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My mom has been making this recipe for years, and I am not sure why it’s taken me so long to try it on my own. An interesting flavor combination, dill, tomatoes, sambuca, and cream, mixed with shrimp and ladled over whole wheat pasta, this dish is SO easy and seems a little bit fancier than your everyday pasta.

I LOOOOVE this time of year and the availability of beautiful, locally grown produce. Tomatoes and dill provide much of the sauce’s flavors.

A nip of sambuca provides a kick of licorice, a little sweetness, and a bit of spice.

While doing my little foodie photo shoot, I checked out my garden, including this habanero plant. There’s something happenin’ here! Can you see the teeny tiny little peppers starting to form? Last year my habaneros were plentiful and spicy, ripe just around the time that we had great tomatoes. Salsa! Let’s hope this year is just as good!

Once I was back inside, I started the cooking. For this recipe you will need:

2 large tomatoes, seeded and diced

1 pound large shrimp, shelled and cleaned

1/4 cup chopped fresh dill

1/2 cup ouzo or sambuca

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 TSP olive oil

about 4 cups of pasta, I used whole wheat spaghetti

Sautee the tomatoes and dill in the olive oil for just about a minute. Gently lay the shrimp into the pan so that each is fully exposed to the bottom of the pan. Cook until pink on one side, then flip over. Drizzle the ouzo or sambuca over the shrimp, and cook until the shrimp are pink on the other side. Slowly pour cream in, stirring gently to combine the ingredients. Increase the heat a little so that everything is simmering. Once the sauce is hot and the shrimp are cooked through, add the cooked pasta directly to the sauce and stir.

Top with some chopped, uncooked dill for an extra punch of flavor.

I paired this with a delicious white wine that we picked up after tasting it at Foodie’s Urban Market in the South End. The Domaine des Cassagnoles white from the Gascogne region of France had some pretty intense grapefruit flavors. Chilled for a couple of hours, it was incredibly refreshing, and the grapefruit really cut through the creaminess of the sauce. and was sweet enough to work with the slightly acidic tomatoes. At $12 a bottle, this wine is a great deal and truly a perfect summer sipper.

 

Hi FoodNuts readers! I thought you might be interested in yesterday’s lunch with the CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farms!

If there is one thing you get out of my recap of yesterday’s lunch with Stonyfield Farms’ CE-Yo, Gary Hirshberg, it’s that even buying one more organic product makes a difference. You don’t have to do a complete overhaul of your cabinets and spend your entire salary on organic food to make a difference in both your health and in the world.

Lunch with the CE-Yo was held at the new location of EVOO in Kendall Square, Cambridge. I had a wonderful food and wine pairing at EVOO’s former location, so I was excited to visit their new, much more convenient location.

The inside of EVOO is beautiful with an open kitchen and a great private room.

After I arrived and took a few photos, I chatted with a few other bloggers:

Elina and Jennifer, Tina and Ali

And we met the CE-Yo, Gary Hirshberg.

Gary was incredibly interesting, informative, and passionate. His devotion to organic food and family farms are enormous parts of Stonyfield’s success, and Gary works on an “Everybody wins” philosophy.

Stonyfield was founded 27 years ago as a 7 cow organic farming school. Gary and his business partner, Samuel Kaymen, began making yogurt as a way to fund the school.

Gary gave us a brief background on his own local eating history. When we was growing up, all of the family food came from within a few miles of home. There were , at one point, 300 family dairy farmers in Concord, NH. When Stonyfield started there were 400 dairy farmers in the entire state of NH, and now there are only 87 remaining. I find this to be incredibly sad. The food that is grown/produced by small farmers is done with such care and attention, as opposed to food that comes from giant factory farms, and the last thing we need in the US is LESS care placed toward our food.

Gary reminded us that for our great grandparents and many of our grandparents, everything was organic. Pre WWI and WWII, food was not treated with chemicals. Post war, chemical manufacturers discovered new uses for their chemicals, and alas, we started on the path that we are on today, where we suffer from an endemic penetration of chemicals both from food and from our environment.

