Have you heard of Half Baked Harvest? I first discovered Tieghan Gerard on Instagram. I quickly purchased the “Every Day” cookbook, one for me and another for Marissa. I cooked out of it extensively when I was in Chicago that first month after Max was born. “Every Day” is Tieghan’s third cookbook. I have not cooked from “My Barn in the Mountains” or “Super Simple.” But I have tried out several recipes from her blog, including the recipe below.

I made a few adjustments, omissions, and additions to meet my likes and cooking style. You can see the original recipe here to compare.

The first issue for me was the instruction to keep the chicken the in skillet when adding the onion and peppers. Although I was using Marissa’s largest Le Creuset skillet, it just didn’t work. Everything didn’t truly fit into the skillet until the onions and peppers were cooked down, so I instruct to remove the chicken to a bowl. I understand why she wrote it that way, it is called a “one skillet meal” but it isn’t practical. And since there is already a bowl used to make the corn mixture, if you use the same bowl for the chicken to rest in and then to mix the corn in, it is the same number of items to use and clean.

Let’s see, what else… I added garlic, because, it’s garlic! I prefer a mix of Aleppo and Chipotle chili powders to basic chili powder. Oh, and Tieghan calls for mayonnaise as the garnish to be drizzled over the finished dish. That is not appealing to me. Once again, I see where she came up with that. True Mexican Street Corn has mayo, but I prefer sour cream to mayo for the drizzling. If I was to add mayo, I would sub out the yogurt in the corn mixture with mayo for a more authentic taste.

One last thing; although we all thought it was delicious as written, Marissa and I believe it would be even better to lift the chicken along with about half of the pepper/onion mixture, out of the sauce mixture once it is finished cooking, and palce in a separate bowl. Then double the number of tortillas, spread about half as much corn mixture on each, and fill the enchiladas with the chicken/pepper mixture too. (You may need to chop up the chicken strips to make them fit better.) Then place the enchiladas atop the salsa cooking liquid in the skillet, top with cheese, and follow the recipe from that point. Just another option to think about.

Read through my version and hers. Then feel free to mix it up with your preferred variations to make it your own. Enjoy!

My former neighbor and dear friend, Lisa James, and I meet up to walk several mornings a week. On the mornings we don’t walk, Lisa teaches spin class at the YMCA. The Y closed several weeks ago and since then, we walk every morning. For years, I’ve heard about Lisa’s Pepper Pasta. It is one of her family’s most requested recipes. One morning last week, she mentioned that she had made it the night before. Finally, I asked her if she would share the recipe. She did one better and gave me the recipe and a container of leftovers to try.

I had it that same evening for dinner and I can see why her family loves it so much. When I went to the store to buy the Italian sausage and canned tomatoes, the store was out of canned tomatoes.

So I decided to make it with what I had in my freezer, shredded chicken and roasted cherry tomatoes. Below is my “use what you have” take on Lisa’s recipe. To make Lisa’s original version, switch out the chicken for sweet or hot Italian sausage and cook the sausage in the skillet first and use a 32 to 35-ounce can of plum tomatoes in place of the roasted cherry tomatoes. Also, you may not need the reserved pasta water for the original, since you will have the juice from the canned tomatoes. But it never hurts to reserve a little pasta water for any pasta recipe, just in case you need it.

Many of you follow me on Facebook and Instagram, either on my personal account or on the Harmony Boards accounts. Therefore, many of you may already know what happened to Cody Howard on January 18, 2020. Today I have an update for you and the entire story for those of you who know nothing.

Cody is the oldest son of my dear friend, Kim Howard. Kim and I worked together for years at Les Gourmettes Cooking School. More than just years, decades, actually. Kim and I came up with the idea of Harmony Boards while I was catering Cody’s wedding to Chanté in May 2018 in the forest outside Kingman, AZ. In fact, the first Harmony Board I made was for the cocktail hour of their wedding reception. Cody is a former US Marine turned contractor and has done many of the projects on my home, such as this complete bathroom remodel, this fireplace facelift, this made-from-scratch barn door, these beautiful shelves in my Harmony Boards office, and these new countertops, etc.

Cody is Kim and Paul Howard’s oldest child. Next is Bret, then only daughter, Susannah and then Trevor. Bret married Alyssa last year, and Susannah became engaged to Chad in January 2019, their wedding was scheduled for April 2020.

On Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, Cody, Bret, Trevor, and friends traveled to the Howard Family home in Canada for a bachelor weekend to celebrate with Chad. They rented snowmobiles to ride on the frozen lake. On that Saturday a snowstorm came and there was an accident, it involved the snowmobile that Bret, Cody, and Chad were riding. Bret was seriously injured. Chad was fine and at first, it seemed as though Cody was okay as well. The property is between Montreal and Ottawa. Ambulances from Ottawa were called and arrived some 90 minutes later. By then it was apparent, to at least Trevor, that Cody was not okay. Another 90-minute ride to Ottawa. There is more detail to the story than I know, but I do know that it took more than 7 hours to diagnose and get Cody into 9-hour emergency surgery for a dissected aorta, Goggle that and you will be scared to death. Meanwhile, Bret was in surgery getting his head sewn back together with a serious concussion and another surgery to repair his seriously injured bladder.

Can you even imagine being Chanté, at home with your 10-month-old son, receiving the news that your husband has been in a life-threatening accident, a country away, and is heading into surgery with a frightening low survival rate? Knowing that he should not have survived the accident, the agonizingly long wait for the ambulance, the ride to the hospital, all the testing to discover what was wrong, or being transferred to another hospital for said surgery?

Or being Kim and Paul and receiving that call telling you that two of your beloved sons have been in an accident and both are going into surgery and you are also a country away? The strength, faith, and hope of this family boggle my mind.

For the rest of the story, I’m going to send you to Chanté’s Instagram page. Please click on the link at the bottom of her profile and watch the beautiful video, read the updates posted there by the family and if you can donate to the Go Fund Me page, please do. If not, especially in this current climate of uncertainty, please say an extra prayer for Cody and his continued recovery and for the entire Howard family. Their story is the sort of inspiration that we can all use right now to acknowledge that as rough as it is for each and every one of us, others are in the same struggle plus a bit more. Quite a bit more.

I love you, Cody. I love you, Kim and Paul. Chanté and River. Bret and Alyssa. Susannah and Chad. Trevor and Clair. Maggie and Marcus and the entire extended Howard and Simpson clans. xoxo

Alright then, how about a recipe? Here is Stir-Fry #2. A follow-up to Stir-Fry #1 was posted yesterday.

Until it cools off, I am going to be lucky to get one post up each week. Between my work on Harmony Boards, driving around town with deliveries and family commitments, I have zero energy or desire to cook. That’s the greatest thing about living alone, you don’t have to cook if you don’t want to!

With that in mind, I haven’t cooked for weeks, so I had to go back nearly two months to Father’s Day to dig up this recipe and photos.

Of course, there was a Father’s Day Harmony Board. I kept light and fairly healthy since steak was on the menu.

I wasn’t certain what I was going to make for Father’s Day dinner until I went to Costco and saw the special Father’s Day Roadshow they had in the meat section. It was there that I found this beautiful U.S.D.A. Prime cut of meat.

To be honest, I’d never seen or heard of a Beef Ribeye Cap Steak before but it looked beautiful and impressive, so I snatched it right up.

The helpful and kind butcher told me it was his favorite cut and recommended that I grill it over medium-high direct heat for about 7 minutes for this thickness. “Thank you, will do!”

Remember: Be sure to always rest meat before cutting. Especially when using it in a salad like this was. Resting the meat gives time for the juices to get back into the meat. You will lose less juice when you cut it and when you eat it the meat will be juicier and tastier. If you cut it too soon, the juices, which will look like blood, will flow out and that is not a nice look on a salad!

Thank you for all your input and comments on which of the 8 recipes I put forth you’d like to see first. The requests were all over the board, but the jalapeño jelly had a couple more than the rest. I believe the halibut had the next most, so that recipe will be second and then I’ll go from there until all recipes are posted here for you.

I made this jelly as a take-home gift for the students in my series at Les Gourmettes Cooking School. All of the recipes from this particular class were from Barbara Fenzl’s Southwest The Beautiful Cookbook. This jelly is the perfect homemade gift or hostess gift, especially during the holidays. But I promise you, it’s would be a much-appreciated gift any time of the year.

The recipe below is written just as it is in the book, but here is a tip I’d like to add: When dispersing the jelly between the jars, use a slotted spoon to evenly divide the solids into each jar. If you pour the jelly directly in, the first few jars will end up with all the solids and the last will have none.

Once the solids are distributed, then ladle the hot liquid evenly between the jars. I used 4-ounce jars and ended up with 17. That is a very satisfying amount of gifts for one quick cooking session.

The weekend before last, my friend and former neighbor, Whitney, hosted a bridal shower. She asked me to help with the food and she ordered a Harmony Board too.

