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Posts Tagged ‘feta cheese’

  1. The Great Publix Adventure AGAIN!

    September 30, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    As you read this blog, I will likely be at Kelly’s house or in Publix, freaking out, as we’ve moved the Great Publix Adventure to her house for this week since she’s read so many times the adventures we’ve had and the delicious food we’ve cooked.

    On the menu: Beaux’s Harvest Bake alongside Pasta Salad!

    What would’ve been only a few people has expanded to a wider circle, which is of course okay, but now I have a kind of performance anxiety welling up inside of me. Doesn’t that sound awful? Yeah, my immediate family can eat any old thing I cook, but for other people, I want to make the food taste good.

    Every time I’ve tried to cook something for Kelly’s house, I’ve run into a failure. Nothing keeps well from my house to Kelly’s house and the 30 minute long drive down Highway 52 because some set of idiots, for some god-unknown reason, decided to reduce the speed limit from 55 mph to 45 mph, thereby taking me even longer to get to Dothan by 52 than it would have before.

    Anyway, the Harvest Bake is simple:

    • Morningstar Crumbles
    • Peas and Carrots
    • Potato Soup
    • Bread Crumbs and Cheese for the topping

    Cooking the crumbles a good way through, then put them in a baking dish. Cover with peas and carrots and potato soup mix. Then add the bread crumbs and cheese. Bake until golden and bubbly.

     

    Pasta Salad

    • Your choice of pasta. I plan to use Wacky Mac’s rainbow pasta.
    • Spinach, chopped
    • Parmesan OR Feta cheese
    • Mayonnaise

    Boil the noodles. Drain. Drizzle them with EVOO, add a little mayonnaise, add cheese and chopped spinach. Salt and pepper to taste.

    Carpe Diem! I already feel so busy!

    Beaux

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  2. MODEL Event from Yesterday and Some of Our DELICIOUS Food!

    August 27, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    MODEL is the acronym I chose to use to describe the random meet-ups we have at Kelly’s house. MODEL stands for “Mystics On Deck Examining Life.” That’s a pretty accurate title of who we are and what we do, and the word “model” can double in meaning as “ideal,” which relates to Platonic philosophy and various kinds of religious mysticism in the first place. So, it works for me.

    A hallmark of our events are the beautiful and delicious foods we eat. I feel guilty for never getting the recipes from everyone to post on here, but at least you can delight in the delicious food you see. Honestly, most of the recipes aren’t difficult to make or figure out, either, so I’ll do a quick explanation towards the end.

    First, we have roasted potatoes, of which I had none; I took pierogies, and unfortunately, some of my pierogies deflated while I was dropping Kelly’s daughter off at Featured Players Theatre. Then they all decided to stick together. Such is the life of noodles and pasta. Maybe I should’ve added oil to the mixture. Anyway, I ate the pierogies instead of the roasted potatoes because they were just totally delicious, though I’m sure the potatoes were good, too.

    Next up is the interesting dish consisting of Brie cheese covered in jam and walnuts and baked in a pastry puff. The ultimate result tasted something like a pop tart, though the Brie was strong for me; I’m not used to eating it, and so the tanginess caught me off guard. However, it’s absolutely gorgeous and definitely worth trying.

    The big winner of the night was the pesto bites. These consisted of pesto spread on bread, the bread rolled, sliced into sushi-like rolls, placed on top of a basil leaf, and topped off with a red (and later, orange) piece of bell pepper. They tasted so absolutely amazing. Quick, easy, healthy, delicious food? Yes, please. Just yes.

    There was also an excellent artichoke dip which we all loved, but it isn’t pictured in this blog. The dip had artichokes and feta cheese with bamboo shoots to add a little extra, and on pita chips, it was absolutely divine.

    Click on the photos to enlarge them! Thanks to Kelly for taking this beautiful photos with her Droid!

     

    The recipes above are fairly self-explanatory. The roasted potatoes had rosemary and olive oil on them, I think. The pesto bites take a slice of bread, some good pesto, a basil leaf, and bell pepper. The Brie puff needs Brie, jam, walnuts, and puff pastry.

