Author: leora76

No Shopping Month has begun.  48 hours in, and I have successfully managed to keep up with my goal of NOT going to the grocery store!  Baby steps, people…

Like any good addict, I had grand plans of going to the store on January 31st and stocking up on fresh produce and anything I thought I couldn’t live without.  One last hurrah before rehab, right?  But that didn’t happen, so I had to just jump right in.  Luckily, I spent the last week of January prepping for this challenge, and did a big ‘ol pile of make-ahead cooking.  My son impressed me greatly by voluntarily cleaning out the pantry, checking the dates on everything and pitching anything truly embarrassing…  like a couple cans of clams which expired in 2013…

Right off the bat, we found a stash of Tastefully Simple boxed foods I’d forgotten about, so I threw together a batch of Peanut Butter Quinoa Bars with Cranberries.  These are awesome grab-and-go breakfasts, and good in the lunch box.  Next up: Strawberry Cherry Lemon/Limeade, courtesy of watching yet another episode of Pioneer Woman.  Even though I have four of her cookbooks, watching her show gives me a constant stream of new ideas and I really should stop watching in February…  However, this was perfect for wading through a bunch of fruit that was getting a little old, and the end of a jar of maraschino cherries.  I mean honestly, how else was I going to use that up??

My boy did the assist on this one too.  (I wonder what he wants??)  He pureed the fresh strawberries, squeezed all the lemons and limes, and then we dumped in the cherries with their juice, along with water and a ton of sugar.  Really, REALLY good.  In a brainwave this morning, I also tossed in the remaining strawberry/peach puree from Bella’s imposter cake a couple weeks ago.  I had already eaten that on top of muffins and ice cream, but the stuff was lasting forever.

Recipe #107, Chicken Soup, is in the works for tomorrow, but I started it last Sunday.  Does anyone else’s kid light up like a sparkler when you pull parsnips out of the fridge??  Maybe it’s just mine…  Bella loves the things!  As make-ahead meals go, this soup really was a good choice.  While I was making the Veggie Chili, I kept going with my chopping and filled the cast iron stockpot with carrots, celery, onion, parsnips, and broth, and that stayed perfectly good in the garage fridge all week.  When I pulled it out today, I added the chicken and simmered it for a couple hours.  It really is a shame there is no such thing as a “smell-o-vision” app, because my house smelled amazing while this was on the stove!  In an inadvertent FURTHER make-ahead step, I finally got to the part in the directions where it said to let the soup chill overnight, presumably so I can skim the fat off tomorrow.  I also had to remove the chicken to shred it and remove bones, so that had to cool so I could work with it.  Sigh… Good thing I wasn’t counting on this for dinner tonight!  One fun thing I got to do while making this soup is whip out the old mortar and pestle.  I just don’t get to use a pestle as often as I’d like…  After my ancient ground thyme and ground oregano were eliminated in The Purge, I did not replace them except with whole dried herbs.  Why buy it twice when I get to pretend to be a witch and smash up my own spices??  Double, double, toil and trouble…  Fire burn and cauldron bubble!

Yep.  Harry Potter quote.  Or Macbeth, if you want to go waaaaay back!  And uh oh…  I just watched another episode and I think tomorrow is going to bring Salted Caramel Cheesecake Squares to the party!  I better turn off the television now…

I am a carnivore.  I am indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of chickens and at least 14 entire cows, a lake full of fish, a small herd of pigs, and the occasional duck.  I’ve even taken out the odd plate of gator, a handful of sheep, a crockpot full of wild boar, and more than a few moose and deer.  I have hunks of elk in my freezer right now.  I say this not to mortify any vegans who may be reading this, but to emphasize how unenthusiastically I approach vegetarian meals.  I can look at a key lime pie and be slightly annoyed that it’s a meatless dish…  Nonetheless, I am committed to finishing Dinnertime, and Ree Drummond must be a closet vegan disguised in cattle-rancher clothing.  For all the many tasty beef and chicken dishes in this book, she still snuck in a quite a few horrors like Tofu Lettuce Wraps.  Yeah, I have that to look forward to…  Thank goodness, recipe #106, Veggie Chili, equaled more than the sum of its parts!

