Cooking – Page 2 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Signs of spring continue

I’m thoroughly enjoying the warmer weather and the time I get to spend outside as a result. It’s not doing much for my Pokémon Go tendencies – there’s so much work to do in the garden, I don’t have time to walk to the nearby gyms and stops. Once everything is planted and at a maintenance level for the season, I’m sure I’ll get more walking in.

That said, I’ve continued mulching all around the garden, both as a weed suppressant and because it looks nice. I’m expecting to have my strawberry plants in the ground by the end of the week, with all of the pavers set so I can reach every part of the garden bed. Most of last year’s mint has been trimmed back, and the dried ends pulled off the chives to see (and taste) the new growth in the spring. I have a couple more plant remnants to pull out before I can start putting seeds in the ground for the early plantings, like salad greens.

The yard has been brimming with wildlife as the robins and other birds return. It’s hard to keep the bird feeders filled, not only because the neighborhood squirrels keep visiting, but also the abundance of birds that perch in the nearby trees. The squirrels do tend to knock all the seed onto the ground, which makes it more accessible to the gathered birds.

Squirrel on a hanging bird feeder — This squirrel is a regular visitor

Given the variable weather in Chicagoland, I’m never quite sure when the first grilling of the season will be. I’m pleased to say that I lit of the grill already… on the last day of March. Well, technically, I cooked on it; Cassandra lit it. I’m looking forward to continued grilling throughout the warm months.

Experimenting with HelloFresh

As I mentioned in my post about Blue Apron, I also tried out HelloFresh. I actually plan on trying a couple other delicious looking meal kit options, just to see what sort of variances are available, but in the end, I only really need one (if that).

My first impression of the HelloFresh recipes was that they were blander than the Blue Apron ones. I rescinded that impression with the second set of recipes; it must have just been the particular recipes I picked.

HelloFresh bags ("This bag is greener than a salad") and selection of meals — HelloFresh bags the ingredients for their meals (other than meats), and here are some of the results.

There are many similarities between the two meal kit services. You log in and pick from a variety of menu options for a given week. The typical box has ingredients for three recipes. In the Blue Apron box, most of the fresh produce is separate from the “knick knacks” bag for each recipe, and any meat is packaged separately; you store the produce as appropriate and refrigerate the knick knacks and meat. The HelloFresh box splits out the meat from everything else; all of the other ingredients for a given recipe are in a brown paper bag (labeled “this bag is greener than a salad”). An interesting difference between the two is that HelloFresh will send you two peeled cloves of garlic in the bag, whereas Blue Apron will send you an entire bulb even if you only need two cloves. We’re three Blue Apron boxes in… we’re never running out of fresh garlic.

The meals in both cases are tasty, and the recipes are easy to follow. In fact, there’s a real pleasure as a parent of being able to hand over a single sheet and pile of ingredients while I run off and do other chores.

There are minor differences in the website that could sway you to one or another – the HelloFresh website lets you skip meals far ahead of their menu planning, whereas Blue Apron dates become available as the menus are posted. We’ve decided to stick with Blue Apron for the moment, more because it was the first of the two we tried… that and I like their Mediterranean recipes.

Coming sometime soon… our thoughts on Meal Village, where instead of a meal kit, somebody else does all the work and you just have to reheat the meal.

The Return of Blue Apron

Shortly after moving into this house, I tried Blue Apron for a little while. Unfortunately, I tried it as we moved into harvest season with a surprisingly large number of squash… I couldn’t keep up with both of them, so I cancelled my Blue Apron subscription.

Blue Apron ingredients, recipes, and meals — Blue Apron ingredients, recipes, and some of the meals produced from two boxes.

Last summer was… complicated. I never got around to re-starting the subscription. Now that things have finally calmed down a bit, we decided we could try it again.

Each box comes with ingredients and recipes that you order – my box had three recipes for two servings each. You can pick recipes each week or accept the defaults (if you forget to log in), or skip weeks when you won’t have time to cook them. All of the ingredients arrive in a freezer bag, with a pack of ice by the meats to keep them extra cool.

