My Week in Food

        Yesterday was a very productive day for me.  I had decided earlier in the week that I was changing up some of my weekend routines so that I could get more done.  We've started to look at houses which means we don't get home until 7 or later.  These are the nights you don't want to chop veggies for supper.  For the past month, we'd usually end up eating frozen pizza or something just as easy and not at all nutritious.  To remedy this, I decided to do all of the veggie chopping on Saturday.  I had done this last weekend and it worked really well.  I've moved laundry day to Friday night (I lead a very exciting life.).  Saturday morning I made myself a pumpkin spice latte.  This is a recipe that I got from a vegan blog called Peas and Thank You.  Don't worry I'm not going vegan, I just enjoy her writing style and some of the healthy ideas from her recipes.  I unveganized it by using cow's milk.  It's still good.  I don't have the garam masala the recipe calls for so I added a dash of chili powder.  Same basic concept.  Side note, a couple days after we tried this recipe without the garam masala or chili powder I found an article in the Sioux City journal about garam masala with a recipe.  Thank you to the food gods!  I didn't try to make it yesterday.  I figured I already have enough planned for the day.  So after enjoying my pumpkin spice latte (my weekend treat!), I did the two loads of laundry left over from Friday night.  After that I raided the refrigerator for all of the veggies that needed to be chopped.  These included: 3 green peppers, 1 red pepper, 1 orange pepper, broccoli and a bag of carrots.  Crank up the radio and I'm in business.  In case you're wondering what all of that looks like, here's a pic:

I don't feel like the picture is an accurate depiction of all of the chopping I did but I hope you get the point.  On Saturday I also made a batch of rice and chicken noodle soup.  We frequently have stir-fry during the week but I always forget to make rice.  Ta-da!  Problem solved!  The chicken noodle soup is for today.  I like to have Sundays be very relaxing and being able to reheat a pot of soup will add to that.

Earlier in the week, we made pumpkin pie smoothies.  I got the recipe from the same site as the pumpkin spice latte.  We had already used the food processor so I had to use my blender.  I'm not that huge of a fan of blender and I was considering getting rid of mine due to the lack of use it gets.  I dragged out our blender and put the ingredients in.  The pitcher of the blender didn't appear to be sitting right but I wiggled it around and got the same result.  I turned it on and none of the ingredients moved.  This is not normal.  I adjusted it and tried a few more times... same result.  I took the pitcher off and looked at the bottom.  It was broken!  I've used this blender maybe 3 times since I got it!  What a piece of crap!  It was a Black and Decker Crush Master.  Don't buy it.  Another side note, I had registered for this as a wedding gift and someone gave it to us.  I'm not criticizing the gift.  I'm criticizing my ability to pick out a decent blender.  I stood there looking at my pumpkin pie smoothie ingredients in a busted blender wondering what to do.  Steve reminded me that I have an old blender from my grandma.  Grandma had given me this blender when I was going to college.  It was extremely old and she was going to get rid of it anyway.  We poured all of the ingredients into Grandma's blender.  Well, almost all of them.  An ice cube fell on my foot in the process.  I have a bruise.  Cooking/baking/smoothie making is dangerous work.  Grandma's 40-year old blender worked perfectly and our smoothies came out great.  So to recap: New blenders are junk.  40-year old blenders are great.  Here's a pic of both:

Ironic, right?  Please ignore my messy kitchen.  That's my week in food.  I hope you enjoyed it!

Kabobs and Smoothies

Tonight Steve and I decided to be adventurous and make kabobs. I had watched an episode of Rachael Ray a couple weeks ago and she was making shish kabobs. We made beef kabobs instead of shish kabobs because the shish part is lamb and I refuse to eat baby animals. Same goes for veal which is a calf (baby cow for you non-farmers). Don't get my wrong... I'm not a vegetarian, not even close, but I prefer my meat to be fully grown. I had looked up Rachael's recipe for the kabobs awhile ago but decided to wing it tonight. Steve cut a beef steak into bite size cubes and I did the same with a green pepper, red pepper, cucumber and half an onion. I seasoned the veggies and the beef liberally with salt and pepper before putting them on the skewers. We were using wooden skewers so we soaked them in water to avoid burning them. The veggies and the meat had their own skewers because each had their own cooking time. Thanks for the tip, Rachael! Another liberal seasoning of salt and pepper and the kabobs were ready for the grill. We also had rice going in our rice cooker for the side. The kabobs cooked really fast on the grill and tasted awesome! I think we've found another summer staple for our menus!

Now for the smoothie! The smoothie is actually tomorrow's breakfast. One of my goals last year was to eat breakfast every day but this habit has been kind of forgotten. I'm trying to revive the habit and make it healthy too. I had a recipe for smoothies from a HyVee magazine. It called for orange juice, which I don't have, and ice, which I refuse to use because the ice in our freezer tastes (and smells) disgusting (no matter what we do). I've made smoothies before and decided to wing it. I did have the fruit and the plain yogurt the recipe called for. I put in the amount of yogurt and the fruit according to the recipe in my food processor. Side note: I love my food processor. The blender I find annoying but I absolutely love my food processor! I gave the yogurt and fruit a whir and took a look. It looked a little skimpy... I added milk and gave it another whir. Not enough cherries... in more cherries went. I gave it a quick taste and concluded... that it needed a little sugar. A couple spoonfuls of sugar (no medicine involved here) blended in and it tasted great! I gave Steve a taste and he gave it a positive review. Breakfast is served!