Lunch: Shredded Beef Sandwiches and Chips
Dinner: Pulled Pork Tacos, Rice and Corn
Dessert: Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Bah! The grocery thieves strike again! There is no cheese left for tacos tonight… literally no cheese. They stole the last of it last night. Oh well, I don’t feel bad. I’m fairly sure the brothers will ferret out who these cheese weasels are and make them pay. Luckily the pulled pork turned out excellent, so it doesn’t really need cheese. I would be perfectly happy to sit there and eat it with tortillas… although if I were to serve it to guests, I would serve it with queso fresco, fresh cilantro, black beans and lime wedges, but that’s just me. Mmmm… sounds good. Apparently it smelled really good, because the brothers kept coming down and commenting on how delicious it smelled. I love comments like that. I rewarded one of the boys with a bite of the pork (I was shredding it at the time).
I didn’t realize, but today was unintentionally shredded meat day. I made shredded beef sandwiches for lunch and there was shredded pork tacos for dinner. Oops! I generally try to keep things mixed up, but sometimes it’s all I can do just to keep from having chicken for lunch and for dinner. The shredded beef sandwiches I made for lunch were a bit of an experiment. I have seen other recipes for shredded beef, but I wanted something simple with a little kick. I really like how it turned out. They are excellent served on toasted buns with swiss or provolone cheese and the sauce on the side to dip it.
Shredded Beef Sandwiches
Serves 10
4-5 lb Beef Roast
4 cups Beef Broth
2 tsp oregano
1 tbs Hot Sauce (optional)
1 bay leaf
Salt and Pepper
Salt and Pepper the roast and put it in the crockpot. Mix together the beef broth, oregano, hot sauce and bay leaf and pour over the roast. Cover and cook on high for 6 hours. Remove the roast and siphon as much fat as possible from the liquid *. Shred the beef with two forks.
* If you’re making this ahead of time (like I did) leave the roast whole and put the roast and the liquid in the fridge. Then when you’re ready to warm it up, you can remove the hardened fat with a spoon and then shred the beef.
Showing posts with label Beef. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beef. Show all posts
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Twilight Zone
Lunch: Bacon Mac and Cheese and Pineapple Tidbits
Dinner: Swiss Steak with Peppers, Rice and Salad
Today feels a little like a Twilight Zone episode. I know it's supposed to be a Tuesday in late April, but I feel like it's a Saturday in late October, early November. Here's why:
1.I had to get groceries yesterday (something I generally do on Fridays)
2.Tyler had to work late last night (something he usually only does on Fridays)
3.It's chilly, windy and gray outside like it would be in late October/ early November
4.We moved into a creepy house and I'm already planning on how to decorate it for Halloween
Of course, it also feels a bit like the 4th of July should be next week because for the last several years, we've moved at the end of June and last year we had a 4th of July party (our old back yard was a prime fireworks shooting space). Well, we just moved and are talking about having a party in a few weeks. My family let me know that a party was pretty much mandatory. My family does not mess around when it comes to parties and any event that might need celebrating is generally celebrated. Oh, and Tyler and I (the designated party throwers of our group of friends) haven't had a party in a while.
Steak with Peppers
20 servings
24 Round Steaks, ½ inch thick
1 can (6lb 6oz) Crushed Tomatoes
6 Green Bell Peppers, sliced into thin strips
2 Onions, sliced into thin strips
¼ cup Worcestershire Sauce
4 cups Beef Broth
2 tbs Ground Black Pepper
8 cloves Garlic, minced
Mix together the Worcestershire sauce, crushed tomatoes, beef broth, ground black pepper, and minced garlic. Put round steaks, pepper and onions in crock pot; pour tomato mixture over steak and peppers. Cook over high heat for 6 hours or low heat for 8 hours. Serve over rice or mashed potatoes.
Dinner: Swiss Steak with Peppers, Rice and Salad
Today feels a little like a Twilight Zone episode. I know it's supposed to be a Tuesday in late April, but I feel like it's a Saturday in late October, early November. Here's why:
1.I had to get groceries yesterday (something I generally do on Fridays)
2.Tyler had to work late last night (something he usually only does on Fridays)
3.It's chilly, windy and gray outside like it would be in late October/ early November
4.We moved into a creepy house and I'm already planning on how to decorate it for Halloween
Of course, it also feels a bit like the 4th of July should be next week because for the last several years, we've moved at the end of June and last year we had a 4th of July party (our old back yard was a prime fireworks shooting space). Well, we just moved and are talking about having a party in a few weeks. My family let me know that a party was pretty much mandatory. My family does not mess around when it comes to parties and any event that might need celebrating is generally celebrated. Oh, and Tyler and I (the designated party throwers of our group of friends) haven't had a party in a while.
Steak with Peppers
20 servings
24 Round Steaks, ½ inch thick
1 can (6lb 6oz) Crushed Tomatoes
6 Green Bell Peppers, sliced into thin strips
2 Onions, sliced into thin strips
¼ cup Worcestershire Sauce
4 cups Beef Broth
2 tbs Ground Black Pepper
8 cloves Garlic, minced
Mix together the Worcestershire sauce, crushed tomatoes, beef broth, ground black pepper, and minced garlic. Put round steaks, pepper and onions in crock pot; pour tomato mixture over steak and peppers. Cook over high heat for 6 hours or low heat for 8 hours. Serve over rice or mashed potatoes.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Hooray Home Depot Guy!
