The odd couple

I told a few people about this recipe before I actually made it and I got some mixed reviews.  When I told my brother I was making cheesy zucchini enchiladas, he told me zucchini goes in pasta or bread, but not in enchiladas....boy was he wrong!  I'll have to admit, I was also slightly skeptical but when you have cheese and enchilada sauce can you really go wrong?   I tweaked the sauce just a little bit, it has chipotles in adobo sauce in it and I thought the smokey flavor was a bit too much.  I just upped the tomato sauce and broth and it was perfect.  The whole recipe was pretty simple and if I could have you try one recipe it would be this!  It had a great texture and taste.  Typically Matt isn't a "non-meat" dinner person, but tonight was quite the different story.  This will for sure be a make again dinner!

 I am still anxiously awaiting some red tomatoes from our front porch garden.  Everything is so big and has tons of flowers but barely any green maters.  Lots of blossoms on the eggplant and we have tons of peppers ready for harvesting.  I also have more basil than I would ever know what to do with, anyone have any suggestions??

 Matt is outside working tonight and might I say it is HUMID outside.  But he is doing some good work and there is some good progress happening.  The piles of wood and brick came out from under the porch....ridiculous.  I am thinking in the next couple of weeks we will be able to get some dirt and have this landscaping almost finished up!

Mmmmm....

I am a big fan of Mexican food, and for some reason some of my favorite things is Chicken tortilla soup.  I don't really like the creamy ones, more of the broth type.  Well when I end up pretty much replicating my favorite soup....you know it was a good night.  Again I found this healthy recipe on www.skinnytaste.com, chicken and avocado soup.  It was insanely flavorful and was still great leftover.  I am a huge fan of avocado to begin with but the avocado in this soup had such a creamy good texture.  

In other news....I GOT MY FIRST RED TOMATOES OUT OF THE GARDEN TONIGHT!!!  I know, I know, you can pretty much get fresh tomatoes anywhere now.  But these came from our garden so that makes them even better.  Matt started making some pickles with the over abundance of cucumbers that we have.  Other than that we haven't been able to harvest anything else from the garden.

We have some house project progression!!  Matt has been working on cleaning out under the porch so he can start laying the cinder blocks to finish our landscaping project.  Tonight, he laid the first seven blocks!!  This might seem little and stupid...but it is a huge step in finally finishing this dang project, it makes me happy!!  Pictures to come soon!!!

New Obsession

Two things to start off with, first I need to talk about something else before my new obsession, and second, please note that this is two days in a row I am blogging...YAY!!  Ok so before the obsession, last week I made homemade pesto and I just had to share.  It was super easy and so delicious.  It was awesome to use some of the overgrown basil in my front yard!!  I just took a large handful of basil threw it in the food processor with some toasted pine nuts, parmesan cheese, garlic and olive oil.  Simply delicious!

Now for the good stuff.  I had a little free time during training at my new job and I found the website "stumble upon."  I might be way behind the times here but I instantly fell in love with the website and I have to admit I stumbled upon probably about a couple hundred sites (I really had alot of free time)  Well I found one hell of a gem and I am happy to indroduce you all to my new food crush, Skinny Taste!!  This website is amazing!  She has a ton of recipes and she also includes all the health information on every recipe.  If you find something you like, you can save it in your recipe box AND you can then create your very own shopping list from there.  I am sure I am losing readers now because you will all go to that one....but I will be cooking her recipes and telling you all about them, so keep reading!!


Last night I made my first recipe, Asian glazed chicken.  Well it is technically called asian glazed drumsticks....but we only had chicken quarters, so that is what we used.  This recipe took not many ingredients, was remotely quick to make (defrosting the chicken took the longest), was healthy and AMAZING.  Holy buckets, if this recipe is any indication of what this website has in store for me then you can count me in!  I served with with some steamed veggies to keep with the healthy theme.....mouth watering....

SUSHI!!

The best surprise EVER, coming home on a Friday night and to find out Matt had gone to the asain market and got a bunch of stuff for SUSHI!  I LOVE LOVE sushi so this was a perfect way to spend a Friday night.  I think I have tagged myself as a professional.  I must say it was a great "couples" activity.  It was just alot of fun.  We started off with making the sushi rice.  Not going to lie, waiting for it to cool was causing me a bit of anxiety because I just wanted to eat it.  Matt bought crab sticks, fresh salmon and tuna, we had avocado and cucumbers on hand so we had a good variety going.  The actual rolling of the sushi took a bit of practice but was fun.  I am not sure if I have said it yet or not...but we have a very small crowded kitchen....you will be able to tell from the pictures.

 We also made some sashami, but the rolls were my favorite.  I liked mixing and mashing the different ingredients.  Man sushi sounds good right now......

