Foodie Pen Pal Reveal

I stumbled upon the Foodie Penpals site by random and found the idea to be ... well simply genius!  I knew I just had to participate.  Here's the jest of how it works:

• Sign up by a certain date
• On the 5th of the month, you get your penpal pairing
• You have 72 hours to email your penpal and swap info, ask about allergies and etc...
• Foodie package must be sent by the 15th of the month to your penpal.  The spending limit is $15 and you must include something written.
• On the last day of the month, you post a blog about what you got.

I was lucky enough to get my inaugural penpal box from Savannah. Her husband is stationed in Guam so her package was filled with local goodies that she's been enjoying.  Content of the box included: Dried Banana Chips, Dried Mango (I've been craving mango lately!), Green Tea Kit Kat (YUMS! I think there's only 5 left), Banana Ketchup (I'm so intrigued by this and can't wait to try it on something) and Calamansi - Tropical Lemon Drink (This was so refreshing & tasty!!!)

My box went to Heather, who's a vegetarian. She told me she was open to trying new things, especially local goodies... well I live where Asian food is more than readily available so I headed to the market and found a bunch of what I think are "staples" in most asian vegetarian diet.  

I can't wait for the next month... which sadly won't be till January since I totally forgot to sign up for December!!!  Booo...  If this sounds like fun to you, click to join!

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Slow Cooker Tri-tip

With a new baby in the house, making dinner meant anything I could whip up in 30 minutes or anything I can toss into a slow cooker.  I originally meant to make roast beef, but there was a great sale on tri-tip and so I decided to improvise. The result was this amazingly juicy and flavorful meat. Yum!

Slow Cooker Tri-tip

ingredients

• 3 lb Tri-tip
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 1 (1 oz) package dry onion soup mix
• fresh ground pepper

directions

1. Trim off a little of the fat from the meat.  

2. Mix the dry onion soup mix with soy sauce in the slow cooker

3. Place the tri-tip in and cook on low for 20 hours or until the meat is tender enough to separate with fork.

notes

The meat by itself already has a lot of flavor, but you can also use the juice it cooked in as a dip, kind of like a french dip.  Just make sure you separate the fat from the au jus.  

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Zucchini Strand Spaghetti

Zucchini Strand Spaghetti
(adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

ingredients

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3/4 lb dried spaghettini
• 3/4 lb zucchini
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 Tbs minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 3 Tbs coarsely chopped fresh basil leaves
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan

directions

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add salt. Add the pasta and cook until al dente, about 10 minutes.
2. Grate the zucchini with food processor, into long strands. Season with salt and pepper. 
3. Heat 1/4 cup of the olive oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Add the garlic and saute briefly until light brown. Add the red pepper flakes. Quickly mix in the basil and remove from the heat. When the pasta is al dente, drain through a colander, reserving about 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water.
4. Pour the pasta into a warm serving bowl; add the zucchini, basil oil (optional, recipe below), the garlic mixture, and 1/2 cup of the cheese. Toss well, adding cooking water as needed to make a smooth sauce. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper, as needed. Grate about 2 tablespoons Parmesan over the top and serve at once.

Basil Oil (optional recipe)

For soft herbs, such as basil, parsley, cilantro or tarragon: Use 4 cups packed leaves to 2 cups pure olive oil. In a blender, puree the herbs and oil until completely smooth. Put the mixture in a saucepan and bring it to a simmer over moderate heat. Simmer for 45 seconds, then pour through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl. Don’t press on the mixture, but you can tap the strainer against your hand to get the oil to drip through faster.

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Watermelon Lemonade

As you know we have an over productive lemon tree so I'm always searching for recipes that'll help me use up some lemons. I started the day thinking I was going to make lemonade, but apparently leaving ripe lemons in the tree dries them out.  Who knew??  So I was suddenly left with a bunch of lemons with hardly any juice!!  I managed to squeeze a cup full from 7 lemons!  Good grief, how was I suppose to make a drink with 1 cup of lemon juice?  Now I don't normally post drink recipes up, but this one was so tasty, it's gotta be shared.

