Make Kitchen Magic With Only The Basics on Hand

You know your kitchen should have basic staples on hand; things like flour, eggs, milk, etc. But did you know that beer should be a staple too?

Keep a bottle in your cupboard at all times for last minute marinades or quick bread making.

My favorite quick prep for pork is beer, rosemary and on occasion an addition of basil. This works for other meats as well. Want something without fresh herbs? Easy - Beer and dijon mustard!

Roasted Daikon Radishes Made Easy

We had a bit of a busy kitchen day over at our house. I've more than a few items to share with you but thought I'd start with the easiest, Roasted Dakion Radishes.

I'm a sucker for fresh from the garden items. When there isn't any of that, I tend to commit to finding the freshest in season items at the market. I was stunned to see 3 arm length Daikon radishes for $.99 and knew I had to do something with them.

All I did was slice up the daikon radishes, red pepper and added baby carrots. I drizzled olive oil with a bit of chopped garlic.

Not only was this nummy dish a "set it and forget it" item, but I was thrilled to see the little stars in each radish slice!

This winter dinner item fit perfectly into my 8 week challenge as well as my daughter's move from being a vegetarian to vegan.

You can take the girl out of Berekely...

In my 20s I put myself through college and started my family doing any number of things that any Art-Major-slash-Designer would to stay afloat including catering.

The nuances and talents of Alice Waters was lost on 20 year old me when my date tried to impress me with a dinner at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, but her story and philosophies that brought that diner to the table were not.

As a resident of highly populated apartment dwellers in San Francisco the idea of creating a meal with only the freshest ingredients from your garden and market place seemed exotic and foreign to me. As a broke college student it seemed completely out of the scope of reality.

But I was inspired (and determined) I started with herbs on my kitchen window sill, then container growing on the balcony of my LA apartment. Ripped out the front lawn of the most adorable rental home in Tujunga for fresh flowers and veggies - followed by amazing edible floral salads. By the time I moved to my first house of my very own in Lake View Terrace I was well past turning out gourmet meals ala' Alice Waters but on a mission of sustainability that seemed closer to survival. After all, I had a mortgage, a baby and a husband who was "finding himself" professionally.

As the family enlarged I wanted them to embrace my garden to table love. Thinking I was creating memories I would take the kids out to the garden and its small orchard to select items for feasting upon. A year ago, when I proudly told them how pleased I was to be able to do that for them and their personal memory books there was a silence. Finally, Sara spoke up and said "Yah, we hated that".

Now, three kids later, a grandchild and an upgrade (read: larger mortgage) to Century City our garden became the Ralph's at the end of the street and eschewing Alice Water's teaching for my mother's post holocaust frugal methods. No wait, not eschewing -- combining and transitioning into my own.

 

 Ralph's has an awesome deli counter with items like the Roasted Corn Salad pictured above. At $4.99 a pound it really isn't in my budget. I could afford it if it was just my immediate family but I don't have that kind of life. Pre-4th of July the dinner and over night drop ins started to arrive, we had 8 for dinner, 10 for breakfast, with a smaller group of 6 for dinner.  This is no different then my weekends as family and friends come and go. Amazingly, that is just the way I like it.

I might like it, but it does take marketing and preparation into a whole new arena. Everything is planned around what is available. I've gone from what is in the garden to what is on sale. You know what? That is just the way I like it.

Our Ralph's has a manager that I adore - they way they continually mark down quality items allows me to stroll the vegetables and yes, even meats to create yummies on a whim.

Finding 3 packages of baby spinach on sale I knew I had to come up with something that highlighted the tender leaves.  But what? I knew I didn't want to cook, the kitchen was just too hot and grilling was out since the fridge was packed with leftovers.

Wait! Did I just say leftovers? Behold; the leftover chicken transformed into a fa-bu lunch for 8.

How did I do it? 99 cents a lb chicken (picnic pack - breasts, thighs, legs etc) from last night's grill. $1.97 Ralph's fresh packed baby spinach, I threw in some of the roasted corn salad which was bought just to stretch other recipes and topped it off with Ralph's 70 calorie light ranch dressing, another mark down find at 98 cents!

I love my husband, but he has different methods then I do. He'll ask "What do you want from the market?" and of course, I'll answer that I don't know - what's on sale? Once I had the manager's special spinach and roasted corn salad I knew that I had to pull it together with something that could make it a side dish or an entree for our mixed use/semi vegetarian/meatarian family - on to the pasta aisle. Once again, Ralph's did not disappoint. An affordable family sized pack of 4 cheese tortellini brought the ingredients to just what I wanted for my group.

