An attempt at Chai Cupcakes

Like very weekend for the past 3 weeks I made a batch of homemade Chai Tea because every week I finish an entire batch (8 cups). They are great as chilled lattes at work!

Well, I had heard from a friend that you could make Chai cupcakes, and the thought just wouldn't go away. Unfortunately, I made some delicious, but overpowering orange cinnamon icing, so they really just came out tasting like carrot cake. This was a good thing because my husband is crazy for carrot cake, so I am not left to finish off the cupcakes alone.

Anyway, we'll just call these Spice cupcakes, since they really didn't taste like Chai...

This week's dinner recipes will include: Walnut-crusted chicken with quinoa and sweet potato chicken stoup. More to come later!

Thai Chicken Pizza

My husband and I LOVE this recipe. Although the "pizza sauce" is supposed to be duck or plum sauce, I've always used Hoisen sauce instead, since it's sweet and always on hand at our house. With 3 chicken breasts and 2 packs of Monterrey Jack cheese, we ended up with 4 mini-pizzas (using the whole grain, organic pizza crusts I picked up from the FM from Phoenix Rising awhile back).

The peanut butter/tamari sauce blend that coated the chicken is what really makes your mouth water- awesome! The bean sprouts are kind of a love/hate thing for me- what a mess! But man, these pizzas are GREAT.

Recipes 8 &9, if you're keeping track

Due to the unusually cool weather last week, I made chili and the most disgusting cornbread ever. I blame it on the website I found a substitute recipe for when I had no flour to make it with (I was waiting for some organic whole grain flour I ordered from Nuts Online, but the 0.25" snow made it arrive later than projected.) Luckily, we're having leftovers tonight (Round 2!) and I'm making regular cornbread the way it's meant to be- tasty.

I made spinach enchiladas last night. I have to give major credit to my sister in law who pointed out that a local restaurant, Los Barrios (owned by the parent of a current student), sold a recipe book that had recipes very much like my husband's grandmother makes. And, since she only speaks Spanish and doesn't write anything down, I jumped on the deal. They were delicious, but I think because I used fresh spinach, they seriously needed some salt.

I have to say, in the spirit of Valentine's day, if you ever find yourself married to someone of a different culture, don't be afraid to butcher the food they are used to. If they really love you, they will patiently wait until you get it "right."

In other news, the weather is very spring-like this week. The high the past few days has been just shy of 80. I am not complaining :)

Adventures with raw milk, snow, green onions and chai tea

I, like my online orders of baking supplies, am using the excuse of the southern "Arctic Blast" for why I am late this week. (Please ignore the fact that it was 82 degrees outside exactly a week ago.)

Last week's FM trip was a new one for me. After reading about all the benefits of Raw Milk (no chemical treatments, if it comes from grass-fed cows, there's usually no hormones or antibiotics, etc.) I decided to try it out. I dropped $7 on a gallon. Yikes! Once I got home, however, it slowly dawned on me that there might be risks to drinking non-pasteurized milk. Sure enough, just Googling "raw milk" provided enough info to scare me into spending 2 hours of my Saturday cooking my milk, and then of course skimming it since we were a little wary of 3.5% fat milk. On the plus side, I made some butter out of the skimmed layer (kindergarten style, shaking a glass jar until my elbow hurt). But, after that experience, we went back to store-bought milk this week.

In other news, I have discovered the secret to green onions. I am not kidding or exaggerating when I say that I made FM green onions last for 4 weeks before they became slightly limp and not at all mushy. The trick is to wrap them individually like a jelly roll in a damp paper towel, and then store them in an open plastic grocery bag (not the produce bags, the regular thick ones) in the fridge. It was AMAZING. (Yes, I am thrilled by the little things in life.

Unfortunately, there was no FM to partake in this morning. Yesterday, the entire city shut down due to about 0.25 " of snow. For you northerners, that's like a blizzard for us south Texans. So, apparently many of the farmers were still stuck at home this morning, since it tends to be cooler in the Hill Country. So this was the first time since December that I have had to shop for everything at the grocery store. Let me tell you, I am constantly amazed at all the things we have become so good at providing in the middle of winter. But, I stuck to my list, which only included produce that I could have got at the FM (except for the hubby's usual apples, he will not give those up!)

In response to the cold weather, I found this Chai Tea Recipe online last week and have just been waiting for the opportunity to make it!

 The tea came out great, but let me tell you, it sure did look weird steeping in the pot with bits of smashed ginger floating in it.

The high today is supposed to be around 65, but we're supposed to get another cold snap on Tuesday. If you're living in a winter wonderland, stay warm! And stay tuned for this week's Chili & cornbread, and spinach enchiladas a la Los Barrios.

