Thursday, July 21, 2011

almost

Ice cream - done
..Who knew it was so easy, just used recipe that came with ice cream maker yummm

No knead bread - day 2
So easy ....so far
Used recipe in "the art of eating in" by cathy erway
...Good all round read

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Projects

- grilled peach ice-cream
- start day one of "no-knead" bread
- finish quilt top
- make big batch of chow mein for nuking

Monday, July 18, 2011

Plans

OK so I've wasted my weekend reading books about food. So now ive got to write down somewhere some of the things it would be nice to actually make since reading Food Trucks and The Art of Eating In

No knead bread
ice cream
chili with pork shoulder
pickled radish
and that's just from The Art of Eating in

There are just to many from Food Truck....First i have several wierd ingredients to locate
baharat
tamarind pulp
and I don't even remember what I needed these for so now I have to look through the book again and add other ingredients that I will probably find.

That's the problem when one starts reading......all the scraps of paper that i need to write ingredients down on

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Soup

What is it about soup lately, I always invisioned soup as a fall thing...not so much a spring thing.
I was "facebooking" with my mother the other day about my sad state of boredom since my daughter and family moved to their own digs....and she said the quickest way to get out of a funk was to make soup. Well I already did that the other day when I was canning turkey I roasted the bones and had the most amazing broth that called for a big pot of soup, so I made some and ended up with several bags in the freezer, not to mention the canned turkey (I side effect of buying turkey on sale I decided to bone it...can it) I also made a few other things for the freezer. I seem to have a problem making small batches of anything lately, everything goes into the freezer. It's then I came to realization that I was turning into my mother....so I stopped all the canning and freezing.
An this morning I was going through a few blogs that I visit weekly and discovered this soup

Miso bacon corn chowder

so now I have to make a trip the T&T market to find some miso. The soup looks and sounds wonderful. If I'm lucky I will only make a batch big enough for one sitting for two.

I've also been reading and enjoying

Pleasures of cooking for one

after watching a segment on Anna and Kristina. I already had a copy from the library sitting around so after watching the show featuring the book I started reading it and soon discovered that I will have to buy a copy for myself. It also added to my list of "things to buy" as in smalled pots and pans and casserole dishes and such......

So as I'm sitting here posting this - I have a room to finish painting another coat, plus baseboards to nail, not to mention the chair rail to paint and attach, and housework you wouldn't believe. Since my daughter and her family moved into their own place (after 3 yrs living together) I have LOTS of re-organizing of space......heavy sigh....all that work and I"m just inheritatly (bad spelling) sooooooo lazy.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Quinoa

I've never made anything with quinoa before...so along with the ham I thought why not.

1 cup (rinsed) quinoa
1 1/2 cups water

went into the rice cooker, until a hard boil then turned it to warming. It turned out very nice, but I got busy with other stuff so I just threw it into the fridge until today - wednesday.

added the cooked cold quinoa to a bowl added 1/2 diced onion, diced baby cuc, handful of juliene pea pods,diced up 1/2 tomato (because that's all I had) 1/2 cup diced leftover ham (from weekend) about 1 to 1 1/2 cups roasted cauliflower florets that I threw into the oven while I was making some banana bread.

Added about 2 tbsp kraft zesty italian, zest of 1/2 a lime, and a little splash of the same lime and mixed it all up



I roasted the cauliflower with olive oil, italian seasoning and red pepper and garlic flakes from club house

Divided up the spoils into two containers and threw it into the fridge for later. When I sampled some for a snack I was pleased with the result. Will be making this again.


Banana Bread

doubled the recipe, currently waiting to put into freezer, this recipe tastes good after sitting in the freezer for a bit. Also I added 2 squares semi sweet chocolate and 1/2 c chopped up almonds, 1 tbsp cinnamon and dusting of nutmeg.

