Last-Minute Dinner Success

I asked, and I received.  My butt and my arms were sore when I woke up this morning!  I pushed myself through another good workout today, but I rushed through some measly stretches so I could get back to the office for a meeting.  I'll be sure to stretch tonight so I'm not stiff and sore tomorrow.

I'm juggling two thoughts in my brain right now.  1. Will I be motivated - mentally or physically - to work out tomorrow, given that it's going to be 99 degrees plus humidity?  2.  Should I treat myself to BerryLine, the best FroYo in Boston, conveniently located across the street from my office?  The answers will most likely be: probably not but I'll suffer through it, and yes.

Back to the present and my I'm-so-starving-I-better-skip-Macy's-and-go-cook-something-now dinner.  My intentions were to bake some sort of chicken, but the chicken breasts I have are fully frozen and I just didn't feel like dealing with the raw meet!  The sweet potato-related meal I was thinking about would have taken too long to cook, and I didn't want to turn on the oven.

So, I finally opened up the big, white binder I recently used to organize my recipes, and right there on the front page was my saving grace: Ricotta-Spinach Tortillas.  Drool.  I printed the original recipe from The Food Network about a month ago when I made these babies two nights in a row.  Tonight, instead of just spinach and onions, I added mushrooms and orange pepper as well.  I don't have any chile peppers, so I used chile powder for the taste.

Onions, pepper, mushrooms, and spinach.

Can I mention that this is the cleanest box of mushroom's I've ever seen?!

 


I'm just in love with this recipe.  Method: saute everything.  I hate overly sauteed and soggy peppers, so I added those after the mushrooms, and the spinach after that.  The ricotta is mixed with cilantro and garlic for a dollop-like topping, but I like to add it to the skillet at the end.  This heats the cheese and blends everything together for a creamier bite.  A dollop on top doesn't hurt though!

The tortilla ripped in the package, so it looks a little funny.  The view, as usual, is perfect.  We're expecting terribly humid and dangerously hot weather, but it's actually a comfortable 83 and very breezy right now.

The problem with cooking just enough for 1-2 servings...

...there's nothing left to pick at after you lick your plate clean!

Blanch the Broccoli?

After a bit of the beach, reading in the park, and browsing TJ Maxx, I ran into Stop and Shop in search of a light snack for my drive back from Newport.  Right.  I saw the "Buy 1 Get 1" blueberries and had a cart in my hands within seconds.

I stocked up on some great fruit, including cantaloup and the most perfect bag of cherries I've ever eaten in my life.  Can't wait to munch on those this week!  This Stop and Shop was much nicer than Southie's, so I grabbed a few things I don't normally see.  The broccoli rabe caught my eye, and I stumbled upon Al Fresco chicken sausage that was buy one get one as well!  One spicy jalapeno, one sweet apple.

I broiled the sausage but steamed, blanched, and sauteed the broccoli rabe.  Heated tomatoes aren't my favorite, but they worked here perfectly.  I added the tomatoes and one sausage at the end.  (Kept the other one whole and ate it separately.  I'm weird like that sometimes.)

I never blanch my vegetables.  Well, I really haven't been steaming my vegetables, but this needs to change!  Every time I do it, I remember how much I love them cooked this way.  The blanching (submerging in cold water immediately after the steaming) is supposed to halt the cooking process, and I've also read that it keeps the veggies green.  I have to say that the broccoli did stay perfectly cooked - with a bit of a crisp - and were gorgeously green.

It was refreshing to have some new flavors on my plate!  Now I have to make lunch and think about what to have for dinner tomorrow.  It never ends!

Bleeding Beets

I must have eaten beets at a restaurant recently, because when I saw them in my new cookbook, Cooking for One, they immediately jumped from the page to my shopping list.  I made a quick grocery run last Monday and come home armed with the strange root vegetable.  A few Google searches and 2 instructional blogs later, I was well on my way to mastering the art of boiling beets.

Lesson one: leave an inch or two of the stems on the beets so they don't lose their color and stain the water red.

Lesson two: beets stain everything red.  Peel them over the garbage, have some paper towels ready and waiting, and wash the cutting board ASAP after chopping them up.

That night I made a delish salad with beets, goat cheese, and homemade honey-roasted peanuts for my lunch the next day.  But, on Friday night, I concocted this beauty:

Sauteed beet leaves with red onion, beets, and cannelloni beans.

In my beet tutorial last Monday, I learned that the leaves of the vegetable are similar to kale or spinach when they're sauteed.  What bang for your buck!  After sauteing the chopped red onion, the I cooked the leaves much like I do escarole.  Saute, add chicken broth or water, simmer down, and add the beans at the end.  I was holding the few beet pieces for lunch the next day, but I decided that the dish needed color.

The plated dish:

With a side of whole wheat Israeli cous-cous, melted with a mix of mozzarella and a bit of Parmesan:

Israeli cous-cous and mozzarella.

The whole wheat cous-cous was so much heartier than the regular kind I've been eating.  I didn't know what I was missing (literally, because I didn't know they made a whole wheat variety)!  I never make anything fancy with this stuff...I tend to throw in a bit of parm and call it a side dish.  I loved the mixture of parm and mozz...I'm drooling just thinking about it!  It looks gloppy and funny in this picture, but it was creamy and melted in my mouth.  Look at this texture!

 All-in-all, it was a success!  It wasn't terribly heavy, which is great, but it could have used some chicken or meat with it.  That's for next time.  This left me pleased and my stomach satisfied!