Great Tomato Soup

I made this soup for two (ate it all myself, though) a couple days ago and am going to make it again in just a few minutes. It's very good and lends itself well to adding a variety of spices. All the ingredients I used are shown in the picture above.

1/2 can of tomatoes (a fresh tomato would be even better) drained
1/2 can of chicken broth (I need a homemade alternative)
1 Tbsp of tomato paste
1/4 cup or so of cheese

I put the above ingredients into my uber blender, the Vitamix, and blended till smooth. If I had had an onion, I would've thrown that in there as well. I could've been done at that point, but I had other plans.

I had cooked some rice in a heavy sauce pan before making the soup. When the soup mixture was smooth (and warmed from the blending), I added it to the rice. To this mix I added some rotisserie chicken and then simmered for a while.

The soup has a nice flavor prior to mixing with the rice and the chicken. I would happily eat that alone without adding any other spices, but adding the soup to the rice and chicken diluted the flavor, so add'l spices are then needed.

Quick and EZ salmon

I have been way too busy this summer, fishing and biking and hiking and generally just enjoying one of the nicest Alaskan summers I can remember, to spend much time on the computer. But I just wanted to add a quick note to my EZ salmon recipe you can find somewhere else on this blog...

I've slightly changed the way I quickly and easily throw together my "smoked" salmon. The difference is I now omit the water from the brine "marinade". So the big picture idea is this: You put some coarse sea salt, some liquid smoke, and some brown sugar in a ziploc-type bag along with your salmon. Leave it in there for a while to soak up the brine. Then cook it in the oven till it's done. When you remove it from the oven and it's safe to handle, remove all the bones, crumble up the salmon and leave it in a glass bowl overnight in the fridge.

The next day you can enjoy it cold or re-warmed.

I had previously added a little bit of water to the mix because I was in a hurry, but if you have a bit more time, omitting the water works just fine. The salt, liquid smoke, and sugar will combine along with the fish to create a liquid that soaks into the fish. I think omitting the water makes for a slightly stronger taste and creates a slight glaze when you bake it.

I'll leave you with an image of a skate. Yes, there are some weird-looking creatures on the sea floor.

Tortilla Pizza Stuff

I'm pretty much gonzo over these tortillas browned in olive oil. They're just so...perfect. It seems that there are no bad combinations when you start off with that lightly browned, nice and warm, deliciously flavored tortilla shell as your base. With that in mind, here are a couple more quick ideas.

BBQ Chicken

Lightly coat the tortilla in olive oil, then warm both sides in your skillet. Season as you like, but I'm pretty happy with basil, oregano, and garlic salt.

This stuff cooks pretty fast, so if you add meat at this point, it probably won't warm up very much as the tortilla is otherwise heating, so I use the microwave to help. As soon as you turn your tortilla over (you're heating both sides), heat some rotisserie chicken in the microwave, then add BBQ sauce to taste. Stir the mixture well.

While the second side of the tortilla is browning in the skillet, add thin slices of Colby cheese so that the cheese will melt on the tortilla. Now dump the BBQ chicken mixture on top of the cheese-covered tortilla in the skillet.

If you do all this quickly enough so that the tortilla is still pliable at this point, you can actually roll the tortilla over so that you make a burrito. I do this by rolling about 1/3 of the tortilla over on top, sort of lightly mash it down for a few seconds, then roll the whole thing over on top of that remaining 1/3, then mash the whole thing down a bit. After a few seconds, you can turn the whole thing over one more time and you've got a burrito. You could also just fold the thing in half.

Now, if you generally like a little bit of sweetness to spice up your meals, I have a really kinky option for you.

When I made my seconds and thirds of this BBQ burrito, I added just a few raisins (some of you are saying, "Ewww...", but bear with me) to the top of the chicken once it was on the tortilla and let them heat up along with everything else. The end result was that, as I chewed the incredibly delicious burrito, I didn't really notice that I was biting into raisins. Instead, I just got these light explosions of chewy sweetness every now and then that was a very nice offset to the tangy and otherwise sort of salty flavor of the rest of the meal.

It was truly incredibly awesome stuff.

Ranch chicken mushroom tortilla burrito/pizza awesomeness

Same concept as above except...

I sauteed (we never say 'fry') some chopped 'shrooms in butter on the skillet. When those were done, I removed them to a plate.

Then I started warming the seasoned and lightly oiled tortilla. After I flipped the tortilla over to warm the other side, I microwaved some chicken.

While the chicken was heating, I added my cheese to the tortilla.

When the chicken was ready, I added the chicken, the 'shrooms, and a little bit of ranch dressing.

I timed it such that I could fold over the tortilla into a burrito and gave it a whirl. Very, very good stuff. I forgot to try the raisins. Next time!


Two qualifiers:
1.) My son thinks anything--even road tar--would taste good with ranch dressing.
2.) My wife thinks I adore the tortillas so much I'd find any combination that includes them delicious. She might be right. ;-)

Pizza redux

Our nearby volcano, Mt. Redoubt, was contentedly puffing away today, like a giant dragon dozing in the sun. Meanwhile, here in Anchorage, it was alternately snowing and cheerfully sunny. If I had gone out running around (say, to the store for some groceries) when it was snowing, I would likely have had to use my windshield wipers. If there had been ash in the snow--a distinct possibility--that ash would have crazed my windshield under the sweep of the wipers. Time for lunch, what to do?

