Eatin' on the Cheap

Right now, in my mind, I am on vacation. I am not actually on vacation, I am somewhere towards the beginning of what will eventually turn into the busiest, most stressful, and exhausting month of my life.

The month of May has now been dubbed Hell Month.

Do you ever have one of those months? Where you just stare at your calendar in disbelief and wonder how all of this got so out of control?

I can’t complain too much. I will be busy making money, which is good. I have goals for crying out loud! And we are about to hit one of those goals this week! The hubby and I have been doing Dave Ramsey since about August, and although we fell off the wagon in December (poor planning on our part) and couldn’t hop back on until last month ( tornadoes and thefts will do that to you), we have managed to (nearly) complete Baby Step #3 of the Total Money Makeover! That is 3 months of salary worth of savings for those of you not familiar. WooHoo! Go us!

But anyway, back to vacation.

So, this month (I mean May) I will be running the crap out of my new catering business with no less than 3 special events,  4 weekly deliveries, 1 dessert buffet, and a couple of new on-site events that I am pretty excited about. Besides the catering, the winery’s new wine club is due for it’s second shipment and I cannot believe the astounding success we have had so far! As of today, I will be putting together nearly 60 shipments for our loyal customers! With the winery, there is also of course our Summer Events that are starting up; movie night, happy hour, Blues & Wine music series and a county wide tour called Hickman County Arts & Ag Tour that is now in it’s second year. And as if that wasn’t enough, one of the newspapers I write for has asked me to do 4 extra articles on top of the weekly column that I already write for them and that is all due by May 10th.

Oh! And our 9th wedding anniversary is May 29th (Happy Anniversary babe!).

And then…vacation.

I have never longed for a condo in Hot Springs, Arkansas so badly in all of my life. Thanks to my mother-in-law for allowing us to tag along all of these years. I have pretty much decided that vacation is less about where you go and all about who is there to help you watch the kids. Vacation is also about quick and easy dinners and, if you are close to the water, seafood.

Shrimp is a favorite of mine and I have totally been on this shrimp/fish taco kick lately. I can’t seem to get enough. So I whipped up this simple recipe and imagined that I was sitting on a balcony, overlooking the water with a cocktail in one hand and a shrimp taco in the other.

June can’t get here soon enough.

Life should never be this crazy. Swirling towers of wind should never come out of the sky at 2:30 in the morning and leave you and your family huddling amongst the winter coats and wrapping paper. No one should ever have to walk outside to see the war-zone that is left in the wake of an F2 tornado. But it happens and it happened to us about a week ago and I am more thankful than you can ever imagine that we survived to tell the tale. Although I am a little tired of telling the tale, so this will be the last time for a long time.

We were so very lucky. We lost just about every tree in our yard, but not a single one fell on the house. Thank God. The roof is a little peeled up in spots but we are still dry. There is now a dead animal under my house. I could have done without that.

That’s my brother who came with my Dad at 7AM to help us try to clean up. He’s 6’3″. That is the tree that didn’t hit my babies’ bedroom.It’s about 30 feet tall.

They got it worse on the other side of that hill though. My friend, Brandy, lost her house and because of her quick reactions none of her family was injured.

Lots of other folks lost everything. Those who didn’t will be paying to fix the damage for quite a while. The community has been so supportive and caring. The outpouring of love has been amazing.

There is a benefit at The Old Coble Store this Saturday if you are in the area and would like to help out. If you are not in the area and would still like to help out you can call First Farmers & Merchants Bank to donate at (931) 729-3522. I urge you to do so. This is a poor community with many families scraping by long before a  tornado came through.

So this week, for us, has been crazy and emotional and busy and we are slowly returning to some kind of normal. And normal for me is holing up in the kitchen and playing with my food. This pepper dish is one I have had rolling around in my head for a while. Its one of those comfort food dishes, perfect for a time like this.

Happy New Year!! 2013 has arrived despite all of the Mayan prophecies and many people are making all of the usual promises to themselves. I don’t know why we feel compelled to make all of these changes on the first day of the year. We could just as easily do it on a Tuesday in the middle of August. Nevertheless, here we are with grand intentions of bettering ourselves by this time next year and I am no different.

Top of the list is the always present “Lose X pounds”. I’m changing this up a little this year. It’s more like ” Get your butt off the couch and exercise 5 days a week. And quit eating like a teenager and drinking like a frat boy.” As my 31st birthday looms ever closer (3 weeks away. eeck!) I’m going to have to accept that I no longer have the metabolism of a perky waitress in a dive bar in Memphis. It’s my last hold-out and it’s days are numbered. I figure if I can stick to this, then the weight will gradually fall away.

My next, and probably easiest, resolution is to get back on the Dave Ramsey wagon. We started back in August and did really great up until December. December was (and always is) an expensive month. We didn’t lose any money but we didn’t save any either. So back on the budget we go and that’s okay with me.

This last one is something that I really didn’t think about until yesterday and it fits right into the budgeting goal. It’s a Pantry Challenge and I came across it over at Good Cheap Eats. Ya’ll…I need this. I have so many random things in my pantry that I really need to use. I don’t want to throw it away, but I am tired of moving them around. I have tons of dried beans, pasta, canned squash, relishes, and pickles. I also have lots of off-the-wall things; rice noodles, fish sauce, canned sardines, and Irish oatmeal (what makes it Irish anyway?). With the gardening season coming up, it’s time to make a little room. Oh! And we bought a side of beef, so I need to make room for that too.

So, this recipe is kind of a combo of all of these things. It’s very healthy and filling and the creamy dressing used quite a bit of ingredients in the fridge and spice cabinet. Hooray for me! The salad is enough for one, but the dressing makes enough for four. It’ll last 3-4 days in the fridge. It would also be great as a dip for grilled chicken or raw veggies.

