Fish and (kind of) Chips

I was able to get my hands on some Icelandic cod, so we decided to try Alton Brown's Fish and Chips recipe for dinner. Mike handled the frying, as usual. He's the fryer in the family!!


We didn't notice that we were out of potatoes until we had already decided to make the recipe, so we made some tater tots instead. Everything was so good, we kept sneaking bites before we sat down!


Wow what a great meal! Better than anything I've had in any restaurant! The tater tots were good, but next time we'll definitely be trying the chips! Plus the salad balanced out all the fried foods, right........right!?!

Valentine's Day Dinner

We kicked Nils out of the house for the night and took a special trip to the Fresh Market for some free-range beef, salad greens, and herbed yeast rolls. We've been so busy lately that it was nice just to go shopping and make dinner together.

The final product: steaks cooked on the Big Green Egg, mashed potatoes, salad, and those yummy yeast rolls!


For dessert I made Homemade Chocolate Pudding, a Taste of Home recipe that I've been meaning to try for a loooong time. It was good with the strawberries and whipped cream on top, but since it was a lower-fat recipe it wasn't very good the next day.

It made for a pretty picture, though! And we enjoyed the time spent together. Hope you had a nice Valentine's Day!

Pan-Fried Flounder with Squash Saute and Roasted Potatoes





I was in the mood for some seafood this week, and while we usually go for salmon (because we all like it and it's on sale often), the local grocery store surprised me by having flounder that looked relatively decent at a relatively low price. Plus, it was wild caught - bonus!!



I actually had very little to do with this meal, but it was so good I just had to share. Plus, I haven't been doing much cooking at all lately, what with my new job and all. Mike decided to pan-fry the flounder with panko breadcrumbs (I finally found some!) and roast some new potatoes, while Nils did the Squash Saute. That squash recipe is excellent - I like zucchini, but it had to be done right - it can NOT be slimy or squishy!! I highly recommend that you try this recipe!
On top of the fish is minced garlic and parsley - a great way to give it a little more flavor! The fish was crispy and delicious. I think Nils enjoyed dinner, because I caught him doing this with the leftovers:

Santa Maria Tri-Tip Roast

We've never tried a beef roast on the Egg, so we decided to try this recipe, which features a crust of cayenne and black pepper, garlic, rosemary, and salt. I have a nice picture of the roast ready to go on the Egg, but for some reason Blogger is not cooperating. But you can see what it looked like right before we devoured it:


And yes, it was just as good as it looks! It was pretty pepper-y, so we'll scale that back next time, but it was succulent and juicy and quite a treat! There was enough left over to make one of Mike's favorites, French Dip Sandwiches:

I'm not sure which was better - the roast or the leftovers! We plan on doing this often - it makes a great weekend treat to have a roast, and the leftovers make a great weekday meal.

Black Bean Croquettes

I've made these once before, but apparently I never posted it. Mike actually made them the first time (which may explain why I forgot to post about them), and here they are:


Obviously we enjoyed them, since I made them again. This time I took a lot more pictures:

I had some black beans leftover from the Beef and Black Bean Burritos, so instead of canned beans I used dried (rehydrated, of course). Once I mashed them I worried that I should have cooked the beans, but it turned out fine. They were a little harder to mash, though. I also just threw in some of my homemade salsa instead of messing with their salsa recipe. The corn is frozen and I also threw in some chives instead of scallions....close enough.

You have to take the black bean mixture and make little mounds out of them, then roll in breadcrumbs. Don't mind my messy hands.

Mike used Italian breadcrumbs when he made them, and I used panko. Both were good, but I think I liked the panko a little better.

Plated up after a quick trip to the oven. I served them with fresh salsa on the side and some tortilla scoops, along with some steamed broccoli.

If you did them like this, they'd make great tapas!!

These croquettes made for a satisfying, guilt-free meal. I plan on making these often to stretch our budget, because it doesn't feel like a "cheap" meal. And get this: even Sophie liked them!!

Beef and Black Bean Burritos

I decided to try a twist on the traditional beef burritos that are pretty common in this house. I'm always looking for ways to stretch our food budget, so the addition of black beans to the beef seemed like a great idea to me!

I had a lovely picture of the beef/bean mixture to show you guys, and for some reason Blogger keeps downloading it sideways. So just imagine a nice mixture of beef and black beans with cumin, coriander, and chili powder. I also added some corn I cut off the cob, and the reason I did this is because of these guy:

I had some salsa ingredients I picked from the garden, and I wanted to add some of the corn that my in-laws brought from St. Augustine. Since I had about half a cob's worth of corn left, I decided to add it into the beef and beef mixture.

Here's the end product, along with some green beans. We both really enjoyed this - it was nice change. Mike ate three of them, I had two, and I still had enough left over to make five more! We'll have enough for two lunches, so for two meals feeding two people, it costed me:*

$4.00 for 1.25 lbs. lean ground beef

$2.00 for 10 flour tortillas

50 cents for the seasonings and onion

Since the tomatoes and peppers for the salsa came from my garden, we'll say about $1.00 for the seeds, plus irrigation, etc.

$2.00 for the toppings - cheese, sour cream, etc.

