You know it’s been a long week when you almost pour your wine on your salad and your dressing in your wine glass. I’ve been insanely busy as of late, so there has been little creativity in my kitchen. But I got distracted last weekend and bookmarked a ton of new recipes to try while trying to figure out what to make for dinner. One of them is the one I made tonight, a Grilled Chicken Salad with Cherries.

The other day when I was in the supermarket, I noticed the heated stand near the self checkout. It’s always been there, but I always seem to just pass by it without really comprehending it. It’s where they put the ready cooked rotisserie chickens (wow, spelled “rotisserie” right on the first try – gold star for me!). So I was trying to think of what I could use one of them for, since, while I like chicken, I don’t like cooking it, because raw chicken is slimy and gross. This salad sounded like a perfect candidate. However, I ended up not going that route because I wasn’t sure what I’d do with the dark meat that I assumed would exist, what with it being a whole chicken and all. I thought about using pork chops, but the store was woefully understocked, so I went back to the chicken idea. Due to my own laziness, I bought the pre-cut “great for stir-fry” package, which, come to think of it, is also rather great for salads – it cooks up quickly, and you can pretty much use it as is without all the chopping or cutting or whatever.

The other issue was the cherries. Fresh sweet cherries are wonderful, amazing things. I’d never really thought about cooking with them before – I never really think about putting them with anything. I could easily just sit and eat a bowlful of them cold (and when they’re in season, I often do). This looked like a reasonably low-risk dish to start with, but cherries aren’t in season now, so I used frozen ones. On the upside, they defrost pretty quickly, and you don’t have to take the pits out. (Though do be careful with the frozen ones – the machines don’t always get all the pits out. I found one pit, but the rest were fine.) The downside is that, like most frozen fruit, they get a little squishy if you let them defrost too much. I ended up slicing a few, but I left most of them whole – they were hard to slice, but they were fine.

The recipe calls for “gourmet salad greens,” so when I was at Whole Foods yesterday to get the frozen cherries, I picked up some Olivia’s Organics 50/50 mix (baby greens and baby spinach). The photo with the recipe actually looks more like an herb salad mix, but the 50/50 mix was the best-looking variety at the time. Unfortunately, when I opened it tonight, half of it was bad. (It seemed to be mainly the reddish leaves – not sure what they are.) So I ended up putting the cherries and chicken on a bed of mostly spinach. I also don’t measure my greens when I make salads, I just put what looks like a good amount for the meal. I think I ended up with roughly 2 cups of baby spinach, which worked out quite well.

As I was plating the salad, I had the idea to add some goat cheese to the mix. Goat cheese goes well with fruit over baby greens, and I had some in the fridge. I wanted to add some pear slices to it also, but the ones I bought yesterday aren’t ripe enough to eat yet. (Pears are tricky to get right. Too firm/green and they don’t taste right; too yellow, and they’re mushy and mealy. You really have to be on top of the pears, figuratively speaking.)

The dressing had a bit of a kick to it. I’m suspecting the Dijon mustard, but I was probably a bit liberal with the black pepper and/or the shallots, too, so I can’t be certain. I liked the dressing, but it’s got a… not sour taste, exactly – maybe “savory” is the word I’m looking for. In either event, to my brain, it’s the diametric opposite of the cherries’ taste, which was quite sweet. It worked, but it sort of clashed a little. It’s hard to explain. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good dinner, and I’m sure it’ll go more quickly next time (I think the key is to already have minced shallots for something else ahead of time), but I almost feel like the dressing would be better on the salad without the cherries. I’m not sure what I would substitute in – maybe just pears? They’re sweet as well, though, so I don’t know if that would do it. It bears further experimentation, but the dressing itself is good, and the salad was a good meal. I had it with a glass of my current favorite wine, the Chateau Ste Michelle 2008 Columbia Valley Riesling I mentioned back in the Bacon Mac and Cheese post. (And yes, I did catch myself before I poured it on the salad.)

I also took pictures before I put the dressing on, so here’s the picture with the dressing.

Wow, with that last post, I hit 1,000 tags! Either I’m too specific or awesome. You decide.

