WE LOVE WINGS!

So this one is long overdue...We love wings in our house.  If we could eat wings everyday I think we would.  Unfortunately, the calories would probably eventually catch up to us and we would weigh 500 pounds.  We do eat wings probably at least once a week though...so I guess it's ok.

I haven't made wings in a while and I wanted to make something "red white and blue" for the election (b/c this was on election day) but everything included blue cheese...which I don't eat, or it was dessert oriented like cake or trifle so I decided to forego the patriotic idea and went with something American instead.  I didn't feel like making hot dogs or hamburgers so I decided on wings.  That seemed pretty American to me....

I didn't take too many pics of this one b/c I was on the phone with my awesome friend, Carol, who had just gotten engaged!!!! and my phone doubles as my camera so abilities were limited.

I bought whole wings, which I don't usually do, so I had to chop them up into pieces since Eric likes drummies and I like wings.  I took out the wing tip and saved them for chicken broth/dog food.  I washed them and then dried them with a paper towel. After chopping them all up they looked like this:

I seasoned them with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper.  Then I drizzled some oil over them and tossed them around.  They were laid out on 2 sheet pans so they weren't crowding each other and I stuck them in the oven.  I flipped them halfway through for even crisping.  I chose not to fry them or bread them for less calories :)

I made three different types of wings: regular wings with Frank's Hot Sauce, golden tangy made with a dijon mustard/honey base, and a copy of Hooter's Daytona Beach wings that I found here:
Hooter's Daytona Beach Wings

So once the wings came out, I put them into 3 different bowls and then tossed them with sauce.  They sat for about 5 minutes and then I tossed them again.

Once coated, they were put into bowls and we ate :)

They were pretty good and REALLY cheap to make since I already had everything except for the wings.  They Daytona were the best.  They didn't taste the same as Hooters and I didn't grill them, but they were still really good.  Frank's Hot wings never disappoint so those were good and the honey mustard ones were a good mix to tone down the two since it wasn't as sweet or as hot but still had a little kick and a little sweetness.  This was a good change from our Thursday all you can eat wing night and we got to sit at home and watch the election process.

When you feel neglected, think of the female salmon, who lays 3,000,000 eggs but no one remembers her on Mother's Day

There was a HUGE sale on wild Alaskan salmon at Whole Foods and we know that I LOVE salmon and HUGE sales so of course I had to buy some.  Since we had already decided on other things to eat for dinner/lunch and it was a weekend, I put it in the fridge to save for another day.  Another day has come and I decided to make salmon...well half of it b/c I bought a whole piece which is way more salmon than we could ever eat in a couple of days.  I decided to keep it light and make a dijon dill sauce and cucumber/onion salad.  I also used the leftover potatoes from the previous dinner as a side.

The ingredients I used were:

cucumbers

onion

vinegar

sugar

dill

salmon

sour cream

cream

dill

lemon

dijon mustard

potatoes

shallots

The first thing I did was make the cucumber/onion salad since it needed to chill in the fridge.  This included slicing the cucumbers and onions and putting them in a bowl with vinegar, sugar, salt, and dill.  I put it in a big bowl and mixed it.  Then stuck in the fridge to let it marinade. 

The next step was roasting the potatoes since it takes a little longer.  I put them in a pan with olive oil, salt, and, pepper and stuck them in the oven. 

I decided to poach the salmon which I've never done before so it seemed interesting enough.  To start, I cooked some shallots in a pan for a couple of minutes.  Then, I added white wine and water and let it come to a simmer before placing in the salmon and covering the pan. 

Finally, while everything was cooking, I started on the sauce.  The sauce was pretty easy b/c everything went into one pot, at the same time and then just gave it a mix while it was cooking.  This included cream, dijon, sour cream, honey, dill, salt, pepper...I think that was it but I kinda forgot =/

So poaching is pretty neat since it keeps the fish from drying out and with such a big piece of fish, the "thinner" parts tend to cook much faster and overcooking.  It also doesn't take very long at all and adds some flavor to the fish in the process without using butter or oil.  Once it was all done, the sauce went on the salmon and everything went on the plate.