Watermelon Lemonade

ingredients
1 cup lemon juice
2 cups
3/4 cup simple syrup
3 cup water

directions
Stir together and served chilled.

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Zucchini Bread

We recently got a bunch of organic zucchini from my aunt.  Whenever I think of zucchini I think about this delicious zucchini bread served at our local salad place.  This isn't that recipe, but it comes fairly close.  

Zucchini Bread
(adapted from Paula Deen | makes 2 loaves)
ingredients

• 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 cups sugar -- original recipe calls for 3 cups, but that's just asking for diabetes
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1/3 cup water
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease 2 standard loaf pans with nonstick spray.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar. 
3. In a separate bowl, combine oil, eggs, water, zucchini and lemon juice. 
4. Mix wet ingredients into dry, add nuts and fold in. 
5. Bake in 2 standard loaf pans for 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean. You can also bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.

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Zucchini and Red Onion Flatbread Pizza

Last week The Husband randomly came home with a bag of shrimps and flatbreads.  I made shrimp scampi from the shrimps, but now I'm left with a very large bag of flatbreads and a dilemma... "Just what do I do with so much flatbread?" Thankfully I found this recipe and was able to use up all the flatbreads. The original recipe is much fancier, I simplified it because I didn't have 40 minutes to spare. So here's my version, it's fast, easy, delicious and healthy. Definitely one for the books... er.. blog.

Zucchini and Red Onion Flatbread Pizza
(loosely adapted from epicurious)

ingredients

• vegetable spray
• 8 flatbread
• Alouette garlic-and-herb cheese spread
• parmesan cheese
• 2 red onions
• 2 long zucchini, cut crosswise into 1/8-inch-thick rounds
• chopped fresh Italian parsley - optional

directions

1. Preheat oven to 400F
2. Lightly grease a cookie sheet with the vegetable spray, or use a silicone baking mat and place the flatbread directly on it.
3. Spread a layer of Alouette garlic-and-herb spread, then sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top of the spread.
4. Layer zucchini and red onion
5. Spray the top of the vegetables with a little cooking spray and sprinkle with a some pepper
6. Bake in oven until the edges are brown, roughly 10 minutes.
7. Sprinkle some parsley.

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Smoky Corn Chowder

It must be corn season, because there's a sale for fresh corn almost every week.  As much as I love munching on the kernels off the cob, I was itching for a little variety.


Smoky Corn Chowder
(makes for 4 servings)

ingredients

• 4 slices bacon, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
 
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced

• 4 cloves garlic, minced

• 2 Tbs. smoked paprika

• 1 pinch crushed red pepper

• 4 ears fresh corn, kernels removed
 
• 4 cups chicken stock

• 1 cup cream

• coarse salt and freshly ground pepper


directions

1. Heat a medium-sized pot over medium heat. Add the bacon and cook until crispy. Remove bacon from the pan and set aside on a paper towel to drain. Drain all but 1Tbs. bacon fat, if you have that much in the pot.
2. Add the onions to the pot and sauté 5 minutes. Add the garlic, paprika, crushed red pepper and a pinch of salt and pepper. Sauté another minute.
3. Add the fresh corn to the pot and toss to combine. Sauté. 
4. Add the stock and cream to the pot. Stir to combine. Keep on a low simmer for 15 minutes. Season to taste.
5. With an immersion blender, place it in the pot and pulse it a few times until about half of the soup becomes creamy, still leaving whole kernels as well. If you don’t have an immersion blender, ladle about a cup and a half of the soup into a blender and pulse until creamy. Pour back into the pot and stir to combine.

variations

shrimp - Saute the shrimp in bacon fat, remove then continue with Step 2.  Garnish with shrimp.

potato - After adding the onions and sautéing, add potato and rest of Step 2.

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