I love to grill food! It brings out the best flavors whether you are grilling meat, veggies or fruit. Plus you don't have much clean up--and that's always good.
Grilled sirloin steak kebabs with red onions and colored bell peppers taste so good and smell yummy while cooking. Neighbors agreed!
Grilled boneless, skinless chicken thighs with yellow onions. The thighs have all the flavor and they are very juicy--don't dry out like chicken breasts. I marinated them with olive oil, fresh lemon juice, garlic, and salt and pepper.
Sliced French baguette dipped in homemade garlic butter, then placed on the grill for a very short time. Crunchy good with a hint of smoky flavor. Yum!
Baby squashes, portabella mushrooms, red bell peppers, yellow onions, and caprese tomatoes slathered in olive oil and salt and pepper, then grilled in a vegetable grill pan (see the holes?) rounded out the "everything grilled" scrumptious dinner! Easy and delicious!
These hot summer days inspire me to go outside and fire up the grill to cook some really tasty food that leaves the neighbors drooling!
These are double rib lamb chops that I stuffed with a marinara, ricotta, breadcrumb and fresh mint filling. Then I brushed them with a little olive oil, sprinkled them with salt and pepper, and grilled them outdoors to perfection! The Caprese salad made with Buffalo mozzarella and heirloom tomatoes went well with the lamb.
This is a Mom's Takeout everything grilled meal. Succulent smoky-tasting rib-eye with rich melt-in-your mouth scallops, and grilled fresh veggies. Perfectly Paleo, too!
Another one of Mom's Takeout everything grilled meal. Fresh tuna with pineapple, jalapeno, onion salsa, and grilled baguette slices. Yum!
This is summertime perfection! Grilled chicken legs seasoned with salt, pepper, powdered garlic and paprika--that's all. I served them with grilled veggies, including portabella mushrooms, and a side of grilled garlic toasts. I had to grill extra chicken legs for Collin because he really loves these bad boys!
And last but not least, who can resist juicy, sweet watermelon to top a delicious grilled meal? Perfect.
The weather here in the Springs is finally getting warmer--still lots of rain, though, and with plenty of green grass and beautiful flowers. And, I'm still hooked on discovering new ways to use those fresh vegetables and luscious salad greens.
Where I grew up in California there was a French restaurant that used to make this navy bean salad made with lots of fresh parsley, onions, lemon juice, celery and olive oil. It tastes so good and cool.
This salad is made with various grains, corn, sprouts, green onions, cherry tomatoes, peas, and feta
cheese tossed together with a vinegarette. Add hot slices of French bread and you have a whole meal!
Mmmmm, endive leaves are so yummy stuffed here with goat cheese, chopped dates and orange segments. Top them off with a drizzle of olive oil and sprinkle chopped chives and freshly ground black pepper. Delicious as a side or appetizer.
This is a baby spinach salad with dates and almonds that I found in my cookbook Jerusalem. This Arabic salad seems to be the counterpart to the Italian panzanella. This one uses crunchy torn pitas sauteed in butter and olive oil along with almonds that are mixed with chile flakes and salt. So good!
Oh man, this was good! Definitely will make again. This is a grilled panzanella salad that I found in my magazine Cook's Country. Grilling the veggies and baguette slices first gave extraordinary flavor to this salad. Winner!
I love to eat fresh salads in hot weather made with interesting ingredients, some raw veggies, nuts, and greens... and grains.
I may have posted this before but it's so darn good, I'm posting it again just in case you missed it! I baked on-the-bone chicken breasts, shredded the meat and placed it on top of a variety of fresh lettuces. The best part of this salad is the amazing avocado dressing that's a zip to make in the blender using avocado, olive oil, a little honey, salt and pepper. So yummy for a paleo breakfast!
This is a really good Asian salad made with coleslaw mix, grapes, apples, celery and oranges.
Tabouli is one of our all time favorite salads! I added black olives to this one just because it sounded good that day! I just love the lemony, tomatoey, parsley, garlicky flavors all mixed together with good olive oil.
Make this great corn and black bean salad when fresh corn is at its best! This has diced red onion and parsley in it, too. Delicious!
This is one stinkin' good salad made with fava beans, garbanzos, red kidney beans, red onion, garlic, all mixed together with a vinegarette. Yum!
