Food, Booze, & Baggage

Food, Life, Travel

Let’s Talk Breakfast

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Does anyone who has a full-time job get up and eat a full breakfast before going to work? I’m not hungry when I wake up, it takes me a little while before I feel like eating. I need packable items I can easily eat at work. I’m currently addicted to Kind Bars, and usually have those laying around in case I don’t have something else. Some weeks I make muffins or scones. Other weeks I do yogurt and granola or apples and peanut butter. If you live in the South you have to check out Atlanta Fresh yogurt, it’s amazing (Whole Food carries it). In the warmer months, I will make smoothies but I cannot bring myself to drink a frozen drink in the morning when it is cold outside. I’m very interested in over-night oats but have yet to try it. I would love to know what you guys do for breakfast. Any suggestions? Have you tried over-night oats?

The Rest of the Week

This week was not the home-run last week was. I picked too many large dishes and we ended up throwing food away…meal plan fail. Technically we could have eaten it but I was not feeling the Hot and Sour Soup.

  • Napa Salad with Buttermilk Dressing: I was originally going to share my Greek twist on this for the post today, but the pictures just did not turn out appetizing. It was a bit pale looking. It tasted great though. I took the original recipe and added feta, olives, and cucumbers. I used Greek yogurt in place of the buttermilk for the dressing.
  • Slow Cooker Ropa Vieja with Rice: We did not make the beans to go along with it. Turned out pretty good. We ended up using stew beef as they did not have flank or skirt steak at Whole Foods.
  • Coconut Rice with Chicken Thighs: This was ok but nothing special. Not a repeat dish.
  • Shiitake & Noodle Hot & Sour Soup: OMG this smelled so much while it cooked. The taste was ok but after smelling it all afternoon I was a bit over it. Not a repeat dish.
  • Banana Bread Muffins: Certainly not the best as the title implied but turned out good and easy to make. I added chopped pecans and used white wheat flour.

Pea Pasta With Grilled Bacon

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This is an easy-peasy dish :)…I just couldn’t resist. Really, it is simple, quick, requires very few ingredients and it’s cheap! What more could you ask for? It also reheats well the next day for lunch. One of the key factors to this dish is to get a good quality Parmesan cheese (not the stuff in a plastic container), it needs to be the stuff sold in a big chunk (Trader Joe’s and Costco both can save you a few dollars on this ingredient). The bacon is technically optional though we have always included it. The bacon brings a great salty smokiness to the dish and grilling it just steps up the flavor that much more. The thick cut bacon is mainly needed if you are grilling it, otherwise you can get the regular bacon and just crumble it over the top. I highly, highly recommend grilling the bacon. I always make P do the grilled bacon for this dish…trust me, you should try grilled bacon, it will change your life 🙂 Sadly, I cannot claim the genius that is grilled bacon, I found the idea from The Smitten Kitchen. 

Pea Pasta via Food, Booze, & Baggage

This recipe is adapted from Macaroni Peas found on Food52.

16 oz frozen petite (small) shelled peas
16 oz pasta, in a small shape (like macaroni, fusilli, orecchiette)
3 tbls butter
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 cup parmesan (good quality), grated
4-6 slices thick cut bacon
basil, chopped (optional)

Take bacon outside to grill, along with tongs. Grill on medium to maybe a little past medium heat…there will be some flames but keep the lid open. You need to stay with the grill this is not a leave it situation; the bacon cooks quickly. Grill until crispy. Set aside, and when cooled chop.

Start large pot of salted water to boil. In a separate saucepan put peas and add just enough water to cover. Bring to a boil and cook until tender — a couple of minutes. Reserve about ½ cup to 1 cup of the pea cooking water and then drain the peas. Place peas aside in large bowl or measuring cup.

Add the pasta to the pot of boiling water and cook according to the package. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a small pan over low heat; add the garlic and cook gently for several minutes. Remove from heat.

When pasta is cooked al dente, drain, and leave in colander. Return pasta pot back to the stove (on an unused burner), put peas into pot (reserving about ¼ cup), add 6 tablespoons of reserved cooking water, the butter and garlic, and ¼ cup of the grated cheese. Using stick blender, puree until smooth, adding more cooking water if necessary. Combine with the remaining whole peas and season liberally with salt and pepper.