I left out the sour cream of the cucumber salad since there was already sour cream in the fish sauce and figured I wouldn't go too crazy with it.  They were all complementary of each other since the potatoes could've used some sauce and there was extra from the fish.  The cucumbers gave a good crunch and tartness to the meal.  The dijon in the sauce also gave it a good kick, not too much but just slightly there.

The chicken came first. God would look silly sitting on an egg.

I really like casseroles and crock potting dinners b/c of how easy and delicious they are.  I also love roast chickens.  Usually, I just buy a chicken at Whole Foods on Wednesday and use it for the week but then the chicken is cold by the time Eric gets home and I usually use it for something like salads or casseroles.  Instead, for dinner I decided to buy a whole chicken and cook it myself with sides of brussel sprouts and fingerling potatoes.

The ingredients for the whole dish were:

whole chicken

rosemary

brussel sprouts

onion

lemon

dijon mustard

honey

salt

pepper

I got the meat people at Whole Foods to cut the chicken up into 8 pieces.  I washed the chicken off and then dried it completely with paper towels.  To start the cooking process, I salt and peppered the chicken then heated some olive oil and browned the chicken on both sides in a dutch oven.

 Once the skin was brown, I removed it and added the cut up onion to the oil. While these things were browning, I also made the sauce for the chicken.  This included the honey, lemon, and dijon mustard.

When the onions were done, I added the potatoes and brussel sprouts to the dutch oven, as well as the chicken. I salt and peppered the veggies before topping with chicken. Making sure the chicken was in a single layer, I stuffed some rosemary in between the chicken and spooned the sauce on top of the chicken, trying to get some to drizzle down into the veggies.

 The dutch oven then went into the oven and cooked for an hour.

Before serving, I took out the rosemary.

Not the prettiest of colors since everything is a little bland looking but this turned out really well!  The chicken had really good flavor from the sauce and wasn't dry at all, which is something I always hate about chickens.  The potatoes and brussel sprouts were cooked through to the perfect amount of doneness and had a little flavor from the sauce as well. This was a great easy, yummy, and healthy dinner that didn't take a lot of effort at all to make.

All cats love fish but fear to wet their paws

Sorry I've been pretty lazy and behind on posts lately.  I will try to be better about them coming up.  The nice thing about being behind is that I have updates for the days I don't cook!

We watched some show on Food Network and one of the dishes they were serving was Chilean Sea bass.  I don't know that I have ever had Chilean sea bass before.  I originally went to the store for halibut but for some reason they only had portions and none of these portions were big enough so I went with sea bass instead.  I like to cook my fish in one big piece and then cut into portions b/c I feel it cooks better and doesn't dry out that way.  I never knew how much this stuff costs!! Surprisingly though, the sea bass was only $1/lb more than the halibut would have been so I guess I didn't spend that much more..but man! I was really shocked at how much it was.

So along with my sea bass I decided to go with a quinoa pilaf and broccolini.  Here are ingredients for dinner:

Chilean sea bass

lemon

butter

shallot

quinoa

broccolini

celery

peas

onions

lemon

white wine

red wine vinegar

chicken stock

garlic

For the fish, I had Eric salt and pepper both sides and then just pan seared it on both sides until cooked through.  Due to the thickness of the fish, it took a little longer than expected but eventually cooked through.

I decided to make a lemon, garlic broccolini.  This was simple enough.  I drizzled olive oil over the greens and sprinkled chopped garlic.  Then, right before serving, I topped with lemon juice and parmesan cheese.

I feel as if we have almost completely moved away from rice and replaced it with quinoa instead.  Quinoa is so much better for you with more nutritional value and it really seems that you can do almost anything with it that you can can make with rice.  To make the quinoa, I started with cooking some chopped onions in the pan.  Then, added the quinoa, chicken stock, and peas and let it all cook down until the quinoa was cooked through and the liquid was absorbed.

I am a fan of Julia Child's recipes since I know beforehand they will be good.  I originally wanted to make a mustard sauce for the fish but I didn't want to make anything that engulfed the flavor of the fish and masked it completely...especially after how much it cost.  Instead I went with making Julia Child's Beurre Blanc.  I was little worried about it at first b/c it seemed like a lot of work for just white wine butter sauce Plus, I was worried that I'd spend all the time making/stirring it and it would break.  Nevertheless, I decided to go with it and made my first beurre blanc.

