While I a m not getting photos of everything on the menu plan, I did manage to snap a few.

The first series is the salmon and blue cheese polenta:

Above: The polenta was baked in my favorite cast-iron skillet. THe light browning on top is the parmesan cheese. Since the oven in our new place isn’t heating as well as it should, the crust never totally browned; but, it was still tasty. Below: The finished product, which was served with  a dollop of light sour cream and a garnish of avocado.

Below is a quick snapshot of the Lime and Peanut noodles I served with the Thai Salmon patties. I didn’t get a picture of the patties, but they were  great with the sweet-and-hot sauce!

Tonight it’s UC’s turn to cook, and Thursday we’ll be having dinner with friends; but, look for more photos of the meal plan soon!

Thanksgiving is over, and it’s time to hop back on the frugal food wagon! As many of you know, there are now four adults to feed in the house. We share our gorgeous, huge new home with another  couple that we’ve known for years, and are keeping the budget down by also sharing food. Here’s the next two week’s dinners (some of it in pictures).

November 30th – December 6th

Monday: Venison Sausage and green lentil soup, with homemade bread. One of our favorite soups for winter meets my brother’s venison stash. We were given some ridiculous amount of venison this year (which is fantastic, since we love the stuff), including these fantastic sausages. They were tender and spicy, giving a deep, warm flavor to the soup. As I’ve mentioned before, lentils are a great source of lean protein, are high in fiber, and a very frugal-but-satisfying dinner. We used homemade stock for the broth, and then paired the soup with some of UC’s homemade ciabatta bread. The total cost for the four of us was less than $2.00. If we’d had to buy the sausage, it would have been about $4-5 total.

Tuesday- Creole catfish, with apple & onion hash, mixed vegetables, and salad. This is a bit of a splurge meal. I love apple & onion hash, and since we have apples coming out our ears, this was the perfect time to make this great side dish.

Wednesday-Thai Salmon patties and hot-and-sour sauce, with miso-peanut noodles (whole-wheat), and a veggie. Canned salmon is another great source of tasty, lean protein at a good price, and mixed with TVP it’s an even better price. I’ll whip up some miso-peanut sauce (with a touch of lime), and grab a veggie out of the freezer to round things out.

Thursday- Mexican pinto beans and brown rice. I’ll be using some of our (huge) store of dried beans for these. Coupled with the brown rice this is a great, spicy dinner with lots of vitamins, protein, and fiber. There will be a salad on the side for  more greens.

Friday: Shape-It-Up Meatloaf with whipped sweet potatoes and a vegetable. My most-requested recipe, currently, is this meatloaf. Low in fat and calories, high in flavor and nutrition. Made with lean meat, oats, TVP, spinach, black beans, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and spices, this meatloaf has converted even the most hard-core meat eaters! This looks better baked, and tastes better than it looks period; but:

Saturday-Salmon, mushroom, and vegetable polenta. We love creamy polenta in the winter. It’s hearty, and when you toss in loads of vegetables, canned salmon, and some smoked black sea salt it’s also tasty and healthy. We’ll be using some of the wild mushrooms we collected this year:

Sunday-Venison Chili with cheddar & sour cream cornbread. My special chili gets a twist with venison (thanks, Dan!). Pinto, white, and black beans (soaked and cooked) will make this stew fun and flavorful.

December 7th – 13th

Monday-Salmon and blue cheese pasta. We’ll be making homemade, whole-wheat pasta if all goes well, then topping it with salmon and vegetables in light blue-cheese, parmesan, and lemon sauce. It’ll look like this, but with the addition of salmon:

Tuesday-Spanish braised chicken thighs with brown rice and salad. This one-pot meal is reminiscent of paella! Deep, rich Spanish flavors, lots of chicken and vegetables, all cooked with brown rice in a wonderful sauce.

Wednesday-Sweet & Sour Tofu. Our favorite tofu from Twin Oaks Commune will sit amid peppers, broccoli, and other vegetables in this Asian dish.

