Spice Rack Mission Complete

Captain's Log 2006-09-24: Chief Scientific Officer Labradoodle and I just completed Mission AX23857, to install a spice rack in the kitchen port. I am happy to report to the Galactic Space Frontier Alliance that the mission has been completed. See virtual image represatation item "@#$4588" for reference of said installation. Signing off, your kitchen commander, instoremarketer.

Labradoodle is in the kitchen!!

Here we go. Labradoodle is cooking her specialty chicken enchilada casserole. Please welcome with a round of applause:

Labradoodle chef extraordinaire!

Vegetable Stir-fry with green beans

My mother gave us a bunch of green pole beans recently so we're making stir fry. This time we're using fresh onion, chopped garlic, green beans, and carrots. Its going to be good!

I'm stir frying the onions, carrots and beans slowly to start to tender them up a bit. Then I'll add the mushrooms later, cashews last.

We're also having brown rice with the stir fry.

This stir fry came out awesome. It had a tiny bit too much garlic, but everything else about it was very good.

Too tired...

Ack... too tired to make the pesto tonight. Hopefully the basil will last until tomorrow when I have more energy...

I did make the pesto and it came out great. We had one meal with it and froze the rest for later.

Presto... Pesto!

My parents have a rockin' garden, and today my wife and I picked a bunch of basil. We made pesto last year and plan to do it again this year. Its easy to store because you can freeze it. I use Goya olive oil, it is high quality and inexpensive. It comes in smaller bottles so it doesn't go back through oxidation.

I prefer to use more parmesean cheese than olive oil. These are the ingredients I know of so far off the top of my head:

• Parmasean cheese
• Olive oil
• Fresh basil
• Fresh garlic

I will research the internet to find other recipes to compare, as I'm on a new kick of using measurements when following recipes!

I forgot the pine nuts! Duh!! I found a good recipe at a good website:

Simply Recipes: Fresh Basil Pesto Recipe

Although I'm having burritos tonight, I'm going to prepare the pesto as well.

Annie's

Just had some Annie's Macaroni and Cheese - it was pretty good but not delicious. I got mine with a $0.50 coupon so the price after the coupon was doubled was only a little over a dollar. With that in mind, it was DELICIOUS! :-)

White Bean Hummus

Yummy! There is an excellent Italian food restaurant nearby (Spazio's) that serves hummus with the bread, and my is it good. I've been trying to make it myself, and finally found something as good.

Thanks to the Get Sconed blog, I made some today that came out awesome.

Tuscan White Bean Hummus ala CPK

The recipe:

California Pizza Kitchen's Tuscan Hummus Recipe

Waffles!

My wife and I got a waffle maker as a wedding present and we finally got t use it today. It rocks. We made Bisquik waffles and put on plenty of butter and maple syrup. My favorite syrup is genuine Vermont maple syrup, and the company I like the best is Maple Grove. They have excellent customer service and great tasting syrup!

Check out the pics!

Veggie Stir Fry with Broccoflower

Tonight we're making vegetable stir fry with broccoflower and mushrooms. We don't have any onions so I'll have to substitute dried chopped onions and onion powder.

Preparation:
* Chop broccoflower and shrooms
* Heat pan with peanut oil
* Premix the special ingredients

First fry the brocoflower, then 5 minutes into it, add the mushrooms.

The special ingredients:
* dash of crushed red pepper
* 1 tbsp soy sauce
* 1/2 tspn garlic powder
* 1/2 tspn ginger
* 1/4 tspn corn starch
* 1 tbsp honey
* 1 tbsp lemon juice
* 1/4 cup chopped dried onions (in lieu of fresh)
* 1/4 tspn seasame oil

I don't recommend this dish. It didn't come out too good. At the last minute I added a bunch of wild mushrooms we bought at Trader Joe's, which I think over powered the rest of the flavors.

Taco Seasoning

Having tacos tonight, trying this recipe:

Taco Seasoning

Recipe for Taco Seasoning
* 6 teaspoons of chili powder
* 5 teaspoons paprika
* 4 ½ teaspoons cumin
* 2 ½ teaspoons onion powder
* 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder
* 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Also adding some dried onion chips.

This time I only made a half recipe, for a pound of meat, I need to make a full recipe, and add a teaspoon of salt, as well as an eight teaspoon of corn starch and a cup of water.

Legal Sea Foods

Went to Legal Sea Foods last night for dinner with my family, had the 12 oz. sirloin and wow was it delicious. I asked for it medium, and they served it medium well, but the flavor as superb. It is supposed to come with a stuffed portobello mushroom, but they were out so I had a baked potato instead, as well as green beans.

Legal's is always good, but slightly too expensive for what its worth. There are definitely worse restaurants that cost more, but there are also equal restaurants that cost less.

What do you think of Legal Seafoods? Please add your comments by clicking below! Thanks.