Soup days

Cool weather and mountain cedar...it's January in San Antonio!!! My favorite time for cooking. Friday night, I made a cajun shrimp boil - wow! my first time doing that and it was really good. Still room for improvement starting with not using the crab/shrimp boil bag I used....not enough 'stuff' on the food and could be a little spicier. I really want the recipe for the remoulade they serve at the boiling pot [I think that's the name] in Rockport Tx

It's been a fun weekend at my house...Saturday was car tinkering day. The El Camino my son drives is running like ca-ca!!! so the guys popped the hood and did all kind of old-fashioned guy things to it, some of which actually helped. Meanwhile, my son replaced the brake pads on my car - how cool is that!!! after being married to a man who couldn't change a freaking light bulb, it's good that J is learning all kinds of cool stuff - new ceiling fans - up, new commode - installed, back porch - roofed, his room - still a mess! Can you tell I'm a proud mama!!!

Saturday night was pho and spring rolls at Pho Cong Ly - not being Vietnamese and not having visited there, I don't know if it's authentic - but it sure is good!!!

Sunday I saw Giarda making a bean soup on FoodTV that I would never make, but at least it got the wheels turning in my brain and I threw together a really good pot of bean soup with canned white beans and tomato, and left over grilled pork chops, a little chili powder, cumin, garlic, onion, carrot - your basic soup veggies....and then tossed in a handful of barley. It was really good. {so good that I had it for breakfast this morning!!!}

But the very best was last night - I was driving home in yucky drizzle and fog, wondering what to do for dinner....and the pieces fell together in my head like a marching band in formation!! Mushrooms, mushroom stock, a roux, onion, garlic, celery, sherry [okay, so the band was not in perfect order!!!

So here's how it went: HEB [I hate the Schertz HEB BTW; I'm an idiot for driving past 2 awesome stores at Blanco and DeZavala, but it wasn't in my head until I was almost home!!] Picked up shitaki, baby bella, and white mushrooms, WHAT no mushroom stock grumble, so better than bouillion mushroom stock concentrate, a 'como batard' [again, the other 2 stores have much better bread selection, HEB are you reading this!!!!]

Recipe {finally}
Shitaki mushrooms - .1 # [should have gotten more]
Baby bella mushrooms 0.3#
White mushrooms - 0.4#
1/2 of a large onion - fine dice
2 stalks celery - fine dice
Smart Balance, olive oil
1/4 c flour
1/8 c dry sherry
Milk [I used skim, but I'm sure whole milk or cream or half/half would make this deadly good]

3 pans on the stove [I'm doing a rachel ray!]; sauteed rough chopped mushrooms in olive oil in my big "green pan", seasoned with Herbes de provence [I used too much]; sauteed onion and celery in olive oil and a little smart balance, heating milk over low heat with a big dollop of the mushroom concentrate. Made a roux in the onion/celery pan and cooked until just starting to get golden, added in enough milk to make it like a sauce, took the boat motor/hand blender and pulverized most of the veggies [note, blender is probably much better tool for this] added milk to the rigth consistency, added mushrooms and hand blendered again - NOT a necessary step, wouldn't do it again. Adjusted seasonings with a little salt and white pepper, added sherry and served with very lightly toasted bread.

No pictures! this was not a pretty dish and I was too hungry to dress it up for a photo shoot. Definitely a do-over!

Sunday morning slowly starting

It's 10:30 as I sit here with my morning diet Mt. Dew, my preferred caffiene source, tho a big glass of Bill Miller tea would have been good if someone had been nice enough to go out and get me a lean brisket, egg, and potato taco - totally not good for me, but I had hoped!

Looking through blogs took up quite a bit of my day yesterday and now I want to figure out EASY ways to get some stuff in here. At the computer, originally to work, then to find recipes and ideas for taking care of the veggies and meat that now fill my fridge! I griped about veggie prices at HEB, and I won't even consider buying meat there...so my honey went down to Chichi's (chachi's - whatever) down by the produce market and brought back cabbage, cauliflower [99 cents a head there - 2.99 at HEB], nice ripe avocados, fruit - I'm not even sure what all else!! Then to Culebra meat market....I've got an entire pork loin - now cut into 4 equal pieces - 1 for a roast, 1 for pozole or green chili stew, the rest for some steaks, stir fry, milanesa style...He's going to be grilling today - fajitas [real, beef, fajita!], pork, and a sirloin that I've dry salted.

This is an idea I got from freaky foodie's blog, actually from grocery guy via her blog!- wait! I may have actually inserted a link!!! The steak is laying out in the garage refrigerator, salted on both sides and flipped mid drying. I did this with my turkey at Thanksgiving in 2006 and 2007 and came out with the bestest turkey ever...so we'll see how the steak does. It took the turkey 3 full days, steak only a portion of the day. If I can get some pretty sides to go with it, I'll take pics - AND if it's good!

So - good Sunday morning to all. I'm going to go dig around in the blog world and try to find out how to do all those little things I want - links [so I can give better credit to my inspiration!] a counter, pictures in my posts - that sort of thing. Besides my Mt. Dew is gone and I really need to NOT SIT HERE all day again today!