The Awesomeness of Olive Oil, Vinegar, Lemon Juice and Pepper

While this is not a new concept I thought I'd write a little bit about my love of the combo of: olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice and pepper.  I feel like it's one of the most versatile concoctions you can use with food.  I've used this combo as for pasta salad in place of using a mayo based dressing, I toss it on almost any green salad, and it's great as a marinade.  When ever I need to add a little "umph" to something I immediately turn to my trusty combo and I'm never disappointed.

I don't typically measure my combos but just eye how much I'm adding.  I use an olive oil base with a splash of lemon juice and vinegar and then throw in some pepper until I feel satisfied that I'll taste it with out being overwhelmed.

To celebrate this awesomeness I'm sharing three of my favorite ways to enjoy the combination:

1 - Pear/Apple, Almond, Feta and Spinach Salad

- 1 pear or granny smith apple sliced thinly

- handfull of slivered almonds

- as much cheese as you'd like, I usually put in about the same amount as the almond slivers

- spinach leaves

- olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice and pepper mix

Mix all the ingredients together and then pour the combo on top and toss.  You won't need a lot because it'll cover everything pretty nicely.

2 - Pasta Salad

- rotini noodles

- yellow pepper

- red pepper

- orange pepper

- cherry tomatoes

- zucchini

- onion

- black olives

- sauteed chopped garlic

- pepperoni/salami/ham cubes (pick one or all)

- parmesan cheese

- -olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice and pepper mix

Cook the noodles and then set them aside to cool.  Chop up the peppers and zucchini into cubes, cut the cherry tomatoes in half and do whatever you'd like with the olives.  (I also like green olives in this salad but not everyone enjoys them quite like I do.)  Sauté your garlic, or you can use garlic powder, but fresh sauteed will be better.  Add all the ingredients together, I like a lot of cheese but feel free to add however much you like, and then again drizzle the combo on top and toss.  Ready to go!  (You do not need to cook the zucchini, I like it better uncooked, but if you must blanch it real quick.)

3 - Marinade

- garlic

- onions

- basil

-  olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice and pepper mix

So this recipe is by taste, so whatever taste you enjoy the most, you should add more of that.  I typically chop up about ten little garlic pieces, half an onion and just a small chunk of basil.  You can use this on pretty much anything, chicken and pork is the best but you could also use it with beef.  Let the meat marinate for a few hours and then prepare however you'd like.  Delish.

So there it is, my love letter to olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice and pepper.  mmmmmmm, yummy.

:)M

 

 

 

Brisket, just like my Daddy makes!

Bob and I have mostly moved into our new condo (hooray) and we want to have an awesome house warming party so I thought we should make something awesome, like....my Dad's brisket!  But I didn't want to test out the brisket when we have the party so I had a test run yesterday and I must say, I am most definitely my Daddy's Gal because it was delicious.

I bought a 4 lbs brisket from our local market, Bi-Rite, rubbed it down with Angelo's Beef Rub, put it in a deep roasting dish, covered it with foil and let it cook on 250 degrees for almost 24 hours.  I cut up an onion and placed it all over the top of the brisket.  I pulled the brisket out of the oven after about 10 hours and scooped up the juices and poured it all over the top of the brisket to keep it moist.   When I pulled it out of the oven after the 24 hours I was a little nervous that it was going to be burnt, but after slicing into the brisket we were pleasantly surprised to see that it was wonderfully juicy, and after tasting it....delicious!

To go with this delicious piece of meat made corn on the cob and covered it with butter and cayenne pepper.  I popped it under the broiler for a few minutes to help make it kind of crunchy and turned out great.

We also had blue cheese potato salad.  I found the recipe online and I must say I was kind of disappointed with it.  I wanted some bite to the potato salad and it was just so-so.  I'm thinking some dijon mustard would have helped quite a bit.  If you'd like to try the salad for yourself you can check it out here.  Who knows, you might like it more than we did.

I mixed up a garden salad with mushrooms, tomatoes, carrots, onions, orange pepper, avocado, and blue cheese.  I was going to make my grandfather's awesome dressing for the salad but ended up not really having everything I needed at the last minute, it's okay we'll try again next time.

To satiate our practice guests I picked up a fruit platter and a couple of different kinds of cheese with rye triskets, and made my own guacamole to go with chips and salsa.  As per usual, especially with my family, I made way too much food so we ended up with a lot of leftovers.  The brisket was a success and we ate almost all of it, there's just enough left over to make fajitas.  I'm pretty excited about this plan and will update you on how delicious it is.

We now know that I can replicate the awesome brisket and we're really excited about the house warming!

:)M

 

Pancakes! They're what's for dinner....tonight anyway.

Tonight's post was going to be about yummy spicy chicken with guacamole, blackbeans and corn and steam veggies, but Bob remembered at the last minute that he had a dinner date with some peeps.  I was all alone, and decided it was going to be pancake night, the only problem was I didn't have anything with which to make pancakes.

