I also have barely enough time for cooking new dishes, which leaves time for WRITING about them even more scarce!

A few weeks ago, Ben and I went out of town for the whole weekend, which means no grocery shopping. On the Tuesday after I got back I finally had a chance to make it to the grocery store to grab a few things. One of them was a rotisserie chicken. While a rotisserie chicken is an easy meal, I thought it would be good in a pasta instead of just making a couple of sides with it.

When I got home I looked in my fridge and I saw a bunch of vegetables on the verge of going bad with 1-2 days left max. I really try not to waste produce, I know what to buy for the two of us and I use it.  Also, since it’s spring my herbs are really growing like crazy and this was the perfect opportunity to use them. While I have a list of vegetables I used in my pasta, feel free to substitute anything you have on hand. Nothing needs to be chopped finely since it is Rustic! So have fun and experiment!

What you’ll need

• Handful of fresh broccoli
• 1 zucchini chopped in chucks
• Handful of grape tomatoes
• Handful of chopped onions
• 1 red bell pepper seeded and chopped
• 3 cloves garlic skins removed
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 lemon
• pinch of red pepper flakes
• 1/4 cup mixture of fresh herbs chopped (I used basil, oregano, thyme, and rosemary)
• 1/2 lb pasta (whatever you have on hand but a rotini would be nice)
• 1/3 a rotisserie chicken (dark and white meat as desired) chopped into pieces
• about 1/4 cup pasta water
• 1/2 cup parmigiana or Romano cheese (or a mixture of both, which is what I used)
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Throw all the vegetables (including garlic) on a baking dish and drizzle olive oil on top, squeeze the juice of one lemon, add the chopped herbs, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper and mix everything together with CLEAN hands. Don’t be afraid to get them dirty; you can always wash them.

Stick the vegetable mixture in oven for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, boil the pasta according to package directions and drain, saving about 1/4 (or a ladle full) to add to the pasta mixture. Also, tear apart the chicken pieces and set them to the side.

When the vegetables are done, combine them with the pasta, chicken, and pasta water, then mix together. Add the cheese and it’s ready to serve.

While this meal does take about 45 minutes to prepare, most of it is spent watching the television while the vegetables roast. Also, what I love about this is that it’s basically things we all have on hand anyway. I think some roasted pine nuts added would have been fantastic also, but I just didn’t have them.

So, next time you are at the grocery store trying to pick up a quick dinner, or you have some left over roasted chicken, give this recipe a try!

Happy eating!

                        

I’ve been making this recipe for years, and I originally got it from somewhere else, but darned if I remember where. I’m sure the recipe isn’t even exactly the same. This is a great example of my philosophy on cooking though. Recipes don’t have to be exact, make them your own. Try substituting different ingredients, spices, anything. Sweet potatoes are great with not only Latin flavors, but also Indian, and Italian blends too. So never limit yourself to exactly what the recipe says. But now back to the recipe:

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 2 sweet potatoes peeled and diced
• olive oil
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1/2 red onion diced
• about 1/2 lb breakfast sausage
• 4 eggs
• mixed shredded cheese to taste
• salt and pepper

Heat your skillet to medium-high heat. Add sausage and cook while crumbling sausage with spatula until done. Transfer sausage to bowl. Lower heat to medium. Put pan back on heat, add a little bit of olive oil (unless your sausage was really greasy) and make a single layer of potatoes across the bottom on the pan. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes. Its an important side note to know that the smaller you up your potatoes the quicker they’ll cook, but it is more important to cut them evenly so they’ll cook all at the same time. After about 5 minutes, mix potatoes and add onions, cumin, chili powder, salt, and peper. Cook until potatoes are soft to the touch.  Mix sausage back in and divide mixture between two plates.

Wipe out pan, and bring back to a medium low heat. Scramble eggs and add cheese just before done. Divide mixture between the two plates. Garnish with sour cream and enjoy something different for breakfast.

