Pickled Red Onions

If you've never had pickled onions, you're seriously missing out. We're not sure if there's anything better to put on a taco. This recipe is extremely simple, which instantly made it a favorite of ours.

Here's what you need:

3/4 cup white vinegar

3 Tbsp white sugar

Pinch of salt

1 Bay leaf

5 allspice berries

5 whole peppercorns

1 large onion

Here's what you do:

Peel you onion and cut in half. Cut into half-moons and put into a canning jar.

In a small saucepan, heat the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.

Once the mixture comes to a boil, pour into the jar with the onions. You might want to use a funnel.

Pop on the lid and put in the refrigerator to cool. 

Enjoy!

Anybody Out There?

Hi. We should apologize. We've been bad bloggers. Summer has been, well, insanely busy. Aside from the oppressive heat and our lack of desire to turn the oven on, we've barely stopped to test any new recipes. We have been enjoying some of our favorites, like Shoyu Pork, many variations of salads, and about a million different ways to grill chicken breast. 

We have also been fighting with our garden. This year has been so hot and dry, that our garden hasn't done as well as we'd hoped. Yes, we water it every day, but sometimes you just need a good rain! It's amazing how much better the garden reacts to rain than just water from the hose. We have gotten a few radishes and some grape tomatoes. Our herbs are also doing pretty well - the basil for sure.

We'll have some posts coming up, but please bear with us!

Our Raised Garden

Zack's parents came over last weekend and the four of us braved the near 100 degree heat to build our raised garden bed. 


We have a rabbit problem in our yard. Much to our dog's dismay, she's so far been unable to catch any of them. Not for lack of trying, however. 


We realize that the point of the raised bed is to discourage any rabbits from hopping into your garden and destroying your crops. Our rabbits seems to be quite ingenious, so we decided to go the extra step and build in posts to hold some chicken wire around the perimeter.


Our entire garden is 4' wide x 10' long, and 10 1/2" deep. We filled it with a combination of compost, potting soil and peat moss. 


Since the temperatures have been unusually high lately, we decided to buy many of our plants already grown, instead of starting from seeds. We purchased our herbs: parsley, rosemary, oregano, thyme, two basil plants, and onion chives. 


We have yellow and red bell peppers, grape tomatoes, and super fantastic tomatoes, which are basically beefsteaks. We also are trying our hand at white onions, garlic, shallots, summer squash, strawberries, carrots, and radishes. We started the carrots and radishes from seed.


We have a lot of other leafy vegetables that we will be planting later in the year when it cools off a bit.


After a scorching hot Memorial Day weekend, we have gotten some relief with a nice downpour and cooler temperatures. We also noticed that some insects have been enjoying our parsley and one of our basil plants, so we're trying to get that under control. At least we hope it's insects. Otherwise, we'll be trying to catch that rabbit and take him to a good home somewhere miles away from our house. 


We'll update you with the progress of our garden throughout the summer!

Farmer's Market

If there's a farmer's market in your area, we recommend checking it out. It's kind of a big deal in our community, and we love all of the fresh produce and local, sustainable, organic farmers. 


We stumbled on a new ingredient that we had never heard of before. Green Garlic. It's basically a milder form of garlic that you can eat raw. We'd say it's a cross between a scallion and a garlic bulb. It's a little spicier than scallions, but much milder than garlic. You can cook with it just like garlic, or garnish a dish with it. We're sure that this hybrid veggie has been around for a while, and we can't believe we just came across it. 


We also found some gorgeous purple asparagus. We used it in a couple of different preparations, so be on the lookout for those posts. 


Also, we found purple and yellow carrots. We sliced some up in a salad the other day, and we plan on roasting what's left. 


Finally, one of our favorite Farmer's Market buys is local honey. If you have allergies, you'll want to pick some up. It's made with the honey from local bees, which means they're picking up the allergens in our air. If you have a spoonful of local honey every day, you'll notice an improvement in your allergies, because your body is building up antibodies. It's science.


We look forward to a long season of Saturday morning Farmer's Market trips, and we hope you do too!

Our Staples

As we've mentioned a time or two, we create a lot of our meals by using ingredients we have at our house already. There are a few items that we always have on hand so we can throw a nice, healthy meal together on a whim.


Canned Goods
Our non-perishable items are pretty much always available. We keep a variety of canned goods: beans, tomatoes, vegetables, etc. We like to keep pretty much every type of canned tomato available at all times. We have tomato paste, diced, crushed, stewed, you name it. 


