A super easy super fancy yummy dinner

So last Tuesday, the boy had a work dinner and I was fully prepared to cozy up on the couch with a big container of watermelon, some tea, and the Olympics. Some days, if it’s just me, I’m all like, fuck cooking. Right? But then at lunch I came across this recipe and I was like, you know what, I want to make this for dinner. AND I’M SO GLAD I DID.

Warning. This recipe is for clams. If you do not like clams, mussels, et cetera et cetera, well you suck and need to try them and experience their delicious, briny glory. But in the meantime, just ignore this whole post.

But anyway. Yeah. I love clams. But they are really more of an East Coast thing and as such, are hard to find in Houston. This is a city that loves itself some oysters. Which is cool and all, but jeeeez, who doesn’t love clams in a good broth with a nice crusty piece of bread to sop it all up?

Bonus on this dish – it is super easy, I SWEAR, but it will look so impressive for guests. This recipe makes enough broth for probably 4 people, but I only bought enough clams for myself, so take that all into consideration when prepping and buying ingredients.

Alright, onwards to Clams in a Fennel and Shallot Broth.

You will need:

- Claims (original recipe said 1 ½ lbs for 4 servings – I bought myself 2/3 of a pound because I was a hungry hungry hippo)
- Olive oil
- 1 medium-large shallot, diced
- 1 medium fennel bulb, diced
- 2 cups chicken stock
- 1 medium Yukon gold potato, peeled and diced
- Parsley (fresh is preferable, but I just used dried because I suck)
- Salt
- Pepper
- A CRUSTY AMAZING PIECE OF BREAD TO DIP IN THE BROTH

Ok so if you’re going with the original amount for 4 servings (let’s pretend we are), you need to bring a cup of water to a boil in a stock pot and then toss in the clams. Cover and steam them for 5 minutes, or until all the clams are open. Remove from pot and set aside. Reserve the cooking liquid.




Meanwhile, getchyo mise en place going:




Dice the shallot and fennel BULB (you can toss the stalks and fronds) into small pieces. They do not have to be perfect here. Drizzle 2 tbsp of olive oil in a sauté pan and heat to medium. When pan is hot, add fennel and shallot and sauté for 6-8 mins, until soft and translucent. Do NOT brown the shallot.




Add chicken stock, reserved clam water (ewww), and diced potato to the pan. Bring to a boil, cover, and let simmer for 15 minutes.

After 15 mins, add contents of pan to a blender (or in batches to your Magic Bullet, like me). Puree until smooth. Pour into bowls and add clams. SOP UP THE DELICIOUS BROTH WITH YOUR CRUSTY BREAD NOM NOM NOM.




Easy, right?

My friends have far too many parties. I mean, I’m really not complaining when someone offers to let me drink at their house and eat their food, but seriously, I don’t know how they do it. Because I hate having people over, which you should know by now.

But whatever, there was a party for the Olympics Friday night, and it came at a perfect time because I saw this wing recipe on Pinterest that I wanted to try, but wings aren’t something that I’m just gonna pop in the oven for a regular old dinner, so the party was a perfect opportunity to try it out.

I have never made wings before in my life. I leave that honor to the good folks at B-Dubs, because their wings are awesome. Also, they come in wonderful, non-spicy sauces. Which is great for me because I’m a puss and don’t like spicy things.

These wings were super easy. I’m sorry I don’t have more pictures, but they were done and then WHOOSH, packed up and whisked off to the party like freakin Cinderella. So just imagine them in your mind.

Ok, let’s get started with the wings.

You will need:

- 2-3 lbs of wings (I bought two packs; also, may I suggest buying them already pre-separated because separating the drumstick part is a BITCH)
- 4 tbsp Chinese 5 spice
- Chili powder
- Salt

Put the wings in a large bowl and cover with the 5-spice, and salt and chili to taste. I kinda just did a few shakes from each. Whatever. Then cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least an hour, can be left overnight if needed.




When you’re ready to bake, spray two sheet pans w/ cooking spray and preheat oven to 400. Put the wings on the baking sheet, making sure they have space between each and aren’t touching. Bake in the middle rack for 25 mins, and then take out and flip them over. At this point, check on them in 5 minute intervals, because you will have a lot of fat rendering and that fat is likely to burn. Fun times. I probably baked mine for another 7 minutes before I could no longer stand the screeching of my smoke alarm. By the way, did I mention that I have the world’s most sensitive smoke alarm?

