Nicoise Salad: a perfect summer salad

Ben's mom Ginny came to visit us at the end of July so we wanted to make sure we had some awesome meals planned for her stay. Ben and I were having a hard time coming up with meals that are suitable for 100 degree weather with a side of 90% humidity. We came across this awesome looking Nicoise salad with seared tuna from Fine Cooking (September 2008 issue). This meal is served cold (a plus for hot days) but is elegant enough for guests. A sort of "fancy" salad if you will. This recipe only took about 20min to make and is very refreshing. I think the salad dressing was the best part of this salad!

Enjoy!
Nicoise Salad
*Note: When buying the tuna make sure to ask if the tuna can be consumed raw. Just asking for sushi grade does not ensure it is safe to eat raw.

Ben and Ginny (his mom) plating the salads

The salads ready to be brought to the table

Nicoise Salad with a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc

Cheers!

Our favorite recipe!

Andy came to visit us last weekend and wanted us to make him a nice dinner. We asked him what he wanted and he requested Lamb. We both looked at each other and thought, our favorite recipe! Black cherry and black pepper lamb chops with mint pea risotto. Now we cannot remember the first time we made this (anniversary or valentines day; we have no idea) but we do know that we got it from the lovely people at Cooks Illustrated and it's wonderful! The dish is very rich and savory, because of the lamb, but the mint pea risotto has a nice cooling affect on your palate. This dish is perfect for a nice evening in and/or to impress friends and loved ones. Another plus, it also tastes like you spent hours slaving over a hot stove but actually only takes 45min from prep to finish.

Here is the recipe for you all to enjoy!
Black cherry and black pepper lamb chops with mint pea risotto

New Kitchen and a few too many spice jars!

Ben and I are very excited about our new kitchen in our new apartment. Not only is the kitchen more up -to-date (by a good 10 years) it also is quite a bit larger. As Ben describes it, we have a two person or more kitchen! Those of you that have had the "pleasure" of observing us in our old kitchens know what a huge change this is. Although I am happy to say that we successfully cooked 2 large thanksgiving dinners in Ben's 1/2 person kitchen (a miracle perhaps).
One thing both Ben and I have learned while moving into our kitchen is that WE HAVE DOUBLE OF EVERYTHING!!!!!! Since we cooked at both of our places we had 2 fully stocked kitchens. It worked at the time but now it's a bit ridiculous! Although having two full sets of pots and pans as well as silverware is wonderful when having people over for dinner! Perhaps the most shocking thing of combining cookware was how many spice jars we have accumulated over 2 years! Ben and I had been very good (perhaps too good) at buying spices in bulk from wards and then buying our own spice jars ($.50 each) to fill. When we unpacked the spices we found that we had a FULL medium sized box containing our spice jars. We decided to just combine them all. However, we quickly found that one does not need two spice racks or 4 containers of ground cumin (for example). In short not only did we have double of spices but there were a "few" things we had 3-4 jars of. To give you an idea the picture below is of some of the spices we were combining (notice Ben's spice rack to the right, I had another one the same size). Here is a picture of the empty spice jars, this is only about half of what we got rid of.
So the moral of the story, no one needs that many spices!

Improvements

We wanted to update everyone to let them know of some new changes that have and will be made to our little foodie blog.  First, we added an RSS feed (see at bottom of page) if you would like to suscribe to the blog. Second, we will be changing how we blog.  We have been bad about blogging in a "timely" manner so we will be adding posts on sunday's now.  Third, we will be adding actual recipes to the blog so everyone can access the recipes we talk about. You will be able to print them as well!
*Thanks to Andy for this wonderful idea and Casie for the software suggestion to make this task a bit easier!

We hope all of you enjoy these little changes we've made and if you have any other suggestions please feel free to leave a comment!

Cheers!
Ben and Shelby

Local Strawberries

While at the farmers market we met the lovely people of Rogers Farm. Rogers Farm is where we got our strawberries for the strawberry bread. However, in mid-may we noticed that they were not selling strawberries anymore. We decided to ask them if they were going to have strawberries for purchase and learned that you can go pick strawberries at their farm on saturdays. So of course, we had to do this!!!! Below are some pictures from our afternoon out in the strawberry fields! We ended up getting 12 pounds of strawberries for 12 dollars!!!! Try finding a deal like that at the grocery store!!!!!!!!! Of course we couldn't eat all of these so we did store some in the freezer.

Strawberry fields!

Ben picking his first strawberry

I'm a little excited about the strawberries!

I just couldn't resist, I had to try one!

12 pounds of strawberries later

Ben going home with more strawberries then he could dream of!

Eat Local Challenge

Ok we have put this off for far too long! During the month of May we participated in the Eat Local Challenge. At first we thought this would be really difficult but since it was the start of summer the farmers market had a lot of variety to work with. Also, instead of just picking recipes on a whim we focused more on what was in the recipe and if we could purchase it at the farmers market. We are very lucky to have awesome family that has given the both of us cooking magazine subscriptions and cook books that also focus on eating in season. So in short, we had an awesome time doing the Eat local challenge and we made all of our meals 50% local or more. I would have to say that during the challenge the majority of our meals were around 85% local. Now we have taken the things we learned during the challenge and have made them a part of our "foodie" life. One of the things we found helpful was buying local meat. We are fortunate here at UF to have a meat processing center on campus. The prices are on average 1/2 the price/per pound then meat found at the grocery store. However, the UF meat center only sells beef and pork. We did find chicken that is semi-local (within a 100mi of our home) and fish (again, we're lucky we live by the gulf).

Since it took us awhile to write our recipes from the eat local challenge, we decided to just put the pictures up:) If any of the food looks yummy to you, feel free to e-mail us and we can e-mail it to you! Here's our yummy meals from the eat local challenge!

Flank Steak in a red wine and onion marinade (our first local meat purchase)


Homemade pizza (local sausage, dough, and tomato sauce)



Pork Ribs with an asian marinade (local ribs and they were oh so yummy!)

Some light reading...

Here are two wonderful articles from the NY Times that came out this week on eating healthier and organic (from your very own yard). Enjoy!

Organic garden
Meat