I love chili.  Chili CON CARNE.  Imagine my disappointment when I read the recipe ingredients (almost a whole page long by the way!) and it stayed vegetarian to the end… I was hoping she’d come to her senses halfway through and throw in some meat!  Sigh.  But hey, it started out with some really promising vegetables: lots of onions of course, a ton of garlic, celery, zucchini, and carrots.  She had this crazy idea about using WHOLE red, green, and yellow peppers, but that is sheer madness, and I subbed in about four of those mini-sweet peppers instead.  I’ll give a nod toward pepper usage, but I’m not going whole-hog.  Or “whole-hummus”, since this is vegetarian…  Other than the extensive amount of chopping required, this is a super simple recipe.  All the veg goes in a stockpot, and they sweat out for about seven minutes.  Next, a truly delicious spice blend gets dumped on top, and really this is what HAS to be right when you are making chili.  If the seasoning is good, it doesn’t matter if it’s white, chicken, green, or even vegan chili; it will transform into the comfort food everyone knows and loves!  This mix was Kosher salt, chili powder, cumin and oregano.  And you know what?  I didn’t add a grain of salt more than she suggested.  It was perfect.

The rest of the “cooking” was mostly limited to opening cans.  Black, pinto and kidney beans went in, plus a can of chickpeas (or look for garbanzo beans, same thing, if your store seems not to carry them.)  Then a can of tomato sauce and one of diced tomatoes (I used the garlic and basil variety).  Now here’s where I kind of went off the rails.  I was supposed to pour three cups of veggie broth over all this, but guess what I don’t normally have in my pantry?  And so my vegan meal was “contaminated” by chicken broth!  Thank God.  The final touch was the thickening element.  It smelled amazing, it looked appetizing, but I think another hallmark of a good chili is the sauce, and it was still somewhat thin.  Ree’s method is to use a masa slurry, and I am stealing this idea for future use!  Masa is just corn flour, and a slurry is just water and a thickening agent whisked together.  1/4 cup of masa in a 1/2 of water produced a thickener that actually possessed a flavor that worked in the dish, instead of the flavorlessness of corn starch and the “flouriness” of regular all-purpose flour.  So now it was perfect.  Almost…  I just had to add one last ingredient…

January is almost over.  I am happy to report that I am one twelfth into my resolution(s), and going strong on most of them!  At least, going strong on the ones that revolve around food. We won’t talk about my exercise plan resolutions…

At any rate, I have made marked progress toward my goal of knocking out the last 37 recipes in Ree Drummond’s Dinnertime during the week!  First up, #101: Grilled Chicken and Strawberry Salad Wraps.  This utilized some pre-cooked chicken breasts from the earlier Freezer Meals chapter, fresh spinach and strawberries, and I even got to FINALLY make my own vinaigrette from some of the Pampered Chef oils and vinegars that survived The Purge of the spice shelf at the beginning of the year.

The recipe called for a bottled vinaigrette, but I wanted to take the opportunity to build my own unique flavor as well as use something I hadn’t opened yet.  I combined two parts Orange Infused Canola Oil to one part Cherry Balsamic Vinegar, then shook it up until it emulsified, giving me a sweet, fruity mixture that blended really well with the berries and greens.  The final touch was goat cheese, which I normally buy in a “log”, but it’s a pain to crumble up.  This time I found it pre-crumbled, so much easier and cleaner to work with!  The end result was a satisfying lunch wrap that could also be served sans tortilla as just a big salad.  This recipe really didn’t take up too much time, so I was able to whip together a dessert before work that would chill and set throughout the day.  Recipe #102, Vanilla Pudding!  Super exciting, right?  Well, here’s the cool part.  It took exactly four minutes longer to make fresh pudding from scratch out of ingredients I always have on hand, as opposed to making it from the Jell-O box.  And I can pronounce everything I put in it!  I have already made her same basic recipe two other times, opting for the chocolate and the butterscotch versions, but kept passing up the “boring” vanilla flavor.

