As I mentioned in my last post on Friday, my friend, Ronnie, sent me the challenge to come up with a recipe with what she had in her pantry and refrigerator. You’ll find that recipe and the photos that Ronnie took of the process and of the finished dish below. If you would like to participate and send me a challenge of your own, please do! Just send an email to [email protected] with a list of what you have on hand and I will come up with a plan for using those items to make a dish/meal. Then you make the dish/meal and send me photos of the process and the finished dish to share here. Please type Pantry/Refrigerator Challenge in the subject line of your email.

On March 31, I received this text from Ronnie:

“OK, Let’s challenge LHop. What can I make with frozen Brussels sprouts, barley, vege broth??? Oh, I do have some frozen ground beef and shrimp. Maybe ‘Challenge LHop’ can be a new addition for your website.”

My response:

“Let’s see, the only thing I can really think of with that combination would be to cook the barley in the vegetable stock.

If the Brussels sprouts are still frozen when you read this, you could process them through the food processor with a slicing blade before they thaw completely so they aren’t soft and mushy.

Then lay the slices out on paper towels to thaw and drain. Use more paper towels to firmly pat out any excess water once they’re completely thawed and then pan fry them in a little olive oil to crisp them up.

As you remove them from the skillet, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Then sauté the onion and a couple of cloves of garlic in the same pan.

Return the Brussels sprouts and the barley to the skillet and if you have any cheese, such as Parmesan or asiago- add the grated cheese and maybe some nuts to it at the very end. Almonds, pine nuts, walnuts,  pecans whatever you have on hand. 

You could serve that as a warm salad with some shrimp that you throw on the barbie.

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.

It’s official – I can no longer say, “I’m back,” as a heading to a post. I’ve used that a few times after a planned extended break from blogging. I said, “I’m back!” as recently as last spring. I meant it at the time. I wholeheartedly planned on getting back to blogging on a regular basis, but then life, in the form of a new business, got in the way.

It’s been more than a month since my last post. As soon as summer remotely felt as if it was over, Harmony Boards took off like a speeding bullet and I’ve been non-stop, often working 12-hour days, ever since. I am not complaining! I love it, but it makes finding the time or wrapping my head around doing anything else, very difficult.

That changed with a comment I received from a loyal blog follower, former Les Gourmettes student, repeat blog contest winner, and friend, Shirley G.

Shirley { 10.20.19 at 8:33 AM }

Hey Linda,
I haven’t seen a blog post from you in a while…is everything alright? Did I accidentally remove myself from your list??? You know I am not the most tech-savvy person around…lol.
Thanks and I miss your posts!
xo,
Shirley

Thank you, Shirley, for the love, for missing me, and for giving me the wake-up call I needed! Here’s a recipe with a tablescape that I’ve been wanting to post. It is from a dinner party I co-hosted on Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day. My co-host, Angela, is 100% Italian. So this 100% Irish girl and Angela taught a lovely group of women to make Gnocchi and I made up a big pot of Cacio e Pepe Pasta (literally cheese and pepper) and an even bigger bowl of Panzanella Salad and of course, an antipasto Harmony Board. We sat outside and it was a glorious night celebrating Italian food and the end of a long hot summer.

Many thanks to all of you who played along with the 10th Blogiverary Contest!

Congratulations to our five winners. If you recall, to win you needed to follow Harmony Boards on Instagram and get two of your friends to also follow. So it seems appropriate to share the winners with you by showing their Instagram home page header.

My fabulous vacation to the Howard’s Deer Lake in Canada is coming to a close. On one hand, I hate to be leaving so soon, but on the other, I can’t wait to get home to my kitties. That sounds like crazy-cat lady talk, I know, but I hate leaving them home alone for so long.

How about I share images from my trip in today’s post?

You’d like that! Yay, here we go.

Seriously, this is the only photo I really need to post. So GORGEOUS! Kim woke up early last Friday morning and caught the full moon over Deer Lake. Absolutely Stunning!

We visited a variety of markets during my visit, here are my favorite images.

On another day we drove into Montreal and visited the Marché Jean-Talon.

After one afternoon of being out for the morning, we came home to find that two birds had flown into the sliding glass doors along the back of the house.

In 1993, Barbara Pool Fenzl began writing her first cookbook, Southwest The Beautiful Cookbook. It was published in 1994. In the space between, I was her recipe tester. Barb would develop the recipes and then give me a stack of recipes for me to test, make suggestions, corrections, and such.  My family vividly remembers it because the batches of recipes came not as a menu, but in groups of the same type of dishes. So one week I’d be making 6 or 7 salads, the next week it would be 5 or 6 desserts, and so on. Honestly, we loved it.

Barb also gave me the opportunity to develop and contribute a recipe of my own to the cookbook. I decided on Tortilla Soup. The only prerequisite was that the soup should include a sauce Barb had developed for the sauce section of the book.  So this recipe uses Barb’s Red Chili Sauce. If you would rather just buy red chili sauce or red enchilada sauce, please take that shortcut. But by all means, make the soup, it is a family favorite.

The recipe also calls for four cooked chicken breast halves. You can substitute shredded rotisserie chicken if you’d like. Use 5 to 6 cups of shredded rotisserie.

Lastly, there aren’t as many in-process photos as I usually post with a recipe. That is because I made this for my final series at Les Gourmettes Cooking School, so I was only able to take photos of the pre-prep I did at home before loading it all up and taking it to the class.

