Pancakes, Pancakes! (Or, Liam's 1st Blogpost)

  Yesterday morning Liam wanted to help me make pancakes. One of his (many) favorite books is Eric Carle's Pancakes, Pancakes; so, while he always enjoys helping me cook, making pancakes was especially exciting. As he poured ingredients into the bowl, he noticed my camera on the counter and said he wanted to take pictures of the pancakes. I thought I'd let him have his first go at food blogging ... he's a pretty advanced two-year-old :) After I loaded the pictures onto the blog I asked him to tell me the story of making pancakes so his grandparents could read it. He was pretty tickled about the idea, and here's what he came up with. (Disclaimer: he did not take the pictures on his own. I was not about to let him hold the camera while standing on a chair over tile floor. He pushed the button and was very proud. Also, you should not follow his pancake making instruction verbatim).

   "You always put some eggs in it, flour, some cement mixer. You always put some water over it when you do the pancakes. You mix it around."

 "You always put some pancakes and flop it over. You take it off and you put it on your plates. You put syrupy on it and you always eat it."

   "It tasted good and I had it."

  

I let Cora gnaw on a pancake for the first time as a little 8 month birthday treat. She was a huge fan.

Tasty Tilapia

  In the past month we've been cooking up some DELICIOUS fish here in the Lawson household. I love all manner of fish and seafood, but for financial reasons, tilapia is the fish we eat most often. My only issue with tilapia is that sometimes it can seem a little boring. Early in our marriage Josh and I ate a lot of broiled or baked tilapia with rice and broccoli, or some other veggie on the side. Nutritious? Yes. Exciting? No. It was pretty bland.

  Anyway, these two recipes that I discovered on Pinterest and tried out recently have livened up our fish eating. Note: neither of these recipes call specifically for tilapia ... it's just the mild, white fish that is most easily and cheaply accessible to us. I should also mention that both of these recipes use a lot of cilantro and lemon. To me, fish, cilantro, and lemon taste like a Mexican beach fiesta; but if you don't like those things you probably shouldn't waste your time trying these out.

Skillet Fillets with Cilantro Butter
  This recipe was really quick to throw together and I prepared it as directed, with the exception of the ground red pepper, because I didn't have any. It was melt-in-your-mouth delicious, and we ate it with rice and the following fantastic cauliflower.

Roasted Cauliflower
  Oh my goodness. Roasting cauliflower this way blows any other way I've ever eaten cauliflower out of the water. It is SO tasty (an opinion I've never had about cauliflower in the past) - the only caution I would give is that the flavor is pretty garlicky. Josh and I really like garlic, but if you are garlic-shy, you may want to cut back a little on the amount that the recipe calls for.   

Epic Fish Tacos
  The title of this recipe is no joke. I made these for dinner last night and they were amazing. Josh and I both loved them and agreed that this is the best fish taco recipe I've ever tried out (bless the poor man's heart ... he has to put up with a lot of new recipe attempts because I love trying new things). Anyway, these fish tacos are fantastic. I used baby spinach instead of pea shoots or watercress, some pre-made guacamole I had in the freezer (and then added the other fresh stuff the recipe calls for to it) because my avocado wasn't ripe enough, lite sour cream instead of creme fraiche, and Pickapeppa sauce instead of hot sauce because it was all I had on hand. I had to make myself stop eating these because they were so delicious.

  When I try a new recipe I have my own little mental ranking system that I use to categorize it:

*Never Cook Again

*Cook Again, but only for family

(this usually means cheap & nutritious, but not tasty enough that I'd want to serve it to guests)

*Tasty Enough to Cook for Company

*Special Occasion

(this usually means it would be too expensive to cook for a large group, but delicious enough that I'd make it for a birthday or date night with Josh)

  All three of the above recipes fell into the most valued "Tasty Enough to Cook for Company" category, so I hope you'll give them a try!

Recipes on Parade

 My recent effort to be more consistent with meal-planning has motivated me to start trying out some of the many recipes I've pinned on my "Looks Delicious" board on Pinterest. (Is that enough links in one sentence for you? Buckle up - this is going to be a link-heavy post). There have been a few recipes that haven't made the cut for our household, but we've really enjoyed several of the dishes I've tried. I'm excited to share them, but I don't think I understand proper blogging etiquette/copyright law enough to trust myself to post the actual recipes (or versions of them) here, so instead I thought I'd just review a few we've liked and give you the links to the original blogs so you can give them a shot if you're interested! Here are some that have made the official move to my "Worth Eating Again" board:

No-Bake Energy Bites
 Oh heavens. I'm telling you about these first while I still have your attention because I'm crazy about them. They are basically a healthier version of a no-bake cookie: oats, flaxseed, chocolate chips, peanut butter, honey, toasted coconut ... how could you go wrong with that combo? I also love that, if you used steel-cut oats, this is a quick and easy gluten-free snack. My mom & sister both have to eat gluten-free, so I always get excited when I find something that I think is delicious that I can share with them. I've got a container of these little guys in my fridge right now, and they are so filling that you really wouldn't want to eat more than two at a time. Also, they always make me want to drink milk. You should make these.

Hawaiian Barbecue Pulled Chicken Sandwiches
  I don't think I've mentioned this recipe before, but I've made it several times over the past few months and it has become one of my favorite quick and easy meals. Well, it's quick and easy to assemble, but since it's a crockpot meal I guess it actually takes quite a while.All you need for this recipe is chicken, chopped onion, barbecue sauce, & pineapple; and all that is required of you is to toss it in a crockpot & then shred the chicken when it is nearly done (the shredding even being made a breeze by tossing it in the Kitchenaid mixer - a handy tip I learned from my friend, Carol). It's a great meal to freeze half of for later (or to share, if you're in the stage of life where it seems someone has a baby every other week).

