Brining with Seamus

Lately I've been really invested in finding good food to go in my body that's filling and healthy and leaves me feeling better about myself.  Rather than, you know, like I want to lay down and cry about the four pieces of pizza I just ate.  Luckily, my good pal Gwyneth Paltrow pointed me in the direction of this book:

Hero Food, by Seamus Mullen, is an awesome Spanish-inspired cookbook.  After being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, Seamus, a chef in New York, started a mission to identify the foods that made him feel better.  He found, conveniently enough, that the foods he loved and craved tended to be the foods that made him healthier.  Aren't our bodies cool that way?

Anyway, the cookbook is beautiful, and filled with delicious-sounding recipes organized by season and by main ingredient.  For Sunday dinner tomorrow, I'm making the Sunday Roast Chicken.  First step:  brine the chicken overnight.  Apparently this will make it juicy and flavorful.

I've never brined anything before - luckily, Seamus provided a basic recipe and I improvised from there:

Ingredients
1 whole chicken, 3-5 lbs.
8 cups water, separated
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 onion, chopped
2 bay leaves
Handful each of basil, tarragon, rosemary, thyme, and sage

Fresh herbs smell delicious.  Except for tarragon.  I don't love the smell of that.

Bring two cups of water to boil on the stove.  Add salt and sugar and stir until fully dissolved.  Pour in to a large bowl and add 6 cups cold water.  You'll want to make sure the water is cold before adding the chicken.  I cheated and added ice cubes to cool it down.

Add the rest of herbs and the onion.  Once the water is cold, add the chicken.  Cover and refrigerator for at least 3-4 hours - longer is perfect if you have the time.

I plan to take the bird out of the brine about four hours before I cook tomorrow.  Seamus recommends letting the bird dry in the refrigerator - rumor has it this will help make the skin nice and crispy once we bake it.  I'll trust Seamus on this.

James also is put tons of effort in to the prep work for tomorrow's dinner:  he started soaking the baby lima beans.

While we slaved away in the kitchen, Zoe and Zebra slept on the couch.  They gave me these looks when I woke them up to take pictures:

Zebra

Zoe

Pets are great.

Saturday Dinners - Vegetable Stew

Today was a cloudy, dreary, cold day in Greeley.

So James and I decided that a slowly cooked delicious vegetable stew was in order for our Saturday date night.  James is rather a connoisseur of soups and sauces and marinades, so I was guided by him in what to toss together.

Ingredients
46 fl. oz. - Low Sodium V8 juice
32 fl. oz - Imagine Organic Beef Broth
1/2 box - Barilla whole grain medium shells
3 potatoes, diced
2 whole summer squash, quartered
2 white corn cobs, shaved
1 lb. fresh green beans, sliced in to four sections
1 onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
2 sweet peppers, diced
2 cloves of garlic, finely diced

We started chopping up vegetables at about noon.  This allowed us to let all the flavors simmer together for hours (and pretty much be lazy the rest of the day).  Zoe made a guest appearance in the living room while we chopped. 

 

The fresh veggies were added in to our giant soup pot, then all of the V8 and the broth.  We cut on the heat at just above low to allow it plenty of time to simmer.  The noodles were set aside to be added later - we didn't want them getting too soggy.

Don't all the veggies look super delicious?  Also, note the Tupperware on the left side of the pot.  We've started chopping all of our veggies every weekend after grocery shopping and tossing them in Tupperware to be used in various recipes throughout the week.  This makes weekday cooking so much easier and quicker.

Six hours later, we added in the noodles and headed out to the dog park to exercise the pup.  

And, because I'm a wonderful fiance, I made James one of his favorite things when we got home.

Eight hours after starting the meal, we finally sat down to eat.

Overall the meal was pretty good.  The liquid boiled down more than we'd expected, so it ended up being much more stew-like and less soup-like than originally intended, but it was delicious.  And My Fitness Pal clocked one serving of soup and corn bread at only 372 calores and 7 grams of fat, so it was crazy healthy on a workout rest day.

And, extra bonus, the time at the dog park definitely worked.