Monday, April 2, 2012

Smitten Kitchen

This week is 'clean-out-the-pantry' week in our house. I assessed the situation on Saturday morning when I re-organized and found lots of grain remnants. One cup of farro, half a bag of quinoa, some dried mixed beans, kind of a lot of long grain rice, semolina flour... there is plenty more, but I digress.
So I made a detailed meal plan for the week so that we could do our best to eat up some of those delicious things before they go bad (I don't know that any of those things would actually go bad- It just seemed like the right thing to do and it is budget friendly to boot!).
My friend Katie turned me on to Smitten Kitchen when we lived in Jackson. I remember looking through her beautiful food photos and thinking "I should really make some of these," and if I'm remembering correctly I did make one of her beautiful cakes, but never really went too deep into her archives.
Anyway, when I started scanning my list of leftover grains, something inside me yelled out to check Smitten Kitchen's recipe files for yummies.
How warm her heart would be to know every night this week will be dedicated to one or two of her amazing recipes.
Tonight was Tomato and Sausage Risotto and Arroz con Leche (rice pudding)--- so basically rice was our grain of the evening. Both are amazing. I'm in a rice coma right now. Sophie, both of these are easy and could feed a lot of people if we're missing any beach meals. I think the sausage could be replaced with shrimp if we had any left over, too.
I was hoping to link some of her beautiful food photos but I don't think she approves of that based on her FAQ section. But you should totally follow those links and check out our delicious supper. I was too lazy to photograph them tonight and her pictures are better anyway.

Up the rest of the week:
Mushroom & Barley Pie which uses our farro
Semolina Dumpling Soup which takes care of our remaining semolina flour
Multi Bean Chili and Cornbread with Cheddar, Jalapeño, and Green Onions which should knock out our bag of dried beans, corn meal, a leftover third of a block of sharp cheddar, and a well-intended-but-never-used jalapeño.


What's on your plate this week?!
I love food.

4 comments:

  1. Ohhh, I want to come eat at your house! Tonight, Bech and I had grilled chicken breasts with salsa verde and grean beans. Yummy, but that bean chili with jalapeno's sounds so good!

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  2. That all looks amazing, especially that cornbread! These days I don't know what I'm eating each day to the next, mostly because Paul takes care of thinking about that for me! But, I had the most fantastic black beans and yellow rice Sunday night at our friends Chuck and Joe's house. I'm definitely going to be making that again soon!

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  3. What's for dinner at my house tonight? I will tell you later (after I scan the Skylight Dinning Room's menue. It will not be as good as yours but I do not have to cook or clean up afterwards and the guest are delightful (sometimes} one of my dinnermates was a world traveler. I thought I had traveled a lot but he had traveled the world. I was a little jealous, No not really--I am happy with all T. and I did.
    MaMaw

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  4. Yay for Smitten Kitchen! I spent basically the entire weekend cooking up a bunch of soups for the freezer. Oh, and I baked a cake. I love food too. :)

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