My friend Lily and I have been friends practically our entire lives: we’ve known each other since the days of pigtails and fingerpaints. And as you would expect, I ate quite a few dinners at her house. I like her mom, so dinners were fun, but I remember the letdown of mac and cheese night. Now, I love mac and cheese. But for most of my life, that meant strictly Kraft mac and cheese (or “Kraft dinner,” as my Canadian buddy calls it). So when Lily’s mom would tell us it was mac and cheese night, I was always psyched to stay for dinner, and then ultimately was disappointed when we got to the table. (Apologies to Lily – please don’t tell your mom!)

Anyway, like I said, until recently, that’s how I thought of mac and cheese, and it’s made me very picky about it. Generally, if it’s not out of that blue box, I’ll pass. (The one exception to this is the lobster mac and cheese at Tremont 647, which is awesome.) So I was a little wary when I saw Cooking Light’s bacon mac and cheese recipe. How this thing is “light,” I have no idea – it’s roughly 400 calories per serving (1 serving = 1 cup). But I digress.

It’s an easy enough recipe, though I imagine it will go faster now that I’ve done it once. I cooked some Barilla Plus elbow pasta that I had leftover in my pantry, instead of the recommended strozzapreti or penne pasta. I’d like to think this made it a little healthier, if nothing else. I’ve never been able to persuade myself to eat whole wheat pasta for more than a mouthful, but the Barilla Plus seems to be a satisfactory in-between, at least in terms of taste. And since there was going to be cheese on it and all, I decided the slight taste variation wouldn’t be a big deal. (And it wasn’t.)

When that was done, I drained it and let it sit while preparing the sauce. Hint: the flour and milk will cook up and start to resemble thickened paper mache if you let yourself get distracted by, say, the ridiculous soapiness of One Tree Hill. (Rachel Gatina married Dan Scott? What now?!) So don’t do that. I managed to salvage the flour/milk mixture by mashing up the clumps and stirring in the remaining cup of milk (I halved the recipe) quicker than I probably should have. So it can be fixed if you make a mistake, but it’s probably better to just pay attention in the first place.

Though I halved the recipe, I used the original amount of bacon (2 strips). Even so, it still felt like there was very little bacon in the mix, and though I could smell it, I couldn’t really taste it. I’m debating whether that’s because I cut the bacon up into very small bits or simply because there needs to be more bacon involved. (More Bacon Than The Pan Can Handle, if you will.) I also substituted minced shallots for green onions, because I had shallots and not green onions. (I’m becoming a fan of shallots on the whole – I’ve never liked onions, and shallots seem to accomplish the same things, but taste better to me. I have not, however, gotten used to how quickly my eyes start stinging when I start chopping them.) I think I’ll leave them out next time, though, because I think it creates a smell that put me off, even though the dish tastes great. I haven’t really thought that part through yet, just pretty sure I’ll leave them out next time. Oh, and I left out the hot sauce, because, well, I don’t like it. So there.

The only other alteration I made was to use reduced fat cheddar. This was not my original intent. I tend to buy Cabot’s 50% light cheddar, because it’s a little healthier but without losing much of the cheddar flavor, but what I’ve learned is that it melts poorly. It sorta dries out and gets bubbly. I haven’t determined if that really alters the flavor much, but the texture can be off-putting. Shaw’s has Sargento cheese on sale this week, and since the recipe calls for “finely shredded cheddar” (which I figured would melt easier), I went for that. I knew I didn’t want to use the Cabot cheese, even though that’s what was in my fridge. I didn’t expect to find a reduced fat sharp cheddar, but lo and behold, there it was. So I figured I’d give it a shot. And on the whole, it’s not bad. I don’t know if I’d want to eat it straight, but for the purposes of the mac and cheese, it worked just fine.

I didn’t feel like firing up the oven, so I took the opportunity to see how the broiler setting on my ancient toaster oven would work. I’d only recently deciphered the cryptic icons on the toaster to determine that there was actually a broil setting, so I hadn’t tested it before. I’m not entirely sure why you’d have to use that instead of just baking the mac and cheese, but whatever. I also don’t own a broiler pan (that I know of), which was part of the appeal of using the toaster oven. I put the mac and cheese in a metal loaf pan, which just fits into the toaster, and worked great. Make sure you keep an eye on the mac and cheese while it’s in the toaster – if you don’t, the cheese may burn a bit. I’m not sure if that has to do with the fact that I was using a reduced fat cheese, or if I put it in the toaster for too long, or if my toaster oven is simply temperamental and inaccurate. Fortunately, there weren’t any major burn spots on mine, just a few browned bits, which were easily scraped off when eaten.

