There is a cliche that states

"look before you leap". This saying has become a cliche for good reason, for it is wise to follow. But I will get to that later.

I cooked again! It's practically a habit already what with doing it twice in one weekend. My plan for Sunday's meal was Tziki, pasta, and steak, but when all was said and done (I'm looking at you, Leapy), all I had was pasta- which was BY GEORGE delicious. So let us start there.

I got this recipe from this months Rachel Ray magazine, which, if my dad didn't give me a subscription every winter I would have canceled by now. But, there is at least 1 recipe a month that I want to make and this was it for this month: Herbed butter linguine with goat cheese and heirloom tomatoes.

Take 6-8 TBS of butter in a pan, melt it, then add 2 shallots. After they soften, add 1/2 c. of white wine and let it reduce. To this you add about 1/4 c. or howevermuch you feel of fresh tarragon, thyme, flat leaf parsley, and dill that has been finely chopped. Cook some linguine al dente, and add 3/4 c. or so of the pasta water to the herb butter. In a bowl, dump everything together with about 8 oz. of goat cheese and 2 c. of chopped heirloom tomatoes. Sadly, Safeway was out of heirlooms, so I chose to use 4 varieties of tomotoes instead. Season with S & P. As you can see, the end result is fairly alfredo-esque.

Next, I got a hankering for some Tziki which is fairly straightforward: chop some cucumbers, add plain yogurt, garlic, olive oil, I added some red onions and dill and finsh with S & P.

Now, here is where the looking and leaping come in. As I was prepping everything up for assembly, I had all my ingredients out on the counter. I chopped all the veggies and plopped them in a bowl, and proceeded to dump all the yogurt in and that's when it hit me: the gently wafting smell of vanilla. VANILLA people - I grabbed sweet, Greek Style, vanilla yogurt instead of plain. Oh the humanity!

Not to be completely undone, I finished the dish and went about with a taste test, albeit a timid one. And then it hit me again... THIS WAS NOT THE FIRST FRAKING TIME I HAD DONE THIS. The taste of garlic and salt imbued vanilla yogurt is not a flavor one soon forgets, at least on a sensory level. So when I tell you to look (I suggest looking while at the store still, because even if you have the containers on the counter with you while you are chopping veg and the lovely vanilla bean caricature is staring at you in the stupid face for an hour you still won't see it) before you leap, I say it from the heart. Else you will end up with a dish that looks thusly:

In the end, after all this work and one of the two dishes ending in disappointment, I didn't really have the heart (or energy) to make the steak. Tonights dinner is steak and leftovers - exciting!

See more pictures of the process here.

Oh yeah, and Eric had burrito for dinner - leftr over meat from the nachos, cheese, and tortilla melted up in the microwave.

I got a wild hair up my butt

to make some dinner that didn't involve a microwave or the deli chick at Safeway who is quite willing to hand me a fully cooked meal. I actually do get this desire to cook up a good meal pretty frequently, I am just lazy as hell. I think tonight's meal should be called "Chunky Colors" which sounds like something you pay tribute to the Porcelain God with, but I assure it you it was much better.

First up: Panzenlla or Italian Bread Salad. Traditionally, I think the bread is supposed to be almost bread crumbs and not big pieces like I have here, but I like to chew and I like the bread to retain body. I took a nice sourdough loaf, cut it up, and put it in a low temp oven until it got almost croutony (Yes, it's a word... now). To that I added a yellow bell pepper, green onions, cherry tomatoes, 2 cloves of minced garlic, 30ish green olives - I got these spicy numbers from the Olive Bar - and about 20 leaves of basil. After tossing that all together, I drizzled about 3/4 cup of olive oil and tossed, then 1/2 c of red wine vinegar and tossed again. Cover, refrigerate, and stuff your face after an hour.

Next up: BBQ shrimp with orange bell peppers and more cherry tomatoes. I marinated the shrimp (beheaded, deveined, flayed, and amputated) in a mix of fresh orange juice, soy sauce, red pepper flakes, and ginger for an hour. After cooking in a basket on the BBQ, I decided there wasn't enough flavor, so I made a dressing of lemon and orange juice, ginger and white pepper which I dredged the cooked shrimp and veggies through. Delish! I was quite pleased with how this all turned out. I think the shrimp may have been missing something but I was never able to really put my finger on it. Maybe not tangy enough. Or fresh ginger - def will try that next time. UPDATE: this was GREAT cold the next day. Maybe toss it over a bed of butter leaf lettuce and add some mandarin oranges with a garlic/lemon vinegrette?

More photos of this meal in the making can be found on our Picasa.

Not that Eric ate any of this; he had nachos.




I 'spose I could have chosen the dishes better to make a prettier presentation, but MMMmm nom nom nom.

People keep telling me

I need a point in order to make a blog. Or to get traffic. Or to keep people entertained. Well, phooey on that. It is what it is.

I never got to updating the looks of this thing. I will eventually. I see a lot of great templates out there, but I'd much rather create the images and do my own design rather than use someone else's stuff. I used to do webpages so why not try it here, amirite?

For someone who is supposedly busy as hell at work

my day has gone something like this:

• Start watching Fringe
• Play with Tweet Deck
• Answer the PoTD and watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBfj6khrG4 again
• Introduce friends to http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/
• Discover the uncensored version of MotherLover and listen 3 or so times
• Rejoice that TFLN also has a Flickr
• Read the entire Wiki for The Lonely Island
• Lust after an Android and look at apps; also look up how much its gonna cost to get out of my stupid Cingular contract and ditch the blackberry ($175.00 YUCK)
• Play the "this chick is so hot" game with Brian -also find the filter by color option google images added
• Start a blog (lol)
• Update and play with a shared notebook with the hubs to keep track of stuff for EQ2
• Decide which deity to follow in EQ2 - after much research

And the rest of my afternoon looks like:

• Finish watching Fringe
• Watch Lie to Me
• Play with blog layout 'cos it is currently ugly as hell

And I never even got to my Reader today...