With a clean yard and a beautiful morning, time to take Sunday breakfast outside. I made apple cinnamon pancakes – including two little ones for two certain canines. Yum.

Not any cooking, that’s for sure! We successfully resisted the urge to turn on the A/C (aside from in our bedroom) – and of course, the Spring heat wave has ended with rain, wind, and chillier weather, as expected. On Monday, though, after two days of the heat, we decided a cold soup was in order:

This one is a favorite that we don’t have very often – it’s a lot of chopping, and J’s not a huge fan of avocado. The summer I lived in Boston, we had lunch at (and I went to alone a couple of more times) The Elephant Walk, a fantastic French/Cambodian restaurant a mere block from my door. As an appetizer, they had this lovely fruit/vegetable dish – Avocado Citrus Soup. I seriously just about licked the bowl clean. When I got home, I figured there was no harm in emailing the restaurant/chef to ask if maybe, possibly, they wouldn’t mind sharing the recipe?

Imagine my surprise when they DID let me have it! I spent a good part of that fall snacking on it, but I think have only made it one other time since. It was perfect for this weather – nice and cold, refreshing and filling. Paired with a mixed lettuce salad with a little EVOO and balsamic, topped with a few shrimp tossed on the grill by J while he was having a beer and a little lemon, it was the perfect (almost) Summer meal. And it looked darn pretty, too.

(Not posting the recipe since it’s not mine, nor is it online or served at the restaurant anymore, so if anyone is curious or interested, let me know and I’ll be happy to email it to you!)

I had every intention of posting this on Friday – but the day got away from me. And then, the weekend here was beautiful – gorgeous weather, lots of time outside! I went to Pilates like a “good girl” early on Saturday morning, and J and I went down to the shore for the first crabs of the season.

They were SO worth it.

We won’t talk about my first speeding ticket in 15 years, or how it was a total trap because he was sitting in the few hundred yard window where the speed limit went from 55 to 45 before going back up to 55. Honestly, I am a speedy driver, so my number was up.

ANYWAY – I mentioned last weekend that we had reverse engineered a recipe…and we call it a success! Are the originals still better? Of course! But they’re not the easiest thing to come by, and my poor, sensitive stomach took days to recover from them, so I’m quite happy with this substitute. A couple of weeks back, we checked out a new (to us)  music venue called The Birchmere, which has almost a “dinner theater” kind of setup, to listen to Juliana Hatfield (Bonus! Remember her?) and Bob Mould rock out on the night of the launch of his new CD. It was an awesome show, and the food was great. We wondered what “chicken sliders” could possibly be, and upon reading that there was BBQ’d pulled chicken involved, we were all in.

They were AMAZING. Open faced, tangy/spicy pulled BBQ chicken on garlic bread, topped with mozzarella. To die for. And easy enough to make our own version, right?

Well – sort of. We tossed the chicken into the crockpot with some BBQ sauce on the way out the door to the museum and came home to…well…a bit of a mess. Not enough sauce. While my Dad dug in and salvaged as much as he could of the chicken breast, I ran out to the store to get a container of the ol’ standby Lloyd’s.  In the end, we mixed them together and it was just perfect.

The moral to the story? Premade BBQ chicken = good. Chicken in the crockpot with anything less than about 2 cups of BBQ sauce = bad.

Chicken Sliders

1 lb (-ish) chicken breasts, thawed (or just one package from the store)
1 FULL bottle BBQ sauce of choice

OR

1-2 packages of premade BBQ pulled chicken (Lloyd’s was great)
Gouda cheese, grated, for topping (a little more character than the mozzarella)
Loaf of crusty bread, sliced into 1 – 1.5″ slices
Butter
Garlic powder and/or minced garlic

The morning of, toss the chicken and the BBQ sauce into a crock pot, mix, and set on low for 8 hrs. Go to work. Pray for the best. (If using prepackaged, obviously, skip this step.)
When it’s done, use two forks to shred the chicken. Set aside. Preheat broiler. Spread butter and garlic on one side of each bread slice, broil until lightly toasted. Remove, flip the toast, and do the same to the other side. Add chicken, top with shredded gouda, and broil again to melt the cheese.

Eat in large quantities. Best with beer.

Dad and his wife have been here this weekend – the closest we get to Easter around here is breaking out a Paas kit and feasting on Peeps and Creme Eggs. So, while everyone else spent Sunday at church and at family gatherings, we spent it at the newly-reopened Museum of American History. Two of the exhibits we really wanted to see had lengthy lines, but we were able to see the Star-Spangled Banner and this:

Any ideas?

