Category: Main Dish

Fast and the Furious

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Last night was a hectic one. I ended up having to work a little extra late, we had a meal to put on the table and we had to be ready for our annual family pictures – all within an hour. The results – a fast meal and a furiously, frantic mom rushing around trying to cook, snap photos, keep the kids clean and finally get us all dressed and ready to go. Fortunately everything looked pretty darn good by the end of the night. Even Miss A’s hair was cooperating. 😉

Since we were still cooking from California, we found another healthy recipe that was seemingly right up Miss A’s alley – Turkey Avocado Pita Pizza. The ingredients are simple and fresh. We started with some Compari tomatoes since they are on the sweeter side and extra juicy.

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Introducing…Shellfish

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A younger Mr. N enjoying Florida’s Gulf

To Miss A that is. We held off on shellfish for both of the kids until they reached the age of three. It’s a highly allergenic food to which we have a family history, but now that she’s nearing her third birthday we’re making the slow introduction of shellfish starting with dad’s stateside pick for the night – Florida.

Dad really wanted to make alligator bites tonight, but unfortunately (Read: Shwoo!), we couldn’t find alligator. So we decided to use this as an opportunity to give Miss A a taste of shellfish – something we dined on quite a bit in the Sunshine State. We wanted a tropical kind of selection too, so we chose Coconut Shrimp with an Orange Dipping Sauce (It’s Florida – we have to incorporate oranges!). The kids, both big fans of Florida even though Miss A’s never been there (except when she pretends she’s flying there in her Nana’s kitchen cabinet), were on hand and excited to help tonight, especially with the dipping.

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Steel Cooking Together After All These Years

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Friday Mike (aka “dad”) and I celebrated our wedding anniversary. It’s been 11 years and two beautiful babies since that day. According to the anniversary lists, steel is the traditional gift this year, but we opted for a sensational dinner for two instead. Do stainless steel utensils count? 😉

When we were planning our meal, we tossed around several of our old favorites – things that Mike used to whip up to impress me. You see, I didn’t cook back then – except for my favorite bowl of pasta which only I seem to like. (To this day I think my dad is afraid to touch any pasta that I’ve made.) Fortunately, I’ve evolved since then and Mike and I have spent lots of date nights in our own kitchen whipping up meals, sipping wine and having great conversations. It’s easily one of our favorite things to do. So this weekend we got the kids to bed early and whipped up one of our favorite celebratory meals – Champagne Risotto with Truffle Oil.

We started with the Arborio rice, chicken stock, vegetable oil and butter. Continue reading →

Da Best Dish in Town

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It’s funny, when we first started this cooking adventure we thought the school year would be the most challenging in terms of finding time to cook our recipes from around the world. This summer, however, is proving far more difficult what with all of the birthdays, Father’s Day, vacations and anniversary celebrations. But for tonight we’re back on our stateside culinary adventure and Mr. N is taking us to the Land of Lincoln.

The recipe selection was our easiest yet. I mean when you think of Illinois, you think of Chicago, and Chicago is synonymous with deep dish pizza. We certainly have consumed more than our fair share of these delicious pies, especially dad and I who at one point in time ordered these on a weekly basis from our neighborhood pizza joint. However, we’ve never attempted to make one which I think is due in large part to the fact that we love them so much, have so many great places from which to order them, and we really didn’t want to screw this up. But Mr. N picked it, so game on.

For our crust we adapted a cornmeal pizza dough bread recipe for the bread machine. The key to Chicago-style deep dish pizza crust is cornmeal. It has to have cornmeal. We made our crust large enough for a 14″ deep dish pizza pan which we greased with olive oil and sprinkled with cornmeal. Continue reading →

Almost Perfect Father’s Day

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I had two things I wanted to do on Father’s Day–play golf with my dad and try out the new smoker.  The problem is, smoking and golf both take a long time.  But dad got an early tee time and I figured five hours would be just enough to have dinner ready by six.  Golf was the almost perfect part–I missed my first career ace by less than the width of the ball.  185 yards with a 6-iron on the 15th hole and I hit the edge of the cup on the fly, but it spun out to about 8 feet.  (Sadly I missed the putt.)  Still, it’s always great to play golf with my dad.

As for the smoker, well, that was pretty darn near perfect too.  We got three slabs of ribs from Costco. I thought there were only two in the package, so when we opened them last night and saw how many ribs we had, we quickly called mom’s parents to join us for Father’s day dinner.  Step one was to make the rub, which we did the day before.

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Pure Michigan. Pure Yummy.

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Ah Michigan. I love everything about it – the quaint lake towns, Traverse City, Trattoria Stella, amazing wineries, B&B’s, even its ad campaign. There are exactly two ad campaigns that can capture my attention and transport my mind and Michigan is at the top of that list. Any season, any medium – radio, billboard, television – and I’m mentally planning my next trip. (The other is Corona. I relax just seeing those commercials!) But back to Michigan. It’s been one of our favorite weekend getaway destinations whether for a romantic getaway or a family trip to a beach house; and then there’s the winery hopping, apple picking, fall drives and pumpkin farms.

I could really go on and on, but let’s get to the food. This week we obviously picked Michigan for our state night dinner which meant that cherries had to be the star of the meal. Afterall, Michigan is home to the National Cherry Festival. We also wanted to make something healthy since we’re still recovering from our soul food dinner, and we wanted to use ingredients we had on hand. The result – a Salmon Spinach Salad with Cherry Sauce.  Continue reading →