Cooking

Zoom Zoom!

by Jessica on May 8, 2012

in Automotive, BBQ, Columbia, Exercise, Food, Freelance, Racing

This weekend went fast, but thankfully, we maximized every minute of it. We had kind of an ambitious list of to-do’s. Training runs, workouts, car painting, a client website go-live and some hefty yard work. I worried we might have set our sights high with the hot weather in the forecast, but we pushed through, and even though I think we set some new lows in personal hygiene, we arrived at early Monday morning with almost everything done.

Saturday Run

Saturday morning started bright dark and early for me. Because the weather was supposed to be hot and super humid, I wanted to knock a run (the #Blend5k) out early, before the heat could literally stop me dead in my tracks. I know I’ve talked about my struggles with endometriosis in fitness but I also struggle with extremely low blood pressure. While most people would be happy to have low blood pressure, and I’m certainly not complaining, it does sometimes make endurance exercise difficult, especially if it’s hot out. I get very dizzy and disoriented — not good.

Since I was on a mission to beat the heat, I cranked out a 4-ish mile run around my neighborhood in about 45 minutes. I mapped the route the night before on MapMyRun. How did I just find out about this app last week? As you can see on the map, we live in a neighborhood with lots of twisty little paths, and when you collect them all together, you can crank out some good distance runs without even leaving the neighborhood. Perfect to liven up my routine morning run route.

Came home from my run to this scene...

I arrived home to this comfy scene. If I wasn’t so sweaty, I probably would have climbed back into bed, but instead I started the coffee and hopped in the shower.

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Neil and I had made plans to hit the Farmer’s Market early Saturday. You have to go early, or they sell out of everything fairly quickly. We also like to beat the crowds and peruse a bit before making our decisions. However on this day, everyone seemed to have the same idea, the market was packed!

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Since we made the mistake of arriving hungry, we grabbed a breakfast burrito to share. They are usually one of the first things to sell out, and now I know why. So good!

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We picked up a few new herbs for the garden. My basil and cilantro have been ravaged by slugs, so I need to eradicate and slowly replace. So bummed. I also picked up some parsley and thyme.

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While we were there we came upon this awesome display of bees that reminded me of Chrissy. So jealous of her urban homestead!

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To eat, we picked up huge bunches of spinach and asparagus, a dozen eggs, and fresh garlic. Quite the haul!

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After returning home and taking a short nap, we made a few stops around town for some new workout gear and swim trunks for Neil. Since it’s getting hot, I decided to purchase a few Reebok sports bras to work out in. I’m still a little self-conscious about bearing my pale programmer’s skin to the world, but it’s too hot in our CrossFit gym not to.

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Once the sun started to go down, we ventured out for some yard work. I took to trimming back (read: hacking to pieces) shrubs while Neil mowed.  The yard is a jungle of every native flowering and invasive species imaginable. It boggles my mind that anyone thought this was landscaping. This little patch took me an hour to weed and chop.

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Sunday was paint day for the car. Over the past few weeks, Neil has been prepping the car to paint the roll cage. He’ll talk more about it in his post, but essentially, painting the roll cage prevents undesirable rust from forming. Because of the nature of the rust preventative and paint application cycles, you have to kind of schedule your whole day around applying, waiting and painting. We applied two coats of the rust preventative, and three coats of the paint. Definitely sweaty, smelly work. More pictures to come!

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In between coats, I managed to clean the house and catch a short nap so I could stay up late for the client implementation. We went live with our latest client’s website Sunday night, and I couldn’t be more happy with the outcome. I love how a single process can create such a variance in the different solutions and aesthetic elements that emerge with each of our clients. It’s just a fun thing to see.

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To top off our Sunday, we also had a HUGE dinner comprised almost entirely of these steaks. Being a former veg, I used to hate steak, but once you have fresh grass-fed steak, it’s impossible not to want it every day. It doesn’t hurt that Neil is an amazing grillmaster. He gets the crust on the steak just how I like it every time.

So that was our crazy weekend, how did yours go?

{ 2 comments }

Veggie Stuffed Squash Boats

by Jessica on September 22, 2011

in Food, Main Courses, Paleo, Recipes, Vegan

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I have something to confess. Until making this dish, I’d never had spaghetti squash before. I know what you’re thinking, “For shame Jessica!” I know it’s pathetic, but hear me out. I didn’t grow up eating them, they were always purely decorative. At Halloween and Thanksgiving my aunts would place them on tables as centerpieces or on their porches with their pumpkins, no one ever ate them. Aside from pumpkin pie, no one ever did anything with members of the squash family. I was finally convinced of their tasty value when I started reading blogs and stumbled across dozens of amazing looking recipes.

My other excuse is that Neil up until now has never been very open to or a big fan of squash. He’s also not a fan of zucchini unless it’s baked into something, like bread or cake, which I was always happy to endulge him with.

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What I’m getting to is that, in all my newbness and excitement to try spaghetti squash for the first time, I went a little caddywompus with the directions, and sort of well, threw everything in a pan and just started cooking. Didn’t bother to think about staggering for optimal cooking times until about 3 minutes in. Never entered my mind (blame grad school). Luckily it turned out great and tasted beautiful, but I should have thought and done it the right way.