50 cents for the black beans - I used dried instead of canned

NOTHING for the corn (thanks, in-laws!)

The green beans were brought fresh, and I washed, snapped and froze them myself. I'd say the 2 servings we ate cost about 50 cents.

For a total of $5.25 per meal for two people, or $2.62 per person, per meal! How's THAT for frugal?!?

*all figures are approximate

In the Garden


We're still getting some growth in the garden, depsite the full onset of summer here in sunny Florida!

My banana pepper plant continues to surprise me with how well it's doing. Clickity for biggity to see all the babies on that plant!!

Snap beans - waiting for a trellis! :)

In the background is the basil, which I've been religiously pinching off to encourage bushier growth. I swear, one day I trim it down and the next it looks exactly the same! The mint in the foreground isn't quite as fast a grower, but it's starting to spill down the sides of the pot! Time to make more Mint Ice Cream!

My Patio Princess tomatoes. I've been thrilled at thier production! They produce a fruit that's a little bigger than a cherry tomato. I got these from Burpee before I decided to grow mostly heirloom and open-pollinated seeds, but I've been so impressed with them that I planted the rest of the seed packet I had! I am also starting some Brandywine (heirloom) and Salsa tomatoes, which are specifically for making one of the very favorites foods. Mmmmm...salsa!

This morning I re-potted this orange tree into the tub you see here. I got the tub on sale, and although it's not really for growing plants, I put a layer of river rocks in the bottom for drainage and I think it will work just fine. Much cheaper than the other options I was looking at! It will make a fine home for this Page orange until it's big enough to go in the ground.

The bounty for today!



All washed up. The banana and bell peppers and the carrots will go into a stir-fry for tonight (stay tuned!) and the tomato will most likely go into Mike's mouth before I can do anything with it :) Our bounty is small this year, but hopefully next year we will have enough to really make a dent in our grocery bill and health goals!

Howie the guniea pig was more than happy to take care of the carrot tops for me. Gardening benefits us all!!

Heaven on an Egg...

The grocery store had a steak sale last week, and I took it as a sign. You see, ever since we got the Big Green Egg, I've been wanting to try a filet mignon. However, I'm just too darn cheap to buy them full price...really I'm too cheap to buy ANYTHING full price, but that's another story. But they were cheap enough for us to indulge, so indulge we did! I found these directions at Naked Whiz's web site, who is kind of a hero in the Egg world.

On the Egg.

This is after the searing, which seals in all the juices. After a rest, you're supposed to roast the steaks to get them to the done-ness you want.

This just might be my new favorite picture of Mike. We also had the first sweet corn on the season, also on the Egg.

The finished product. Along with the steak and corn, we had some mashed red potatoes and the carrots from our garden.

The steak was good. REALLY good. But I gotta say that this meal as a whole was really satisfying, too. Everything was very high-quality - home-grown carrots, potatoes from St. Augustine (3 hours away), corn from Zellwood (1/2 hour away). I LOVED this meal.

Everything except this disaster. We got some locally grown peaches from an employee, and I decided to make a mouth-watering cobbler in a Dutch Oven to try on the Egg.

Beautiful, isn't it? You should have seen it once it came off the Egg! It was burned almost completely black. We forgot (okay, I forgot) to put the Dutch Oven on what is called the Indirect Method. Kinda important. Oh well...live and learn.

Meat Loaf Wellington

Tonight I decided to make Meat Loaf Wellington for dinner. I tried the recipe back in December when I found it in a Taste of Home magazine; it uses crescent roll dough for the outside and has lean ground beef and mozzarella cheese inside. This time I made half of the recipe, and used the other half of the crescent roll dough to roll up some crescent dogs for lunch tomorrow. On the side we had a steamed vegetable mix from the freezer and a fruit salad (granny smith apples, bananas, kiwi, and blueberries from the freezer).

The verdict
I was pleased with this recipe last time, and this time it didn't disappoint me. As far as Mike is concerned, anything with meat, cheese, and bread is perfect. The fruit for the salad came from the Fresh Market (except the freezer blueberries), and I'm always amazed at how good the fruit is from there. I also love how they sell spring mix salad and spinach in bulk, so I can buy a little of each and have a variety in our salads, but not have any go to waste. This meal was also great because I was able to use up things from the freezer for our move: blueberries, vegetables, and Cool Whip. Anyhoo, I give this meal 5 out of 5 stars for taste and 3 stars for health.

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

I had some leftover ground beef from the burgers Mike made a few nights ago, so I decided to make a meat sauce to go with some spaghetti. I started with some plain canned tomato sauce and seasoned it with fresh garlic, oregano, basil, and a little rosemary. Since Mike doesn't eat pasta, when I get the hankerin' for it, I make some good bread to go with it, and Mike just skips the pasta. So I made a french bread, along with a spring mix salad. That's feta cheese on top of my salad. Gosh I love feta!

The verdict
What is it about spaghetti that's so good? It's so simple, but it sure hit the spot. The bread was crusty on the outside and soft on the inside - I read somewhere that you should stick a pan of water in the oven when you're baking the dough, and the steam helps form the crust. I give this meal 4 out of 5 stars for taste and 3 stars for health.