Thursday-Venison Roast with root vegetables and salad. The leftover root vegetables will be used to make the stew you’ll see later on in the menu.

Friday-Whole wheat pizza night. UC is making whole-wheat crust, our friend Adam is making the sauce, and we’ll all top our pizzas with our favorites. Mine will be light on the cheese, heavy on the roasted broccoli, onions, and TVP. UC’s will be heavy on the cheese and pepperoni.

Saturday- Roasted root vegetable stew. This is another great winter soup. Roasted root vegetables are pureed into a creamy soup, served topped with parmesan cheese and olive oil:

Sunday-Kufta on pita, with the fixin’s and cucumber salad. This Middle Eastern vegetarian dish combines lentils and bulgar for a complete, lean protein:

Right now, we’re spending about $100/week to feed 4 adults.

What’s your meal plan this week?

Thanksgiving is upon us, or will be shortly, and I will be off the blog until Monday, November 30th. I will have very limited email access, but you can always email me or reach me by phone.

Have a wonderful holiday!

With the holidays fast approaching, many people are scrambling for that unique gift for their special someone. A gourmet dinner tailored specially to your sweetheart’s tastes is the perfect way to say “I love you.” For Christmas, Valentine’s Day, anniversaries, engagements, or other celebrations, let me help you make it a night to remember.

Dinners are designed just for your special person–no mass-produced meals! Local, flavorful foods mean rich, wonderful flavors, too.  Proposing? Let me find design the perfect way to surprise her with the ring.  Anniversaries can be designed around your wedding theme, complete with a home-baked cake! Give that new mom a night off with a quiet and romantic dinner she can really enjoy, without any cleanup.

I’ll serve your dinner in formal chef’s whites, and additional server is available for an added touch of class.  Dinners include appetizer, soup or salad, entree, sides, and dessert with your choice of gourmet beverage (coffee, exotic flavored teas, and more!).  Cheese plates, wine pairings, and more are also available to tailor your dinner experience.

Romantic breakfasts and lunches are also available, as are picnic lunches! Special diets, including locavores, are always welcome. For more information, email me at chef at shwankie.net.

The move is done, and overall went well; so, I am back to cooking. And blogging.

Above: Chicken zirva, a recipe from Chef Channon Mondoux’s new book “Celebration at the Sarayi.” This is a current favorite of ours, with it’s deep flavors and heartiness. It’s a perfect winter dish when made with dried fruits. Below: the final product. This Turkish-Ottoman recipe is a unique and flavorful way to introduce people to Turkish cuisine.

One of the fun parts of my job is getting to taste new things. Last week, we headed to Horton Winery with our friends Dave and MJ for their 20th anniversary event, which included a cellar tasting and tour. They have some lovely whites, and are known for their Viogner.

The larget vineyard in VA, Horton makes over 50 wines, and they were almost all available for tasting. Needless to say, I didn’t go through them all. Having been told by reliable sources (read: Dave and MJ) that their whites were far better than their reds, I opted to stick mostly to those. Their Viogner was nice, and their sparkling Viogner was quite good. Their chocolate dessert wine was good, as was their blackberry.

Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to use their dessert wines in a chocolate cake soon, because I think the raspberry would be an amazing addition.

One of my holiday recipes is being featured on AC’s Food & Wine page!

Holiday Cheese Tortes, by Shawn Sisson.  This is the same recipe I donated to the Bike Stop event earlier this year. I am excited!

As some of you know, we’ll be moving to Lynchburg, VA in about a week. This means there will be a hiatus on updating starting today, so I can finish packing. We should have internet up and running within a day after the actaul move, but there’s a lot of unpacking to do. So, plan on hearing from me again the first week of November.

This also means I am no longer taking clients in Northern VA, but am accepting new clients in Roanoke, Lynchburg, and Charlottesville starting in January (I will not be taking new clients during the holidays).  For now, I am not able to do pre-prepared meals for drop-off, but hopefully that service will return after the New Year.