While it may not be the most creative flavor, this was a huge hit with the whole family, both as single servings in individual cups, and also as a layer in fruit parfaits.

Next up; yet another chicken recipe.  It’s the most commonly eaten protein in the U.S., and this cookbook reflects it!  To the tune of 25 chicken dinner variations.  Good thing I love yard-bird!  Also, I know I gave it some smack-talk during my “Big 100” post, but I figured it was time to knock out Lemony Green Beans to go along with it.

Recipe #103 was Chicken Milanese, and I jumped on this one because it cleared out a TON of stuff in the cabinets in one meal.  By the time it was plated, I had used up the rest of a can of bread crumbs, an open bag of pretzel chips, the dregs of a gallon of whole milk, some potatoes growing eyes, a bag of chicken I portioned out from a 5-lb container, several lemons, and frozen cauliflower.  Now, I know you are looking at the picture and probably wondering where some of that is hiding…  This is why I love cooking!  You can be creative with whatever you have and most of the time, it’s still going to work out.  I didn’t have enough bread crumbs to coat the Chicken Milanese (basically a flattened chicken breast, dredged in flour and egg wash, then crumb coated and pan fried, topped with greens and Parmesan shavings), so I grabbed the bag of “Everything” Pretzel Chips that the kids weren’t putting in their school lunches.  Out came the old meat tenderizer, and I pounded the pretzels into a fine dust, adding both the additional coating material I needed but also flavoring in its own right.  The Lemony Green Beans, #104, were beyond simple: butter, lemon juice, green beans.  Do the math, you’re probably right!  The only thing missing was a starch, and I love that mashed potatoes can be made from all but the most decrepit of spuds.  You can also easily hide vegetables in there to lighten them up or stretch the portion.  Enter the last half-bag of frozen cauliflower rice, and no one could even tell they were in there.  YUM.

Last but not least, Chinese take-out, except I didn’t have to “take out”.  Recipe #105 was Broccoli and Snow Peas.  It’s an entree I have literally never ordered in my life.  I’m more of a chicken fan when it comes to Chinese food, but this was not bad at all.

This was made this in under 30 minutes, including the time it took to marinate the flank steak.  I was supposed to use jasmine rice, but since I don’t have it, I fancied it up a bit by steaming it with beef broth as well as water, and threw in some diced carrots.  I tried to get out of putting snow peas in here and subbing in frozen peas, but darned if I didn’t find a pack of snow peas right there in the produce aisle.  Stir-fry vegetables = yuck… But that’s my personal bias, and they were still okay.  As soon as she teaches me to make crispy pork egg rolls and an amazing teriyaki chicken, I may never over Chinese take-out again!

 

No, of course I didn’t make this up!  This is an actual thing.  I’m not like normal people who can pick up a magazine (or subscribe to one) and just flip through it at random.  When it comes to my Food Network Magazine, I read it all.  Every.  Single.  Page.  In order, even!  During my intensive study of the January/February issue (I always feel so cheated on those “double issue” months, by the way) I came across an article debating the essential differences between cupcakes and muffins.  Spoiler alert: it’s not JUST about the frosting!  The best part of this fascinating topic was the 12-month calendar of beautiful, delicious, and unique Muffins of the Month.  You’re not going to find “bran” or “banana nut” on this list.  Take January’s entry: Orange Pomegranate Muffins with Citrus Glaze.  Yep; muffin… but with glaze.  I guess you’d have to read the article to understand…

Right off the bat, I’m glad I was making this recipe in January, before my grocery shopping ban goes into effect.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t have an on-hand supply of clementines and pomegranate seeds hanging out in my fridge.  Luckily, it turns out clementines are just “Cuties”, so my kids will be packing these in their lunches for a couple weeks.  Also turns out you can buy single-servings of pomegranate seeds in a handy snack-pack, so you don’t have to go through the agony of procuring them from an actual fruit.

