Smoked Salt & Pepper

I learned how to cook by making omelettes for weekend breakfasts with and then later, for my mom. It's a great dish to clean out your fridge with.  Any past-their-prime veggies or deli meats and cheeses can be used once you get the hang of what tastes good together. Ham and Cheese Omelette eggs (I usually number of people +2 eggs for how many I use) chopped ham or other deli meat shredded cheese salt and pepper butter herbs (green onions, parsley, etc.) Directions: In a small bowl, crack and beat the eggs with a fork until combined.  Add salt and pepper. Warm a large pan over medium heat and add a small amount of neutral cooking oil and a small pat of butter. Gently pour the beaten eggs in the pan and swirl the pan to evenly coat the bottom.  You can shake the pan or use a spatula to gently lift cooked edges and replace with the remaining uncooked eggs. Once most of the eggs are set, put your fillings (chopped ham and shredded cheese, cooked onions, cooked spinach, whatev...

I have always been a little intimidated by making biscuits from scratch. And the biscuit mixes I've tried thus far have been lacking and gummy (Bisquik=bisyuck). Making some nice, yummy, country-style biscuits with flaky butter layers without resorting to 'pop'n fresh' containers has eluded me. Until I found this recipe from Chrissy Tiegan's Cravings cookbook. Equal parts delicious and non-fussy. I did do a few adjustments, such as make maple butter glaze instead and I don't generally keep buttermilk on hand so I make my own. Chrissy Tiegan's Cravings Pull-Apart Buttermilk Biscuits Ingredients: 1 1/2 c. whole milk 1 TBS and 2 tsp. white vinegar 1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes 3 cups plus 2 TBS. all purpose flour 1 TBS. baking powder 1 tsp. sugar 1 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. baking soda For maple butter glaze: 5 TBS. butter, 3 TBS maple syrup, 1 tsp. salt Directions: In a measuring cup, combine milk and white vinegar a...

A few months ago, heck, maybe a year ago, I bought some English muffins. I've never been a huge English muffin fan, but after experiencing gestational diabetes, I became much more aware of my carbohydrate intake. I made a goal for myself to try to finish a whole sleeve of English muffins before they molded or went bad. I'm really the only person in my household that eats much of a breakfast at home, so it was particularly challenging. Here are a few of the meals or combos or ideas I came up with. English muffin with 'Love'dip from Central Market.   English muffin with canned sardines in tomato sauce with pickled onions   English muffin breakfast sandwich with honey ham, backyard eggs, arugula, and mayonnaise.   English muffin raspberries, honey, and Greek yogurt     English muffin with fresh strawberries and condensed milk

Back in October of the last year, I lost my grandmother. She lived in Paris and I was thankfully able to attend her funeral. It's been a hard loss, and I'm not sure I've really allowed myself to fully process it all. I loved my grandmother, my ba ngoai , so much. More than I can even grasp. She is how I was able to appreciate food. She is the reason I can fully understand how love can be shown through food and cooking. Her cooking, the smells wafting through her tiny apartment in Paris, are tied to some of my best childhood memories. My ba ngoai taught me how to love everyone. She taught me how to smile in the face of adversity; how the glint in smiling eyes can disarm anyone. Ba ngoai lived through a lot. She lived through a war that tore her home and wealth from her, she lived through re-establishing herself and life in another country, she lived through her brother never coming home, she lived through raising 3 children, she lived through her husbands death...

You know how you throw out or give away all the food in your fridge before you go on vacation? Yea, well it's a necessary evil of making sure you don't come home to a stinky house.  The problem with that, is it leaves you with no food when you come home from vacation and you're tired. And you have to unpack. And need to do 5 loads of laundry. Going grocery shopping is one of the last things on my mind when I come home from a trip. So I usually have a few things stocked in my pantry or freezer that I would consider 'staples'.  This is also helpful for if you have a baby and don't have time or the effort to have perishables.  And hate food waste.  I usually have some oatmeal and/or grits in the pantry for breakfast.  And I usually have some kind of seafood, ground beef, and chicken thighs or breasts in my freezer.  And I usually keep some parmesan cheese in my freezer.  So I happened to have some frozen shrimp in the freezer when we came home from o...

I don't know about you, but allergy and cold and flu season has been kicking my butt. Maybe it's the lack of sleep while waking up so frequently to breastfeed the baby, the Bells Palsy, or just being post-partum, but my immune system just hasn't been working great.  So this is a great way to quickly get some vitamin C in that's easy to gulp down.   I love the taste of cardamom  and cinnamon and the turmeric adds anti-inflammatory benefits. Raw honey is supposed to help with allergies.  Flax seed adds omega 3.  I have a Blendtec blender so it's super easy to throw everything in (can be prepped night before) and blend in the morning while I'm toting the baby around in the morning.   Then it goes in my shaker cup! 2 c. Unsweetened vanilla almond milk 1 large Fuji apple 2 carrots 2 mandarin oranges 2 tbs ground flax seed 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon 1/2 tsp Indian turmeric  2 tsp ground cardamom  Directions: combine all ingredients in a blender. 

