Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Cooking around the web

Most Saturday or Sunday mornings I sit down & write my menu for the week ahead to create a shopping list. Typically, Matt or I have a few ideas of things we want to make based on recipes we've bookmarked or just what's in the freezer or fridge. This weekend I was working on this week's menu but it was all very vague. I just couldn't pull anything creative together. But then I went & checked some of my favorite food blogs & it was like they knew exactly what I needed.

First, as you know I've been down hard with a head cold. Saturday I really wanted soup. What a really, really wanted was a curry soup like I used to get at the Citrus Club on Haight Street in San Francisco whenever I had a cold. The chicken broth is the perfect cold medicine & the little bit of spice sweats all the bad stuff out of you. We couldn't find what I wanted in any of our cookbooks so we had settled on just chicken noddle. Then I checked the latest post from Culinary Adventures of a New Wife & there it was, the chicken curry soup I was dreaming of.
Coconut Curry Soup
We even had the green curry paste in the house needed to make it. Matt was very skeptical because we hadn't liked curry made with green curry paste in the past. Oh, but this soup was perfect. Just eating that big steaming bowl of it made me feel so much better. This will be a soup I make over & over again all winter long. The only thing we changed in the recipe was we left out the shrimp.

Then for Sunday I was defrosting a pork tenderloin from the freezer. We knew we were going to grill it but had no special plans for it at all. When up popped the latest post of Dinners for a Year and Beyond for Pork Tenderloin with Balsamic Fresh Fig Sauce. It sounded perfect, we love figs, we love balsamic. The question was, could we get figs? I'd never seen them in my market. I didn't see any at the store but decided to ask someone. Lo & behold, he has a box in the back, not only that but he'd just told two other customers they didn't have any & then he found this shipment (apparently they get shipments of figs year round into MN but the figs often don't come in good enough shape to sell).
Pork Tenderloin in Balsamic Fig Sauce
We stuck pretty close to the original recipe except we grilled our pork & we added all the figs to the sauce. The flavor was amazing. The wonderful flavor of figs blended so well with the balsamic.

It seems when my creative culinary juices are down someone on the internet seems to know just what I want to cook!

5 comments:

Nikki @ NikSnacks said...

I love being inspired by other food blogs. I have to admit, I was inspired by your galettes last week. My made my own savory one. I think I'll share it tomorrow!

Deborah said...

I am often inspired by other blogs - and these look very inspiring!!

Beth (jamandcream) said...

That chicken curry soup is just what I need now!!

Braeg Heneffe said...

Thos two meals look so nice, so glad it's the weekend so we can start cooking after a busy week at work

eatingclubvancouver_js said...

I've also been dreaming of chicken soup these days. Yours look heavenly!

Some weekends I feel up to cooking and planning, some weekends no. I guess those are the vicissitudes, eh?

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Get Email Updates!

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Measurement Abbreviations

T = Tablespoon
t = teaspoon
c = cup
lb = pound
oz - ounce

Labels

Blog Archive

Contributors

Blog Directory for Minneapolis, Minnesota