Trader Joe's Salad Hack

One of the nice perks of my office location is that I am a two block walk away from Trader Joe's and can pick up some last minute items for dinner. Alternatively, one of the not-so-great perks of working so close to a Trader Joe's is that I also pick up things that I really shouldn't be buying - like my favorite sea salt and turbinado sugar covered dark chocolate almonds or a prepared salad for lunch while I am at the store under the guise of "getting something for dinner." More often than not, I will find any excuse to go in there on my lunch hour (more on my lunch hour grocery shopping trips here).

When my husband and I play Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who wins the previous night's leftovers for lunch that day and he wins, then I just go to Trader Joe's for lunch. (Note to self: Watch linked video on how to win Roshambo every single time.) I try to find a healthy salad that isn't a total calorie bomb but will keep me filled for the afternoon. So while I am technically eating a salad almost every day for lunch, I am also paying about $4-$5 for these packaged salads which any person in their right mind would know is a royal waste of money. As I ate my favorite Vegetable & Grain Country Salad at my desk the other day, I took a quick look at the ingredients and realized that I was paying $4 for a whole lot of packaging and not a whole lot of salad. I resolved right then and there to make my own Country Salad (what, pray tell, makes it a 'Country Salad' Trader Joe's?).

This salad has simple ingredients and could not be any easier to make. The packaged version came with cooked bulgur wheat, garbanzo beans, two or three sad cherry tomatoes, some diced roasted red bell pepper and cucumber mixed together and placed on top of shredded cabbage.

Mine was the same but I threw in some basil and some edamame because I had it in the fridge. 

Vegetable & Grain Country Salad Hack
(Note: I cooked 1 cup of dry bulgur wheat in 2 cups water which yielded 4 salad servings for me)


Bulgur Salad:
1/2 cup bulgur wheat, cooked = .49 cents
1 Persian cucumber, peeled and diced = .17 cents (Six for a $1 at the farmer's market)
1/2 red bell pepper, diced (I didn't roast it) = .25 cents (2 for $1 at the farmer's market)
1/3 cup garbanzo beans = .33 cents
6 cherry tomatoes = Free from my garden
1 cup shredded cabbage = .15 cents ($1 per cabbage at the farmer's market)

Dressing:
(no measurements, just did it to taste)
Exrta virgin olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Cumin
Squirt of lemon
Salt and Pepper                                                                                 

Total Cost:  $1.39

Crazy, right? All I did was cook 1 cup of bulgur wheat in 2 cups simmering water for about 15 minutes and  added extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper as it cooked. I added a little more oil after it was done cooking, threw in the diced vegetables, mixed it together and put the mixture (about 1 cup total) on a bed of shredded cabbage. I made about four salads with 1 cup of cooked bulgur and then used the remaining ingredients for other things in our dinners that week.

This was a successful Trader Joe's salad hack in my book. I love that I can easily make this and can add in whatever vegetables I have in the fridge at the moment. I've added shredded carrot, minced shallots, green onions, edamame, etc. It's very adaptable and quite tasty. Hope you like it!

Dinners for August 5 - 11, 2012

It took me close to a week after our vacation to get back into the groove of things. I had a menu for last week but I can't even remember where it is or what we ate. Now that we are back into our old routine I was more than happy to go make a menu early Sunday morning while my kids slept and then shop for it that same day the way I usually do. It feels like I got into a rather bad habit of going to the store nearly every day to pick up this or that and it was driving me crazy! Who wants to go to the store every single day? I like to get it done in one day and then not have to think about it for the rest of the week.

This week's DALS Cook-A-Long meal is Fried Fish Sandwiches with Zucchini Fries. I love this kind of meal because it's a modified Twofer. I can use the breading from the fries for the fish as well and not have to clean up another plate.  

Sunday: Out with family

Monday: Fried Fish sandwiches with zuchinni fries <------ DALS Cook-A-Long Selection of the Week

Tuesday: Pork stir fry

Wednesday: Shrimp, bacon and corn pasta toss

Thursday: Yogurt-marinated chicken with zucchini fritters

Friday: TBD

Saturday: TBD

DALS Cook-A-Long #2: Barbecue Ribs with BBQ Sauce

50 Cent's other hit, "In da Rub" inspired this caption

In this second installment of the DALS Cook-A-Long I wanted to cook something that was screamed summer to me and for me that would be ribs on the grill. However, I had a mental block with ribs and I had no idea how to even cook the darn things. Seriously, they were as mysterious as Turducken to me. Do you know what I mean? This rib mystique probably came from logging far too many hours watching barbecue competitions on the Food Network in my formative cooking years (aka - unemployed after the dot com bubble popped).