In addition to pretty pictures, the recipes are available on the Blue Apron website when you select your menu options for the week, so you can get a feel for how long each meal will take to cook. Two of this week’s recipes were 45-55 minutes, so I had to make sure I had that time to cook.

All of the recipes come with step-by-step directions, so you just follow along, preparing bits and cooking other bits generally in the recommended order. In my case, I occasionally add steps like “hide raw meat in microwave until oven is heated” and “hide cooked meat in microwave until side dishes are ready”… anything to protect the food from Arwen.

I normally cook from ingredients, rather than prepared foods, so that part isn’t really a change. The big differences are having the exact amount of ingredients needed to prepare the meal, and the ease of access to a variety of recipes, particularly with their recent addition of Mediterranean recipes. It allows me to explore new ideas – such as including capers and raisins in the same dish – without a remnant jar of capers remaining in the fridge. (To be honest, I think I already have one.)

So far, it’s a successful experiment. For comparison, I’m working through a HelloFresh order. In the end, I only want to order recipes and ingredients from one website… watch this space for my thoughts on HelloFresh.

Thankful

This has been a whirlwind years, with plenty of ups and downs to keep things interesting. I am grateful that the ups far outweigh the downs. Here are some of the things I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving:

The Oregonian Cookbook my grandmother sent me a few years ago. It renewed my interest in poached eggs – I ate an egg poached in homemade broccoli tomato soup this morning – and filled my house with the wonderful scent of cranberry streusel to take to our Thanksgiving meal. (And amused that spellcheck thinks I should replace “streusel” with “stressful”.)
Diane looking up at Arwen without hissing or growling.

I’m delighted by the kitten we adopted earlier this week, it’s probably not what my parents expected me to spend my holiday money on…
and relieved that Arwen’s introduction into the house has been mostly painless. Well, at least among the cats… I have scratches that prove there’s a kitten in the house.
I am immensely grateful for coffee, since kittens don’t seem to sleep through the entire night.
The lovely sounds of Peter Hollens’s Christmas album that I listened to while cooking, and that Cassandra (mostly) has good taste in music.
That I have friends and family who appreciate my sense of humor, which explains why I included a note about Dobby when I mailed a sock back to a friend.

I hope everybody had a fabulous Thanksgiving!

This year’s big harvest: tomatoes

This year’s favorite harvest recipe: tomato soup.

Each year, it seems to be a different crop that goes wild and leaves me scrambling to use it or freeze it. Last year’s tromboncino squash forced the discovery of new recipes (orange zucchini bread is fabulous), the purchase of a food processor, and is still taking space in various forms in the freezer.

A few good tomatoes — Ripe Glacier and Ananas Noire tomatoes.

This year’s bumper crop is Ananas Noire tomatoes. Cassandra will happily eat them raw, but they’re fairly large, so even she can’t keep up. I’ve been taking extras to work a couple times a week. The stellar find for dealing with the excess harvest is this tomato soup recipe.

I typically make a recipe at least once before tweaking it to my taste, but I don’t usually have plain tomato juice in the house, so I substituted V-8 juice (which is mainly tomato, with other vegetables added) the first time. I’ve worked up from there, adding onions (caramelized one time), green peppers, celery, and what pushed it over the edge to I could eat this every day, leftover beef. Some days I even remember to pick some basil for the recipe.

Tomato soup ingredients in the crockpot, then swirling in the heavy cream, and lastly, in the bowl.

I drop it all in the crockpot first thing in the morning, then run the immersion blender through it when I get home from work. After it’s mostly blended, I add the heavy cream and blend again before dropping the butter in. (Let’s be honest, that’s mostly because I like to watch the swirly pattern as the cream mixes in.) I leave the butter to melt for a few minutes, then stir and serve.

I’m not particular about which kind of beef I include, it just depends on what leftovers I have in the fridge. After a day in the crockpot, it’s all going to dissolve nicely. The first attempt was thin sliced fajita beef; I’ve also tried steak and short ribs (cooking on the grill, of course). They all work nicely.

