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Monday, September 17, 2012

Let the Cooking Begin!


With Halloween approaching it seems only fitting that this blog should become "undead'. I always get excited for the fall and Halloween holiday foods so  I decided it was high time to wake Road Raging Foodie up again. However, buyer beware this blog may be about to become Road Raging Foodies, otherwise known as cooking with EL and JJ.

As some of you may know,  I recently vacationed in the wilds of Utah for about a week, living off the lovely freeze dried camping meals ( which actually weren't so bad). On my return home my lovely boy insisted on cooking me a full home-cooked meal. This is what happens when you date someone who spent 6 months in a culinary program! Since then he has been spoiling me, or planning ways to spoil me with delicious meals. If anything was going to inspire me to come out of the void of the cyberspace to write about food again it certainly would be his meals.

The menu for my return to civilization meal was Pulled Pork, Grilled Veggies, Coleslaw, cornbread and Molten Lava cakes. The pork  and corn bread he prepared at home and brought to heat up, the coleslaw was bought and while he made the lava cakes I grilled the veggies.

 I grilled peppers, eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms and onions on my little George Foreman grill after drizzling them with oil and vinegar.
The veggies took forever but came out really tasty; even the chef approved. The pork was fantastic and I couldn't believe it was homemade. The lava cakes were care of a Paula Deen recipe and they came out beautiful and delicious.

cakes hot from the oven



Every thing was delicious but the warm lava cake with a gooey center definitely stole the show. JJ said it could have use whipped cream but I thought it was perfect.


Meal number two which we had a few weeks later consisted of breakfast for dinner, which is usually my favorite way to have breakfast ( aside from at midnight or later).
We made french toast from a recipe, which I can't say I've ever done before, and JJ brought a quiche ( one of my standbys) that was half Gruyere and bacon and half just Gruyere ( for the veg roommates). We used half and half in the french toast, which lightened it up from being so heavy, and made it super delicious. The quiche was excellent, especially with the smoky flavor of the bacon against the strong cheese flavor. We accompanied both with fresh fruit and mimosas. I did say I was getting spoiled didn't I ?
And, last but not least, I created a meal for myself tonight which I'm rather proud of for being unusual. It wasn't as magical as I'd hoped but it was pretty darn good.
I found myself hunting through the kitchen for dinner ingredients and decided to try cooking up a mango with my tofu.


I started by sauteing half an onion and adding a bit of hot sauce and ginger. Next I cut up the mango and cooked it up for a bit. Next the tofu was cut and added ( about 3/4 of a block) followed by some black beans. I was going for sort of a hot mango chutney/salsa inspired thing but as a main dish. Something was missing, despite the fact that I kept adding hot sauce.
I wanted a little liquid and couldn't find anything until I stumbled onto some tangerine-guava- mango juice I had bought recently. Just a touch of that and it was perfect! I put it over some egg noodles and voila! Dinner is served! It was spicy and had a good flavor to it, but probably could be tweaked into perfection.
Don't hold your breath too long but stay tuned for more cooking adventures to come! There's certain to be a lot more joint menus on the way :)