Happy New Year!!

Check out this recipe on the Shine Supper Club too!

It seems I have gone AWOL from this poor little blog lately. These things happen. For the last month, we have been hopping from one activity to another. Dance and T-Ball on Monday, Taekwondo on Tuesday and Thursday, T-Ball again on Friday. Of course there is also work at the winery, writing for the newspaper, and lets not forget laundry. The never ending laundry. The garden is also becoming more and more productive, there fore requiring more of my attention.

I will not complain about the garden. It is my happy little oasis in the corner of our yard. So far, we have gotten several delicious strawberries out of our patch as well as radishes, spinach and lettuce. And I am pretty excited to say that I will have fresh Summer squash a good month ahead of everyone else.

The point of all this rambling is to say that I have become well acquainted with the uber-quick dinner.  More than once dinner has been a grilled cheese sandwich and a bunch of grapes or some much unhealthier version of that. Lucky for me, BBQ season has started and thanks to my husband, our fridge is well stocked with lots of smoked and pulled meat. While BBQ sandwiches are always delicious, sometimes I need something with a vegetable on it ( call me crazy!). So, because I never throw away my food magazines I adapted a Food&Wine recipe to fit what I had in the fridge. I made this with chopped brisket but it will also work well with chicken, pork or even some grilled white fish.

I consider myself a good Southerner and I tend to stick to tradition as much as anyone when it comes to welcoming in a new year. I never hang up my new calendar for the new year until January 1st ( much to my daughter’s chagrin) and I always eat my black eye peas on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. That’s not to say that I get up and particularly look forward to eating a big bowl of black eye peas. Culinarly speaking, black eye peas are pretty bland and can become pretty monotonous very quickly. But, like most inherently plain foods, black eye peas can handle all different kinds of flavor profiles. Especially spicy ones. And I LOVE spicy flavor profiles.

So, this recipe is something I whipped up to help liven up the yearly dose of black eye peas. Hopefully the extra kick of spice will guarantee us even more prosperity in the new year. It’s worth a shot anyway. Happy New Year!!

My tomato plants have been good to me this year. While everyone else in town has been complaining about a horrible year for tomatoes, my 3 tomato plants have kept me and my family knee deep in juicy ripe tomatoes all Summer. So, now here it is October and the first frost is expected to come tonight and that means the end of my hard working tomato plants. It took me two trips to get all of the green tomatoes off the vines, yielding over 1/2 a bushel of tomatoes in varying stages of ripeness.

I couldn’t let all of those pretty green tomatoes go to waste so I sat down with all of my canning books to look for the perfect solution. Leave it to The Complete Ball Home Preserving Book to have the remedy to the plethora of green tomatoes and jalapeno peppers laying on the kitchen counter!

A great take on salsa verde using green tomatoes instead of tomatillos. I doubled the recipe and tweaked the seasonings to our taste and increased the amount of peppers…significantly. What came out of it was some very delicious green salsa that will brighten up any future Mexican nights at our house. This would make great Christmas gifts too!

So 3 weeks of rain was followed by 5 days of searing heat, then… more rain. All of this wishy washy weather has been reeking havoc upon our allergies but the garden doesn’t seem to mind much. Especially the broccoli and lettuce. We have been eating off of those plants for the last week or so. Especially the lettuce. I have certainly been adding more fiber in my diet. The great thing about lettuce is that not only is it fairly fast growing, but you can really just harvest what you need and leave the rest for another day. So, if I want a salad for myself I just go and cut a few of the large outer leaves instead of cutting the whole head. If I do cut the whole head, little shoots of new leaves will grow back in it’s place. It’s pretty awesome and the kids are really getting a kick out of it.

Before long, we’ll have a little more variety. The tomato plants are starting to bud out and I even have my first squash blossom coming out.  It also won’t be long before the onions are ready to pull out and dry. I’m already planning out recipes to use with the future crop of fresh veggies!

So, with all of this fresh lettuce coming in, salads have become a regular part of our diet. It’s easy for a salad to get boring, so I like to experiment with different dressings, toppings, and marinades. Texture is really important too. A good salad will have a creamy element and a crunchy element. Otherwise, it all starts becoming a little monotonous. With this salad, I added not only croutons for crunch, but some black beans and corn for some creaminess and sweetness. If you have some ripe avocado lying around it would also be a great addition! The dressing is a simple and refreshing lime and cilantro vinagerette that is very similar to the marinade for the chicken. All in all this is a healthy and satisfying lunch or dinner on a warm spring day.

Cilantro Lime Grilled Chicken Salad

Serves 4

4 chicken breasts, boneless, skinless

for marinade:

2 limes, zested and juiced

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 T cumin

pinch of red pepper flakes

pinch of salt

For salad dressing:

1 lime, zested and juiced

2 T chopped cilantro

1 garlic clove, minced

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper

For salad:

1 head of lettuce, washed, dried and torn into pieces

1/2 cup canned black beans, washed and drained

1/2 cup fresh or canned corn kernels

tomatoes and onion to taste

croutons

mozzerella or parmesan cheese

Prepare your coals for grilling.

Meanwhile, whisk together the ingredients for the marinade and pour over the chicken breasts in a covered dish or ziploc bag. Let sit in the marinade for at least 2 hours.

Spread your hot coals evenly on your grill and oil the top grate with an oiled rag. Then, place your chicken breasts on the grill and grill 4-6 minutes on each side until the chicken reaches 165 degrees internally. Remove and let rest.

In a small bowl, whisk together the ingredients for the salad dressing to make a vinagerette. Taste and adjust seasonings.

Toss your salad ingredients in a large bowl. Slice the chicken breast and place on top and then dress the dish with the dressing. Toss lightly to coat and serve!!!