I really enjoy baking, but having gestational diabetes has made it difficult to enjoy baking the usual things.  Banana bread is one of those things that I'll make once I have a few too-ripe-bananas and want to have breakfast for the week ready.   I have an old standby recipe that I have no idea where it's origins are from, except that the handwritten recipe is in my sister's handwriting and it's on a scrap of a flash card.  I altered this one to include some dark chocolate chips to compensate for cutting back the sugar and subbing whole wheat flour for some of the all purpose flour.  I also added some chopped walnuts for added protein/satiety.  Came out well.  I did add some cream cheese frosting to the loaf for Reid to enjoy.  Without icing, it still comes out to about 42 grams of carbs per serving (which is a bit more then the 30 g/meal I should be eating...).  But hey, I can satisfy myself with half a slice and 1 c. of milk. "Healthified" Ban...

I don't think I ever realized how great of a childhood I had.  Every summer when I was in elementary school, my mom would take my sister and me to visit her family in Paris, France.  I remember waking up to the smells of fresh baked mini croissants and p âté chaud  and pain au chocolats wafting in the bedroom from my grandmother ( b à ngoại )'s tiny Paris apartment kitchen.  I didn't know it at the time, but my mom would later tell me that  b à ngoại  would wake up at 4am just to make us that special breakfast.  Lately I've been feeling really nostalgic and my  b à ngoại   doesn't really remember me so I wanted to remember her in a way that I could.  I visited her last summer in Paris and although her physical health is still pretty good, I don't know if she remembers me and those memories we shared. Pâté Chaud  is a Vietnamese-French meat-filled pastry.  If you've ever had a Chinese bao zi (steamed pork bun) think like tha...

I'm posting this recipe mainly for my mom, who was interested in my overnight oats when my parents stayed with us a couple of weeks ago.  I'm always looking for easy, quick breakfast meals and overnight oats is as good as it gets for me as far as meal planning goes.  I can make a batch of 10 of these jars on Sunday night and have breakfast on-the-go for both me and hubs for the whole work week.  These are so easy to put together, that even the hubs can assemble them.  I'm always amazed at people who can plan an entire week or month's worth of meals for their family.  I'm lucky if I can get it together enough to defrost some chicken to eat for that night's dinner.  So overnight oats is my stepping stone to those Pinterest boards of months of freezer-to-crockpot pictures I'm oh-so-envious of. Overnight Oats (makes 4) Ingredients: 4 pint sized mason jars 2 c. old fashioned or steel-cut oats 8 tsp. maple syrup 1 tsp. vanilla extract 4 tbs. chia seeds ...

Sometimes, it's hard being a morning person.  Like on weekends.  As much as I try, I have to get up at around 7 or 8am.  Every once in a while, I can go back to sleep after feeding the animals breakfast and letting them out but for those weekend days where I can't get back to sleep, making a big breakfast keeps me busy while Reid sleeps in. This morning, I made banana muffins and a mango-strawberry-orange-banana smoothie.  This banana bread recipe came from my mom's recipe box.  It had been clipped out of the Houston Chronicle who knows how long ago.  I've tried a few other recipes (usually when I can't find this one), but always come back to this one.  It's the perfect balance of moist, sweet, and banana-y.  This morning I made them in a cupcake pan instead of a bread pan and I think I prefer it this way.  It doesn't seem to dry out as much, because I didn't have to bake them as long.  The bread would always get a little more crispy a...

Smoothies, breakfast of champs!  It's hard for me to get Reid to eat breakfast. He likes something on-the-go that won't cut into snooze time. I like getting fruits and veggies into our day somehow.  I was made aware of how bad we were at getting at least 3 servings of fruit/veggies a day when my friend, Dalia, headed up a Facebook get healthy in 30 days challenge. We were given points for healthy choices and it made me aware that the days I didn't drink a smoothie, I wasn't getting enough fruits or veggies.  We have a really nice blender, a Blendtec , which makes smoothies a breeze in the morning. I can drink one before (or if I'm running late, carry to) work and leave one for Reid by the door to drink on his way to work. The Blender Bottle really helps break up that weird crust that forms if you don't drink a smoothie right away, so it's my choice for on-the-go smoothies. I even tried the Dr. Oz 3 day smoothie cleanse (because you can do anything for just ...

