Redneck Risotto

I wanted to share this recipe with you as one of my, erm, less delicious attempts at cooking. I'm sharing it because I feel like it has potential, but there's one key ingredient that was my stumbling block, and I feel like someone might be able to give me advice that would make this better?


What's that ingredient?


Grits.


This may seem odd, since I was born in Georgia and raised in North Carolina...but we just didn't eat grits in our house. I blame it on my parents being born and raised in Connecticut, so even though we lived in the South, we weren't really genuine, sweet tea dripping out your veins Southerners. 


Here's the recipe, from the 1998 Southern Living Annual Recipes cookbook. This particular recipe was contributed by Chef Jimmy Sneed in Richmond, Virginia. I apologize right now Jimmy for not doing justice to your recipe.


Redneck Risotto


Ingredients:
6 1/2 cups chicken broth, divided
2 cups uncooked stone-ground white grits
1/4 cup unsalted butter
2 (3.5 oz) packages shiitake mushrooms
3/4 pound spicy Italian sausage
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 shallots, peeled and diced
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
3/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese


Directions:
Bring 6 1/4 cups chicken broth to a boil in a large Dutch oven. Gradually add grits, stirring constantly; cover, reduce heat, and simmer, stirring occasionally, 1 hour or until creamy. Stir in butter; remove from heat.


Remove and discard mushroom stems; slice caps.


Remove sausage casings, and cube sausage; brown sausage in a skillet over medium-high heat, stirring often. Drain on paper towels. Wipe skillet clean.


Saute sliced mushrooms, garlic, and shallot in hot oil in skillet 1 minute. Add remaining 1/4 cup chicken broth; remove from heat.


Stir together grits, sausage, mushroom mixture, pepper, and 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese. Sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup cheese. Yields 6 servings.


Sounds delicious right? I was so excited to try this recipe. Stupid, evil grits. Here's my progress through the recipe.

This may have been my first mistake. The only options of grits I could find were these and instant. Hmm.

Peeling sausage casings isn't for the faint of heart.

Now, if you know anything about grits, I'm assuming you can tell where I went wrong, right here. My grits weren't creamy - they were actually quite stiff and moldable. I think I overcooked them? Someone help me out here.

I used Baby Bella mushrooms, since I couldn't find Shiitakes.

Stirring the sausage into the grits.

This portion of the recipe smelled like heaven. I should have just left it out, mixed it with the sausage and had it over rice or something. Hmm...

Final product: doesn't look so bad?

Since the flavors of the other ingredients smelled and tasted just fine, I'm 99.9% sure that my trouble was with the grits. I can imagine them smooth and creamy (like shrimp and grits...YUM), in which case this recipe would probably be one of my favorites. But since my grits were more similar to rubber than food, Scott and I wound up powering through this meal, and throwing away the precious leftovers, which I hate doing. 


So I've shared one of my failures with you, now would some precious Southerner explain to me the delicate art of cooking grits? Pretty please?


Happy Thursday!

Trendy McTrenderson!

Oh hey, remember when I showed you some page flags on my Favorite Things?

Mighty Girl (inspiration of my life list and generally a blogging genius) just featured them in this post.

And there's a link...so we can all have more and more of them! :) 


I have a feeling I'm going to be spending a lot of time on that website. Hmm...


Three cheers to my friend Laur for being Trendy McTrenderson!

Desk Yoga?

The past few weeks, I've been having a really hard time with the 3pm slump at work. I could be in the middle of a huge project, and still be so sleepy I can barely keep my eyes open. And from what I hear, I'm not the only one with this problem.

So I started looking into "boredom killers" and ways to relax at work. Some of the suggestions were a bit ridiculous. Like...playing online poker with your coworkers...calling and making farting noises on the phone..leaving lewd notes on dry-erase boards. Seriously?

I'm all for a joke, but some things are just not meant for the work place. Unless you're 15 and working at Abercrombie & Fitch, I suppose.

There were a ton of awesome ideas which I'll get into later on, but the one that tickled me the most was Desk Yoga. (Not that relaxation at my desk helps with the 3pm slump, but it certainly does help the rest of the day.)

I loved this article on Monster.com called Relax at Your Desk with These Yoga Techniques. The author immediately won me over with "you may be well on your way to an Ibuprofen moment." I definitely recommend it. And I promise it's not one of those articles that tells you to do butt-squeezes or other things that make your passing co-workers look at you just a bit odd. 

Some of my favorites are from the brown bag options, which focus on creating the environment that makes you comfortable. Here's my desk at work, in its tiny, cluttered gloom, and how I've tried to make it a happy thing to stare at for hours!

A couple months ago, I added my little lamp, not for aesthetics but out of necessity, since the light fixture above my head fried itself and can't be fixed. The joys of working in a 100 year old building. I love the warm light though, and it helps to counteract computer headaches.

One of the desk yoga techniques - to have inspirational quotes around your desk. This is one of my favorites.

I have two plants that keep me company at work. This is George, a recent addition and a spunky little guy.