I served this with a simple grilled pork chop, which was a good choice. I considered mixing either edamame or corn into the mac and cheese, but didn’t on this round. I’ll definitely make this again, so maybe next time. (I’d been considering this originally, when I’d intended to make the mac and cheese as a stand alone dish, rather than as a side dish for the pork chop.) I had the pork chop and mac and cheese with a 2008 Chateau Ste Michelle Columbia Valley Riesling, which I’ve had at Legal Seafood before, and recently found in Ye Olde Sketchy Liquor Store nearby. I’m biased because I like the riesling anyway, but I thought it went well. I also tried it with a Sutter Home White Merlot, which wasn’t bad either, but I like that wine on its own as well, so my pairing suggestions are fairly simple – amateur at best. But I like them, and since it’s my dinner, that’s what counts.

I’ve been trying to come up with some new healthy snacks, and this weekend, I experimented with granola. I always go back and forth on granola. I can never decide if I really like it or not. I also tried my supermarket’s version of Raisin Bran Crunch (which has granola in it), and I rather like it, though the cereal itself tastes like a sweetened cereal, which is odd. But anyway, that sparked my decision to try something with granola.

Years ago, we used to buy the custard-style Yoplait yogurt and freeze it for snacks. I’ve been doing that again – I seem to be partial to the blackberry flavor. On a whim, I bought Erin Baker’s peanut butter granola while at the grocery store and decided to pair it with the yogurt. I used 1/4 cup of granola, as well as some semi-sweet chocolate chips, and spooned the frozen yogurt over it. It was a good idea in theory, but disappointing in the end. I keep forgetting that semi-sweet chips don’t do well when paired with cold things, because the chocolate doesn’t melt at all, and it doesn’t really taste chocolatey. Which annoys me. The granola was also somewhat disappointing. It didn’t really have a peanut buttery taste to it – more peanuty, which are not the same thing. I also bought some Cascadian Farms dark chocolate almond granola on the same shopping trip, so I may try that next time.

Some of my neighbors had a lovely barbecue for Labor Day over the weekend. I love an excuse to bake, so I started hunting for recipes. I was going to make my favorite Irish cream brownies, because they’re quick and easy, but I wasn’t sure if they were really barbecue food. I started searching for pie recipes instead, thinking those were more appropriate. I needed something quick and easy, since I didn’t plan ahead quite as well as I should have. After about 20 minutes of searching, I found a Cooking Light recipe for a blueberry-peach galette. It only had six ingredients, most of which I had, and took roughly 30 minutes, so that was my winner.

Originally, I was going to substitute blackberries for blueberries (as I am wont to do), since I had some in the freezer. (I’d fully intended to make these with frozen fruit, both because of time and cost.) I started thinking about melting the apricot jam with a cheesecloth bag of lavender blossoms in it, to infuse the jam with a little of the flavor – based on some of the recipes I’ve seen with lavender, it would have gone well with both the blackberries and the peaches.

Cost of frozen fruit thwarted my plans, however. The recipe was for two galettes, though I knew mine were going to be a bit smaller than the recipe’s, as I was able to buy a two-pack of premade pie crust which were 9″ ones. I figured I could get away with less fruit, but instead, decided to buy only one package of peaches, and use berries for the other galette. I bought sliced strawberries (figured whole ones would be too difficult to manage when eating the galette), and remembered I had a bunch of raspberries in the freezer I wanted to use up, as well as a few blackberries. So I decided I was going to make a blackberry-peach galette, and a strawberry/raspberry/blackberry one.

This was a good plan until I got home. I had far fewer blackberries than I thought, and on a whim, I decided to switch my flavors. I ended up with a peach-strawberry one, and a raspberry-blackberry one. I left out the lavender plan at this point, both in the interest of time and the flavor mixing, but I may go back and try that another time, with the peach-blackberry combination.