This was a super easy, throw-together-10-minutes-before-dinner, fridge left-overs kind of meal.  Reid was out-of-town, and it was difficult for me to put in the effort to make a usual dinner so I peaked in the fridge and found kale, eggs, and chicken broth.  Yay! A meal! I did a little googling and found a similar recipe on  http://www.yumsugar.com/Spicy-Garlic-Kale-Poached-Eggs-30574463 .  Most recipes poached the eggs separately, but why dirty another pot? I just poached the eggs over the kale.  It was a tasty, healthy and simple dinner!  Serve with some toast so you can sop up all that yummy egg yolk! Kale and Poached Eggs Ingredients: 2 cups kale, ribs removed and cut into 1/2" strips 2 large eggs 1 c. chicken broth 1 tbs. olive oil 1 tbs. butter 2 cloves garlic, sliced 1 tsp. paprika, smoked if you have it salt 2 tsp. red pepper flakes Directions: Bring a large, straight-sided pan to medium-high heat; add olive oil and butter. Sau...

Did you know that homemade bagels are AMAZE-BALLS?!!!!! Well, they are! OMG they are so good.  I don't know how anyone could ever give up carbs.  I mean, these bagels are so good.  They are totally worth the 2 days it took to make them.  Yea, it took two days to make them, but all of it wasn't hands on.  Most of the wait was waiting for them to rise for 24 hrs (and I didn't have time after work one night, so I actually let them rise for 48 hours).  I'd always been kind of nervous about making bagels because one super traditional recipe I read used lye to boil the bagels.  Lye? Like the caustic basic solution stuff? The recipe even had a note about how it's hard to purchase/illegal maybe to sell lye in the grocery store so you had to order it online.  Can't remember where I saw that recipe, Food & Wine or epicurious.  But yea, that put me off making bagels.  But then my friend Laura told me she made bagels with her mom and they were a...

You know what one of the benefits of getting married is? New kitchen gadgets!!!!!!!! Oh yea, and gaining a lifelong partner to share the joys of life and family and all that jazz.  But seriously, so many gifts.  It's like Christmas times a gazillion.  So the next few posts will be of me trying out all of the new goodies.  Like our waffle iron: Thanks, Marcus! Recipe from the St. John's church recipe book, a bridal shower gift.  This church is where both Reid's grandparents were members and where Reid's parents got married. Belgian Waffles Ingredients: 1 c. flour 1/2 tsp. salt 1 c. milk 1/2 tbs. melted butter 1 tsp. baking powder 1 tbs. sugar 1 egg, separated Directions: Sift dry ingredients together in a bowl. Beat whites until stiff; set aside. Add egg yok, butter and milk to the dry ingredents an dmix thoroughly. Stir 1/4 of the egg white into the batter to lighten it and gently fold in the remaining egg white. Bake accordi...

Last weekend I had my bachelorette weekend in Vegas and it was so fun. I think the best part was being able to see so many of my girl friends who live all over. My old roommate, Allegra, wrote me a card about some of the good times we had when we lived together and one of the things she mentioned was when I threw together a quiche with our leftovers. I had totally forgotten about that and it was such a sweet memory to remember. Anyway, it made me crave quiche and so I made this for lunch after work today. I don't know if it was because I was so hungry or because of some of the tweaks I made to my recipe, but it came out so pretty and yummy!  Also, if you want to make this quiche extra delicious, make Tartine's homemade pie crust**.  Reid will literally just eat the pie crust, it's so good!  It makes 2 pie crusts, so you can freeze one of them to make quiche another day. Spinach Quiche Ingredients: 1 c milk with 2 tsp Greek yogurt mixed in, allow to set at room temp ...

Sunday mornings deserve a great brunch.  I'd done some damage at Central Market last week.  Who can resist fresh baked rosemary bread or maple smoked bacon?  I can't.  Decided to whip this together in order to salvage the last of the rosemary bread. Baked Egg in Bread Ingredients Rosemary bread, cut in 1" thick slices 4 eggs 2 tsp butter, melted 1 tbs grated hard cheese (IE parmasan, fontina, etc) 1 tbs chopped italian parsley Salt & Pepper 1/4 lb. maple smoked bacon (optional) Directions Using a spoon or your fingers, create a crater in the center of each slice of bread to fit an egg.  Try to leave a thin layer of bread at the bottom. Note: this would've worked better with individual small rolls, but I had a delish loaf of bread on hand Brush with melted butter Crack one egg into the crater.  Top with cheese Bake at 350* 15-20 minutes or until eggs are set.  Fry up the bacon during this time Sprinkle each egg wit...