Those little heirloom summer tomatoes are so good on a simple bed of butter lettuce, topped with blue cheese and drizzled with balsamic vinegar and evoo. Just right for hot summer days.
Just realized how many different salads I've made!! This panzanella is another one of my favorites, and is made with homemade croutons, red onion, red and yellow bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and I added kalamata olives because I like them in this salad--gives it a nice kick.
Hey! How'd this get in here? Well, this year I'm growing my herbs in planters on the front porch in hopes that those pesky squirrels and deer won't find them. We'll see. I like to use lots of fresh herbs for salad making and cooking in general.
Well, after such a long time gone from posting on my blog, I'm not sure where to begin... hmmm, the month of May was a gully-womper of a rain show! Every single day it rained. And it rained so much that we broke the record for the most rain in May set back in 1935! So, needless to say, I didn't cook much outdoors. Seemed that every time I got everything ready to grill, down came the rain. Oh well, stuff happens. Now that we're into June, though, I'm sure I'll be posting more grilling outdoors pictures. Just not yet...
I'm still cooking without a "real" oven, just using my roaster oven. (Why does that remind me of when I was kid?) It does a decent job, except for baking, most of the time. And I really miss not being able to make pizza since a while back I was on the search for the perfect crust, and was just about there (if you recall) when "poof" my oven decided to just give up. Anyway, this is a picture of tilapia I baked in the roaster oven. I cooked it with butter, lemon, paprika and capers. It was good.
This is a very (and I mean very) easy recipe for peach cobbler that I cooked in my roaster oven. I know, I said baking doesn't go well in the roaster oven, but this turned out pretty well. The problem is that it got a little burned around the edges. I'm experimenting with baking in this oven... This cobbler is made using Bisquick and canned peaches!
And this is called "Gemista," a Greek stuffed tomato recipe that is made with uncooked rice, zucchini, fresh mint, garlic, onion, chopped tomatoes, and breadcrumbs. Stuff the tomato then place it on top of chopped potatoes, salt and pepper it all and drizzle with olive oil; then bake it in the oven. My roaster oven worked very well for this dish. It was delicious!
These are stuffed sweet potatoes I made for the vegetarian in my family. First, I cooked the potatoes in the roaster oven (works very well for cooking potatoes), then I cut them in half and scooped a little of the potato out, added black beans, cheddar cheese and put them back in the oven to melt the cheese. Then I topped them off with a homemade pico de gallo.
Spring smells and happy bird songs are floating through the open windows. Aaaahhhhh, I love this time of year. Soon I'll be planting herbs and flowers, and spreading grass seed around the yard. And, of course, I will be cooking--outdoors a lot! I've actually already been doing quite a bit of outdoor grilling. I just really like the way it smells.
And what says Spring more than grilled loin lamb chops and fresh asparagus? I love this food, and it was so good with the tzatziki sauce I made to go along with the lamb. Just the right amount of mint, cucumber and yogurt.
This is one of David's favorite meals: grilled filet of beef with roasted sweet potato. I used my crockpot to cook the potato since my oven is still broken (sigh) and it did an excellent job! Look at all that butter! Oh my. I love you paleo diet! I also roasted a mixture of delicious veggies (in my roaster oven) to go along with the steak and potato consisting of red and green bell peppers, yellow squash, portobello mushroom, and red onion. I tossed it all with olive oil, salt, pepper and Italian seasoning before dumping it in my Pampered Chef stoneware baking dish. Then I cooked it at 400 degrees for about 35 minutes. Yum, good.
The kids weren't left out either! Mom's Takeout provided them with grilled lobster! And roasted veggies and a russet potato baked in my crockpot. Sometimes it's fun to surprise them with yummy lobster.
Seeing glimpses of Spring... finally. New life. I'm more relaxed. Happy. Even my jeans don't feel as tight. Funny how a change of seasons can do that. And last night David grilled rib-eye steaks on the bone and we had a wonderful Paleo feast! I completely zoned out.
I feel rejuvenated! Good food does that to me. There was just enough luscious, flavorful fat on that steak to make it even more scrumptious. I also made a salad of endive, various lettuces, apple, tender pea shoots, and walnuts--all mixed together with a good vinaigrette. And I steamed fresh asparagus and fingerling potatoes before tossing them quickly in a little olive oil/butter mixture with a whole bunch of chopped fresh garlic. Oh Spring I love you!
