Life, food, family, friends…
During our recent trip to Idaho my bro and sis-in-law invited us over for a fresh trout dinner at their place. I hadn’t had trout for a really long time and was looking forward to it. The day before, my bro had gone out fishing and caught lots of fishies. So anywho, on to the pictures!
Mmmmm……makes me want to go fishing (as long as someone else kills the fish!).
Mmmmmmm…..
I love this salad and Chanin makes it really well! But, then again, she makes everything really well!
Here are the basic ingredients:
I’ve always loved my Grandma’s chile (chee-leh as she says) but usually have to go long periods without it since we don’t all live near each other. I’m actually lucky enough to have two Grandmas who make excellent chile. So, on a recent visit to Grandma Becky’s we brought home a jar and promptly gobbled it up. We figured it was time we tried to make it on our own. After firming up a few details with the Grams we hit the store and bought all of the goodies. Chanin is an excellent cook/chef so she improvised a little to make it her own.
I roasted those bad boys on the grill as the first step.
The house smelled really good after bringing the veggies back inside. I’m not too clear on the rest of the steps but after much blending and seasoning Chanin produced an excellent chile. I know she wants to try a few more things to tweak the recipe but I’m sure it will become a family recipe.
Here are a few pictures from some of our recent grill experiences. These were taken a little while ago but I’ve been slackin’ on the website duties.
First up is our rotisserie chicken. This was actually our second attempt. Both times it turned out really good but next time we think we’re going to brine the bird first. That should give it some more flavor internally. The meat turned out really tender and juicy but just not a ton of flavor, except for the skin.
To accompany the chicken I decided to try grilling some artichokes. I was inspired by the recipe I saw in my new grilling cookbook (Thanks Phil and Angela!). Well, it didn’t work. They looked pretty good but were really rubbery and tough. Actually, I couldn’t even pull a leaf off to eat. Oh well, I may try again but cook them longer and make sure they have enough moisture in them.
Next, we have some beef and veggie kebabs. Chanin made a really good marinade for the meat (london broil) and we added different types of peppers, onions, and pineapple (Thanks Phil and Angela again!). They were “da bomb” as the kids say these days (do they still say that?).
To go along with our nice new backyard we finally went out and bought a new grill. After a lot of research I had the choice narrowed down to a Weber gas grill or one from Sam’s Club. They both had good reviews but the grill from Sam’s came with more features for the price.
I’ll get a picture of our grill soon but for now here’s a picture from the Sam’s website.
Here are some of the important “deets:”
To “break in” the new grill we bought some T-bone steaks, potatos, zucchini, and squash. I seared those bad boys on the infrared sear burner but wasn’t successful with the grill marks. I’ll have to keep working on that. I also grilled up the veggies to eat on the side. Everything was really good and it make a perfect first meal for our grill.
Since then we’ve cooked fish a few times, chicken, pork, and some more steaks. Everything has turned out pretty darn good and I’m having fun learning how to cook on a gas grill. In the past I’ve only cooked on a charcoal grill but cooking with gas is just so much easier. I’ll still go back to the charcoal for some things but probably not too often. I’ll post more about my grilling adventures as they happen.
OK, just catching up here. So here goes a few posts that we’ve been too busy to write!
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So, we ended up back in Southern California for Easter, partially because I had some customer work to do in San Diego. We figured we would just drive out there so we could spend some time visiting our families and hanging our for a bit.
We celebrated Easter at Chanin’s parent’s house with lots of family and food. Of course, I forgot to take pictures of all of the food but we had ham, potato cheese casserole, yams (with marshmallows), corn, deviled eggs, and lots more! I can’t seem to remember what else we had but I assure you it was a FEAST!
I was charged with making dessert and decided to make carrot cake since it seemed “Eastery.” I love carrot cake and hadn’t made it before so I scoured the ‘net for recipes and found one that looked good on Chowhound. My bro and sis in law suggested cupcakes since they’d be easier to eat so I went with that approach. I must say they turned out really good. I think I outdid myself! Even Chanin said that if she liked carrot cake then she would’ve liked mine!
Here are a few pictures of the cupcakes. I’ll post the recipe further below.
When we were designing our new backyard Chanin mentioned that she’d like some citrus trees. So, we got a Thornless Mexican Lime and a dwarf Meyer Lemon tree put in our side yard. The lemon tree actually had some fruit on it so we picked one and squeezed if over some grilled salmon.
The lime tree doesn’t have any fruit, and is pretty small, but we’re hoping for some soon. OK, so maybe this isn’t too exciting for most people but we were pretty happy about it!
According to wikipedia.org fortune cookies were first invented in San Francisco, although Los Angeles claims the cookies were first created there. We don’t care where they were invented but we enjoy reading the “fortunes” which usually contain silly bits of wisdom or a funny phrase. Chanin found the fortune shown below in her cookie after we ate at a Vietnamese restaurant. It’s one of our favorites of all time.
To celebrate the holidays, Chanin and I went out to a very nice dinner on my company’s dime. Because my company has employees located in different parts of the world, it’s virtually impossible to get everyone together and have a “normal” Christmas or Holiday party. So each year Chanin and I celebrate on our own. This year we decided to have dinner at The Melting Pot.
The Melting Pot is a fondue restaurant with many locations all around the country. We went to the Ahwatukee location just south of Phoenix. To get the full experience, I think you need to get the “Big Night Out” deal. This includes your choice of a cheese fondue, salad, main course, and chocolate fondue. We chose and ate all of the food below!
So, we’re at the store the other day and spotted the Marsala wine and thought “Hey, we should make Chicken Marsala!” I love mushrooms so I went and picked some out and we also got a few of the other necessary ingredients. The next day I looked up some recipes with the help of FoodieView.com, which is a recipe search engine which searches lots of different sources. One of the recipes, from Cooking Light magazine, looked promising so we decided to make that one. I had planned on making this dinner but we decided that I should make the next dinner (probably Shrimp with Red Chiles, Ginger, Garlic & Scallions) and Chanin would make this one. She’s good at making adjustments and I pretty much just stick to the recipe so this one suited her better. I’ve put our version below but if you’d like to see the original (and slightly more healthy) recipe you can find it here.
Now, on to the recipe:
Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and add 2 teaspoons olive oil, shallots and garlic; cook until tender. Add mushrooms and cook 3 additional minutes; remove mushroom mixture from pan. Set aside.
Place each chicken breast half between 2 sheets of heavy-duty plastic wrap; pound to a 1/4-inch thickness using a meat mallet or rolling pin. Sprinkle both sides of chicken with 1/8 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Place flour in a shallow dish; dredge chicken breast halves in flour.
Add butter to pan, and place over medium-high heat. Add chicken; cook until browned. Remove chicken from pan. Add broth and Marsala to pan and scrape pan to loosen browned bits. Bring mixture to a boil and thicken with a flour water mixture (1 teaspoon of flour to 2 tablespoons water). Return chicken to pan and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes; add cream, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Return mushroom mixture to pan and stir in peas. Cook until thoroughly heated. Serve chicken and sauce over pasta.
Chanin modified the recipe to use some ingredients we already had on-hand and to make a larger amount of sauce. The original recipe was lower fat but considering that this made four big servings we don’t think it was too bad for us. I’ll just skip the ice cream tonight!
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