This was a simple enough recipe to throw together, it just took a little bit of forethought.  It called for milk… but at room temperature.  Butter, melted… but cooled.  The weird part was about the oranges.  “Cut into eight pieces; put in blender (peel and all) with the milk.”  Wait.  What?!  That did NOT sound right.  In fact I was really put off by it.  I have used citrus zest many times, but never the entire peel!  I was pleasantly surprised that tossing the wedges into my Bullet blender resulted in something that closely resembled an Orange Julius from back in the day in a matter of seconds.  Who knew?  Next I combined the wet ingredients with the dry, producing a slightly lumpy batter that was going to make 18 muffins, in theory.  I was further impressed by the fact that this quantity of batter actually made 22, and I could have easily stretched it to an even two dozen.  More bang for the buck is always better!  I’m going to try freezing the excess and see if they maintain flavor and texture.

The pomegranate seeds were dropped on top of the batter, and then into the oven.  If I was competing on Cupcake Wars, I would have been raked over the coals for my treats being overbaked (I only used the time range suggested, though I went with the high end), but I like them a little on the brown side.  So there!  Better than soggy, I always say.  The citrus glaze was a real treat on this, as the “muffin” by definition (read the article!) was closer to a cornbread than a cake.  It was just drizzled on to give a little hint of sweetness, but none of the heavy frosting that would have pushed it over into cupcake-land.  These will be great as breakfasts on the go, snacks after school, or added to lunchboxes.  Next month: Double-Chocolate Salted Caramel Muffins!  I may “accidentally” double that recipe too…

I am already starting to panic.  That feeling of desperation is closing in.  I don’t know if I can be strong, but I’m going to give it the old college try.  Again…  Why do I do this to myself?

What is the mission that has me so frazzled?  It’s a rough one.  My second annual “No Groceries Month”.  Let that sink in…  NO.  GROCERIES.  For four whole weeks.  I know! It’s insanity.  The purpose of this exercise is pretty straightforward: I habitually over-buy if I’m in a grocery store.  I easily have enough food in this house to survive three zombie apocalypses, a typhoon, and 10 Super Bowl parties.  But I just KEEP BUYING MORE!  My cookbook projects and my impulsive nature set me up for failure when it comes to keeping a simplified, reasonable-sized pantry.  And freezer.  And refrigerator…  Ok, two refrigerators and three freezers, if you want to get all technical!  Yes, that’s a “spare” 20 pound turkey and two cases of Pepsi.

Last year I set a goal to see just how long I could go without hitting up the supermarket for anything other than perishables.  Because seriously, it’s tough to justify an average of five trips a week to Safeway, Sprouts, King Soopers, and the occasional specialty store! It was good for the pocketbook, but tough on the soul.  To give some perspective, my grocery bill for January is already at $350.  So far…  I reconciled myself to the experiment by a) knowing I certainly would not starve myself or the kids, and b) flexing my creativity muscles trying to find uses for all the stuff I had stored up.

 

I am not completely going off the food grid for February, but there are a few self-imposed rules to abide by.  I am forbidden to see something I simply MUST make immediately and run out to purchase canned clams, arugula, or goji berry juice.  No impulsive recipes!  Give me strength Lord…  I have to survive off eating the food I have already, seeing as I have pounds and pounds of frozen meats, poultry and seafood, some frozen fruits and vegetables, and enough dry pasta to stock an Italian restaurant.  And don’t even get me started on the freezer meals I have put aside from the past year’s Ree recipes.  She had a whole chapter!  And I made them all.  I have Lasagna Roll-Ups.  Baked Ziti.  Minestrone.  Chili Con Carne.  Pre-roasted chicken breasts that I can utilize a dozen different ways.  I even have a couple cans of Spaghetti-O’s with Meatballs and boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese just in case I get tired of “real food”!