While the wings are baking, gather the following:

- 4 tbsp of butter
- 4 tbsp of red curry paste
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- Sriracha sauce
- COMPLETELY FREAKING OPTIONAL UNLESS YOU’RE AN IDIOT LIKE ME AND DIDN’T REALIZE YOU WERE ALMOST OUT OF RED CURRY PASTE AND WERE TOO LAZY TO DRIVE BACK TO THE SUPERMARKET: soy sauce, thai fish sauce

Ok, so by now you can tell I found myself in a little bit of a bind when I went to make the wing sauce. And then I said fuck it, because it’s stupid wing sauce and if it sucks, I’ll just toss them with the barbeque sauce we had in the fridge. So what I ended up doing is the full 4 tbsp of butter, about 2 tbsp of the curry paste, the brown sugar, Sriracha to taste for heat (I probably added ¾ a tbsp), and then I just dumped about 2 tbsp of soy sauce and a few healthy shakes of the fish sauce. I put that in a sauce pan on the stove and let it cook down and you know what? It was damn good. I will probably use the alternate recipe next time.

The last part: dipping sauce. You could be lazy and just dip these in ranch dressing and I bet it would be awesome, but you get cool points for making a flavor coordinating dipping sauce. You need:

- A bunch of cilantro (literally – the whole bunch)
- Juice of 2-3 limes, depending on size
- ½ cup mayo
- ½ cup greek yogurt

Confession time: the original recipe called for a full cup of mayo and I made it that way. But I had to add some greek yogurt at the end because it was just tasting BLAH – needed some tang. So I am gonna go out on a limb here and suggest going ½ and ½.

Anyway – dump all that crap in a food processor. Or blender. Whatever. Process. Serve.

Take the wings out of the over and drizzle the sauce all over. Toss to coat. Eat. Enjoy. Thank me later.

summer = lazy (even though I still have to wake up and go to work every day)

Yeah I know. I'm not on "summer break" anymore. Fuck the real world, man!

But despite my weekly 8-5 schedule thy never changes, I'm still feeling a bit of that summer laziness. Which is why I have not been blogging and anything I do blog is my version of "lazy food."

So the other night I made some shrimp concoction, it was ok, not worth blogging. But because fresh shrimp were like $6/lb, the Jew in me was all like, "hell yes gimme a pound of shrimps that I will not be able to eat!" and then I sautéed them up and they were fine but alas, I had like 1/4 an lb left!

My options were: (1) toss, (2) refrigerate with the intention of eating for lunch and then finally toss 1 week later, or (3) actually eat the suckers for lunch. Normally in my household, all leftovers go the way of #2, but not this week, my friends!

So on Tuesday, I headed home for lunch and whipped up this shrimp salad, which was yummy and easy and kept me from wasting my ridiculously cheap shrimp. Win. I'm pretty sure you could substitute any protein here - seeing as I'm swimming in a plethora of leftover chicken right now, chicken salad will be next!




Alright, so you will need:

- mayo
- greek yogurt
- chopped green onions
- old bay seasoning
- garlic powder
- lemon juice
- spinach
- walnuts
- some sort of bread-like apparatus on which to place said salad

I had bought these Flat-Out fiber wrap thingys that are actually pretty dece, so that was my wrap.

Alright, in a bowl, combine your leftover shrimps, cut into smaller pieces, with equal parts Greek yogurt and mayo. The yogurt gives it a bit of tang and also makes it not so fatty. Add a few drops of lemon juice to cut the mayo. Oh ps this whole "recipe" really depends on your own tastes and how much shrimp/chicken/tofu whatever you have. So yeah.

Next, season with the garlic powder and old bay to taste. Add your green onions. tomatoes might be delish in this, too!

Lay some spinach down on your bread/wrap, then the salad concoction, and then I sprinkled a few walnuts on for taste and texture. Totally optional. Not gonna lie, when I concocted this thing, I was a bit dubious of whether it would be edible, and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised! I will definitely be scrounging up a chicken version post haste!

cheater panzanella

Ok, I was just scrolling through my pictures for my previous post and realize I had another quick thing to throw at ya that requires very little effort to write up OR prepare. WINNER WINNER chicken dinnerrrr.

I usually go home at lunch, for a multitude of reasons: my demon puppy usually needs to be let out, the dining option in downtown Houston as surprisingly awful, plus I am pretty convinced that the fluorescent lights in my office are going to give me a seizure someday, so the less time spent under them, the better.

