Late Summer BBQ

Ok yes, it's October now but the weather has been awesome so it still feels like summer.  This was actually done about a month ago so it really was summer then.  There was a big art fair going on in our neighborhood so we invited some friends over to check that out and then have a BBQ.  This is the food that we came up with.

First up, a salad.  I don't like salads but this combo I made up was actually good!  The greens were baby spinach leaves and there were chopped up sundried tomatoes and toasted pecans mixed throughout.  But the best part was the homemade salad dressing concocted with random things we had.  The base was olive oil and pomegranate balsamic vinegar to make a really good vinaigrette.  Also in the dressing was some minced garlic, salt, peppers, spicy mustard, and a little brown sugar.  It was really good!!

Here's the total meal with the salad, cornbread, kebabs, potato salad, and fruit.  The potato salad and fruit were brought in by friends but the rest we made.  I already talked about the salad, now for the cornbread.  I used a boxed mix but altered it a bit to make it delicious.  First off, I added more milk than it called for plus some melted butter to make it softer. Then I mixed in some jalepeno cheese and topped it with green onions. It was super good!

The kebabs were also great.  The basic structure was chicken, green pepper, and onions.  I made three kinds, one was gluten free for a friend of ours and it just had some olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Another was marinated in soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, and a bit of spicy mustard.  And the third was slathered in BBQ sauce from Oklahoma Joe's in KC. They were all great but the Asian style was my favorite.

And the best part? Leftovers to enjoy for dinner later in the week!

Seriously Good Tacos

There are two things that can happen when Ruchir gets hungry.  One: he makes a weird concoction - examples are grilled squirrel, octopus, beaver, etc.  Two: he makes something amazingly delicious!

This is chicken that has been stewing in a wonderful mix of all sorts of delicious things.

Serve with pepperjack cheese, cilantro, taco sauce, and  use Jarritos or Mexican Coke to wash it all down!

Crawfish Etoufee

Here's what we made with the leftover crawfish tails from our Annual Crawfish Boil. This was mostly Ruchir's doing, but I helped quite a bit too. First he made a roux, and that's where I had to step in. It was mostly flour - and it became a dough. I managed to salvage it though sort of. I can't quite remember the rest of the ingredients exactly, but it definitely had a can of diced tomatoes, two cans of tomato sauce, green peppers, onions, and plenty of cajun spice mix and cayenne pepper. Wayyyy too much cayenne pepper. Seriously this thing is hot! then we added the tails that we had extracted from the crawfish and let it all simmer. Pictures speak better than words.

Yum!

Mexican Lasagna

Ok this one is kind of a bad picture but a great meal! Ruchir was off barbecuing a squirrel (I wish I was joking) so I made this Mexican lasagna out of things I had on hand to feed me and a couple friends. I didn't follow a recipe but just threw in things that seemed like they would fit with the mexican theme.  This was awhile ago so I can't remember everything but the basics were ground beef, tomatoes, green chilis, and tortillas in alternating layers with plenty of colby jack shredded cheese.  Again, not the best picture, but it sure was tasty!

Anjali Day

I'm not really going to go back in order of all the postings that I've been stock piling, but this is one of the earlier ones that I haven't posted yet. This is the meal I had in honor of my graduation. All delicious! Again, I think I'll start keeping the words to a minimum and just let the pictures do the talking. Ruchir made most of this meal but I made the grilled asparagus, yum!

Messy Joe's

I still had a lot of that ground beef from Aldi (previous use was the wontons), so I decided to make some sloppy joes. I don't personally like them too sloppy...so I made them messy instead! It's just ground beef with onions that was already cooked from before and then I mixed in some garlic powder, a little tomato paste and then a bunch of BBQ sauce. We actually had a variety of sauces from when we went to Pappy's Smokehouse (a post about that is on it's way!), but I ended up just using good old Kraft BBQ sauce. This one is on wheat bread for Ruchir; I had mine on white of course!

Scarf!

Bacon, Brie, and Caramelized Onion Quesadilla

A creation of mine, spawned from all the things I've been craving
lately. Pretty self explanatory but extremely delicious!

Getting ready to spread this soft rindless brie on a tortilla. I went to go get some more of this last week but I couldn't find it anymore!

Frying up some bacon! Yum! I find it easier to cut it up with scissors before frying it, rather than cooking it in strips and then crumbling. I pour off the fat into a little bowl and use it occasionally in my extremely bad for you but extremely good homemade salad dressing.

Close up, you can see the caramlized onions just glistening like little tasty jewels.

The finished product, as delicious as it looks!

Thai Coconut Curry Rice

I was rummaging around the cupboards looking for something to eat when I unearthed this old forgotten box of Thai Rice mix.

I love Thai food, especially this coconut chicken curry from Thai Gai Yang which was close to my old apartment. So I decided to add some things to this rice mix to make it more like that delicious curry I crave. I sauteed some ginger, garlic, and green chilies. Then I added some of the chicken that I had roasted (yes, I'm still trying to use it up!). And then to the rice mix, instead of the water that I was supposed to add, I added some coconut milk. Mixed it all together and it was a pretty good meal!

Easy Tortilla Soup

I created this recipe one day when I realized that I was eating at Qdoba was too much. The thing I was always get there was called Mexican Gumbo which was cilantro lime rice topped with beans and a couple ladles of tortilla soup. I really only ordered this because I love the soup so I a quick fix of it that I could make at home. I always have different types of cans of tomatoes on hand in the pantry because they are so versatile. So I just mixed a can of tomatoes with green chilis and chicken stock. (Can you tell that I'm making tons of soups because I need to use up all this chicken stock?) From there you can add all sorts of things like shredded chicken, all sorts of cheeses, different kinda of beans, some corn, etc etc. I've even found that if you don't have chicken stock, you can just refill the tomato can with water and then dump that in there. Still delicious!

I served it over some leftover rice that I had and garnished it with my trio of usual soup accompaniments: sour cream, green onions, and fried tortilla strips. I threw in some small chunks of habenero cheese as well. This would be awesome with some slices of avocado too!

Baked Potato Soup

So simple! Homemade chicken stock mixed with mashed potatoes and chopped bacon. I also added some habenero monterey jack which gave it a real kick.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream, green onions, and garnished with some fried tortilla strips. Like my presentation, ooohwee fancy pants?!

Roast Chicken

After returning from veg land (north India), I went on a meat buying spree. I made an impulse buy and bought a whole roast chicken. It was only 4 bucks and it was fairly easy to make. I didn't have that much on hand so I just rubbed it with olive oil, stuffed a ton of butter under the skin, threw some potatoes and onions an garlic cloves in the pot and let it go. Sometimes simple is good because the chicken turned out very moist with delcious crackly skin.

I made a gravy with the browned bits and some cheap white wine that I got at a Christmas party. The gravy was a little boozy so Ruchir didn't have any (he's a teetotaler: ). I ate it with some mashed potatoes and a salad. I always douse my salads in this special dressing that I created because otherwise I generally hate greens. But that will be described another time. Anyway, verdict on this meal...mmmm!

A note about this pictures, the ones in this post and probably most of the ones to come are taken with my phone. I can just email the pictures in and it's just so much easier than hauling out the camera, loading onto the computer, then uploading it to the site. So hopefully the quality isn't too bad!