 We even had wasabi and the pickled ginger....measuring cups made great dippers for the soy sauce.  Hey when you don't have the space or the utensil, you gotta improvise!!  The best roll of the night was the "all in" roll.  I put every ingredient in it and I ate it all myself...Matt was full, whatever.  I am a bottomless pit for sushi!!

 Stay tuned for some killer recipes from my new food blog crush... www.skinnytaste.com
 

So Much to Say!!

I have never had this much to blog about before.  I am going to have to break this up into multiple posts...this is crazy!!  I will try and stay on top of this from now on.  Alright, well Matt worked over the weekend, so he was off work on Thursday and Friday.  He had dinner planned both nights which was wonderful.  Soooo lets start with Thursday night, salmon burgers.  Yum, this was a great surprise.  They were simple to make and we had almost all of the ingredients on hand.  Since the salmon gets broken up, we just used frozen salmon, which saved us a bunch of money.  Topping for the burger was arugula and tartar sauce, we aren't the biggest fans of tartar sauce but it was delicious.  If you are sick of grilling the the normal hamburgers and brats, I highly recommend this.

On to dessert.  I am going to do a huge teaser here...I am going to tell you all about dessert and show you pictures and tell you how yummy they were, and then not give you a recipe.  Here is the back story of the dessert.  We love The Nadas, and pretty much any time they are around here, we are in attendance.  We have developed a little "Nadas Family" as we like to call it.  Well one of the members, Emma to be precise, has a birthday coming up....and she also LOVES Guinness beer.  Well as I was browsing other food blogs I came across a picture of Guinness brownies with irish cream frosting and I knew they must be made for her.  So that we did, and by we I mean Matt did on his day off.  We make a killer regular brownie, seriously make them, so Matt took that recipe and subtracted this and that and added a bottle of guinness.  The frosting was pretty easy a little butter, cream cheese, irish cream and some powdered sugar.  We just added things until it tasted good.  And I must say they tasted GOOD.  We brought them to the bar to surprise her and she loved them....even the waitress enjoyed them.  

And last but not least, I finally remembered to take pictures of the garden during or "weeding" day.  I am still anxiously awaiting the ripening of all the baby tomatoes.  I mean i literally can't wait.....man I love tomatoes.  So we have a ton of cucumbers and even tonight I made a new huge batch of cucumber salad.  I can't wait to start making some greek salad with my fresh maters!

 Look for more posts this week, I have plenty more yummy food to tell you about!!!

Going Green

Well I don't mean to toot my own horn...but TOOT!!  Holy cow I don't even know how to explain my past two dinners.  Seriously I am in a food coma and I don't regret a single bite!  Last night was a repeat of Garlic Shrimp Casserole, and somehow it was even better than before.  Well actually I made a few tweaks to the recipe.  I made the chicken broth mixture thicker, which helped alot.  I think the thing that helped the most was my accidental purchase of lemon pepper panko instead of regular, best mistake ever!


On to the deliciousness of tonight.  We had quite the little mexican fiesta at the Mangela household.  We had tacos, those are pretty self explanatory, tortilla, cheese, sour cream, salsa and some browned up venison (hey it was free!)  Those were good but not even comparable to the side dishes.  The first was cilantro lime rice, my mouth is literally watering just typing this.  Now I can't take credit for this recipe and neither can food network, this is all from my bff Kate Stone.  Please everyone make this soon, maybe tomorrow.


Cilantro Lime Rice
2 cloves garlic minced
1 cup basmati rice
1 1/2 c chicken broth
2 T lime juice
salt
1/2 c cilantro
zest of one lime


Saute garlic with rice for a few min.  Add chicken broth, lime juice, and salt.  Bring to boil, then cook on low for 15-20 min (per cooking instructions)  When done, stir in cilantro and zest.  ENJOY!!


Ok, so the rice was great, but I have better!  Tomatillo Avocado Salsa, sounds amazing right??  Well think about the best thing you can eat, and then just know that this is even better!  As for a recipe, we make this so often that we just make it so I can only give you estimates of the ingredients.  Ok, so you will need 4 tomatillos, three avocados, a small onion, a bunch of cilantro, lime juice and salt and pepper.  Just chop everything and mix together.  It is better the longer it sits, but lets be honest....I ate it immediately.  

Now I think those of you who are reading this, read it and then dismiss all my hard work on finding these excellent recipes.  So now I would like to challenge you, make at least one recipe so then reading this is worth your while.  My friend Kate made the chocolate pork chops tonight and she told me it "was a win"  I promise to not lead you to a gross recipe....just give it a shot next time you are at a loss for something to make.  


Ok, so other updates, working on landscaping sucks when it is 100+ degrees so that is on a standstill.  The garden is over run by cucumbers, which is actually awesome because now we have cucumber salad constantly.  The tomatoes or starting to sprout up, as well as the weeds!!  That is tomorrow's goal, pick more cucumbers and weed the crud out of the garden.