Coconut syrup

Christie and I are on a coconut kick right now. My neighbor gave me this recipe for coconut syrup and brought me some over, it is delicious. Here is the recipe 2 cubes of butter 2 cups of sugar 1 cup buttermilk add to medium saucepan and heat on medium heat until boiling. Boil for 2-3 minutes then remove from heat. Add t teaspoon of baking soda and 2 t coconut extract.

Chipotle Mayo

This is a great little variation on an otherwise ordinary condiment. We like to use it on burgers and grilled chicken sandwiches.


• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 2 chipotle peppers, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp adobo sauce
• 1/2 lime, juiced
• Salt and pepper to taste


Cans of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce can typically be found on the Mexican food aisle at the grocery store. You can dictate the spiciness of the mayo by the pepper seeds. For example, when we had the parents over for dinner, I sliced the peppers open and scraped out all the seeds first. But when we are cooking for ourselves we leave the seeds in since we are partial to a little spice.

Garlic Butter

Here is our aforementioned Garlic Butter recipe. It comes from All Recipes, but I greatly reduce the amount of garlic salt compared to the original. Don't worry, it is still plenty potent.

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 tbsp garlic, crushed
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 tsp garlic salt
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp ground paprika

In a small bowl, combine softened butter, crushed garlic, and parmesan cheese. Season with garlic salt, Italian seasoning, pepper and paprika. Mix until smooth.

Fresh Tomato Marinara Sauce

We're still making our way through all the fresh vegetables we got from Bountiful Baskets. A cool thing about getting all the fruits and vegetables you might not normally buy is that you have to learn new recipes to use it all.

It was late last night, time for dinner, no meat in the house, and we'd already had tortillas with beans, the end of the chicken, cheese, and tomatillo salsa for lunch after a morning full of soccer and precipitation. While we have a ways to get to get through all our tortillas, I wasn't feeling like more Mexican for dinner.

I found this marinara recipe, since we had several fresh tomatoes we needed to use. Dinner was really basic, just spaghetti, the sauce, garlic toast, and salad.

During the dinner, we had the following conversation:

Rob: Brynlee, do you notice anything different about dinner tonight? Something about what we're eating? Or actually, more about what we're not eating?

Brynlee: Ashlee's gone.

Rob: And we usually eat Ashlee for dinner?

Brynlee: Oh. Let's see. There's no meatballs.

Of course, when Brynlee said dinner was different due to a lack of meatballs, that's not to say we always have meatballs. We have chicken more often than we have meatballs, but the meatballs would be the obvious type of meat to go with spaghetti.

So she did pick up on it pretty quickly when asked about it but I don't know if she'd have noticed there was no meat if I hadn't asked. We had some Swiss Chard Curry last week with no meat in it, and no one noticed. I'm reminded of the first time we had veggie burritos, and we weren't allowed to look inside the burritos until we had tasted them, presumably because if we'd known it was just zucchini and other vegetables, we would have refused to try them.

Another memory brought back when putting together this sauce was of the huge stock pot full of spaghetti sauce that would simmer all day after harvesting the tomatoes, onions, and various herbs and spices from our garden in the fall and then canned or frozen.

Here is the recipe as I found it online:

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
2 garlic cloves, chopped
3 cups (about 3 large) peeled, chopped tomatoes
1 can(6 oz.)no-salt-added tomato paste
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon fennel seed

Directions:

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion, green pepper, and garlic. Cook, uncovered, 2 to 3 minutes. Add remaining ingredients. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, until tomatoes are very tender, about 15 to 20 minutes; stir occasionally. Cool 5 minutes.

Place cooled tomato mixture in blender jar 1 or more cups at a time. Cover and blend at stir about 30 seconds after each addition. Blend at puree about 30 seconds. Return mixture to saucepan. Simmer over low heat about 5 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve over fresh pasta.

We didn't have any green pepper or fennel seed, so I just left those out. I had tomato paste, but I just never got around to putting it in. I added some parsley, and every time I tasted it I added more oregano. I dipped the tomatoes for 10-15 seconds in the boiling spaghetti to loosen up the skins for easy peeling, then just quartered the tomatoes and smashed them up in the pot while they cooked. I didn't run it through the blender, just served it extra chunky.

Tomatillo Salsa

We got a Mexican Food Pack along with the standard Bountiful Baskets delivery this week. It came with tomatillos, cilantro, serrano peppers, onions, avocado, limes, and a ton of tortillas.

I found this Tomatillo Salsa recipe which matched up pretty closely with the ingredients we had received, so that's what ended up on the menu last night.

I marinated some chicken for a few minutes in a little bit of milk, vinegar, chili powder, garlic, cumin, and probably a few other random spices from the cupboard and sauteed it with onion and bell pepper.

For the rice, I was going to post the recipe I used, but it was very similar to the Lime Rice Pilaf just barely posted here, so no need to duplicate. I pretty much just throw some bouillon cubes, cilantro, and lime juice into the rice cooker along with the rice and water.

So we served up the rice, chicken, and tortillas along with guacamole, sour cream, and some fruit salad for a pretty good Mexican dinner.

On to the Tomatillo Salsa:

Ingredients

1 1/2 lb tomatillos
1/2 cup chopped white onion
1/2 cup cilantro leaves
1 Tbsp fresh lime juice
1/4 teaspoon sugar
2 Jalapeño peppers OR 2 serrano peppers, stemmed, seeded and chopped
Salt to taste

Method

1 Remove papery husks from tomatillos and rinse well.

2 Cut in half and place cut side down on a foil-lined baking sheet. Place under a broiler for about 5-7 minutes to lightly blacken the skin.

3 Place tomatillos, lime juice, onions, cilantro, chili peppers, sugar in a blender and pulse until all ingredients are chopped and mixed. Season to taste with salt. Cool in refrigerator.

Serve with chips or as a salsa accompaniment to Mexican dishes.

Makes 3 cups.

I broiled the peppers, tomatillos, and onions. I also threw in a couple green onions. I used two serrano peppers, and it was very mild. I was expecting it to be hotter and would have put in more peppers now if I knew how mild it was going to be. Supposedly with both jalapenos and serranos, sometimes they're really mild and other times really hot, so maybe we just got a mild batch of serranos.