I posted a version of these photographs over on Instagram (look me up!) with the caption "trying to get my mojo back."

And it's true—while I could tell tall tales of action-packed holidays and busy work schedules and many too many meals out, the simple fact is that some time in November my wonderful sister and brother-in-law gave me a session with a house cleaner for my birthday, which led me to put my photo lights in the closet and ... well, that's pretty much all it takes to leave me thoroughly distracted.

So how have I fed myself the past couple of months? Mostly with spoonfuls of cottage cheese straight from the container for breakfast, brick-sized turkey sandwiches grabbed out of deli cases for lunch, and convenience foods for dinner. I dabbled in the kitchen here and there, but my efforts felt for the most part clumsy and disappointing and unsatisfying. 

And you know what? It started to really get me down. Granted, I know about the extent to which our heads are in the game when it comes to food more than most, but I realized I was feeling listless and off track. Putting mystery meat, other assorted blech, and much of the world's supply of potatoes into my body day after day was affecting my waistline and my psyche.

I knew that if I wanted to regain my footing, I was going to need an absolute bolt out of the blue.

And here she be:


Beautiful. Fresh. Colorful. "Taste the rainbow" doesn't have to mean Skittles, friends. These are all healthy, unadulterated ingredients, but they're also delicious and indulgent.

For this little jump start, I went to the fancy market and bought all organic ingredients. That's truly not necessary—I find I can't afford to eat that way all the time, in funds or in time—but it went a long way toward making this meal feel like a treat I was giving myself. In all, I spent about $35 on everything you see here (with potatoes and tomatoes and eggs and olives and onion and greens left over), and got four good-size portions out of the deal. That's better bang for your buck than I generally get from eating out.

In the end, this is a salad. Some people just can't get all that excited about a salad, and I totally understand that. Sometimes I am some people, too. But the beauty of this salad is that there are so many components that each bite can taste a little bit different than the last, which makes your taste buds ever so happy. Especially if you save the olives for last.

There are a few tips to making this work as a quick meal, as opposed to feeling like you're making seven different dishes:

1. Cook the potatoes first. Blanch the green beans during the last few minutes of the potato cooking time.

2. Slice the onion, halve the tomatoes, trim the beans, and make the dressing while the potatoes cook. Also set your eggs out on the counter to come to room temperature.

3. Once the green beans and potatoes come out of the boiling water, add the eggs—fewer pots to wash!

4. Grill the tuna first, and slice the cooked potatoes in half; then add the potatoes, cut-side down, to the grill to pick up a little of that charred flavor (OK and maybe also so they'll look pretty.)

5. Set aside some dressing, and toss the warm potatoes in it the minute they come off the grill. FYI this does nothing to make the process easier or more efficient, it's just delicious.

6. Remember to have some ice on hand if at all possible for shocking the eggs. This makes the water cold-cold, so that egg whites gasp in horror and shrink from the shells, which makes peeling ever so much easier. I did not have ice, and ... well, you'll see there are three eggs here instead of four. (RIP fourth egg.)

Enjoy!


Tuna Salad Niçoise

8 fingerling potatoes
10 ounces haricots vert or fresh green beans
½ 10-ounce package mixed baby lettuces
8 ounces grape tomatoes, halved
¼ large red onion, thinly sliced
16 pitted kalamata or niçoise olives
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
2 garlic cloves, minced and divided
1 (8-ounce) tuna steak
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
4 large eggs, at room temperature

1. Cook potatoes in boiling water to cover 15 minutes or until just tender. Add haricots vert to boiling water during last 3 minutes of cooking time. Remove haricots vert and potatoes from boiling water with tongs; place haricots vert in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process. Slice potatoes in half lengthwise. Set aside.

2. Whisk together mustard, vinegar, 2 tablespoons oil, and 1 garlic clove in a medium bowl. Set aside.

3. Season tuna on both sides with salt and pepper. Heat grill pan over medium-high heat, and brush lightly with olive oil. Cook tuna 3 minutes on one side; turn, and cook 1 to 2 minutes (for rare) or until desired degree of doneness. Set aside.

4. Place potatoes, cut sides down, on grill pan; cook 3 to 5 minutes or until potatoes are well marked. Remove to a bowl, and toss with about 2 tablespoons reserved dressing. Set aside.

