OhFeelYa's Easy...Dinners--Lamb Chops and Sauteed Bok Choy, Cabbage, and Leeks

OhFeelYa's still here, and still easy (just kidding, Mom!). Still full of easy dinner ideas. Now that we've made it through the great winter of pork and potatoes, I'm trying to get more veggies in around here. My silly husband, who would attend the Church of Bacon if such a thing existed, is also a great lover of lamb. I got these pretty little chops last Saturday from a vendor at the Chestnut Square Farmer's Market in McKinney, Texas, but you could use beef fillet or pork chops or something similar . Btw, the farmer's markets are open again! Please go support your local farmers and meat producers! (Just make sure you ask each vendor where the produce comes from and if chemicals are used.)

Anyway, I was in a hurry this week, so the lamb just got sprinkled with a little salt, a lot of pepper, and allowed to sit out for a minute to take the chill off.

While the lamb was warming up a little bit (I think it browns more evenly when it's closer to room temp), I hunted around in the veggie drawer to see what needed to be used. I had a leek and three perfect little bok choy as well as the heel of a head of purple cabbage (the rest was sacrificed to the fish taco gods a couple of days ago). I chopped it all up, along with a couple of cloves of garlic, and put the leek and cabbage into some bacon grease with salt and pepper to cook down a bit. I waited to add the bok choy because I just wanted it wilt a bit, not turn into mush.

So here's another something I learned in the last six months or so about searing meat especially: let your pan get HOT. I've always been a bit scared of overheating the pan, and because of that, I never really got a good sear on anything, much to my husband's chagrin (he enjoys his meat blackened on the exterior and basically raw on the interior). Don't fear the hot pan. It's your friend. I put the pan over medium heat, let it get good and hot, and then I added ghee for the lamb to cook in. As soon as the ghee melted, I tossed in the lamb chops. Since my espoused likes his lamb with a dark sear but still quite rare, so I keep my heat in the medium/medium-high range. Flip the lamb when it's brown enough, and keep a close eye on it. If you want to cook it a bit, turn the heat down when you flip it.

While the lamb rested, I added a bit less than 1/4 cup of cider vinegar to the cabbage mix, tossed in the bok choy, and put a lid on that pan. The great thing about this veggie recipe is that it's good with cabbage and onion, brussel sprouts, and other greens. A tiny bit of bacon grease does add great flavor, but you could easily use your favorite oil or shortening and a sprinkle of smoked salt to get the desired effect. (Go easy on the smoked salt. It's potent stuff.)

Attempted pretty picture (I'm not awesome at plating).

I try to take pretty pictures for you all. Really. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not so much. I thought I'd try to take a pic of a normal portion, and it's so-so. However, the picture below, of what my husband actually ate, actually turned out better.

What this basketball-sized plate really looked like just before my hubby ran off with it.

If I could just get him to let me leave out the bacon grease, this is a reasonably decent meal, health-wise (if you only eat half of the amount in this picture). So it's easy to do something different for dinner, get your veggies in, and clean out that veggie drawer. 

Recipe is after the break...

Foodie Confessions...

So, since this is a food blog, I sort of feel compelled to report on all the parts of my life touched by food. Goodness knows, I love me some food. If you've met me, the food-lovin' evidence is pretty clear. I'm big(ish) and beautiful, for sure. I'm a size twelve, I do yoga about four times a week, and I skate regularly.

My and my niece, Christmas the Giant Bunny

I've spent my entire adult life having, like lots of other folks, a complex relationship with food. I love it. I hate it. I think about it a lot. It's my solace, my friend. It's my worst enemy some days. It's a great creative outlet. It's my addiction.

People in our country don't want to hear about food addiction. I've heard it said that it is less shameful in America to have a heroin addiction than it is to be fat. I've seen my own students express sympathy for an alcoholic in one moment and, in the next breath, express distain for a overweight individual, not seeing any similarity between the two. However, research has shown that some elements of food can trigger a similar response in the brain that opiates do. That sucks a lot if you have an addictive personality.


