More Cheese More Chocolate

Wine, Cheese, Peaches, Tomatoes

September 1, 2010 by Kirsten

I might squeeze in another post before heading out of town again tomorrow for a two wedding, two state, three city weekend, but in case that doesn’t happen I want to leave you with an idea for a weekend dinner. Or an eat-this-at-least-once-a-week dinner, which is my plan after eating this last night. And yes, I am aware that it is only Wednesday, but my weekend starts on Thursday. Never mind, I’m unemployed. Everyday is the weekend! Wahoo! What better way to celebrate unemployment than eating good cheeses and sipping wine? Eating good cheeses and sipping wine at a vineyard in California instead of my apartment in Minneapolis is all that I can come up with, but if I were in California then the cheese course probably wouldn’t be followed by a round of Trivial Pursuit set to the beat of the Wu-Tang Clan, so I’ll take the Minneapolis option.

Clockwise from top left: grapes, la petit cave roquefort, cherry preserves, cana de cabra, raw almonds, mahon, and olive tapenade.

Another thing, expect some poor quality photos for a while until I figure out how to work with the lighting in my new apartment.

Served with a baguette, seeded crackers, salted butter, and a salad of peaches, avocado, tomatoes, radishes, and more, which deserves its own post.

Thanks to my amazing mom for helping me move apartments and funding a trip to the grocery store to buy items that would not ordinarily be possible on the budget of someone who’s unemployed.

The leftovers make for an exquisite lunch – a tomato, avocado, spinach and blue cheese sandwich with cucumbers and olive tapenade on the side.

Posted in Appetizer, Cheese, Vegetarian | 2 Comments »

California Love

August 30, 2010 by Kirsten

Has it really been over two weeks since I last posted? Yikes! I’m not sure how I managed to post while studying for the bar exam but didn’t manage to post once in two weeks of vacation, but maybe the bar results will explain it all. Since I was last on here I’ve been to California, Chicago, Iowa, and back to Minnesota. I tasted some wine, drank some wine, went to a really fun wedding, ate some awesome food, ate some not so awesome oysters, got my cavity-free teeth cleaned, mowed some grass, watched a little Jersey Shore, and moved apartments. Life has been non-stop for two weeks, and here are just some of the pictures of the fun I’ve been having.

Los Angeles

Los Dodgers.

The Getty

Mary Poppins

Getty gardens

LA by night

LA by day

LA traffic

California Coast

Somewhere near Hearst Castle

Gummy bear games

San Jose traffic

Livermore, CA

My first In-N-Out experience

With the bride-to-be the night before the wedding

(thanks to Kyle for the photo)

Huevos con chorizo, strawberry agua fresca, and my brothers’ significant others

Serious honey

Jennifer the horse

Wine tasting

Jess, Bobby, wine

Caryn, Kyle, wine

Sweet berry wine

A toast to the new sheriff in town

The Sokolovs

Beautiful scenery

Pesto shrimp hoarders

Posted in Travel | Leave a Comment »

Five Salad Ingredients, Three Ways

August 15, 2010 by Kirsten

I often lack restraint when shopping, especially for groceries. When I went to the farmers’ market a week ago I knew that I would be leaving town in nine days (two days until LA!), but that didn’t stop me from buying way too much food. It was cheap, it looked good, and it was my first time at the farmer’s market all summer and I simply could not control myself. I have managed to polish a lot of it off by eating every meal at home for the last week with the exception of breakfast yesterday, and a string of those meals were big salads that were largely composed of my market finds. While none of these salad combinations are mind-blowing, I thought I would tell you about them because they all use the same ingredients in completely different ways. The results are two thumbs up and one Kirsten-sized thumb down. Read on.

The constants:
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Avocado
Feta
Radishes

The variables:
Bacon
Corn
Refried beans
Tortilla chips

Salad 1: BLT Plus

Bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado, radishes, feta, oil & vinegar. Simple, summery, delicious.

Salad 2: Fiesta

Lettuce, tomato, radishes, corn, feta, guacamole, leftover refried beans, bottom of the bag of tortilla chips. Not pictured: a lot of hot sauce. I will eat anything that remotely resembles Mexican food, so I really enjoyed this salad.

