Crab Corn Chowder and Beer Bread

We are having some friends over for dinner and I am so excited! Today's recipe was adapted from a book called "Salsa Cooking" by Marjie Lambert. My husband has had this cookbook since before we met and this is our favorite recipe from it, but this is how we have made it over the years, not as it appears in the book.


1 onion, chopped
butter or olive oil
1 qt. of chicken broth
3 C of salsa (favorite fresh variety)
1-2 C of frozen kernel corn
1/2 red bell pepper
1 C half and half
1/2 tsp salt
white pepper to taste
1 C sour cream (or plain greek yogurt)
1 lb fresh cooked crab meat
cilantro and green onions for garnish


Melt some butter or heat some olive oil in a stock pot, sautee the chopped onion. While onion is sweating put a rimmed baking sheet under the broiler and roast the corn and the half of a red bell pepper. Check vegetables often and when red bell pepper becomes blistered and blackened remove from under broiler, place in a container with a lid and close it up for 5-10 minutes, then remove most of skin, chop and add to onions in the pan. Continue cooking corn until brown spots begin to appear. Add salsa to onions, add corn and stir, add chicken broth and bring all to a boil for 1 minute. Then let soup simmer for 20 minutes with a lid on, slightly ajar. Add half and half, sour cream, crabmeat and stir together to heat, but do not boil as you can curdle the dairy. Serve in bowls garnished with cilantro (or parsley of cilantro is unavailable) and chopped green onions. Serve with beer bread, cornbread, tortillas, or chips.

I use the Farmgirl Fare beer bread recipe and it is a good one! I had to modify it today because I was down to my last 2 1/2 C of whole wheat flour and I had no all purpose to speak of, so I subbed in some bread flour. I also added 1 C of 4 cheese Mexican blend shredded cheese to the mix. It smells WONDERFUL in here.

And last but not least my husband prepared Alton Brown's Frozen Blueberry Pie for our guests today and that is baking up right now. I hope you all have a nice Sunday with your friends and family.

Saturday Night

Busy day today, dance class, husband baked a blueberry pie for tomorrow and cleaning the kitchen. We went and visited some friends for lunch. Dinner was super cheesy mac and cheese, salad and apples. I love Saturdays!

Tomorrow we are having some friends over for lunch after our oldest kid's basketball game. Keep an eye out for "Corn Crab Salsa Chowder", so YUMMY!

Hope you all have a great relaxing weekend.

Fish Friday: Snapper and Scallop Paella

I got a paella pan for Christmas. A paella pan that you could easily bathe a small child in, a paella pan that is easily bigger than any cabinet I have in my teeny weensy kitchen. A paella pan that is just BEGGING to be filled with rice and saffron and scallops and snapper and sausage. A paella pan that will be used tonight. Because darn it I need to justify it as a cooking pan (and taking up a lot of space on top of my cabinets) or I need to just start bathing the two year old in it.

I have read a lot of paella recipes and here is how I am approaching the situation. I have some brown rice and saffron I could use but I think the length of cooking time it will take to make the rice will over cook the fish. I have snapper and scallops in my freezer that I need to use up. I also have mushrooms, lemons, white wine, and asparagus that need cooking. So I think what I will do is cook the sausage in the paella pan, then add some green peppers, onions and garlic to the pan and fry it up. Then I will add some yellow rice to the pan with some chicken stock and white wine and let that partially cook, then I will add my snapper and right before serving I will add my pre-seared scallops and some green peas. It should be a pretty nice dish.

I will serve with a salad garnished with baby tomatoes, pine nuts, and carrot curls. AND if it all comes out really well I will take a picture. Wish me luck!

Dinner Decisions: Cheese tortellini in an Improvised Sauce

Yeah, it was sort of unofficially Italian week here at Chez Lost. Spaghetti, pizza, and now tortelloni. This past weekend I went to Costco, or as my kids call it, the Snack Store. We loaded up on necessities as well as a few splurges. For me getting a huge bag of asparagus, bright green stalks of asparagus, counts as a splurge. Normally I am very good about getting everything unpacked and parceled out and planned for, but I due to illness I really dropped the ball this week. I have been very good about using up the lettuce and spinach, since they are the most prone to spoilage, but I only managed to use the asparagus once (and there is plenty more where that came from) and the brussels sprouts remain untouched.

Tonight I used up one package of fresh cheese tortelloni and still have one package left over, I used up just under a pound of ground beef and managed to pack up the rest of it into one pound chunks. I have plans in place for the brussels sprouts for dinner tomorrow and over the weekend and the last of the spinach and lovely fresh mushrooms are going into some fabulous omelets tomorrow.

