Roasted Garlic

Tags

easy recipes, garlic

The week of garlic gave me a great excuse to try something I’d seen on tv and the internet but never tasted.

Oven Roasted Garlic.

Sounds intriguing doesn’t it.

It’s truly as simple as it sounds.

Begin with a whole head of garlic. I used two.

Peel off most of the outer layers of skin, but leave the cloves intact and together.

Then, you cut off the top.

Cut about 1/4 of the way down the garlic bulb so each clove is open.

You’re going to wrap this in aluminum foil.  Tear off enough foil to wrap the garlic, but before you close it up, lube it up with a heavy dose of olive oil.  Rub the oil in a little so every piece gets coated. 

Then pinch the foil together on top to make a little pouch.  You can place this in a muffin tin to keep it stable. I put it right in the oven, on the rack, and it seemed to do fine.

Roast it at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes.

When it’s done, take your purse out of the oven and open it up.  You’ll have something like this:

Allow the roasty toasty melty garlic to cool and each little clove will pop right out.

It’s smooth, mild, and spreadable.  You can spread it right on toast.  I do recommend toast, by the way.  We ate it on fresh italian bread but it was too soft.  It needs the crunch of the toast and the toasty-ness would compliment the garlic.

Here’s something else to do with roasted garlic.  Make a spread.

Recipes I’ve read say mix it with sour cream.  I tried that.  Just a good dollop of sour cream and several cloves of roasted garlic, mash it up together and spread it on toast.  

You can try that, too.  It’s decent, but if I were telling you what to do, and I guess I am, I would say mix it with some softened cream cheese and some chives. 

Spread that on toast too.

This is super simple and yet, seems very sophisticated somehow.

Impress your dinner party guests with it.

My Sincere Apologies

When I began this blog, I set one particular goal for myself. 

Post something new every day. 

I knew there would be a few days when that might not be possible, but I felt (and still do) that if someone was going to take the time to visit my blog, I could at least do them the favor of giving them something new to read.

This past weekend, I took my little family to see my big family in my hometown.  I uploaded photos to write about while I was away, but that didn’t happen.

Then, I began my new “job” keeping the baby this week and haven’t quite figured out the schedule.

Rest assured, I plan to keep up from now on.  I hope.  Don’t shoot me if I mess up.  Please.

Thank you to all of you who have visited the past few days only to see a boring old post that you’d read already.

Now, let’s get back to garlic!

Photoshop Insanity

The other day I showed you how I drastically edited a photo of my child in a post I called “Photoshop Gone Wild”.

I was wrong.  This is Photoshop Gone Wild. 

Check out this artwork.

I had hoped that I could insert the photos here, but I can’t seem to find the information.

Just click on the link.  It’s proof that they can do anything with an editing program and some photographs.

Braised Porkchops

Tags

braise, easy recipes, fall dinners, garlic, porkchop

Earlier this week, we had our first taste of fall weather.  I decided it was the perfect night for this recipe.  It features rosemary which always makes me think of winter, warmth, and holidays.  Even on an ordinary weeknight, rosemary calls to mind an evergreen in the living room.

Begin with garlic, of course.  Three smashed cloves in the bottom of a roasting pan or casserole dish.

 Next, I added another quarter of that onion I used in the shrimp stock.  (I keep it in the refrigerator in an airtight container.  That one onion is getting a lot of use!)

Now, we turn our attention to the porkchops.

Mine were rather thinly cut boneless.  If you use bone-in, the cook time will be longer.

Salt and pepper one side.

Then place them seasoned side down in the roasting pan.  Salt and pepper the other side. 

Now, it’s time to consider herbs.

I don’t often use rosemary because it tends to hog the spotlight.  If you’re going to use rosemary, you need to be sure it’s what you want.  In this situation, it’s perfect.

I added only about 2 teaspoons of dried rosemary.  Fresh herbs are usually about 1/3 as strong as dried.  That means you could use 2 Tablespoons of fresh rosemary, but I’m not certain about that.  Fresh rosemary seems stronger than other fresh herbs.  I mean, I don’t hold a bunch of parsley and smell parsley on my hand all day the way I do if I brush up against a rosemary shrub. 

For some depth of flavor, I also added dried oregano.  I just sprinkled it on; if you’d like a measurement, it was one teaspoon.  (I just used about half as much oregano as rosemary.)  

Once the porkchops are properly seasoned, you’ll need to add a bit of water.  This is our braising liquid. 