Gary shared a lot of information, and here are a few of the points I found the most interesting (or disturbing!):

• By the time babies are born, they already have 285-300 toxins in their blood. One third of these are tied to food.
• Organics make up 3.7% of the US food supply.
• Stonyfield’s support of 1750 family farms keeps 180,000 acres chemical free.
• Stonyfield donates 10% of its profits to environmental causes.
• The farmers that Stonyfield buys milk from never experience a price decrease. They are paid well above the rates of non organic farmers.
• Cows on non-organic farms live 4-6 years. Cows on organic farms tend to live for 12-20 years, thus increasing their milk producing years and the profit for the farmer. Cows on organic farms must also have access to pasture which makes them happy
• Through their commitment to organic milk, Stonyfield helps to prevent 425,000 drug treatments for animals and 185,000 lbs of insecticides and herbicides.
• The President’s Council on Cancer recently found that 41% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer and 21% will die from it. One of the most significant things that we can do to prevent cancer is to eat an organic diet.
• The #1 way to bring down the price of organic food and to make it more accessible to all is to increase the volume in which it is produced. To this end, large corporations such as Wal Mart selling organic is a very good thing.
• Per capita, Austrians eat the most organic food. Another reason for me to love Austria!

I could go on and on with the information I learned today, but I really came away with wanting to pay more attention to the food that I eat and to make even more of an effort to buy organic. Gary truly made me FEEL like I can make a difference with my dollars and that blogging is a powerful tool for spreading this message. He also said his prayer for all of us would be that we could blog as our “real jobs”. Yes, please!

Of course, no food blogger lunch is complete without delicious food, and EVOO took good care of us!

I started with the Asparagus Soup with Parmigiano Reggiano, Red Chili Flakes, and EVOO. It was velvety with chunks of fresh asparagus; it totally tasted like spring.

My lunch entree was a Seared Atlantic Golden Tilefish with Organic Potatoes, Fiddlehead Ferns, Wild Ramps, Cilantro, Curried Potato Broth, and Minted Carrot Salad. I don’t think I have tried tilefish before, but I loved how meaty and flavorful this fish was.

For dessert we had Stonyfield Organic Yogurt Tart with Balsamic- Basil Glazed Strawberries. The tart was incredible. It had a creamy, tangy flavor, and you could tell it was made with only the best ingredients.

And received a sample of Caramel Oikos yogurt. . . it was the first time I tried this flavor, it was sweet, creamy, yum! It did not last long once I got it home!

Before we left, EVOO’s chef, Peter McCarthy, came out to meet us. Chef McCarthy talked briefly about EVOO’s efforts to use organic and local ingredients whenever possible. Their menu, as a result, incorporates delicious, seasonal dishes.

I am looking forward to returning to EVOO for a dinner with wine pairings very soon. Their menu is too tempting!

Thank you Stonyfield and 360 for inviting me to such an incredible lunch, and thank you Chef McCarthy and EVOO for hosting us!

Speaking of organic, there are only TWO DAYS to enter my Olivia’s Organics giveaway!

This is a weeknight recipe that is too good NOT to write about. Earlier in the week I bought a huge tub of strawberries at Trader Joe’s, and I wanted to make sure we ate every single one before any mold started to grow! I HATE when produce, and especially expensive produce, goes bad before my eyes! In addition to eating the strawberries on their own and in a few smoothies, I threw together this healthy, bright, and delicious salad one night after work. The most difficult part was remembering to marinate the chicken strips in balsamic about an hour before I cooked them.

The ingredients:

1 bag organic baby spinach

2 cups chopped strawberries

1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar, reduced until syrupy

organic chicken tenders (I cooked 6, 2 for me and 4 for my husband)

While I plated the spinach, strawberries, and goat cheese, I had a small pan full of the balsamic simmering until it reduced down to a sweet and syrupy dressing for the salad. Just keep an eye on it to make sure that it doesn’t reduce too far, or you will have a sticky, burnt pan!

I added a healthy grind of fresh black pepper to this salad as well. There is just something amazing about the combination of black pepper and strawberries. Mmm. . . a black pepper and strawberry sorbet would be a lovely summer treat!