Meaty "Not-sagna"

So, Rachel Ray claimed that her "Not-sagna" takes less time to prepare than regular lasagna... um, not really.
But, it was just as good!

Grass-fed ground beef, fresh onions, fresh basil, Organic spaghetti, with some ricotta... It was pretty good!
Only thing I forgot was the french bread. And, I'm a little annoyed that making your own tomato sauce (for pizza or pasta) always makes it come out pretty runny. All the recipes online tell you to add a can of tomato paste, which kind of voids the whole "homemade" thing.

Hubby ranked this at a 6 out of 10, and said last night's meal was an 8/10.

When he told me what he thinks is closer to a 10, I was a little surprised. He likes the simple throw together stuff. So, soon enough, I'll be doing some REAL "30 minute meals."

In other news, check out this insanely huge head of cauliflower the hubby found at our local grocery store:

Speaking of food, anyone else seen the news on Taco Bell's latest lawsuit?

Black Pepper & Coriander-Crusted Tuna with Orange and Fennel-Roasted Potato Salad

This is a definite keeper! I think I overcooked the tuna steaks a little- I was unaware that tuna could be cooked like beef. I figured if there was any pink in fish, it was not a good thing. But I suppose when the recipe gave varying cook times for medium and rare, I should have caught on.

The Orange & Fennel-Roasted Potato Salad was not made according to recipe... I had no idea you could buy whole fennel bulbs, and had no clue where to look for them.
The original recipe for the salad called for 2lbs roasted potatoes mixed with 1quartered & thinly sliced fennel bulb, 1/2 small red onion, 10 fresh basil leaves, chopped, 1/4 cup fresh parsley, 1 Tbsp Dijon mustard and the zest and juice of one small orange.

My recipe (due to not reading the recipe carefully before heading to the store/market) was edited slightly:
In place of Dijon mustard, I used 1 Tbsp yellow mustard, 1 tsp Tabasco, 1 Tbsp honey, 1 clove sauted minced garlic, 1 tsp onion powder, salt, pepper
and I forgot the onion and fennel bulb, but instead used 1 Tbsp fennel seeds.

All in all, I think it was great, but it could have used a vegetable on the side. I'm thinking cauliflower and broccoli?

Menu for last week of January

So, apparently there is this cool thing called Pecan Oil that supposedly has less saturated fat than Virgin Olive Oil. The man at the Leon Springs Farmer's Market informed me that it has just as light a taste as Olive Oil. We shall see...

This week's buys, for a grand total of $59.50:
-4 Tuna Steaks, fresh from the fishermen in Port Aransas (1.85lbs)
-1 dozen free-range chicken eggs (I got a speckled egg in this dozen! That's lucky, right?)
-1lb red potatoes
-10 tomatoes
-16oz honey (that's right, I finished the other 17oz in 3 weeks... what can I say, I like tea and I have a sweet tooth!)
-10 oz Pecan Oil
-A yummy Gluten-Free/Dairy-Free Berry Bar from The Green Brownie Company that did NOT survive the car ride home!


This week's Recipe plan:
1) Black Pepper & Coriander-Crusted Tuna with Orange and Fennel-Roasted Potato Salad
2)Lasagna (with ground beef- just the way the hubby likes it)


You may be wondering what I did with the ever-elusive turnips... Well, after trying one raw- and let me tell you I'm shocked to say it wasn't bad- I ended up using an onion, some red potatoes and broccoli that looked like it was on it's way out to make a soup, and threw the turnips in. Basically a "throw together soup"- it was great with rice.


The best thing about this New Year's Resolution? We only bring frozen dinners to work for lunch once or twice a week now. The leftovers from cooking so often are GREAT for lunches! I've also found that all this Farmer's Market shopping as created an aversion to cereal for breakfast every morning. So my hubby claims he is pleasantly surprised when he wakes up to find eggs or some other breakfast item awaiting him.

With the dreary weather outside, pizza was the perfect lunch!

So, my tomato sauce came out ORANGE! Apparently, when you don't use preservatives, red tomatoes don't stay red unless you cook them very slowly. But since I'm impatient, that didn't happen.

Used homemade sauce made from the tomatoes I bought at the FM yesterday, used 2 of the 4 whole wheat organic pizza crusts I got at the FM, and the spinach, too. Only thing that was on the pizza that was hard to tell what's in it was the Oscar Meyer turkey sausage we tossed in with the spinach.

Anyway, the pizza was great, and I'm counting it as Recipe #2!

Excuses, excuses. And a new FM visit!

I have been a horrible blogger. This week has been pretty smooth, but the most important part of this blog is the one element I have forgotten the last 3 recipes: photographic proof!
So, this week, we will start over at #2. A few extra recipes never hurt anyone, right? (Although, I can foresee myself on January 30th, coming back to this post and saying "Those 3 recipes count!!")