See you in a few weeks!

I promised you a review and recipe for this, and here it is!  I got the idea from this months’ SELF magazine, but I tweaked it for a variety of reasons. Note: The pictures are kind of awful, since the light in the house wasn’t great and my tripod is in my car.

Ingredients:

Above: garlic & lime marinaded shrimp. Below: Chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (the leftover peppers were frozen for later use, which is what you’re seeing here).

Above: sweating onions and garlic. Below: Multi-color diced peppers.

Below:  Diced fresh broccoli.

Recipe:

Sauce

14 oz. crushed or diced tomatoes. From our garden.

1 medium onion, diced

3-5 cloves garlic, mashed and diced. From Roundabout Farms.

3-5 chipotle peppers, diced fin

Filling:

1/2 lb. shrimp, peeled, deveined, and roughly chopped, marinaded in lime juice, zest, and chopped 2 chopped garlic cloves. I got these at aldi for $3.99/lb, making this a really frugal meal.

1 c. or so broccoli, diced

1 c. or so peppers, diced (use whatever color you like). These are from our garden.

1 pkg. corn tortillas

1 c. or so of cheese of your choice

Put it together: Sweat onions and garlic in a small amount of EVOO.  Combine all ingredients, and blend (I used a stick blener) until mostly smooth. I like chunks, so I left a few. Set aside. Sautee’ broccoli and peppers together in a bit of EVOO.

Cover bottom of  pan of appropriate size (I used a 10 inch, deep pan, but I also doubled the recipe) with a thin layer of sauce. Dip both sides of corn tortillas into sauce (I did this in a separate bowl), and arrange to cover bottom of pan. Cut to fit if necessary:

Cover with shrimp, and a layer of cheese:

Dip more tortillas and cover shrimp and cheese layer. Spread broccoli and pepper mixture on top. Cover with a light layer of cheese of your choice (I used cheddar this time). Cover with another layer of sauce-dipped tortillas, cover with remaining sauce, and top with light layer of cheese (pic only shows top layer of tortillas):

Cover with lid or foil, and bake at 3750 for 30 minutes. Uncover, and bake an additional 10 minutes. Serve:

UC was really dubious about shrimp in an enchilada bake. Generally, he loves enchiladas and related foods, but the shrimp thew him.  He loved it. It was different, and delicious. It was also totally unlike anything you’d call an enchilada, so I’ve renamed it! Saying it’s an “enchilada bake” is pretty misleading, in terms of flavor.

Let me know what you think!

Sunday I got out of bed all by my lonesome, so to speak, and reveled in a perfect morning. The other half was off on an overnight lab-work trip (which I’d been supposed to go on, but had to back out due to work, unfortunately), and I had the morning to myself.  One of the tasks of the day was to start a grocery list and food plan for the upcoming weeks, which UC would help with when he got home. To do that, I felt, I needed more than my usual light breakfast. Since I work out fairly early each morning, my breakfast is usually protein & some fiber, and I eat a heavier snack when I get home. Sunday,I had the freedom to indulge!

In the picture: 0% Fat Fage Greek Yogurt (I prefer TJ brand, but we don’t have one close by), topped with fresh melon, blackberries & strawberries we put up earlier this year in the freezer, chopped walnuts, and a 1/2 tsp. local honey. Eggs, scrambled with leftover seared broccoli (the nutty flavor is deep and rich), mushrooms (mushrooms, in addition to being tasty, have recently been shown to decrease the risk of breast cancer by up to 35%), garden-fresh green pepper, tomato, basil, and thyme. Sided with clementines and a cup of Yoga detoxifying tea. YUM!