 

I also have some security blankets in place to make sure I can make it the whole four weeks:

1.  Royal Crest Dairy Delivery.  They come every week and bring me milk, cream, eggs, cheese, and bread if (when) I need it.  They even have cookie dough and bottled water, though I have never willingly paid money for water, and I think buying cookie dough would somewhat defeat the purpose of trying to use up my current supplies.  I can just bake my own cookies!
2. Schwan’s Home Delivery.  Now before you go and call me a great big cheater, I cannot order pre-made meals or sides!  Trust me, I already have plenty sitting in my freezer…  However, I may break down and order salmon fillets or the like.  I’m not planning to use this option, but knowing it’s available keeps my hyperventilation in check…
3. Butcher Box.  I recently placed my very first order with this home delivery service for quality proteins, set to deliver the first week of the month, and I look forward to telling you all how it goes!  It will be a last resort to actually cook with these steaks and other beef products in February though.  I intend to use the oldest and most forgotten groceries that have been overlooked for so long.  Once the clean-out has occurred, I can celebrate with my organic, grass-fed, yoga-practicing, essential-oil-wearing, spa-going beef cuts!
4. Lunch hour.  Yeah, exactly what it sounds like!  If I get a craving that just won’t quit, I’m allowing myself to indulge it as a single serving, versus coming home and making the tempting recipe in a batch guaranteed to require Tupperware later!

So that’s my plan…  I’m stocking up and trying to knock out recipes that call for weird ingredients before January runs out.  My goal of completing the Dinnertime cookbook may not make much progress in February, but I guarantee we will not be losing weight in this house.  Stay tuned for that March 1st post, because I’m probably going to make something over the top!  Wish me luck…  I’m going to need it!

 

 

Finally!  Cooking Club is back on track!  If you are a foodie, you take any excuse to cook, eat, and be fed, and this is something I look forward to every time we do it.  My little Cooking Club is full of like-minded souls (no professional cooks, just good old-fashioned food lovers!) but recently had major scheduling difficulties.  In 2018 we recommitted to our monthly themed get-togethers, and we kicked it off with a Mexican Fiesta!  During any given club gathering, the host chooses the theme (regional food, a certain chef, international cuisine, etc.), and the rest of us just show up with whatever dishes we want to try out.  In fact, it was one such meeting that introduced me to Ree Drummond’s cooking, who I had never even considered as a chef-mentor.  And now here we are, just like peas and carrots…  Yes, that was a cooking joke.  And coincidentally, it was also recipe #75!

For my Mexican Fiesta contribution, I literally had no idea what to make.  There aren’t many more “South of the Border” recipes in Dinnertime except for Black Bean Soup and Burrito Bowls, and we already had a taco bar planned.  I also had a pork loin living on borrowed time in the fridge.  By sheer serendipity, I found the PERFECT solution while I was digging out a cooking vessel that doesn’t get all the love and attention it richly deserves: the Rockcrok from Pampered Chef!  This thing transitions from the stovetop to the microwave to the oven, broiler or grill without missing a beat, can be used in the freezer, is nonstick and dishwasher safe, AND can be used as a slow cooker when you use their heater unit.  It even comes with a lid!  But the real selling point for me is the handy collection of recipes it came with, such as this little gem: Mexican Pork Stew with Salsa Verde!  It was meant to be…  It was exactly what a Cooking Club recipe should be: something I’d never made or eaten before, using ingredients I’m unfamiliar with, and feeds an army!  Check, check, and check.  As are all Pampered Chef recipes, this was easy-peasy.  The only things I had to grab from the store was a jalapeno (which I conveniently can grow like a champ in the summer) and tomatillos, something I have been very interested to try.  I’ve seen these things on Food Network shows for years, but only knew they were supposed to be sour or tart.  When I taste-tested a bite, the flavor reminded me of something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  I thought it was kind of like a cross between unripe honeydew and a green strawberry.  Since I have zero experience with this vegetable, I had to Google it.  I could figure out that I had to remove the papery outer husk without much guidance, but I was unprepared for what lay beneath!  No one warned me about the sticky sludge.

Once I pulled the skins off, I realized my hands were partially glued to the little green beasts.  It didn’t come right off in water either!  I learned that this sticky substance is a natural secretion the tomatillo produces in order to prevent insect infestation.  It’s already a member of the nightshade family, and the outside skin is another layer of defense, but if a little bugger gets past all that, this residue is sufficiently disgusting to repel them.  Sounds like dinner, right??  Once I got the gunk off in hot water with a decent amount of friction, they were ready to dice.  Next up was chopping some onions, garlic, and the jalapeno to sweat out in shimmering vegetable oil.

