Go Griffin Go! » Food

Playing with Food

Dan — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:25:25 +0000

We don’t make a secret out of the fact that we love to, well, experiment with food. And the nice thing about having some time off from work is that we’ve been able to experiment even more than usual.

When we visited Frank, Kathy, and Chelsea in Baton Rouge, we went to a very high-end sushi restaurant where we had some unusual sushi wraps with ingredients like strawberries, mango, and kiwi. Inspired by this, Katie and I set out to recreate some of those.

Katie builds a sushi roll with fruit — inspired by some fruit sushi we had in Louisiana

The next night, we decided to continue the restaurant recreations by trying a version of jalapeno poppers. Neither of us had ever tried to make these, but we both like them in restaurants. We found a highly rated recipe on Allrecipes.com and really enjoyed the results. (These were even baked, instead of fried!)

Baked Jalapeno “Poppers”

The next day we rummaged through the fridge and found both left over crab meat (from the sushi) as well as left over cream cheese and cheddar filling from the poppers. Katie had the idea to turn those ingredients into crab rangoons. They were so delicious! I wish I had more!

Crab Rangoons

As “cheesy” as it sounds…

Dan — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:48:50 +0000

It seems no matter how old you get, everyone enjoys pizza. Katie and I are no exceptions. We love to make our own pizzas and come up with interesting flavor combinations.

Here’s the one we made for lunch.

We’ve seen this on Food Network. Luckily it didn’t hit the ceiling (or the floor)!

Spring Rolls and Egg Drop Soup

Katie — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:10:27 +0000

We sure are having fun cooking Asian style. The 2 most exciting aspects of our Asian dishes so far — they are inexpensive and they are delicious! Tonight’s dinner consisted of fried spring rolls (complete with sweet and sour sauce made from scratch) and egg drop soup. Had we closed our eyes and eaten, we would have sworn we were eating at a Chinese restaurant. If you like cooking with out of the ordinary ingredients but haven’t made it to the Asian store in your area (ours is in Cary), then you should definitely make a point of going. It’s one of our favorite places to grocery shop.

Asian Deliciousness for $1.50 each

Dan — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:23:55 +0000

It seems we must be on an Asian kick.

Tonight we thought we’d use up some of the stuff from the fridge and decided to try some “Orange Chicken” from a recipe on AllRecipes.com — but we added some additional ingredients since we had them.

It turned out really nicely — and we decided it would rival any dish from a local chinese restaurant. The best part is that we calculated that it was only about $3.00 for our entire meal tonight. We wouldn’t be able to get it for that at a restaurant!

This was so good over a bowl of rice!

Good Eats

Dan — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 03:21:32 +0000

We’ll take a minute to borrow an idea from our friends Abbie and Ben who post pictures of all of the mouth-watering food they make.

When we were in San Antonio, Nancy taught us how to make “Summer Rolls” — which are made with rice paper and lots of green vegetables. It’s like a salad in a roll! We made ours with bok choy, cilantro, green onions, bean spouts, onions, mushrooms, and shrimp.

We also decided to deep-fry some wontons — some stuffed with ham and cheese and some stuffed with pepperoni and cheese! Excellent when dipped in pasta sauce.