It’s Julia Child’s kitchen.

I was amazed by how homey and real it is, and at the amazing array of gadgets – the mix of single-use gadgets and the best of the best multitaskers. Her knife collection. The pots and pans on peg boards on the walls. The solid, central kitchen table that could serve as a dinner place, a gathering place, and an extra workspace.

Nothin’ fancy, but heaven conceptually for the home cook.

The exhibit included TV’s playing her old PBS shows – as a New England girl, shows from WGBH-Boston were regular Saturday fodder. This Old House. New Yankee Workshop. Jacques Pepin. Yan Can Cook. And of course, Julia Child – who, by the time I was on the scene, had long ago settled in Cambridge and was filming her show, finished each episode buy sitting down to dinner with a glass of wine. It was actually a mix of water and Gravy Master, I learned today – she didn’t want to be drunk and filming, but did enjoy good wine with her meals – a lesson learned from her time in France at the Cordon Bleu. Forty plus years ago, she was making a point of cooking in season, with locally grown produce. Sound like a familiar “trend?”

“Food should have sense of time and place,” one of her friends said in a video. I wholeheartedly agree.

We came home, newly inspired. We tried a little recipe reverse-engineering for dinner tonight. I think we have a winner – a fun, easy meal. With a sense of time and place – at least, a reminder of it for us…

Around the time I got married (*gasp* approaching 6 years ago now), J and I happily planned setting up our little nest, and gleefully looked forward to all of the yummy meals we would cook. Cooking together was (is – we should do it more) one of our favorite things to do.

Around then, Martha Stewart had just started yet another new magazine – Everyday Food. I bought the first issue. Variety? Check. Healthy? Check. Nutritional info included? Check. Won’t take up my entire evening to cook and does not require raising my own chickens? Check. We subscribed. And it is now the longest running magazine subscription we have. Not a month goes by that we don’t cook something out of the latest issue, and going back 6 years, we certainly have our favorites that we revisit. When the latest issue comes in the mail, J and I “fight” to be the first to read it and dog-ear what we want to try.

This week has been the coldest of the season in the DC area. Today, I woke up to a whopping 13 degrees and our townhouse’s heat pump fighting for every degree of warmth. The rest of the week brought us into the 30′s and low 40′s during the day – simply balmy for a half New England / half Midwestern couple. Cold weather = soup. Plain and simple. Liquid warmth poured down your throat at the end of a cold day.

So, for this week – one of our Everyday Foods favorites. From far enough back that it’s even posted online now!

Mushroom Barley Soup

If anyone wants the full nutritional info, please let me know, but I do know that this clocks in at a healthy, but filling, 352 calories per serving. Bacon included!

Notice that Dutch Oven there? Again – why do they taunt me?

Our modifications:

• Jason has been known to toss in more bacon when I’m not looking. I try to keep on him about it. This week, it had the correct amount – he knows I’m watching my calories carefully right now.
• No quick cook barley around here for some reason – regular barley works just fine, just be prepared for some extra time.
• For the love of all things gourmet, try to use cremini instead of button or a mix. Creminis are baby portobellos, so if needed, chop some of those up and use them instead. Additionally, these mushrooms are more substantive and filling. There’s a reason they use portobellos as hamburger substitutes, you know! And the flavor is rounder and richer, to boot.
• Play with the vinegar. We usually end up using 2 t – 1 T. We like vinegar anyway, but in this recipe you can’t really taste it and it brings up the other flavors. The tomato paste really brings up the sweetness level.
• Our standard is usually one more clove of garlic than it says, in just about any recipe. Free flavor!

I see on the webpage that one person posted saying this was “OK” and “lacked flavor, tasted like something was missing.” I personally have no idea how she would get that unless it WAS missing something. This is one of our favorites in terms of flavor – J flat out craves it. It’s no beef-and-barley – so if that is what you’re looking for, this ain’t it.

Warm, balanced flavors, lightly hearty – perfect for a health conscious winter night meal. Cheers!

PS – IT HAS COME! Our fabulous Kiwi Le Creuset. Not used yet, but SO worth the wait….we can’t wait!!