Lunch: Turkey Nachos (boy I’m sneaky, I didn’t tell them it was turkey)
Dinner: Italian Chicken and Sausage Soup
Oy, it has been a hectic week already! Is this week over yet? Cooking for 40+ requires soo much more work. It also makes it more difficult in that I only have 1 oven. There is only so much space which means that things have to be cooked in stages, and it is likely that something is going to cool down or dry out. The lovely roasts I made last night ended up a little dry because I had to make them hours in advance in order to make the roasted potatoes. I should have made gravy, but I didn’t think about it. Today I made my Italian chicken and sausage soup for the guys and Tyler was completely jealous. He loves Italian chicken and sausage soup. The problem is our stove is currently non operative. Mom and dad graciously donated their stove to us because the one that came with our rental house was old and icky. The landlord was also kind enough to run in a gas line for us. The problem is getting it all connected. We went out to get a new gas line (as you’re supposed to do) but the connections didn’t match. The kit only has one male/male connector and we needed two. I went to every hardware store in town trying to find one that A. knew what I was talking about and B. had the piece. I really didn’t think this was rocket science. Here’s how the conversation went at Ace Hardware:
I brought in the kit with the piece I needed and showed it to a person in the department and said “I need another one of these”.
Ace Guy: “You need a male/female one?”
Me: “No, I need this exact one. Male/Male” I show it to him.
Ace Guy: “Hmmm… well let’s see what we can put together for you”
He then tried to put together some sort of contraption with all sorts of expensive connectors, and it still wasn’t what I was looking for.
Ace Guy: “Well, you know, I think you should have everything you need in that kit. You shouldn’t need another one”
Argh!
Then I went back to Home Depot. The first time I was there I couldn’t find a person to talk to. Then Tyler went. Then I went back again. You see they have only one type of connector for gas lines. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong size. Why would you have a gas connector that doesn’t fit the lines you sell? It makes no sense. Well, the final time I went I found a gentleman in the plumbing area. He helped me look for a minute, and then he pulled down one of the kits, “You just need this part right here, right?”
Me: “Yes!”
Home depot guy then ripped open the package, took out the part and handed it to us. He said we could look at every hardware store in Atlanta and we probably weren’t going to find it and he wasn’t going to make us buy a whole new kit for a $2 connector. So, I would just like to say, in a public forum, thank you home depot guy you restored my faith in humanity. It’s good to know not everyone out there is a soulless boob like the people at ATT&T (more on that tomorrow, the anger is still too fresh).
The moral of the story is, we currently have a non operative stove and I don’t like eating fast food. We’re definitely putting the old crock pot to good use. Tomorrow I’m going to try making Italian chicken soup in the crock pot for Tyler. I’ll have to let you know how that turns out. Last night we made mock beef burgundy. I generally hate any sort of recipe that has mock in the title… so we’re going to christen this recipe “Faux Beef Burgundy”. Faux sounds so much better than mock. Someday I’ll tell you about Mock Yummy Good Surprise. This recipe is great if you just want to throw stuff in a pot and forget about it. That’s all you do; you dump the ingredients together and forget about it until you get home and smell the wonderfulness. It is excellent served over egg noodles or mashed potatoes (while they are nowhere near as good as real mashed potatoes, if you use the Oreida steam and mash variety you can get dinner on the table 10 minutes after you get home.)
Faux Beef Burgandy
Serves 6
1 ½ lbs Beef Stew Meat
1 can Beef Consommé
1 can Condensed Cream of Golden Mushroom Soup
1 packet Onion Soup Mix
1 soup can worth of Dry Red Wine
1 jar Button Mushrooms, drained
Put stew meat and mushrooms in crock pot. Mix together the onion soup mix, the beef consommé, the golden mushroom soup and the dry red wine; pour over beef and mushrooms. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.
Dinner: Italian Chicken and Sausage Soup
Oy, it has been a hectic week already! Is this week over yet? Cooking for 40+ requires soo much more work. It also makes it more difficult in that I only have 1 oven. There is only so much space which means that things have to be cooked in stages, and it is likely that something is going to cool down or dry out. The lovely roasts I made last night ended up a little dry because I had to make them hours in advance in order to make the roasted potatoes. I should have made gravy, but I didn’t think about it. Today I made my Italian chicken and sausage soup for the guys and Tyler was completely jealous. He loves Italian chicken and sausage soup. The problem is our stove is currently non operative. Mom and dad graciously donated their stove to us because the one that came with our rental house was old and icky. The landlord was also kind enough to run in a gas line for us. The problem is getting it all connected. We went out to get a new gas line (as you’re supposed to do) but the connections didn’t match. The kit only has one male/male connector and we needed two. I went to every hardware store in town trying to find one that A. knew what I was talking about and B. had the piece. I really didn’t think this was rocket science. Here’s how the conversation went at Ace Hardware:
I brought in the kit with the piece I needed and showed it to a person in the department and said “I need another one of these”.
Ace Guy: “You need a male/female one?”
Me: “No, I need this exact one. Male/Male” I show it to him.
Ace Guy: “Hmmm… well let’s see what we can put together for you”
He then tried to put together some sort of contraption with all sorts of expensive connectors, and it still wasn’t what I was looking for.
Ace Guy: “Well, you know, I think you should have everything you need in that kit. You shouldn’t need another one”
Argh!
