For the record...

Everyone LOVED dinner tonight! Usually there's one person (usually L) who is not happy about at least one part of dinner. Tonight: no complaints AT ALL and plenty of asking for seconds! YES! (fist pumping). That was awesome.

So I don't forget it, it was super easy. We had potato soup (T helped to make it - she's made it by herself before, it's a really easy recipe), rolls, and a green salad. Last time I made potato soup it was a hit except for D - and this time he loved it!

If you want the recipe - it's nothing fancy, but I've tweaked it some - here it is. It makes quite a bit, we'll have enough for another meal at least. Easily halved.

Potato Soup (easily made dairy-free, too)
6-7 med. to large potatoes, washed, peeled,* and diced
3T dried onion flakes**
1T dried parsley
1T kosher salt
4T butter
1 can coconut milk
a few grinds black pepper
2 Qts (8cups) water

Bring water to a boil (I forgot to do this first, and just dumped everything in first - still worked), THEN add potatoes, onions, parsley, salt, and pepper. Cover and lower temp - cook until potatoes are done - about 45 min.

Mash potatoes with a hand masher. Stir in butter and coconut milk. Simmer 15 min. uncovered - don't boil. It will thicken up some as it cools. We add some grated cheese to the bowls, and some people like diced ham thrown in as well. It doesn't taste like coconut in these proportions, but when I've halved the recipe I must have used more than 1/2 a can, as it did some - but still yummy. The original recipe called for some evaporated milk.

* I peeled about 1/2 of them. You don't have to peel any of them, really.

** Onion flakes are not my fave to cook with, but it makes this recipe REALLY easy. You could use fresh onion, but I would saute it first probably?

funyun casserole!

Kris is considering ending his 10 year streak as a vegetarian for this. We love that the can of vegetables is totally optional.

worthy of praise

We had a dinner tonight that was fantastic, and worthy of praise. Just a few vegetables that came together to make something delicious. A salad: lettuce greens, toasted pecans with a pinch of brown sugar, onion and golden beets roasted to perfection (drizzled with balsamic, olive oil, and honey before cooking), avocado, goat cheese, a little brown rice, and olive oil and balsamic for a dressing. Oven sweet potato fries: sliced, tossed in olive oil and kosher salt. It was excellent! If only we had worked in bell peppers, sautéed greens, and cherries it would have been the perfect meal for Dad Jorgensen :).

While the Jorgensens were here we ate another dinner that is worthy of praise. I had been wanting to try a new fennel recipe and found this one. However, I wasn't home to make it, so Mom Jorgensen whipped it up even though she had to improvise on 1/3 of the ingredients. Thanks! We substituted spicy veggie sausages for the Italian sausage, left out the mushrooms (but did cauliflower on the side), used plain yogurt instead of cream, and used goat cheese instead of Parmesan. I guess that means she had to improvise on 1/2 the ingredients, oops! Sorry for not doing a better job prepping for that one Gayle. Anyway, it was excellent as it was. I think the regular recipe would be delicious too. The cauliflower was a great side dish.

What did you eat for dinner?

cake pops

A friend of mine told me about the website foodgawker.com. This website has now become a problem for me b/c I love pictures of food. The first day I looked at it there was a link to a site about cake pops. I hadn't ever heard of them before, but apparently they were all over the internet in 2008. Sam saw the picture and fixated on the idea that we needed to make them and with Valentine's Day coming up we decided to go for it.


Most of the recipes I found sounded disgusting--a box of cake mix (baked), mashed up with canned frosting. Form that into balls and dip into some cheap, waxy chocolate. Yuck. However, Martha Stewart also had a recipe which is the one I opted for, although I cut out half of the sugar in the cake and didn't bother with two different colors to dip it in.

Sorry, I don't have any pictures of ours, but they looked a lot like the ones above. We tried doing chocolate cake with the cream cheese, buttercream frosting and dipping them in white chocolate, but Kris accidentally sabotaged our melting white chocolate. We ended up with chocolate centers dipped in melted dark chocolate and put sprinkles on the outside or stuck a conversation heart on. I was prepared to feel about them the way I feel about cupcakes--so-so. However, they were surprisingly good. I saved half the filling and froze it which I think will come in handy for Sam's 4th birthday.

Hope you had a nice Valentine's Day treat too!