Sloppy Joes





I made a ham over the weekend, and so of coarse I had to bake a couple (4) large yams. Along with the leftover ham I had I large yam as well.....so....when it came to making some sloppy joes I thought ....why not
actually I added the yam because I added a little too much sriracha hot chili sauce. (my latest go-to-additive)

Sloppy joes

1 lb ground round (500 g)
1/2 lb ground pork (250 g)
1 med onion diced
3 cloves garlic mashed
1/2 red pepper diced
sloppy joe spice mix
1/2 cup red wine
1 cup cooked yam
1 tbsp sriracha hot sauce
3/4 can 16 fl oz tomato scarpones (about 1 1/2 -2 cups)


I browned the meat with the onion and garlic. Added the wine (only because it was sitting on the counter and I figured...why not). Then the peppers for color




I added the hot sauce along with the packaged sloppy joe mix, and it tasted a little bit toooooo hot, so that's when I added the yam, about this much


about 1 cup

after the yam was encorporated


added the tomatoes and wasn't sloppy enough after cooking a bit, so I added about 1/3 cup water.

And it was a very good sloppy joe after that, I served it to the grandkids spooned over steamed baby potatoes and grated cheese, with some sour cream to temper the spice down a bit more.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

A Little Obsession

I love this recipe





I could eat it all day long for days....and days it is that good

and then I throw something in the garbage and what DO I SEE...

The leftovers (about 2 servings for a snack) laying there, unceremoniously dumped..... I almost had a heart attack

My daughter claimed it was left on the stove overnight

WTF

WHAT DO I CARE.....it's cooked. My daughter and her obsessive irradication of all germs is driving me insane. And now she's thrown my leftover chicken in the garbage....the chicken I kept thinking about overnight...how good it was going to taste with my morning coffee....

Im in moarning ( i don't know if that's spelled correctly or not and I don't care - my chicken is goooooooone) This is the same girl who used to eat leftover pizza that was on the counter FOR DAYS in her apartment.And she eats mussels and mushrooms (all come from shit or are shit based) ugggh and she thinks my chicken was germy.

It will take a long time to forgive this infraction...a long time

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Stuffing

On sunday I made a batch of my standard stuffing


large onions small dice
4-5 garlic cloves, run through a press

saute, then add

500 g(1 lb) hamburger
300 g ground pork
large splash lee & perrins
balsamic vinegar
sriracha hot chili sauce ( you ought to know by now how much you will tolerate) don't overdue it
1 tsp celery salt
1 tbsp+ club house roasted garlic & peppers

brown, and i mean brown until no liquid is left in pan and then brown the meat after the liquid is gone. DO NOT drain any liquid, cook it off. You can add some wine that is leftover on the counter, then cook it off again

add whatever veg you have
I usually add 1 cup of shredded zucchini or mixture of zuc and grated carrots, then brown mixture until veg is limp.

add 1 container 500 g cottage cheese, ricotta or combination off.
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1-2 eggs
1 can heinz tomato soup, or 1 cup tomato sauce you have hanging around or whatever liquidy tomato-y thing you have
if you have some leftover hard cheese, grate it and throw it in, not necessary but if there are bits and pieces, why not....

mix the whole mess up

On sunday i stuffed rigatonni noodles

I used a roasting pan. First I sprayed cooking spray, then upended can of heinz soup spread it around then layed stuffed noodles on tomato mix, but any tomato-y mixture will do, whatever preference is, but if using tomato soup, nothing else will do except heinz believe me everything else SUCKS. I have used spaghetti sauces, and tomato sauces, its usually whatever I have on hand that will cover the pan about 1/4 inch.

and do not put noodles into tomato mixture, but just lay lightly on top so that the mixture will cradle the noodles while cooking. otherwise they will not cook nice on the bottom.

after stuffed noodles are finished then spread the same tomato mixture on top of the noodles, being generous but not soupy (if you know what i mean, don't drown them) cover will foil in the preheated oven at 350 for about an hour, take the foil off after about 50 min and test noodles for done ness, but be carefull you will get blast of steam and it burns owwww

The recipe will give you lots of leftover stuffing mixture, for me it's usually about 2 sandwich bags that I toss into the freezer for those lazy days. You can defrost and add a carton of cottage cheese or ricotta and then lasagna noodles make a nice lasagna, add mushroom stems and lots more garlic and you have a nice stuffed mushroom,

But on wednesday (actually sooner than expected) I opened the pantry and a box of "oven ready" canallonni noodles literally fell down on me, so I unthawed a bag, added a sandwich bag of spinach that I steamed then chopped up, I also had a dish of edemane beans left over from the night before, so I shelled them and threw them into processor with a handful of leftover corn niblets, and threw the hole mess into the stuffing mixture that was unthawing and viola.....dinner.