Then I went back to Home Depot. The first time I was there I couldn’t find a person to talk to. Then Tyler went. Then I went back again. You see they have only one type of connector for gas lines. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong size. Why would you have a gas connector that doesn’t fit the lines you sell? It makes no sense. Well, the final time I went I found a gentleman in the plumbing area. He helped me look for a minute, and then he pulled down one of the kits, “You just need this part right here, right?”
Me: “Yes!”
Home depot guy then ripped open the package, took out the part and handed it to us. He said we could look at every hardware store in Atlanta and we probably weren’t going to find it and he wasn’t going to make us buy a whole new kit for a $2 connector. So, I would just like to say, in a public forum, thank you home depot guy you restored my faith in humanity. It’s good to know not everyone out there is a soulless boob like the people at ATT&T (more on that tomorrow, the anger is still too fresh).
The moral of the story is, we currently have a non operative stove and I don’t like eating fast food. We’re definitely putting the old crock pot to good use. Tomorrow I’m going to try making Italian chicken soup in the crock pot for Tyler. I’ll have to let you know how that turns out. Last night we made mock beef burgundy. I generally hate any sort of recipe that has mock in the title… so we’re going to christen this recipe “Faux Beef Burgundy”. Faux sounds so much better than mock. Someday I’ll tell you about Mock Yummy Good Surprise. This recipe is great if you just want to throw stuff in a pot and forget about it. That’s all you do; you dump the ingredients together and forget about it until you get home and smell the wonderfulness. It is excellent served over egg noodles or mashed potatoes (while they are nowhere near as good as real mashed potatoes, if you use the Oreida steam and mash variety you can get dinner on the table 10 minutes after you get home.)
Faux Beef Burgandy
Serves 6
1 ½ lbs Beef Stew Meat
1 can Beef Consommé
1 can Condensed Cream of Golden Mushroom Soup
1 packet Onion Soup Mix
1 soup can worth of Dry Red Wine
1 jar Button Mushrooms, drained
Put stew meat and mushrooms in crock pot. Mix together the onion soup mix, the beef consommé, the golden mushroom soup and the dry red wine; pour over beef and mushrooms. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Yesterday, or How I Lost My Butt
Lunch: Cheesy Pigs in a Blanket and Chips
Dinner: Hungarian Goulash, Egg Noodles and Mixed Veggies
The last 24 hours have been very hectic. After I left work yesterday afternoon, I got a call from my landlord. You see, I’ve been trying to get in touch with my landlord for the past 2 weeks to try and tell him that we were planning on moving out. But he never called me back… We found out from our neighbors that he was in the hospital, but is out now and is all better. Well, the neighbors told him yesterday that we were planning to move apparently because I got a call from him. I’ve come to believe you have to be a strange sort of person to be a landlord. All the landlords I’ve ever had have been strange. The current and the new one are no exceptions. Anyway, the landlord informed me that he had someone interested in buying the house, but they wanted to do it before the end of the month (homebuyer credit) and so they needed to come look at the house tomorrow (as in today, Wednesday). What! EEEK! Let me tell you a little secret about myself, I’m messy. Now let me tell you a little secret about my husband, he’s messy. We’re both messy, disorganized people (except for when I’m at work, strangely I can keep a million things straight and my desk neat at work… when I come home, well that’s another story). To make matters worse, we haven’t really been home to clean. And if all that weren’t bad enough, we’re in the middle of trying to pack all of our belongings. Last time we moved, I was out of work and had time to keep the house clean and organize and pack things neatly. This time, we’re both working and just sort of packing and hauling as we go with no sense of organization. Our house looked something like a war zone, complete with orange Georgia clay foot prints all over the carpet from our dog. A note on Georgia clay and white carpets: they don’t mix, thank God our new house has wood floors! When he told me they had to see it today, I could have cried. Instead, I called Tyler and we spent the next 5 hours working our butts off. The house is immaculate. I rented a carpet cleaner and steamed the Georgia clay out of the carpets. We threw all of the messy disorganization that was our closets into boxes; heaven help us when it comes to unpacking time. The downside is, I’m fairly sure I have no butt now because it sure is sore when I sit down. The upside is, now we won’t have to worry about cleaning after we move… we’ve done most of the work already.
Because we were up so late cleaning last night, I decided to sleep in an extra hour and drive to work rather than take the bus. Boy am I glad I did, the bus I normally take was sitting broken down on the side of the road. Hooray for avoiding bus drama by sleeping in!
When I got to work this morning, the kitchen smelled like gas. In fact, the whole basement smelled like gas. It was time to get drastic. I e-mail/ texted all of the top dogs and let them know that either the stove needed to be fixed by 2pm or I was going home and staying there until the stove was fixed. Well, apparently they had a technician out last night to fix it. He said the lines were clogged and needed to be cleaned and the pilot lights were out. Well, he cleaned the lines and all, but did not relight the pilot lights for the broiler… so the kitchen filled with gas. Luckily, no one exploded. We shut off the gas to the broiler because the broiler is nasty and broken and it makes no sense for those pilot lights to be on.
Now dinner is almost done, I’m just waiting on the egg noodles to finish. Tonight I’m making Hungarian goulash for the guys. I love goulash. I especially love goulash from the Bohemian Café in Omaha. I decided that goulash would be perfect for the guys because it’s meat slow simmered in a tomato based sauce served over noodles. It’s very man foodish. It does require one special and sometime hard to find ingredient: Hungarian style paprika. It is important that you don’t use just any old paprika. Hungarian style paprika is different, it’s sweeter and less bitter. It isn’t that expensive, it just may be difficult to find at a small grocery store.