                        

Ingredients
• 1 jar alfredo sauce
• 4 cloves garlic (roasted)
• 1 Tbsp fresh rosemary or 1 tsp dried
• 1lb penne pasta
• 2 chicken breasts
• 4 slices of prosciutto (or bacon)
• about 12-15 medium shrimp
• 1 Tbsp olive oil plus some to put on chicken
• ½ onion diced
• 1 cup Parmesan cheese
• 1 roasted red pepper diced
• paprika
• salt and pepper

Heat oven to 400 degrees

In a small sauce pan empty alfredo sauce, the mashed roasted garlic,
and rosemary (if you don’t roast the garlic first, sauté it in the
sauce pan for a couple of minutes in olive oil then ad alfredo sauce.)
Let simmer.

Heat large sauce pan on stove and cook pasta. Set aside when done.

Cover raw chicken breasts with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Grill on
high heat grill until done. Let rest for a few minutes then slice and
set aside.

Heat olive oil in sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add prosciutto and
cook for a couple of minutes to brown. Salt and pepper raw shrimp. Add
shrimp and onions to prosciutto. Cook for a couple of minutes until
the shrimp are almost done but still a bit translucent.

Combine chicken, prosciutto/shrimp mixture, and alfredo sauce
together. Add about 1/3 cup parmesan cheese and most of the red
pepper. Mix everything with the pasta in an oven proof dish. Add the
rest of the red pepper on top. Cover with rest of parmesan and
sprinkle with paprika.

Cook in oven for about 20 minutes until the top of the pasta is browned.
Garnish with fresh rosemary. This sucker serves 8-10 people pretty easily.

There were some other pretty cool copy cat recipes at this party too. One person made Wendy’s Chili and it was spot on. Another person made candy that tasted just like snickers bars. It was a great idea. Do you have any copy cat recipes that you like to cook? Leave a comment below

                        

My new favorite combination of smoothie is raspberry and nectarine. I never thought of blending up nectarine in a smoothie until one day it hit me that it is basically the same thing as a peach. Duh! I’m not the biggest fan of peaches: too smooshy or something. I do love nectarines though. They seem to have a bit of a bite.

Here’s the smoothie I’ve been making recently.

I used one banana, one nectarine, about 1/2 cup raspberries, 1 cup orange juice, and about 1 cup ice. I love the tangy-ness of this smoothie, the nectarines, raspberries, and oranges really work well together. Its such a nice change from the standard strawberry/banana combo.

                        

Sometimes I want to feel fancy in my own home. I can usually accomplish this by making almost any type of fish outside of tilapia or shrimp, or if I buy a really nice cut of steak to make at home. While I dream sometimes of being one of those fancy food bloggers that is constantly shaving truffles on their dishes or trying some exotic ingredient from their high priced specialty store, I am not one of them.

Ben and I are on a constant budget, and we buy almost all our meats from Costco, portion them and freeze them (or buy them frozen in the first place). I try to make it to the farmers’ market every week, not only for the fresh seasonal produce, but for the fact that it’s about 1/2 the price of the grocery store. Everything else is just bought at plain old Publix (the local grocery store here in Florida). The only time Ben and I can act snooty about our food purchases is when we bring green bags into the store instead of using plastic. Oh, and the only reason we do that is because it’s more convenient, not because we are on a crusade to save the planet.

I feel like I represent the regular cook. I’m on a budget, but that doesn’t mean that everything has to taste like cardboard, even if I can get the best ingredients.

On my birthday, Ben took me to one of the fanciest restaurants in town. I started to read reviews about what to get, and a bunch of them said get the mussels. So I was set on getting the mussels. However, since my birthday also falls on Valentine’s day we were not able to secure a dinner reservation and a late lunch had to do. Unfortunately, mussels were not on the lunch menu!