Just stuffed the larger noodles by plunging them into stuffing, and laying them the same way as with smaller noodles on sunday. This time I found a sandwich bag of frozen canned tomatoes ( that heaven only knows were leftover from something else) and added 2 cans heinz soup mixed it up with a splash of lee and perrins and balsamic and italian seasonings then half went on the bottom half on the top and in the oven at 350 for about 40 min, cause cannelonni (bad spelling I know) cooks faster than rigatonni noodles.

This is the best stuffing mixture to have on hand in freezer for any sort of combo for dinner and whatever noodles, shells, are handy.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Butter Chicken

I bought chicken on sale some time ago and now that's what we seem to be eating ALOT of. I call it the carcass. It's a good deal ..... The price is usually for a bag of 4 consisting of the chicken minus legs, wings, and thighs. So basically the back and breast. I usually buy about 4-6 bags and the sale usually appears once every 5 weeks on a rotation. Any day now...maybe next week I can replenish my freezer.
So I usually cut the backs off and put them into a seperate big bag ( my freezer is full of these - its time to make stock if I wasn't so lazy) then put 4-6 breasts per bag. So what I usually get is breasts for $1.25 each, now that's a DEAL.

So last night I used 6 breasts (I should have used 8 as there was sauce enough for 8 and I would have had much more leftovers....I live for leftovers)


But I only had 6 breasts unthawed....ooooh well

The recipe calls for chili powder but "SOMEONE" appears for have given away mine to the neighbor cause its been weeks and it hasn't come back yet....grrr. So I sub with chipolte chili powder and used it liberally because the last time I used it ...I shouldn't have cause it was way too hot. But this time I could have added a bit more or maybe I should have added some sriracha chili sauce...it could have used a bit more heat. The leftovers are a bit on the bland side. There is nothing worse than bland leftovers.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Dinner, last night

I made this last night, sorry but no pic so i used the one from the blog, next time i make this I will replace the pic. But this is the best recipe I have ever tasted for chicken. Tonight I am adding some apple cider vinegar to see if it will work as a sweet/sour combination for pork sausages.

Dessert tonight

well maybe....snack before dinner




damn.....only ice cream I have is rootbeer, ahhh well it'll have to do

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

White Spaghetti

I can't remember where I saw this or even when exactly it became a family fav, but it has become THE pasta go-to-meal.

1 pkg spaghetti (454g)
4 tbsp butter, total
3 garlic cloves (smashed, diced)
3 tbsp minced parsley
1/3 cup - 1/2 cup parmesan, romano
1 cup panco bread crumbs
opt'l addition of bacon crumbled, diced mushrooms (i didn't use either this time, but have in the past)
salt, pepper to taste
sprinkle parmesan, romano to serve


Cook pasta as per pkg directions
at the same time that pasta is cooking, melt 2 tbsp butter, add garlic, salt and pepper, being careful not to burn add the panco to pan and toast and brown the bread crumbs, again careful not to burn it can burn very quickly if not watching the pan, take the pan of the heat and add the parsley and cheese and bacon if using.
Once the pasta is done to pkg directions add the butter to the pot of pasta, then empty the contents of the pan of panco, garlic, parsley, cheese etc into the pasta.
serve with more cheese

For leftovers, if your fortune enough to have them aftem everyone in the house packs spaghetti into containers for lunch-to-go. Melt about 2-3 tbsp butter, add onions garlic and saute. Add the cold spaghetti being diligent to seperate the strands and brown so it looks dry and almost sold, Add leftover mushrooms or bacon bits or whatever you have in the fridge, anything goes, then turn the mixture over and continue to brown, add about 2-3 scrambled eggs to the pan and stir it all around as per an omelet, add whatever cheese you want cover, cook add spices and herbs, flip when cooked on one side to the other, cover until done then slice like a pizza and serve or eat right off the cutting board, the kids usually like ketchup. There is never enough leftovers for this, doesn't matter how much is cooked the day before, its the leftovers that are truly treasured, and when the original is cooked this way it makes the leftovers easier to make into an omelet instead of with tomato sauce. Although leftover spaghetti with tomato sauce is good for lunch the next day just as it is. But try it this way















Saturday, March 26, 2011

Bits and Pieces




This is what you do if there are 3 pork loin center cut chops taking up space in the fridge.