Sunday Dinner

So our church time just switched to 1-4. We've always hated afternoon church, but have to admit it's not so bad now that the kids are a little older. At any rate, we're trying to come up with a good plan for Sunday dinners. Ideally they aren't much work, and really they can't be since we're pretty much all starving by 5-ish. But we want GOOD food since there are several weeknights (between dance and basketball - MOST weeknights) that we aren't home right before dinner so we have to have easy meals then.

Yesterday our Sunday dinner was awesome. Aaron pulled some ribs out of the freezer (he'd bought them on sale a while back) poured half a bottle of Famous Dave's BBQ sauce on it (usually we make our own, but you know... time) and put it in the crockpot in the morning. I got out some Rhodes rolls before we left for church. When we came home we baked the rolls, broiled the ribs with a little more sauce, and thawed/warmed some leftover mash potatoes from the freezer. Oh, and washed some lettuce for a salad.
YUM.
So crock pot might be the way to go... and the Rhodes rolls worked really well time-wise.

And we got yummy leftovers for lunch today. No more mashed potatoes, though, and the roll is replaced by our crusty bread (but it was hot - yum).


Anyone have any awesome Sunday Dinner After Late Church suggestions?

Now who should I get this for for Christmas...

A small part of the blurb on amazon:

" ...the self-proclaimed "King of the Kitchen Pimps" teaches readers how to become a "ghetto gourmet" with basics like scallops "rap'd" in bacon, shrimp cocktail (Cold Shrimpin'), spaghetti (Bro-Ghetti)..."

Awesome.

eating well

Last night we decided to try out the Corvette Diner which was rumored to have housemade vegetarian bean burgers and delicious fries. Both rumors were true, but that place was crazy. It is a 50s themed ginormous restaurant complete with a live DJ (spinning oldies, taking requests), poodle skirt wearing hostesses, dancing servers, a disco ball, an arcade, an ice cream counter, and more. The dancing servers made Kris and I feel so uncomfortable, especially when we remembered Eva's stories of her worst job ever. The kids loved that part. The lights refracted off the disco ball were also super exciting for the kids. Lucy kept pointing to things, wide-eyed, saying, "Uh-bu-duh. Bah-bee." I don't know what that means but she was having a ball. Sam's favorite part was the ice cream sundae and the arcade. Anyway...

Kris bought me the cuisinart ice cream maker for mother's day (I think Mom and Dad Jorgie have it?). Love it. Last week I made chocolate coconut milk ice cream that included melted dark chocolate and cocoa powder (plus a pinch of granulated coffee to bring out the chocolate flavor, a little chocolate cake baking trick I learned). Pow! That's seriously how it tasted in my mouth. It was excellent. I have no idea what the proportions were but hopefully I can recreate it someday.

Awesome pizza

On Kauai we ate at Brick Oven pizza (no connection with Brick Oven in Provo) based on a recommendation. It was awesome. This was cheese with fresh basil:

Still the best pizza

We were thrilled to find that Boston's North End Pizza on Oahu is still around. The pizza is as good as we remembered.

The pizzas are still too big for the boxes:

Yum:

quick meals

Usually when I make posts on this blog I post things that were exciting for me to make, and usually, but not always, that means it took a lot of time and/or effort. Lately I just don't have time so I am on a search for yummy meals with kid appeal that don't take a lot of effort (but aren't meals in a box).

This savory bread pudding is a favorite quick one I made recently--loved it (we got 3 of the 4 in our family to eat it, Sam wouldn't even get near it). I used rosemary instead of dill and a leek instead of a shallot b/c that's what I had. I went the mushroom route, not olive. I also used soy milk instead of regular. Other quick meals we love: Yaki soba is a big hit around here with my kids, I always throw in bok choy; burritos or tostadas with a little grated zucchini; rice cooked in coconut milk w/ nuts and veggies; paninis with roasted veggies; and pasta w/ bechamel sauce.

What are some quick meals you like?

bean burgers

Just needing to share that Aaron made us delicious bean burgers for dinner. They were super tasty. We've tried them several times, with different recipes/spice combos but this time they were the best. And stayed together really well.
The recipe is from this book ("Veggie Burgers"):

And we loaded them up with avacodo, onion, tomato, greens, cheese, etc.

The big news is that this time the kids liked them! All of them ate it. Hooray!

le petit chef

Sam is way more interested in helping in the kitchen lately. He used to only be interested if I were making cookie dough. Now he'll help me make just about anything as long as he can do some stirring, patting, mashing, and/or messing. Since the last time we made cookie dough, and had a long talk about raw eggs (our neighbor just had a really bad reaction to cookie dough) in dough and how we shouldn't eat it, he asks, "It has raw eggs in it?" every time we make any kind of dough.