Salad 3: Mess of Roasted Vegetables

I had this idea that a salad with a bunch of roasted vegetables would be awesome. I spent all day peeking in on the tomatoes that were slowing roasting in the oven, I discovered that you can roast corn in the oven with the husks still on, I made a shortcut version of a really good vegetable mix that we’d made around Thanksgiving, and I burned my lungs with the fumes from dry-roasting serrano chiles in a skillet. The result? One of the worst salads I have ever had. If it weren’t for an abysmal salad that I made the first night I was home in Iowa last week, this would be the worst salad I’ve ever made. Actually, the salad I made in Iowa was terrible because I used expired salad dressing that tasted like dust, and this salad was terrible because all of the ingredients I threw together just did not work. Based on the fact that my cooking skills blew it on this one, I think it should win the prize for the worst salad I’ve ever made. I ended up throwing half of it away, and I have a pretty high tolerance for not-so-great food, especially when I am the one who made it.

The makings for oven roasted tomatoes. You cannot go wrong with these, with the exception of this salad.

I was convinced that the corn tasted kind of funky, but I’ve eaten boiled ears from the same batch that tasted alright. Maybe cooking them in the oven with the husks on imparted some weird flavor? Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s Minnesota corn and not far superior Iowa corn. I’m not quite sure.

I thought I’d use up some serranos by recreating (and dumbing down) a corn dish that we made at Thanksgiving and loved.

Failure.

Lettuce, roasted tomatoes, avocado, feta, corn/radish/serrano mixture, oil & vinegar.

If it weren’t for heaping pile of the corn mixture, this probably would have been a pretty decent salad. Note to self: piling on a combination of ingredients that don’t taste good is only going to make the salad worse.

A better use for those roasted tomatoes: topping off a slice of ricotta-smeared bread.

Posted in Salad | 2 Comments »

Things That I Love

August 13, 2010 by Kirsten

My dad has always told me not to love anything that can’t love me back, but I’ve found a few reasons to break that rule. Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, cheese, homemade bread – all things that I love that are incapable of loving me in return.

Even with the knowledge that Trivial Pursuit cannot love me, I can’t help but love it. It makes me happy. It brings me joy. Especially when I win. The same goes for Jeopardy, cheese, and homemade bread. I’m fine with breaking the rule and having a few one-sided loves in my life.

Today I found another thing to add to the list: a friendship where a gift of top-notch bacon is reciprocated with a gift of freshly made pasta.

I love having a friendship like that.

If we had a friend with a few fresh eggs and another bearing parmesan, we could have some fantastic carbonara. I would love that.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Zucchini Lasagna

August 12, 2010 by Kirsten

In my mind lasagna was a great way to use up most of the zucchini that I’d picked up at the farmers’ market over the weekend. In reality it was a great way to use up two zucchini, and one of them was a really little guy. Two down, four to go. Awesome! Maybe I’ll make zucchini bread. Or zucchini pancakes. Or zucchini pie. Or I could be charitable and give them to the guy begging for change by Lake Calhoun who somehow manages to keep his handlebar mustache perfectly maintained. I guess I have a lot of options.

Even though this lasagna didn’t do much in terms of clearing out my zucchini stash, it did clear a few other items from my kitchen – a bag of frozen spinach, a jar of tomato sauce made by my aunt Amy, and a bit of cheese. Plus, it tasted good, so I’ll count it as a success. Most of the flavor came from the tomato sauce and the fresh ricotta, but if you don’t have a good sauce to use, a few fresh herbs and a can of plain tomato sauce should work. I thought about adding fresh basil or oregano, but a trip to the store would have conflicted with my clearing out the kitchen agenda. This lasagna is nothing earth-shattering, but it’s simple and satisfying. I’d put it somewhere between my failed pre-marathon eggplant lasagna and the more recent spinach lasagna. While the spinach lasagna was excellent and definitely worth making, this version is less time-consuming, which is preferable on a 90+ degree day when you want to keep the hot oven/stove time to a minimum but for some reason still feel compelled to make lasagna.

Zucchini Lasagna

Note: all of these amounts are rough estimates, so feel free to play around and improvise

2-3 small zucchini

10 oz. chopped, frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed of excess moisture

1 cup fresh ricotta

A few ounces of parmesan

1 pint tomato sauce (or more)

6 no boil lasagna noodles

Makes 4-6 servings in an 8X8 baking dish

All of the ingredients ready for layering.

Line an 8X8 baking dish with a few spoonfuls of tomato sauce. Top with noodles then more sauce.

Cover the noodles with zucchini and spinach.

Then ricotta and parmesan. I personally could have gone for a little more cheese, maybe mozzarella or provolone, but I didn’t have any around. Oh well, less guilt.