Back to regular life...

We always try to clear out our fridge before leaving for vacation so that when we come back, we waste less and are ready for fresh groceries!  Part of our "coming home" routine includes the obvious unpacking, laundry, cleaning up, and grocery shopping.  I like to get fresh meats and make my green seasoning (see previous post on this) and season the meat.  I divvy the meat up into separate Ziploc bags, mark them, and place them in the freezer.  I was able to pull one of these previously frozen and seasoned chicken bags out of the freezer when we got back and make a super easy chicken dish for the fam!  I sliced up some potatoes (thinly sliced) and some onions and lined the bottom of the baking dish with them.  I sprinkled them with salt, pepper, and drizzled olive oil over them.  I laid the chicken over the potatoes and onions, also sprinkled them with salt pepper, and olive oil, and then baked it at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for about a half an hour.  I then put it under the broiler for another 10 minutes to get it crispy.  I made some basmati rice and steamed some frozen mixed vegetables on the side, and voila - dinner for tonight and lunch for tomorrow!

Here's how it turned out:

Completed Chicken and Potatoes

Seasoned chicken in labeled Ziploc bags for the freezer

Chicken with homemade green seasoning

This is my 2 year old's version of dinner tonight

My 4 month old started green peas this week!

Lunches ready for tomorrow

We also bought a few packets of Sorrel while we were in NYC this week!  Got to make our first batch to go with dinner!  For those of you who don't know what this is, it's a Hibiscus drink that West Indians make. Many people spice this differently, but we like to add cloves, orange peel, ginger, a Bay leaf, and cinnamon to it!

Here's our Sorrel to go with dinner:

A cold glass of Sorrel

The jar of Sorrel we made using 2 cups of dried Sorrel and 9 cups of water

Here's what a bag of dried Sorrel looks like

After steeping the Sorrel and spices overnight

Green Seasoning

I've talked briefly about my "green seasoning" in a previous post, but since I decided to make some this morning, I thought I'd share my process!  Publix had chicken breast and chicken thigh on sale this week for their buy one get one free sales and so I bought two of each and needed to season them!  One of the best pieces of advice I can give to anyone who is too busy to season (hello....2 kids under the age of 3!!!!!), is to buy good meat, clean it and season it right away, and put it in the freezer!  I, personally, have been doing this for years (even pre-children).  It makes life sooooo much easier.  You just take down the meat you want to cook that morning and when you come home, it's thawed and seasoned and all you have to do is cook it!

Green seasoning is another Caribbean staple that I've learned along the way.  It's basically a mix of green herbs, onions, and garlic blended together to make a paste that you can season all of your meat with!  When I lived in NYC, I used to just buy a large bottle of this stuff (pre-made) from my local West Indian grocery store and just pour it over my meat to season it.  Now that I have my own herb garden and try to make food as fresh as possible, I make my own.  There are tons of recipes on how to do this and what ingredients to add - but you should add more of what you like and less of what you don't like I think :)

In my green seasoning, I like to use things from my garden: chives, green onion, thyme, parsley, and cilantro.  If we happen to go to the Flea market and have some culantro (Shadon Beni), I put that in, otherwise, the cilantro is just fine.  I also add an onion, some garlic, a small piece of ginger, and a squeeze of lemon.  I like to also put in my own spices and tend to add in salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika.  I drizzle some olive oil over the top and put it all in the blender.  A few years ago, we invested in one of those Vitamix blenders, so that's what I use for almost all of my blending!

Here's a look at my green seasoning:

Fresh herbs, onions, and garlic in the blender

All blended up

Seasoning over cleaned chicken

Seasoning massaged in

My two freezer bags of meat, labeled and ready for the next time I want to cook chicken

Rice and Peas

Every Sunday in my home is "cooking day" as I like to call it...lol.  My husband grew up in a household that had a hearty, home cooked meal EVERY Sunday and so we continue that tradition in our home today.  I, on the other hand, have no recollection of a specific day where food was cooked and we all sat down for a proper meal.  I feel like when the food ran out, my mom cooked another meal and that was it.  Because I grew up that way, that's how I cooked too!  I always just made a meal regardless of the day of the week, but that all changed when I met my husband!  It has been a joking (and not so joking) point of contention in our marriage because I never saw the point of "MUST cook on a Sunday", but because it matters so much to him, I've tried to continue the tradition.  All that being said, my husband has started taking my 2 year old to swimming lessons every Sunday morning which now gives me some time to be alone with baby and to actually cook a thought out meal :)  This Sunday, I went traditional caribbean for him and made some rice and peas, callilou, roasted yam, and chicken wings.  I got lots of compliments on how the meal turned out in such a short amount of time!

Here's how everything turned out:

Baked chicken wings with my secret BBQ sauce (Diane's BBQ sauce brought in from Canada) 

Oven roasted yam

Rice and Red Kidney beans "Rice and Peas"

Callalou - in the same family as Spinach, brought up straight from Grenada and made with Denielle's mom's recipe :) It's a mix of okra, onions, garlic, thyme, salt, pepper, pumpkin, coconut milk, and I put a small piece of salt fish in it for body. After boiling it all down, I put it in the food processor for a few seconds to make it into more of a soup.

This is what my 2 year old had for dinner.  I just mixed the Callalou up with the rice and peas for her.

Here's the recipe I use from the book below.  If you like Caribbean food and don't have this cookbook, you MUST get it. 

My friend Celine got this cook book for me from Trinidad and I use it ALL the time!

Fresh Garden Herbs!

So I was watching today's episode of "The Chew" and was inspired by a dish being made using lots of fresh herbs.  It was a grilled chicken with a cilantro/mint marinade! Luckily, the herbs in our garden are growing fabulously and so I decided to get up and make it!  The marinade has lots of asian flavors in it, which our family loves.  It includes fresh cilantro, mint, lemongrass, and chives from our garden along with some red onion, rice wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh ginger.

Here's the link to Clinton's recipe on "The Chew" today that inspired my dinner:
http://abc.go.com/shows/the-chew/recipes/grilled-chicken-lettuce-cups-with-fresh-herbs-chiles-clinton-kelly


While I was cutting up all of these herbs, I decided to also make some spring rolls at the same time!  I used all of the same ingredients but also threw in some cabbage, sprouts, and shredded carrots!  Our eldest daughter, Deena, is a huge fan of spring rolls!  It took me MANY years to even try Asian flavors, but thanks to the hubby, I started getting used to eating it when we went out, and now I love it and love cooking it.

Here are some pics of what today's dinner will look like:

This is the mix I made to put into the spring rolls

This is the fresh herb marinade to put over the grilled chicken

Chicken grilled on the stove top using my cast iron pan

Chicken after its been shredded

I added salt, pepper, olive oil, and some vegetable grilling seasoning to the veggies going into the spring rolls

So you basically fill the egg roll dough with the veggie mix (and for those Egyptians)...roll it like mahshee waraa 3nab or grape leaf rolls!  See picture below!

Wrapped spring rolls ready to be pan fried (do this like you would dumplings)