The process starts with shallots, white wine, white wine vinegar, salt, and pepper in a small pot.  This gets heated VERY slowly until it comes to a boil.  The heat is then reduced to a simmer until it's reduced by about 1/3.  Then, very slowly, one "chunk" at a time, you add butter into the pot.  I took the pot off the heat for the most part to not overcook it.  You want to make sure you only add one piece of butter at a time but also make sure to add the next piece before the previous piece has completely melted..does that make any sense? Anywho...whisk the entire time and if the sauce is getting too cold, add it back to the heat until it can melt the butter again.  Just stir and stir and stir until it becomes a creamy sauce! I felt like I was whisking for forever so it may take longer you expect.

Everything was finally done after about an hour or so.  I thought it was only going to take 30 min so needless to say, we ate dinner a little later than planned but it turned out to be good!  I think the tartness from the lemon in the broccolini was a good way to cut some of the butter in the beurre blanc.  The quinoa also helped with that b/c it would absorb some of the sauce into it when mixing it together.  The fish was a little sweet and pretty meaty which was nice.  I'm glad that I went with the beurre blanc instead of the mustard sauce b/c it's definitely a delicate fish and it was nice to be able to still taste it through the sauce.  The quinoa didn't really taste like a rice pilaf but it was still good and went well with the rest of the meal.  It was much lighter in flavor than the rest of the meal which was great for balancing out the flavors.

Grillin weather isn't over yet!

I was a little sad when the weather was perfect and beautiful the week that I was stuck on the couch due to my wisdom teeth. Luckily, after a week of cold, it picked back up and decided to be nice again.  This happened just in time for Eric and I to purchase a ton of steaks from Omaha Steaks with the gift card he got from the Kellogg wedding :) Our freezer is now full of filets, pork chops, and hot dogs.  With the weather being so nice, we generally like to make sure we use the opportunity to do non-winter things.  For me a couple of nights ago, that meant grilling! Plus, I'm finally able to eat more things and steak always sounds good.

I didn't want to eat just plain steak so I decided to marinade these.  For the marinade, I used

brown sugar

garlic

balsamic vinegar

rosemary

salt 

pepper

Sorry for the lack of pictures with this post.  I was running around all crazy this day so I didn't really focus on pics that much. 

Anyway, so I mixed these ingredients together and then poured them in a zip lock bag with the steaks.  They marinaded in the fridge for about 6 hours.  

About 30 minutes before cooking time, I removed the steaks from the fridge and let them sit to room temperature.  While these were sitting, I started on the sides.  I decided to make mushrooms and creamed spinach.  

For the mushrooms, I used:

onions

mushrooms

marsala

salt

pepper

butter

worcestershire

Originally, I was going to use white wine instead of marsala but marsala sounded better so it became a last minute substitution.  

To start, I melted the butter and cooked the onions for a few minutes.  Then, I added all the remaining ingredients and let them cook for about 30 minutes to soften and for the sauce to cook down. 

While the mushrooms were cooking, I made the creamed spinach.  I decided to use frozen spinach instead of fresh just b/c it's cheaper and I don't have to deal with washing all the dirt out.  I just put the spinach in a pot and let it defrost.  Then I added some half and half, salt, and nutmeg.  This cooked down until it was "creamed"

So somewhere halfway through the mushrooms, I put the steaks on the grill.  I let them cook to about medium rare and then took them off and let them sit on a plate for about 10-15 minutes while everything else was finishing.  I also decided to make a side salad with homemade dressing using balsamic vinegar, honey, salt, and pepper.  Finally, dinner was done.  This one was pretty painless and easy to make. 

The salad contained avocados, tomato, fresh mozzarella, farmhouse cheddar, cucumber, arugula, spring mix

Pretty good dinner overall.  I'm glad I didn't include potatoes or a starchy side b/c this ended up being a really good amount of food.  It wasn't too filling but at the same time not leaving me hungry.  The marinade was really good with the steak and paired well with the marsala mushrooms.  The steaks were really tender, I'm sure partially due to the marinade.  The salad was a good light and crisp starter to the meal.  

Hopefully the weather stays nice out b/c we have at least 10 more steaks to make! Maybe we'll attempt the cast iron/oven method once it gets cold.