So, since then I have been craving a nice bowl of mussels with some crusty french bread to mop up the sauce. Mussels are one of the things that, if I serve at home, make me feel fancy and, on Saturday night, I wanted to be fancy damn it! So I used this recipe from Tyler Florence to make a dish of my own.

Here’ s what you’ll need

• 3 pounds mussels
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 2 leeks, white parts only, finely chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/4 bunch fresh thyme
• 1 cup white wine
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

First Ben and I spent a half hour to clean and debeard the mussels. I guess being fancy takes some elbow grease. I think this is the most important step so don’t skip it. It helps get all the dirt and grit out of the mussels. A good soak will help too.

Next, you heat 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a pot over medium-high heat. Saute the vegetables for about 5 minutes.

Toss in the mussels and mix everything together.

Add the white wine and cover the pot to let everything steam for maybe 10 minutes. It may take less time. You’ll know they’re done when the mussels are open. Add the rest of the butter, a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper. Discard any mussels that don’t open during the cooking process, as they were dead before you cooked them.

This recipe is simple, but it’s fresh and easy. The best part is, mussels really aren’t that expensive. They just feel different from the everyday chicken.

Now sit down at the table with the rest of that bottle of wine, a loaf of crusty french bread, and enjoy being fancy, even if you are in your PJs.

What do you like to cook at home to make you feel fancy? Let me know in the comments below.

                        

This post is not about how wonderful this Chicken turned out (even though I dreamed for a week about what it would look like). This chicken turned out to be a complete failure.

I followed the directions to a T (unlike usual for me with a recipe) because I had only roasted a chicken once before and it came out so-so. This time I wanted it to be crispy on the outside and tender and juicy on the inside.  I cooked it to the temperature that it suggested and put my thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh and it read 169 degrees, 4 degrees over the recommended 165 for a cooked chicken in the recipe. Oh no I thought, better get this bird out of the oven before it over cooks!

I even made the gravy, and it tasted wonderful. I really have never tasted homemade gravy so good. And I am sorry to those of you reading this blog whose gravy I have eaten in the past, its not that my talent in gravy making is superior to yours, its that this recipe really renders a fantastic gravy.

I put everything out onto the table. This night we would sit at the kitchen table and eat like civilized people instead of at the coffee table in front of the television. It looked beautiful with the bird I pictured in my head as the center piece. Then we cut into it…

…it was still raw in the middle! What?!?! I did everything right. How could this be? Ben and I picked at a couple of pieces of cooked juicy breast, but most of the chicken was really uneatable. I was so upset, dinner was ruined.

While I sat there and contemplated what to do, I thought about how I was going to boil the bones afterwords to make stock, and I thought, maybe I’ll just make some soup instead since most of the meat was still intact.

After a phone call to Ben’s mother (thanks Julia) for some advice about how to boil the chicken. I looked at what ingredients I had in my kitchen. There was about a cup of white/wild rice mix from Thanksgiving that I was probably never going to use. I had some onion, carrots, and mushrooms. So I thought maybe I’ll do chicken and wild rice soup.

Now, about the only chicken and wild rice soup I have ever eaten is from Panera Bread, and that is my favorite soup there. But I have never boiled a chicken, and I have never made any type of chicken soup myself.

But this is what this post is about. How I made the most fantastic, mouth watering, and wonderful chicken and wild rice soup from a failed roasted chicken.

Here’s what you’ll need

• 1 whole 3-5lb chicken, cooked or not (mine was half way) and as much meat as you have left on it.
• about 1/2 an onion chopped. And one onion in large chunks.
  
• about a cup of carrots
• about 80z of mushrooms
• about a cup of  white/wild rice mix
• 4 cloves garlic
• fresh oregano, thyme, and parsley chopped. Maybe a tablespoon a piece  (I have no idea what made it into the soup because mine was already on the bird)
• 6-7 cups water
• olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

First you put your chicken and the onion chunks in the pot (I actually added everything that was stuffed in the bird except the orange from the original recipe), cover it with water, and boil it until it’s cooked. If its already cooked, a 1/2 hour will do just fine. If not, it may take longer. Let it cool and drain the chicken from the liquid (SAVE THE LIQUID! THIS IS YOUR STOCK!!!!) and when the chicken is cooled pick all the meat off the bird. Then you can discard it and the onion.

