I made a Mediterranean-style dinner last night. I had chicken defrosting and knew I wanted to use some packaged polenta that I had on hand, so I went looking for a recipe that would complement it. The sherbet & sorbet recipes follow, also. Here you go, with a few personal adaptations, of course!
Braised Balsamic Chicken
6 Chicken Breasts, boneless & skinless
NOTE: I substituted chicken tenderloins and used about 10-12
Garlic salt (I like fresh ground garlic sea salt)
coarsley ground pepper
2 T. olive oil
1 sweet onion, sliced thinly
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar--buy the best you can afford--Costco's is pretty good
1-small can diced tomatoes
1 t. dried basil
1 t. dried oregano
1 t. dried rosemary
1/2 t. dried thyme
Pat chicken dry with paper towels and season with salt & pepper. Heat olive oil in a skillet, brown the onion and the chicken.
Mix tomatoes, vinegar and seasonings in a bowl, then pour over the chicken and onions. Simmer, uncovered, until the chicken is done (145 degrees) and the tomato sauce is thickened.
Polenta
I cheat and buy the stuff at TJs in the tube. Slice it off and brown in a skillet brushed with olive oil. Place on a cookie sheet and top with grated asiago cheese. Broil to melt the cheese. Serve with extra sauce from the chicken.
Three Bean Salad
1 can dark kidney beans
1 can garbanzo beans
1 can green beans
3 T. seasoned rice vinegar
1 T. Extra virgin olive oil or other light oil
1 t. sugar
1/2 t. seasoned salt or garlic salt
1/8 t. pepper
1/8 t. Mrs. Dash seasoning
Drain and rinse all the beans, then place in bowl. Whisk together the remaining ingredients until the sugar is well disolved and add to the bean mixture. Refrigerate until about 20 minutes before serving.
Raspberry Sherbet
1-12 oz bag frozen raspberries, at least halfway defrosted
1 c. non-fat half and half
sugar to taste (about 1/2 cup or more)
Blend all ingredients together in a food processor for about 30 seconds. Add mixture to ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's instructions.
Mango Sorbet
1 c. sugar
3/4 c. water
1 lb. bag frozen mangoes
Combine the sugar and water in a saucepan over medium high heat. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved and the syrup is clear. Remove from heat and cool in refrigerator.
Allow mangoes to thaw while syrup is cooling, about 30-45 minutes.
Combine the syrup and the mangoes in a food processor and process until smooth (about 30 seconds) If mixture is cold, process in ice cream maker immediately. If it isn't cold, refrigerate, then process in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.
You may serve both of these immediately if you are pressed for time, but I like to put the finished product in a container with a lid and freeze for at least a couple of hours before serving.
There you have it, folks--my mediterranean inspired dinner! I served it with a wine from a local winery--2005 Capstone Unicus. If you don't happen to have that one in your wine cellar, try a Washington or Coastal California Zinfandel or any "big" red wine. I also served the Asiago bread from Safeway bakery, warmed in the oven while the chicken cooked. Enjoy!!
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Memorial Day
The ritual was one that she had performed since childhood--filling the car with whatever flowers happened to be blooming in the yard on Memorial Day,"Decoration Day," weekend. She wasn't sure why she still did it--all the other relatives who cared were long gone, but, then again, maybe that WAS why she did it. Driving up the rutted gravel road to the old cemetery brought back childhood memories.
Most of my father's relatives were dead before I was born, and they were held in greater esteem than any of the living relatives. My great-aunt was adamant that we know that these dead people had lived greater lives than we could ever hope to, and in a time that was much greater, simpler and harder than ours. The family matriarchy was the dominion of the iron-fisted, acerbic sisters, my grandmother and great-aunt Nellie, her younger-by-only-two-years sister. From the time I was about four, several times a year, but most importantly on "Decoration Day," they would load their gardening tools, my cousin and I into the old Buick and head to the Oddfellows Cemetery to tend the family plot.
