Swedes feed 2

IKEA has changed their menu a little since the last time I was there. Mom and I both ordered the apple glazed salmon, which came with new potatoes and multi-colored carrots. Yep, all those colorful things are carrots. The orange are the sweetest, the white are kind of firm and turnip-y and the red ones were more mushy. And the yellow carrots taste a bit like squash.

We shared an order of Swedish pancakes with lingonberries for dessert. Stephen had fun gawking at the ground floor from his third-floor vantage point on my lap.

Swedes feed

It's tradition at the Tilsches to have a Swedish-themed meal over the holidays. Our smorgasbord included limpa -- a mild and sweet swedish rye with a hint of licorice -- and pickled herring...
Also, smoked salmon, cucumber slices in vinegar, shrimp...
Deviled eggs, rye vita (Thanks, Susie!), potato sausage, bundoost (a swedish cheese, I'm sure I've spelled it wrong), lingonberry jam, and some sweet potatoes.

I had to eat my smorgasbord in about 3 minutes because Stephen was ready for his lunch too.

Christmas grub

We always do fusion over the holidays. Yesterday's menu included sticky rice, fried rice vermicelli, pork roast, meatballs, turkey hotdogs wrapped in turkey bacon, spinach salad, zuchinni and corn casseroles, sweet potatoes, cookies, homemade hummus and homemade pitas... crab dip, ham, shrimp and cocktail sauce...

My mom made jook (congee) for a mid-morning snack today using the leftover rice.

Tomorrow we'll have our "Swedish Christmas" meal with pickled fish, bondoost (I have no idea how to spell that), limpa and potato sausage. For tonight though, we're having pizza.

Blogger tells me it's malfunctioning, so I might try to make this better later...

Green Lasagna

I wanted to see if lasagna could be made without tomatoes... and without ricotta. This is what I came up with:

First layer: homemade pesto that's been in the freezer for too long, sauteed spinach and red onion with salt
Second layer: firm tofu mashed with extra virgin olive oil, oregano, basil and sea salt and sauteed broccoli, french cut green beans, onion and mushrooms.
Top layer: More sauteed spinach with sweet onion, garlic and salt and a layer of mozzerella.

I liked how this turned out. I was afraid it wouldn't be juicy enough to keep the noodles from getting hard in the oven, but it did fine. The tofu tasted really salty when I was mashing it up, but once it was in the lasagna it didn't have enough flavor. The texture, though, does a good job of approximating ricotta.
I guess this creation would probably gross some people out, but I've been eating it for lunch all week :-)

I think next summer I'd like to try a yellow lasagna and use lemon boy tomatoes and zucchini as the sauce... hmmm.

Another use for cake mix

Chocolate chip banana craisin muffins
1 box chocolate cake mix
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil
3 mashed bananas
1/2 cup mini chips
handfull of craisins

Spoon into muffin tin, cook until set at 350 degrees.

These came out pretty good. I had to restrain myself from eating more than one on a full stomach.

Turkey salad sandwich

I mentioned in a previous post that I made turkey soup with the meat and bones leftover from Thanksgiving. But I didn't use all the turkey bits that my mom so painstakingly pulled from the bones. Last night I chopped the meat and mixed it with a dollop of cranberry sauce, splashes of vinaigrette dressing, a big squirt grey poupon extra creamy mustard, and some minced red onion. I'm sorry I never like to measure things... Then I put fresh spinach on some baguette rounds, a scoop of the turkey salad, a slice of golden delicious and a sprig of dill (I bought two packs when I was preparing for the previous recipe.) Came out pretty tasty. I had about 6 of them for dinner last night.

Some how-to's

I've added a new feature to my posts called reactions. For now, there's four choices: yum, hmm, aw!, and ew. You all can click on one or more reactions to express you're opinion about the food, nature or baby in the post :-)

Also, I know some of you don't have a blogger or google I.D. but would like to leave comments. You can leave your thoughts by clicking the green word "comments" below the post. That will bring you to the comment screen, which looks like this:

Select the "Name/URL" option and type in whatever name you want. You can leave a URL if you have a website, but you don't have to. Or you can continue to be anonymous like some people *cough-mom*.

Perciatelli with spicy dill anchovy breadcrumbs

Made this recipe out of last April's Gourmet magazine.

3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
2 cups fresh bread crumbs
1/4 cup chopped dill
1 lb red onions, thinly sliced
1 (2-oz) can flat anchovy fillets, drained and chopped
1 lb perciatelli pasta (long tubular strands)
1/2 tsp dried hot pepper flakes

This recipe got my attention because I LOVE fresh dill. I could just eat bouquets of the stuff. (TANGENT: Every year I try to grow it in my container garden and on my window sill. And every year those cursed pots produce gangly, yellowed stalks with nary a feathery frond for me to munch. This time, I got some luscious and overpriced organic dill from Kroger.) Also, I've never made anything with anchovy fillets. Nor have I made many Italian recipes without tomatoes.

The magazine says to: Heat 1/4 cup oil in skillet, and stir breadcrumbs 'til crunchy and golden. Then toss with chopped dill, salt and pepper.
Wipe skillet, cook onions, salt in remaining 1/2 cup oil until very soft. Then add anchovies and mash into onions until "dissolved" (I never heard of fish dissolving before, but OK.)
Meanwhile, cook pasta in 5 quarts water salted wit 2 Tbs salt. (yeah, really salty!)
Drain pasta, stir pepper flakes and 1/2 cup reserved pasta water into anchovy mixture and toss with pasta. Stir in half the breadcrumbs and pile the rest on top.

I felt like this recipe had a little too much oil. Even though I used a non-teflon skillet, I think I could have cut the oil by half or a third. Plus all the excess made the anchovy sauce slip off the noodles and to the bottom of the bowl. I also thought it was a little salty, but that's just my personal taste. I think I would have upped the onions and I did up the dill to a half cup. Though the crumbs were soggy, the next day's leftovers seemed to be more flavorful.

peeking