While we were in Santa Fe for the opera a couple of weeks ago, we were kindly invited for dinner with nearby family of old friends. While we love eating anywhere in Santa Fe, it’s usually a restaurant. We not only saw Santa Fe in a whole new light by breaking bread in a home, but made new friends who then next day took us for a picnic and hiking in the Santa Fe National Forest (do it, do it, do it).
Month: August 2015
Colorado Two-Potato Stew with Roasted Chiles and Cheese
In late summer in Colorado and New Mexico, there are chile roasters on busy street corners and if you haven’t the time or inclination to buy and roast your own chiles, this is the place you stop for our homegrown goodness. The aromas wafting around the intersections will call you even if you haven’t seen a roaster in years. Can’t eat them all right away–just warmed and layered with cheese, eaten with tortillas or tortilla chips? Then it’s time to gently tuck the chiles into small or large containers and freeze them for winter cooking.
Come cold weather, I like to pile up a big slow cooker full of sliced fresh salted and peppered pork loin, chopped onions and garlic, sliced or canned tomatoes, and the thawed or still frozen roasted chiles. At the end of a snowy day, we hit a fresh tortilla place on the way home and walk into the house full of blasting hot southwest aromas hitting us in the face. Tortillas go in the oven and a big bowl of pork and chiles is ladled out for each person. Time to sit down to summer complete with a cold beer. Meanwhile, we watch the wind whip down out of the mountains, screaming cold, cold, cold. Yes, it’s rather heavenly-sounding, isn’t it? Continue reading
Late Summer Egg White Frittata or What to Do With Leftovers from a First Birthday Party
My nearly daily breakfast is an egg white omelet or frittata, which is just the Italian word for an open-faced omelet. It’s fast, luscious, nutritious, and maybe best of all uses up my odds and ends of raw or cooked vegetables, restaurant leftovers (pizza toppings, too), bits of meat, and even a grate or two of cheese. I try and blog one of these a couple of times a year just to give a high five to
- eating healthy foods continually
- using up leftovers
- not throwing food out
- eating vegetables for breakfast
- getting a good start on the day.
There are times when I’m on a fresh fruit and Greek yogurt jag and even eat that with some of my homemade low-sugar granola, but this summer finds me working hard to lose weight and I’ve cut back both my fruit and my dairy in hopes of finding success. It seems to be working! I’m down a size or more and perhaps have taken off 20 pounds. No scale in the house; the clothes are the indicator.
Last Saturday, I made a brown and jasmine rice salad to take to my granddaughter’s birthday party (see below for opening presents through playing peek-a-boo, to eating cake and the very-necessary after cake sink bath–sorry for phone pics) mostly like any luscious summer pasta salad but with a combination of brown and jasmine rice added to a huge bowl of vegetables and a spicy mustard vinaigrette.
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Tapenade Salad with Hot Tomatoes and Goat Cheese Crostini
If you follow my blog, you could know I cooked a 50th birthday dinner for my next-door neighbor Mike a couple of weeks ago.
Maybe you made the Blueberry-Strawberry Pie I made him in lieu of cake; Mike is a pie-boy!
Quick Provençal Summer Vegetables on Rosemary Couscous
I try to eat as many meatless meals as I can. It’s hard; I love meat. My husband Dave is perhaps even more of a carnivore, but snarfed this down as fast as he could the other night out on the deck. In Colorado, our al fresco dinners are numbered. Within a couple of weeks, lunches outdoors will work wonderfully, but dinners will simply be too cold. In the meantime, we’re loving every meal we can get at the patio table with something fun on Pandora going and the dogs running around enjoying the breeze.
Grilled Cantaloupe with Goat Cheese, Maple Syrup, and Toasted Almonds
My book, SOUPS & SIDES FOR EVERY SEASON, has a chapter with easy and quick dessert recipes and one of my favorites is Grilled Peaches or Figs with Cheese, Honey, Thyme, and Black Pepper. It’s on the blog, too. While figs aren’t often available in Colorado–more’s the pity– our Palisades peaches are plentiful, juicy western slope wonders. (Scroll down for more info about our peaches and see about attending the upcoming Peach festival. I’ll stay up here where it’s just a bit cooler, heat wuss that I am. In fact, I’m heading to Santa Fe where it’s both higher AND cooler. But you go on west.)
Grilled Eggplant Lasagna
So you love summer grilling but are getting a little bit tired of it all. That pot of chili simmering on the back burner or a chicken casserole in the oven is beginning to sound like something you want. (Smells, good, huh?) Salads truly make you a happy camper, but your mouth is just a wee bit sick of chewing…chewing…chewing. Welcome a new girl on your cooking block: grilled eggplant lasagna. You might rather think of it as Eggplant Parmesan Stacks or just Eggplant Parmesan–and you can– but as I recently realized: there’s mozzarella in this gorgeous and quick summer dinner. Which makes it more like lasagna, right? You call it whatever you like, but make it.
This meal looks and feels like pasta, but there’s no pasta in sight, making it perfect for a gluten-free meal. Seems a bit like meat, but the meat stayed at the store while the vegetables came home to play. (Scroll down for notes for both G-F and vegan.) There’s little to it but grilling the eggplant and zucchini, topping the eggplant with fresh mozzarella, then layering it all on the plate with warm marinara and shaved Parmesan. A few flakes of crushed red pepper add zing, if you like, and a plate lined with greens tidies the whole thing up and makes it both beautiful and healthful. Try this, even if you’re unsure about eggplant: Continue reading