We would wander through the cemetery for a while, but eventually our attention would be called away from our morbid grave games to pay our respects to the dead relatives. The would come the stories. Detailed, sometimes vivid descriptions about how each of these people came to be here that fascinated me and horrified my cousin. She didn't do well with things like that. While I thrived on hearing the stories like the one about my grandmother's brother Ralph, who, it was told, had an operation and died from the ether. My poor cousin would turn pale and rush to the car, escaping into the safety of the backseat. Ether, I was told, is what they used to knock you out so that the operation didn't hurt. I imagined that operations took place somewhere like the Frankenstein's labratory I had seen in the movies. While my grandmother told these stories in her matter-of-fact manner, my great-aunt seemed amused and almost delighted in seeing us squirm.
The trips were never described as "going to the cemetery," but as "going to see Mama and Papa," or "going to visit Ralph and Ester." No one in the family questioned it, or seemed to think it was the least bit odd that we going to see dead people. Sometimes the sisters spoke to them, filling them with the latest family news and gossip. Although I never asked either of them about death, my sense of death, as a child, was htat it was a temporary situation, and that, in time, they would get over it.
My peculiar sense of the dead continued at home. Home was my grandmother's house where I lived with her and my father. A big old house that had once held four apartments; we lived mostly downstairs in the space that had once been two of those apartments. When I would ask my grandmother about my grandfather and my father's little sister, she would tell me that they were with the man upstairs. I thought she meant upstairs in the unused apartment, so I sneaked up the stairs to look for them. I could use someone to play with. I wasn't supposed to be up there, and when she caught me, my explanations were met with silence. I thought it was pretty neat that we kept dead people in our upstairs and I told all the kids in my kindergarten class about them.
In another part of the house, my father had mounted the head and horns of a deer over the doorway. Unfortunately it was between me and the bathroom. I just knew that the deer wasn't really dead, but just marking time on our wall, and that it might come back to life just as I walked under it. After I had peed my pants a couple of times, someone figured out that I was afraid of the deer and took it down.
Many years later, when I was a young bride, the news came that my father had died. I went to his house, my grandmother's house where I had grown up and before anyone else arrived, I checked the apartment upstairs, just in case.
Most of my father's relatives were dead before I was born, and they were held in greater esteem than any of the living relatives. My great-aunt was adamant that we know that these dead people had lived greater lives than we could ever hope to, and in a time that was much greater, simpler and harder than ours. The family matriarchy was the dominion of the iron-fisted, acerbic sisters, my grandmother and great-aunt Nellie, her younger-by-only-two-years sister. From the time I was about four, several times a year, but most importantly on "Decoration Day," they would load their gardening tools, my cousin and I into the old Buick and head to the Oddfellows Cemetery to tend the family plot.
We would wander through the cemetery for a while, but eventually our attention would be called away from our morbid grave games to pay our respects to the dead relatives. The would come the stories. Detailed, sometimes vivid descriptions about how each of these people came to be here that fascinated me and horrified my cousin. She didn't do well with things like that. While I thrived on hearing the stories like the one about my grandmother's brother Ralph, who, it was told, had an operation and died from the ether. My poor cousin would turn pale and rush to the car, escaping into the safety of the backseat. Ether, I was told, is what they used to knock you out so that the operation didn't hurt. I imagined that operations took place somewhere like the Frankenstein's labratory I had seen in the movies. While my grandmother told these stories in her matter-of-fact manner, my great-aunt seemed amused and almost delighted in seeing us squirm.
The trips were never described as "going to the cemetery," but as "going to see Mama and Papa," or "going to visit Ralph and Ester." No one in the family questioned it, or seemed to think it was the least bit odd that we going to see dead people. Sometimes the sisters spoke to them, filling them with the latest family news and gossip. Although I never asked either of them about death, my sense of death, as a child, was htat it was a temporary situation, and that, in time, they would get over it.
