Food In The Fort

A few weeks ago, Kroger had a BOGO (buy one – get one free) offer on bay scallops. I love scallops (and most seafood) but they’re so expensive I usually can’t indulge so I seized the opportunity and bought two 12 oz. packets (apparently the mysterious grocery shrink ray has struck the seafood aisle now too and instead of getting a full pound of your fishy faves, it’s only 12 ounces).

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good idea of what I wanted to do with them. Searching for recipes didn’t turn up anything that really floated my boat and most recipes I could find on the net were for sea scallops. Sea scallops of course are much bigger than bay scallops so they lend themselves well to things like breading and frying but bay scallops usually just turn into very expensive and soggy balls of fishy goo if you do that to them. We’re very anti-fishy goo in this house. Thus there they’ve sat in the back of my freezer taunting me, “We’re damn expensive and delicious, and you’re still not eating us!”

Now, I’ve been doing of lot of rather meat intensive dishes of late (meat loaf, meat ball sandwiches, meat roast, vegetable meat soup…) so it seemed a good time to give my arteries a rest and maybe do something a bit lighter. And being really hungry I was also feeling quite impatient and, dare I say, reckless so I threw caution to the wind and thawed out the scallops deciding I’d just throw something together. Edible or not, it would get eaten. But my gamble paid off and handsomly, allowing you, dear reader, to benefit from my careless ways..

As with all my unrecipes, please don’t take measurements or even ingredients as gospel. I don’t really measure things most nights I”m cooking and whatever I list here are just approximations. Don’t want so much garlic? Cut it down. Want it fishier or richer? Add more scallops or butter. Substitute fake crab meat for the scallops and rigatoni for the pasta if you want, and add a little heavy cream to the sauce. Hell, make a yucky face and order a pizza if you want. It’s all good. Read the rest of this entry »

This is one of those healthy eating gimmicks that I always look askance at. You know, those little tricks like making fresh “ice cream” by throwing a couple of frozen bananas in your blender. You and I both know any resemblance to ice cream lies only in the mind of the diet guru trying to sell you their book. Sure it might be tasty, and it might even be palatable but it’s not what it promised to be and you only end up feeling cheated.

So when I saw this video showing how to substitute summer squash for fettuccine making the rounds of the food blogs a couple of weeks ago I thought this was just more of the same food fakery. But I needed something to make to bring with me to book club this past Tuesday so I decided to use Fort Wayne’s literati as guinea pigs. Read the rest of this entry »

Somewhere, perhaps deep in a mountain lair or maybe hidden away in an abandoned missile silo, there are scientists who speculate that should Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup disappear from store shelves tomorrow it will herald the end of civilization as we know it. Oh, I didn’t say they were the sort of scientists you’d want running the Large Hadron Collider or even tinkering underneath the hood of your Ford. I’m sure they exist though simply because no matter how ridiculous a proposition someone makes, you can always find somebody who will support it. Witness Scientology.

Whether you believe that Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup was the foundation of modern civilization, you have to admit that it’s pretty handy to have around. How else do you explain almost 80,000 recipes using it on Google? Today I have an un-recipe for a yummy pasta sauce taking advantage of that mushroomy miracle in a can.

It’s an un-recipe because I’m a little light on the measurements. The truth is, I wanted pasta with a meat sauce for dinner and I didn’t have any tomato sauce in the cupboard. So I just made this up on the spot with what I had lying about. My suggestion to you is just that… take this un-recipe and any measurements as only a suggestion of what you might want to do. Everybody’s tastes are different and who knows what you have in your pantry. Besides, it’s not like I wrote anything down. I was hungry! Read the rest of this entry »

If your place is like mine, it’s oppressively hot in the summer, even with the air conditioning running. So the last thing you want to do is add more heat by cooking. Still, unless you want to subsist on a steady diet of deli meats and fast food all summer, you’re going to have to turn that stove on some time. Although, now that I think about it, eating more fast food would give me an excuse to loiter and soak up that sweet, cool, air-conditioned atmosphere… Ah, who am I kidding? They all kick you out after the first couple of hours anyway.

The key to summer cooking is to cook for as short as possible, do it as early in the day as possible, then forget about it and spend the rest of the day competing with the dog for the primo spot on the sofa right next to the A/C vent. This recipe fits the bill. To its advantage, it happens to be quite tasty too and literally takes under a half hour to make (including the time it takes the water to come to a boil). Now move over dog, it’s my turn! Read the rest of this entry »

This recipe, which comes to us from the top of a Tribe of Two Sheiks hummus container via Catherine’s mom, is one we really wanted to like. Honestly, we did. After all, hummus, pasta and veggies are all things we heartily approve of. Catherine’s mom and dad both loved it but, alas, we found it a bit bland for our tastes. It’s not that it’s a bad recipe. The texture is nice and we found the rotini we used held the hummus and veggie mix very well. It’s also a welcome change from tomato or cheese based sauces.

We just think it needed something, maybe cumin and some ground red pepper. Perhaps we were, for a change, just too shy with the garlic. Catherine’s mom suggested that maybe she had used a spicier hummus. Perhaps. And maybe our readers will have some hints on how to improve this dish or some more recipes that make clever use of hummus. Let us know in the comments. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a great recipe which my mom made a lot when I was growing up. Besides combining spinach and tons of olive oil – two things of which I very much approve – this recipe is almost foolproof (and I should know) and has the added bonus of being quick. Anyone with kids can appreciate this combination. Anyone with kids who eat spinach, that is. Alas, I do not belong to that happy group. But I still make this recipe and the little buggers can have their spaghetti with butter. Read the rest of this entry »

This past January Leo and I were in Chicago for a conference and had lunch at the Parthenon. That’s not a very creative name for a Greek restaurant, but the food wasn’t as cliched. In fact, it rocked. Or actually, it flamed in the case of the saganaki – opa! While we don’t want to go into a detailed review here, the Parthenon is excellent and should be on your itinerary the next time you’re in Chicago. The pastitsio there, Greek for “macaroni and cheese,” made such an impression on us that we wanted to try and duplicate the experience at home. We failed. But it was a glorious, cheesy failure which kept the dog in pots to lick for close to an hour. It also made an excellent breakfast. So here’s the recipe with some caveats: add salt, add hot sauce or red pepper and, by all means, add garlic!

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