What’s for dinner: BBQ Ranch Salad

Posted in Food by Jennifer | Stick Girl JAM

Mumbles is like a lot of guys in that he has to have meat on his plate to consider it a meal. This was pretty tricky for me in the early dating stages, as I’ve been known to have meals that consist solely of bread, cheese and wine. (I later learned to add salami and nuts to round it out a bit for him). Even sometimes now when I’m not up for cooking meat I get a little worried… that is until I decided to make myself like black beans. Dr. Merrett can attest to the fact that I’ve told her [probably a million times over] of how I learned to love tomatoes while living in Spain with BFOTB, forced myself to eat pickles until I began to crave them, and even tried to partake in the party staple deviled eggs (that one hasn’t stuck yet). So, I’m proud to present the new Mumbles and Stick Girl go-to favorite for when we don’t want to cook meat but still want to pack a punch of healthy protein in a meal: the BBQ Ranch Salad.

I cut up a bunch of fresh veggies like celery, tomatoes, carrots, and bell peppers (and would have used corn if I had any). Next I added in half a can of black beans and some pepper jack cubes to give a slight kick to the salad, then added the leafy greens and tossed everything together with light ranch dressing and barbecue sauce. The finishing touch was crumbling some tortilla chips on top.

It was super delicious and because I was too lazy to dirty up more dishes/find it somewhat romantic to eat out of the same bowl (again with the two forks, one bowl – this is really starting to stick! – or just completely make people throw up in their mouth a little. gosh, we’re like the kind of couple that sit on the same side of the booth at restaurants… okay, yes, we do that, too, sometimes. stop judging me.), we were fighting back and forth over all the yummy nuggets of goodness in this tasty salad.

What are your go-to recipes when you don’t have/want meat?

16Aug2011

What’s for dinner: Pork Chops in Wine Sauce

Posted in Food by Jennifer | Stick Girl JAM

My sister-in-law, the future Dr. Merrett (who is also a future Mrs.) and I decided to get a little creative with dinner last night. Pork chops. Pork chops are an intimidating meat. We found a fun little recipe online featuring what I consider to be a fantastic main ingredient: wine. Other ingredients included sage, rosemary and garlic. We rubbed the pork chops with those tasties and a pinch of sea salt and pepper before placing them in a skillet with olive oil to cook for a few minutes on each side. Four minutes on each side, to be exact. Next comes the good part: add the wine. The recipe calls for 3/4 of a cup of dry white wine but merlot sounded really good to me. And don’t tell anyone but we might have added a lot more than 3/4 cup. Let it simmer in the wine for 25 minutes (we flipped them at the half point). During all that goodness, we boiled some peeled potatoes. Once the pork was ready the potatoes were too. Quite convenient. We simmered the wine sauce a bit and then poured it over the pork chop and potatoes. Oh, and also sprinkled sone parmesan on those potatoes. Remember, cheese makes everything better. Write that down. The potatoes are a bit bland which is good because the seasoning and sauce of the pork is insanely delicious. Trust me. The Dr. and I are happy our men weren’t around for tonight’s feast because it was unbelievably awesome and they might expect this ridiculously good food every night. Not possible. We are adding this to the “when I really need to impress people” recipe list. Plus, it was super easy to make, surprisingly enough. Just don’t tell anyone and they’ll be really impressed. Mumbles came home later and ate the leftovers. I think he loves me more because of this meal. Seriously.

Here are photos of each step and the final dish:

Do you make pork for dinner? How do you make it? Leave your comments below!

Cheers!

4Aug2011

What’s for Dinner: Sunny Day Salad

Posted in Food by Jennifer | Stick Girl JAM

Last night was another one of those nights where I opened up the refrigerator, took a look at what was inside and just grabbed at what looked good. Mumbles had been gone for a week and he’s a huge salad fiend so I knew there was going to be a whole lotta lettuce involved in his first dinner being back home. And, since I missed him while he was gone and wanted to prove to him that he shouldn’t ever leave his doting wife for that long again, I decided to make the presentation impressive too. Not only did the salad come out looking superb, I also donned my “honey, I’m home and don’t I look sassy in our kitchen makin’ you dinner” apron. Okay, that’s not really what I call it, but that’s totally the message it sends. It’s this here lovely from Anthropologie but in the half version (which totally defeats the purpose of an apron to protect your clothes, but looks super cute on, especially with heels. Write that down.).

So, here’s the final beautiful bowl of salad that we munched on together – two forks, one bowl. [side note: should I ever have my own cooking blog/show/book, I will totally call it Two Forks, One Bowl. Cute, no?]

Salad contents include: spring mix lettuce, celery, gala apples, sunflower seeds, pistachios (which i shelled myself because let’s be honest: isn’t it so much more gratifying?), two strawberry slices made to look like a pair of hearts [swoon, I know. although it doesn’t look like the hearts in this photo] and darling little yellow tomatoes sliced in half rounding the perimeter of the bowl like a frame, finished with a drizzle of grapeseed oil and balsalmic vinegar. On the side I melted pepper jack cheese on some triangle slices of pita bread to help fork the salad goodies onto our forks and also because cheese really makes everything taste better.