I think they turned out okay. Everyone at the picnic said they looked great – one person even asked for the recipe. (I imagine they would have looked better if I’d had time to plate them better, but as it was, I barely gave them time to cool before I had to head over to the barbecue.) The only problem is that frozen raspberries tend to fall apart and clump together, which makes defrosting them a real pain. Because of the time shortage, I ended up baking the galettes for about 20 minutes at 425° instead of bringing the temperature down after the first ten minutes. I don’t know if this caused the break or not, but the pastry broke in one corner on the raspberry-blackberry galette, and because the berries were frozen and had lots of juice (I presume), it leaked out one side. It didn’t damage the galette as far as I can tell, but it wasn’t terribly pretty.

This is definitely a good, quick dessert if you’re in need of one. The fruits can obviously be swapped out and combined differently. When I get more pie crusts, I’m going to try the peach-blackberry combination (I have some frozen fruit left), and I want to experiment with the lavender-infusing, because I am apparently mildly obsessed with finding culinary uses for lavender. The peach-strawberry combination was just the right amount of sweet (and was excellent with some vanilla frozen yogurt); the raspberry-blackberry needed something to cut the flavors a little (I put a little whipped cream on it, and that did the trick).

A week or so ago, I noticed these crazy big dahlias growing in a community garden that I pass most days. I finally remembered to bring my camera with me, and on Thursday, I stopped by to take some pictures. While I was standing outside the locked gate, a guy stopped by and asked if I wanted to go inside. He had a plot there, but forgot his key, so he said if I was still around in 10 minutes, he’d be happy to let me in. I’ve admired this garden often, so of course, I jumped at the chance to go inside.

While I was waiting for him to come back, two more people came by to go in and water their plants. They, too, offered to let me in to take pictures. I wandered around the roughly defined paths and took tons of pictures of lots of stuff, including those huge dahlias. I talked to a fourth person on my way out – it turned out that her plot was one I’d been admiring when I first walked in. (Not with the dahlias, but the first plot that I actually walked past.)

So thank you to the very nice gardeners from the Gazebo Garden in the South End who let me in to photograph their lovely garden. The full set is on Flickr.

I love when the necessity of using something in my fridge turns into a rather good meal. In this case, the thing that needed to be used was a salad mix.

Last week, the supermarket had salad mixes on sale, so I brought home a romaine, iceberg, cabbage, and shredded carrot mix. Broccoli was also on sale, and I had a bit of that to use as well. I added some black olives and most of what remains of the goat cheese crumbles left in my cheese drawer. I remembered I’d bought some garlic croutons ages ago that I’d never used. Fortunately, they were still good, so I threw those in, and on a whim, added some microwaveable bacon, left from a recipe I tried on Friday (more on that later).

Halfway through, I realized I’d forgotten the salad dressing (I don’t usually put dresing on my salads – I tend to use cheese instead, or ingredients like fruit that I don’t think lend themselves to dressing), but it didn’t matter. All in all, it was an excellent satisfying salad. The bacon added a nice bit of salty taste along with the olives. It probably didn’t really need the vinaigrette after all. Definitely going to make this one again.

Due to an abundance of chopped shallot leftover from the Blackberry-Sage Pork experiment on Friday, I got a little creative with breakfast over the weekend. I usually don’t add anything to my eggs aside from cheese, or on rare occasion, bacon, but I decided to see what the shallots would do. I threw in some dried thyme, garlic powder, pepper, and frozen basil, too. (Though it occurs to me that I had two perfectly nice basil plants I could have used. I think my brain already earmarked them for pesto, so that’s why I didn’t think of using them.)

Once the eggs were cooked, I placed about a tablespoon or so of goat cheese crumbles in the center, ground some sea salt over it, and folded the eggs over.

I was pleasantly surprised. The goat cheese added a weird texture that I’m not sure I liked, but the taste overall was good. I love garlic in practically anything, but I liked it in combination with the other tastes in the eggs. The shallots didn’t overwhelm any of it, despite the strong scent coming from the Tupperware they’re living in until I figure out what else to use them for. So a win for breakfast. Clearly, I have a lot of culinary motivation building up in the back of my brain. This heat is making it hard to want to do anything, let alone cook, so I figure I should go with it when it comes.

Well, I did it. After a week of “I’m too tired,” “I got home too late,” and “OH MY GOD, it’s TOO FREAKING HOT!”, I finally made Cooking Light’s Grilled Pork with Blackberry-Sage Sauce recipe on Friday.

