Tomato Soup

I'm posting this recipe as requested. If you are as obsessed with tomatoes as I am, then you will love this.


Megan's Cream of Tomato Soup
Ingredients:
3 pounds of tomatoes, peeled OR 4-5 cans of diced tomatoes (if real tomatoes are out of season)
1 yellow onion, diced
1.5 cups chicken broth
1/4 cup basil (if you can get fresh basil, use it!! It tastes so much better)
2 tablespoons butter (I used I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Light)
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup skim milk
1 tsp pepper

Directions:
In a large sauce pan, put together tomatoes, onion, chicken broth, and basil. Simmer for 20-25 minutes.
Using a strainer, strain the entire mixture so that you separate all liquid (tomato juice and chicken broth) from the solid tomatoes, onions, and basil. Save all of the liquid in a bowl, and move the solids to a food processor. Blitz all of it until it is smooth, and then move blitzed solids and the saved liquid back into your sauce pan.
Add flour, butter, skim milk, and pepper. Mix well. If you think the soup needs more salt, I like to blitz another can of tomatoes and add it rather than adding straight salt.

This entire pot yields about 500-550 calories, depending on how many tomatoes you use. If you use anything more than skim milk or light "butter", then that will also up the calories. I usually eat about 1/4 of the pot with something else, like a grilled cheese sandwich. 1/4 of the pot is about 125-135 calories.

OH MY NOSE!

Has anyone ever seen the Brady Bunch episode where Marcia Brady gets hit with a football and her nose swells up and turns black?

Watch this:




Last night, in the middle of the night, I got up to go pee. When I got back into bed, I must have startled Chad or something because he jumped forward very fast resulting in his face being punched into my nose.

We both heard a "CRACK", but I knew immediately that he didn't break it because the first thing I did was try to push on my nose and I didn't notice anything different. And then right away blood started gushing out of my nose and onto my sleep shirt and the bed sheets.

Chad took me back into the bathroom and made me sit there with a towel on my nose and within five minutes or so the bleeding calmed down. I'm assuming that when he rammed my nose like that, he busted a blood vessel but it was pretty quickly repaired.

When I woke up this morning, all I felt was pressure. Almost like a five pound weight was sitting on my nose. But as the day progressed, it has started to get more sore and now it's even swelling up. Knowing my luck, I'll probably wake up tomorrow and my nose will be like Marcia Brady. :(

Also, Chad has a nice little knot on his forehead where he rammed into me.

Merry Christmas to us! :)

Lessons Learned

Lessons I have learned during the past week:


1) WHERE THE HELL HAS SPAGEHTTI SQUASH BEEN MY WHOLE LIFE?

What is spaghetti squash, you ask?



This is a spaghetti squash. Maybe this is common knowledge, but until yesterday I had no idea what this was. I cut it in half, boiled it, and then the squash strings apart like spaghetti noodles to make this:




(images courtesy of Google Images... I was way too excited yesterday that I didn't take any pictures of my food.)

Here is a comparison:
2 cups of spaghetti noodles = 410 calories
2 cups of spaghetti squash = 66 calories

AMAZING!
It tastes the same as a noodle, but has a diffferent texture because it's squash... but it's AWESOME. AMAZING!!!!


2. No matter how hard I try, it's nearly impossible to eat healthy during the holidays. My work keeps having cake for us, they were selling chili dogs today for a fundraiser, and Chad's boss gave us a huge block of fudge to eat. Dammit.

Pho Adventures, Pt. 3

I made homemade beef pho!





It was way harder and took way longer than what I had expected.

I bought 5lbs of beef bones from Safeway. And then we went to Whole Foods to find all of the weird spices I had never heard of (coriandor, fennel, star anise... I don't know what any of those are, but I bought them and I used them!)
I boiled all of the bones for about 20 minutes to remove all of the dirt and cleaned them off really well. Then I put them back in water, added all the spices, some roasted onions and ginger, and let it simmer for about two and a half hours. I couldn't believe what kind of flavor comes from a bone and seasoning.


I froze about 3/4 lb of london broil (because it's lean) so that Chad would be able to slice really thin slices from it. I also prepared a package of thin thai rice sticks, some chopped cilantro, jalapeno and green onion and it was done.

Our final verdict: very good for a first attempt! Our only pho experience is from Pho King in Seaside. And the pho I made was completely different from theirs. But when I look online at how other people's pho turned out, mine looked exactly like theirs. I think I did it right, but that Pho King's is different.

Next time, after I make the pho broth, I am going to put it in the fridge and then let the fat rise to the top so I can scrape it off. It was a little greasy. But for now, I think I have completely pho'd Chad and I out for a while.

My next cooking adventure is going to either be vegetable chili of some sort, or learning how to steam and eat a full crab.

Pho Adventures Pt. 2

Last night, I made my first ever attempt at homemade beef pho. I used store bought beef broth (like I mentioned in my previous blog), and surprisingly it wasn't that bad. Or as Chad put it, "It wasn't bad for a first attempt." Win!

