Chopped Inspiration

C and I do not watch a lot of "quality television" or even "hits". We make totally questionable choices that we're often embarrassed to admit. I will say we both enjoy "Life" quite a bit, as well as "Paranormal State". I know, I know. Honestly not worth discussing most of the rest of it.

However, one other theme that carries throughout our TV-watching is FOOD. Food Network (almost anything but Emeril), anything on public access...anything food. Recently, there has been a new show introduced (at least to us), "Chopped." Stars Ted Allen as the host; you know, the food guy from "Queer Eye".

Premise is this: four competitors, three courses. A competitor's dish is on the "chopping block" each round. Trick is, they hand you a basket of random - and I mean random - ingredients that you must use.


Many times people get booted for not using all the ingredients, not cooking their food properly (there's a time limit for each round), lack of creativity, etc. Best ousting? Messed up and used salt instead of sugar in his dessert.

Well, this has been a long lead-in...my copywriter friends would likely scold me for that. Long story short, Chopped is a bit of an inspiration of late.

If you are one of the very few dear regular readers of this blog, you'll know that on occasion I post up a "Dinner Surprise" post. Tonight I really did a dinner surprise. But I forgot to take a photo of it. Ditto with yesterday.

Dinner surprise means...no recipe, no plan, seat of my pants.

Yesterday: Seared shrimp with fresh parsley and mint, butter and orange zest, served over Israeli couscous; side dish: sauteed cauliflower.

Today: Boneless pork chops, lightly grilled then baked with coconut milk, black beans, green onions, cumin, lime juice...and banana. Side dish: my homemade guacamole.

Verdict from C and O: thumbs up on both! Woo-hoo. G ate well too. I am so proud.

I don't really know what the point of this post is except to show that I can cook creatively. Yep, that's it.

Dinner Surprise III

I have to say it wasn't much of a surprise but it worked well!

Last night I encouraged C to grill up an entire package of yummy Italian sausage (links). I suppose I didn't judge very well but we wound up eating maybe 1/4 of it. In the fridge it went.

So I was thinking, if I just leave it in the fridge it will totally go to waste, we'll never eat it if it stays in link-form. It was grilled already; we had it with grilled vegetables and cornbread.

Planning a laid-back night at home with the kids today, I grabbed it. Yes, we were going to have sausage again, damn it.

I also grabbed an onion, some zucchini and plum tomatoes from the farm market, and a handful of chopped cilantro. I cut the sausage into somewhat thin slices.

Olive oil in the pan; onion and zucchini. Just until both started getting soft. Threw in the sausage. Let it all carmelize a bit together.


About 2 minutes before I was ready to take it off, I threw in the tomato (good-sized chunks so it didn't totally fall apart) and the cilantro.

Took a fresh Italian bread with a little butter to have with it and soak up the juice...delicious.

Woo-hoo! Success. Happy family. We even threw the vegetables in the Cuisinart and G ate some too.

Dinner Surprise II

Just to recap for anyone who hasn't seen this before..."Dinner Surprise" is whatever the heck I come up with based on the ingredients in my fridge. We rarely plan a whole meal when we shop and it's decided when we walk in the kitchen every night. Usually, it's just a series of proteins and vegetables we come home with.

Had some good-looking swordfish as a start, tonight. I figured I could pair it with Stew's potato salad.

I made a mango salsa to go with the swordfish. It was great.
1/2 avocado
1/2 mango
1/2 tomato (cored)
chives
good slice of red onion

Chop it all up and put in a bowl. Add fresh lime juice and some salt. Stir and refrigerate. Mmm.


Vegetable. Needed a vegetable. Yellow and green squash in the fridge. Cut one of each up in long slices. Buttered a small casserole dish.

Melted some butter (2 tbsp?). Took it off the heat. Stirred in sour cream, about 3 tbsp, about 2 tbsp of grated pecorino romano, and a couple good shakes of seasoned breadcrumbs. Made it a little thinner with some milk. Threw the squash in the pot, stirred it all up, put it in the casserole. Baked it at 350 for, oh, I don't know. Until it was done.

(Of course I forgot to take a picture until we had eaten most of it. But you get the idea.)

We bagged the potato salad. Totally unnecessary.

What did you have for dinner?

Introducing Dinner Surprise

I'm going to introduce a "special" here on LoveMomWorkLife....Dinner Surprise. I think it will become a recurring regular on the menu. Tee-hee.

How do you shop for groceries? Do you go once a week, every day, somewhere in-between? Same store all the time or multiple stops?

If you are like us, you frequent three different stores for groceries. In our case, Stew Leonard's is the "big shop" for the week, then every few weeks I hit Trader Joe's, and then peppered in amongst those visits are pit-stops at our local DeCicco's. If you are paying attention, you can deduce we appreciate fresh food and like to cook.

(Which is why, again, we had to redo our kitchen and give us a place to cook we could both fit in without bumping into each other. Yes, yes, I know...I swear I will post the renovation soon. The kitchen is not done yet, though.)

We don't create a weekly menu when we shop, or go to the store with a list (unless we're out of some staples). Whatever is in season or on sale or we're inspired by, we buy. Then we just figure out what to make with what as the week goes by.

Tonight's Dinner Surprise ingredients:

• chicken breast from Stew's
• green and yellow squash
• onion
• salt & pepper
• chicken broth
• fresh chopped basil (a little)
• fresh chopped parsley (more)
• lemon

How to make it, from memory: Chop onion, saute in olive oil until starting to brown (use higher heat to get there fast); add chicken breast, cut into chunks and sprinkled with s&p. Add a little broth, just to cover the bottom, barely. Add the squash, also cut into chunks. Add more broth. Bring it up to a bubble. While you do that, add in the chopped herbs, and the juice of half a lemon. Add more pepper. Serve with couscous.

Verdict: Thumbs up from both C and O, barely any leftovers. I think I should have added more lemon juice just before serving.