Salsa? Yes, please.

Fresh salsa with a tequila splash.

I'm a salsa nut.  I love it all.  Well, ok that's not true, I can be pretty picky - especially when it comes to store bought salsas.  Most of them are not so good.  My mom makes a really good salsa.  She grows her own tomatoes and jalapenos and bakes up a huge batch and cans it all.  Then she kindly mails me jars and jars.  One day, I want to can my own but for now, I've been making due with fresh salsas.  If I'm honest, I make them a lot.  Every now and again I even splurge on that icky but ooh so tasty Tostitos brand cheese dip, you know the one I'm talking about.  Yum.  

Just as important as a good salsa, are the tortilla chips.  Unfortunately, ALL my local stores seem to have stopped carrying my favorite brand.  I can't find them anywhere.  

Stop and Shop, my local store, has replaced them with a new brand, Grande something, priced at 2 for $6, that are tasty enough but the bottom 2/3rds of the bag are ALL crumbs.  I have enough crumbs in my pantry to make a million taco salads.  So I'm frustrated.  Luckily, Shaws, another local store, had Tostitos on sale buy one get one free, which is worth the $5 price tag.  I love Tostitos, but they're freaking expensive! I dislike having to sale shop for staples, and tortilla chips are clearly a staple.

Last night's salsa was my basic, nothing fancy, 10 minutes and your done. Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

1 can petite cut tomatoes (I guess I do cheat a little here, real fresh salsa would use fresh tomatoes, but these are soo much easier to keep in the pantry)
1 or 2 Jalepeno/Serrano/pepper(s) of your choice.  I can never remember which are which but 2 give me the perfect amount of heat.
2 or 3 garlic cloves.
Small bunch of green onions
Cilantro to taste
dash of Tequila

Cut open your peppers and remove or keep the seeds, depending on how spicy you want your salsa.  I usually throw out most of them.  If your peppers are older, be careful, the juice can irritate your fingers and make them burn! I found that out the hard way.

Dice the peppers and the garlic.

Chop them in a food processor with a dash of Tequila, it adds great flavor!

You can play around with texture and level of puree, my little processor has a fine line between chopped and complete puree, a few chunks are fine with me.

Open your petite cut tomatoes and drain the juice.  If you have the time and energy, you could always sub in real tomatoes, peeled and diced. 

While the tomatoes are draining, chop the green onions.

Add the tomatoes, green onions, a handful of cilantro and salt and pepper to taste.

Blend.

Add more salt and/or pepper to taste.  A dash of lime is also great and dig in! 

I also made shrimp tacos with pepper and onions for me and chicken tacos for J. 

Mustard Chicken for Him and Her

His and Her Mustard Chicken with Potatoes and Asparagus

I whipped up this dinner last night from things I found in the fridge.  Last week was a total bust due to a nasty cold and allergy season sort of hitting me all at once (yay Spring) and its still FREEZING here.  I'd like to know how tree pollen can be so high when its still 22 feels like 16 on my morning dog walks.  It just doesn't seem fair.  In happier news, the hubby and I finally made it out to dinner to belatedly celebrate our first anniversary :)  I dressed myself up in one of the new LBD's I purchased for the Honor Ball we're attending this Friday and tried out my new vintage earrings and black pumps while I was at it.   It was more than a tad too cold for bare legs but I still had fun and, more importantly, didn't damage my new heels walking on all the cobblestones downtown.  No pictures from Saturday's outing but I'm going to try my hardest to get a few on Friday.  While we were out to dinner I noticed that one of the sides was a loaded baked potato, which is a huge favorite of mine.  My mustard chicken concoction was the perfect excuse for me to make my own loaded baked potato and since J isn't a huge fan I decided to make His and Hers potato sides.   

Ingredients: 

2 chicken legs (whole foods are the best)

Spoonful of coarse mustard

Spoonful of honey

1 medium/large potato

3-4 small potatoes

Cheese, I used Mozzarella 

Spinach

Thyme

Asparagus

Lemon slices

Take a decent sized spoonful of coarse mustard and add a good dollop of honey, mixing to make it more of a paste.   

Spread some of the mustard under the skin of each leg. 

Spread the rest of the mustard onto the skin.   J told me later that his was a tad too mustard-y so next time I might just spread a bit of honey under the skin and save the mustard for the top.  Either way, don't skimp on the honey. 

Transfer the legs to an oven safe, tinfoil lined pan and preheat the oven to 425 degrees. 

His and Her potatoes. 

Wash both potatoes and cut His into quarters. 

I decided to toss His potatoes with a little olive oil, oregano and pepper. 

With a dash of cayenne pepper to finish them off. 

Arrange His potatoes around your chicken. 

For Hers, to insure that its done at the same time as the chicken and His potatoes, microwave for 3 minutes, then sprinkle with olive oil and kosher salt.  Once the oven is preheated, put both the chicken dish and Her potato in the oven.  Cook for about 30 minutes, or until Her potato is soft to the touch.

While all that is cooking combine the cheese and thyme for Her potato.  I really like loaded potatoes with bacon, but we didn't have any.  If you do, I'd highly recommend making some now and crumbling it to add.  

Grab a handful of spinach and steam it to add to Her potato as well. 

Originally, I'd planned on making enough spinach for His plate, but then I found this small amount of asparagus in the fridge.  I'd eaten the other small handful on Friday and J had complained that he didn't get any.  So I decided to make this last bit for him instead.  Toss the asparagus in a little olive oil and salt and cover it with a lemon slice or two.  Then set it aside to add to the oven closer to the end of the baking time. 

With the pre-microwave cooking, Her potato should be nice and soft after 30-35 minutes.  You can also fully cook the potato in the microwave but it doesn't get the crunchy skin that cooking it in the oven produces. 