Ingredients:

1 medium spaghetti squash

For the filling:
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 cup yellow onion, chopped
1/4 cup peperoncini, sliced
1/2 cup red pepper, chopped
1 cup asparagus, rinsed and sliced
1 cup black beans, rinsed and drained well
1 small eggplant, chopped into bite-sized pieces
1/2 cup sweet corn, frozen or fresh
All of the reserved cooked squash, about 4 cups
1/3 cup cilantro, minced
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 tablespoon lime juice
2 teaspoons white pepper
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
1 teaspoon sea salt

Directions:

To prepare squash: Roast squash in a 375°F oven for 50 minutes until tender. (Note: you can also cut squash in half, cover lightly with plastic wrap and place in a bowl with 1/2-inch of water and microwave for 20 minutes on high or until tender). When cool, scoop flesh from squash halves leaving the shell for stuffing.
To make filling: Heat oil in a large pan and sauté red onion, jalapeño chili, peperoncini, eggplant and red pepper for 2 minutes. Add beans, corn and chili powder, sweet paprika and white pepper; sauté 1 minute longer. Add cooked squash, cilantro, lime juice and salt, cook 1 minute until heated through. Fill squash halves with filling, mounding mixture in the center.

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The best part of eating so many vegetables is that our meals are so brilliant and colorful.

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Serving food in a edible bowl is a great way to perk up your weeknight dinners. The squash not only performs like a noodle, but when heated up, it gets almost stringy like cheese. It was fabulous. Definitely another “why have you waited so long” ingredient. Best yet, Neil LOVED it, so you can be sure it will be on the menu quite a bit this fall!

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Do you have a fun or creative way to use spaghetti squash? We’d love to hear your ideas!

{ 1 comment }

At Home Take-Out: Healthified Szechuan Pork Stuffed Peppers

by Jessica on July 19, 2011

in Chinese, Food, Main Courses, Recipes

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I feel like our kitchen avoidance dinner posts are becoming almost a broken record. This Summer heat is unrelenting! We have tons of yard work and new bedding plants that are sorely being neglected and the lawn looks like it has some form of mange. I’m starting to think the only season that can truly be enjoyed in Missouri is Fall, and even it feels abbreviated by the crazy extremes we seem to experience in weather. But Summer marches on and so continues our streak of quick and easy meals.

Our latest recipe was inspired by Neil’s new-found love of Szechuan Pork from one of our local Chinese restaurants. You might remember his obsession with recreating and healthifying popular take-out meals at home, and his latest, Szechuan Pork Stuffed Peppers, are one of his best creations yet (though I’m still pretty partial to the Springfield-style Cashew Chicken myself). Sweet and tangy pork in a crisp summer sweet pepper? Yum!

Ingredients:

1/2 pound lean ground pork
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground white pepper
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 teaspoon peanut oil
2 teaspoons garlic, minced
2 shallots, peeled and chopped
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1 teaspoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons Braggs Liquid Aminos/low-sodium soy sauce
2 cups white rice, prepared according to instructions
4 medium sweet peppers
hummus (optional)

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Directions:

  1. Combine pork, corn starch, soy sauce or liquid aminos, salt, white pepper, hoisin sauce, brown sugar, red pepper flakes and rice vinegar in a medium bowl. Stir until thoroughly mixed. Set aside to marinade for 15 minutes.
  2. Core and blanch the peppers in boiling water for 5 minutes, or until they are tender but firm. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain in a colander. Rinse with cold water until cooled but still slightly warm.
  3. Heat oil in a large nonstick pan over medium-high heat. Add garlic and shallots and cook for 3 to 5 minutes or until shallots are soft.
  4. Add marinated pork mixture to the pan and cook until pork is no longer pink, and is crumbly.
  5. To finish, spoon a portion of the pork and rice mixture (about 6 tablespoons) into each of the peppers and serve. Makes 4 servings/peppers

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The textures and flavors mingle so well in this meal — sweet and tangy pork, on a bed of soft rice in a crisp sweet pepper tastes amazingly fresh, and not too heavy for a hot summer day. The only thing I wish we would have thought to include is a little fresh cilantro. I think a tablespoon or so in each pepper would have really capped the meal off right. I did stir in roughly a tablespoon of hummus into each finished pepper, just to give it a little extra creaminess and kick (it was spicy hummus). All in all a perfect lightened version of what we’ve had in restaurants dozens of times, and served in an edible container, which is never a bad thing if you ask me.

{ 2 comments }

Overnight Cinnamon Rolls

July 14, 2011
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If you were on Twitter Tuesday night, you may have noticed I spent the entire night baking and prepping breakfast for my first meeting with my new department staff at work the following morning. It wasn’t anything groundbreaking, just a nice double-batch of homemade cinnamon rolls — or at least that’s what I thought. When [...]

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Pizza Caprese with Spinach?

July 9, 2011
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As of late, I feel like our meals are really reflecting our priorities. While good food and fun meals are still important, our desire to squeeze every last minute out of this summer has us making much simpler meals than we typically do. The fourth of July holiday always marks the midpoint of summer in [...]

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Kimchi Prosciutto Pizza

June 29, 2011
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Kimchi has been on our “to try” list for just about a year now. Every time we’re in the grocery store, we roll past it and say, “we really need to think of a way to use kimchi,” before wussing out and rolling right on past it again. We’ve always been intimidated by it because [...]

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Black Bean Mango Stir Fry with Cilantro Lime Coconut Sauce

June 24, 2011
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If you find yourself at the grocery store as often as we seem to be lately (sometimes we go just to look around — is that weird?), you’ve probably noticed that mangoes are CHEAP right now. Being that we have tons of random veggies around and we’re trying to eat on the cheap, I thought [...]

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