Food of the Week

Good Sunday morning! I feel like the last few weeks have flown by in a blur, and it's only going to get busier around here for the next month. I have 5 baby/bridal showers, one 50th birthday party and family coming into town twice...all in March. Yikes! It's all great stuff of course, but it'll be busy for sure. I actually have to get ready soon to head to a bridal shower a couple hours away, but it's been a little bit since I've had a chance to do a weekly food catch-up, so I was determined to do so this morning.

Let's catch up, shall we?

Over the last two weeks or so our meals have swung a wide spectrum. I recently signed us up for Door-to-Door Organics, which delivers a box of organic produce and other items right to our house every week (a huge time saver, especially since we usually need to run out for extra fruit every weekend), and am loving it so far.

I've been making tons of chopped salads with the fresh produce we've been receiving (mainly for lunches), as well as stir fries and even a pasta dish with roasted shrimp, brie, my stocking stuffer saffron and lots of fresh asparagus and tomatoes. 

Seafood has also been making plenty of appearances. Last weekend when we were in the Poconos, Matt and the guys made a smoked brisket with homemade barbecue sauce and coleslaw, but I had a grilled tuna steak instead of the meat. It.was.amazing.

I could not get enough of the homemade sweet & spicy barbecue sauce combined with the crunchy, tangy slaw. It was the perfect meal after coming home from a chilly day on the slopes. 

Pause from food pics here to enter kid pictures...

This was before we put the skis on Riker. He was much happier then. Once the skis went on, it was total meltdown mode. Ah well, we'll try again next year. He had much more fun playing in the secret hideout at the cabin we were staying in. 

I can't take the cuteness.

Okay, back to the foodie pics.

When we got back home on Sunday we stopped to eat lunch outside at Fins, my favorite Cali-style burrito place. It was so gorgeous out (60 degrees!) I just could not fathom sitting inside at home, especially after being in the snow all weekend in PA.

I got a coconut fish wrap with Asian slaw and pickled onions. It didn't disappoint. We even got to spend a few minutes at the beach afterward. Perfection!

We also had Matt's mom's birthday that night, which included grilled shrimp, veggies and quinoa for dinner and the traditional Baratta family ice cream cake for dessert.

We've been eating a fair amount of fish at home, too. Last week Matt made homemade fish cakes with the striped bass he caught a while ago and which has been in our freezer. We eat them bun-less with homemade tartar sauce and a side of garlicky kale or spinach. They don't look that great, but they are really tasty.

Friday night we had a seafood feast of fresh clams & mussels, and seared salmon with homemade yogurt dill sauce. Matt picked up the seafood from our local fish market and it was super fresh and so good. We also made some coconut flour-dusted sweet potato fries on the side. Gotta have something to dip in all that delicious clam broth!

Veggie filled meals of salads, stir fries and seafood aside, we've also had a few "fun" meals...

1. Taco Night (with lettuce taco shells, salsa verde and queso fresco)

2. Nacho Night (uuuh, definitely not as healthy as lettuce tacos, but it was a snowy day, and, well whatever)

3. Indian Night (using a spice packet, paneer and naan we got at the local Indian food store, on top of quinoa with broccoli, peas and tomatoes)

Sometimes you just need to break things up with some spice in your life.

I did all my meal prepping yesterday for the next two weeks, and we have some good stuff coming up in all the same categories. I'm looking forward to trying a few new recipes I found on Pinterest as well, including curry cauliflower & sweet potato soup. I need to get all my soup fixes in now since spring is on the way!

Alrighty, off to get ready to shower my cousin's baby this afternoon. :) Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Strawberry Lime Coconut Cooler

A drink recipe! I’m not sure I’ve ever blogged one of these before, probably because the only things I really drink are water, unsweetened iced tea and coffee. Occasionally I will add lemon, lime or berries to my water, but that’s about it. Once in a while I get an itch for something different so I’ll buy some seltzer water, but after one sip I get hiccups and realize yet again that I don’t like carbonated beverages, and then it’s back to the plain old water.

But today is somehow already time for Recipe ReDux again (actually one day late, but I got no Internet service up in the Poconos, sooo it's coming today), and this month’s theme was all about drinks. Hot, cold, whatever your preference – but something healthy and different. Truth be told, if I wasn’t pregnant, I probably would’ve come up with some fun weekend cocktail. Filled with homemade ginger simple syrup, mint, and maybe some gin. Yep that’s what I could really go for right about now.