One of the reasons it was so hard for me to get everything squared away is that my freezer is really tiny. I have a small side by side refrigerator and just ran out of space. Fortunately, a good friend of mine has a spare freezer in her garage and let me bring over the extra package of tortelloni, some bread, and 6 pounds of ground beef over to her house to freeze.

My sauce tonight consisted of onions, mushrooms, chopped spinach, garlic and ground beef with a can of plain tomato sauce. I added Italian Spices to it and let it simmer while I cooked the packaged pasta for 6 minutes. I drained the pasta and added them into the pan with the sauce. Everyone loved it of course and since I chopped the spinach up really finely the kids got a whopping good amount of fiber and Vitamin A plus some iron and calcium. My kids are hit or miss about spinach, sometimes they love it and other times it's like I offered them a plate of raw worms. But anyhow they ate it up without complaint. Other veggies I "hide" in a red sauce include grated zucchini, carrots, summer squash, pureed pumpkin or sweet potato, leeks, or broccoli. Not all at the same time mind you! Just what I have on hand that needs using up quickly. I wouldn't say I'm a "sneaky chef" but I do know that a robust sauce can make a whole bunch of veggies more palatable to kids.

Great Green Soup

Tonight is the Blood Drive and Parent to Kid book reading event at my daughter's school. I usually give blood and I am due to give it today, but I am on antibiotics so I think that counts me out tonight. Oh well, I will hit them up at the next event. As a reminder though, if you are healthy and able to give blood, please do! Blood levels in my community are in critically short supply and I know periodically they get low in other places. You can even make an appointment at your local blood bank. Find out where to give here as well as find out if you are eligible to donate!

Okay, so they serve pizza at Parent to Kid night and I know even though we had homemade pizza last night my little munchkins will want some when they get there, but first they are going to have a bowl of Great Green Soup, inspired by some soup I once had at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Massachusetts. The cafeteria there was wonderful, really locavore and organic and everything was so tasty! It was the coldest May I can ever remember and they had a bright green soup that tasted wonderful and was bright as green grass. I asked the lady behind the counter what was in it and she said, "Basically, any green vegetable we have in stock and in season. Frozen veggies work well in it too!" So today my great green soup is a simple affair, I sauteed chopped onions and celery in butter and salt, then I added chopped baby spinach and 6 large stalks of lightly steamed and chopped up asparagus. To this I added 2 1/2 C of organic chicken broth (could just as easily be veggie broth) and then I mixed it all up with my immersion blender. Taste and adjust seasonings; if need be add a bit of fresh ground black pepper. I serve it with a dollop of plain greek yogurt, but you can of course use sour cream or creme fraiche if you have it. I think a bit of shaved parmesan cheese in it or on it might be good too.

So there you go, bright green tasty antioxidants in a cup! This might be fun to serve for St. Patrick's day too!

Pizza Night

So, I have a clogged salivary duct! I guess that means my food has been insufficiently mouth-watering lately. It is making me feel pretty cruddy so I am taking it easy on myself and having a "Make Your Own Pizza" night. I will use the leftover red sauce from last night's spaghetti dinner and some thin round sandwich breads (whole grain!) for the crusts. The kids can spoon on their own sauce and top it with pieces of mozzarella string cheese.

I used to have a pizza stone but after a few years it snapped into two jagged pieces when I accidentally spilled some water on it while it was very hot (I was making a creme brulee.) Anyhow when I went to replace it I saw that they cost like $20 and up so I decided to use an unfinished, unglazed 12 x 12 ceramic tile in my oven instead. It cost about $2 and is much larger than a standard pizza stone. I used it for all of my baking now, gives great crust to pizza and bread and keeps the oven temperature consistent.

Hope you all have good health and good dinners tonight!

Meatless Monday Menu: Spaghetti and veggie red sauce

I think everyone makes this meal when you invite someone over for the first time and say, "By the way, i'm a vegetarian." I have more vegetarian dishes under my belt now, but none that go together as quickly. I chopped some onion in the pan and let sauté in olive oil. I added kosher salt, chopped garlic and sliced mushrooms. When the onions were soft and brown I added a few TB of red wine. Then I added Italian spices, canned tomatoes, and a small can of tomato sauce. I had some spaghetti leftover and dinner was ready. Sorry for the brief post but I am updating the blog via iPhone.