Crockpot Brown Sugar Chicken
  I was both intrigued and a little nervous about this recipe, mostly due to the massive amount of brown sugar you dump in your crockpot. Then, in it's early cooking stages, I was sure we were going to end up with a huge pot of chicken we'd have to throw away, because the vinegar smell was a little stinky. However, by the time dinner rolled around and we topped our rice with the chicken, poured on a little of the broth, and mixed in the steamer bag of veggies that were fresh out of the microwave (because this is the only way I can get myself to consistently prepare vegetables without tons of waste - and I'm okay with that), we found it made quite a tasty dish. Since the recipe makes a TON of chicken, I ended up shredding all of the leftover chicken, freezing half, and keeping the other half in the fridge to eat on sandwiches, with rice, or over a salad.

7 Layer Mexican Bean Dip
 I tried out this 7 layer dip for a community group potluck last night. I liked the idea of a dip that is a little different than the traditional cold 7 layer dip I would normally think of. While I probably won't make this often (it's REALLY hearty & a little time-consuming), it's great for a crowd. It takes a little while because you have to factor in baking the spicy brown rice it calls for. I think I might prefer some of the flavors of the traditional cold dip (I'm a big fan of sour cream & guacamole), but it was fun to have something a little spicy and unexpected.

  There you have it - the latest & greatest, from my kitchen to yours.

  Also, if anyone knows of a great resource for understanding good blogging/linking etiquette that would help me make sure I'm not being a pirate or an intellectual property thief, please send me the link. I really try to avoid being a thieving pirate.

Grilled Cabbage

  Another post about food! I never blog about food, but here I am, apparently very inspired by the fresh tastes of summer. This summer Josh and I decided to go in with our friends, the Bogues, and buy a "harvest share subscription" from a local farm. There is a non-profit in our community called The Cobblestone Project, whose dream is to, "work towards 'A Community Without Need.'" One of the ways they are pursuing this goal is through an initiative called "the Farm". At the Farm they grow a wide range of produce, both to sell and to give away. This year they sold share subscriptions to help fund the costs of growing the produce they give to local shelters and individual families.

  That long explanation is just to say that, as of two weeks ago, I now head to the Bentonville farmer's market every Saturday morning to pick up our lug of produce for the week. I have really enjoyed the challenge of using what we receive in the lug, which so far has consisted of lettuce, spring onions, broccoli, new potatoes, & cabbage. When we got our head of cabbage this week, I was a little mystified as to what to do with it. Cabbage always feels like a fall/winter vegetable to me. It makes me think of hearty soups or an accompaniment to sausages. I know coleslaw is summery, but I didn't really feel like slathering the cabbage in all that oil & dressing.

Photo by: Taste of Home

So, to help me brainstorm I turned to good ol' allrecipes.com and found an idea that had never occurred to me before: grilling cabbage. The recipe that you'll find at that link was my inspiration, but here's what I did:

• Sliced the cabbage into wedges and arranged on a large piece of foil
• Placed a small pat of margarine on each wedge, then seasoned them all with a few shakes of Tony Chachere's creole seasoning.
• Sealed the foil and placed on a preheated grill (I left them on about 20-25 minutes because they were fairly thin wedges, and just flipped the foil packet once).

I think I can safely say that this is my favorite way I have ever eaten cabbage. I prepared half of a head, and Josh and I ate all of it with our dinner tonight. I plan on using this method every time we get cabbage in our lug this summer, and it will encourage me to buy it more often in the future. I'm sure it would be just as tasty with any other seasonings (Cavender's, salt & pepper, etc.), and a big benefit to grilling it outside is that our house wasn't permeated with the strong scent of cooking cabbage. I hope you give it a try - it's excellent!

Delish

(Disclaimer: this post would be more visually interesting if I took a picture of what I'm about to write about, but I really can't be bothered with that. Caring for a one-year-old and a husband with a broken foot kills my motivation to photograph my food, transfer it onto the computer, and then upload it. You'll just have to use your imagination).

 I have to tell y'all about THE. BEST. SNACK/LUNCH. EVER. Seriously, I could eat this tasty treat every day (possibly even twice) and not get sick of it. A couple of months ago, when my friend, Kristen, was in town visiting her mom, Liam & I went to have lunch with she and her little girl, Eisley. Kristen introduced me to this yummy-ness that she and her husband invented; and now I would like to introduce it to you.

Peppered Apple, Goat Cheese & Salami stacks

Ingredients:

• Apple (preferably a sweeter variety - I like the pink lady)
• Goat cheese
• Salami (I use hard salami, sliced not too thin, not too thick)
• Cracked black pepper

Yep, the name that I made up for it describes exactly what is in it, as well as how it is assembled. I don't think you could really call this a recipe ... it's just a list of a few ingredients that taste amazing together. All you do is slice the apple into fairly thin slices (not paper thin - you want crunch, but you don't want the apple flavor to overpower the other flavors), smear some goat cheese on the slices, crack pepper over the cheese, and top with little slices of salami.

It is perfection. The sweetness & crunch from the apple, the tangy creaminess of the goat cheese, the bite of the pepper, & the full flavor of the salami ... it's fantastic.

The only catch is that you have to like apples, goat cheese, salami & cracked pepper. If you do not like any one of these ingredients, you will not like the end result. Josh thinks it's gross. I think it's life-changing.