Decided to try out another Farmer's Market today. Leon Springs Farmers Market is further from my house, but their website indicated that they sold free-range chicken, which I could not find at Pearl FM last weekend.
For $72, I came away with:

• 2lbs grass-fed ground beef
• 2 whole chickens (free-range, antibiotic/hormone free)
• 6 tomatoes
• 4 turnips
• 8 small red potatoes
• large bag of spinach
• 5 oranges
• 8oz of pecans
• 4 whole grain, wood stove cooked pizza crusts

Everything, once again, comes from local hill-country areas (except the oranges, they, like my husband, are from the RG Valley)

I'll be the first to admit, $72 is pretty pricey. But cooking for the two of us will not use up all of these items in a week. The meats were the overkill, I've got one of the chickens in the Crockpot now to debone and freeze (and to get some yummy broth from). The ground beef is in the freezer for another time.
My biggest dilemma is how to cook the turnips. But I've been told, if you treat them like potatoes and mash them up, they can be pretty good and have a radish-like bite to them. We'll see how that goes over...

Recipes last week that were not recorded:

• Roasted tomato soup with ham and mozzarella "sandwiches" on Portabellas
• Crockpot Roast (with carrots, onions, grass-fed beef-- no celery, because I couldn't find it organic. Why is celery so important to be organic? It's at the top of the "Dirty Dozen" list, and it provides no nutritional value anyway.)

Options for this week:

• Rachel Ray's Chicken with Scallion-Lime Sauce and Sweet Carrot Rice
• Spinach-Sausage Pizza (homemade tomato sauce cooking right now!)
• Something that goes well with mashed turnips as a side
• Some kind of soup with the broccoli, potatoes and onions I still have sitting around (and the chicken broth being made as a by-product of the the Crockpot chicken??)

My Master's Program starts Wednesday, but we have Monday off and a half day Friday, so I don't see this affecting my cooking schedule anytime soon.

Cheers!

First Time at a Farmer's Market

Check out my finds at the Pearl Farmer's Market this morning! Everything offered there was from no more than 150 miles away from San Antonio, and most items offered were organic.
I was surprised to find produce I could actually use in recipes I already know by heart. It was a little pricey, and I did end up going to HEB afterwards to pick up a few other things that aren't sold there, which gave me a chance to double-check the price differences.

For $41.50, we got:

• 16oz local honey ($7.50)- I've given up my afternoon sodas, and local honey in my tea is supposed to help relieve my allergy sufferings (Mountain Cedar Fever- yuck!)
• 1 bunch of carrots ($3)
• 2 Portabellas ($5)
• about 16 tomatoes ($6)
• And the prize of the day- 2lbs Grass Fed Beef from about 20 miles away ($16) Besides Sun Harvest and ONE HEB, I haven't found anywhere with grass-fed beef that aren't just T-bones.
• Oh, and if you're doing the calculations, my husband may have gotten excited and bought a freshly made kolache or 2 while we were there

Because we spent less than $100 total on our weekly grocery bill, and due to the laid-back and non-snooty nature of the people with booths in the Farmer's Market, I think I am slowly getting the husband on board the Organic/Local boat. Honestly, it's not that much more expensive. Our local state-wide grocer, HEB, offered the vegetables for only $0.75 less. I think the trip alone was worth the extra $3-4 we probably spent.

I did forget to mention that while we were visiting family in the Rio Grande Valley, we picked up some nearly-always-in-season oranges (the in-laws have orange trees in their yard and it's all we can do to escape with less than 40 oranges the 4 or 5 times we visit between August and February). We also stopped at a fruit stand on the way back to San Antonio and picked up a bag of 8 sweet onions for $3 and a bag of tangerines for $2. All of the produce has been GREAT so far, and are keeping well.

So, you may be asking, what's on this week's menu? I won't lie, we've had some pre-made pizza dough sitting in the fridge awhile, so we'll probably use leftover mozzarella and slap some canned tomato sauce on it and see what we get one of these "I'm too tired to even get up and look for the remote" nights.

But here's the "good stuff":

• Crockpot Roast: makes an awesome stew the second day and all I have to do is chop a few things up before I go to work. Ingredients: carrots, potatoes, onion, beef, beef broth, and usually a can of french onion soup, but I figure that if I pre-saute the onions and deglaze them with a little red wine, I could probably mimic dumping a can of Campbell's in there. And since canned foods are officially a no-no now (unless they are already in the cupboard), it'll have to do. Suggestions? Besides trying to cut down a french onion soup recipe to 8oz?

• Grilled Tomato Soup with Ham and Mozzarella Portabellas "sandwiches"

Really going to have to avoid soups and stews next week, didn't realize that's 3 meals in a row with soup recipes. See you on the other side of the weekend!