This is Francine. Her lover, Franklin, lives out at the front desk with my friend. Francine & Franklin were gifts to us by one of our former co-workers.

Another desk yoga technique - tea. In my absolute favorite mug. Everything tastes better in a pretty mug!

I also have two bird friends at work, which oddly enough, don't really have names. This is my little bird, given to me by my best friend Kate, and I love having it right in front of my computer monitor to remember to pray for her sweet little girl, Madeline - who is fondly nicknamed Little Bird.

Mr. Flamingo was part of a fundraising/protest effort. Cafe Hon is a Baltimore icon, and was forced to take down its two-story flamingo as part of some new sign ordinance. So they filled the lawn in front of a government building (the size of a city block) with pink flamingos, and were selling them for $1.50 each. Gotta love Mr. Flamingo.

And there you have it! I'd love to have it much more open and full of empty, soothing wall space, but when you work in 5 feet of space, you make do. I keep myself surrounded by photos of loved ones, comics, and lovely photographs.

Now time to try out those desk exercises - hah! (More to come on beating the 3pm slump!)

Another IKEA Addition

Surprise surprise, another IKEA item has entered our house.  Since we have little to no storage space, I've been working on paring down a lot of our clutter, so that we don't have to have an apartment full of storage boxes. 


Sometimes paring down clutter fights viciously against my tendency not to waste anything. Prime example: hair products and lotions. Expensive, but I usually get bored with them after using half the product. I don't want to throw them away though, because I do inevitably go back to using them. Thus...a storage problem is born. (I do want you to know that I'm not obsessive about these though - I do throw away things, especially if they're old. Nobody wants to use crusty lotion.)


Our bathroom is such that it connects to the main area of the apartment, but also to our bedroom via our closet. One side of the closet is clothes, the other side is a small dresser and our hamper. Here's the state of that dresser on any given day, as well as a storage tub of miscellaneous bathroom items that I've just never been able to quite find a place for. (Feel free to gasp. SHE'S MESSY!!!)

While wandering through IKEA, we discovered a bathroom storage shelf that made me suddenly grip Scott's arm with the intensity that let's him know that we're not leaving the store without that particular item.

(You can find the link here.)

It almost reminds me of a little alien with it's little feet. It's a little more generic and utilitarian than I would normally choose, but oh wait - it was only $40. For something with glass shelves. Say WHAT? And is also only 11.5" x 11.5", which means it fits in snugly right next to the dresser in our closet.


I'm proud to say that I assembled this bad boy all by myself, to the detriment of my already aching-wrist, but that's beside the point. We all make mistakes right? I won't lie...this makes me feel particularly macho, since it involved the use of my favorite hammer (yes, I have a favorite) and my drill. I may or may not have blown across the end of the drill like the barrel of a gun in an action movie when I was done.


When a full shelf comes in a box that looks like this, you KNOW there is "some assembly required". 

As you can see, I haven't dealt with the clutter on top of the dresser yet, but once the shelf was loaded up, the dresser looked significantly better. I don't have any after pictures of that...sorry! Also...please excuse the poor lighting. If this was someplace we owned, we would have replaced the lighting in the closet a LONG time ago.  

This is actually mounted to the wall. You can see the gray brackets in the inside top corners. I love this aspect, since I always worry a little bit about tall shelves like this tipping over. And the last place I want to die is the threshold between my bathroom and my closet.

Woohoo storage!! That doesn't involve digging a plastic container out from under two shoe boxes and off a top shelf!

I'm sure that I'll probably re-arrange things a few more times, but in the meantime, I'm more than thrilled to have easy access to bathroom stuff that is usually buried so deep that I dread the moment I have to dig for it.


Our closet and our bedroom is my next major project now that we finally have the living area in a set-up that I adore, so at some point I will be posting more photos of this project, hopefully with better lighting!


I'm off to continue munching on something that is no doubt not very healthy and I will regret later, but football is my excuse.


Happy Superbowl Sunday from the house that bleeds Green & Yellow. Go Packers!

For me??

I had planned on posting something cute and creative today, however, my already-hectic work week ended on a high note with me re-straining my wrist while moving and re-arranging too many large files. Note: my right wrist, with which I highly value to function normally.


Thus, a lot of typing and mouse-clicking is not feeling so good right now. I'm off to curl up with four wonderful things:


1. Chinese takeout
2. My bathrobe
3. A chick flick
4. A large glass of wine.


In the meantime, here's a little funny that I'm sure most of you will appreciate right about now, courtesy of the hilarious Natalie Dee.

Title: "I wish I could have a million blizzards they're just great."

Happy Friday everyone!

Wok Wok Wok

I'm sorry. I couldn't resist. I just love saying the word Wok.


Wok wok wok.


ANYWAYS.


I'm glad to see you've made it to Thursday...Friday is so close I can taste it!


I have absolutely NO clue where I got today's Dinner Feature recipe from. I just found a photocopied page of a cookbook with only page numbers, and some sort of spiral binding and no identifying marks. Hmm. So, if you read this and you realize this is your recipe, CLAIM it because it's wonderful!