But alas, gin could not be had. So I made a fruit drink instead. I actually really like this drink because 1) It’s refreshing and would be great in summer, or makes you think of summer when it’s freezing cold and snowing outside, 2) It’s a great way to hydrate because it’s main liquid is coconut water, which is filled with electrolytes, 3) It’s not plain old water, and 4) It’s also a fun way to consume your afternoon fruit snack when you just can’t look at another apple.

Plus, there is no cooking or muddling or mashing or really even measuring. Just eyeball everything, dump it in a blender and blend away. Serve in a mason jar with a fun straw and for a second feel like you’re in Miami again.

Almost. (And P.S., this would probably be really good with vodka too if you were feelin’ that. Just saying.)

Strawberry Lime Coconut Cooler

Serves 1 (Can easily be multiplied)

Ingredients

1 cup (or 4-5 large) frozen strawberries

¾ cup coconut water (I use Cocozia)

¼ tsp. coconut extract

Juice of ½ a lime

1 tsp. coconut palm sugar

Toasted coconut for garnish (I use Trader Joe’s unsweetened)

Put all ingredients except toasted coconut in blender and blend until smooth, about 1 minute. Pour into glass and garnish with toasted coconut. Enjoy!

An InLinkz Link-up

Kale, Lox & Mozzarella Quiche

We're off to the Poconos for the weekend! Every year we go for a weekend to stay with Matt's friends from work who have a cabin near Camelback Mountain, and it's always a great time. We ski, we relax, we hang out and play cards and drink local brews and make homemade pizza. This year will be a little different for me since I can't ski and I can't partake in the beer drinking, but it'll still be fun. I fully plan to hang out in the ski lodge drinking hot tea and digging into my new book, And the Mountains Echoed, at least for a little while when Matt has Riker out on the slopes.

We planned to get on the road as soon as I finished work this evening and figured we'd just grab dinner on the way. But I've had a plan to make quiche for about a week now, and decided there was no reason we couldn't eat slices of that in the car rather than stopping for some (like unhealthy) food along the way.

Plus, I had two bunches of kale in the fridge that were starting to go limp and surely would've gone way past their prime by the time we returned home on Sunday night. And lox. Wild caught delicious lox that has been staring at me every day daring me to eat it, which I've been saving for this quiche. I simply couldn't wait another day.

So on my lunch break today - which is a rarity actually, I don't usually take an actual "lunch break" but opted to do so today - I emerged from my home office to spend a half hour in the kitchen whipping this up. It was well worth it.

When it was time to leave I cut out two slices and re-heated them in the toaster oven to take with us on the road, but in the meantime Matt stood at the counter eating it out of the pie plate cold, saying it was the best thing he's eaten in a while. I'll take that compliment any day. Especially since this quiche isn't made with heavy cream or fatty meats (meaning ham) the way most quiches are.

I made a big batch of kale chips to eat on the side - perfect snacking for the car ride and an extra serving of veggies too.

Heading into the mountains now and about to lose my hotspot - no complaints here. ;) Enjoy your weekend!

Kale, Lox & Mozzarella Quiche

Serves 4-6

Ingredients
1 pie crust (fresh or frozen)
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
4 oz. lox
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 bunch lox, ribs removed, chopped into bite size pieces, rinsed & dried
1 onion, chopped
3 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375. Blind bake the pie shell by pricking the shell with a fork, covering it with tin foil and filling it with dried beans or pie weights; bake for 15 minutes, then remove the pie weights and tin foil and bake another 5 minutes until crust is cooked.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil over medium heat and sauté onions, chopped kale and 1 tsp. of salt until veggies are softened. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Fold in the cooked onions and kale.

When the pie shell is cooked, remove it from the oven; while it is still warm, brush the edges with a beaten egg. Then spread half the mozzarella cheese on the bottom, followed by the slices of lox. Pour the egg & kale mixture over the lox. Finally, spread the remaining mozzarella cheese over the top.

Bake the quiche for 30-40 minutes, until the eggs puff up around the edges and a knife comes out clean. Let set for 10 minutes before serving. May be eaten hot or cold.