By the time I drive home and back, that’s 20 minutes out of my 1 hour lunch break. Then there’s the necessary dog caring, etc., and you start to run out of time to prepare yourself a meal real quick. This solves that problem and is fresh and healthy. I call it: cheater panzanella! (real panzanella is more onion focused and has vinegar and other stuff)

Ok, you will need:

- 1 small avocado
- 1 small-medium tomato
- 2 smallish pieces of your favorite wheat bread (I got this great honey wheat bread from HEB, the seedilicious bread from Whole Foods would work well, too)

Alright, dice your avocado. Put in a bowl. Cut your tomato in half, remove seeds, dice, put in bowl. Toast the bread. Cut into squares. Put in bowl. Add salt, 1-2 tbsp of GOOD olive oil, and basil is nice, too. Toss to combine. ENJOY!!!!

a refreshing summer treat!

Apologies for the blogging hiatus. Not gonna lie, the more bored I get at work, the less motivated I become across the line. Hence, I have pictures of some food I’ve created, ready and waiting to be blogged about, but no actual intention of writing this shit up.

Also – side note – to those of you planning your imaginary weddings on Pinterest… all I have to say is enjoy this stress-less, imaginary time now. Because planning your actual wedding sucks donkey balls. I thought I had it sooooo easy: dress was purchased within a month, venue with an in-house caterer picked, bridesmaid dresses purchased, DJ booked. Phew, almost done, right? Well then you start adding up how much this shit is gonna cost you and you start realizing that your remaining budget for cake and flowers and invitations and favors and all the other fucking flotsam and jetsam that comes with weddings is slowly shrinking and you start FREAKING. OUT. Because you feel this insane and imaginary pressure to put on this grand party for your in-laws and their family and it MUST be better than your future brother in-law’s wedding was ten years ago and however much you are spending, it must feel four times more expensive, especially since your fiancé decided to blab to his family how much money YOU and YOUR family are spending and what it’s no big deal who cares, YES IT IS A VERY BIG FUCKING DEAL ASSHOLE. Also, do you KNOW how much flowers cost? And fucking favors. What the fuck, they will just get either eaten or tossed, but every God damn wedding featured in every wedding blog has them, and your life’s goal, besides upstaging your in-laws, is having your wedding featured on one of those stupid fucking blogs. So yes, enjoy this time in your life that is not governed by budget and family and societal pressure, because it’s a bitch. Also, that shit you’re pinning on Pinterest for your fake wedding? Trust me, you can’t fucking afford it.

So, in the words of Willy Wonka, onwards and upwards!

This is not really a recipe. It is more of a success story? I dunno. But I have gained great pleasure from this particular concoction, so I recommend it to you, as well.
Plus, it’s summer, its hot as balls, and my desire to stand over a hot stove stirring a pot of fucking risotto for an hour has greatly diminished.

Ok, so yeah: strawberry-basil-lime water.

Yes, this is water. Leave me alone, can’t you tell I’m stressed!?

Basically: get a pitcher. Take a carton of strawberries, remove half. Halve those strawberries and put them in the pitcher. Grab some basil leaves. I dunno, like 3-4 good sized ones. Chiffonade them (I am too lazy to explain this, please google it, thanks). Cut a lime in half. Squeeze the juice in. Add the halves.

Take a big wooden spoon or something of this nature and smash the fruit. Don’t, like, completely pulverize the strawberries, but you want them to be somewhat mushed. Fill the pitched with ice. Fill it with water. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours. Enjoy. Perhaps with vodka?

breakfast quinoa!

I have been feeling the need recently to switch up things with my breakfast routine. Get something a bit more substantial in there – something warm and comforting and, I dunno, breakfast-y?

Oh, and something that is grab and go, too. Which is kinda a tall order.

I used to really love the packets of maple brown sugar super sweet disgusting quaker oatmeal, that you just add hot water to and go. But, for one, I’m reaaalllllyyy trying to cut out process shit from my diet wherever possible (beer is still allowed, for example), and I dunno, I was craving something more.

ENTER: breakfast quinoa.

I’m not gonna dive into all the accolades available for quinoa – y’all can google it for yourselves. But, long story short, quinoa is actually a seed, is gluten free, is loaded with protein and some other important crap, and has a mildly cous-cous like consistency. Which makes it less mushy and texturally disgusting than oatmeal (don’t lie – even if you like oatmeal, that shit is kinda disgusting).

I experimented with a few different preparations of the breakfast quinoa before arriving on the perfect recipe, which is not too sweet, but still has flavor. Plus, you can pretty much add anything you want to it. It’s a blank slate.

