Category: Main Dish

Hold the Cheese Please

42 Comments

On Sunday afternoon last week, Mike and Miss A went on a little father-daughter excursion. Miss A wore her favorite “fancy” dress and Mike put on a button down shirt, and the two headed out to see a dance recital version of the Wizard of Oz. Miss A was absolutely in her glory. (I think Mike was too. 😉 )

So while Mike and Miss A were off for an afternoon on the town, Mr. N and I took on our next Armenian recipe, an Armenian Lahmajoun. The lahmajoun is similar to a pizza, but without the cheese. We started the recipe with an onion, butter and garlic. Continue reading →

A Cowboy State of Mind

22 Comments

Hopefully by the time you read this we’ll be well on our way to sunny skies and warm sandy beaches. So if you don’t see my comments around for a while, you’ll know why. I’ll be back and caught up on things after our return – hopefully nice and refreshed and with a bit more color in my face. Until then, we thought we’d share a recipe from our most recent state night dinner. As you may remember, we’ve been trying to keep things a bit on the lighter side. That’s why when we started looking for recipes from Wyoming, the Cowboy State, we wanted a nice warming soup.

We came across a recipe for Butternut Squash and Jalapeño Soup in Pamela Sinclair’s A Taste of Wyoming, which just sounded fabulous. The only problem with the soup – the original recipe called for two cups of cream. Now I’ve used cream in soups before, but never two cups of cream. Even my terribly sinful tomato cream vodka sauce doesn’t use that much cream. Then just for kicks I looked at the nutrition panel on the cream and calculated the calories and fat for two cups – ACK! I mean I knew cream wasn’t the healthiest of things on the planet, but wowzers! So here’s our adapted version of this Cowboy State delicacy, Butternut Squash and Jalapeño Soup. Continue reading →

Toto We’re Not in Maine Anymore

30 Comments

Actually, we’re quite far from Maine with this cuisine as we’re still cooking recipes from Hong Kong, but this recipe features one of our family favorites – Lobster. Now you might recall we had many adventures this summer in Maine with our live lobsters. We tried boiled lobsters, grilled lobsters, lobster risotto and lobster rolls. Every time, the lobster was a hit. So I had a good feeling going into this recipe for Cantonese Lobster Stir Fry. (Cantonese food is often served in Hong Kong…)  Continue reading →

Squashing the Calories

46 Comments

Before we launch off on another one of our international adventures, we thought we’d share one of our favorite healthy, winter meals. We, like many others around the world, try to lighten the caloric loads after the holidays. Most of our meals are centered around vegetables whether it be salads, soups or light pasta dishes. It’s our way of making up for the holiday over-indulgences. This year, however, we have a bit of added pressure as swim suit season is coming a bit early.

Mike, through his research, has the opportunity to attend a conference in Hawaii next month (rough job right?!). His professional associations pick some mighty nice places to visit in the dead of winter let me tell you. Now typically the kids and I will tag every now and then, so as you can imagine, we’re picking this year to go! That being the case, we’ve been in healthy eating mode (well, for the most part) for the past month and this is one of our favorite go-to healthy, flavorful winter meals – Spicy Spaghetti Squash. Continue reading →

Chim Chim Cher-Ee

61 Comments

Whenever I hear the word chimichurri I always think of the song from Mary Poppins. It’s such a happy little song and who doesn’t love Dick Van Dyke – the man exudes happiness.

But chimichurri obviously has nothing to do with sweeping chimneys, rather it’s a sauce used with grilled meat that originated in Argentina. It can also be found in Uruguay, Columbia, Mexico and…Nicaragua!

So for our last Nicaraguan recipe we bring you a delectable steak recipe featuring the chimichurri sauce for what we’re calling Nicaraguan Tenderloin. We started by preparing the sauce using Italian parsley, olive oil, red wine vinegar and garlic. Continue reading →

All’s Quiet on the Home Front

48 Comments

Last night was an unusual occurrence. Mike was working in the city for most of the weekend while the kids and I were busy keeping busy. Then yesterday evening the kids went to visit Mike’s grandma with their Nana and Papa and I escaped to a yoga class. When I came home it was just Mike and I for dinner – and at a normal dinner hour!

Now it’s not unusual for us to put the kids to bed and have an at home cooking date night, or to even drop the kids off at Nana and Papa’s for a night on the town, but to find ourselves at home, alone, at the dinner hour – unheard of. So we decided to launch our next international adventure alone, with a recipe we knew we’d enjoy, and eat it in our dining room. (I don’t know that we’ve ever sat down to eat in there aside from Christmas Eve or a random dinner party.)

So where are we venturing off to now? We’ll get to that in a minute, first we bring you “Bloggers Unplugged,” a fun little game of questions in which we were tagged by Charles of Five Euro Food. Charles as you may remember is the creator of this delicious baba ghanoush that we made for Christmas and have enjoyed for lunch over and over again. Thanks for the recipe and the tag Charles. Here are the questions fielded by both Mike and I.

1. What, or Who, inspired you to start a blog?
Mr. N was our inspiration. We had talked for a long time about exposing the kids to different cuisines from around the world. Mr. N, who was really excited about our “experiment” thought we should write a book about the experience. Well, it’s not exactly a book, but I think he approves. 😉

2. Who is your foodie inspiration?
Well, first and foremost, Mike expanded my horizons with food exponentially very early on in our relationship. Many of our early dates revolved around fantastic restaurants or cooking at his apartment. One of our favorite dishes to this day came from those early dating years. We may get around to sharing that one of these days. Other foodie inspiration – well the many food blogs we read. They’re always inspiring us. And of course Chopped. 🙂 Continue reading →