When you are ready to make the soup. Add some olive oil to the pot over medium-high heat and cook the onions, carrots, garlic, and mushrooms until tender, about 5 minutes. Then add your stock  (mine was about 6.5 cups), rice, chicken and herbs, salt and pepper. Let the liquid boil then cover and reduce the heat to low for 45 minutes. The picture below illustrates my final product.

So at about 10pm on Sunday night. I finally finished dinner attempt number two. Wow, it was worth the wait. What was once an underdone disaster turned into the best soup I have ever made, ever! Now I only hope you, and myself can reattempt this accidental masterpiece.

What are some meal time disasters you have had in the kitchen? Were you able to salvage the dish? Let me know in the comments below. And enjoy the happy accidents in life.

                        

I love Oatmeal in the winter time. I never ate oatmeal growing up, so it was a whole new option for breakfast when I got older. However, having the same brown sugar, OR raisins, OR apples, OR cinnamon, OR any dried fruit, OR any combination of those can start to taste and feel the same.

A couple of years ago I saw a commercial on Food Network where Alton Brown was talking about making a different type of oatmeal out of the things you may have in your hotel room. This was basically the result.

What you will need:

• 1 orange flavored tea bag
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup oatmeal
• 1 tbsp strawberry jam

First pour the water in a bowl and heat in microwave for a couple minutes until boiling. Then place the teabag in the bowl and let sit to make the tea for a few minutes. This is going to be your cooking water. When the tea is made, stir in the oatmeal and strawberry jam and cook according to the directions on the box.

The orange tea and strawberry jam really complement each other. There’s a subtle sweetness to the dish and its a great change of pace from those little oatmeal packages that are full of sugar.

Try different types of tea flavors and jams to change the taste up too. Now you have a new flavor combination for your oatmeal!

What are some of your favorite ways to eat oatmeal?

                        

What I DO want to write about tonight is Stir Fry. I promised myself this year that I was going to explore Asian cooking a little more. I love Asian flavors, but I don’t always know what to do with them. I do have a couple of tried and true recipes that I turn to, but I am at a loss regarding how to really diversify myself. Then, like a shinning beacon landing in my mail box, came my very first issue of the Food Network Magazine, which my wonderful boyfriend got me a subscription to for Christmas.

I didn’t even know that Food Network had a magazine, so I had no idea what was in store for me. Let me tell you, it really over whelmed me. I mean, it’s a WHOLE magazine that is full of recipes and cooking advice. I seriously didn’t know what to do with myself. The cover picture is of a stir fry and I was instantly intrigued by this recipe. When I turned to the page with the article in it, the title was 11,375 Stir-Fries! What?!?! How can there be 11,375 stir fry recipes in ONE cooking magazine, but then you look to the next page and see the beauty of the whole thing. Its a mix an match ingredient list. Perfect, I thought to myself, this is exactly what I have been looking for. Basically, you pick  a protein, some vegetables, a sauce, and you’re on your way. What is great about this is that you can pretty much use what you have on hand as far as vegetables and meats are concerned when you’re not sure what to make for dinner that night. There are a few ingredients in the sauces you may have to pre plan for, but even the sauces use a lot of the same ingredients: so, once you have them, you can keep them on hand for all the variations.

Anyway, over the next weeks or months I am going to feature different stir fries. Some will be inspired by this article, and some may be from other places (I do have a mean stir fry I already make and I’ll have to feature it in one of my posts). I will also research and tell you a bit more about stir fry, its history, and some general tips for cooking it. But those will have to wait for another post because this one is getting a bit long.

