Playdate nirvana

FIVE playdates and counting this weekend. Kids love it; so do Mommy & Daddy.

Tonight we're having a barbecue. Burger bar (with tiny buns for kids); broccoli slaw; fruit salad (yummy yummy for all you Wiggles fans); leftover marinated chickpea salad; and mac & cheese (the fabulous crock pot version from this very website made with lowfat evap. milk, lowfat milk, and lowfat Velveeta). For dessert, SlimaBear ice cream sandwiches.

Seems like a good excuse to include my broccoli slaw recipe here, modified from a Cooks Country recipe. It's a stand-alone slaw. It's not the creamy kind of slaw you'd put on pulled pork, but more of a salad. I make it all ahead, except I hold the ramen noodles until just before serving. This is a great and sneaky way to get veges in my kids. They love the dressing (thanks to the sugar) and will gulp this salad down generally by the tubful.

Ramen Noodle Broccoli Slaw
Serves 6-8

Dressing
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup olive or canola oil

Salad
1 (12-ounce) bag broccoli slaw mix
2 (3 ounce) packages ramen noodles, crushed, flavor packets reserved
4 scallions, chopped thin
1 cup shelled roasted sunflower seeds
1 cup slivered toated almonds (or 2 cups seeds or 2 cups nuts)

Whisk sugar and vinegar in a medium bowl until sugar dissolves.

Combine broccoli slaw mix, ramen noodles (add 30 minutes before serving), and flavor packet (I only use one generally), scallions, seeds/nuts, in a large bowl. Drizzle dressing over the salad and toss until well-coated. Put in fridge for 30 minutes; up to two hours before serving without the noodles.

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Roasted shrimp

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While I'm on the subject of beach food, a revelation to me was Barefoot Contessa's roasted method of shrimp for shrimp cocktail. It is so easy, not messy, doesn't involve steaming cauldrons, and takes a mere 8 minutes. She has a fabulous recipe for homemade cocktail sauce in her latest cookbook as well, but at the beach I just buy Pete's and add lemon juice. Without further ado, the instructions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place shrimp (peeled and deveined if you so desire) in a single layer on a baking sheet. Toss with a little bit of olive oil, kosher salt, and pepper. Roast about 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven. Eat warm or cool.

Chickpea, green pepper, and cucumber salad

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For a big vegetarian meal full of veges from the farmstand, I adapted a recipe from a rather delightful cookbook I found in our beach house. It's titled Kitchen Suppers for Friends and Family, by Laura Washburn, and I find that I might need to procure a copy for myself. This was quite tasty, and I'll bet pureed with a little more olive oil would make a great sandwich with roasted red peppers and feta. It meets all my beach food criteria. It be easy to make with ingredients I haul along (some vinegar and a handful of spices), readily thrown together, hearty, tasty (of course), and the remaining ingredients must be easy to find at a farmstand or grocery store. If you don't seed the cucumber, by the time you serve (or eat the leftovers) it will have become rather watery.

1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded, and chopped into 1/2 inch dice
1/2 green pepper, seeded and chopped into 1/4 inch dice
1/2 red pepper, seeded and chopped into 1/4 inch dice
1/4 medium red onion, chopped into 1/4 inch dice
14 oz. canned chickpeas, drained
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1/2 lemon or lime juice, fresh
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon (or to taste) sea salt
1 small head cilantro, finely chopped

Toss the cucumber, peppers, chickpeas, and onion in a bowl. Add vinegar, olive oil, paprika, cumin, salt, and cilantro. Toss well. Adjust salt, then squeeze lemon or lime (lime was delish) over the salad and stir. Let this sit while you're making the rest of your dinner. Before serving add more salt and/or lime.

Come to mama, babies

Via Joy the Baker: Oatmeal Cookie Pancakes.

To. Die. For.

$1 Fast Food Tasting Plate

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Via Salon a witty and informative fast-food tour of $1 menu items. I'm partial to the Frosty, I must say, and McDonald's fries rock. I also am a McD's Diet Coke fan, but the Big Gulp Iced Tea at Wendy's makes great road drinking, if, that is, you want to stop every 10 miles for a potty break. I could wax philosophic about the Chili Cheese Burrito at Taco Bell. Thinking about it is making me very hungry. Fortunately, I'm miles away from a Taco Bell and far too lazy to get in my car to find one.

Anyhoo, read for yourselves and opine:

It's cheap -- but can you swallow it?

Oh my God I want this right now

Buttermilk Pudding via Simply Recipes

Chicken with artichokes and sundried tomatoes

From The Blog that Ate Manhattan:

Looks fantabulous. Can't wait to try it with a nice green salad and a little crusty bread.