On the whole, I’m pretty proud of myself, because I made it with Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Pecan Butter, and managed to time it so both recipes were done around the same time. I usually try out one recipe at a time (and then make something I already know with it), but even so, I have trouble timing everything. I have to pop things into the microwave once I’m done cooking more often than I’d like to admit. The sauce needs to simmer for 20 minutes initially, so as soon as that was set, I put the potatoes in the microwave (10 minutes), and then went about gathering the rest of what I needed for the recipes, and making the potato topping.

I varied the pork recipe slightly, in that I “grilled” two pork chops on my little Foreman Grill, instead of the bigger cut of meat the recipe calls for. Since you don’t put the sauce on until the pork is cooked, I didn’t think it would make any difference (and it didn’t). I really need to get a grill pan, though. (I’ve heard Lodge makes good ones – any other suggestions?) One side of whatever I make in the Foreman Grill gets grill marks (from the lid) and the bottom is always kind of brown all over, since there aren’t any real ridges on the bottom half. (Why is that? That strikes me as a design flaw. But I digress.) Anyway, the point is that I always feel like the meat is tougher than it should be when I finish. Maybe because of my tendency to slightly overcook things out of paranoia of undercooking them, maybe because of design flaws in the grill. Anyway.

The sauce was interesting. I generally do not approve of mixing fruit with onion-like things (there are shallots involved in this recipe) – it’s why I tend to get disappointed when I find recipes for things like fruit-based chutneys. But I soldiered on and kept cooking. When I got to the part where you have to strain the mixture to get the liquid out, I was vaguely nauseous. Perhaps it’s just because of my preferences, but I didn’t find the smell appealing at all. In the end, it worked out okay. I think the smell bothered me because the shallot and sage were much stronger than the blackberry scent when stuff was cooking down. In the end, it turned out to be a milder taste than I expected from the smell, and I didn’t really taste blackberries OR shallots. But it did add a nice tangy flavor to the pork. It was easy to make, so I may do it again. It’s not my favorite thing ever, but it made the pork a bit more interesting, and I like to make pork chops fairly frequently. I’m not sure if it should have been thicker, though. The recipe says to let it cook down for about 9 minutes. As I’ve learned before, reducing is not my forte, so I stuck to the timing, and went from there. I can’t decide if it would be better with more of a jam-like consistency. I don’t think it would matter much in terms of taste, just in texture, which could just be a matter of personal preference.

The one thing I would do differently, though, would be to use cheesecloth instead of a strainer. I HATE cleaning out my metal strainer. Because you have to squish the mixture to get the rest of the juice out of the blackberries, you end up with a mushy substance in the strainer, and the seeds and stuff get stuck. (Anyone have tips on cleaning metal strainers?) It occurred to me later that if I’d poured the mixture through cheesecloth over a bowl, and then squeeze the cheesecloth, I could get the same effect, and then just toss the remainder in the garbage. (Less clean up is good, because I have an unfortunate tendency to try to clean up as much as possible after the meal is ready, and then my dinner gets cold.)

The potatoes were good, and quite easy, since you cook them in the microwave. But word to the wise: do not attempt to remove potatoes with your bare hands, even if the towel you’re putting them in is two inches from the microwave. Microwaved potatoes are HOT. The neat thing when you take them out is, if you slice them down the middle, you can scoop out the insides almost in one shot, because the microwaving separates the skin from the flesh. When you’re done and you put the topping over it, the butter in the topping melts, seeping into the potatoes, which is nifty. It’s really good – it sort of reminds me of a cinnamon roll or strudel. They didn’t go as well with the pork as I’d thought. I usually like pork and sweet potatoes, but the blackberry-sage sauce is a little tangy, and the potatoes are pretty sweet. Perhaps without the topping, and maybe just mixing in some pecans would work.

All in all, a successful experiment. Two new recipes down, and a potential new weeknight meal.

Despite the weird weather, crazy humidity, and being left alone for a week, the plants are still doing well. More of the zinnias have sprouted, the basil’s still doing okay, and the sunflowers are getting ready to bloom! (They look a little bedraggled in the photos because I took them yesterday after watering them, but before they’d had a chance to bounce back from the hot day.)