In theory, we eat a little of it and freeze the rest for delicious soups in the winter. Last weekend’s soup – a full crockpot – never made it to the freezer.

Kitchen Tip: Preparing Artichokes

Sometimes I learn a kitchen trick and wonder why I ever did it differently. That’s certainly the case with freezing sliced bagels and toasting them straight from the freezer, and freezing overripe bananas for future baking. I recently learned a different way of preparing artichokes, and can’t imagine I’ll go back to the old way.

Growing up, we ate artichokes occasionally as a special treat, always prepared the same way: top of leaves and stem chopped off, spiky bits of remaining leaves trimmed, then boiled for 25-30 minutes. I had already modified that to steaming in recent years, I rarely boil vegetables anymore – and the stems are left longer to get to the bit of heart in them. (Sometimes I save the stems after cooking to make a single serving of artichoke dip.)

Artichoke preparations — Upper left: unprepared artichoke, steamer, and dish with lemon juice. Upper right: artichoke cut down the center. Bottom left: split artichoke with fuzz removed. Bottom right: cooked artichokes.

When I started grilling this season, I went looking for a grilled artichoke recipe. What I found quickly became my favorite way of preparing them; it eliminates stopping halfway through eating to clean out the fuzzy bits on the heart. After the prep that I’ve always done, I slice each artichoke in half, top to stem, dip each side in lemon juice to reduce browning, then loosen the artichoke fuzz with a knife before scooping it out. It gets another dip in lemon juice, then set in the steamer basket while I prepare the rest.

The artichokes can be eaten steamed, with a dipping sauce – mayonnaise or garlic butter are traditional options – but we’ve settled on grilling them while it’s warm out. I pour a marinade of olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and pepper over the artichokes before placing them sliced side down on the grill for 10 minutes or so. (This will vary based on the type of grill; as mentioned before, the cooking time on a Big Green Egg is shorter.) My grill can easily hold four artichokes. Inconveniently, my steamer only fits two, and that barely if they’re massive ones from Costco, so I steam two batches before grilling.

It’s grilling season!

Many years ago, on this day, my father was born. It seems appropriate to celebrate with this topic, since he taught me how to cook on a grill. I can’t make it to his birthday party, hopefully someone at the house is lighting up the grill to make something delicious for him.

My Big Green Egg (with a side of weeds) and other people’s backyards.

I’m always excited when grilling season arrives, though I don’t grill nearly as much as I think I should. Growing up in Miami, grilling season was year round, and I continued that tradition at my old house, where my grill was on a covered patio. Calling it a “grill” is almost insulting, my outdoor cooking is done in a Big Green Egg, which is a ceramic smoke oven. In addition to having a fun name, it cooks faster than a regular grill and retains more moisture in the food. It’s similar to cooking in an oven, with the added flavors that come from cooking over charcoal.

Delicious grilled salmon — Grilled salmon. Yes, it was as good as it looks.

I finally fired up the grill for the first time this season because of a grilled salmon recipe I found in a magazine. I don’t eat fish often, much less when it’s cooked; I prefer it in sushi. But the recipe sounded good, calling for garlic and fresh herbs. I’m a sucker for garlic, and was able to harvest fresh chives and cilantro to add it. When it’s warm, I’d rather not overheat the house by baking, so I took my cooking outside.

Once I’ve started grilling for the season and have a taste for it, I’m more likely to fire it up any given weekend. I realize it’s more work than a gas grill, but I think it’s worth the extra effort. This weekend’s grilling plan is a lime cilantro flank steak (pre-seasoned, not using my cilantro this time), garlic artichokes, and a jalapeño with peanut butter (to see how it compares to the baked version). Just thinking about it is making my mouth water. (If I touch my eyes after cutting the jalapeño, they’ll be watering too. I’ll try to avoid that.)

Happy grilling, and happy birthday, Dad!