I like to make a big batch on Sunday, and package it up into individual Tupperware containers, so I have a week’s worth of breakfast. Grab and go, baby. This is how to make enough for 5 days’ worth of yumminess (or, a business week for you nitpickers).
You will need:

- 1 ¼ cups dry quinoa (may I suggest buying it in a package that says “pre-rinsed?” because I can’t tell you what to do with anything that is not rinsed)
- 1 ½ cups of coconut milk (unsweetened)
- Honey
- Pumpkin pie spice (for convenience – you can also use cinnamon, a bit of sugar and nutmeg)
- Vanilla extract
- Chopped nuts of your choosing (optional)
- Almond butter flavor of your choosing (optional)
- Frozen fruit of your choosing (optional – but I suggest raspberries and blueberries)




Dump the quinoa and coconut millk into a sauce pan over high-ish heat. Once you get a nice simmer going, reduce to medium. Add the honey, vanilla and spices. I do, like, 2 nice squeezes of honey, probably 2-3 tsps of vanilla?, and a few dashes of pumpkin pie spice. You want it to smell just delish – its kinda hard to go overboard. But it’s possible, so be careful.




Cover the pot and simmer until all the liquid is absorbed, stirring occasionally. If it stops simmering, turn the heat up a little bit. Once all liquid is absorbed (about 20-25 mins), remove from heat and portion out into 5 tupperware containers. Garnish with chopped nuts (I go with a mix of walnuts and pecans), frozen fruit, and a tbsp of almond butter (I personally love Justin’s Vanilla Almond Butter, but dark chocolate, maple, regular… it would all work). Stick in the fridge, where the fruit will unfreeze itself and leak yummy juices all into your breakfast for an awesome sweet/sour taste. Microwave for 1 min in the morning to reheat. Enjoy!

memorial day murph

After a lovely Memorial Day Weekend spent at Lake LBJ, outside of Austin:




I came home to this:




And this:




Which, secretly, was a bit more lovely than the weekend itself. Heartburn + sunburn + hangover + eating shit all weekend is not a good feeling, amirite?

So, rather than snuggle up on the couch with the pups and indulge in whatever episode of Law and Order happened to be on at the moment, I arrived back in Houston, where the temp was 92 and the humidity was 146%, and thought, “HEY! Let’s go make myself feel even WORSE and do a CrossFit workout at the box!” So off I dragged my ass.

For anyone not familiar with CrossFit, I can’t explain it all without boring you to tears, but basically it’s a kick-ass, high intensity workout designed around functional bodyweight movements (push-ups, squats, pull-ups), Olympic lifting, and gymnastics movements. It is perfect for the ADHD child in me, since you rarely do the same workout twice (and if you do, it will be months apart, as a means of benchmarking your progress). Also, it is infinitely scalable – you can always lift less weight, do push-ups on your knees, etc. In the same vein, there is always room for improvement and always a goal. Plus, what girl secretly doesn’t want to feel bad ass like the boys and throw some weight around?

I’ve been CrossFitting since September 2011, and Memorial Day was the first time I would be tackling one of the most respected benchmark workouts: MURPH. CrossFit has multiple benchmark workouts named in honor of men and women who have lost their lives in combat, and loved to CrossFit. Murph is named for Lt. Michael Murphy, a Medal of Honor winner, who was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2005. It looks a little something like this:

1 mile run
100 pull-ups
200 push-ups
300 squats
1 mile run
(20/12 lb weight vest for men/women)

You can break up the pull-ups/push-ups/squats however you want, but they must be bookended by the mile runs. Other hero workout rules: 1) Don’t cheat 2) Don’t quit

Let me just say – this workout is no joke. Even though I used a band for pull-ups and (duhh) did not wear a weight vest, I wasn’t breezing through this shit. It certainly didn’t help that concrete that has been baking in the sun all day is hot as hell. When I hit the ground for my first push-up, I felt like I was laying on a tanning bed.

I broke the workout up into 20 rounds of 5 pull-ups/10 push-ups/15 squats. More than 10 push-ups in a row would be pushing it for me with this (ha ha, see what I did there? “pushing” it? ha ha). Thanks to not having the ability to do regular pull-ups and having to use a band, my hands didn’t rip. But my quads were on fire about halfway through. And you wanna know what sucked? That last mile run. I thought “oh, haaay, I’ll just jog the last mile real slow, no biggie”. HA. I walked about 1/3 of it.

BUT – I finished. (Without going to my knees for push-ups!!) And so did everyone else. I’m happy to have this workout under my belt, and glad to have done SOMETHING mildly patriotic for Memorial Day, rather than just posting some bullshit on my Facebook timeline and calling it a day. While doing a hero workout may be mildly selfish (because secretly, I was also doing it to burn off the 47 million beers I consumed over the weekend), I think it’s really cool that my CrossFit box, and others around the country, do this workout every Memorial Day to remind us all that, hey, this may kick the crap out of you, but it ain’t SHIT compared to serving in the Middle East, so take your torn hands and sore quads and STFU. Or something like that. Happy summer, y’all!