SO- the plan is this weekend, probably Sunday because Saturday (tomorrow) is my work's Christmas party, I will be attempting crock pot beef pho, from nothing but homemade ingredients.

I will be buying beef bones and all of the weird sounding spices that I've never heard of (what is "star anise"? I don't know, but I am going to find it and buy it this weekend.)

I have faith that I won't screw it up! In the meantime, here's to hoping I don't drink too much at my work's Christmas party tomorrow. (Not really, but I hope it's not too lame.)

Pho Adventures

Chad and I have fallen in love with this little Vietnamese restaurant in Seaside called Pho King. And seeing as how my number one favorite hobby is cooking, I decided this week that I am going to attempt to make my own Vietnamese Beef Pho tonight for dinner. Because I'm crazy.

Now, after reading about this on several websites, the trick to making your own pho is the broth. I have never made my own broth because I didn't think I had the time or resources. So I bought a few cartons of Swanson beef broth when i did our grocery shopping for this week that I'll be using tonight.

Here is the recipe I'll be trying tonight (I made this up using several recipes online as a base)

Ingredients:
10 cups beef broth
2 limes
2 tablespoons Vietnamese fish sauce (I found a huge bottle of this for $2.79 at our local produce market. It's owned by a Korean family, and they have a wide variety of ethnic ingredients available there.)
7 oz Thai rice sticks (I found this in the Asian aisle at the grocery store)
6 green onions, sliced
1/2 yellow onion, sliced
1/2 bunch cilantro
1 lb lean beef, thinly sliced (our butcher actually sliced up a filet mignon for us using their slicing machine, so it's really thin)
1 jalapeno
Basil

Directions:
Bring beef stock to a boil in a large stock pot with the juice of the limes, sliced green and yellow onion, and fish sauce. Let stock boil for 15 minutes.
Prepare package of rice sticks, and divide into bowls. Top with broth and sliced beef. Beef will cook in hot broth.

This sounds easy enough. But I realize that we're basically eating store bought broth with some noodles, which might be tasty but is INSANELY high in sodium. Being the crazy health nuts that we are, we thought I'd atleast try this recipe to see if we liked it. And then this weekend I will venture into making my OWN beef broth.

Apparently, the trick to making beef broth is to roast beef *bones* in the oven with a bunch of cut up vegetables (such as tomatoes, celery, carrots, onion, and garlic) for a long time until they are all brown. Then boil them in water (or put them in a crock pot with water on high) with some spices, and let it go for a few hours. Strain everything out and you're left with sodium free beef broth.

Cool, but what the hell are beef bones? Can you actually BUY them? I had no idea what the hell they were or if you could actually buy them.
But, Yes! *Apparently* you can! Upon visiting Safeway's website, they sell something called Ranchers Research Beef Soup Bones for $1.79/pound. If I bought 5 pounds, it would cost ~$9, and the vegetables would be around ~$2 at the produce market. So basically, it would cost me about ~$11 to make 5 quarts of beef broth. Store bought broth costs anywhere from $3-$4 a quart. I think it's worth it.

I also learned that you can make chicken broth that same way as beef broth, but you replace the beef bones with chicken thighs.


I'll be updating during the next few days with my pho and beef broth adventures.

Time zones suck

I have a phone consultation with the florist this Wednesday at 5:30pm PACIFIC. Yes, unlike my past vendors, this lady was courteous enough to work beyond her business hours to accommodate the time difference. I guess there are actually people who live in the eastern time zone that realize there are other time zones other than their own. Once you live in a different time zone, you will soon realize just how EVERYTHING is catered towards the east coast and how ignorant people are over there about it.

When we bought our washer and dryer a few months ago, L.G. decided to give me a call at 6:00am the next day to confirm the purchase. Yes, I understand that it is 9:00am over there, and that would be an acceptable time to make such a call IF YOU LIVE THERE. Did NO ONE who works at L.G. even think about the fact that I might still be sleeping because I live in a different time zone?

And I also love how everyone on facebook insists on plastering what happens on their favorite TV show when it happens. Thanks for ruining who got voted off Biggest Loser, Dancing With the Stars, and American Idol and at the same time explaining what you thought about the House/Cuddy love scene as well as your opinion about who hooked up with who on Jersey Shore and Teen Mom. I STILL HAVE TO WAIT 3 HOURS FOR IT and now I know what's going to happen because you are too stupid living in your little "east coast only" box without any regard to people who haven't watched it yet.

The one thing I enjoy about the time difference is that sports begin at 9:00am on the weekends and are over by 8:30pm, unless there is a specific west coast game on. The superbowl is over at 8:00-8:30pm and then we can go out somewhere and have dinner afterwards. And it's kind of fun to wake up at 8:30am, make a pot of coffee and watch College Gameday until the first game starts.