I recently picked up a handy little trick from one of the culinary mysteries I read for my book club, where we only read books featuring recipes (future blog topic!), and this one really works!  I had already used half of this particular onion in another recipe, so I knew it was a real corker.  I mean tears just streaming down the face while dicing.  In State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy, a mystery series about the Executive Chef at the White House, the heroine mentions slicing raw onions next the open flame of a gas stove to prevent crying.  Worth a try, right?  Well let me tell you, this is totally the real deal!  Try this immediately.  Maybe even go and chop an onion you don’t need just to prove it to yourself!  The rest of this recipe came together in a matter of minutes.  I had my son brown the pork loin chunks in batches in the Rockcrok 4-quart casserole while I chopped veggies, and then everything cooked on the stovetop first.  Once chicken stock was added, I threw the whole pot straight in the microwave for 12 minutes.  It was finished it off with fresh cilantro from my Aerogarden (another future topic we’ll explore here), avocado, and sour cream.  It.  Was.  Delicious.  Nothing fancy in here, just humble ingredients and simple cooking techniques.  Add the great company of family and friends of Cooking Club, and you have all the makings of an incredible meal!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/tortellini-primavera-2744155.html

DRUMROLL PLEASE!!  This is a major milestone for me, as I have reached the century mark in my Ree Drummond Project!  There are only 37 recipes to go, which means I am going like greased lightning through this book.  I’m nearly finished with Dinnertime in a mere 55 weeks (so far).  By comparison, it took me over five years to complete Good Eats: The Early Years, and there was a total of 160-ish recipes in that.  With that, allow me to introduce the winner of the honors, Tortellini Primavera, aka Recipe #100!

This was a big decision…  I mean, “100”!  That’s kind of a big deal.  Would it be Roasted Butternut Squash Salad?  Meh.  Lemony Green Beans?  Booooooring.  Probably really tasty, but certainly not “Big 100” status!  (No offense, Ree!!)  So here’s the deal; I had actually planned on the humble Chicken Soup as my 100th recipe.  I had all the ingredients.  I love chicken soup.  I’m terrible at making it on my own (yeah, I KNOW it’s supposed to be simple and “everyone” has a recipe, but I just haven’t mastered making a version that I think is better than the soup at The Perfect Cup restaurant in Anchorage, Alaska!)  That is some quality stuff…  Anyway!  The soup was marked in my book and I was ready to go, but then my son decided to surprise me with dinner, and made up his own recipe utilizing a random single, vacuum-packed tilapia fillet that had been languishing in my freezer for years.  Legit, YEARS.  I don’t even know why I still had it.  His creation was a surprisingly tasty fish and ditalini-fagiolo soup, (that’s pasta and beans in case you don’t speak Italian!) but he made about a gallon.  So soup as my next recipe was out!

My runner-up became the headliner!  Basically, I had all the stuff already and I got to use up more junk from the freezer.  Hey, all the recipes have to get cooked anyway, right?  Plus, just look at all the STUFF this one uses!  (Note my delicious Nutty Irishman cocktail, essential for celebrating my 100th cook!)  I was able to polish off the dregs of a quart of heavy cream, a partially used bag of frozen peas, an open container of Parmesan shavings, a whole dying basil plant, a ham steak, and most important, a package of frozen shrimp and lobster ravioli I’ve had forever.  Ok, maybe not as long as the tilapia fillet…  “Ravioli?!” you say.  But this was supposed to be a tortellini recipe!  So sue me, I went high-end on the pasta choice.  I’m baller like that!  Plus it’s what I had on-hand.  At least she didn’t have me doing something crazy like hand-rolling pasta sheets and forming tortellini from scratch.  (Spoiler alert: the first recipe in the next Alton Brown book I’m doing is making fresh pasta from scratch…)  All I had to do for this was boil the ravioli for a few minutes, chop up the veggies and sauté them in butter.