I never really understood why drug addicts and alcoholics couldn't "suck it up" and "exert some will power" regarding their addictions until I found myself binging on fast food in my car week after week about seven years ago. Immediately, self-loathing would set in, and I would promise on everything sacred that it was the last time I would hide out and overeat. I'd never do it again. Less than twelve hours later (sometimes more like two), I'd find myself back in the same place, hating, hating, hating the food and myself and everyone and everything while I ate.  I was worse than any drunk who just can't stay away from the bar.

Food is super weird. You can't quit it cold turkey. You can't avoid places that serve it. If you have struggles with it, you still have to deal with it every day, multiple times a day.

Around Christmas time that year, I just couldn't take it anymore. I was researching food addiction on the Internet when I came across the website for Overeaters Anonymous. I stumbled into my very first Twelve-Step meeting a few days later, sobbing that no one was going to love my fat ass ever again, and I fell into the best place I've ever been. The last seven years have been up and down for me with my food issues, but I've made some progress, and I've never, ever felt as miserable and alone again as I did that Christmas.
I know a lot of folks are skeptical about food addiction. Even more are skeptical of Twelve Step programs. I'm not here to lecture about the validity of either. They're real to me, but everyone else has to make an individual judgment call. I'm not even here to get on my soap box about body image and American culture, though God knows someone desperately needs to. I just really want to speak to other people like me out there. If you feel hopeless, helpless, utterly disgusting and out of control (and this applies to anorexics and bulimics as well), you're not alone. There are a lot of folks out there just like you, and there are many places you can go for help and support.

I'm going to keep writing about food, some of it healthy and some of it decadent, because it gives me pleasure to do so. But please know that people who seem to joyfully relate to food don't necessarily do so easily, and not all people who struggle with weight are just lazy. I guess I really just want to say that if you have a less-than-healthy relationship with food, I get it.

I swear I will finish the kimchi post soon. It was damn good.

The Economical Kitchen--Strawberries and Muffins to Make You Swoon

The strawberries are so pretty at the store right now; I cannot resist them. (One thing I try to always buy organic is strawberries. They are one of the most heavily chemical-laden fruit available. See this link to an NPR story about California strawberries.) However, I wound up with a surplus of fruit last week, and my girl-child was in a rabid banana phase, so I wanted to preserve my strawberries. I love, love, love dehydrated strawberries. The dehydration process makes their tart/sweet flavor even more pronounced. So I cut them into even pieces and dehydrated them. Depending on how thick you cut your slices, they can dehydrate quickly, so keep an eye on them. Chunkier slices will make a more gummy-bear sort of consistency, and very thin slices will become almost like paper. I like a happy medium. When they were done, I bagged them and put them in the freezer. They can last for up to a year this way.

But they didn't even last a week in the freezer. I got hungry for Chunky Monkey Muffins. I started making these a long time ago, but haven't made them in a while. When I came up with this recipe, I started with the Oat Bran Muffin recipe from my pink gingham Betty Crocker cookbook. For the record, let's go ahead and clear the air about muffins. They're cake. Period. Just because we put oatmeal and fruit in them and call them breakfast does not make them any less cake-y. Check out the sugar content on that Starbuck's blueberry crumble muffin. I dare you. 

I, however, like cake for breakfast. But I don't want to feel crappy about it. So I worked out a recipe for really toothsome, chunky muffins with low sugar that can easily be made vegan.  

For the Chunky Monkey, I mix 3/4 cup instant oats (if you want to use steel cut or old-fashioned, just soak them in hot water until they're softened up a bit before you proceed) and 1/4 cup hemp hearts with 3/4 cup whole wheat flour and 1/4 cup all-purpose flour. Throw in 1/4 t. of salt. To the dry mix, I add 2 t. baking powder, 1/2 t. baking soda, and two packets of Stevia. You can sub in any sweetener you like or you can add extra honey below. Mix well.  

Here's the chunky part. I added about 1/4 cup blueberries because they needed to be eaten, 3/4 cup dried strawberries, 1/4 cup shredded coconut, and about 1/3 cup walnuts.At this point, my muffins are really just fruit and nuts held together by a little muffin.