I used to think that cooking ribs required a third generation family recipe, four days of marinating and cooking and a rotisserie barbecue grill about the size of my dining room table. Everyday Food disspelled this myth when they explained that delicious ribs simply required that one bake the ribs for three hours and then grill the ribs for about 10 minutes after that. Before reading this helpful nugget of information, I was the one who bought the pre-cooked and pre-marinated ribs at Trader Joe's. I didn't know any other way to do it.

Now that I am no longer a naive rib nerd, I had a feeling that Jenny's rib recipe was going to be a keeper. However, I did tweak a few things in the recipe.

BBQ Rub recipe notes

The recipe said the rub would make enough for 4 rib racks but I wasn't sure how many ribs were typically in a rack. So I  used half the rub for the 14 ribs in the rack and it worked out great. I baked the ribs at 300 degrees for three hours with no problems.

• I opted to use 2 tablespoons of smoked paprika, since I didn't have regular paprika... we all survived.
• I used fennel seed instead of celery seed. Delicious.

Barbecue Sauce recipe notes

First and foremost, the number one page turner in a recipe for me is the use of sugar with meat. My stomach turns at the thought of it, actually. So naturally I wanted to pass on this recipe but I had faith and I knew I could adjust the sugar contents.

• I used 1/4 cup brown sugar instead of 1/2 cup brown sugar. I survived!

This barbecue sauce was incredible and I made enough to use for a dish later this week. It isn't sickly sweet and isn't too spicy for the kids. I had my hesitations, but this recipe was a winner.

And you can bet your bottom dollar I was singing the Scrubs version of 'Baby Back Ribs' while making these bad boys.

Olympic Pizza

Team Pizza USA!

I have been eagerly awaiting the start of the Olympics for months and now that it's finally here, I can hardly contain myself. The usually quiet television is on non-stop for the next two weeks when we are home.

When the games are over I experience a Olympic-sized hangover, mainly from the let-down of the games ending to the sudden silence around me when television used to be on 24/7.

In honor of the Olympics (and a sly effort to break our traditional pizza topping issues) I made this Olympic-themed pizza with blue potatoes, black olives, cherry tomatoes, kale and yellow bell peppers for our Friday night dinner.

May the odds be ever in your favor... oh wait, wrong games.

Harvest

The last of the kale is in the background. Rest in peace old friend.

A good friend of mine has a really nice backyard garden here in San Francisco. Often we sit back there while watching the kids play and chat about about what she has growing in her raised vegetable beds. When she went inside to get a drink for the kids one day, her husband came over  to me on the sly and said, "When she needs to do gardening, she says she is going to "go harvest the garden." But then she only brings in a few cherry tomatoes! That's not a harvest! That's just picking what happens to be available at that moment!"

Well, I can relate to her choice of words because anything I bring into my home out of my garden is a harvest to me. I had an amazing amount of kale awhile back and now that that situation has died down, we are harvesting delicious cherry tomatoes and the delicious sugar snap peas pictured above. In previous seasons, these little gems never made it past the back door because my kids would mow through the vines while playing in the backyard. But this year I managed to harvest a few before the kids got to them. I was quite proud of my harvest - all 12 of them that I promptly placed into their lunchboxes. (These are our favorite lunchboxes!)

Mom Camp 2012

Egg carton painting

Every year families across the United States scramble to find glorified childcare camps for their kids during the summer. The prices can really set a family back when you add up how many weeks of camp one must schedule for their children, particularly if the parent works outside of the home like I do.

Last year my friend Emma and I searched around for a few friends to do a week of Mom Camp, asking each parent to put in one day of watching kids for the other four days off. It was originally to save money, but Mom Camp forces you to think out of the box. It can get all too easy to take your kids to the park or the same old places every single week. We kept the Mom Camp structure simple: Hours were from about 9-4, each parent had to watch the kids one day that week and siblings were not included, unless you were the host parent and then you could have both of your kids at your day of camp. This rule was bent on Friday when the younger siblings had a separate camp at Emma's house (Never again. Right, Emma?). Besides sibling camp, I thought the whole thing went really well and I am eager to do it again next year.

