As a Matter of Food

One night last week, I came up with this dish while going through our refrigerator.  I was too lazy to go grocery shopping and there was food in the refrigerator.  All I had to do was make sense of it.  I found chicken tenders, cilantro, scallions, and a box of penne pasta in the pantry.  With some olive oil, a little butter, soy sauce, black pepper, crushed red peppers, and some garlic and it evolved into this recipe.  We’re up in the mountains and my husband requested it again.  I just kicked it up a few notches by adding a few extra ingredients and took it to a whole new level.

Recipe:

1 box of penne pasta (you can use any pasta)

1 lb of chicken breasts/tenders/skinless boneless thighs

5 cloves of garlic

1/2 an onion sliced or chopped

2 cups of sliced mushrooms (fresh or canned)

2 Tbs of olive oil

2 Tbs of butter

1/2 tsp of salt

1/2 tsp of black pepper

1 tsp of crushed red peppers (can adjust to taste)

2 Tbs of soy sauce

1/2 cup of light cream

a splash of a good white wine (optional)

Directions:

1.  Before you start prepping the chicken.  Start to boil water for your pasta!

2.  Slice chicken into small slices  (1/2 inch x 1 inch) place in bowl

3.  Slice or chop half an onion

4.  Mince garlic cloves

5.  Add garlic, soy sauce, salt, pepper, crushed red peppers to chicken

6.  Put oil in a big pan, medium to high heat

7.  Sautee Onions until the onions are soft, then  add mushrooms, if you’re using fresh toss them until slightly soft then add your optional splash of wine; canned mushrooms are already soft so there’s no need to wait

8.  Add chicken and cook thoroughly then add cream

9.  Add cooked pasta into pan and toss until pasta is covered in sauce

10.  Garnish with slice scallions and chopped cilantro (optional)

Serves 6 to 8

I want to point out that it’s always a good idea to try your dish before you serve it and that it suits your taste buds.  Although I follow recipes, I don’t follow them to a tee.  Everyone’s palette is different.  The first time I made this dish, I didn’t add the mushrooms, wine, and cream.  Boy it sure made a difference, and the cream didn’t make it too heavy.  You can omit these ingredients and the dish would still turn out great.

I own a ton of cookbooks, but usually cook from memory or create new dishes on the fly.  I had to really pay attention to take a stab at putting this recipe together.  Please feel free to test it and give me feedback.

While I’ve been working and noodling over getting my blog back up to speed, I’ve taken some inventory. One of the questions I’ve come up with is – What has or is going to help make this blog successful?

True, I definitely need to write well. REALLY well. However, no one wants to just see endless words. That gets very boring after a while. While I’ve illustrated my work in previous blog posts, I realize I have a lot of room to grow in the illustration department. I may as well dedicate some time and effort into learning more about the art of food photography. As it seems I always have a camera ready to snap a photo of something I am about to eat, just prepared, or food I happen to be passing by.

A valuable resource I’m using is Digital Food Photography by Lou Manna.  I also occasionally use  a photo light box and some lighting I bought in a package deal on Ebay.

I’ve used a Kodak EasyShare Z740 for a long time. It’s a point-and-shoot with 10x optical zoom and 5.0 megapixels capability. The pictures taken with this camera have come out pretty decent. I also own another little point-and-shoot, the Olympus FE-20. Its features are 3x optical zoom with 8.0 megapixels. This camera is more convenient to carry around for those frequent drive-by food shots. Not bad for a sleek small camera which can fit easily into your pocket.

The camera I am most proud to own is the Nikon D80. It is a digital SLR and while I’ve owned it for over 2 years I don’t know much about it. (Yes, what a shame and I intend to change that very shortly.) I have used it and it has yielded some great pictures. It just intimidates me. One, it was quite expensive. Two, it’s not just a point-and-shoot. Three, I don’t want to somehow break it. It’s quite bigger than the other cameras I have and it is heavy.

I’ve been digging through my storage boxes and I’ve found the manual for my Nikon D80 and have resolved to conquer the beast once and for all!

As I post, I’d like to not only receive comments about my food work, but would appreciate constructive feedback and tips on my photos.

Remember, if you have any photos you would like to share with me and would like to see posted on here email me!

I am still working out and learning some of the technical features to get this blog exactly where I want it to be. I am fortunate to always be able to turn to Alex, owner of Sliqua Enterprise Web Hosting. Not only does his company host my blog site, but he is really the one who has helped me to even get this far.

I need to clean up my categories and tags along with setting up a way for my readership to contribute their materials. I would eventually like to allow people to share recipes, stories, and photos. For now if you want your work to be featured, please send me an email to GotFood13@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you!

I stayed up until now (3 AM) to fix my slideshows on some of my posts. I added some widgets and also tried to download some free plugins, but I don’t know how to upload them correctly. So I’ll just have to wait to get help this coming week. Basically, I want to set this site up so I can just do what I am really here to do. That’s to blog.
I’m exhausted but I’m smiling, because despite having a whirlwind of madness buzzing around my head, I took some time to get moving again. One of the best things is when I look at my archives. Although there are huge gaps I still feel good that over the last 2 years I’ve put some content in. Now I just need to commit to keeping it up and avoiding the big dry spells.
Next project is to figure out how to upload to my directories, then clean up the categories and tags. I somehow need to figure out how to redirect visitors going to asamatteroffood.wordpress.com to this site now. When I’m active, I have many visitors to my site. I think I want to change out the theme too. This plain blue theme just sucks. It is so boring.
Well I’m ready to catch some shut eye because now I’m just exhausted, but feel great!

This movie gave me renewed hope and inspiration after a long bout of stress and just drifting.  I still have a lot of work to do ahead of me in the next couple of months, so no real time to blog about anything other than my thoughts.  THIS, however, is a good start.  At least I was able to figure out how to log back in!  I will take time whenever I can to clean up this blog, fix the slideshows, and just start organizing my thoughts again and come back to the one place which has helped keep me grounded in the past.  Here on my blog, writing about the one thing that has always given me comfort and has always made me feel the most certain about myself.  Cooking.  Food.

I can completely relate to both Julie Powell and Julia Child.  At 33, I’m still searching for that which really means something to me.  Don’t take this the wrong way.  I have many things that mean very much to me.  My family and friends.  But what I’m talking about is the thing that is just YOURS.  The feeling which makes you feel like you’re standing alone on a mountain, with your arms spread out wide at your sides while embracing a strong gust of wind, and feeling as if you’re soaring.  Perhaps I’ve just been looking in the wrong places or the wrong direction.  I think it’s time to once again, and this time, look within.

So here I am again.  Going back…well more like continuing on my journey, accompanied by the one certain thing I’ve known for more than 25 years.

I will treat this as a journal but hope that my journey and experiences will inspire someone as Julie’s and Julia’s stories reignited my spark.