5. Add eggs to boiling water; cook exactly 6 minutes, and remove to a bowl of ice water.

6. Heat remaining 1 garlic clove in remaining 1 tablespoon oil in a small skillet over medium heat about 1 minute or until fragrant. Add haricots vert, and toss until lightly heated through. Sprinkle with salt to taste. Cut tuna into thin slices. Carefully peel eggs, and gently cut in half crosswise.

7. Line a platter with baby lettuces; top with tomatoes, onion, olives, haricots vert, tuna, eggs, and potatoes. Serve with remaining dressing. Makes 4 servings.

 

While I consider myself to be a relatively modest person (all things in moderation, after all), I can't help but want to toot my own horn a little bit on this one. 

I am many things when I am in the kitchen: I am busy, I am focused, I am thrilled and open and curious and excited. The one thing I am not is calm. 

Or very good at estimating volume.

I'm trying to get on a schedule of posting at night, so I know this comes dangerously close to spammy blogging. Ergo, I shall keep this one short. Or as short as a chronically verbose person can be.

You're looking at two of my new favorite loves, there: panko and hiding vegetables in interesting ways. (Namely, under cheese.)

One of these days I'm going to stop beginning every blog post with an apology for my absence. Like just before the next scheduled Rapture, or after this debt ceiling thing gets sorted out.

I have a particular talent for unsalading a salad, the sweet gift of turning something that is supposed to be healthfully holier-than-thou into a lovely mess of delicious calories. The Cobb salad is an ideal starting point for this sort of bastardization, in part because it doesn't do a very good job of masquerading as a salad in the first place. It's basically a deconstructed fatty sandwich. (I don't think I need to reiterate my love for the fatty sandwich.)

I have a soft spot for Cobb salad, too, standing out there yelling, "I'm a salad, I swear!" when it's really something you might make when you're in tears. Anyone who has ever thought that chicken and hard-boiled eggs are not enough without avocado and cheese and bacon on top is a) someone who has had some emotional wreckage and b) my kind of people.



Alas, my local market (once again) failed me, neglecting to stock half of the ingredients for a decent Cobb salad, and I was left trying to steer things in my favorite direction: south ... west ... ish?

I decided that if this salad was not—tragedy!—going to have the benefit of avocado, I'd replace it with a black bean/corn salsa. Having determined that beans + chicken + eggs + cheese was probably enough protein for my lithe form, I forwent the bacon.

(Or possibly, because I can't tolerate anything other than the apparently FANCY center-cut style, I'm just way too cheap to spend six bucks on bacon. True story. BaconIloveyou.)

After that, it was just a matter of gathering all my favorite South of the border flavors, or what I imagine them to be—red onion, cilantro, jalapeño—and after that ... well, things got a little crazy.

Because I was intoxicated by hunger while I was at the grocery store, I was too under the influence of my weaker brain cells to pass by the Snyder's buttermilk ranch pretzel pieces. But no matter; I'm confidently reassured that calories don't stick when you're suffering the effects of rabid starvation.

But as I was staring at the little nuggets of yum in the bowl I'd poured half the bag into (portion control, people), I got a wild hair to crush some of them up with a mortar and pestle and crust the chicken in the crumbs.

I am nothing if not resourceful, and also determined to cover everything in my life with ranch. (Those of you who look REALLY REALLY closely will note that I had less than zero patience and/or attention span for the crushing, and mostly just slapped some gigantic pieces of pretzel all over the chicken.)

To be honest, I wasn't as thrilled with the results as I'd hoped. Yes, the pretzels gave the chicken a pleasantly crispety crunchy crust, but most of the salty buttermilky ranchy potential got lost in the cooking. I see absolutely no reason why you shouldn't have pretzel-crusted chicken on your path of salad destruction, but it's probably not ultimately worth the effort.

My advice? Just pour some ranch on top before eating. NO ONE HAS TO KNOW.



