Bite. Sip. Repeat…

One of my son’s friends joined us for dinner.  She tries to eat a gluten-free diet, so I decided to keep it simple and serve oven-baked chicken breasts, rice and steamed veggies.

Seasoned the boneless, skinless chicken with my spice mix (Essence of Bargabus, recipe here) and baked it at 350° until it was at an internal temperature of 165°.  Rice in the rice cooker, steamed veggies for the kids.

For Lisa and I, I made some collard greens.  Sautéed a slice of bacon, a small onion (diced) and two cloves of garlic (pressed) in a large stock pot.  After the aromatics had softened, I added the greens and cooked them until they were wilted. The greens almost filled my large stock pot, but wilted down to about 2 1/2 cups of greens.   Then I added a cup of chicken stock, covered the pan and let the greens steam on low for 20 minutes.

B: Toast, fruit

L: Tuna sandwiches

D: Chicken “Fried” Rice

Had an emergency computer service call come up and we didn’t have time to shop yesterday.  We had a bunch of miscellaneous veggies, so I thawed a couple of chicken breasts and made a cooker of rice.  Marinated the chicken in oyster sauce, sesame oil, pepper, cayenne and ginger.  Diced the veggies small (sugar snap peas, green pepper, mushrooms, onion, garlic, scallions, carrots).  Sautéed the chicken and set it aside.  Sautéed the vegetables in a teaspoon each of canola and sesame oil.  When they were still a bit crisp, I threw in a handful of frozen peas and added in the cooked rice, about 2 cups.  Mixed in the chicken, seasoned everything with some salt and pepper and it was done.  I took a tip from Ming Tsai who doesn’t use soy sauce to season his fried rice.  I like this version.  Pretty tasty

My wife was grocery shopping last weekend and grabbed a package of our usual mushrooms, the brown crimini ones. A passerby said she should really get the white button mushrooms because they’ve got better cancer prevention properties. My first reaction to this story was “Horse Hockey!”.  Not really my exact words, but my Mom reads this blog

Of course, I had to check out. Numerous internet searches showed evidence that mushrooms (especially white buttons) inhibit the enzyme aromatase that’s necessary for the production of estrogen. Excessive estrogen has been liked to an increased risk of breast cancer. See one article here.

Another article said the chemoprotective can be seen by eating 3.5 oz. of mushrooms daily. Not a huge amount, but certainly more than we eat on a regular basis. I guess we’ll have to work a few more mushroom omelets and pizzas into the weekly rotation.

Anyway, I thought this was pretty interesting, hope you thought so, too.

It’s still a little hot and humid, so I was looking for a light lunch.  The boys wanted leftover spaghetti and meatballs from last night.  Lisa had a meatball sandwich.  I opted for a toasted pita, schmeared with hummus, topped with arugala, chopped heirloom tomato and blue cheese crumbles.  Quick and delicious…

Lisa was doing an art project with our #1 son. The kids were drawing vegetables and the idea was to have the roots and leaves attached so they could see how the vegetables grew. Long story short, we had several bunches of veggies: carrots, beets, leeks, etc. that I had to do something with. I had also bought some Brussels sprouts and broccoli and had some miscellaneous produce in the fridge. I decided to just season them simply and roast them in the oven.

I cut everything into bite-sized pieces and tossed them with seasoning salt, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and olive oil. I put them all in a baking pan and into the oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, just until they were fork tender. Absolutely delicious…

My #1 son’s school, Flora Vista Elementary in Encinitas, started hosting a Farmers’ Market a couple of weeks ago. It’s on Sunday from 2pm – 5pm. More information on San Diego County Farmers’ Markets here. Dr. Steve, his lovely wife and adorable son came over and we set out to shop. Unfortunately, we forgot the camera. We’ll take some pictures next time.

The market was pretty well populated, maybe just a little too heavy on prepared food and crafts. There were two barbecue stands, Indian food, kettle corn, smoothies, a juice stand, prepared garlic spreads, flavored hummus (about 15 variations), jewelry, walking sticks, and some other stuff I’m forgetting. Oh yeah, and some produce, too.

They had all the stuff that’s in season, tomatoes, avocados, asparagus, oranges, etc. We bought green beans, asparagus, avocados, oranges, and strawberries. No one was selling heads of garlic, but the nice lady at the garlic spread place gave me one from her display. We headed for home.

On the menu tonight: Continue Reading »

My son loves brussel sprouts and salmon. Not bad for a boy of 7. These are not your mom’s sprouts. They come out a little crispy, caramelized and sweet. The recipe is very simple. Wash and trim the sprouts.

Continue Reading »

Plantains are those fascinating banana-looking fruit surrounded by a bit of mysticism. Are they really fruit or vegetable? Do we eat them raw or cooked? When should we eat them? They start out bright green and hard, move toward beautiful yellow, slowly get black specs and in the end turn completely black and soft. This change of life takes only a few days and plantains can be enjoyed at every stage of ripeness. They are the cousin of the common banana we’re all familiar with (plantains are sometimes called cooking bananas). The color of a plantain is directly proportional to the level of sugar in the fruit. I recently took a trip to Puerto Rico recently and re-found my love for plantains in many dishes and stages of ripeness. I had some great Mofongo (mofo-what?), tostsones and baked plantains. I’ll dive into the history and execution of these dishes as well as some interesting facts about the plantain. Bananas! (now I feel like a cool 14 year old…girl…mm..not so cool). Let’s continue down banana road. Continue Reading »

My wife was looking for some in-season fruit for my Number 2 Son. My Number One Son asked how we knew what was in season. A quick Google search uncovered this fabulous web site, Eat The Seasons. Great idea, brilliantly simple interface, terribly useful. Who knew that sunchokes were “in season”? I didn’t even know what a sunchoke was. Some of the items in season are links to an article about them, which includes history and facts about the item, as well as recipes. Check it out. Screenshot below…