Homemade frozen pizza

Pizza is a weekly occurrence at our place, usually on Friday (like everyone else, right?)  Every week, I have the same dilemma--the pizza crust recipe makes two rounds and we only eat one.  Sometimes I freeze the uncooked ball of dough, sometimes I par-cook the crust and put in the freezer, sometimes it's baked with olive oil as flatbread, but sometimes *gasp* it gets thrown out.  I know, why not just halve the recipe?  (Answer: the dough is difficult to work when there is such a tiny ball.)  My other dilemma is that the sauce I use (a tiny can of Hunts tomato sauce) is also unfinished.  Sometimes we find other uses for it, or it can last until the next week, but it often suffers the fate of other leftovers and gets tossed after it's refrigerator life has expired.

Make it today: Leftover egg and lentil salad

A week isn't too old for a hard-boiled egg, right?  I hope not, since I just devoured one in this lentil salad!  Looking for a way to use up all those Easter eggs, I found inspiration from a few websites to try a lentil-egg salad with vinaigrette.  Most call for using a fried or poached egg, so I improvised my own version.

Thai green curry with tilapia

It's Tilapia Tuesday!  Today, I altered a recipe I make fairly often to include tilapia: thai green curry.  I'm always pleasantly surprised by how quickly this type of curry recipe comes together, especially if you have leftover rice (which we did).  My husband and I both enjoyed the substitution of tilapia for chicken, but I did have to reserve both fish and vegetables without sauce for the kids since it can be a bit spicy. We got our CSA box just moments before dinner, so I used some beautiful flat Romano beans, red peppers and carrots that we found in there, but you can certainly use other vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, etc.) instead.

Thai green curry with tilapia and vegetables
Two filets of tilapia, thawed and cut into 1 inch chunks
2 cups of chopped vegetables (cut harder vegetables, like carrots, thinly)
3/4 cup chopped red onion
2 T. peanut oil or vegetable oil
2 T. (or more to taste) green curry paste (I like Aroy-D brand)
1 14 oz. can of regular coconut milk
2 kaffir lime leaves (I order them fresh and store them in the freezer, but you can omit or substitute more lime juice or a little lime zest)
1 teas. brown sugar (to taste)
1 teas. fish sauce (to taste)
1 T. lime juice
1 T. thai basil leaves (we planted thai basil this year and this was our first time using it!) or regular basil, chiffonaded

Heat oil in 12 inch skillet.  Add the curry paste and saute until fragrant (about 1 minute).  Add about half of the coconut milk and whisk together until smooth.  Add remaining coconut milk, kaffir lime leaves and about 1/2 cup of water, whisk.  Simmer for 2-3 minutes.  Add all the vegetables and simmer until the vegetables are just starting to soften.  Then, add tilapia chunks.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the fish starts to flake. Then, season with brown sugar, fish sauce and lime juice.  Add thai basil, if desired.

Grilled tilapia with mango salsa

My local grocery had a deal the other day: spend $20 and get two mangos, two limes, and a bunch of cilantro for free.  Yes, please!  Here's what I did with it:

Grilled tilapia with mango salsa
Tilapia:
1/4 cup olive oil
2 T. lime juice
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 teas. dried oregano
1/2 teas. salt
3 tilapia filets

Mix together first five ingredients in a bowl.  Place filets in a zip-top bag and add the marinade.  Set aside while the grill preheats (gas grill = high).  Reduce the heat to medium-high, remove the filets from the marinade and shake a bit to remove excess oil.  Place on grill and cook until just opaque.

Mango salsa:
1/2 green or red pepper
2 T. chopped red onion
chopped jalapeno (to taste and optional--I didn't use it since the kids were eating the salsa, but I wish I could have!)
1 perfectly ripe mango, cut into 1/4 inch dice
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
2 T. fresh lime juice
1/2 teas. salt

In the food processor, whirl green or red pepper and onion (and jalapeno, if using) until the pieces are small, but not pureed.  (I prefer these to be tiny, but a small dice would work just as well here).  Place the peppers and onions in a bowl, fold in the mango, lime juice and cilantro.  Season with salt to taste and let sit for 20 minutes or so.

I loved the mango salsa, and mixed the leftovers with some canned pinto beans for lunch the next day.  Yum!

Tilapia with pineapple rice

Aside from how good it tastes, this dish is incredibly fast and simple to prepare, and I usually have the ingredients in the pantry (well, except the green onions--I rarely just have those just lying around).  The recipe is from a magazine called "Clean Eating", so in addition to all of the other reasons to make it, it's very healthy too.  You know, so I can eat a bowl of ice cream for dessert :)  Here's how to make it:

Pan-fried tilapia

This is what I make if I am uninspired by the contents of my fridge and/ or I'm in a hurry.  It always tastes delicious, so there aren't any complaints when I make it.  Here's the recipe (such as it is):

Tilapia Tuesday!

We all love fish, especially my 6 year old.  When I take the weekly poll about what everyone wants for dinner, he usually asks for fish (hotdogs are his unfortunate other request).  While other fish might be a tad tastier, I tend toward tilapia because it's mild flavored and fairly firm, making it easy to cook and versatile.  And unlike other fish (I'm looking at you, salmon) it doesn't suffer from being frozen.  As a matter of fact, I only buy tilapia in frozen form, which makes for easy planning and quick, last-minute meals.  Even better, US farmed tilapia is listed as a "Best Choice" on the Seafood Watch list.

Since we have tilapia so often, I'd like to start a regular feature highlighting our tilapia recipe of the week.  Full disclosure: we won't necessarily have the tilapia meal on Tuesday.  That's too much pressure.  :)

Overrun by Olallieberries, in a good way

Jars of jelly and jam, in my beautiful new jars!

Olallieberry ice cream

This past weekend, we made the trip back to Swanton Berry Farm in Davenport to pick olallieberries.  We went a little wild, picking over 12 pounds (and at $4 a lb!), and it was quite a task to dispatch all those berries before they went bad.

Strawberry season = jam

This weekend, we went with our good friends and all four of our little boys to go strawberry picking at Coastways Ranch in Davenport, CA.  It was a beautiful day and the kids really enjoyed having their own containers to collect berries.  It's so very hard to resist the bright red beacon of the perfect berry, so we all picked way too much.  A failed strawberry pie became a pretty decent ice cream topping, but with still many, many berries left, I made up our first batch of jam of the season.  Some gorgeous Weck canning jars are in the mail, heading to my address as we speak, but perfectly ripe berries wait for no one (or jar).  While strawberry jam is tasty (especially on scones with clotted cream), my boys like olallieberry best.  Another month for those!

Roast chicken in cast-iron with pan gravy. Seriously good, and easy.

I make roast chicken a lot...about every week.  The best roast chicken I've ever had was at Zuni Cafe in San Francisco.  After the meal, I bought the cookbook to get my hand on that chicken recipe.  I've made the chicken and it's great, but the recipe is picky, takes a long time (dry brining for days, kind of length), and you have to find a 2.5 pound chicken.  All in all, it's not a make-every-week type of recipe.

So, I fall for it every time a cooking magazine claims to have the "Easiest Recipe for the Best Roast Chicken EVER!"  The variations include cooking low and slow...cooking high and fast....flipping the chicken half-way through...shoving herb butters under the skin....etc. etc.  Each time, I am disappointed.  At our house, we like just salt and pepper, plain-jane roast chicken, heavy on the crispy skin.  My husband does the dishes, so for him, easy clean-up is equally important (so much so, that I actually tried using disposable roasting pans).