Week 29: Inspired by a color

This is not one of my proudest posts, which might explain why I am so slow in updating it.  Our challenge was to do a dish "inspired by a color" and had grand aspirations of doing an entirely purple plate with eggplant and red cabbage followed by wine poached pears for dessert.

Instead, I made shrimp pot pie, and it was "sort of white, sort of green" for my color inspiration.  Luckily, it was delicious.  The puffed pastry crust was a little disappointing, but the fennel, leek, and shrimp filling definitely made up for it.

Next week's challenge is burgers, and I'll try to be a little more impressive!

Week 28: Citrus

For our citrus challenge, I did a spicy orange glazed chicken with lemon flavored green beans and plain corn muffins.  The chicken was roasted in the oven and brushed liberally with a sauce of orange marmalade mixed with hot garlic chili sauce.  It was delicious, and even grandma requested extra sauce!

Week 27: BBQ

For this week's assignment of BBQ, it didn't occur to me that I should actually try to use the barbecue grill.  Instead, I made a dish that captures the spirit of BBQ using the slow cooker.  

This was our "5th of July" feast and it consisted of "BBQ" pulled pork sandwiches, baked maple beans, and a spinach pasta salad.

It was absolutely delicious.  The pork spends almost 5 hours in the slow cooker before being shredded and put in a hot oven to crisp up a little.  The pasta salad is one of my favorites, using farfalle pasta and two entire bags of spinach.

Dessert was outside the scope of the challenge, but it was a big hit, so I'll include it here.  I made baked apple dumplings from a recipe I found online.  The secret ingredient is a little bit of Mountain Dew!

 

    

       

They were just right fresh out of oven with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream! 

      

Week 26: Pizza

Another challenge I was looking forward to: Pizza week! I made a pretty tasty pizza that replaces traditional tomato sauce with an avocado spread and topped it with sweet corn, cherry tomatoes, and monterey jack cheese.

I even used a pizza stone for the first time, which really did seem to help crisp up the crust.  Overall this was pretty tasty, next time I'll add steak or chicken.

Week 25: Regional Cuisine

One week too late for my trip home to Alaska we had a "Regional Cooking" themed week. Since I was half traveling and half packing for a big move, I decided to cheat and submit my Grandpa's smoked salmon as my dish.  Last time I was in Alaska in the summer I took several photos of the fish smoking process, and I submitted them as a mini photo journal for this week's challenge.  I also did brought some fresh smoked salmon home, which Grandma and I will definitely be enjoying during cocktail hour!

 

Week 24: Berries

This week makes my second recent berry tart. Our week 22 challenge was tarts, and this week's is berries.  I've been traveling in Alaska  (which explains the delayed post) but I did have time to make raspberry poptarts using Grandpa's homemade jam.

The recipe is super simple since it uses ready made pie crust and prepared jam.  They were pretty tasty considering, especially since the jam I used was pretty tart.  Strangely enough, this submission was one of my highest voted ever in the online submissions! 

Week 23: 20 minutes or less

For week 23, our challenge was to create a full meal from prep to finish in under 20 minutes.  I found that the time limit made me a little less inspired than usual, I don't particularly like to be rushed.  At any rate, I went looking for simple recipes that wouldn't require an extra trip to the grocery store this week.

This is what I found:

It's a quick and easy curry tuna on rice.  It's flavored with yellow curry powder, cumin, paprika, salt, and pepper.  I didn't eat the salad because I'm pretty sure Ben is saving the greens for lunch tomorrow, but I'm sure he won't mind that I borrowed them to give the plate a little color!