Hungarian Goulash
serves 25
10 lbs Beef Stew Meat
12 medium Carrots, roughly chopped
4 medium Onions, cut into thin strips
1 head of Garlic, minced
7 cans Tomato Paste
3 cans Tomato Sauce
½ cup Hungarian Paprika (sweet, not hot)
1 tbs Salt
1 tbs Carraway Seed
1 ½ tbs Pepper
6 Bay Leaves
12 Green Bell Peppers, cut into thin strips
Vegetable oil
Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet. Brown beef on all sides. Drain and add beef and remaining ingredients except for the green bell pepper into a crock pot. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. Turn the crock pot to high and add peppers; cook for 30 minutes. Serve over egg noodles.
Dinner: Hungarian Goulash, Egg Noodles and Mixed Veggies
The last 24 hours have been very hectic. After I left work yesterday afternoon, I got a call from my landlord. You see, I’ve been trying to get in touch with my landlord for the past 2 weeks to try and tell him that we were planning on moving out. But he never called me back… We found out from our neighbors that he was in the hospital, but is out now and is all better. Well, the neighbors told him yesterday that we were planning to move apparently because I got a call from him. I’ve come to believe you have to be a strange sort of person to be a landlord. All the landlords I’ve ever had have been strange. The current and the new one are no exceptions. Anyway, the landlord informed me that he had someone interested in buying the house, but they wanted to do it before the end of the month (homebuyer credit) and so they needed to come look at the house tomorrow (as in today, Wednesday). What! EEEK! Let me tell you a little secret about myself, I’m messy. Now let me tell you a little secret about my husband, he’s messy. We’re both messy, disorganized people (except for when I’m at work, strangely I can keep a million things straight and my desk neat at work… when I come home, well that’s another story). To make matters worse, we haven’t really been home to clean. And if all that weren’t bad enough, we’re in the middle of trying to pack all of our belongings. Last time we moved, I was out of work and had time to keep the house clean and organize and pack things neatly. This time, we’re both working and just sort of packing and hauling as we go with no sense of organization. Our house looked something like a war zone, complete with orange Georgia clay foot prints all over the carpet from our dog. A note on Georgia clay and white carpets: they don’t mix, thank God our new house has wood floors! When he told me they had to see it today, I could have cried. Instead, I called Tyler and we spent the next 5 hours working our butts off. The house is immaculate. I rented a carpet cleaner and steamed the Georgia clay out of the carpets. We threw all of the messy disorganization that was our closets into boxes; heaven help us when it comes to unpacking time. The downside is, I’m fairly sure I have no butt now because it sure is sore when I sit down. The upside is, now we won’t have to worry about cleaning after we move… we’ve done most of the work already.
Because we were up so late cleaning last night, I decided to sleep in an extra hour and drive to work rather than take the bus. Boy am I glad I did, the bus I normally take was sitting broken down on the side of the road. Hooray for avoiding bus drama by sleeping in!
When I got to work this morning, the kitchen smelled like gas. In fact, the whole basement smelled like gas. It was time to get drastic. I e-mail/ texted all of the top dogs and let them know that either the stove needed to be fixed by 2pm or I was going home and staying there until the stove was fixed. Well, apparently they had a technician out last night to fix it. He said the lines were clogged and needed to be cleaned and the pilot lights were out. Well, he cleaned the lines and all, but did not relight the pilot lights for the broiler… so the kitchen filled with gas. Luckily, no one exploded. We shut off the gas to the broiler because the broiler is nasty and broken and it makes no sense for those pilot lights to be on.
Now dinner is almost done, I’m just waiting on the egg noodles to finish. Tonight I’m making Hungarian goulash for the guys. I love goulash. I especially love goulash from the Bohemian Café in Omaha. I decided that goulash would be perfect for the guys because it’s meat slow simmered in a tomato based sauce served over noodles. It’s very man foodish. It does require one special and sometime hard to find ingredient: Hungarian style paprika. It is important that you don’t use just any old paprika. Hungarian style paprika is different, it’s sweeter and less bitter. It isn’t that expensive, it just may be difficult to find at a small grocery store.