The menu was a green salad, frittatas, and breakfast potatoes. Since I’m Irish and I love potatoes, I’ll post that recipe first.

I quadrupled the recipe, so when you see the photos, do not fret. It looks like a lot because it is a lot!

I bought a mix of baby potatoes from Costco. The tri-color of the potatoes and tri-color of the bell peppers really make for a pretty dish, as pretty as you can get with potatoes, anyhow.

In the recipe, I say to roughly chop the potatoes, think bite-size. With the baby potatoes, that was as easy as cutting them into quarters.

Since I was just dropping the food off, I didn’t get a photo of the finished product (I did the last stage of roasting at Whitney’s house and left them in the oven as I left) so, I’ll just leave you with a photo of one the lovey buffet tables she had set up for the food.

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Do you remember a few posts back when I shared my excitement over finally being able to grow something, besides herbs, in a garden?

Well, are you ready to see the surprise harvest?

The surprise is that I forgot what I’d planted. I thought it was zucchini and watermelon but turns out it was watermelon, cantaloupe, and English cucumber. This weekend I had another wonderful surprise!

The watermelon was not your run-of-the-mill red-fleshed watermelon, it is yellow!

I had completely forgotten I had planted the super cool yellow instead of the everyday red. I was overjoyed but honestly a little disappointed too.

Disappointed because I’d looked for yellow watermelon in the market when I was creating the Harmony Board for Lisa’s birthday last week but I could not find any. And there it was – in my own backyard the entire time. Doggone it!

When shopping for the board, I may not have found the melon I wanted, but I did find yellow kiwi at Costco. Did you even know there was such a thing? I discovered it a couple of summers ago, but this was the first time I saw it at Costco. The green kiwi is the smaller fuzzy one on the left. The yellow is slightly larger and has no fuzz.

Just as with the watermelon, they taste much like their everyday cousins.

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While Anne, Peggy and I  were vacationing in Carlsbad last month, Peggy made her famous salsa. Lucky us! I took notes and happily share it with you.

Peggy insists that one thing is an absolute must for her salsa.

You must use only chiltepin chile peppers! They can be hard to find and are more expensive than that other little pepper easily found in grocery stores, the chile pequin. The pequin is nothing like the chiltepin, so don’t bother using it as a substitute.

The chiltepins are what make this an authentic Sonoran salsa. You can find them at Food City or on Amazon. To read more about the chiltepin and the salsa, check out this article from Edible Baja Arizona.

Peggy also prefers to use a mortar and pestle to crush the peppers and the garlic. Mine is packed away, so I opted for a cocktail muddler and measuring cup.

Alternately, you could start an empty food processor or blender, and while it is running, drop the garlic cloves and chiltepins through the feed tube into the empty machine and let it do the work for you.

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This refreshing salad is the perfect counterpoint and complement to the Spaghetti Squash Pad Thai – posted last week. It is best served cold from the refrigerator.

My family enjoys and can tolerate quite a bit of heat and spice in our food. I thinly slice the jalapeño pepper for this dish, but it can also be finely minced for those who like things toned down a bit. I give directions for both methods; you decide which suits your taste.

Prep the salad and the dressing hours ahead and then dress it just before you heat up the wok for the pad Thai and your meal will come together in a snap.

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Shishito peppers are specialty peppers from Japan. They are high in vitamins A and C and are completely edible, including the seeds. Unlike other peppers, the skin is thin, so there’s no need to peel after blistering or roasting.

I like to serve blistered peppers as a nibble with drinks. Shishito peppers are also great in stir-fry and I even use them to garnish cocktails.

Shishitos have quickly become the new hot thing in the last year or so and are slowly showing up in the produce departments of grocery stores around the country. They are readily available in Japanese grocery stores.

I found 8-ounce packages of the peppers at Fry’s. They really are worth searching for. But if you can’t find them at your grocery store and are too lazy to go to a Japanese market, there is a substitute.

Use the sweet mini peppers that are readily available in produce departments and at Costco and Trader Joe’s

The peppers are sprinkled with flaky sea salt while still hot. My favorite salt is Maldon. It can be found at specialty food and kitchen stores. Or like everything else, on Amazon, which is where I get mine. I am obsessed with Maldon. I love it!

The other important ingredient for this recipe is shichimi togarashi. I first posted a recipe using shichimi togarashi, or Japanese seven spice, in the summer of 2014. I love this stuff and use it all the time.

Don’t be scared off by the long and complicated name of the recipe. It is the definition of easy-breezy and only has 6 ingredients, two of which are salt and olive oil.  See … EZ!

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