Add just enough water to cover the bottom of the dish without covering the porkchops.  This will cook together with our herbs, onions, and garlic to create a flavorful stock.

Put a lid on the dish and bake in a 400 degree oven until done.  Cook times will vary depending on the thickness of your porkchops and whether they are bone-in or boneless.  Mine took about 30 minutes.

Sauce:

When the porkchops are done, move them to a serving dish. 

In a skillet, melt three tablespoons of butter.  Whisk together with three tablespoons of flour.   We’re making a quick roux.

Allow this to cook, on a low temperature, until it is smooth and looks something like this:

Then, pour on the liquid left in the pan. Whisk to combine. 

When it begins to thicken, turn off the heat.  Taste to check for seasoning.  You may need to add salt and pepper. 

Pour this over the porkchops.  It’s also good on mashed potatoes.

We enjoyed our porkchops with sweet potato casserole (made using leftover sweet potato wedges), broccoli (also from leftover), green beans (leftover), and mashed potatoes.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so successful at cleaning out the fridge and creating a meal.  With so many dishes, it felt like Christmas! 

I hope this recipe will shake up your usual ground beef or chicken dinners. 

PS    When you find typos, just leave a comment.  With two littles interrupting, sometimes I lose my thought and don’t make sense.  (That’s right, blame the children.) Coco, you’ll be pleased to know I only wrote broccoli once and did not have to use spell-check.  I’m learning!

Income!

Tags

debt, Ditching Debt, God, income

 

(Photo for illustrative properties only)

 

I didn’t want to say anything until it was certain, but we have good news.

Remember last week I mentioned a special visitor to our house?  That special visitor was a nice lady I met–a friend of a friend of a friend–who was looking for at-home childcare for her baby.

For the life of this blog, I have told you that we manage our budget just fine, but we aren’t making any headway on paying off the debt because there wasn’t any extra.

I have persued several avenues, but the best bet for our family–for me to be at home, available for homeschooling, budget managing, creative meal planning, and chores–and still making money seemed to be childcare. 

Sure, there were internet options, and a few other things, but I needed something reliable.  I wanted something where I just needed to “show up”,do my job, and get paid; not actively seeking new contacts for making money.  Most internet options are very mind-draining, hands-on, attention-demanding.

In fact, the whole idea of being this focused on making money made me feel uncomfortable.  It seemed wrong to be that concerned with money, to look at every opportunity with dollar signs in my eyes.

I knew the waiting time was for some purpose.  God is usually trying to teach us something when we struggle.  And I learned a lot.  I learned that debt has a powerful impact on your availability to “answer God’s call”.   That’s the thing.  In the process of aquiring debt, we knew it was a dumb thing to do financially.  And somewhere, in the back of our minds, we knew it was not in God’s will, but we didn’t understand why. 

How does paying a credit card balance keep you subject to a different master?  Before we began the journey to get out of debt, we gave as much as we wanted to the church or other good causes.  We just couldn’t pay cash for groceries and gas. It wasn’t until we said, “no more credit cards,” that I realized what a big impact debt has on your life. How, for example, could we give money to orphans, consider adoption or ministry positions, or think about having another baby if we were unable to do without.  Could we even afford for me to homeschool the children, something we feel called to do?

That’s where the childcare comes in.  I’ll use this new income to pay-off debt, set a bit aside to avoid debt in unexpected circumstances, and continue living on our current budget. 

So today I am thankful.  Thankful for the learning period.  Thankful for God’s faithfulness to us through it.  Thankful for our new opportunity and the wonderful family we’re getting to know.

For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
       his faithfulness continues through all generations.      Psalm 100:5

Photoshop Gone Wild

Every now and then, you grab your camera, head outside and forget that you left the white balance on incandescent and the shutter speed way down for the low light and the ISO too high and basically your camera is ALL wrong for going outside. 

You shoot a picture and get something like this:

You do that, right?

Look at that photo!  It’s horrid.  It’s wretched!  The color, the exposure! Oh the humanity!!!

Quick, delete it before anyone else sees it!

Wait. . .look at her little smile.  I could never catch that from just the right angle with the perfect little expression.

So you don’t delete, but what do you do?

I did this:

No, it’s not perfect.  It’s still all “wrong”.  But it speaks to me.  (I feel artsy and phony at the same time when I say things like that.)

Would it speak to me if it were someone else’s daughter?  Maybe not as much.  But it’s my photo and I’ll like it if I want to. 