In a small bowl, I combined 1/2 cup buttermilk, 2T. oil, 1/4 cup honey (you can also use maple syrup or agave nectar or whatever you're into), 1 single serving container of no sugar added applesauce (about 4 oz.), an egg, and 1 t. vanilla. Combine gently until all the flour is moistened. Don't overmix, but get it all wet. This will be a pretty thick batter.

Grease your muffin tin. This recipe makes enough for 9 medium-sized muffins. I fill the cups all the way up. I always fill the remaining cups with water to add moisture to the baking environment. Bake at 350 for about 14-15 minutes. You don't want to overdo these, as the oatmeal and whole-wheat flour will dry out quickly. However, if you catch them just at the right moment (when the knife tip comes out with just a smidge of batter on it), they're warm and soft and full of texture. They're not pretty, but they taste great and aren't too shabby for you. I have also made these with rice milk instead of buttermilk and Ener-G egg replacement for a lower calorie, vegan version. If you go this route, add a bit more applesauce and oil for moisture. I love to use organic coconut or grapeseed oil in these.

These muffins are rad because they're so versatile. Add dried bananas, slivered almonds, pumpkin or chia seeds, or my favorite, dried cherries. The recipe is after the break!

Where the Magic (and Many Disasters) Happen

I know after I've been reading a food blog for a while, I'm always interested to see what the blogger's kitchen looks like. That bit of visual evidence into someone's home seems to make the whole blog-reading experience a bit more personal. So, for fun, I thought I'd take some pictures of my work space and favorite tools for anyone who's interested. And if you're not, just sod off and read the previous/next cooking post. Kidding. Sort of.

I live in a smallish house in a Dallas suburb. While my home is sometimes referred to as "The Little Cottage in the Barrio" or as "The House of Weird" (largely due to the welcome mat that reads, "LEAVE," the two full rooms of books, and/or the five nutty animals we live with), I love my little place.

My kitchen is still waiting for an overhaul, but here it is as of now. I never thought I'd be that woman with a kitchen full of chicken paraphernalia, but when my granny Pauline died just after my daughter was born, I inherited a ceramic chicken from her kitchen. Not too long after that, I wound up with some chickens from my maternal grandmother's kitchen, and then yet another few from my great-grandmother's place after she went on to go terrorize angels or whatever feisty, old women do after they die. So now I'm that girl with a kitchen full of cocks, which would amuse some, but not all, of my grannies. 

OhFeelYa's Kitchen

While my kitchen itself is good sized because it's combined with the dining area, I don't have a lot of counter or cabinet space. My mom bought me my little island when we first moved in as a housewarming gift. I don't know how I would function without it.If you're desperate for more counter space and have even a small bit of room in the middle of the kitchen, I recommend the island as a great way to increase storage and counters.

The dining half of the kitchen area.

I love my kitchen because it has a lot of family things in it. My chickens (my husband even came with a kitchen chicken when he moved in!) all have history, my granny's breakfast cart, china cabinet, and china are in here, and the art hanging on the walls was done by my late father-in-law, a crazy, lovely Italian man who passed down many recipes to me and was twice the cook I'll ever be.

As for things I can't live without, I give you The Vitamix! This was a graduation/Christmas gift from my husband, who still shakes his head when I ask for kitchen gadgets for holidays. What's not romantic about a Vitamix, I ask you?!? While I love it the most for morning smoothies (remember all those bananas I froze in this post?), Marissa at Food in Jars uses hers for a wonderful-looking whole-wheat crepe recipe.

Canning Shelf

Recently, I cleaned out my tiny pantry to make more room for the items that are important to me. I was shocked at how much crappy food had expired while I was working on moving my family more towards slow food. I was able to condense my packaged food items onto one shelf, and that freed up one shelf for canning items and one for items that were shoved in a corner cabinet that never got used because they sucked so much to get to. Hurray! Above, in the canning shelf picture, is (left to right) about four rows of canned jelly, jam, marmalade, jalapenos, and chicken stock with my baggie of lids tossed on top. I'm always looking for jars at thrift shops and discount stores, so some of the extras are up here as well. On the right are the jar tongs. If you ever decide to do some canning, I would highly recommend these rubber-coated tongs for moving jars in and out of boiling water. I learned this the hard way when I tried to use the metal grill tongs. It was a sad, sad day at Ofy's that day.