Cut a small top off of Her potato and scoop out the insides, adding them to your cheese mixture.

Mix and mash Her potato with the cheese. 

Add the cooked spinach and a small amount of milk, as well as any salt and pepper to taste.

Put the stuffing back in the shell. 

Top it off and put it back in the oven, along with the asparagus to cook for another 10-15 minutes.  The asparagus should be cooked through and the edges of Her potato should be browning.   At this point, I like to flip the Chicken legs, to insure the bottoms get cooked through.   Once Her potato and the asparagus are cooked, remove from the oven and turn on the broiler.  Flip the chicken legs back over and crisp up the skin to your liking. 

Total cooking time is under an hour, more like 45-50 minutes.  

Divide everything into His and Her plates (I stole 2 asparagus) and Feast!

The boy bought me flowers!

Cheesy Indulgence #4 - Trader Joes Spinach and Artichoke Dip

Okay, I admit, this does seem kind of like a cop-out.  I didn't bake anything.  I just tossed it into the microwave for a few minutes.  

BUT

When I started planning out this whole idea last week I had a great Acorn Squash Quesadilla with Tomatillo salsa all ready and planned out.  Then I started to think about how great snacking for dinner really is, and how I used to snack dinner several nights a week back before I was married.  J is the worst snacker I have ever met.  He just doesn't ever want to snack, no weird snack cravings during the day. No full bag of tortilla chips and half a jar of salsa binges.  Nothing.  I don't get it at all.  So really, as my last night of culinary freedom, snacking seemed just right.

Besides, its my Anniversary and no one wants to cook on their anniversary.  

TJ's  Spinach and Artichoke Dip with tortilla chips.

and of course, I had to have some Andre.

I spent the night watching Nine, but it wasn't for me.  I can handle some musicals, Mamma Mia I LOVED, but this was just boring.  Instead I bought shoes online :)  

J made it in around 1AM and it sure was nice to sleep next to him again.

Blackberry Lemon Frozen Yogurt

When my parents asked me last year what I wanted for my birthday, I hemmed and hawed and eventually told them I wanted an Ice Cream Maker even though the hubby couldn't have any.  I'd just seen too many amazing recipes while blog-browsing and I needed to have one. 

Don't worry, when it arrived I was the dutiful wife and my fist experiment was with a cranberry sorbet - very j-friendly.  Unfortunately, that was also right about when the ulcer issues began so I don't think he ever actually had any.  

Well, that wasn't my problem. I'd done my duty.

Blackberry Lemon Frozen Yogurt

Making ice cream isn't hard.  Variations are as easy as pie but everyone seems to vary on techniques and in the end its just a finicky endeavor.   I'm not a big fan of using gobs of raw eggs in my recipes, nor do I want them to be long complicated affairs.  I have to thank the lovely lady of bakedbree for my favorite vanilla recipe.  (and she has soo many other amazing ideas as well).

This was my first time trying out a frozen yogurt and my first time trying out the Cabot Greek Yogurt.   Both are keepers, although I think for Greek Yogurt Parfaits I'll stick to my Chobani. 

I found the recipe at thecravingchronices when I was browsing there the other day for my home-cooking dinner date (we ended up making Chili).  I also found a million other recipes to try, so check them out when you have a chance.

Blackberry Lemon Frozen Yogurt

adapted from thecravingchronicles

Ingredients:

3/4 cup sugar
zest of one lemon
handful of fresh mint leaves
2 cups Greek yogurt
2 heaping cups (300g) fresh blackberries
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 tablespoons Limoncello

 Start by zesting one lemon. 

 In your food processor, combine the sugar, mint leaves and lemon zest. Pulse until moist and fragrant.

It should look something like this.

Add the blackberries and pulse until combined.  I only have a mini food processor so I had to do this in several batches.  

The original recipe says to push mixture through a sieve at the end when all the ingredients have been combined to remove the blackberry seeds.  I decided to keep the seeds in my yogurt, mostly because I tried to use the sieve and it was rather hard.  The next time I make this, I'm going to push the mixture through a sieve at this point in the recipe - before I add the yogurt. 

The last time I had Lemoncello I was in Venice with some of my lovely study abroad friends.  Those were good times :)  This is the only brand of Lemoncello I could find at any of the local liquor stores - apparently the Irish arn't quite as interested in Italian liqueurs as they are in whiskey.  My kinda people :)

Once all the blackberries have been incorporated, start adding the yogurt, lemoncello and lemon juice.  

In the actual recipe, this is where it tells you to push the mixture through the sieve.  But, like I said, it was almost impossible and I was lazy.  I also don't mind the seeds. 

The other tricky part about homemade Ice Cream is that typically, its a two day process.  The first day you mix the ingredients, then it has to chill overnight and the next day you can throw it in the machine for the magic to happen.  When you cover your mixture for cooling, I've found it works best to push the saran wrap down onto the mixture itself, to prevent a film from forming.  Then find a spot in the fridge and let it sit overnight or for at least 4-6 hours. 

The next day.....

Pull your mixture out of the fridge. 

Toss it into the machine and let it churn.  My machine usually takes about 25 minutes.  

This is after about 15 minutes.  

All done!  My Dad likes to eat his homemade ice cream when its almost a soup.  I like mine a little firmer.   Sometimes, my machine doesn't get the mixture to quite the texture that I want, so then you just toss it into the freezer for a while until you reach the consistancy of frozen that you like. 

My original plan was to have this as dessert every night that J was out of town.  That plan failed most nights because I ate too much of whatever the entree happened to be, but I did manage to try it out the night I made my quiche and it was great!  I didn't mind the seeds at all but I did think that the mint was a tad too strong so just be careful when you're deciding how many leaves to add in.