Composed Southwestern Cobb Salad with Pretzel-crusted Chicken
½ cup low-fat sour cream
1 jalapeño, seeded and diced
Salt, to taste
Pinch of granulated sugar
Hot sauce, to taste
½ cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro leaves, divided
1 lime, divided
¼ (15-ounce) can low-sodium black beans, drained and rinsed
¼ cup frozen corn kernels, thawed
¼ cup diced red onion
Pinch of ground cumin
1 teaspoon garlic powder
½ chicken breast, pounded to an even thickness
½ cup Snyder's buttermilk ranch pretzel pieces, crushed
2 tablespoons olive oil
¼ head iceberg lettuce, chopped
¼ pint grape tomatoes, halved
1 ounce Monterey Jack cheese, grated
1 hard-boiled egg, sliced
Garnish: lime wedges

1. Combine first 5 ingredients, ¼ cup cilantro, and juice of ½ lime in a small bowl. Set aside.

2. Combine black beans, corn, onion, cumin, garlic powder, and juice of remaining ½ lime in a medium bowl. Set aside.

3. Dredge chicken breast in pretzel pieces. Heat oil in skillet over medium heat; cook chicken about 4 minutes on each side or until browned and cooked through.

4. Combine lettuce and remaining ¼ cup cilantro on a plate; top with reserved sour cream mixture. Arrange black bean mixture, tomatoes, cheese, egg, and chicken alongside lettuce. Garnish, if desired. Makes 1 serving.

This week I learned a very valuable lesson, namely that one should not let too much moss grow under a recipe whipped up on the fly, particularly if one has the attention span of a fly. (It's easy to forget how in the heck you made a dish come together if you don't write it down, it turns out.)

Last week, I got the rather distressing news that the county would like to take my house—or, if they can't have it, they'd like to tax me out of it. I am not in the habit of going down without a fight (and by "fight," I mean "temper tantrum"), so I railed against the man until he said thank you very much, I appreciate your position, hand over your paycheck, por favor. To which I was all, "Oh. Umkay."

Power to the people!

All of which is to say that in the intervening period between March's paychecks No. 1 and No. 2 (whom I love dearly and do not want to see go, amen), I was on something of a budget. And when I say "budget," I mean "less than $19.80 a day." Not a terrible per diem, to be sure, unless you're someone who likes to cook something new every night. Then it's just limiting and cranky-making.

Or is it?! I decided that this arbitrary $19.80 could make for a fun and motivating (albeit still unwelcome) project. I wanted fresh spinach in this dish, but for some unfathomable reason, my grocer was fresh out. So I had to opt for frozen—while I would have preferred the fresh, I'll admit the frozen chopped version was all but free, and I think the flavor difference was inconsequential. Taste the sauce along the way and adjust the amount of mustard to your liking—I wanted this to be really deeply tangy and mustardy, but it's all a matter of taste. (A good-quality mustard is key, though. I used Grey Poupon, which I already had in the larder.) The same is true of the chicken broth; you can add more or less depending upon how thick you prefer your cream sauces. Some of these ingredients I had on hand on the Woodside, but when all was said and done I managed to cobble this together for less than $12.80.*

*Sometimes, when a girl has been roundly slapped by the local tax commissioner, a girl needs a $7 bottle of wine.



Creamy Chicken, Spinach, and Tomato Penne
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 to 1½ pounds chicken cutlets, cut into strips
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
2 cups half & half or heavy cream
¼ cup spicy brown mustard
8 ounces Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, freshly grated
Hot sauce (optional)
16 ounces penne pasta
1 cup fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
1 (10-ounce) box frozen chopped spinach, thawed and wrung out well in a clean dish towel

1. Heat oil in a saucepan over medium heat; add chicken, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Sauté until golden brown and cooked through. Remove chicken to a plate, and set aside.
2. Add garlic to pan, and sauté about 1 minute or until fragrant. Add butter; when melted, sprinkle over flour, and cook, stirring, about 2 minutes.

2. Add cream to pan, whisking constantly until sauce bubbles and thickens. Reduce heat to low, and stir in mustard, Parmigiano cheese, and hot sauce, if desired.

3. Meanwhile, prepare pasta according to package directions. While pasta cooks, stir sauce occasionally, adding chicken broth, ½ cup at a time, until sauce reaches desired consistency.

4. Stir tomatoes, spinach, and reserved chicken into sauce until heated through; toss with cooked pasta. Top with additional grated Parmigiano, if desired. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Cheesy Garlic Bread
1 medium baguette, sliced in half lengthwise
Reduced-fat mayonnaise
Garlic powder
Sliced provolone cheese
Freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese

Top baguette halves with mayonnaise, garlic powder, and cheeses. Broil until cheese is melted and browned. Makes 4 to 6 servings.