This day we were making red lentil dahl which you hear him say faintly. The dahl is simple, just 1 c. red lentils (they're thinner than the green, if you've seen em'), a chopped onion, chopped tomato (the tomato does not need to be mashed, Sam just wanted to mash it, so why not?), 1.5 c. water, 1 can coconut milk, turmeric, ground coriander, cumin, a few curry leaves, 2 chopped carrots, salt to taste. Mix it all together and cook, uncovered, for about 30 minutes. Add extra water if necessary. It should be fairly soupy. After it's done put mustard seed and cumin seed in oil on heat until the seeds "pop." Chop up another onion (or you can do 1/2 in the dahl and 1/2 later if you don't love onions) finely and cook it with the mustard, cumin, and oil on a low temp until the onion is golden brown. Mix it in the dahl, simmer a few more minutes, and voila! The first time I put in regular coconut milk, the second time lite coconut milk. You can imagine which tasted better (just don't look at the fat content, that was my mistake).



I've never made my own naan before but the second time I made dahl Sam and I made naan and it made the dahl even more delicious. A really good meal became a delicious meal. It's pretty easy to make. I got my recipe from here but found that I needed almost another whole cup of flour in the dough to make it kneadable. I also didn't have a pizza stone to cook them as it recommends since ours broke, but a cookie sheet worked fine.

Curries

We still are loving curries - Thai and Indian. Indian ones are our favorites to make.
Here's a couple we've been digging lately:



Actually, I can't remember what this one was called even - but we made it for the first time a couple of weeks ago and it's going on our favorites list! Super yummy, with chickpeas, potatoes, and sweet potatoes in it. Aaron found the recipe in this awesome pressure cooker book. He's loving his pressure cooker.

And Rajma - kidney bean curry. We've made this one a lot.

I like it with a little plain yogurt and plenty of cilantro.

Both of these photos were spur of the moment - after I'd already started eating - sorry, but I was so excited at the yumminess that I had to share!

Millions of peaches - peaches for free

(remember that song?)


We've been eating the peaches that we grew and canned. They are delicious.

The first time we opened a can it made a very nice 'pop' sound - which is what you're supposed to hear when you've properly canned something. Aaron said, "That's a good sound!"

Because we're proud of ourselves.

Another good sound? The sound of the boys immediately devouring peaches and saying 'Mmmmmmmm'.

Definitely a good sound.

potato tacos!

Mix together:
2 medium sized potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed
*1/2 to 1 cup chile sauce (el pato is good, but I used my homemade kind)
*1/2 to 1 cup cotija cheese (it's a hard, salty, crumbly Mexican cheese, I found it at Food 4 Less)
cumin, salt, garlic powder, tiny bit of oregano
*These amounts have a wide range b/c I don't know what I put and b/c you could just do it to taste, as long as the potato mixture is a good consistency to spread on a tortilla--not runny, but not too stiff.

Make guacamole:
roasted jalapeno with seeds and pith (?) removed
a few grape tomatoes
lots of fresh lime juice
salt, pepper, paprika
4 avocados

Thinly chopped cabbage (or lettuce, if you prefer)

Soften corn tortillas with tiny bit of oil and heat in a pan. Or just heat if you have a non-stick pan.

Put fillings in tortillas as desired. Delicious!

tamales and pizza!

We made tamales to celebrate the New Year. I think this is the most labor intensive food I've ever made because we made almost every part ourselves (the chile sauce, broths, fillings, masa). On New Year's Day we invited a few families over and feasted on the tamales as well as beans, rice, guacamole, crema, salsa, and dessert. We did roasted peppers and cheese, vegetable medley (?), and chicken (since we are the only non-meat eaters, and for me--I wanted to gain the experience).

Peppers, etc. boiling to make the sauce


Spreading the masa, rolling the tamales


Party people! These are some of the kids who came--the dress-up box was a hit (Sam's in the background, sucking his thumb).


We did not eat pizza with our tamales, but I made pizza for New Year's Eve and I believe we've found our favorite dough recipe yet. It is super simple, delicious, easy to make, and versatile. Check it:
6.5 c. flour
3 c. water
1.5 T yeast
1.5 T course salt (like kosher, though we might start putting a little less salt than this).

