My Adventure Into the World of non-meat/dairy

So I overindulged over the holidays. Shocker, doesn't everybody? That is what they are there for right?  I'm a pretty big gym rat and I'm of course going to keep my regular gym schedule up but I thought I would try to change up my eating habits as well.

One of my best friends came up with an idea for eating that I'm going to try to stick to... at least until a Miami vacation that I've got coming up in February :)

We are going to cut out the meat (excluding fish) and dairy from our lives. Supposedly this is a great way to lose a few lbs and kick your body into healthiness. I've tried going vegetarian before and it has never worked out too well, but I've recently tried almond milk as a substitute for dairy and LOVE it. We'll see, the main motivation is to look good in a bikini in February and right now, we've got some work to do, so hopefully this will help me meet my (very vain) goal :)

Vegan recipes that I've found

Deleted the kitchen tool saga

Didn't like it, didn't want to write about it. Found it boring.

..... new and awesome things to come though!

Spicy Shrimp Noodle Bowl

I have been in quite the soup mode lately, and while I seldom make the same recipe twice, I have made this soup, or some variation of this soup 3 times in the past 2 weeks. It is SO GOOD! This Cooking Light soup is a chicken stock based soup with seafood flavors (clam juice & shrimp tails) as well. I'm guessing that they called for chicken broth rather than fish stock because generally, chicken broth is easier to come by and is more readily available to the majority of people. Although, I bet this soup would be fantastic with a really good fish stock as its base.
Rather than sugar snap peas, I added shelled edamame and some sliced bamboo, both of which worked out really well. I love bamboo and cook with it a lot.... it really doesn't have a whole lot of taste but the texture is really interesting and its just kind of cool to be eating bamboo. :)

This dish is light enough that you will have room for dessert yet filling enough that you are not left hungry. The ginger is fantastic as are the noodles (although I may try glass noodles next time...yummm) and the spice! Warning, this dish can be VERY spicy if you add the amount that the original recipe calls for... I added a little to the dish during cooking and then added extra in my dish, as I like my food a bit more spicy than the significant other.

This is a great dish for any weather, any time of the year, and is perfect for a lovely lunch or a light dinner. The recipe suggests serving along side a cucumber salad (my friend Maura's favorite,) which would be perfect. I, unfortunately, did not have a cucumber so I steamed some store bought pot stickers as a side. They were delicious!

Enjoy!! Click here for the recipe

Husband rating... 8, it was a little spicy for him, but it cured his stuffy nose! :)

My Adventures With Canning

Tomolives

I love summer. Anyone who knows me, knows that I would give my left arm to never see a snowflake again. I love the warm weather, trips to the beach and the fruits and veggies that come with the world's most perfect season.

Spicy Habanero Garlic Dill Pickles 

The market where I do most of my grocery shopping stocks it's shelves with the most beautiful local produce all summer.... you can literally taste the sunshine in the tomatoes. I love knowing that the peaches that I am eating come from the next state over, or that the Kale in my stir-fry was grown less than an hour away. Unfortunately, this local growing wonderland is short lived in the most-of-the-time-freezing city of Chicago, and while I was grocery shopping the other day, I felt compelled to scoop up a ton of produce and preserve all of it's sunshiney glory by way of canning. Rather than buying every fresh item I saw, I thought that I should first see how this goes and start small. Pickles seemed like the obvious first step into canning and as far as I know, (I'm giving them a few weeks to get really sour :) my canning test drive was a success. I made garlic dill, spicy garlic dill (made spicy with the addition of one habanero pepper per jar) and Tomolives.
Tomolives are lovely little pieces of heaven introduced to me by my friends Melannie and Sam. Sam makes some of the best martinis in the world and often throws a few tomolives in his drink rather than the standard olive. A tomolive is a cute and delicious pickled tiny green tomato that just goes perfectly with some chilled vodka. Try them, they are a wonderful secret that southerners have kept from us for far too long. Thanks Sam and Melannie :)

For my tomolives, used a mixed variety of tiny grape and cherry tomatoes that I had lying around. They look so pretty!! I'll update once they have had time to sit for a few weeks.

Click here for the tomolive recipe that I used

Click here for the pickle recipe that I used 

Click here for safe canning practices 

The Best Linguine with Clam Sauce Everrrrrrr

Whenever I go home to visit my parents, there is one dish that I ALWAYS ask for: Linguine with Clam Sauce. Now, this isn't the typical creamy, heavy restaurant style clam sauce. This is a light, amazingly flavorful, vacation-to-the-Cape-for-your-mouth, type of sauce. I might go as far as to say that if I were stuck on an island for the rest of my life, I would choose this dish to have as my only meal. Really.... it is that good.

The following is my mom's recipe for Linguine with Clam Sauce.... Enjoy :) **Some of the times listed of how long to cook various parts of the recipe are a bit vague.... basically, just follow your instincts. If you taste the recipe at a certain spot and you think it needs a bit longer on the stove, or maybe a little more salt, or whatever, go for it!! You know what you like... make changes based on your tastes. 