Me No Miss No Meat Chilaquiles

Here in the Midwest, we're starting to see more decent fresh produce, even some local produce. Days are longer. People are blinking in the sun and moving their pale bodies outside. I start to see my appetite perk up. I'm interested in something besides mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes, donuts, and mashed potatoes. Perhaps something green. Perhaps something grilled.

Well, the next recipe has nothing green or grilled, I fear, but we had it this week and it was good. It was a fair success with the kids, although I think if I'd come up with a catchy name like, "Ola nacho lasagna" they'd have been easier to convince. As it is, this is an easy pantry meal thing to throw together as soon as you walk in the door. It has to cook about 40 minutes, so there's plenty of time to unwind and play with kids, open mail, change clothes, etc.

1 package tortillas (corn or white okay, any size)
2 jars of salsa (largish jars)
2 packages low fat cream cheese (would be fine to mix one package with Greek yogurt, too)
2 or 3 eggs
2 T cornstarch
2-3 cups of frozen corn (thawed if at all possible)
2 cans drained and rinsed black beans
2 cups grated sharp cheddar, Monterey jack, or whatever is around

1. Turn the oven on to 375.
2. Get out a large baking pan. A 9x13 is fine, but you can easily make this into a 11x14 pan, too.
3. Rip up the tortillas into quarters, sixths, whatever is a manageable size. Throw them into the pan, then throw the pan into the oven while it is preheating.
4. Put cream cheese (or cream cheese and yogurt) into the bowl of a food processor. Add one jar of salsa, eggs, and cornstarch. Let 'er rip until blended.
5. Take the tortillas out of the oven and throw them on to a clean dish towel.
6. Add 1/2 a cup (or a little more) of the salsa to the bottom of your baking pan, freshly emptied of tortillas. Add about 1/3 of the tortillas to the bottom of the pan, on top of the salsa.
7. Spoon half the egg/cheese mixture on top of the tortillas.
8. Spread the corn over the eggs/cheese, then spread the beans over the corn.
9. Drizzle another generous 1/2 cup salsa over the corn/bean combo, then top with another layer of tortillas. Press those tortillas into the veges to compact a bit.
10. Put the other half of the eggs/cheese on top of the tortillas, then top with the remaining tortillas. Top the whole thing with salsa.
11. Cover with aluminum foil (spray it with non-stick spray if you like) and put in the oven for 40 minutes. Pour a glass of wine, exercise, sort the mail. Just take a break.
12. After 40 minutes check the center. If it's hot, then cover with the grated cheese. Put the whole thing back in the oven without the aluminum foil and bake until browned, about 10 minutes. If it's not hot in the center, put it back in the oven and check again in a few minutes and proceed with cheese step whenever the chilaquiles are ready.
13. Serve hot. Makes a mountain.

Note: Modified this recipe from the delightful Crescent Dragonwagon's encyclopedic cookbook Passionate Vegetarian. It's a GREAT cookbook to peruse. Chatty, happy, enthusiastic, and chock full of great ideas and nutritional information. A seriously painless education in vegetarian cooking and HUGE.

With a nod to Martha: Mini Greek Burgers

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My kids love Greek food. So do I. So does Daddy. It's almost always a slam dunk to go out for Greek, get take-out, or make it at home. What's not to love about garlicky grilled meat, yummy salads, and, of course, the chickpea?

This week I chanced upon a Martha Stewart recipe for Greek-style mini-lamb burgers. I modified by using lean beef, making the burgers really teeny, dropping the tomatoes called for (they're not fresh yet and I don't like them raw anyway), using different herbs, and I added some red wine vinegar. They were A HIT. Easy. From the time I started the tzatziki to the table with the kids was about 30 minutes. Here's how I did it:

Assemble:
1 cucumber
1 cup plain Greek yogurt
1T fresh lemon or lime juice
1 small garlic clove
Some fresh mint to taste
Some fresh dill to taste
Some fresh oregano to taste
Salt and pepper

1 pound lean ground beef
1/2 small finely chopped read onion (about a half cup)
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 T chopped fresh oregano
just under 1 T red wine vinegar

4 pita breads (6")
Shredded lettuce

1. Turn on grill to high.
2. Peel and seed cucumber. Chop up fine. Throw it in a bowl. Add the yogurt, lemon or lime juice, mint, dill, oregano (any or all is fine). Shred the garlic with a grater (or garlic press, or just mince it). Add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
3. hrow beef in a bowl. Add the onion, red wine vinegar, parsley, oregano, salt, and pepper. Form the mixture into tiny little patties. They should be use big enough to cook on your grill and not fall through.
4. Cook the patties on the grill until done. They'll only take a few minutes per side. Take them off the grill, then throw on your pita. Once they're done, cut them in half. It's cool to cook extra pita because you'll have extra tzatziki to use for dipping.
5. Open the pita halves carefully. Put some finely shredded lettuce at the bottom. Add a slice of tomato if you'd like, then a little burger or two. Top with tzatziki.

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