Carrots, Carrots, and more Carrots

Just this last weekend the weirdest thing happened in Phoenix, AZ...it rained all day on Saturday, the temperatures dropped to high 60's and we all were wearing a sweater; I think our heater even kicked on. It was nice and cool to make something in the oven so I roasted some carrots of all colors and some yellow beets that I bought at the farmers market to go alongside a yellow chicken curry Tom prepared for dinner. It was delicious! The sweetness of the carrots and the beets complemented the curry very well. It was our first time having yellow beets and unlike the red one's these seem milder in sweetness and another plus was that they did not die the entire dish purple; one of my least favorite things about beets. Today I was on facebook and there was a link from the downtown Phoenix farmer's market sharing a story http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bella/2011/04/in_season_carrots.php about recipes made with carrots. I thought it was a great little feature story and thought I would pass it along here.

Cheers and Enjoy!

Lily & Tom (I will definitely be making him a carrot boutonniere for this Easter!!!)

The Supemarket Picks Dinner

Sometimes when we are having a hard time figuring out our menu for the week we go by what's on special for that week at the supermarket. This week at Sprouts, ground beef was on sale. Now when I buy ground beef I always think of three recipes, hamburgers, a dish my mom always made with spinach, and ground beef and zucchini (Tom's recipe). I bought two packs and planned on making the hamburgers and the zucchini, but when I reached for the zucchini it was $2.99 a pound. That just does not seem right! Instead I bought the yellow squash which was half the price :-)

My husband and I really liked how the dish turned out. He basically stir fry's the squash with tomatoes, the ground beef and the yellow squash. This is great over rice but it would also be awesome in a quiche or even in layers of lasagna. Next time you buy ground beef before thinking about making a burger try this, you can use  your favorite ground meat. And remember sometimes you might be suprised when you try a slightly different ingredient to your recipes. We definitely plan on making this again.

Cheers and Enjoy,


Lily & Tom (who is flexible with his recipes)

Fancy Steak and ummm Sour Potaoes??

Well I am not sure what you consider fancy meat but anytime we buy something that is more than $5 a pound it's fancy to us. We recently bought some rib eye steaks and prepared it the first night with pesto sauce and the second night just with plain black pepper and salt. The pesto trick is something we always do when we make lamb, but we tried it on the steak and although good I like it better on the lamb. Try it though, it's something different and worth trying :-)

The night of the P&S steak I prepared some simple mixed greens with no dressing as a side, and some fingerling potatoes that I had just read about in this months Bon Apetit issue. The potatoes were basically roasted then marinated in lots of garlic,even parts of lemon juice and olive oil  and some zest.  As soon as I told my husband I was going to make them he said "great sour potatoes for dinner," then I gave him a hard time and told him I was going to make them anyways. And guess what, they were sour potatoes.

It wasn't that they tasted bad it was just that they did not complement the steak. I think the potatoes would go great with a vegetarian dish like on top of a bed of hummus or for meat eaters even some lamb, something that could compete with the strong flavor.  I even thought the potatoes were really fragrant. Guess I will have to save the sour potatoes for another time, I'll give them one more shot with the husband.


Cheers and Enjoy,


Lily & Tom (who dislikes sour potatoes)

CLAMS :-)

After a week of fabulous pasta dishes at my sister-in-law's house in the SF bay area we decided we were either going to have seafood or steak on our first dinner back home.  Since it was Friday and we are in Lent we decided to make clams in black bean sauce. At first I did not know how Tom and I were going to eat 5lbs of clams but we did. They were delicious, but Tom and I both agree that for the next time we would make our own black bean sauce because the sauce we used was a bit salty, however not enough to ruin the clams.

I wish I had a better picture but the camera I usually take pictures with was recharging after our vacation. Next time we make seafood I want to try and make mussels in a tomato broth similar to the one we had in Shorebreak hotel's Zimzala resturant in Huntington Beach. We definitely recommend both the hotel and the resturant!

I wonder what everyone else makes on Friday's during lent...


Cheers and Enjoy,

Lily & Tom (Just recently turned one year older, Happy B-day to my sweetie)

Salmon with the skin on...