 

 This collection of microplanes is my next favorite group of tools. Bless my parents for showering me with microplanes this year at Christmas. I had been struggling along with this one below from Williams Sonoma (which was only of ANY USE when used on something quite hard, like nutmeg but otherwise just made me mad). 

 My dad has a set of the Microplane brand trio (all four above) at the lake, and I swooned over them every time I was there until he finally got me my own. Thanks, Dad. Whether you're trying to zest citrus, or grate cheese or ginger or a hard spice like nutmeg or cinnamon, these are amazing. One good thing about them is that they can be purchased separately. I would recommend the red-handled one as a staple in any kitchen, as it is small enough to zest and do spices but also works perfectly on parmesan cheese.  The yellow-handled one is my favorite for soft cheeses.

In Williams Sonoma's favor, however, is the fact that they brought back the ebelskiver (sometimes spelt with an "a" at the beginning), the Danish pancake pan. I really love this pan because you can do  quite a lot with these little round pancakes. I like them because I always have jars of jelly and marmalade that need using, so I can make jelly-filled pancakes or put some blueberries in the center and top with Orange-Saffron syrup. You have not eaten until you have a Nutella-stuffed pancake with a dab of clotted cream and warmed orange marmalade on top. You can also do tiny quiches in this pan. Just pour in your egg mix, let it begin to set around the bottom, and then put your filling in the middle of the ball (cheese, veggies, etc...). My husband is a fan of the savory stuffed pancake. I'll leave the sugar out of my pancake batter, sub in some black pepper and thyme, and stuff them with pulled pork. Or, he loves the maple-bacon-jalepeno stuffed version as well. There are entire cookbooks dedicated to the noble ebelskiver, and a handy post from The Reluctant Gourmet here.

While I have a great many kitchen gadgets due to the love, support, and gift cards of my friends and family, nothing is quite as handy as my pressure cooker. (I will not show you a picture of the storage unit in the garage that houses my larger gadgets and an enormous spangled drinking cup with "bitch" spelled out in rhinestones--don't ask. That cabinet is stuffed to the gills.) My mom didn't cook with a pressure cooker when I was growing up, as she had seen her own mother blow up the pressure cooker a time or two and developed a healthy fear of them as a result. However, today's versions have more safeguards than our grandmothers' did. This one is a Duo brand that I got at Sur La Table a couple of years ago. I love this set because it comes with two different sized pans, which is important because your pressure cooker needs to be about 2/3 full to cook properly. It also comes with a regular lid in addition to the pressure-cooker lid so the pots are really functional. I love this cooker because like most cookers today, it is mechanized so that you can't open it until the pressure has released sufficiently. The gauge will tell you when it's ready. The pressure cooker is like magic. Anything you cook in the crockpot or oven for a long time can be done in about 1/3-1/2 the time in the pressure cooker (just don't do rice or things that expand really fast). It's awesome for beans because I nearly always forget to soak my dried beans overnight for cooking the next day. The blog at Hip Pressure Cooking has recipes for days.

What is in your kitchen that you can't live without?

 

Move Over Ham...It's Shrimp Benedict and the BBC on Historic Food

Don't tell my husband. But I just can't eat another bit of pork for a while. However, I love hollandaise sauce with an unhealthy affection, and I like making it for Sunday brunch when we're all at the lake. I dig seafood for breakfast, and one of my favorite diners does an Eggs Benedict with super-spicy, blackened shrimp, so I thought I'd try to recreate it.

The main thing about making a decent Hollandaise is the prep work. You have to have your mise en place squared away because you can't be putting down your whisk to go in search of white pepper, lest your yolk curdle or the sauce break. So go ahead and juice your lemon, melt your butter, separate your eggs, get out your seasoning, etc.... You'll need a melted stick of butter, three egg yolks (save the whites for an egg-white omelet tomorrow--your cholesterol will need it), about 2 T fresh lemon juice, a pinch of salt, white pepper, and cayenne pepper (optional). I didn't salt my Hollandaise as much as usual because I wanted to use blackening spice on my shrimp, which is already pretty salty.

