Once upon a time I had a friend named Brookery. Brookery’s family owned a beach house on LBI. I says one day to Brookery, “Let’s go down the shore, I’ll make a menu, let’s bring Val”. Brookery says to me “Ok, Leslie’s coming too.” Dear friends you might note the posting time and the posting date are different. As there is no interwebs on LBI and I’m currently sitting in Brookery’s dining room this entire weekend’s foodsperiments will be posted after I arrive back at my own humble abode.
Friday Dinner – Sesame Teriyaki Flounder
So the menu for this weekend is pretty stellar, but tonight is a recipe I got from my friend Robin, who got it from Better Homes and Gardens. Oh dear, Brookery has just arrived! As such, I’ll try not to be awkward. I was going to prep tomorrow night’s meal while we waited for Leslie to get here tonight, as Val isn’t coming tonight and she DOESN’T EAT SEAFOOD (THE HORROR) I figured we could do some tonight.
Anyway, the recipe calls for:
- Fresh black bass (uhm, subbed Flounder bc Brookery doesn’t eat bass)
- Black pepper – check
- Soy sauce - check
- Sweet Rice Wine – no dice but I’m subbing rice wine vinegar because womp womp
- Honey - check
- Cooking oil - check
- Sesame seeds, toasted – check w/out the toasting
So there were a couple of challenges on this cooking agenda. 1. Electric stove which I’ve never worked with and my sister has told me “back away from slowly so it doesn’t attack”. It’s always challenging when you’re working in not your own kitchen, so it took me a hot minute (or ten?) to get used to the idea. I set the sesame seeds to toasting, which it later occurred to me should have involved butter or oil of some kind and didn’t.
Any who, got down to the cooking itself, put together the glaze and let it “boil”(which I forgot to turn up the heat so it took a while) and put the edamame (frozen) in a pot to boil, and put another pot on to boil the rice. WOAH BIG MEAL.
I set the flounder to frying and then I realized that I have zero clue how to tell when flounder is done…good thing Brooke was there to help me out with that. The “flaking” is basically the fish could fall apart easily (and tries to as you remove it from the pan).
Long story short, the glaze eventually thickened, and the water for the rice boiled, the flounder cooked, and I plated the damn things and glazed them, the table was set, Leslie brought some wine…I waited in anticipation and…VOILA!
This foodsperiment gets a +7 for taste, a +6 for the company, a +5 for being at the beach, and a +5 for being a quick put together. I don’t know that I would change anything the next time, and the whole meal was enjoyed by all and they lived happily into the Friday night of a girl’s weekend.
Saturday Breakfast – Eggs and Bacon
I admit that for the foodsperiment on Saturday breakfast, I can’t take any credit. I’d gotten us eggs, and brought along my favorite Dubliner Cheddar (mmm Irish cheese) as well as bacon. Brooke took the lead on this one. I did take the morning to prepare and start the marinade on the evening’s speriment, Honey Chicken Kebabs. It’s amazing how difficult it is to cut up chicken thighs into quarters (obviously I still had a lot of chicken thighs…) anyway, all the chopping, cutting, glaze putting together…well not the glaze putting together but the rest of it (more on that later)…took the usual amount of time between me waking up and Brooke waking up such that Brooke made breakfast while I showered. Even though it technically wasn’t my foodsperiment, I gave the whole thing +10 for amazing cheesy eggs, +5 for the company, and +5 for the beach. YUM!
Saturday Lunch – Avocado BLTs and Guacamole
After a glorious morning at the beach, we tripped the two seconds back to the house and I set about putting together lunch! I found the “Summery Avocado BLT” recipe on finecooking.com. The ingredients were:
- 2 avocados – check
- Lemon juice – check
- Kosher salt – woops, regular salt will have to do!
- Tomato – check
- Bacon – check
- Onion – check
- Bread – USED THE AMISH WHITE BREAD!
- Lettuce? – uhm, I forgot.
So we got back and it was a pretty quick put together. I had Brookery my sui chef do the bacon and onions. I mashed together the lemon, salt, and one avocado, which was pretty simple, and cut up the other avocado. Leslie helped toast the bread, and meanwhile I “somehow” got “coerced” into making the guac at the same time. The tomato had already been sliced and prepped during my morning prep routine.
If we remember, the last time I made guacamole I thought there was too much (ok not really too much) but a little more than enough garlic. This time I used garlic, onions (not too much this time!) some lime juice, some lemon juice, some diced tomato…and mushed it altogether and put it on the table! I put together the sammies as described…and we ate with relish (no relish was served).
This lunch-foodsperiment I gave a +10 for taste! I LOVE LOVE LOVE avocado, but also LOVED the BLT’s! +7 for help in the kitchen, +8 for putting the excess avocados into more guac! (which we ate during evening snack!)