We used our battered and beaten George Foreman grill, which I have had for 8 years, to grill the chicken indoors. It was a delicious topping for the salad with its slightly sweet, balsamic glaze. Once the salad was constructed, I drizzled a little of the reduced balsamic over everything. Reduced balsamic + goat cheese= heaven.

This salad paired well with, you guessed it, Travessia Rosé. You will be seeing a lot of this wine over the summer

The Eating from Home Challenge was pretty easy when it came to dinner, especially because of meals like this one. I did learn a few things from the challenge that I think will help me moving forward:

1) Having a desk filled with ample work snacks is key. I work in a building with several takeout restaurants and cafes, and when hunger strikes it is too easy to go buy something. During the challenge I did not allow myself to buy anything, and I ended up pretty hungry most afternoons!

2) Buying treats throughout the week, like an iced latte or a scone, is okay as long as it is within reason. On most normal weeks (not the post-marathon week!) I buy one latte a week and usually also buy lunch once a week. These little splurges help to break up the monotony of the work week and give me a little something to look forward to!

3) This challenge, and especially not being able to go out and buy what I wanted because I was restricting myself, reminded me how lucky I am and that many people really have to spend the afternoon or evening or all day hungry.

I am not huge on doing all sorts of challenges, but I think once in awhile it definitely is nice to check in with yourself to see where you can be doing better!

This week, I will be working on a few recipes to pair with some wines that I was sent last week. I am really excited about this and can’t wait to get shopping! Also up this week, a wine dinner at Ten Tables and a Bordeaux wine tasting.

I am also hosting a giveaway of a case of Honest Tea which ends tomorrow, so stop by http://traveleatlove.com if you are interested in winning!

What are your meal plans for the week? Anything new on the menu?

I was told that only two good things ever came out of St Louis. One was this cake. I assume the other one is supposed to be my Father-In-Law, but I think they’re forgetting about Ted Drewes. I know he would agree.

But I digress. On to the cake!

Ingredients:

- One Box Yellow Cake Mix (18oz) (Do not use a mix that has pudding in the mix.)
- 1 Stick of Butter (Softened at room temperature) (Yes, you really need to use butter!)
- 4 Eggs
- 8 oz Cream Cheese (Softened at room temperature)
- 1 Box Powdered Sugar (1lb)

Bottom Layer

- One Box Yellow Cake Mix (18oz)
- 1 Stick of Butter
- 2 Eggs

Mix ingredients for bottom layer and pat into a well-greased and floured 9×13 inch pan. I like using the disposable ones.

Top  Layer

- 2 Eggs
- 8 oz Cream Cheese
- 1 Box Powdered Sugar (1lb)

Mix ingredients for top layer and spread evenly over the bottom layer.

Action shot!

Sprinkle with additional powdered sugar, if desired. (You do.)

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes at 350 degrees.  Cake is done when edges are dark brown and the top is golden brown. Center may be a little Gooey. Personal preference here. For more done, cook 5 more minutes.

Note: Gooey Butter Cake is a good coffee cake that freezes well and will stay fresh for several days. It will never last that long.

Pickled Eggs have always been a special snack treat in our house.  I can’t remember the first time I ate one, but I am sure I was probably a toddler.  I remember seeing them on the counter at Phillippes in downtown Los Angeles.  My grandfather and my father would always order several, cut in half.  I can’t say whether this recipe is Phillippes recipe or not, but I am sure it was my family’s attempt at recreating it.  Enjoy them with a little salt and a cold one!

2 doz hard boiled eggs, peeled

1/2 box of pickling spices

1 pint Pickled Beets. (DelMonte in a jar preferred; I used Auntie Nellies here in the south.)

1 pint Heinz white vinegar

2 Tbs sugar

Fill a 3 quart pot with the above ingredients (not the eggs) and bring to a boil.

Put eggs in a large glass crock or jar.  Pour the boiling liquid over the eggs.

Let pickle at least 12 hours before sampling.  24 hours preferred.

Here are the eggs right after I added the Pickling liquid.

Sample egg after 12 hours in the “sauce”.  Still has a way to go, but tasted great!