Eating breakfast, I started the menu plan, which was finished last night with UC. As we get ready to move, we’re concentrating on making some meals that leave excellent freezable leftovers. The idea is to get things we can heat up quickly in the microwave the week before and the week after the move, so we can avoid eating out (and eating unhealthy foods, too). So, you’ll see some heavier fare here pretty regularly for the next couple of weeks.

DINNERS

Week 1

Monday: Shrimp Enchilada bake with salad and crusty bread. This recipe is from this month’s Shape magazine, and is an experiment. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Tuesday: Pork piccata with golden acorn squash, salad, and broccoli. UC loves my pork piccata, which I make with a slightly lighter sauce than some restaurants. It’s important to use flat leaf, also called “Italian”, parsley in this recipe. Actually, I never use curly-leaf parsley other than for garnish, and rarely even then. It just doesn’t have enough flavor. Aldi had great broccoli this week!

Wednesday: Baked whole chicken with baked sweet potatoes and long beans. I’ll slide some lemon and rosemary under the chicken’s skin, rub it with a mixture of herbs (lemon thyme, sage, oregano, black smoked sea salt, pepper, and paprika) and stuff it with a quinoa and grape stuffing. The potatoes take about the same time to bake in foil, and the long beans will be seared (they’re from our garden this year).

Thursday: Rustic Cabbage soup with crusty bread. UC will be cooking this night, as I have an evening activity.  He makes wonderful cabbage soup that’s replete with butter beans and chunks of vegges. We serve it with a hunk of crusty bread (his ciabatta, in this case) to make a wonderfu meal on cold days.

Friday: Leftovers. I’ll be gone all day, and late into the evening working. So, it’s a great time to clean out the refrigerator. Some leftovers will be packed by me for lunch and dinner, some will be eaten by UC for his dinner, and the rest will be packed and frozen for the move.

Saturday: We’re out of town this day to deal with move stuff, so we’ll be eating out from necessity.

Sunday: Pumpkin Bisque with grilled cheese on artisan bread.  ‘Tis the season for pumpkin, one of my favorite things! Since we’ll be coming home late, we needed a fast dinner. We’ve got an amazing bisque recipe from a fabulous restaurant, L’etoile in Charlottesville, at the market last year. The restaurant uses a lot of local products, and the food is amazing. We’ll be serving this up and freezing some for the move. The grilled cheese will be on some of Thadd’s bread, with an-as-yet-undetermined cheese, and smokey chipotle mustard I’ll be whipping up.

Week 2

Monday: Roasted turkey, stuffed with apple, chicken sausage, & cornbread stuffing. Served with whipped sweet potatoes and seasonal veggie. Turkey is a good price right now, and while I’d love to buy our turkey locally, we just can’t spend $70 a bird or more. This is one of the few things we haven’t tried to work into our budget, but hope to possibly next year. With the move so close, it’s just not reasonable this year. What we will be doing is roasting the turkey and eating on it for a day or two. The remaining meat will be ground and frozen, to be pulled out after the move and mixed with mayo, pickles, and a few other things to make a wonderful sandwich spread. The bones will be made into stock, which will also be frozen for later use. I’ll make the cornbread for the stuffing this week, break it up and let it dry out, then store it in a plastic bag until next week. It’s fantastic with local tart apples and a good quality chicken sausage!

Tuesday:  Tofu & Chickpea Indian Curry over Brown Scented Rice. This is one of my specialties.  I don’t do it often for just the two of us because there’s no way to not make a mountain of it, but it freezes fairly well so long as you freeze the tofu separately, which we’ll be doing. My curries are spicy, but in slow-heat, forhead-sweating kind of way. The brown rice is scented with star anise, cardamom, coriander, and saffron. The curry itself has tofu, chickpeas, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, green peppers, onions, ginger, bananas (no, that’s not a typo), and some other veggies (whatever I find that looks fresh and tasty). This is a wet curry, made with yogurt and coconut milk, so it’s perfect over rice.  It’s topped with chopped peanuts,  green pepper, and raisin.