My peculiar sense of the dead continued at home. Home was my grandmother's house where I lived with her and my father. A big old house that had once held four apartments; we lived mostly downstairs in the space that had once been two of those apartments. When I would ask my grandmother about my grandfather and my father's little sister, she would tell me that they were with the man upstairs. I thought she meant upstairs in the unused apartment, so I sneaked up the stairs to look for them. I could use someone to play with. I wasn't supposed to be up there, and when she caught me, my explanations were met with silence. I thought it was pretty neat that we kept dead people in our upstairs and I told all the kids in my kindergarten class about them.
In another part of the house, my father had mounted the head and horns of a deer over the doorway. Unfortunately it was between me and the bathroom. I just knew that the deer wasn't really dead, but just marking time on our wall, and that it might come back to life just as I walked under it. After I had peed my pants a couple of times, someone figured out that I was afraid of the deer and took it down.
Many years later, when I was a young bride, the news came that my father had died. I went to his house, my grandmother's house where I had grown up and before anyone else arrived, I checked the apartment upstairs, just in case.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Hispanic Barbie
In the previous post, you might have noticed the picture of the pretty salsa that I served on Cinco de Mayo. Behind the salsa in the photo is something I bring out of the closet once a year, but has come to mean a great deal to me. I call her "Hispanic Barbie," but she is actually a barbie head and arms atop a styrofoam tortilla warmer that is covered in ruffles and lace to form the senorita's dress. She was a gift several years ago from the wife of one of our employees who knew for my love of Mexican food. I was speechless when I was presented with Hispanic Barbie. What the heck was I going to do with it? It vaguely reminded me of the doll heads with crocheted dresses that were intended to cover a spare roll of TP and sit on the toilet tank at Grandma's house. Although I can't recall the woman's name, I do remember the sparkle in her eye when she gave it to me, the "jefe's senora"(boss's wife). I thanked her in my pathetic college spanish and resolved to find a way to display the gift.
If you've been to my home, you might have noticed that I like to decorate the dining table for the appropriate season/holiday, etc. My daughters will tell you that "like" is an understatement and that my fascination with it borders on eccentric. Heh. I own tablecloths, placemats, napkins and rings, and centerpieces for practically any occasion. Hispanic Barbie would be a centerpiece for Cinco de Mayo! It's a great holiday to haul out my brightly colored table linens and my much loved vintage Fiestaware.
So once a year I haul out this wonderful centerpiece and remember the love with which she was given. It is a nice feeling.
If you've been to my home, you might have noticed that I like to decorate the dining table for the appropriate season/holiday, etc. My daughters will tell you that "like" is an understatement and that my fascination with it borders on eccentric. Heh. I own tablecloths, placemats, napkins and rings, and centerpieces for practically any occasion. Hispanic Barbie would be a centerpiece for Cinco de Mayo! It's a great holiday to haul out my brightly colored table linens and my much loved vintage Fiestaware.
So once a year I haul out this wonderful centerpiece and remember the love with which she was given. It is a nice feeling.
Super Secret Kick Ass Salsa
I haven't often shared my salsa recipe, partly because it has developed over the years and I have never really written it down, and partly because I get lots of compliments on it and am being kind of selfish :) But I have been giving it out quite often lately and it seems that I write it down a bit differently each time, so I thought that I would post it here and then just direct people here when they ask for it. So here it is!
This salsa is pretty quick to make and it is easy to have the ingredients on hand all the time in case you have unexpected company or a really big snack attack! This and a bag of tortilla chips are also my mainstay when invited to something potluck-like and I get asked to bring it quite often. A few years back I went on a houseboat vacation with 9 of my closest friends and we made a gallon of this salsa, chopped entirely by hand because we didn't have a processor. We consumed every bit of it and could have eaten a lot more! But be forewarned, some people have not been able to recreate my salsa, probably due to the haphazard way I cook! Adjust the heat to suit yourself--I make it hotter at home but tone it down a bit when I take it somewhere. I'll also soon be posting some other recipes, one for pineapple salsa and another for Chipotle Salsa (burn your eyebrows off HOT!!!) But in the meantime, here is Twylla' s Super Secret, Kick Ass Salsa! Enjoy!!!