As I'm a little lazy in the evenings, give me a break I've been unpacking for days, I took the J Muni line to the Castro Safeway.  On a side note, I'm unsure as to why the Castro Safeway is so poorly lit, I like to be able to see my groceries in all their glory.  I like to walk into grocery store that are brightly lit and full of happiness, the Castro Safeway makes me feel like it might be a night club after hours and that I'm viewing it's unsightly day time ensemble.  But I've gotten off point...  I took Muni to Safeway and picked up some bisquick (I know, blasphemous, I just didn't want to buy all the ingredients to make pancakes from scratch) cinnamon and sugar, milk, eggs, and orange juice and then promptly jumped back on the J to get home.

It's been a while since I've made pancakes, I'm more of a french toast kind of gal, but I had an overwhelming desire to make pancakes and then cover them with butter and cinnamon and sugar and wash it all down with a large glass of milk.  YUM.

Okay, so I got out my cooking gear:

1 - electric skillet (inherited from Grandpa Smith)

2 - mixing bowl with little poury spout thing (bam Target!)

3 - spatula and flipper thing, for some reason I don't own a whisk.....I shall have to get one, btw the spatula is red

4 - measuring cup

5 - Awesome but unnecessary little bowl thing that I bought at sur la table today.  It came in a set of 4 and they're super cool because you can squeeze them and they make a little spout area.  Check them out here.

6 - All the ingredients bisquik told me to use: 1/2 cup milk, 1 egg, 1 cup bisquick

So I turned on my electric skillet, it has a handy dandy little dial on the side that tells me what temp to cook pancakes at, 350degrees, if you're wondering.  I put some butter on the skillet to make things extra delicious.  I mixed all the ingredients together stirring like a crazy lady to get rid of all the lumps of bisquick and then pour my first pancake.

While the pancake was cooking I mixed some sugar and cinnamon in my awesome sur la table bowl so that

I'd have a wonderful concoction to put on top of my pancake.  (I like about half as much cinnamon as sugar.)  The pancake was really fluffy, which was weird because at my house we always had thinner easier to roll pancakes.  We'd roll them and eat them like burritos when we put cinnamon and sugar on the pancakes.  My pancake was to thick to roll, so instead I slathered it with butter and then tossed a bunch of cinnamon and sugar on top.

I would like to say it was everything I wanted and more but it wasn't.  The pancake was so-so, so I mixed so sugar and cinnamon into the actual batter which made it much better.  I think next time I'll put even more cinnamon in, it just tasted too bland the first time around.

I poured myself a gigantic glass of milk and enjoyed my pancake in front of my laptop while I tried to figure out why my iPhoto was syncing properly.  (Side note on that, Bob eventually had to figure it out when he got home.)

And last but not least, I wore my cute new apron while making pancakes.

Overall dinner was filling, mostly satisfying and really very easy.

:)M

 

The Other Place and Juicy Berry (Salt Lake City)

Once upon a time my grandparents discovered this restaurant they now frequent once a week, it's called "The Other Place."That's seriously the name of the restaurant.  The Other Place is a Greek/American restaurant and my grandparents go there every Thursday for the navy bean soup, which is pretty good.  My grandmother likes to add lemon juice and pepper to hers, but I think it's pretty good as is.  Anyway, I joined the Thursday night bean soup crowd to catch up on what was going on in the family and hear all the good gossip, and because I too like the bean soup.

I had a side greek salad, a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of navy bean soup.  The Other Place is very generous with it's feta cheese when it comes to the greek salad, which I love because I <3 (Did you know the Oxford Dictionary now recognizes that symbol as a word?  It does, I'm not making this up.)feta cheese.  If you order a regular sized greek salad it's the best because there isn't any lettuce, it's a real greek salad with only cucumber, tomatoes, onions and kalamata olives and feta.  The side salad has lettuce but I couldn't handle ordering a real greek salad this time around, because I really wanted grilled cheese, mostly to work as a vehicle to get my bean soup into my mouth.  Just like tomato soup goes great with grilled cheese, so does bean soup.  The grilled cheese is nothing fancy, but it's still good.

The other place is nice because the portions are just the right size and the prices aren't crazy, plus my family seems to know everyone who works there so they always have a table waiting.  Yes, we're those people.

After dinner I met up with my friend Jill at this new Frozen Yogurt place at the local mall, the Gateway.  The place is called

Juicy Berry and it's a chain, but it's a wonderful chain.  There are about 10 different flavors of frozen yogurt and everything is self serve, so you get a gigantic cup and fill it up as much as you want, and then head over to the toppings bar.  In the end they charge you based on the weight of your cup.  I tried the pomegranate/wild berry fro yo and the cookies and cream fro yo all covered in sprinkles and oreo pieces.  I give this place a huge thumbs up.  Eat this, it's delicious, and you can have just about anything you could imagine.