Thus, with no further ado...


Shrimp and Peas in Wok
(clever title, no?)

Ingredients:
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp salt
1 tsp honey
1 tsp ground ginger
3/4 cup chicken broth
2 tbsp Tamari soy sauce
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/4 cup peanut oil
1/2 lb (8 oz) fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 pkg (10 oz) frozen peas, thawed
1/4 cup green onion, minced
1 bag (1 lb 4 oz) frozen cleaned shrimp, thawed, or 1lb fresh shrimp, peeled, deveined
hot cooked brown rice


Directions:
Combine cornstarch, salt, honey and ginger. Blend in chicken broth, soy sauce, and garlic.


Preheat wok or skillet about 3 minutes. Add oil and continue heating over high heat. Add mushrooms, stir-fry 1 minute. Add peas and onions. Stir-fry 2 minutes. Add shrimp. Cook and stir until shrimp are pink and firm, about 3 minutes.


Stir chicken broth mixture to blend. Add to shrimp mixture and cook and stir until sauce is thickened and clear. Serve over rice. Makes 4 servings.


I was in a bit of a picture-taking mood this time around, so I hope you're feeling tolerant.


I buy peas in huge bulk bags because we're a pea-eating family, especially when I'm a vegetable snob and don't really enjoy many frozen or canned veggies, which becomes an issue in the winter when fresh produce isn't peeking out of every corner. It's a problem, and I'm coming to grips with it. So this is me, measuring out my 10 oz of peas.

Frozen shrimp (also purchased in bulk) are not quite as pretty to weigh out.

This is what happens when you drink strong wine while you're cooking (and waiting for your rice to cook). Hmm.

Yummy ingredients. I used baby portobello mushrooms (our grocery store calls them "Baby Bellas", and I also doubled the quantity of green onions.

So, I've always been a weeee bit afraid of heating oil over "high" temperatures. So I turned mine up to about medium and then gradually raised it up. I'm sure it's a cooking no-no, but until I can go to culinary school and learn how to not make things explode or give me severe burns...that's my method.


This looks lovely cooking, doesn't it?

My shrimpies, cleaned, thawed, and ready to go.

For some reason I couldn't get a clear photo of the sauce, but it was icky looking anyway so I think it's for the best.

Simmering down that sauce. By the way, at this point your kitchen is going to smell like heaven. I'm just saying.

Note: most brown rice takes at least 45 minutes to cook, and a stir fry with delicate ingredients like this generally doesn't cook longer than a few minutes, so be sure to plan ahead and get your rice going right away.


Also, because I used lower temperatures, mine took longer than 2 or 3 minutes to cook. I kind of just kept an eye on everything and made sure it wasn't getting too mushy. It takes probably at least 10 minutes (for me anyway) to reduce the sauce, so take that into account when you're doing the intial cook of the veggies.


Final product over rice!

I bet you wish you could taste it!

Verdict:
This will definitely be added to my list of go-to recipes. The ingredients list is a piece of cake - most of it I already had on hand. Scott and I BOTH had two helpings (I know I know, shame on me) and I also had it for lunch the next day. I should note that three people at work commented on how good it smelled being heated in the microwave, if you weren't convinced you should make it already.


Try this recipe. Your taste buds will thank you. (And your tummy too, since it's low-fat! Although not necessarily low-sodium, if we're covering all the health bases.)


Happy Thursday!

Announcing...The 9 to 5 Alliance!

Remember earlier this week I mentioned I was going to be launching a new project of sorts? Well..it's here!

I've been talking to some of my friends about ways to give my blog some direction, and what they'd like to see from it in terms of inspiration and help.


And the results were pretty much the same. While a lot of mommy blogs are at the top of our favorites list, it seems like there are few that cater to working girls. Young women, who are not necessarily career-driven but driven by the necessity to pay the bills. Who love their life outside of work, and look for ways to enhance it. (Disclaimer: I am a HUGE advocate of stay-at-home moms. I have every intention of being one once the opportunity presents itself. No disrespect intended!)


I'm not saying I have all sorts of wise advice, or that my life situation is the most common in the world. And truthfully, this blog (if it lasts that long) will eventually morph into a mommy blog, because Scott and I do plan to start a family once Scott is done with school. But in the meantime, childless, petless, dirt poor, and non-home-owning is where I'm at.


Which means you working ladies have something to look forward to. Things like easy packed-lunch ideas (because we ALL know that frozen meals are highly overrated and not satisfying.), tips to make the work-life balance a bit easier, pick-me-ups for that 3pm slump, and other things that I honestly haven't thought of yet.


But! It's my hope that this little project will evolve - which requires your feedback. What would you like to read more about? Suggestions?


I'm excited about the 9 to 5 Alliance and can't wait to see where it goes!


In the meantime, here are some little snippets from an awesome book called "The Artist in the Office: How to Creatively Survive and Thrive Seven Days a Week" by Summer Pierre. (You can buy it online here, or check out her blog here!)