Brie Tortellini

Holy easy amazingness, Batman!!! I haven't cooked in approximately a thousand years because I'm NEVER home. A girl gets kinda tired of eating crackers for dinner, though, ya know? Enter the easiest pasta dish eeeeever.

1 package of tortellini (mine was cheese. Pretty sure anything goes)
about 1/2 lb chopped up tomatos (or however much you want)
1/2 cube brie (ish)
chicken (I totally cheated and used that ready to eat bagged cubed stuff. Don't judge me)
sliced fresh basil (I definitely forgot this, but I'm certain it would be perfect)

cook the tortellini as the package says. Drain and return to the pot. Immediately start adding little cubes of brie. Every few cubes, stir it up. The cubes will melt and start turning into a thick sauce. Keep adding until it's to your desired cheesiness. I like mine medium cheesy, so it was about a half triangle. Mix in the chicken and tomatoes, and add the basil last. SO EASY. And hello, the sauce is all melted cheese. Heck yes.

Sangria!

Two summers ago our "drink of the summer" was watermelon margaritas. Last summer it was mojitos. This summer it's going to be sangria. My usual first stop for a recipe? Allrecipes.com. Sure enough there was one with a bazillion reviews and almost all of them raving. As yesterday was our first No Pool Pool Party (NP3) of the season to celebrate my buddies Nic and Rob's return to the mainland, it was the perfect party to test this out on. And it was a freakin success, y'all.

1/2c brandy
1/4c. lemon juice
1/3c frozen lemonade concentrate
1/3c orange juice
1 bottle of red wine (or white, probably. Right?)
1/2c triple sec
1 sliced lemon
1 sliced orange
1 sliced lime
1 sm chopped apple
sliced strawberries (basically threw in all the fruit I could think of. To me, the more fruit the merrier)
2c ginger ale

I made it the night before, everything except the ginger ale and strawberries (they were super ripe, so I was afraid they'd get mushy), and let it marinate overnight. And marinate it did. The apple chunks the next day tasted like straight liquor. Awesome. Oh, and we also quadrupled the recipe and basically served it out of a giant bucket. Heh...I'm pretty sure that this isn't going to need a whole lot of tweaking. We tried it out before putting the ginger ale in and it was super good and SUPER strong. The ginger ale just cut it down a bit and made it last longer, so I'll leave that one up to you... ;) Just know that the first option also comes with a "knock you on your ass faster than you think" warning...weeee!! Also-I know that there are totally legit, fast and easy recipes out there for sangria. This one takes a bit of time and bunch of ingredients, but it's pretty damn good...

Basil Chicken over Angel Hair

I made this tonight! I love and adore angel hair pasta. No clue why. I think it's the light dreamy texture of it. Since I haven't actually cooked anything at my new place and my personal training client canceled on me tonight, I decided it was a good night to kick back, open a bottle of Downhill Wine, and whip up some food!

1-8oz package of angel hair pasta
2teas olive oil
1/2c finely chopped (I did sliced) onion (I assumed yellow?)
1 clove chopped garlic (one glove? For 4 servings? Yerrite. I did 2. The Ashtons raised me better than that)
2 1/2c chopped tomatoes (I used Roma)
2c cubed cooked chicken breast (oops)
1/4c chopped fresh basil
1/2 teas salt
1/8 teas hot pepper sauce (I used a couple shakes of ground red pepper)
1/4c Parmesan cheese

In a large pot of salted boiling water, cook angel hair pasta until it is al dente, about 8-10 mins (the one I used only took 3 mins!! Keep an eye on it). Drain, and set aside.

In a large skillet, heat oil over med-high heat. Saute the onions and garlic. Stir in the tomatoes, chicken, basil, salt, and hot pepper sauce. Reduce heat to med, and cover skillet. Simmer for about 5 mins, stirring frequently, until mixture is hot and tomatoes are soft.

Toss sauce with hot cooked angel hair pasta to coat. Serve with Parmesan cheese.

Other than throwing raw chicken in with everything because I didn't READ THE DIRECTIONS (every teacher I've ever had hates me), which I don't think really negatively impacted it at all, this was a totally easy and freakin tasty dish!! It's a very light sauce, mostly just the juices from the tomatoes, which I liked. The basil and garlic took over the flavor, which suits me juuuuust fine. I'll just go ahead and file this one under success ;)

ps-holy crap my food pics totally suck...I'll have to work on that...

Teriyaki Beef Stir Fry

I was super craving something teriyaki-y today and, since I bought some veggies at the farmer's market on Sunday, thought a stir-fry type thing would be good. I snagged some sauce from Target and some beef fajita strip things from Whole Foods and the rest is history...




