Thursday, September 30, 2010

Jerry, Roger & Eats

Once again, there has been a long time between posts. Sorry about that (again). Time just seems to go by so fast lately. I have been busy with among other things -

going to see Jerry Seinfeld perform his live stand-up act. Totally hilarious!! We laughed for an hour and a half. He makes the silliest observations & verbalizes it so well. I still rank "Seinfeld" among my top 5 TV shows of all time. Sometimes, that show is my life.

My biggest event, BY FAR, was the Roger Waters concert.

Can you believe it's been 30 years since "The Wall"? (one of my all time favourite albums). I loved the songs, I loved the story, I loved the movie....and when I heard Roger Waters was doing an anniversary tour, opening in Toronto, there was no doubt in my mind that I would be there.

What a FABULOUS show! Roger was in terrific form.

He brought along the inflatables, wall projections, special effects, pyrotechnics, the pig - EVERYTHING! (except David Gilmour - boooo!!)

The experience was mind blowing. Roger's voice was great. During the first half of the show, the wall was constructed brick by brick across the front of the stage.

And at the end, they tore it down. It was wild! Best concert I've ever been to.

Anyhoo, as exciting as all of that was for me, probably not as exciting for you, so let's move onto a bit of food, shall we?

I really like the Podleski sisters cookbooks (Looney Spoons, Crazy Plates, Eat Shrink & Be Merry) They are quirky cookbooks filled with lower fat/calorie recipes - a bit of healthier cooking, shall we say. They are NOT vegetarian, although they do have some recipes with tofu & a meatless chapter. A lot of the other recipes can be modified to be meatless. Anyway, one that is vegetarian is Mexican Lasagna.
(Sorry the photo is a little orangey. I didn't have the proper lighting setting on my camera.)

This uses corn tortillas instead of noodles and lots of beans and veggies. It was really, really tasty! It did make a big pan and we had it for a couple of meals and I put the leftovers in the freezer. Not a good idea. It was all soggy and fell apart when defrosted. So I'll have to halve the recipe next time.

I had a bunch of dill that was starting to wilt and needed to make something so I could use it up. I found one on the Campbell's soup site. It was supposed to be with chicken, so I just used PC World's Best Meatless Chicken Breasts.

I also got to use up some sugar snap peas I had in the fridge. Combined with red pepper, cream of mushroom soup (recipe said cream of chicken, but I used mushroom) and some noodles, this was quite good. If you'd like to make it, the recipe is here.

Jim is not a big fan of cauliflower but, I found a dish that has won him over to the cauliflower side -
Red Lentil Cauliflower Curry from Veganomicon! He even had 2 servings of this. We had it with some basmati rice and Naan bread. It was sooo good. I took some leftovers for my lunch the next day and it heats up well in the microwave. 2 thumbs up on everything! (if I had an extra thumb, it would be 3 up for Roger)

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Something New & "Chicken" Marsala

I've been working a lot of shifts and didn't have a whole lot of cooking time available. I thought this new product by Sunrise would be great for a quick meal. It's tofu in sauce and all you have to do is add vegetables.
These were on sale at the grocery store for 99¢ and I had a coupon to save 75¢, so I got this package for a quarter! The instructions said to add carrots and broccoli. I also had 1/2 of a green pepper in the fridge, so I threw that in too. This was ready in no time.

I found it wasn't quite saucy enough for my liking, so I poured in some jarred teriyaki sauce I had. The tofu was tasty and for 25¢, I'd say I got a pretty good meal. There was enough for 2 servings and I also had some brown rice on the side. I've since seen the "tofu n' sauce" at $2.49 which I probably wouldn't pay. It would be much more economical to get a whole block of tofu and cube it myself & add sauce.

Finally, I had some time off to make a bit of a special meal for Jim & I. I started with some Naked Quorn Cutlets and did "Chicken" Marsala. Marsala is a fortified wine from Sicily and gives this dish a succulent flavour.

I used Martha Stewart's recipe and it turned out really well. Of course, I didn't have any mushrooms on mine and I like it just fine that way.

New potatoes are out now and I just had to have a feast of those. These were steamed until almost done, then I tossed them in a pan with some olive oil and fresh herbs to finish them off. I used some parsley, rosemary and a sprinkle of chives. Soooo freakin' yummy!

I found a recipe for carrot ribbons on the Bon Apetit site that sounded interesting, so I gave those a try too. They turned out quite nice. I found I had to do a bit of fussing because the ribbons kept sticking together. I wanted to make sure that each one got a good coat of the sauce, so I spent a bit of time separating them. For a unique presentation, this was nice, but next time, I will probably just cut the carrots in pieces.