  I might not be the green gardener I once was but with local stores, our farmer's markets and a little creativity in the kitchen I still adhere to a pick-n-eat and enjoy as many drop-ins as wish to join the table.

2012 Kicks Off With A Culinary Win

The last month of 2011 had me running to the market and to my Mom's constantly. As I bought fresh foods for her, she returned to the hospital just as frequently. In the midst of this cycle my kids were here and there (read: not home for meals), Holiday celebrations cancelled plus Dave and I too tired to do anything other than grab a quick something somewhere and fall into bed for sporadic cat naps with the cell phone tucked under the pillow.

Is it any wonder that I spent New Year's Eve scouring the web for yummy recipes that would use up the veggies-on-the-edge-of-forever in my fridge and not send me to the market, thus sending 2012 into a budget deficit?

Committed to creating a hearty breakfast or brunch that would send us to the hospital (post Football game of course) and see us through the visit with enough yummy in our belly that we did not succumb to the hospital cafeteria, I opted for VeganPiggy's Vegan Breakfast Burritos To Die For.

Since I had 6 packs of Tofu that I bought on sale for 59 cents in addition to all the veggies on hand this seemed like a winner. After swapping the carrots for broccolini, sautéing a few heirloom tomatoes in what I had left of shallots I had the happy experiment of omitting the salsa and using up what was left of Basiltops Vegan Pesto Habanero. We buy this at the Farmer's Market in Santa Monica but you can get yours at their online store. 

Did it work? I'll say. MeatatarianMan Dave happily helped himself to seconds and confirmed that this was a do-again. Yay! A kitchen victory so early in the year.

But wait! There's more. The all important Eagles game ended (Let's not go there), kids confirmed they would not be home and there was the emotionally exhausting hospital visit. No way did I want to cook. I just wanted to sit in a dinner and be served copious cups of coffee (say that 3 times fast). Hubby had other ideas, he wanted to go home. Ugh. What to feed upon? I threw the left over breakfast burrito innards into a big bowl of wild rice that I had forgotten to serve last night and added artichoke hearts, more tomatoes and the few mushrooms I had on hand.  No photos, but trust me - it looked great and tasted great too.

Dave liked this so much that he didn't ask for the Kelbasa he missed out on at breakfast and chose not to add the diced chicken breast I had set aside for him. Another win!

Cooking for the Sandwich Generation

You've heard the term, The Sandwich Generation; those of us who are squished between our parents and our kids running hither and yon trying to be all things to all people and burning the family candle at both ends.

In our family hoagie, there is also a meal prep issue. At one time we had 3 different types of vegetarians in the house, plus two confirmed "Meatatarians". There's the no salt/sodium requirement for my mother, my own diabetes and my husbands love and never ending search of the perfect Philly Cheesesteak.  It can boggle the menu making mind.

Factor that in with the fact that I never really know who will be at the dinner table (Football practice, dates, work, going to friends, friends dropping by) and that my mother won't allow extra food in her fridge for the next day and you have a whole new algorithm of size and quantity to deal with.

Today was designed to be left over day. With only one self sufficient son at home and my husband and I enjoying the calm that hoped for, there was no cooking planned, just help yourself to the odds and ends in the fridge and I'll make up for it tomorrow.

Of course, this was all before the early morning texts came in from my Mom's caregivers, and the new flurry of activity started in again. Mom wasn't feeling well, mom wasn't eating and mom wanted pasta… today.

Did I mention this was Christmas day? Day of the closed market?

So I set to work, wondering all the while what I could make that worked with what I had on hand and could also be made to satisfy one and all. Today became the day Baked Pesto Shells were born.

Here's the down and dirty basics:

• Whole wheat pasta shells cooked
• Homemade pesto sans salt (I keep it in the freezer most of the time)
• Sliced mushrooms (Why? Because they needed to be used)
• Chopped leftover chicken breasts from last night (note to self - omit when vegetarian daughters are home)

Put the whole mess into a 9" x 13" baking dish, top with a little bit of parmesan cheese if the Philly husband insists and bake for about 35 - 45 minutes. 

Viola! You have dinner that everyone will embrace and you are once again the coolest thing since sliced bread.