1 large can diced tomatoes--I like to use organic--and when you have ripe tomatoes in your garden, use them either by themselves, or added to the canned
1 small can chopped green chiles
2 or more chipotle chiles in adobo sauce (buy a can in the Mexican foods section, use what you will and store the rest in a ziploc in the fridge or freezer until next time you need them) These are dried, smoked jalepenos and give the salsa its zing and smokey flavor
1 bunch green onions, cleaned and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 bunch cilantro, stems cut off
Seasoning salt, or sea salt to taste
2t-2T sugar
Place all the above ingredients in a food processor (I like to place the fresh vegetables in first with the rest on top so that they process better) Process until you get the consistency you like.
Make sure and taste it before you take it out of the processor so you can adjust it if you want to.
This salsa is pretty quick to make and it is easy to have the ingredients on hand all the time in case you have unexpected company or a really big snack attack! This and a bag of tortilla chips are also my mainstay when invited to something potluck-like and I get asked to bring it quite often. A few years back I went on a houseboat vacation with 9 of my closest friends and we made a gallon of this salsa, chopped entirely by hand because we didn't have a processor. We consumed every bit of it and could have eaten a lot more! But be forewarned, some people have not been able to recreate my salsa, probably due to the haphazard way I cook! Adjust the heat to suit yourself--I make it hotter at home but tone it down a bit when I take it somewhere. I'll also soon be posting some other recipes, one for pineapple salsa and another for Chipotle Salsa (burn your eyebrows off HOT!!!) But in the meantime, here is Twylla' s Super Secret, Kick Ass Salsa! Enjoy!!!
1 large can diced tomatoes--I like to use organic--and when you have ripe tomatoes in your garden, use them either by themselves, or added to the canned
1 small can chopped green chiles
2 or more chipotle chiles in adobo sauce (buy a can in the Mexican foods section, use what you will and store the rest in a ziploc in the fridge or freezer until next time you need them) These are dried, smoked jalepenos and give the salsa its zing and smokey flavor
1 bunch green onions, cleaned and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 bunch cilantro, stems cut off
Seasoning salt, or sea salt to taste
2t-2T sugar
Place all the above ingredients in a food processor (I like to place the fresh vegetables in first with the rest on top so that they process better) Process until you get the consistency you like.
Make sure and taste it before you take it out of the processor so you can adjust it if you want to.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
End of the Season
Tonight I watched the Trailblazer's last regular season game from my sofa within arms reach of a large box of tissue. Turns out it was a groaner, but I was disappointed to not be there in person. My husband took me to my first professional basketball game while we were dating, and it didn't take me long to become a pretty big fan of the Portland Trailblazers, or the "Jailblazers" as they came to be known. It was easy to lose interest there for a while, when the Blazers were in the news more often for some of the dumb antics of their players than for their expertise on the court. But the last few years have been very, very different for Blazers fans--we have a superstar, and a local one, at that--we have an owner who is deeply committed to the organization--we have a fan-freaking-tastic coach, and we have a deep, a VERY deep bench. To say that this year held a lot of challenges for the team would be a gross understatement. The team has been riddled with injuries to the point of being unbelievable, and when Joel Pryzbilla suffered a season ending injury, many fans thought that the Blazer's prospects for the playoffs were over. But this amazing team stepped up and met every challenge and ended their season tonight 50-32, just four wins short of their season last year, and as sixth seed in the West.
This weekend the playoffs begin, with the Blazers set to play Phoenix in the first round. Who knows what the playoffs will bring, especially with Brandon Roy's play being questionable since he sustained an injury while playing against the Lakers. What I do know is that this team has a lot of heart and I can't wait to watch them continue their journey no matter where it ends this season.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Spring in the Greenhouse
I have a lot of experiments going on out in the greenhouse right now and they all seem to be going superbly! If you are on Facebook you might remember that I was searching for a waterbed heater a while back--odd...huh? I put a "wanted" ad on Craigslist and after a couple of disappointments actually managed to score 2 waterbed heaters. No, I'm not having a nostalgic moment, but I had been shopping for seed mat heaters for my greenhouse and found that they were terribly expensive. Seed mat heaters look a lot like waterbed heaters, as I recalled, and I thought that perhaps someone out there might have one for sale cheap. Not only were the heaters just half the price that ONE seed mat was, they are much bigger also! A very good score for a girl who LOVES a good bargain.