Wednesday: Veggie Lasagna, Shawn-Style, served with salad and garlic bread. There’s a trick to this lasagna that I just can’t give up yet. It’s one of my most asked-for recipes, and even meat eaters dive in for seconds (and thirds, and fourths, if I let them). It’s also got about half the calories of regular veggie lasagna! And nope, there’s no tofu or soy involved.  This will be served with a huge green salad and crusty, homemade garlic bread. I’ll be making two pans so we have enough to freeze.

Thursday: Zirva, with brown rice and seasonal veggie. Zirva is chicken roasted with plums and apricots, and it’s incredible. The recipe is from my mentor, Chef Channon, in her book “Celebration at the Sarayi,” which takes a look at 1500’s Turkish Ottoman Empire cooking. The recipes in this book are just mouthwater (hint: you can buy the interactive book at her website!).

Friday: We’re eating out for the second time in two weeks, which is pretty unusual for us. But, we’re trying to spend time with friends before we leave (yes, we’ll see them again, but not nearly as often), and this is a chance to meet our friend Dave’s mom!  Dave’s creativity is inspiring, and his commitment to environmentally-friendly landscape design is pretty fantastic, so we want to see where he gets it from! Dave and his wife, Mindy, have invited us to the Bavarian Chef for dinner with his mom. This restaurant is it’s very own experience. Go hungry, that’s all I am saying.

Saturday: Venison and Wild Mushsroom straganoof, served over spaghetti squash “noodles.” Another specialty of mine. The trick is in the fresh-ground nutmeg. The venison is from my nephew (my older nepher, though I suspect I’ll be getting some from my younger nephew in November, since he just got his first deer. Congratulations, Josh!!!). The Chicken-of-the-Woods mushrooms were collected and frozen earlier this year, and hopefully I can collect–rather than buy–some oyster mushrooms next week. Courtesy of an idea from UC, this will be served over spaghetti squash “noodles”, which he did with something else a while ago. It was spectacular, so it’s becoming a standard part of our menu.

LUNCHES (mix-n-match)

Leftovers. Tuna salad on whole grain bread. Salad. Probably some things I am forgetting.

BREAKFASTS (mix-n-match)

Steel-cut oats. Greek yogurt with fruit. Whole Grain toast. Scrambled/fried/poached eggs. Fruit. Homemade healthy muffins.

SNACKS

Hard boiled, farm-fresh eggs. Nuts. Cheese. Fruit (pomegranates are in season, yummy!). Fresh salsa & corn chips. Raw Veggies. Steamed artichoke. etc. Homemade healthy muffins.

BEVERAGES

Milk. Tea, caff and non. Water. Coffee.

I haven’t finished shopping for the whole two weeks yet, so I can’t give a definitive cost.

It was wonderful to see Channon again. She continues to inspire me, educate me, and make me laugh.  Her class at Sur La Table went beautifully, and in just a few weeks she’ll be off to Turkey. Color me jealous!

Above: Channon whipping up some muhallebi, a rice-based pudding. This recipe, and the others in her book, were redacted from Ottoman Turkish recipes previously lost to us.  And, they’re yummy. Below: Me, flipping the katlama boregi, a feta and walnut savory pastry.  I have to say that I share the feelings of most other female chefs I’ve met: Chefs jackets for women are awful. They make you look lumpy and poufy no matter how svelt you are!

Channon and I were hosted by Ms. Kauffman, a reknown chef and cookbook author. Hopefully, I’ll have some of her cookbooks reviewed here, and a link to her website, soon. The three of us spent the day preparing for this class, and were helped out in the evening by another of my favorite chefs (and a wonderful friend), Elaine Koogler. She, incidentally, is to thank for these pictures, which we really appreciate.

Sur La Table has a beautiful professional kitchen, and our helper Whitney was fantastic. I am looking forward to teaching there myself soon!

Check out Channon’s website, which includes all kinds of fun stuff from videos on food preparation to her NPR interviews!