So, now on to the recipe:

Stir Fry Test One: Pork, Bok Choy, Mushrooms, and Onions.

What you’ll need:

Sauce, Mix together:

• 3/4 cup chicken broth
• 1 tbsp cornstarch
• 2 tbsp Rice wine
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp sugar

Other ingredients:

• 3/4 lb pork chops cut small strips
• 1 egg white
• 1 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 head bok choy chopped
• 1/2 a medium red onion sliced
• 80z mushrooms (I just use one package from the grocery store) sliced
• 2 heads garlic minced
• 2 tbsp grated ginger
• additional salt
• additional sugar
• Vegetable or Peanut oil (I used Canola)

First marinate your meat in the vinegar, cornstarch, and egg white (first 3 ingredients) for about an hour.  While that is marinating, prep all your ingredients. Get your sauce ready in a bowl, chop all your veggies. Grate your ginger and mince your garlic.

Now we are ready to cook.

Heat your wok (or you may use a skillet) over medium heat. Add about 1/4 inch oil (I just plopped a couple tablespoons in there). Drain the marinade,  add the pork, and stir until white and no pink is showing (depending on how small you cut your pieces, I would say that should take no more than 2-3 minutes). Remove the pork from the pan and wipe it down. Turn the heat up to high. Next add 2 tbsp of oil back into the wok. Add the garlic, ginger, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of sugar.  Cook for only 30 seconds. Then add the vegetables. It says to add from the ones that take the longest to cook to the ones that cook the shortest. I added the mushrooms and cooked them for a 1-2 minutes, then I added the onions for another minute, and finally the bok choy for another minute or so. Finally, add the pork and sauce back into the wok and cook for about another 3 minutes.

The sauce with this recipe is very light and it really lets the flavors in the vegetables and meat through, so make sure that you are using really fresh ingredients. Everything was cooked great, the bok choy still had a crunch to it, and the dish looked so pretty and uncluttered. You can try different meats too; just marinate them the same way or switch out a vegetable or two. It’s very versatile, and it comes together super fast once you are cooking. Then you can just slap it over some rice, couscous, or even quinoa and enjoy!

Let me know how you changed this dish up, and look for the next recipe in this series where I’ll use different meats, veggies, and a different sauce!

                        

This is what it looks like on the inside.

One day I was on facebook and someone said yams and sweet potatoes aren’t the same. Really? I had no idea so I promptly googled it. Turns out she was right. A yam is actually a white sweet spud that is a little nutty and used a lot in Latin cooking, it is better known as a boniato (bone-YEE-et-O).

Well last week I was at the Latin grocery store I sometimes go to and there they were. I had to get some. But what to do? I decided to alter this recipe from Lottie + Doof.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 8 garlic cloves, minced
• 6 tbsp vegetable oil
• 4 boniatos peeled and cut into wedges or sticks
• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary

Heat oven to 475. Heat the garlic and oil in a microwave safe bowl for 1 minute. Pour about 5 tbsp of oil onto your baking sheet (but leave the garlic). Add boniatos to remaining oil and garlic and mix together thoroughly. Cover with plastic and microwave about 6 minutes stirring once half way through.

Next add cornstarch, salt, pepper, and rosemary and mix together. Place on pan…

and throw them in the oven for 30-40 minutes until crispy. Turn them once during baking. Then remove from the oven and enjoy.

These are really good and the boniato gives a subtle sweetness to it which pairs well with the rosemary and garlic.

                        

Our favorite part of the whole day is watching the men in kilts throw giant logs in the caber toss…

…but the yummy food and beer comes in a close second. While we could have gotten some haggis which is a famous traditional Scottish dish that is composed of sheep entrails, we opted instead for some pasties. These  are pasties filled with savory things like beef and cheese.

And of course the burger and fries of the British Isles: Fish and Chips

So go out to your next festival and enjoy some different types of fare. Oh and maybe a drink or too.