Hungarian Goulash
serves 25
10 lbs Beef Stew Meat
12 medium Carrots, roughly chopped
4 medium Onions, cut into thin strips
1 head of Garlic, minced
7 cans Tomato Paste
3 cans Tomato Sauce
½ cup Hungarian Paprika (sweet, not hot)
1 tbs Salt
1 tbs Carraway Seed
1 ½ tbs Pepper
6 Bay Leaves
12 Green Bell Peppers, cut into thin strips
Vegetable oil
Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet. Brown beef on all sides. Drain and add beef and remaining ingredients except for the green bell pepper into a crock pot. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. Turn the crock pot to high and add peppers; cook for 30 minutes. Serve over egg noodles.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Countdown
Lunch: Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup
Dinner: Pot Roast, Roasted Potatoes and Veggies
So the count down begins for both the end of the semester and for Tyler and I to move. I hate moving; I hate packing; I hate unpacking. Since I started college (way back in 2003), I’ve moved at least once a year. I really hate it. However, we’re renters. With every house we’ve rented there’s always a catch, something that we’ve disliked. Something we’re sure we’ll find an improvement upon in the next house. When you’re a renter, you can’t improve a house, not in any real sense. If you have leaky windows and doors, you’re not going to make an investment in fixing them. If you need a fenced-in yard and you don’t have one, you’re not going try to put one up. And if your living room is oddly shaped and only has 1 power outlet which is nowhere near the cable outlet, you’re definitely not going to rewire the house (a. we don’t know how b. we’re not going to pay someone to do it). Then there’s always the idea that there’s something better, something cheaper out there. Towards the end of your lease you start to wonder if the perfect house (for the perfect price, at the perfect location) isn’t out there and you’re just about to miss it. Well, our new house is far from perfect. In fact, on the outside it’s downright ugly and the kitchen and bathroom are ugly too. However, it’s nearly $300 cheaper and it’s in town (not 20 minutes outside of town in the sticks like our current house). It also has a fenced in yard, a ton of storage space, pretty wood floors, and nicely sized rooms. Did I mention that’s it’s nearly $300 cheaper and not out in the boonies? We’re also fairly sure it’s haunted. It looks like it should be haunted. The attic stairs are narrow, dark and super creepy and when we first looked at the house there was a creepy, broken child’s rocking chair in the attic. I love it. I love creepy old houses. I tried to get Tyler to talk the people from the Gaithers Plantation (which is down the road from where we currently live) to let us stay there overnight. Tyler was out there covering a story about it for the newspaper for Halloween (my birthday). It’s supposed to be really haunted. He didn’t ask; I think he was afraid.
The other major news is, it’s nearly the end of the semester, which means I’m nearly out of a job. The guys don’t keep a cook for the summer (which is silly as there are still plenty of guys living there). So during all of my down time at work I’ve been sending out my resume and researching job opportunities. Any one want to hire me? I’m a hard worker and have an excellent office/ administrative background. I’ll bring you cookies… Please? Applying for jobs is so stressful and somewhat disheartening. You see a job you want to apply for. You spend a good amount of time tweaking your resume and cover letter so it’s just perfect. You try to make it say all those things that are simply impossible to convey on paper, but that are key to getting the position: that you’re a motivated, hard worker, that you’re organized and good at time management, that you’re professional and courteous, that you’re smart and a quick learner, that just because you’ve never worked in that specific industry or with that specific computer program doesn’t mean you won’t be able to understand and get it right away, that you are absolutely sure that within mere weeks of being hired, you will become an indispensable, integral part of their team, and you’ll bake them cookies. Then you send it out like a little bird from the nest, and wait for a response to come flying back to you. But… it doesn’t. You begin to wonder, “Did they get it? Is it lost out there somewhere in cyberspace? Is it sitting at the bottom of thousands of other resumes, never to see the light of day? Did they use it to spit their gum into or to wipe up some spilled coffee?”. The waiting is terrible, and 99.9% of the time, you won’t hear a word from them. The first week, you’re excited about all the opportunities and are optomistic. By the third week, you’re despondent. I know you’re not supposed to take it personally, but it’s terribly hard not to. Couldn’t they at least send out a quick form e-mail letting us poor applicants know that they’ve actually received our resume and when to give up hope (as in, thanks, but no thanks). After almost 2 years of job hunting (off and on), I’m not sure which is worse, rejection by simply not ever saying anything or straight out rejection (we’ve met you and we’re not interested). No, maybe the worst is, “Thanks, but you’re over qualified”. Umm… but my bills aren’t. Meh.
Sorry to be so “dark”, but I hate job hunting. It makes me grumpy. So does crashing into a MARTA bus, as the bus I’m currently riding on nearly did. I also don’t like when recipes don’t turn out. Ok, it isn’t so much that the recipe didn’t turn out as the meat I purchased was really gristly. The recipe actually worked rather well (and is ridiculously simple). There were even a few boys who came poking their noses around wondering what the wonderful smell was. So, it smelled good and tasted good… the meat was just gristly. So, here is a wonderful recipe for super simple pot roast try not to use gristly meat. I’m giving you this recipe per roast… it’s just easier that way. Just multiply it by the number of roasts you’re going to make.
Super Simple Pot Roast
Serves 6
3 lbs Boneless Beef Roast (I used chuck roast)
2 packets Onion Soup Mix
¾ cup Water
¾ cup Ketchup
Preheat oven to 275. Mix ketchup, onion soup mix and water together. Place roast in a deep oven proof pan. Pour ketchup mixture over roast and cover tightly with foil. Bake for 3-4 hours or until roast is tender. You can serve the sauce from the bottom of the pan on top of the roast.
Dinner: Pot Roast, Roasted Potatoes and Veggies
So the count down begins for both the end of the semester and for Tyler and I to move. I hate moving; I hate packing; I hate unpacking. Since I started college (way back in 2003), I’ve moved at least once a year. I really hate it. However, we’re renters. With every house we’ve rented there’s always a catch, something that we’ve disliked. Something we’re sure we’ll find an improvement upon in the next house. When you’re a renter, you can’t improve a house, not in any real sense. If you have leaky windows and doors, you’re not going to make an investment in fixing them. If you need a fenced-in yard and you don’t have one, you’re not going try to put one up. And if your living room is oddly shaped and only has 1 power outlet which is nowhere near the cable outlet, you’re definitely not going to rewire the house (a. we don’t know how b. we’re not going to pay someone to do it). Then there’s always the idea that there’s something better, something cheaper out there. Towards the end of your lease you start to wonder if the perfect house (for the perfect price, at the perfect location) isn’t out there and you’re just about to miss it. Well, our new house is far from perfect. In fact, on the outside it’s downright ugly and the kitchen and bathroom are ugly too. However, it’s nearly $300 cheaper and it’s in town (not 20 minutes outside of town in the sticks like our current house). It also has a fenced in yard, a ton of storage space, pretty wood floors, and nicely sized rooms. Did I mention that’s it’s nearly $300 cheaper and not out in the boonies? We’re also fairly sure it’s haunted. It looks like it should be haunted. The attic stairs are narrow, dark and super creepy and when we first looked at the house there was a creepy, broken child’s rocking chair in the attic. I love it. I love creepy old houses. I tried to get Tyler to talk the people from the Gaithers Plantation (which is down the road from where we currently live) to let us stay there overnight. Tyler was out there covering a story about it for the newspaper for Halloween (my birthday). It’s supposed to be really haunted. He didn’t ask; I think he was afraid.