 For those of you who are interested in this sort of thing, I adjusted the contrast and temperature a bit in Photoshop Elements.

Then, I applied the cross-process action from CoffeeShop.  I didn’t use all the layers–it made the photo too yellow. 

Then I used the burn tool, set to a low opacity, on her eyelashes and hair and some of the edges of the photo. 

Oh, and obviously, I cropped it.

I would be happy to show you how I did all that, but the chances of anyone having a photo with all the problems of my original are about as good as my chances of winning the lottery.

And I don’t play the lottery.

But I do play with pictures.

Lemony Shrimp Scampi and Linguine

Tags

homemade shrimp stock, how to cook shrimp, Melissa D'Arabian, Pasta, Shrimp

Today’s dinner is Lemony Shrimp Scampi and Linguine with six–count ’em SIX–cloves of garlic.  Don’t worry; it’s not too much. 

Before we begin, I must tell you this recipe took me an hour.  I usually get dinner done in less than thirty, so I thought you should know.  But trust me, for shrimp and pasta.  It’s worth it.

I got this recipe from Melissa D’Arabian on Food Network.  Click here for the printable version.  Melissa, Food Networks’ newest star, knows her stuff.  She’s got four girls under four years old, her husband’s from France, and she cooks dinner for four under ten dollars.  But  apparently, she doesn’t do it fast.

Here’s the line-up.

Believe it or not, the shrimp is actually not a budget-buster. Mine was about five dollars.  Everything else in this is really cheap.  (Notice my free with pizza red pepper flakes.  Do stuff like that and you can afford shrimp every now and then!) 

Unless you can smell the sea from your fish market, frozen shrimp is freshest.  Mine comes already de-veined, but not shelled.  So, the first thing to do is thaw under running water,

and remove the shells.  Put the shells in a small sauce pan.  Since we’re serving this shrimp in pasta, you can remove the tails too.  Add them to the saucepan, as well. 

By the way, if you’ve not familiar with shrimp.  The “vein” is not a vein, but actually an intestinal tract.  That means the stuff inside is not blood, but. . . well, not good to eat.  If your shrimp has that–it’s a black line along the back of the shrimp, not the legs side–you’ll need to cut a small groove in the back of the shrimp and remove the “vein”.  Rinse your cleaned shrimp to remove any residue.

We’ll add one quarter of an onion, sliced, to the pot and start that to boil.  We’re making a quick shrimp stock.

Also, get some water on to boil your linguine. 

Now for our marinade.  I tried to grate my garlic, but I don’t have a microplane and this grater was not cooperating.  You can do like I did and dice your six cloves of garlic. 

Add the juice and zest from one lemon, the crushed red pepper, and salt.

Stir in five tablespoons of olive oil.

Toss with the shrimp.

This is a good time to work on any side dishes you have planned.  I served it with broccoli–roasted in a 400 degree oven with a little olive oil.

When your pasta water is boiling, add a good amount of salt and then, the pasta.  Set your timer for 2 minutes less than the package suggests.

Now, heat a skillet to high.  Take the shrimp out of the marinade and cook them through, about 3 minutes.  Shrimp cook really fast and turn rubbery when over cooked.  As soon as they’re pink, they’re done.

Remove them to a plate.  Then put the rest of the marinade in the skillet.

Let that cook a bit and drain your shrimp stock.  Be sure to pour the liquid into a bowl and strain out the shells and stuff.  It would be like me to get moving too fast and pour the stock down the drain and keep the shells! 

Don’t do that.

Add a cup of that stock to the skillet.  (I had leftover stock.  Freeze it for another day!)  Add half a cup–a good ladle full–of the pasta water.  Pasta water has starch in it and will thicken the sauce.

Let the sauce reduce by half.  Add the juice and zest of another lemon and a few tablespoons of butter. 

Add some chopped fresh parsley. (My grocer was out of parsley–oops, I guess we’ll have to make do.)

Now, add back in the shrimp and pasta.  Toss to combine.

I served mine along-side my broccoli.

I think it’s missing something.

There.  No pasta dish is complete without a little cheese.

And just think what you’d have to pay for that at a restaurant!

 

 Edit:  We found the recipe to be more lemony than we had expected.  Also, I only used the one little pepper packet.  Melissa calls for a whole teaspoon.  It was plenty spicy for us–actually more than we prefer, but not remotely uncomfortable, just had a pepper flavor we’re not used to.   My little ones did not complain and they usually do.  If your family is not big on the heat, I’d recommend only a half teaspoon of pepper.