Our Anniversary

Yesterday, May 26th, was our 3rd anniversary. We've really been focused on being extra frugal, not eating out, and really trying to redo our whole budget. As the one with no willpower whatsoever, I wanted to go somewhere "fancy" (don't even ask what that entails because I don't know that even I can explain it), and ever practical, Ian wanted to go somewhere within our budget- $30. Ian & I couldn't decide on a local place to eat dinner that met both our requirements, so we decided to cook dinner together. I pulled out my handy Eating Well 500 Calorie Dinners recipe book, and flipped to page 128: Lemon-Garlic Shrimp & Vegetables.

Ian agreed to make a run to our local Earth Fare and pick up the things we needed for the recipe, which turned out to be most of the items in the recipe.

Towards the end of the day, Ian showed up at my work with a dozen beautiful roses!  That picture isn't the dozen he got me, and in no way compares to the beauty of the ones he got me, but I ran out of time and will have to post the actual picture later.

Anyway, we get home and start cooking. It was a very simple recipe to cook. While Ian was chopping the asparagus and red bell pepper, I was prepping the shrimp and measuring out other things we needed.

The best thing I love about that cookbook is that it pairs side dishes and/or desserts and drinks with each meal. For this recipe, it said we could have a side of cauliflower & couscous or quinoa with fresh herbs AND a choice from two other sides. We love quinoa, so that's our go-to grain. Since Earth Fare was out of the quinoa we regularly get, Ian got red quinoa. We both thought the red quinoa had a slightly stronger and somehow slightly different flavor than regular quinoa. Also, when I was washing the quinoa, it smelled like peanuts! Anyway, I digress...

So the coolest thing about all this (besides it being our anniversary and having a romantic date night at home), was that we ended up both getting what we wanted. Ian spent $25 at Earth Fare for the dinner ingredients and dessert (we split a chocolate vegan cupcake). We saved the bell pepper seeds to plant next year, and we still have probably .75 lbs of shrimp left. We also have a ton of quinoa left, but we can use that with just about any dish! I got my fancy meal, and a chocolate dessert, so life was good! All in all, it was a great deal and a fantastic meal!

Now for a rant.

Dear Earth Fare:
Would you please publish a vegan baking cookbook? I promise if you publish one I'll still eat at your store! I'd give anything to know how you make your vegan cupcakes. I also had a coconut date bar that was out of this world. I bought a vegan dessert book, and everything I baked out of it was dry and not very good. I'm a great baker of non-vegan goods, so trying to replicate your recipes might restore my faith in vegan baking!
xoxoxo,
Ashlie

Meals back home

Well, we got some bad news about my Granddad, so we traveled to Tennessee to be with family. My Dad's Dad is in bad health, and knowing how much my Dad appreciates my cooking, I figured just being home and cooking some meals for my parents would be a nice thing to do. We took our EatingWell 500 Calorie Dinners cookbook and made a few meals out of it.

First up was the "Provençal style edamame saute." We served it with a side of quinoa. It was so good that we managed to eat it all before we could snap a picture of it. The recipe called for frozen artichokes, which we couldn't find. I bought two fresh ones instead, not thinking to look for canned ones. Let's just say that in cooking the recipe, we ALL learned a lot about how not to cook artichokes! We also learned that Tennessee grocery stores don't sell wine. That seems pretty idiotic to me, since more people cook with wine than beer, but I digress...

Next up was "charred tomato, chicken, and broccoli salad." I added a side of brown rice with a squeeze of lime. This recipe was a bigger hit with Mom and Dad. Thankfully Mom took over the charring of the tomatoes- I'm woefully inept at frying, apparently. And speaking of charring tomatoes, Mom and I were both shocked and the different aromas (and flavors) brought out by charring. At one point the charred tomatoes had the house smelling like baking sweet potatoes. It was incredible.

This recipe would definitely be just fantastic in the dog days of summer. 

Ian make breakfast for dinner one night, but you probably guessed that from his prior post.