Saturday Dinner – Honey Chicken Kebobs, Grilled Potatoes and Onions, Grilled Corn on the Cob
Dinner on Saturday can be described as an extravaganza. Luckily a lot of the work had been done earlier in the day, as by the time we set about to getting the grill hot and everything prepped to throw on it, I might have had a few margs…the better to feed you my biffles. Also by this point we’d been out on the beach a few more hours and my back was looking extra burned! AND our darling VLynn was available for discussion!
I used three different recipes from allrecipes.com. They called for the following ingredients:
- potatoes - check
- red onion – check
- salt – check
- black pepper – check
- butter - check
- veg oil – check
- honey – check
- soy sauce – check
- chicken breast – subbed thighs for breasts
- garlic - check
- onions - check
- red bell peppers – check
- corn – check
- white sugar – check
- cumin – check
Putting together the potatoes and onions to grill was easy. And quick so I got that done asap. It took a while to put the pre-marinated kebobs together…but at least I’d gotten the marinating done early in the morning! The corn dressing (uh I mean seasoning…) didn’t take long either. Eventually everything was constructed and I could put things on the grill. The tricky part was timing how to cook everything. The potatoes and onions needed 30min, while the kebobs and corn were supposed to take 15min. I cooked the onions on the outsides of the grill, and when I flipped them over, I put the corn on the grill. Finally I put the kebobs on, those took the longest and looked like they were burning or possibly not cooked, but I realized that the dark meat of the thighs (thanks to Brooke and Val for pointing that out) made it more complicated to see. It was a little rough to tell about everything else (if it was done) based on anything other than time…which I discovered was a womp when one of the potatoe packets wasn’t exactly cooked right.
But all told, the meal turned out really well (even the Veggie burger of our vegetarian friend Leslie!) I give this meal a +8 on taste, a +5 for coming together at about the same time, and +7 for the tenderness of the dark meat, - 3 for getting the potatoes wrong. Overall…I like grilling! Too bad my new apartment doesn’t have a lot of grilling opportunities.
Sunday Breakfast – Cheesy Eggs and Bacon
Breakfast on Sunday is another meal of the weekend I can take zero credit for. I toasted some bread (rye bread) and ate the remaining edamame. VLynn gets all the credit for the cheesy eggs and bacon. She even had the genius idea of using the bacon grease and pan to cook the eggs! Brilliant! I did contribute the strawberries, and sliced and stored the ones I’d need for later.
Sunday Lunch – Feta and Strawberries Salad
After a good number of hours on the beach, and getting a little more burned, I stepped back to the house a bit early to start making lunch and cleaning up my things (boo to leaving the beach but responsibility raged on…) It would have been a better idea if I hadn’t found out at breakfast that Brookery doesn’t like strawberries (unnatural though it is, I wish I’d known.)
I got the recipe from the mother of all recipe sites, of course allrecipes.com. It called for the following:
- Slivered almonds – check
- Garlic – check
- Honey – check
- Dijon mustard – check
- Raspberry vinegar – couldn’t find this so I used raspberry vinaigrette dressing instead.
- Balsamic vinegar – check
- Brown sugar – check
- Vegetable oil – check
- Romaine lettuce - check
- Strawberries – check
- Feta – check
This salad was so easy compared to the prosciutto and gorgonzola fruit salad I made a couple weeks ago. I stepped into the kitchen and I had already sliced the strawberries in the morning so that was one less thing. I put the almonds in a pan on the stove to toast them while I put together the dressing. The dressing took almost no time, just had to mince the garlic quickly (this I’m starting to become a pro at) and then threw everything into the bowl to wisk it with a fork. By the time the dressing was ready to go, so were the almonds. I still needed to shower from the beach so I did that real quick when everyone got back to the house. Then dumped the bag of romaine into the bowl, in went the feta and the strawberries, followed by the dressing. Tossed the whole thing and VOILA! A light, summer, at the beach meal. Val and Leslie LOVED this one! The toasted almonds and feta and strawberries were a fantastic combination! And so easy to put together!
This foodsperiment I gave a +10 for taste, a +5 for easy get together, and a -3 for me not knowing that Brooke wouldn’t eat it….
\Kebobs and Leslie's Veggie Burger on the Grill
Strawberry Salad!
The weekend beach menu was overall a success! I was a failure at remembering to take too many pictures but womp. The greatest part was the whole sha-bang only cost $20 per person, if we’d eaten out the whole time it would have been a substantially more expensive weekend. Huzzah for happiness ya know? Anyway I’d call the weekend a success! Happy eating!
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