The other major news is, it’s nearly the end of the semester, which means I’m nearly out of a job. The guys don’t keep a cook for the summer (which is silly as there are still plenty of guys living there). So during all of my down time at work I’ve been sending out my resume and researching job opportunities. Any one want to hire me? I’m a hard worker and have an excellent office/ administrative background. I’ll bring you cookies… Please? Applying for jobs is so stressful and somewhat disheartening. You see a job you want to apply for. You spend a good amount of time tweaking your resume and cover letter so it’s just perfect. You try to make it say all those things that are simply impossible to convey on paper, but that are key to getting the position: that you’re a motivated, hard worker, that you’re organized and good at time management, that you’re professional and courteous, that you’re smart and a quick learner, that just because you’ve never worked in that specific industry or with that specific computer program doesn’t mean you won’t be able to understand and get it right away, that you are absolutely sure that within mere weeks of being hired, you will become an indispensable, integral part of their team, and you’ll bake them cookies. Then you send it out like a little bird from the nest, and wait for a response to come flying back to you. But… it doesn’t. You begin to wonder, “Did they get it? Is it lost out there somewhere in cyberspace? Is it sitting at the bottom of thousands of other resumes, never to see the light of day? Did they use it to spit their gum into or to wipe up some spilled coffee?”. The waiting is terrible, and 99.9% of the time, you won’t hear a word from them. The first week, you’re excited about all the opportunities and are optomistic. By the third week, you’re despondent. I know you’re not supposed to take it personally, but it’s terribly hard not to. Couldn’t they at least send out a quick form e-mail letting us poor applicants know that they’ve actually received our resume and when to give up hope (as in, thanks, but no thanks). After almost 2 years of job hunting (off and on), I’m not sure which is worse, rejection by simply not ever saying anything or straight out rejection (we’ve met you and we’re not interested). No, maybe the worst is, “Thanks, but you’re over qualified”. Umm… but my bills aren’t. Meh.
Sorry to be so “dark”, but I hate job hunting. It makes me grumpy. So does crashing into a MARTA bus, as the bus I’m currently riding on nearly did. I also don’t like when recipes don’t turn out. Ok, it isn’t so much that the recipe didn’t turn out as the meat I purchased was really gristly. The recipe actually worked rather well (and is ridiculously simple). There were even a few boys who came poking their noses around wondering what the wonderful smell was. So, it smelled good and tasted good… the meat was just gristly. So, here is a wonderful recipe for super simple pot roast try not to use gristly meat. I’m giving you this recipe per roast… it’s just easier that way. Just multiply it by the number of roasts you’re going to make.
Super Simple Pot Roast
Serves 6
3 lbs Boneless Beef Roast (I used chuck roast)
2 packets Onion Soup Mix
¾ cup Water
¾ cup Ketchup
Preheat oven to 275. Mix ketchup, onion soup mix and water together. Place roast in a deep oven proof pan. Pour ketchup mixture over roast and cover tightly with foil. Bake for 3-4 hours or until roast is tender. You can serve the sauce from the bottom of the pan on top of the roast.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Busy Week
Sooo… I’m sorry it’s been a couple days since I’ve posted. It’s been a very busy couple days.
To start, the concert was excellent. Our seats were so-so but I can’t complain too much because they were free. Michael Franti was very entertaining and very energetic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a grown man bounce for an hour straight. John Mayer is an excellent guitar player, but I don’t really understand why people find him all that attractive. He makes the strangest faces when singing; he looked like he was in pain. We wouldn’t have been able to tell what kind of faces he made from our seats, but they had an enormous screen behind him that would do close-ups on his face. All I can say is eeefft. There was also a teenage boy in front of us who was there with his mom. You’d think the kid was at a heavy metal concert instead of John Mayer. He was standing up and head-banging… to Heartbreak Warfare. Yeah… not normal. But all in all it was a very good night.
Tyler almost lost a very dear friend this week. It was touch and go for a while, but it appears his dearest friend has made a recovery and will pull through. This friend, of course, is his PS3. While in the middle of killing Nazi zombies, it just stopped. It gave a feeble hum and then blinked the yellow light of death. Tyler was frantic. He spent the better part of last week researching possible problems and solutions on the internet. The PS3 apparently has problems with overheating. When it overheats, it can cause the solder on the hard drive to melt and the hard drive to pull away from whatever it was connected to. Sony will fix the problem… for $150 plus shipping and handling. Oh and they will get it back to you within only 90 days. The thought of being without his friend for 90 days caused Tyler to do something drastic, he decided to try and fix it himself. There are, apparently, detailed videos on just how to do this on you tube. But, Tyler isn’t exactly handy… When something breaks he asks me to come and take a look at it (because I know anything about riding lawn mowers…). When I told my dad about Tyler’s plans, he offered to help. So Tyler and I headed up to mom and dad’s this weekend and they attempted to fix it. There was much sweating and stressing and talk of needing to imbibe to help with the nerves. I guess it was a very precise and delicate procedure requiring the removal of many screws. In the end, they fixed it and all seems to be back to normal. Tyler celebrated by having his friend come over with his PS3 and they set two TVs up in the living room so they could kill zombies together.