Ingredients

1 Pkg Spaghetti or Linguine
3 TBSP Olive Oil

1 Medium Shallot

2 cloves of garlic, sliced VERY thin

1 cup parsley, divided

1 pinch, red pepper flakes

1 medium tomato

1/2 cup white wine

1 8 oz bottle clam juice

4 6.5 oz cans of chopped clams

1/4 cup freshly grated parmigiano reggiano

4 Fresh basil leaves

-Mince Shallot, set aside

-Slice garlic cloves, set aside

-Slice tomato into quarters, squeeze out juice and seeds and chop into a small dice, set aside

-Pour oil into a medium saucepan and saute shallots for a few minutes over medium high heat

-Add garlic to the pan, stirring constantly for a few seconds. Add the red pepper flakes and saute 1 minute more.

-Add HALF of the parsley and all of the tomatoes and saute for several minutes until the tomatoes have wilted a bit.

-Add the wine and let the mixture reduce for about 10 minutes 

-Add the bottle of clam juice and the juice from the 3 cans of clams (reserve the clams for later) and cook for approximately 5 minutes over medium or medium-low heat. 

-Add the reserved clams and slowly simmer the sauce for 10 minutes

-Add the grated parmigiano and simmer SLOWLY for approximately 40 minutes or until sauce has reduced and looks just delicious

-At this point you can turn off the sauce and let it set for a while (if you have the time to do this, if not you can skip this step.)
-In a separate pot, boil spaghetti until al dente. drain and return to original pot. 

-Before serving, stir in the remaining 1/2 cup chopped parsley
- Place a serving of pasta on each plate and top with as much sauce as you like**

-Sprinkle the chiffonade of basil and additional parmigiano on each individual plate to finish (follow the link to see how to chiffonade.)

**Generally I am a firm believer of adding the prepared pasta to the sauce pot, and cooking the pasta along with the sauce for a minute before serving. I find that this process helps the sauce bind to the pasta better than if I just ladled the sauce over the pasta on the plate... however, for whatever reason, my mom has always prepared this recipe differently. I would guess, that adding the cooked pasta to the sauce wouldn't hurt, I just have never done it and therefore cannot recommend it. 

Boeuf Bourguignon

So this blog episode is a role reversal! A sneak attack role reversal in fact :) My friend Alli has just informed me that her mom, Marie, (who I adore and who follows my blog) is making a very special dinner tomorrow a la Julia Child.

Boeuf Bourguignon (Beef Bourguignon for those of us who do not parlez vous francais) was made famous in our country by our beloved Julia. The famous American chef lived with her husband in France for a period of time and brought sophisticated French cuisine back with her when she returned. I remember watching her cooking show and loving every second of her shrill, high pitched voice describing how to prepare a chicken. Nobody would ever call Julia delicate or dainty, she didn't always get recipes right on camera and she never really got the idea of cutting things uniformly the way other chefs do, but she was fantastic. She cooked with passion and poise and wasn't afraid to laugh at herself or make light of a burned item in the kitchen. Julia introduced the American housewife to true cooking, and thank god she did.... A woman can only make so many casseroles with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup before she either goes insane, or dies of hypertension.

So Marie, after you make this lovely dinner for your beautiful daughters, will you please comment on this post? Tell us which recipe you used and how it turned out?? I'll make Boeuf Bourguignon next week and we can compare notes :) Good luck & Bon Appetit!

I've included some Julia clips below to inspire your inner French Chef :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWmvfUKwBrg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPcGiLVp9Zw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezfZTlDGDvU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHX0pv8_JOE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaASyRFXTj4

Extreme Comfort Food

I live in Chicago and Fall is definitely here. The leaves are falling, there is a crisp, cool breeze in the air. While I don't like the season that comes after Autumn (icy, arctic winter) I LOVE Fall. I love bundling up in a sweater or light jacket and heading to the apple orchard or a biergarten, but most of all... I love the yummy hearty food that comes along with this lovely season.

For me, there is nothing more comforting than a steaming hot bowl of pasta or a huge helping of lasagna. Some people like fried chicken, or meatloaf, but for some reason, hearty Italian food feels like a warm blanket on a rainy day. To clarify, I am not Italian, but have adopted their food traditions, because when was the last time you happened upon a Dutch restaurant? Or heard someone say.... "ooooo, you know what I could go for today? Some Dutch food." I honestly couldn't tell you what the people of my "home country" eat... I'll look into that and get back to you.

Anyway, the other day, I felt the first chilly breeze of fall and was inspired to make lasagna. Normally I follow a recipe by my favorite chef: Giada DeLaurentiis, but I decided to branch out and try a new recipe. I found a great one by Ina Garten and while I changed the ingredients slightly, the results were amazing. The recipe I used was for Ina's Turkey Lasagna. I chose it because it called for some things that I hadn't used in making this dish before... like goat cheese. I LOVE goat cheese.
The most drastic thing that I changed in the recipe was that I used 1 lb of ground buffalo in addition to spicy turkey sausage. I had the buffalo and needed to use it.... honestly I think that it definitely added to the dish, it made it very meaty and the combination of flavors was really good! I know, the turkey & buffalo combo sounds weird, but for some reason, it worked!

I followed the rest of the recipe exactly and really loved it! The cheese mixture was so delicious! The goat cheese added a really great tangy component!! I will never make lasagna without goat cheese again, it was fantastic. It also freezes really well! I made a full recipe of lasagna and ended up freezing half of it. After defrosting and heating it up again, it tasted just as good!

Honestly, make this lasagna, curl up in a blanket with some wine (of course) and enjoy this wonderful season!