough to be satisfying. These certainly aren’t as low calorie as the dessert that we are going to sample this week-but they do deserve a spot in your cookbook.

We also decided to test out a vegetarian stir fry. I’m not typically a huge fan of meatless dinners, but I am always up for something new. We found this recipe in Cooks Illustrated Cooking Light magazine, and they put together a large chart of optional vegetables to swap into this. What really caught our eye about the Stir-Fried Portobellos with Sweet Chili-Garlic Sauce was that we would have a chance to use a bit more of our sweet chili sauce that we bought for chili-chicken lettuce wraps. CI had an interesting side note about replacing the mushrooms with tofu. We decided to use 3 large portobellos, and half of a brick of firm packed tofo. Tossed in corn starch you can then fry the tofo and get a crispy exterior with a creamy inside bite. We really enjoyed this flavor combination for a quick and easy weeknight dinner. The meatiness of the hearty portobellos did a really good job at filling in for the meat-but next time I’ll likely slip in a sliced chicken breast! As with all stir fry dishes, just make sure you have your veggies all chopped and prepped when you get your stove going-this one cooks fast!

The answer is-mostly home. Late January I posted that we were up in Jersey, with a shot at going to Savannah. Well, that job didn’t take off (it was Home Depot, and they were having issues with the new equipment doing funny things) so we went down to Delaware for a week. I’m not sure how much you know about Delaware, but let me just say it’s not the easiest place to locate a RV park in the winter. We did end up finding one in Maryland, with a 30 minute commute to the job each day.

Luckily, that job ended fast. It was a very interesting project-our company had previously installed RFID sensors on school buses. When the bus driver would do their pre-trip inspection, they would take this wand around to each spot that they checked. There is a radio frequency tag in each location, and they touch the wand to the tag-verifying that they checked that spot. We were doing a little update to the wiring, and I always love cutting into ignition wires of $80,000 vehicles that still have the batteries hooked up.

Next they sent us up to Westfield Massachusetts. This was quite the experience. If you ever have the chance to RV in MA in the winter-don’t. The first park that we tried-was a sheet of ice. We entered the lot, and were promptly stuck. It would have been really nice if they would have returned my calls about a spot! So then we drove another hour and a half, and grabbed another park. This place was actually pretty decent, except they shut off all the water to the lots in the winter. We were left to use the shower houses for a week ) = We did get to MA a day early, so were able to run into Boston for a short visit on Monday. Sadly, the trains took so long to get there, that we only ended up with a few hours to walk around, then we had to head back to let Willy out.

After that they told us to come home. They gave us 2 days to drive, 2 weekend days to see our family, and then we were going to be trained in town, and sent out for 3 months. Karen and I pulled a full night of driving, and made it back just in time for me to go surprise my sister at her 22nd birthday party! Karen and I were also able to go with her to the casino when she celebrated there the next night. After that training, they ended up putting us on ANOTHER project.

If you’ve never had the misfortune of working in a dog food production plant, try really hard to avoid that one. I must say that I was very pleased at how the place was setup. I walked into it fearing that I’d never be able to buy dog food again. This plant happened to be a Kibbles and Bits joint, and I must say they do a good job at what they do. Nothing struck us as horrible or unsanitary, etc. However the smell…is very intense. If you have ever opened up a bag of dog food, you are well aware of the smell. Just imagine that it is everywhere around you, for 10 hours a day. Oh, and when the bag is empty-turn it inside out and rub the dust into your clothes, there we go!

On our final day of that project, we get a call from Karen’s sister. Their step-father’s health isn’t looking good. We had taken John into the hospital on Christmas day, and ended up finding out that he had cancer. The first round of Chemo shrunk the tumor-that happened to have been attached to the colon. This ripped a hole in his colon, and things went downhill from there. It was decided that he was going to be moved to the Kansas City Hospice House, and put on comfort medications only. I can’t say enough good things about that facility. It is a very beautiful location that is very inviting and calming to families. You don’t tense up in the way you would in a hospital or nursing home. The rooms are large and spacious, and several people can visit without feeling cramped. While there, John was surrounded by his loved ones nearly 24X7 until the day the he passed. Unfortunately he went at 2.30 at night, when I was 100 miles from a job in Columbus, Ohio. After a 10 hour drive there, I slept for 3 hours, worked for 5, and headed back home to KC. His visitation services are later today, with the funeral tomorrow.