I decided to make pizza again, although this time about the only thing I could find to put on the pizza was mushrooms and cheese, so that's what I made in the photo shown below. I made two of them. They were good.



I think about the only thing I did different this time was to use shaved slices of cheese rather than the chunks the original recipe suggested. And with the 'shrooms, I sliced those two ways, so they ended up as small chunks. I lightly sauteed them in the olive oil, then set them aside. I warmed the tortilla a bit, as I seasoned it, then added the cheese, the 'shrooms, the sauce and the parmesan on top.

Good stuff!

Really Great Pizza for One

I'm going to run through this one quickly, then add the links for the credit at the end. Ready? Okay, here's a recipe the way I did it.

1.) Heat your skillet to medium or so. I used my cast-iron-like skillet.
2.) Put some olive oil in the skillet and let it warm.
3.) Coat both sides of a flour tortilla with olive oil. You can either coat it and then put it in the pan or you can flop the naked torilla in the pan and swirl each side in the olive oil until it's lightly coated.
4.) Season your tortilla with spices. In a pinch, you could probably make due with salt and pepper, but I used basil, oregano, and garlic powder.
5.) Pile some cheese (I used Colby) in the middle of the tortilla.
6.) Add other ingredients that sound interesting. Timing is pretty important here. I just added orange bell peppers today. Those can be eaten raw, so heating them was not important. If you use something that actually needs to cook, I'd probably bake the pizza rather than use this method.
7.) Watch the bottom of your tortilla closely. I slightly burned my first one (I ate it anyway and hardly noticed). If your timing is really good, you can add some tomato sauce (I used Prego spaghetti sauce because I love it) while the tortilla is in the skillet. I wasn't that good, so I removed the tortilla from the skillet, put it on a plate and then added the Prego. I topped the whole thing with some parmesan cheese and put it in the microwave for about thirty seconds.

Ooh la la.

Let me say that again: oooh la la.

8.) Eat it while its warm, then do the whole process again because it's so darn good.

This is definitely two tomato-y thumbs up!

Oh yeah. The credit for the recipe goes to www.cooks.com. Here's another link for homemade pizza that sounds good. If you try it, let me know. This gal actually bakes her pizzas: homemade pizza.

Gluten free brownies - a product review

I have to start this post with a confession: I've blown off my diet. I maintained the food sensitivity diet pretty well--even when eating at restaurants in the US--for about a month. While stringently maintaining the diet, I noticed that I had a bit more energy and noticeably less sinus drainage, so I can now see the cause and effect behind my body's reaction to eating certain foods. Before this experience, there were too many variables associated with my fairly minor symptoms. Was my nose running because of an allergic reaction to something in the environment? Was it acid reflux? Was I coming down with something? Or was it something I ate? Would my nose really run because of something I had eaten several days in the past? Now I have a much better idea.

That knowledge was worth the effort. But with my international travel schedule, maintaining that diet on the road, in so many places where the food preparers and servers do not speak english, was not worth the effort. Here in the US, I now eat pretty much whatever I want, but I minimize my consumption of the reactive foods. It seems to be a nice compromise. I live an active, healthy lifestyle, and eat foods in a combination that seems to be working very well. Given a choice between eating 'reactive' foods and non-reactive foods, I'll choose the latter most of the time and I'm fine. It's working for me.

With that confession/discussion out of the way, I'll move on to my latest product review, another great product from Juli at The Cravings Place. You can see another of her products that I reviewed in this post.

I'm running out of time so I'm going to make this a quickie...

I used her Ooey Gooey Chocolatey Chewy Brownie Mix to make brownies and, despite the fact that I messed up, made some great brownies. My mistake? I used the wrong sized pan. Apparently it makes a difference! Who knew? She calls for a 9" x 13" pan and I used a smaller glass dish. I ended up cooking my version for about five minutes longer than prescribed in order to get them "done". When we ate them while still warm, they were pretty good, but the taste was different from what we expected. Had we had vanilla ice cream to top them, that would've been great and we wouldn't have noticed, but the taste was just a tad "off". Then the next day, I had some more and the taste grew on me. I put the remainder in a Ziploc bag and took them on a trip with me. The more I ate, the more I liked them. If you had never had the conventional kind--the kind made with eggs and all the conventional stuff--you would love this stuff. As it was, for me it took a little transition period, but now I do like them very much.

Inside the box you find two bags. One bag has the powder mix; the other bag contains chocolate chunks. Those chocolate chunks taste pretty much just exactly like the dark chocolate I used to love buying in Germany. I dumped it all together in the mixing bowl, mixed with oil and water as described by the directions and found it all very easy and (now) very tasty. I'd definitely do it again.

It doesn't get much easier than this to make and, after my adjustment period, I give it two chocolate-covered thumbs up.

Blog problems

Hey Folks-

I wanted to post some pix and some other stuff, but Blogger--the outfit that created this blogging system--is having difficulties. In fact, it looks like they've been having intermittent problems the past several months. I cannot post pix for the time being. More to come later.