I was just reading Irishgirlieknits’ New Year’s resolutions post, and among the “to dos” were eating more healthy, cooking in more, and just plain cooking more. It got me thinking….if there is one thing I love, it’s eating good food. And I’ve been lucky enough to marry a guy who loves to cook. (I’m a good helper.) While he is roughly the size of my pinky, I am always trying to balance keeping (or getting) slim with continuing to eat well but healthy. We’ve spent the last few months focusing on eating in more and eating out less, and while we’ve fell into a routine of “go to” meals that we love, we’re looking forward to trying new things this year. We aim for one new recipe a week, and often, I end up editing it a bit to reduce fat and calories. Admittedly, it’s an experiment – some work, some fail, and I am really picky about what I call a success!

So, Feasting Friday will celebrate those successes – I’ll reference the original recipe, and share with you the A & J Version. Sometimes, when I find one that’s good as is, I’ll just post a link with comments.

If you try one – please let me know your thoughts and what YOU do to make it your own!

This week – or, rather, from last week – we had a fantastic version of Coq au Vin at my Dad’s. He loves to do the same healthy editing that we do, so this is his version. We’re currently plotting (read: saving) for a Le Creuset dutch oven, so of course every recipe we see seems to be dutch oven-ready. This was no exception – but it can also be done in a crockpot with a little tinkering, or in an oven-safe stockpot. In fact, we used a Calphalon stockpot for this pass of it since that was on hand.

Usually, Coq au Vin recipes take 4, 6, or even 8 hours. Simply, we picked this recipe because it only took 2 (plus prep). This is a weekend recipe for sure, but the leftovers will carry you into the weeknights!

The original recipe can be found at Cooking.com – here. And our version:

Amanda’s Dad’s Coq au Vin

Ingredients:
For Chicken
2 T olive oil (set aside, and keep a teaspoon handy)
2-3 lbs of packaged boneless, skinless chicken breast
1/2 c whole wheat flour, lightly seasoned with salt and pepper

For the Sauce
1/3 c brandy
3 c red wine (you didn’t really think I’d skimp on the alcohol, did you?)
2 c reduced fat/low sodium chicken broth or stock (canned is perfect)
1/4 c balsamic vinegar (never underestimate the value of good balsamic vinegar)
1 T dijon mustard (coarse ground is great, but regular will do)
1 bag of frozen pearl onions, thawed (you can buy fresh and peel if you really want to – I’ve done
it, it sucks)
1 (16 oz or whatever is closest) can of chopped tomatoes with juice
5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced. (yes, more!)
1 lb baby carrots (just a bag of ‘em) OR 1 lb regular carrots, scraped & sliced
3 ribs of celery, sliced however the heck you want
3 cups sliced button mushrooms (J will slice himself, I buy pre-sliced)
2 T fresh chopped rosemary (seriously, fresh matters here – dried just isn’t the same)
1/4 c fresh chopped parsley (ditto)
s & p

Now – just follow the directions as above in the original recipe. To cook the chicken, I dredge it in flour, shake it off, and brown it in as little oil as possible – hence the teaspooon, and add it a teaspoon at a time. We used up 2T – but it’s important to get those browned goodies, so I don’t advise much less. And after the prep time? Yes, I KNOW it’s over 2 hours, but well, just do whatever you do around the house (knit?) and stir occasionally, we’re not talking risotto here! That’s why this is a weekend recipe!

The original recipe says 664 calories a serving – but we’ve got less oil, no dark chicken parts, reduced fat/sodium broth, and no skin. Sad, I know, but trust me, it’s OK. The chicken breast just falls apart and is not dry at all, and the rest of the ingredients are fresh – vegetables, herbs…good for you! I don’t even like carrots, but trust me, they are awesome this way. I didn’t actually sit down and calculate, but I’d think we’re somewhere in the ballpark of 400 – 450 calories for this one. Not bad at all – not even “special occasion” calorie level!

And it’s YUM the second day, so break out your Tupperware! Leftovers for the week!

Just a comment on the alcohol – some of the wine and brandy flavor does come through, so I don’t recommend omitting it completely, but you can always play with more broth, less wine if you want. In addition to the flavor, there is the liquid volume consideration to bear in mind. Omitting wine does omit more calories, but I try to keep my meals in the 350 – 450 calorie range, and I’m pretty confident we’re in that already. French bread to sop up the sauce is a nice addition, but more calories….I’m all about the protein and veggies when I can, and less refined sugars/carbs, so I don’t typically use it. Skinny Hubs loves to, though. Lucky schmo.

Wishing you fantastic feasting! Cheers!