Tortilla Soup

Soup

• 2 tablespoons corn oil
• 3 corn tortillas, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
• 1 jalapeño chili, cored, seeded, and minced
• 2 Anaheim chilies, roasted, peeled, cored, seeded, and finely chopped
• 8 plum tomatoes, seeded and diced *see photo below
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 5 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup red chili sauce (recipe below) or use store-bought red enchilada sauce
• 2 whole cooked chicken breasts, shredded
• 1 ripe avocado, pitted, peeled, and diced

Garnish

• 4 corn tortillas
• Pam
• Salt and chili powder
• 1/2 cup grated Monterey jack cheese
• 1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Soup: Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large pot. Add the tortilla pieces, reduce heat and cook until they are golden and brown, and slightly crisp.  Add the onion and cook for 3 minutes, then add the garlic and jalapeño and cook another 2 minutes.

Add the Anaheim, tomatoes, and tomato paste; cook for 10 minutes. Stir in the cumin and cayenne; slowly whisk in the chicken broth and the red chili sauce and simmer the soup for about 20 minutes, or until slightly reduced. Add the shredded chicken and avocado and heat until warmed through.

Garnish: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Stack and cut the tortillas into julienne strips. Spray a baking sheet with Pam, place the tortilla strips on a baking sheet and spray them with more Pam. Cook in preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes, or until brown and crisp.

Remove from the oven a spray with Pam one last time and then sprinkle generously with salt and chili powder.

To serve, ladle soup into bowls and garnish with the grated cheese, cilantro, and baked tortilla strips.

Serves 6

When I originally made this dessert for Anne’s birthday, I was winging it, I hadn’t tested the recipe beforehand. It needed a little tweaking. I used too much brown sugar and too much brandy that first go-around which made it runny and way too strong in the alcohol flavor. It doesn’t spend that much time under the broiler to burn off all the brandy I originally had in there.  I made it again and got it just right. The photos were taken when I remade it as a single serving for my do-over, but the ingredient portions in this recipe serve four.  

Halibut Asian Style

• 2 pounds halibut fillets, cut into chunks
• 3 tablespoons sesame seeds
• Olive oil
• Sesame oil
• 3 large garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
• 2-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 lemon
• 5 sprigs of fresh coriander, leaves pulled off
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced on the diagonal
• 1 fresh red chile, thinly sliced on the diagonal

Place the sesame seeds onto a flat dish, then add the halibut chunks, turning them over in the seeds to nicely coat.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and 1 tablespoon sesame oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add about 3/4 of the sliced garlic to the pan and fry for 1 minute, or until golden and crisp, remove from heat and use a slotted spoon to quickly transfer to a plate, leaving the oil in the skillet.

Return the pan to the heat, then add the sesame-coated halibut to the garlic oil. Sear on one side for 1 to 2 minutes. Using a spatula, turn over and cook on other side for another 2 minutes. Transfer to a plate.

Place the grated ginger in a small bowl with the soy sauce, 1 teaspoon sesame oil and the remaining sliced garlic. Add the zest of the lemon and 2 tablespoons lemon juice, then mix well to combine. Taste and add more lemon juice, if needed.

On Monday morning, while I was sitting in a waiting room as the oil in my car was getting changed, I received this text from my daughter, Marissa.

I quickly searched Notre Dame on Google and immediately saw images of the fire. As were millions of others around the world, I was devastated.

I got up and turned on the TV to NBC. Tears did stream from my eyes while I listened to Lester Holt describe the scene playing out in from of me.

Once the car was done, I came home and watched for hours more. When the announcement was made that the next 90 minutes would be crucial as to whether the two front towers would continue to stand, I could take no more. I went to Target to get a vaccination for shingles that my doctor had ordered. Then to Home Goods to wander aimlessly, finding nothing that brought me even an ounce of joy, leaving empty-handed. That tells you how devastated and depressed I was feeling.

The 90 minutes was almost up, so I headed home and was beyond relieved to hear that the towers were expected to stand. I watched a bit longer and once again could not bare watching that inferno blasting out of Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris. (Notre Dame de Paris translates to Our Lady of Paris.)

It is the Mother Church of France and it truly felt like our mother was being injured and possibly dying. I turned it off and instead, started searching my computer and albums for happy photos of all the times I’ve been to the Cathedral over the years.

If you’ve been there even once, you know those feelings. The feelings and knowledge that the beloved church that has stood for over 850 years and holds such majesty and humility is being so violently threatened. Of course, Notre Dame holds great meaning to Catholics like me, and to all Christians around the world, but it also houses art, poetry, literature, and priceless antiquities of mankind. It is a true icon of civilization. An icon of what is best in our humanity.

Notre Dame has survived the Crusades, the French Revolution, two world wars and so much more. It is the most visited structure in the most visited city in the entire world. Thirteen million visitors a year, approximately 30 thousand a day! It is a gothic masterpiece.

In 1909 Joan de Arc was beatified in Cathedral Notre Dame by Pope Pius X. You feel all of that whether you are in its shadow or inside its sacred walls.

There is so much to be in awe of. From the flying buttresses, the gorgeous rose windows and the wonderful gargoyles. My family loves the gargoyles!

(I’m taking a break here to let you know that all of the above was written on Monday afternoon and evening. Knowing I would not post this until Wednesday, I tried to write in the past tense.  Everything below was written on Tuesday afternoon, after seeing and learning what had survived the fire.)