    What are you waiting for? Go make some easy, delicious food! Then be sure to send me a copy of the recipe and a photo so I can blog it for you.

    Beaux

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  3. Sinfully Delicious: Shrimp and Noodles

    July 13, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    There’s an inside joke about why I call this recipe “sinfully delicious,” but I won’t expose myself here.

    What you need:

    • half a pack of your choice of noodles. I used a kind of short egg noodle.
    • a half pound of shrimp; frozen salad shrimp work well.
    • a medium-sized tomato
    • a quarter to a half of a medium-sized onion
    • a clove of garlic
    • 2 teaspoons of oregano
    • 2 teaspoons of basil
    • feta cheese or parmesan cheese
    • 3 teaspoons of pepper
    • salt and any other spices to taste

    What you do:

    1. Bring water to boil and prepare the noodles.
    2. While the noodles are boiling, heat 3 Tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil in a skillet.
    3. Slice the tomato, onion, and garlic and add them to the skillet; heat on low.
    4. Add the basil, oregano, and pepper.
    5. Add frozen shrimp to the skillet and increase heat.
    6. When noodles are done, drain and add to the veggie-shrimp mixture.
    7. Cook on medium to low-medium for five to ten minutes or until most of the juices have evaporated.
    8. Remove from heat.
    9. Add cheese, stir well, and serve immediately.

    This recipe is quite similar to on that my friend Kelly made recently. Also, today, I added a squirt of lemon for extra flavor and seemed to have a problem getting the food salty enough. I’m not quite sure what happened.

    In addition, always remember that you can flavor your noodles by boiling them in a seasoned water. You can add crab boil, for instance, to the pot to season them before adding them to the main recipe. This is in fact the only real time you can add flavor to your noodles. After they’re cooked, the show’s over.

    Carpe Diem!

    Beaux


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  4. Organic, Healthy Pizza: Beaux Style, or The Great Publix Dining Adventure, Week 3

    March 6, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    Gigi’s right, Publix should be paying me because of the sheer amount of advertisement I seem to be doing for them on my blog!

    In all seriousness, I really love Publix in a way that I don’t typically love stores.

    The only real problem I have with Publix is restraining myself from going crazy and buying an immense amount of food.

    This time Howl’s friend Swifty was in town, so I had three people for whom to cook. Other people were supposed to show up to the get-together, but they all flaked out like a plate of fresh baklava.

    Here’s the grocery list from last week:

    • Organic Baby Spinach: $3.99
    • Tandoori Naan Garlic Bread x 2: $5.98
    • Athenos Feta Cheese Crumbles: $4.59
    • Publix Brand Organic Tomato Sauce: $0.59
    • Publix Brand Organic Tomatoes: $1.59
      And the splurge point was grilled Japanese dumplings:
    • Grilled Dumplings: $3.49
    • Grand Total: $22.05

    The basic gist of the meal was this: to take the naan, use it as a pizza crust, and to make a healthy, organic pizza.

    The original plan was to use organic tomatoes. However, organic tomatoes were priced at $4.99. I said no, rather vehemently, to paying that price for them. The last time we had been to Publix, the organic tomatoes were on sale, and thus I paid $1.99 for them. They were incredibly delicious, but that would’ve been too much, and the organic canned tomatoes did the trick.

    To make the pizza:

    • First, wilt the spinach. To wilt spinach, put it in a skillet with olive oil over medium heat. All the spinach to be coated in the EVOO, and then remove it from the heat.
    • Chop the spinach up after it cools.
    • Mix the spinach and feta cheese.
    • Spread the tomatoes on the naan. You might want to toast the bottom side of the naan before doing this.
    • Spread the feta-spinach mix on the naan.
    • Put it all in the oven for 15 minutes at 400º or until the naan has begun darkening on the edges.

    The main problem I had with this dish was a lack of salt. While it tasted good, the small addition of salt brought it to the level of being a true pizza.

    The tomatoes may have been too sweet as well.

    Anyone else want to try making it and letting me know how they like it?

    In the next blog, I’ll tell you about the grilled dumplings adventure.

    Beaux

     


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