Salmon is not one of my favorite fish but when it is  pan fried  with the skin on I can eat it all the time. I remember we were on vacation visiting Tom's sister a couple summers ago and she was making salmon for dinner and she threw the skin away. Tom and I gasped! We couldn't believe they did not eat the skin, so we tried to sell them on it describing how crispy the skin was. Within the same week she made salmon again,  she kept the skin on and they liked it. I think they still eat it with the skin on and in our home we wouldn't have it any other way, unless it's sashimi. Whenever salmon is on your menu for the week try making it with the skin on, we think you will love it.

Cheers and Enjoy,

Lily & Tom (he says I give away all our secrets)

Pumpkin Pasta Again...

Pumpkin Pasta of course sounds like an Autumn dish but we make it all year round when we are craving it and especially because the sauce holds well if you freeze it.  However even though we like it a lot we don't make it that often except for this last month. This last Valentine's day Tom made pumpkin pasta and as any good cook does he tastes the sauce constantly as he is cooking it and of course just before serving. When he asked me to try the sauce on Valentine's day it tasted sweet, we thought it was because he added an extra can of pumpkin to the recipe. Later, as he was throwing away the can he noticed that it read "pumpkin pie mix" so instead of pumpkin pasta we had "pumpkin pie pasta." It was so sweet we just kept passing the mozzarella cheese to each other so that we could at least finish our plate. Our two year old daughter loved it and she was the ONLY one to have it for seconds on the next day. It was definitely a memorable "sweet" valentine's. Luckily he read the can the second time around!

Cheers & Enjoy,

Lily & Tom (my sweet Valentine cook)

Bring out the Grill

I have lived in a sunny place all my life and I wouldn't have it any other way. Perhaps the best thing about living in a warmer State is that spring comes sooner. Today's temperature was almost 80 and with such nice weather I thought it would be fun to cook outside. So instead of making mole  like I mentioned in my previous post we grilled chicken. We had chicken legs, thighs and some chicken tenders that I marinated in some Polynesian sauce. For veggies we grilled orange, red, and yellow bell peppers.

However my most favorite thing to grill are green chiles, something about the smell of them grilling either indoors on a skillet or outside on a grill makes me smile. I think it's because it's something that we always had in my home when I was growing up. They also remind me of the sacks of chiles my father would buy in New Mexico; our car would smell like chiles for the next 6 hours on our way home from visiting family in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, TX.

Today we had also planned on planting our herbs in the new raised garden bed I bought my husband as a present. We planted cherry tomatoes, jalapenos, sage, basil, chives, and cilantro. I can't wait till it grows in a bit and we can start using the herbs & veggies. I am hoping that we will have many more days like today before the heat becomes too much and we start to hibernate inside our air conditioned home.

Looking forward to more grilling days, I have a pineapple riping on the counter for the next time.

Cheers and Enjoy,

Lily& Tom (I also made a pot of rice because he was craving it, good wife status, two thumbs up)

Pork Chops for Dinnner ...Really though it was the Plantains

One of my favorite things to eat are fried plantains. If it wasn't for the frying part I would eat them every week, so it's a treat when I actually make them. We planned on eating pork chops this week and I thought plantains would go great with them. I also love to accompany the plaintains with a dollop of sour cream. Something about it cuts the greasiness of the plantain. Although the pork chops probably should have been the focus of the meal, the plantains stole the show :-) They also remind me of Costa Rica, one of my favorite trips that I took with my sister when I just started dating my husband.

In addition to the plantains I also made some fingerling potatos and an impromptu salad. I scavenged the fridge and the pantry to make the salad. I mixed scallions, a can of kidney beans, a can of corn kernels and then put in some cilantro. Instead of dressing I sliced some hot pickled carrots that I also had in the pantry. The salad was delicious! It had a slight vinegar taste and it was a little bit spicy, both thanks to the carrots.

Later this week we are making chicken, maybe I'll make some mole, one of my sweetie's favorites!

Cheers and Enjoy,


Lily & Tom (sadly my pork came out dry and he still had seconds)

One of My Favorites!

I tell my husband each time I eat one of his homemade Chinese dishes that I had no idea Chinese food could be so good. He says the same thing to me when I make Mexican food. I guess we both agree that nothing really beats homemade food but it is also a reminder to not dismiss a certain type of food or cooking you might just be suprised at how good it is and it might even become one of your favorites.

