Martin Luther King, Jr. Day makes for long weekend I celebrate by… cooking. After finishing up “the holidays” and then going back to work, I can only make it a couple days before I need another breather! Enter the near-immediate 4-day weekend that doesn’t really have any actual traditions for a pasty white, German/Swedish/Irish/Scottish girl… That means I get to create my own theme, or no theme at all. Which is exactly what I did!
Day 1: Slow-Cooker Chicken Curry. Food Network Magazine in December was heavily laden with bookmarks on all the recipes I want to make! This easy, crock pot Weeknight Meal was a fridge clean-out for me. At the beginning of every year I like to use up the bits and bobs left over from other culinary experiments, and this was perfect! I had fresh lemongrass and a hunk of fresh ginger left after one of my son Dean’s recipe attempts, and there is just no substitute for fresh herbs. Ok, that is a blatant lie, I use these handy subs when I DON’T have random fresh herbs and they are a heck of a lot better than skipping the ingredient altogether or even using a dehydrated version:
I got to bash up the lemongrass stalk (good stress reliever!) and chop the ginger, then the recipe was as easy as coconut milk, fresh lime, peanuts, and curry powder with some whole chicken thighs and chunks of red potato. Fast forward eight hours and that chicken FELL apart, and with white sticky rice I had a meal that everyone enjoyed eating. Look at these faces!! Kids with open mouths but NOT talking is the only review I need! https://www.pinterest.com/pin/320811173448603391/
Day 2: 
Eggnog French Toast. This. ROCKED. Another find in December’s FNM, this overnight dish made it possible for me to have breakfast at actual breakfast-time for once. Now, eggnog is not my favorite thing at all (I know, I know, more griping about what I don’t like!) but this one is different, I swear! It’s all about the texture with this item; the flavor is fair game! There was a whole section of different recipes using eggnog, so I ordered a quart from my dairy delivery service, Royal Crest, before they stopped carrying it for the season. There is an Eggnog Waffle a La Mode I have my eye on for this weekend… But I digress! I thought this French toast would be super easy to make for the whole family so we could eat breakfast that didn’t get poured from a box with a cartoon character on it. I was wrong. The recipe called for challah bread. I don’t know why this is some kind of “mystery ingredient” around these parts, but every bakery I walked into looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears when I asked for it. I finally resorted to asking a co-worker who happens to be Jewish if she had a challah recipe so I could bake it myself (it’s just an eggy, braided bread typically served for Sabbath dinners, but it holds up beautifully in liquid). She told me they sell it at Panera Bread on Fridays and Saturdays! So yay, make a note if you want to try this recipe yourself.
The batter was quite heavy, eight eggs and over two cups of half and half and eggnog, so personally I will reduce maybe 1/2-3/4 cups total liquid next time I make this. It came out very wet at the appointed time, so I left it in 10 more minutes after draining the liquid to the edges so it would cook through. Once it was done, powdered sugar and whipped cream finished it off! https://www.pinterest.com/pin/320811173448603395/
Day 3: I can only title this, “The Sauce”. That’s not even what the dish IS, but it was the entire reason I bothered making it. The Sauce is not my recipe. It is not from a cookbook. 
It wasn’t inspired by an episode of one of my cooking shows. It is the brain child of my friend Otto, who is an amazing cook in his own right. He came up with this recipe, which I will NOT share, because seriously dude, you need to be jarring this up and selling it! I did exactly as he told me to do, and darned if it came out not tasting like his at all. 😦 But hey, on a good note, it still came out delicious! I made some spiral pasta and pan-cooked some chunks of salmon, leftover from another recipe my son had made. Add The Sauce, et voila, dinner was served! It’s also delicious on chicken or shrimp. I’m going to be buying stock in this product when you go commercial, O!
Day 4: Colorful Cole Slaw, recipe #99! This was fun. And messy. Like “I’m still picking cabbage out of my hair the next day” messy. I’m a big fan of that high-end joint, Kentucky Fried Chicken. I love an extra-crispy pile of chicken legs and a pint of overly sweet coleslaw eaten right out of the container. You can keep the nasty mashed potatoes that I SWEAR are made from instant flakes… This was a close second.
As you can see from the first couple of passes over the grater, the cabbage was going into the bowl… and everywhere else too! I tried a few adjustments, but in the end I had to just go with it. And clean up a lot later! As per usual, Ree’s recipes make WAY too much for my family, so I reduced this to about 1/3 of the vegetable input, but still made a half-batch of dressing. Dry slaw is yucky! Keep in mind the vegetables will “sweat” some liquid the longer it sits, so she recommends only making it about 8 hours max before you serve it. I would say it was just as good or better the next day, but I did drain off the excess fluid. I also added double the sugar the recipe called for. No surprise there! But for the rest of the workweek that followed the MLK holiday, suffice it to say we had PLENTY of leftovers! https://www.pinterest.com/pin/320811173448603391/
Have Book, Will Cook 