This year the dad's got involved and proved to be as much fun as the mom's. This should not come as an surprise to any of our friends, both dad's involved this year should have 'Fun Dad' stamped on their foreheads.

Dad Camp - Monday, July 2nd

Dad Camp was fueled by strawberries and hot chocolate

My husband drove three seven-year-olds and our two-year-old daughter down to Swanton Berry Farm in Davenport for strawberry picking. For $28, the kids had a blast picking and eating berries along the coast, eventually walking away with 10 overflowing baskets of organic strawberries. After they ate their packed lunches at the farm's picnic benches, they drove to Año Nuevo State Park  and walked around the trails, ending their adventure on the beach, digging for sand crabs and running in the waves. My husband commented that this was probably the best day he's ever had with so many kids all at once. He came home happy and the kids were thrilled with the strawberries as well as the copious amounts of hot chocolate he gave to them to keep them warm (hey, this is Coastal California after all, folks!). With sand in their hair and shoes and strawberries to share with their families, these kids were happy campers.

Mom Camp - Tuesday, July 3

The Butterfly Hunters of San Francisco

My friend Emma hosted camp at her house and being the crafty one that she is, had art projects ready to go for the kids. They created plastic water bottle bumblebees and Fourth of July luminaries, hunted for caterpillars and butterflies in her backyard, baked Peanut Butter Cup Brownies in her kitchen, and went on a geo-caching treasure hunt at Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. Whew! I am exhausted just reading the list of stuff they did. My son came home with his arms filled with art projects and stories that dominated our dinner hour. It was a great day of camp!

No Camp - Wednesday, July 4

Dad Camp - Thursday, July 5

Breakneck speed required on the cement slides in San Francisco

This dad took all the kids to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The kids had a blast trying out the science experiments and ate their packed lunches in the cafeteria. Afterwards, he took them to the infamous concrete Seward Street Slides. This part of the day turned out to be the highlight moment for all of the kids. After they were done with the slides, they all came back to his house to play in the backyard and drink gallons of lemonade. Perfection!


Mom Camp - Friday, July 6

Tin can stilt races

Looking for sea otters at Mori Point

I had a few things planned for the "at home" portion of the day, but as usual they took up less time than I expected. Our friends down the street joined our camp for the day and the kids painted egg cartons for the treasure hunt I had planned in Pacifica. Then they made their own popsicles with pudding and/or fruit juice with toppings to eat later on in the day. The night before camp, I made coffee can stilts for the kids to walk around on and they played on those for awhile (Best DIY Project: Old coffee cans with jump ropes from the Dollar Store for stilts. The kids loved them!). I took the kids on a hike to Pacifica's Mori Point and we brought along the egg cartons for the nature treasure hunt. I was surprised at how seriously the kids took this hunt, they were on a mission to find every color in their carton, however blue was the only color we weren't able to find. When we got to the lookout at the top of Mori Point, my son wanted to go higher and so we climbed this beast.

One child claimed this hill to be 380 stories high.

If the kids did not sleep well that night after this hike, then I did not do my job! It was quite a hike and they were exhauted when we got to the top. Afterwards, we went to the Pacifica Pier to watch the fisherman and then headed home to eat our popsicles. It was a great day for everyone. 

All in all, this was an incredibly successful Mom & Dad Camp. I would love to do it again next year and I hope our friends are up for the challenge. If you put it in dollars, the three families saved nearly $900 dollars for three kids in our camp and each day probably only cost about $20 for each parent to host. Definitely worth trying if you can find friends to do it with and have the time to put into it.

Foggy Day Popsicles Round 2

A little San Francisco fog never slows us down when it comes to making popsicles around these parts. My son had been drooling over the Fruit Salad Popsicles from the cover of last summer's Everyday Food Summer issue and we finally got around to making them. Since his sister was in school that day we had some time to do these together and it was a perfect afternoon shopping trip and home project. These could not be easier and I don't know why I didn't do them sooner - it's just white grape juice and sliced fruit, after all. My son took great pleasure in using a knife on his own to cut up the fruit and these were all consumed in one day.

Studying the picture so he could cut the strawberries the same way

Ta Da!