After all the visiting and such, we were all pretty tired and stressed, so I decided to make a humongous dessert. I don't feel too bad in saying that I'm known for my desserts, so when I found a yummy looking trifle recipe in a magazine given to me by my Mammaw (my Mom's Mom), I knew I had to make it! I'd never made a trifle before, and didn't even have a trifle bowl there. I substituted a large punch bowl, and it worked just as well!

The recipe comes from the April/May 2010 issue of Taste of Home magazine. Hope I don't get in too much trouble for posting it, but it's too good not to share! I made some edits to the recipe when I made it and it was still so sweet that it almost made us sick. I've included my edits and suggestions below.

Peanut Butter Brownie Trifle

Yields 20 one cup servings

1 fudge brownie mix (13" x 9" pan size) [I used two 8" x 8" brownie mixes that included peanut butter cups.]

1 pkg. (10 oz.) peanut butter chips [I did not include these because of the brownie mix I used.]

2 pkg. (13 oz. each) miniature peanut butter cups [I only used one bag, but it was probably more than 13 oz.]

4 cups cold 2% milk

2 pkg. (5.1 oz. each) instant vanilla pudding mix

1 cup creamy peanut butter

4 tsp. vanilla extract

3 cartons (8 oz. each) frozen whipped topping, thawed

Prepare brownies according to package directions; stir in chips. Bake in a greased 13" x 9" pan at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out with moist crumbs (do not overbake). Cool on a wire rack; cut into 3/4" pieces [I just ended up crumbling].

Cut peanut butter cups in half [I would do quarters instead]; set aside 1/3 cup for garnish. In a large bowl, whisk milk and pudding mixes for two minutes. Let stand for two minutes or until soft-set. Add peanut butter and vanilla; mix well. Fold in 1-1/2 cartons of whipped topping.

Place 1/3 of the brownies in your trifle [punch] bowl; top with 1/3 of the peanut butter cups. Spoon 1/3 of the pudding mixture over the top. Repeat twice [or until you run out of ingredients!]. Cover with remaining whipped topping; garnish with reserved peanut butter cups [but don't garnish with WHOLE peanut butter cups like I did- that seemed to irritate everyone]. Refrigerate until chilled [or in the case of my family, consume as soon as assembled].

If you try this recipe, I'd love to hear your comments on how you modified it.

The new report

Lots of new stuff to report. Ian's going to report his part, so here's mine.
I've been wanting to explore vegan baking. I'm fascinated with the alternative ingredients used in vegan baking, and how they produce such amazing flavors. So Ian treated me to The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes. I like it because it's very straightforward, down-to-earth (doesn't use a lot of frou-frou ingredients), and explains the traditional baking ingredients and how vegan ingredients do the same thing.

I'm also very excited because we checked at Earth Fare, and the sweetners and flours used in the recipes are at really low prices. We even picked up some demarara to have in our coffee.

Because I'm fascinated with the raw eating lifestyle, Ian picked us up some Go Raw Spirulina Super Chips. Man are they good! The ones we got include banana, sesame seeds, coconut, dates, and spirulina. They taste of banana and sesame, but are just fantastic. If they tasted any better, I'd want to eat them in a bowl with soy milk for breakfast!

And because we're also (still? always?) counting calories, Ian also picked up EatingWell 500 Calorie Dinners. Hands down, it is one of the best recipe books I've seen in a very long time. It has caloric information for each dish, and suggests sides and dessert options (with caloric info, too) for them as well! We've already picked out two recipes from this book that will incorporate vegetables that we've been wanting to try. The first will be skillet gnocchi with chard and white beans (page 83). We've had about every shape of pasta except gnocchi, so we were happy to find whole wheat gnocchi at Earth Fare. We also picked up white chard, which is a vegetable we've never tried. The other recipe is provençal-style edamame sauté (page 96). It also incorporates a vegetable we've never tried- fennel. I'll report back once we make the recipes.

We picked up two more things, but I'm waiting to see how they work before reporting on them to you.
In the meantime, I hope you're well. Get out and get your hands dirty. Life's too short not to play in the dirt.
xoxo
akc