This night Tom made pork in black bean sauce with green bell peppers, onions and for some heat two jalapenos. We serve it on top of some steamed rice. It is also one of those dishes that gets better the second day and the sauce for this dish is so delicious that I have to have just the sauce on top of some crispy rice. What's crispy rice? After you have scopped out almost all the rice from the pot (yes we do not use a rice cooker) you leave the stove on low and in 15 minutes or so you will have a toasty crispy yummy rice layer at the bottom of the pot.

Crispy rice is one of those things you might be fighting over for at the dinner table, especially since there is only a limited amount made out of each pot. I posted a picture of the crispy rice so everyone could see :-)

Cheers and Enjoy,

Lily & Tom (he's busy cooking dinner as I write this post)

When in doubt make Pasta!!

Every once in awhile when we don't have time to make a big grocery trip on the weekend and we are too busy to plan a menu for the week we get stuck trying to figure out what to make for dinner. These nights always seem to be when we make pasta.

For this meal I decided to use a marinara sauce that I bought from Costo and love (maybe it's the Italian tomatos). In some olive oil I sauteed half an onion, three cloves of sliced garlic and then browned three hot italian sausages. Once everything was browned a little I poured in the marinara sauce and just like that I had semi-homemade pasta sauce. I was about to grab the spaghetti but saw that I had capellini pasta. Someone once told me this was the same as thin spaghetti but when I put thin spaghetti into the water I realized there was definitely a difference in thickness.

Capellini pasta is like what my side of the family uses to make fideos (a pan fry, broken pasta dish with tomato sauce, and chicken broth).My suggestion is that if you are going to make it a pasta night have different types of pasta in the pantry, even though spaghetti is easy using a different pasta makes it feel like you actually planned for the meal. In the end the capellini pasta with sausage turned out well and Eloise loved it too! Leftovers were packed in her lunch box for school the next day.

Enjoy and Cheers,

Lily & Tom (he liked the dish too!)

Our First Little Collection of Pictures for the Bowl

When I started taking pictures of our dinners a few weeks ago my husband was wondering what I was going to do with these pictures. That's when I told him about my bowl idea. Now he waits for me to take the picture before he starts eating because I always try and make his plate look the best.

On the night that I made the tostadas, rice, and avocado I was about to load the picture onto my computer and realized that the camera did not have the memory card in it; a mistake which has happened a few times now. Tom suggested I recreate the dish later that evening for a picture and although it sounded silly at the time I did and since he is such an awesome husband he ate dinner twice :-)

In this little collection is also a picture of poke which is a raw tuna like salad that they make in Hawaii. If you love sashimi  and a little bit of sesame oil then you will love poke. We used the recipe from D.K.'s Sushi Chronicle of Hawaii (look at our cookbooks we love section at the side of this blog). If you have never had poke it is delicious and a good dish to make when your ahi tuna isn't the fanciest. Fun fact: Tom made seared ahi tuna the night he proposed to me! As a side dish Tom sauteed baby spinach with some onion and oyster sauce then topped it with some sliced almonds, delish!!

Later in the week it was Chinese New Year, Happy year of the Rabbit!! Tom usually cooks but since it was a busy week I made sure to make atleast two important dishes, a whole chicken and noodles for long life. I roasted the chicken and would baste it a couple times to crisp with hot chinese chile oil. The noddles I tossed with some beautiful cabbage I bought at sprouts supermarket earlier that day.

Lastly, one of our favorite meals to eat and make is chow mein. It is also the meal we tend to bring to potlucks. This time Tom decided to make it a little different and steamed the noodles and then topped it with stir fried baby bok choy and barbeque pork. I thought it turned out great!

Well hopefully all my blog posts won't be so long :-)

Enjoy and Cheers,

Lily & Tom (he became my first follower)

Our First Post!!

I thought for our first post I would share the meal we had for my 30th Birthday. However that was not the only thing we were celebrating. It was also the day we found out that we were having another baby girl. We were so excited. Tom prepared my nephew's chili recipe, homemade corn bread and pineapple upside down cake my favorite. As you will see in the pictures he added two cherries between each pinapple ring thinking that we might be having a boy. God is sure full of suprises and we wouldn't have it any other way. We love our little Susanna!!

Enjoy and Cheers,

Lily & Tom (for now he knows the blog exist)