1 packaged (1-ish lb's) of fajita cut beef
1/2 bottle of Kikkoman Teriyaki baste and glaze
1 med yellow onion
4 large chard leaves
3 weird orange radish/beet type things (no clue. I bought them at the farmer's market because they're pretty! I'm eating it right now and still have no idea what they are)
1 med green bell pepper
rice



Put 2T of olive oil in a frying pan. Over med heat, cook the beef, flipping once when half done. After you flip it, pour in the teriyaki sauce and simmer until cooked. Maybe 5 mins total. Ish. Take the meat out and set aside on a dish, keeping the sauce in the pan. Add the mystery veggie, bell peppers, onion, and the chopped stem of the chard and cook until slightly soft. When it's almost done, add in the chard leaves. Add the meat back in and serve with rice.

Success!! My meat was a little overcooked (as usual. damn it!), and I put a little too much sauce in mine, but overall it was pretty good. I managed to get the veggies just right. Cooked but still a little crispy.

Coconut Mojito

There's a mojito bar in San Jose that we were obsessed with for a while. They have a coconut mojito that tastes like it was made with the baby jesus's very own hands. SO GOOD. They have rum with giant chunk of fruit marinating in it and the result is fabulous. Rather than continue to spend $10 a drink on this taste of heaven, we decided to try to make them ourselves. After several test rounds, we finally came up with the perfect concoction.

2 teas sugar
8 mint leaves
1 1/2 shots light rum
1/2 shot of Malibu coconut rum
1 shot lime juice
splash of soda water

Smash sugar, mint and lime juice in a cup with one of those..uh...smasher thingies. Pour the booze mixture over it. Add a splash of soda water on top and some ice and you're good to go. The manual labor is worth the result, trust.

Apple Cinnamon Quinoa

The love of my life, quinoa, is not a savory only ingredient! I think I remember my brother Justin mentioning that it could be cooked up and eaten just like oatmeal/hot cereal. Huh...I'm game! So I poked around the interwebs and pulled from a few sources to make this:

2c. rinsed quinoa
4c water
1 peeled, diced apple (just peel with a potato peeler, and type of apple is up to you. I usually use Granny Smith)
2 teas cinnamon
handfull of raisins

Combine the water and quinoa, bring to a boil then cover and simmer. When water level meets quinoa level (ie: it's about half way done), throw in the apples and raisins so that they cook and soften and sweeten up the quinoa. I like my raisins all plump and juicy, but if you want them more chewy then just add them in right before you eat it. When the water is all absorbed, mixed in the cinnamon and voila! Simple as that. Just like any hot cereal, feel free to add a little brown sugar/syrup/whatever and milk if you want. It's really up to you. I like a ton of apple, so I usually throw in a bit extra of that, too.

Quinoa. Again.

This is kind of a cop-out, since I've pretty much made this before but, since I haven't cooked anything in approximately forever, I'm writing about it anyways. Deal. It is, however, the first time that I've used ground meat with quinoa, so it's sorta newish! It's my 'crap I wanna make dinner but don't want to put ANY effort into figuring out what to make or actually making it' meal.

Quinoa:
1 part quinoa to 2 parts chicken stock (it's been a little squishy lately, so maybe a smidge less than 2 parts). I used almost 2 cups of dry quinoa, which might have been a little too much for the amount of meat and veggies that I had.

While that's simmering, covered, I started the meat and veggies.

-splash of water
-1lb (I think. 1 package, anyways) of ground pork (because it was the cheapest and well, ground meat is ground meat to me. My palette is sophisticated like that)
-a sprinkle of Fagundes (sp?)meat seasoning (that stuff is the SHIZ! Especially rubbed on a steak. Drool...I'll put it on pretty much anything)

Saute the meat up over med-ish heat until it's not pink and transfer it onto a plate/bowl with a slatted spoon to drain the liquid. Try not to continuously pick at it and end up eating half of it off the plate because ground meat with seasoning tastes like a dream come true. Oops.

Leaving a little of the liquid behind, toss in your veggies and cook those suckers up over med-high heat until soft-ish. This time I had green beans, mixed potatoes (which I bought at the farmer's market. I love the purple ones. Because they're pretty.), and yellow squash. Oh-I put the potatoes in first for a few minutes because they take longer to cook than the other veggies. I'm a dumbass and sprinkled more seasoning on the veggies, because I'm obsessed with it. Let me tell you something- chicken stock (or any stock)+salty seasoning on meat AND veggies=OMG I NEED WATER. Way too much salty. Oops. It was still super tasty though, and made enough for probably about 4-6 people. (read: I'll be eating leftovers every meal for a week)

Side note: I go to the farmer's market every Sunday to load up on produce, but didn't have any veggies other than the potatoes on hand because I went all apple and orange crazy at the market last week. I went to Whole Foods, the only place with decent organic veggies, prepared to get raped by their outrageous prices (I've paid $4 there on accident for ONE red pepper before. Wtf.). For once, they weren't bad though! I try to stick to the farmer's market because I like knowing that it's fresh and local, but Whole Foods is a decent fall-back. Sometimes.