This was such a delicious side to the rib-eye steaks we enjoyed. And so easy. I think the simplest foods are the best! God gave us a mighty bounty!
Snow, snow everywhere we go! Snowflakes falling just like honey cakes... A great Pooh song fit for the occasion.
I've been cooking a lot of food to warm the tummy since it's been brrrrrr so cold! I think the weather man said today's temp will be 15 degrees. So, yesterday I put Frijoles de Olla (Mexican-style pot of beans) on the stove. They cooked in all their goodness--one large onion studded with cloves and one large whole jalapeno--for a long time and made me very happy.
I love pinto beans cooked this way! They smell so good and get nice and creamy in their own broth. Oh, and don't forget to salt after they're cooked. Yummy.
While the beans were cooking, I had a chuck roast cooking in my slow cooker. To it, I added one can of chopped tomatoes, one can of Hatch green chiles, one large sliced onion, five cloves of garlic, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper, and a little beef broth. It just fell apart. So tender. Very good over cilantro, lime rice and topped with those delicious pinto beans, sliced radishes, green onions and shredded cheddar cheese. I also warmed up some flour tortillas to eat with the meal and sop up the juices.
Ok, now I'm ready to dig into the food made in the slow cooker and my Roaster Oven. Hope you all enjoy it and maybe even see something you'd like to try, too.
I made spinach and cheese lasagna roll-ups in the slow cooker and they were good! Better than in the oven because I didn't have to worry about them getting burned or dried out. Perfect and so good with the meat sauce.
And here it is all plated up! See how juicy it is? Of course I topped it with fresh Parmesan cheese, and I made a green salad on the side. Slow cooker cookin' is great!
This is one of the easiest, tastiest, and most comforting dishes you can ever cook in a slow cooker. Not kidding. And it makes your house smell like your favorite Mexican restaurant. What could be better? I took some beef stewing meat, onions, lots of garlic, jalapenos, can of diced tomatoes, salt and pepper, and some beef broth, and stuck it in my smaller crockpot (wished I'd used the bigger one and made more!). I turned it on and let the crockpot do the cooking. Then when it was just about time to eat, I topped it all with some yellow bell peppers because that's the only colored ones I had on hand. Of course there's lots of jack and cheddar cheeses, too. I probably added some Mexican seasonings in the beginning, too, like cumin and oregano--and a squeeze of lime or two.
I haven't posted anything since December. So much fun and festivities and cooking surrounded our Christmas this year... maybe I just needed a rest. Old Man Winter set in and he brought lots of cold weather with a good dose of snow, too. And my oven broke :( so at first I wasn't sure what to do since my oven is my life! Well, maybe not completely, but I do use it probably everyday. I'm still the CEO of Mom's Takeout and without an oven, cooking is quite a challenge. So I dusted off my Roaster Oven (you know, those big metal, porcelain cookers that Grandma used to cook the Thanksgiving turkey), and I decided to become an accomplished Roaster Oven Chef! I'm working on it. Also, I crawled way back in the cupboard and brought the two slow cookers out, cleaned them up, and have attempted to find out everything there is to know about how to cook food in a slow cooker. A challenging season of my life. And a fun one learning new things. I actually have quite a lot to show.
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Well, I couldn't start without adding a pretty picture of my mom on her 89th birthday, which was on December 30. She got lots of presents, attention and ate good food. I love you, Mom!
No need for an oven here! Fried chicken is always welcome in our home (well, except for the one special vegetarian in our family).
This delicious strawberry, spinach and feta salad goes well with just about any meal--and no need for an oven. I dressed it with a citrus vinaigrette that made it even more delicious.
This is a very good Asian Shrimp stir fry I made in my wok! Rinse and dry the shrimp, first, then salt and coat with a little cornstarch. Fry them until they start to turn pink, then remove them from the wok and add a little oil and the vegetables--in this case, snow peas, shredded carrots and green onions. Wok the food and add shrimp back and then the sauce. Lastly, sprinkle with sesame seeds. Mmmm, good. Oh, and no need for an oven! I wonder when the cooking in crockpots and roaster ovens is coming....