Return the pasta to the pot and toss with the sauce. Serve in individual bowls with more grated cheese, grilled bacon, basil, salt and fresh-cracked pepper.

The Rest of the Week:

Typing this out I’m pretty proud of us for being so local this week. The sides we just basically threw together ourselves but I did link to recipes as a reference. While, I usually don’t include where we eat out during the week, if you are local you need to go to Garland. This week was our second meal with them since they opened their dining room and both times have been amazing. I even got crazy and had a rum drink (I never drink rum), I was shocked at how good it was.

Modern President via Food, Booze, & Baggage

Veggie Soba Bowl

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One of my goals with this blog is to include what we are eating at home. As I mentioned on my about page, I’m fascinated with what people eat and how they plan their meals. When I lived alone, if I ate at home, I would eat things like cheese and crackers or maybe a frozen something for dinner. Well, I’ve come a long way from those days. Our move into focusing on cleaner eating has been great and was actually easier than expected. The big challenge for us is not wasting food; to avoid this planning is required.

Our general routine is to plan and shop on Sunday morning three to four meals for the work week (not to include weekends). This gives us the flexibility to go out to dinner one night or to pick something up one night because we don’t feel like cooking. The weekends we leave open and just figure them out as we go. P and I do all of our planning, shopping, and cooking together (well I may do a bit more planning and P may do a bit more cooking).

Pinterest has been a great resource for planning and finding new recipes. We will repeat some recipes but try to do at least one new recipe a week. I have a secret board labeled “Meals this Week” that we use for planning purposes. This makes finding recipes when it is time to cook so much easier. I try to write a comment on the original pin of any changes made or notes for next time. If a recipe is particularly good then I will copy it into the Menu Planner app (so if a blog disappears we still have the recipe).

Here is one of the meals we enjoyed this week:

Veggie Soba Bowl

Veggie Soba Bowl

Adapted from Epicurious "Spicy Soba Noodles with Shiitakes and Cabbage"~Maggie Ruggiero

For sauce

  • 1/3 cup water
  • 1/3 cup soy sauce
  • 1 to 2 teaspoons roasted red chili paste
  • 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
  • 2 tablespoon packed brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon sriracha or to taste

For noodles

  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil (I use sunflower seed oil)
  • 3 tablespoons finely chopped peeled ginger
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
  • 10 oz fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and thinly sliced
  • 2 cups broccoli florets (about 2 broccoli heads)
  • 8 cups (@1 1/4 pound) Napa cabbage, thinly sliced
  • 3 scallions, thinly sliced
  • 8 to 9 ounces soba (buckwheat noodles)
  • Toasted sesame seeds (optional as topping)

Preparation

Whisk together all sauce ingredients until brown sugar and paste is dissolved, then set aside.

Prepare pot of salted water for soba noodles (2 tablespoons salt for 6 quarts water). Heat oil in wok or large skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers, then sauté ginger and garlic, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add shiitakes and sauté, stirring frequently, until tender and starting to brown, about 6 minutes. Reduce heat to medium, add broccoli and sauté for about 3 minutes. Start noodles-see below. Then add cabbage and most of scallions (reserve about a tablespoon for garnish) and cook, stirring occasionally, until cabbage is crisp-tender, about 6 minutes. Add sauce and simmer 2 minutes (a bit longer is ok if you are still waiting on the noodles).

While cabbage is cooking, cook soba in a pasta pot of boiling salted water (2 tablespoons salt for 6 quarts water) until noodles are just tender, about 6 minutes. Drain in a colander and rinse under cool water to stop cooking and remove excess starch, then drain well again. Transfer to the pan with the vegetable mixture or combine both in a large bowl. Serve sprinkled with reserved scallions and if using sesame seeds.

Serves Four: this was enough to have 5 bowls and two potions left over for lunch the next day.

Notes 

  • This would also work really well over rice.
  • The mushrooms may stick a bit while cooking
  • This does end with quite a bit of liquid sauce at the end, it does not really thicken up.

I created a Pinterest page for Food, Booze, & Baggage. My goal for each week is to share our “Meals this Week” pins there…so head on over and see what other dishes we enjoyed this past week.