The end result was a super tasty dish which was intended to be a main entrée, but I had a hankering for steak that wouldn’t quit today.  My chef-in-training son made a recipe earlier this week that called for an herb butter currently sitting in the fridge, and I needed a reason to use it up.  Yeah, I’ll go with that excuse for why I wanted a steak!  To turn my Primavera into a side dish, I amped up the veggies and kept the pasta portion at 50%.  Then I served it alongside these lovely hunks of beef: some inexpensive center-cut rounds for the kids (who I suspect may have been adopted, as they didn’t inherit my love of red meat!) and a ribeye for mom.  I flavored them with Tastefully Simple’s Seasoned Salt and Garlic Pepper Seasoning and Worcestershire sauce for mine, and Rancher Steak Rub from Wildtree for the kids.  I have reps for both these direct-sales companies if you are in the market for delicious seasonings delivered right to your door!  Then I pan-seared the steaks in cast iron with butter, olive oil, and fresh rosemary, finished them off under the broiler, and topped them with the leftover herb butter.  A perfect companion for the big 100!

 

 

 

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/

 

 

Well.  I finally did it.  I wasn’t happy about it either.  Turning hot dogs, burgers and fries, tacos, and 7-layer dips into desserts is unnatural.  It’s an abomination.  But it’s also a challenge!  Naturally I had to give a try, despite my misgivings.  My baby girl turned 10 a couple weeks ago, and she wanted an Oreo ice cream cake.  Could I do it?  Sure.  But I let Cold Stone do the honors, because a good ice cream cake takes a couple days for proper freezing and setting, and I’m a lousy decorator.  Today was her “my-birthday-is-right-after-Christmas-and-no-one-ever-comes-to-my-party” late celebration, so I decided to make her a cake that was just for fun.  Enter the Grilled Cheese Sandwich and Tomato Soup…Cake.

You know how they say on Food Network that you eat with your eyes first?  Well, that is doubly true for me.  I taste whole dishes in my mind long before I buy the first stalk of lemongrass or bottle of capers.  It’s why I’m sometimes plagued with indecision about what to make for a given meal, causing me not to eat breakfast until 3:00 PM or spend $100 buying the supplies for 10 different menu options…  It’s a curse.  It also makes the very concept of eating what LOOKS like a savory dish but is actually a sweet dish totally repellent.  I can’t let go of the idea that the taco should be beefy, not chocolatey.  I decided to let all that go today and try for the aesthetics of the “sandwich” cake, even if I couldn’t bring myself to eat it.

Step 1: Mock tomato soup.  This was a simple puree of fresh peaches and fresh strawberries.  Which I did not have.  And it’s January in Colorado.  Frozen fruit to the rescue!  Make that “freezer burned” fruit; there was so much ice attached to these things I didn’t need to add any additional water!  A little bit of sugar and some lemon juice, and then all I had to do was cook it down and hit it with the immersion blender.  Please note the shameless Cuisinart plug below.  I’ll be expecting my commission check in the mail any day now…

Step 2:  “Grilled Cheese”, a.k.a. boxed white cake and instant vanilla pudding.  This sounds simple, right??  I managed to jack it up.  I let my son go into the store alone to pick up these two items, and unfortunately did not warn him of the perils and intricacies  of the Jell-O aisle.  He had no idea about the overwhelming amount of choices, and I didn’t check his purchases until it was too late.  Sugar free, fat free.  Blarf.  Ah well, I could still work with it.  I mixed up the cake batter (nearly ruining that by dropping whole eggs in instead of just the whites – had to scoop those out with my fingers) and threw it in the oven, carefully following the time and temperature directions on the box.  Bad choice…  I pulled it out when the timer went off and didn’t think to check the doneness.  We’ll get back to that…

“Cheese” was easy enough; instant pudding and enough orange food coloring to resemble the gold standard (pun intended!) of grilled cheese filling, the Kraft Single.  So now I had all the makings of a pretty decent imitation of a sandwich, once I cut the baked cake in half and “toasted” it.  Too bad I couldn’t get a knife through the ridiculously under baked cake I had on my hands.  I failed to read the fine print of the recipe, which clearly stated I should have baked it for 35 minutes instead of the 28 minutes recommended on the box.  It’s a cardinal baking sin, but I had to throw it back into the oven  after it had cooled.  Do you know it took a full 25 minutes more before that dang cake was cooked through??  Sigh…  By then the edges were pretty firm.  Ok, they were burnt.  On the bright side, I figured it added to the look of “crust” for a good grilled cheese.  It was finally baked enough to cut the cake in half horizontally, then brush melted butter onto the surface and put the poor cake under the broiler to get the toasted look.  So, you know, now it was even MORE baked.  I almost felt sorry for it.  Despite my best efforts to ruin this cake, it actually ended up tasting pretty good.  Even though I had to shut my eyes to eat it!