Trim off fat and gnarly bits then cut into strips, add hoisin sauce, soya sauce, ginger and garlic and marinate the pork off to the side.

Cup up a medium carrot, onion (strips), pepper (strips) and sugar snap peas (cut on diag).



Splash some oil (olive, grape seed, sesame, whatever...) into a pan and saute the contents of the pork that was set aside, marinating (dump the whole thing into the pan) and stir it around until done. I like mine a little overly brown, but that's me

Add the onions and carrots, when the carrots are cooked add the peppers and sugar snap peas



Serve with rice or ramen, I had some leftover rice, so that's what I used.

Makes a nice lunch for two. This was just one of them, my husband scarffed the first one down before I could take the pic.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Meatloaf

1K ground beef
300 kg ground pork
1 egg
1/2 cup instant oats
2 tbsp lea & perrins
1 tbsp srirachi (or any other) hot chili sauce
1 lrg onion small dice
2-3 med carrots shredded
1 small zuccini shredded
1 stalk celery shredded/diced (whatever)
3-4 cloves garlic minced/pressed
3-4 tbsp ketchup
1 tsp celery salt
oil for pan to saute
salt and pepper

Heat oil in saute pan and saute onions, add garlic after about 2min., then add carrots, celery (chopped mushrooms, zuccini, etc). When veg are done add to meat mixture in large bowl. Add the remaining ingreadients. You can improvise here with whatever spices you want to add.

I always saute the veg first, it just hold together better for me this way, but you can add it raw, whatever....

I don't usually use mushrooms in the mixture, but saute sliced mushrooms to add to sliced meatloaf at the table because I HATE MUSHROOMS.

I have a huge box of disposable painting gloves under my sink just for times like this....mix the thing up wearing gloves it just incorporated better by hand instead of with a spoon.

Once the mixture is combined line a loaf pan with paper and overstuff the mixture into the pan



Line a small sheet (I use the one that came with the toaster oven, perfect size for me) with paper and invert the loaf pine onto it.


Into oven at 425 for about 30min.

Remove the loaf pan and top paper before returning to oven at 350 for about 1 hour. I usually drain the liquid from bottom of the pan sometime during the baking process just because I don't want the house to smell but you do whatever....











I do this process of covering the raw mixture with the loaf pan because I find it flattens to much during cooking for my liking. It retains its original loafy shape when I do this, but it's not necessary. I also cook it in this fashion because I like the way the meatloaf gets browned on all sides, and I really HATE my loaf swimming in the fat, this way it drains off....but also make a note that the meatloaf is much drier when finished adding as much veg into the meat mixture some what moistens it, but not that much. So a sauce could be served with the meatloaf. But since I like mine on the dry side....doesn't really matter to me, use ketchup.




Serve this with loaded smashed baby potatoes

Steam about 25-30 baby potatoes, throw onto small sheet pan lined with paper to cool. Pan that isn't too much larger than the potatoes once they are cooling on the pan.

Once cooled smash down







cook about 8-10 slices of bacon diced, set aside once done. Brush the smashed potatoes with bacon drippings, or oil (no sense in wasteing the drippings) add some seasoning salt then sprinkle the bacon on top of the potatoes. Cook the potatoes along with the meatloaf in the oven (that's why I use the pans that I do, so that they will both fit into the oven together. Just before the potatoes are done reheating and sizzling up, sprinkle with grated cheese (use whatever is handy, i had cheddar, parmesan and some unknown hard white cheese prob romano) just before serving sprinkle with chopped green onions

yummmmm


The sandwich this morning fullfilled all my expectations.....

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Cravings

Woke up this morning and had a sudden craving for a meatloaf sandwich. Mmmm
On toasted rye bread or pumperknickle.....well I have the rye bread, so I guess I'll have to make the meatloaf today for the sandwich tomorrow