So the theory is that seedlings start much faster when bottom heat is applied to them. In the past I've used my greenhouse for many different things, but I haven't been big on starting seedlings. So I am starting quite a few seedlings right now and will likely have baby lettuce (mesclun) in just a few weeks! I typically spend quite a bit of money on plants each year, and my theory is that this will save me quite a bit. For now I'm growing lettuce, eggplant and cilantro because I have limited space for the vegetables. They have to be fairly close to the house or else the deer come up and feast upon them.
I just purchased a book that I read many years ago--Square Foot Gardening---and hope to incorporate more of the ideas from that book into my veggie crop this year. The idea is that you don't need a huge area for vegetable gardening and that a lot of space is wasted when vegetable gardens are planted in the traditional way. The methods in the book also reduce the amount of work required--that is always a bonus in my book!
I also ordered a variety of heirloom tomato plants from www.Burpee.com and just got notice that they are on their way. In MHO it is too early to set out tomato plants, so those bad boys will go into the greenhouse for awhile while we prepare a new raised bed for them. I've found a nice spot but I'm afraid it is going to require quite a bit of work to put a new bed in place there.
All the while I am also getting ready to put in a decorative flower bed out in front of the greenhouse--it's been pretty baren and weedy out there and it really needs some work. And I really need a few nice days so that I can get all my ambitious projects started!
So the theory is that seedlings start much faster when bottom heat is applied to them. In the past I've used my greenhouse for many different things, but I haven't been big on starting seedlings. So I am starting quite a few seedlings right now and will likely have baby lettuce (mesclun) in just a few weeks! I typically spend quite a bit of money on plants each year, and my theory is that this will save me quite a bit. For now I'm growing lettuce, eggplant and cilantro because I have limited space for the vegetables. They have to be fairly close to the house or else the deer come up and feast upon them.
I just purchased a book that I read many years ago--Square Foot Gardening---and hope to incorporate more of the ideas from that book into my veggie crop this year. The idea is that you don't need a huge area for vegetable gardening and that a lot of space is wasted when vegetable gardens are planted in the traditional way. The methods in the book also reduce the amount of work required--that is always a bonus in my book!
I also ordered a variety of heirloom tomato plants from www.Burpee.com and just got notice that they are on their way. In MHO it is too early to set out tomato plants, so those bad boys will go into the greenhouse for awhile while we prepare a new raised bed for them. I've found a nice spot but I'm afraid it is going to require quite a bit of work to put a new bed in place there.
All the while I am also getting ready to put in a decorative flower bed out in front of the greenhouse--it's been pretty baren and weedy out there and it really needs some work. And I really need a few nice days so that I can get all my ambitious projects started!
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Unemployment
The unemployment thing was fun for a while. I got some much needed downtime after two years of full-time work, full-time school, part-time business partner, and part-time wife, AND had some quality time to get my thesis written. Then there was the new grandbaby (last June) and the youngest daughter's wedding (September) my step-daughter's return from overseas (November), and of course, the holidays. After the holdiays, the search got serious and I have been applying for jobs for which I am over-qualified, under-qualified, and not-even-close-to-qualified. Although I recently completed my masters in Manangement, all of my experience is in non-profit, education, and workforce development. I have had a few interviews and honestly thought I had a good chance at a couple of them, and in "normal" times I probably would have, but there are tons of qualified applicants out there right now. In the meantime, since I have some expertise in the area of job search, I have been helping out friends, friends of friends and sometimes complete strangers with resumes, cover letters, job search strategy, and whatever else might come up....each and every person I talk to is unprepared for the difficulty of today's job search. YIKES, if I'm having trouble, I can't even imagine what other people are going through.
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