coming baaaack

well hello people who have probably stopped reading this basically defunct blog.

life got in the way of creative cooking. life got in the way of documenting the creative cooking that did happen. and then by the end, we were just mainly eating some variation of Mongolian food every. single. night.

and well let's be honest, that's just not all that exciting.

unless of course you like looking at various versions of veggies/meat mixed with some carbohydrate.

but I'm in Omaha now. And Hol is in D.C.

And I'll be darned if creativity can't come back to the kitchens in our respective new cities. And we'll sure as heck still be wearing long underwear in the winters since D.C. isn't exactly Hawaii. And Nebraska likes itself a cold, windy winter from what I've heard.

So to bring us back to the now...

I present my very first food post in a very, very long time.

Quinoa Tabbouleh.

Also known as one of those recipes that I drooled over while in Mongolia and dreamt about the day that I could actually attempt. I have quite a lot of those actually. And my googling/bookmarking/salivating self always got made fun of by my more practical roommate who never got why I tortured myself looking at recipes that weren't possible in our current state.

But guess what? I like to dream :-) In multi-colored vegetable, interesting grain dreams!

And this stuff is A.) easy, B.) tasty and C.) healthy.

Defintely making this again and again and again.

chunky chicken salad

sometimes we splurge.

and by splurge I mean buy and de-bone chicken. and buy five dollars worth of fruit, including a tiny little portion of purple grapes.

then Holli makes her chunky chicken salad and we both rejoice in occasionally making things that take a little more time, effort and money here.

what you'll need:

-chicken. we used two chicken legs, boiled them, took off the meat and then finished cooking the meat on the stove (save the bones and skin for later!)
-sour cream
-honey
-grapes
-apples (we used crab apples because they're in season right now and cheap)
-nuts of your choice (we used peanuts- because they're the cheapest)

chop, de-seed and mix.

enjoy with toast or if you really lucky and have just received a package of goods from your parents, some Wheat Thins :-)

kitchen sink soup

What does one make with a bag full of garden-grown potatoes and carrots, some soaked and sprouting chickpeas and some onions?

Add in water, vegetable boullion cubes, bell peppers, pasta and some leftover chunks of frozen chicken and you've got yourself a mish-mash vegetable soup that is super easy to make and perfect for a chilly fall evening.

I was so lazy I didn't even peel the potatoes, just washed them really well and cubed them. Then I threw everything together (minus the pasta) and let it simmer for quite awhile. Once the vegetables were soft I added in the pasta and let it cook for a little while longer.


And you know every bowl of soup requires some delicious bread and jam on the side, not to mention some extra-special Wheat-Thins that arrived via my parents' wonderful fall package.


You can't beat soup for dinner when you live in a place where it's already snowed and it's only the beginning of October.

Everything but the sink- a la vegetable soup in our Mongolian kitchen.

comfort food

sometimes you need the good stuff.
and by good stuff I clearly mean chicken club sandwiches and french fries.
this is not a culinary feat but more of a using up of hoarded ingredients that are hard to find.

such as chicken and bacon...


we also cooked up some onions and sliced up some potatoes- tossing them with olive oil and seasoning.

and then we used up some lettuce and tomatoes (I am already mourning the end of summer and the relative cheapness of these veggies) and piled high our bread with the goodness.


the french fries got thrown in the oven until crispy and they were quite possibly my favorite part of the meal. Also baking was much easier than frying them. I think the key to potatoes not taking forever to cook is slicing them really, really thin.

what are some of your favorite comfort foods?

cabbage rolls

an end of summer abundance of cabbage meant the market ladies were selling heads of cabbage by the bag for ridiculously cheap.

we've discussed the possibility of cabbage rolls for several months but just finally attempted them a few weeks ago.

our resourcefulness was tested by the need for something to hold the cabbage rolls together- we didn't have any toothpicks, so we improvised and cut up some matches to use instead.

we also subbed tomato sauce for tomato soup and filled them with rice, ground beef and onions.

neither of us had ever had cabbage rolls before so I can't speak to whether or not they tasted like they should, but we liked them and it was a good way of using up a fairly significant portion of our head of cabbage.

any cabbage cooking suggestions? the top parts of the rolls crisped a bit too much in the oven but the matches did an excellent stand in job for holding them together.

soup as a second meal

Living in the coldest capital city in the world means we crave a lot of soup, and often.

It also means we frequently have soup leftovers sitting in our fridge, waiting to be re-heated or recreated into new things.

Which has brought the soup becoming casserole process into our kitchen.

It's an easy thing really:

Step One: Make some rice (Or pasta- we usually choose rice)

Step Two: Chop up some vegetables or other additional add-ins.

Step Three: Mix the rice (or pasta) and vegetables with the leftover soup.

Step Four: Stick in a casserole dish and sprinkle with cheese or crushed chips or whatever else you have laying around that sounds good.


Step Five: Enjoy your old/new dinner of leftovers :-)

fried green tomatoes

It took until Mongolia for me to have fried green tomatoes.

Hol spotted them at the market a few days ago and upon discussion, discovered I had never had them. Which then of course led to us having them for dinner a few nights after that.


And when you have extra batter? You should totally make homemade onion rings.


Not technically healthy food, however we did eat homemade hummus sandwiches prior to the fried onions and tomatoes. So really, it all evens out in the end.