This coming week is spring break, and I am off for a week. While the thought of sleeping in and not having to deal with traffic is nice, I really hate not having anything constructive to do. Sure there are things I can do around the house, but it isn’t quite the same. I think it stems from all the time I spent unemployed after Tyler and I got married. It also doesn’t help that I’m waiting to hear about an application I put in. Keep your fingers crossed for me. As if waiting on an application weren’t enough, we’re also waiting to hear about this house we want to rent. As much as I hate packing and moving, I love changing stuff around and redecorating. I’m having daydreams about how I would position furniture and decorate. (I never said I was normal).
I do have a recipe for you. I’m going to do my best to keep recipes coming this week, mostly because there’s a whole bunch that I want to try while I’m at home and have time. I came up with this recipe because enchiladas are tasty and delicious but take waaay to much time to roll (esp. when you’re making them in bulk) and they just end up falling apart when you pull them out of the pan anyway. So I thought… why not make it in layers like a Mexican lasagna, and why not add frozen corn and black beans because you have some stray frozen corn and black beans. The result was a cheesy delicious and filing concoction that I will most definitely be making again, not just for the guys but at home as well. I would like to try it with chicken or perhaps some ground turkey.
Mexican Lasagna
Serves 25
7 lbs Ground Beef
3 cans Black Beans, drained and rinsed
3 ½ cups Frozen Corn
8-10 cups Shredded Cheddar Cheese
4 ½ cups Water
3 tbs Chili Powder
1 1/2 tbs Dried Oregano Leaves
1 tbs Ground Cumin
5 cans Diced Chilies
8 cloves Garlic, minced
120 oz Tomato Sauce
24-30 Corn Tortillas, 6 inches in diameter
Salt and Pepper
Preheat oven to 350. Brown ground beef and garlic in a large skillet over medium heat and season with salt and pepper; drain. Add frozen corn and black beans. Meanwhile in a large sauce pan, combine the tomato sauce, water, chili powder, cumin, diced chilies salt and pepper. Cover and heat over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Spoon a small amount of sauce in the bottom of 2 baking pans. Top with a layer of corn tortillas, overlapping slightly. Top tortillas with a layer of ground beef, another layer of sauce and a layer of cheese. Repeat. Top with a final layer of tortillas, sauce and the remaining cheese. Heat, uncovered for 20 minutes or until sauce is hot and bubbly and the cheese is melty and beginning to brown. Serve with sour cream.
To start, the concert was excellent. Our seats were so-so but I can’t complain too much because they were free. Michael Franti was very entertaining and very energetic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a grown man bounce for an hour straight. John Mayer is an excellent guitar player, but I don’t really understand why people find him all that attractive. He makes the strangest faces when singing; he looked like he was in pain. We wouldn’t have been able to tell what kind of faces he made from our seats, but they had an enormous screen behind him that would do close-ups on his face. All I can say is eeefft. There was also a teenage boy in front of us who was there with his mom. You’d think the kid was at a heavy metal concert instead of John Mayer. He was standing up and head-banging… to Heartbreak Warfare. Yeah… not normal. But all in all it was a very good night.
Tyler almost lost a very dear friend this week. It was touch and go for a while, but it appears his dearest friend has made a recovery and will pull through. This friend, of course, is his PS3. While in the middle of killing Nazi zombies, it just stopped. It gave a feeble hum and then blinked the yellow light of death. Tyler was frantic. He spent the better part of last week researching possible problems and solutions on the internet. The PS3 apparently has problems with overheating. When it overheats, it can cause the solder on the hard drive to melt and the hard drive to pull away from whatever it was connected to. Sony will fix the problem… for $150 plus shipping and handling. Oh and they will get it back to you within only 90 days. The thought of being without his friend for 90 days caused Tyler to do something drastic, he decided to try and fix it himself. There are, apparently, detailed videos on just how to do this on you tube. But, Tyler isn’t exactly handy… When something breaks he asks me to come and take a look at it (because I know anything about riding lawn mowers…). When I told my dad about Tyler’s plans, he offered to help. So Tyler and I headed up to mom and dad’s this weekend and they attempted to fix it. There was much sweating and stressing and talk of needing to imbibe to help with the nerves. I guess it was a very precise and delicate procedure requiring the removal of many screws. In the end, they fixed it and all seems to be back to normal. Tyler celebrated by having his friend come over with his PS3 and they set two TVs up in the living room so they could kill zombies together.
This coming week is spring break, and I am off for a week. While the thought of sleeping in and not having to deal with traffic is nice, I really hate not having anything constructive to do. Sure there are things I can do around the house, but it isn’t quite the same. I think it stems from all the time I spent unemployed after Tyler and I got married. It also doesn’t help that I’m waiting to hear about an application I put in. Keep your fingers crossed for me. As if waiting on an application weren’t enough, we’re also waiting to hear about this house we want to rent. As much as I hate packing and moving, I love changing stuff around and redecorating. I’m having daydreams about how I would position furniture and decorate. (I never said I was normal).