Stir together dry ingredients, mix in water with a spoon. Let sit for 2 to 5 hours (top should be flat when risen, dough will be really sticky). On floured surface shape dough into pizza crust. You won't get a perfectly circular shape b/c you can't roll it out with a rolling pin. I didn't mind that at all.

What's great about this dough is it can also be used to make dutch oven breads (the artisan, no knead kind Eva posted about a while back), boules or baguettes, or whatever other bready thing you want. It can also be kept in the fridge for a week or so and it gets sour as the days pass. So we made the full amount of dough, made 3 pizzas, then a few days later made a boule. Highly recommend it.

Birthday Dinner

a
Kirk made borsch for my birthday Sunday dinner. We ate it with black bread from Vogel's bakery in Salt Lake and a green salad. For dessert: an apple/cranberry crumble made from apples I picked off of our landlord's tree. (They said it was okay.)

You all know how to make borsch, right?

Char Sui Pork

I had to post this for Mom:


Yesterday we had Char Sui pork for dinner - we've had it before, but not for a while. This time we put it all in the crock pot and the smell was AWESOME. Nearly drove us crazy. So yummy. Mom can attest to that.

When it was done, I reduced the liquid into a sauce, broiled the meat to let it caramelize a little, and Aaron stir-fried some veggies (onion, carrot, green pepper, and zucchini) with some of the sauce.

Whoa. That was good. The girl says we should put this out for Santa instead of cookies this year.

That good.

salad

Three things I want to post about:

1) Is this blog dead? Do people want to keep it around?

2) I knew I wanted to make a post about salad but don't have any pictures, so I searched google images for salads and found this:


Yes, that is Richard Simmons. If you weren't hungry for salad you surely are now.

3) Usually I don't make salads with meals b/c we eat a lot of veggies in whatever our main dish or side dish is. We just started getting our CSA box which had lettuce and will for most of the year so I decided to throw out some ideas I've had or have seen. Salad can easily been a main dish, or the only dish, in our case. Some good combos:

• arugula and other baby greens with kidney beans, whole wheat pasta (penne, or shells), tomatoes, green onion, balsamic vinaigrette, olive oil, Parmesan cheese salt and pepper.
• taco salad: beans, cheese, avocado, tomato, chips, salsa, cilantro, lettuce, grilled peppers.
• grilled veggies like zucchini, yellow squash, bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, onion, beets, any others, paired with goat cheese, spinach, and a light vinegar/olive oil dressing.
• sliced, boiled potatoes (cooked in salt water), lettuce, tomato, croutons, avocado, onion, cucumber.
• panzanela: french bread cut into cubes and toasted like croutons, cucumber, lemon zest, garlic, tomato, scant onion, balsamic vinaigrette, olive oil.
• cabbage sliced thinly, grated carrot, toasted pine nuts, olive oil, salt, pepper.
• walnuts tossed with olive oil, cayenne pepper, brown sugar, salt, cumin, and toasted; lettuce, pear slices, Parmesan or blue cheese, onion, and a tart dressing.
  

All paired with some yummy bread, or cheese toast, or whatever--I love it (salad, not the image).

wontons

Not only have I been into baking cakes this summer, I've just been enjoying cooking in general. I get really excited, and sometimes carried away (our fridge is bursting with fresh produce and other items), in my culinary adventures. My favorite part is making things up or using recipes as mere suggestions. Recently I made some mushroom-filled wontons that turned out especially well.

Note: everything that went into the wonton wrappers was chopped finely. Sautee 1 or 2 shallots in sesame oil, then add 2-3 carrots. Cook until softish. Add 1 package of mushrooms, a one-inch piece of fresh ginger, and about 1/3 of a bunch of cilantro. Add soy sauce, garlic powder, and cumin to taste. Cook without lid, so that the moisture leaves, until the mushrooms are soft. Put1 or 1.5 teaspoons of filling each wrapper, fold in half and seal with water. Fold in corners.

Heat vegetable oil in skillet until a test wonton wrapper browns fairly quickly (med-high heat).

Fry wontons, drain on paper bag. We ate ours with boiled brown rice and edamame. The dipping sauce had sesame oil, rice vinegar, fresh garlic, soy sauce, red pepper flakes, and probably something else in it. Maybe lime juice? Sorry, I didn't write that part down.


I just recently learned how to make pad-thai and mango sticky rice. I also made a sourdough starter, for the first time, and have made a few loaves. While absolutely delicious, the loaves weren't sour at all. I'll have to work on that. Hope everyone is well! Jenn