 

 

 

You are reading the words of a woman on the edge.  At the end of her rope.  A woman in desperation.  What’s the problem you ask?  I’m hungry.  I mean REALLY hungry!  And that always leads to A) getting in the car and heading to a nearby fast food restaurant for instant gratification or B) sitting under a pile of cookbooks, trying to narrow down from 312 recipes that all sound AMAZING at the time.  Today was a “B” kind of day.

So there I was at 9:30 AM, coffee in hand to tide me over, Ree and Alton books on one side, several issues of Food Network Magazine on the other.  So many choices!!  But I had a taste fixed in my mind… I wanted CHICKEN STRIPS! Yes.  For breakfast.  I was inspired by the fact that I am up to recipes #97-98, veggie dips!  I made Chipotle Dip a couple days ago for a get-together, and the Honey Mustard recipe in Ree’s Dinnertime book made me immediately think of chicken strips.  Problem: there is no recipe for chicken strips in that cookbook.  What a let-down.  But hooray!  My sister-in-law got me the newest Ree cookbook (Come and Get it) for Christmas, and lo and behold there it was… Cap’n Crunch Chicken Tenders!  But first… the Honey Mustard…

I love recipes that are just “put this, this and this in a bowl.  Mix it up.”  Both of these dips were just that!  But dang, talk about yummy.  I never in a million years would have thought honey mustard would contain mayonnaise.  Or paprika.  Guess that’s why I’m not writing the cookbooks!  When a recipe is so simple, I usually like to use “the good stuff”.  I have several ingredients that I am very protective of, and they are not to be used by ANYONE else.  My honey is from my friend Ian Frazier in Alaska who sent me a few jars from his own apiary (that’s a bunch of beehives for anyone not up on bee-speak!) and you can practically smell the flowers they harvested nectar from; hit him up if you need honey, I think he still has some for sale!  I bought my Hungarian sweet paprika in actual Hungary.  Budapest to be exact.  I do not just dump that on top of Tuna Helper!  I went the cheap route on my paprika this time because I went fancy on the honey, but next batch I’m using the Gold Standard seasoning!  My mustard was just plain old French’s yellow, because I was polishing off the last of the bottle.  You know what?  DELICIOUS.  I mixed this up a few hours before finally scratching my chicken itch, so the flavors got to meld nicely.

Now for the star: Cap’n Crunch Chicken Tenders.  Sounds weird, I know.  I ran to the store and grabbed all I needed, luckily just the chicken strips and the cereal.  Cap’n Crunch was on sale, which I took as a sign from God that I was meant to make this dish today.  First job was just to make a dredging station of seasoned flour, whipped eggs, and the crushed Cap’n Crunch.  A new use for my meat tenderizer!  Then all I had to do was throw it in the cast iron skillet in some vegetable oil.  I have very low confidence when it comes to pan-frying.  For whatever reason I have the worst luck with temperature control.  I detest “bacon kisses”.  Basically frying scares me!  Still, it had to be done.  I followed the directions to a tee on the first batch…always the first mistake…and it resulted in what I will lovingly call “blackened” chicken strips.  Three minutes each side on medium heat, my a$$!  Second batch, I ignored the directions and went with my own nose and eyes.  Heat down to mid-low, two minutes per side.  I could still feel that the chicken was firm and knew it was cooked through, and the color was much more agreeable.  End result was absolutely delicious.  Like “better than going to Culver’s” good.  That’s saying something!  And that honey mustard recipe?  Total keeper.  It was supposed to be a veggie dip, but I am probably going to use it exclusively on chicken from here to eternity…