Stock
We always keep a couple of containers of beef stock and chicken stock on hand. We use stock in MANY of our recipes. We often use stock instead of water in many recipes because it adds another layer of richness to the food.


Fresh Fruits & Veggies
We always keep a bag of lemons and limes on hand. We use the acids a lot to make pan sauces, salad dressings, or just to add to a good cocktail or glass or iced tea. We also like to have at least one other fruit for eating, like apples, bananas, pears, whatever we are feeling like at the time.


As for vegetables, we always have lettuce available, generally red leaf because we think it makes the prettiest salads. Beyond that, it really depends on the season. 


Herbs
We use a lot of fresh herbs. In the warmer months, we grow our own herb garden so that we always have fresh herbs to season with. In the winter, we normally have parsley and cilantro. We like to have chive and thyme on hand as well. We add fresh herbs to eggs every morning we have them. We top almost all of our meals with some type of herbage. If you can keep herbs sealed well, they last for quite a while.


Meats
We like to keep the basics on hand: ground beef, chicken, Italian sausage, country sausage, more chicken, and whatever venison we can get our friends to donate to our culinary ventures. If we want to make something special, like a beef roast or lamb, we typically run and grab that close to the meal so we don't have to freeze the meat.


Cheese
We always have Parmesan cheese. We use it constantly. We also keep a block of cheddar and a block of mozzarella to slice or shred when needed. For salads, we like to keep feta or blue cheese in a sealed tub around to, once again, add flavor.


Other Must Haves
Rounding out our list, we must always have eggs and bread - you know, the basics. We also keep a huge amount of spices and different kinds of vinegar to create different flavors.


If you always keep the basics available, you'd be amazed at what you can create. 


Enjoy!

Calling All Recipes!

We actually spend quite a bit of time researching new recipes. Some we choose because they will challenge us in the kitchen. Some are chosen because they are simple and easy to throw together on a week night. Some recipes we choose because they will taste great re-heated. Some we choose because we need to feed a horde or people. We actually enjoy reading cookbooks and scouring the internet for tasty treats. 


We've featured quite a few recipes that were handed down from family and friends. These recipes have been some of the best dishes we've ever put together.


Well, call us greedy, but we want more! Do you have a recipe that you want to share? Something that makes people cry happy tears when they eat it (even if only figuratively)? We promise to give you all the credit for the recipe when we post it.


Feel free to post recipes in the comments section, send us a Facebook message, or if you know our email address, send it there. 


We'll plug through the mass emails as quickly as we can, so please don't be offended if you don't see your recipe right away.

Happy New Year!

Hello friends! We hope you had an amazing 2011. Ours was exciting and definitely busy. It seems like the end of every year just gets crazier and crazier as time goes on. 


We apologize for our spotty posting of late. The holidays caught up to us and we didn't have a chance to sit down and write anything up. We attended a few holiday parties and we have some posts coming up that we think you're really going to enjoy. So, bear with us while we get back into the swing of things.


Wishing you all the best in the coming year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

As you may have guessed, Thanksgiving is one of our favorite holidays. We love getting together with our family, and of course, all of the tasty food.


No recipes today, but we wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and hope you all are also enjoying some great food. We'll have our Thanksgiving creations up for you soon!

Apologies

To our loyal readers -

We apologize for our absence. We are in the process of moving into a new house and our lives have been filled with paint swatches, carpet cleaners and takeout boxes. Half of our kitchen has made the move already, leaving us with limited supplies and ingredients. We will soon have a larger kitchen to test our recipes in.

Thank you for being patient and we'll be back again soon.

(We're also working on a couple blogs for recipes we did ages ago, but need to find time to put it all together!)

The Introduction

Hello and welcome to our blog! We're Zack & Michelle - The Amateur Foodies. 

So, why are we writing this blog when there are so many food blogs out there? 

We love all things culinary, but it's not our full time job. We enjoy challenging ourselves in the kitchen and discovering new and exciting flavors. On any given day, we may channel Eric Ripert, Hubert Keller, Mario Batali, Jacques Pepin, Jamie Oliver, Jonathan Waxman or Alton Brown, to name a few of our favorite chefs. Not that we can actually replicate any of their dishes. We don't exactly try either. We do, however, learn techniques and add them to our bag of tricks.


We hope you enjoy spending time with us! We'll share our insights and we hope you'll share yours too.