:)M

A Wadsworth Fantasy aka Hire's Big H (Salt Lake City)

My Dad calls some of the places the family always eats at in Salt Lake "Wadsworth Fantasies" because we like the places we've always gone to for years, even though sometimes they're not as good as they should be.  Yet we go back time and time again.  One of these places is "Hire's Big H."

It's just a locally owned burger place, but I can remember eating here every summer when my mom would pack up myself and my sisters to live with my grandparents.  We all almost order exactly the same thing when we go, a double cheeseburger with only mustard and pickles on it.  It's delicious and washed down with a made by hand cherry coke it's exactly the way I always remember it tasting.  It's tradition to go to Hire's, it's just something we do.  Plus, there's fry sauce and I don't know why I like fry sauce, I just do and it doesn't taste as good anywhere else.  It's not better than In-N-Out or even Five Guys but I love it, and will continue to want to visit Hire's ever time I visit Salt Lake.

The prices are average for a burger place, and the staff is really friendly.  Be warned if you go during a peak hour the place is covered in children, this is after all, Zion.

:)M

Slow Cooked Vegetarian Lasagna

Josie and I made some of this slow cooker vegetarian lasagna this past weekend and it was pretty good. Its main feature would be the pound of crimini mushrooms we put into it, thinly sliced with a mandolin (the instrument, obviously). It took roughly eight hours on the low setting to fully cook into this masterpiece of pasta and delight. The recipe is actually pretty simple:

1. Thinly slice 1 pound of crimini mushrooms and saute them with 2 tsp of minced garlic, salt and pepper to taste. Put this on the side.
2. Cover the bottom of your slow cooker with 1 cup of tomato sauce.
3. Place four lasagna noodles (oven ready) on top of the sauce. You can break it to fit. It may form multiple layers.
4. Place a mix of 1/4 cup parmesan, 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella, 1 cup of ricotta cheese on top and half of the mushrooms.
5. Place four lasagna noodles on top.
6. Pour in 1 cup of tomato sauce.
7. Repeat step 4 (using the rest of the mushrooms).
8. Repeat step 5.
9. Repeat step 6.
10. Place a mix of 1/4 cup parmesan and 1/2 cup of shredded mozzarella on top.
11. Set it for 6-8 hours on Low (3-4 hours on High).

This is what it looks like before it's cooked. Amazingly simple. It actually looks like a lot of rice, but it's just the cheese. Ate this with a nice brown & tan.

The Bohemian Brewery (South Jordan, Utah)

To celebrate my youngest sister's 21st birthday the family went to The Bohemian Brewery.  I'd never been here before as it was a new addition since my actually living in Utah.  Melinda thought it would be a good place to go because she'd heard the food was good, and it's a brewer.

The family piled into the car while it was snowing like crazy outside and headed down to South Jordan from Ogden.  We had planned on being karaoke super stars after dinner but the snow changed our plans, but don't worry we did plenty of other fun things for Melinda's birthday.   But back to the food....

Melinda, Rachel and I all ordered different beers so Melinda could get a taste of the different varieties the Brewery made.  We decided that while we all don't typically like the stouts, the Brewery's stout was their best, the other two were kinda watery and similar to something you'd find at a frat party.

We had a pear, brie, walnut salad with a lemon vinaigrette as part of our appetizers.  I wish there had been more brie or that it had been chopped up into smaller bites, rather than the wedges because there might as well have not been any cheese on that salad.  The walnuts and pears were pretty good though, and the lemon dressing wasn't overpowering but a nice addition.

We also ordered some potato pancakes, which I know have their own special German name but I can't for the life of me remember what that name is.  I do remember that those potato pancakes were really good.  The pancakes came with a sour cream sauce and a spicy mustard sauce.  I liked the sour cream sauce more but both were really good.

<-Potato Pancake                                                                       Salad ->

Now, for my entree.  My father had told me to order the pork chop, but I of course didn't listen to him and instead thought I should try the brawtworst with perogies and sauerkraut.  The perogies were phenomenal, I loved every bite but the sauerkraut was sweet, and the brawt was just kind of bland.  I suppose that the sauerkraut was good, but because I had expected traditional sour/tangy sauerkraut I ended up being disappointed.  I did have a taste of my Dad's pork chop and it was delicious.  I'll know better next time.

The service here was pretty good, although they did seat us in a main traffic area, which was weird because they had other tables that were open that were less in the way.  We were constantly scooting in to avoid the waiters.  Our waitress was really attentive though, and our food came out fast.

The prices seemed a little high, but not unreasonable.  This isn't an everyday place to go, but it's a fun now and again food place.  The building actually looks like a giant cask and that's pretty neat.  I would definitely go back for just the pancakes and perogies.

:)M