Mise en place. 

Next, get your double boiler going. I just use two pots that fit inside one another. I put a dish cloth in the bottom of the bigger one and then fill the big pot with just enough water than it barely reaches the bottom of the smaller pot. Plot the small pot into the big pot, and warm both over a medium heat. Reduce the heat to medium low before you begin making your sauce. A whisk is of vital importance when making Hollandaise.

Rigged double boiler.

Whisk your eggs before you put them in the pot. Get them creamy. Then put them in your warm pot, quickly adding about 1 1/2 T of butter and whisking constantly to keep your yolk from becoming scrambled eggs. If they're solidifying too fast, pull your small pot out of the double boiler and lower your heat. Using the double boiler is a great way to control heat, so don't be afraid to adjust as necessary. Add about half your lemon juice and half seasoning and whisk a bunch more. Drizzle in your butter slowly, stopping about halfway to add the rest of your lemon juice, whisking all the time. After all your butter is added in and you keep whisking, your sauce should begin to look like the below picture. When it does, taste it and adjust the seasonings. You should wait to make your Hollandaise just before you're ready to serve it, as it doesn't sit very well for very long. If it does break (starts to look lumpy and curdled or separated), try adding ice-cold water a tablespoon at a time, whisking like mad, to correct it. 

I did sort of break my own rule and poached eggs while I was making my sauce. Poaching eggs is really not as hard as you may think. Get a good-sized pot (like a large saucepan) of boiling water going. ADD VINEGAR, about 3 T. This is a crucial step, as the egg whites will not coagulate correctly unless you add white vinegar to the water. Then I usually bring the water back down to a very gentle boil. When you're ready, break an egg into a small bowl. Give the water a gentle stir, and while the water is swirling, slide the egg in. It takes longer than you would think to cook an egg this way. But one good thing is that you can cook your eggs just before the sauce and put them under a warmer to until they're needed. 

Pretty hollandaise, thank goodness.

I had a hot pan (I'll confess, a hot pan of bacon grease) waiting for my shrimp. As soon as my sauce was ready, I threw my seasoned shrimp in. I was not bold enough with my blackening spice, sadly, because I was afraid to get them too spicy or salty for my mom, but they were still good. Medium-sized shrimp literally take about three minutes to cook. My bread was toasting in a low-heat oven, I had already made a huge plate of bacon already for my husband so he didn't stage a protest, and my mom was cutting fruit.

As soon as the shrimp were ready, it was time for assembly! Buttered, toasted bread, a layer of shrimp, a jiggly poached egg, and then sauce! I should have added a pinch of paprika for color, but ah, well. A food stylist, I am not.

So, really, the moral to the story is a) be prepared before you begin cooking. Get all your equipment and ingredients prepped before you begin, and there will be many fewer disasters, and b) don't be scared of Hollandaise! It's really not hard, and even if it's a wreck the first time, just try again. It's too rich and fatty for regular consumption (in my case--you may have mad metabolism), but it's such a nice treat, and it's pretty versatile. Traditional eggs Benedict are made up of a toasted English muffin, a slice of ham, a poached egg, and sauce. But you can change it up however you like. Hollandaise is also a traditional accompaniment to salmon and asparagus. Try it and serve it on anything you like!

Just for fun, I've been watching a HYSTERICAL new show on BBC through Hulu this week. It's called The Supersizers Go... and is about a female entertainer and a male food critic in England living (and mostly eating) as though they are living in the Victorian, Elizabethan, Restoration, etc...periods. The show is really well done because it's incredibly historically accurate in terms of dress, manners, past times, and especially about the food of the period. It's amazing how much really heavy protein and booze people consumed during these times in history (except during World War Two with all the rationing). It's sort of History Channel meets My Drunk Kitchen. Well worth the time investment, if you're into food, history, or drunken humor.