I do have a recipe for you. I’m going to do my best to keep recipes coming this week, mostly because there’s a whole bunch that I want to try while I’m at home and have time. I came up with this recipe because enchiladas are tasty and delicious but take waaay to much time to roll (esp. when you’re making them in bulk) and they just end up falling apart when you pull them out of the pan anyway. So I thought… why not make it in layers like a Mexican lasagna, and why not add frozen corn and black beans because you have some stray frozen corn and black beans. The result was a cheesy delicious and filing concoction that I will most definitely be making again, not just for the guys but at home as well. I would like to try it with chicken or perhaps some ground turkey.
Mexican Lasagna
Serves 25
7 lbs Ground Beef
3 cans Black Beans, drained and rinsed
3 ½ cups Frozen Corn
8-10 cups Shredded Cheddar Cheese
4 ½ cups Water
3 tbs Chili Powder
1 1/2 tbs Dried Oregano Leaves
1 tbs Ground Cumin
5 cans Diced Chilies
8 cloves Garlic, minced
120 oz Tomato Sauce
24-30 Corn Tortillas, 6 inches in diameter
Salt and Pepper
Preheat oven to 350. Brown ground beef and garlic in a large skillet over medium heat and season with salt and pepper; drain. Add frozen corn and black beans. Meanwhile in a large sauce pan, combine the tomato sauce, water, chili powder, cumin, diced chilies salt and pepper. Cover and heat over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Spoon a small amount of sauce in the bottom of 2 baking pans. Top with a layer of corn tortillas, overlapping slightly. Top tortillas with a layer of ground beef, another layer of sauce and a layer of cheese. Repeat. Top with a final layer of tortillas, sauce and the remaining cheese. Heat, uncovered for 20 minutes or until sauce is hot and bubbly and the cheese is melty and beginning to brown. Serve with sour cream.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Luck o' the Irish
Lunch: Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup
Dinner: Beef and Beef Irish Stew and Bread
After yesterday’s bread debacle, today has seemed like a breeze. Perhaps I have the luck of the Irish with me. (I did wear green, the fear of being pinched at the frat house was too great) I got here, made sandwiches and soup, threw together some stew and cut up the bread I got from Wal-mart this morning. So far there have been no major mishaps, snafus or concerns. Right now I’m just sitting around waiting for the stew to be done enough for me to leave it on warm for the next several hours. In fact I should be done and on the road by around 2:30. That’s a record for me. Of course, I don’t usually start dinner until 2 most days because I don’t want it to end up soggy or gross from sitting in a warming oven for 3 hours. But tonight’s dinner is stew and bread. I’m fairly sure it won’t hurt the stew (or the bread) to sit around for awhile.
I was planning on making cookies today if there was going to be time. While I do happen to have plenty of time, I find I’m rather short on eggs. Apparently the guys have gotten into the milk, the eggs and the mozzarella cheese. I guess they were hungry for omelets last night? I don’t really mind not having to make cookies (it gives me time to write this), but I know there are going to be some very disappointed guys this week. They get very up in arms over desserts. I have a feeling someone will be tarred, feathered and run out of town tonight when it’s discovered that there will be no cookies this week. I hope they take pictures.
Beef and Beer Irish Stew
Serves 25
12 lbs Stew Meat
15 Carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
8-10 lbs Potatoes, roughly chopped
2 med Onions, roughly chopped
24 oz Tomato Paste
8 cloves Garlic, Crushed
2 quarts Beef Stock
4 ½ cups Dark Beer (Guinness or Amber Bock)
1 tbs Thyme
Salt
Pepper
1 cup Flour
Vegetable Oil
Preheat oven to 300. On the stove, heat oil in a large dutch oven. Mix salt and pepper with flour and dust the stew meat. Brown the stew meat on all sides in the hot oil. You may need to do this in 2 batches. Remove meat and add onion, garlic and tomato paste. Sauté onions until tender, about 5 minutes. Add beer and scrape up any bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Return the meat to the dutch oven and stir in the beef stock, potatoes and carrots. Cover tightly and bake for 2 to 3 hours or until meat is tender. Serve with rye bread (or soda bread, if you dare).
Dinner: Beef and Beef Irish Stew and Bread
After yesterday’s bread debacle, today has seemed like a breeze. Perhaps I have the luck of the Irish with me. (I did wear green, the fear of being pinched at the frat house was too great) I got here, made sandwiches and soup, threw together some stew and cut up the bread I got from Wal-mart this morning. So far there have been no major mishaps, snafus or concerns. Right now I’m just sitting around waiting for the stew to be done enough for me to leave it on warm for the next several hours. In fact I should be done and on the road by around 2:30. That’s a record for me. Of course, I don’t usually start dinner until 2 most days because I don’t want it to end up soggy or gross from sitting in a warming oven for 3 hours. But tonight’s dinner is stew and bread. I’m fairly sure it won’t hurt the stew (or the bread) to sit around for awhile.
I was planning on making cookies today if there was going to be time. While I do happen to have plenty of time, I find I’m rather short on eggs. Apparently the guys have gotten into the milk, the eggs and the mozzarella cheese. I guess they were hungry for omelets last night? I don’t really mind not having to make cookies (it gives me time to write this), but I know there are going to be some very disappointed guys this week. They get very up in arms over desserts. I have a feeling someone will be tarred, feathered and run out of town tonight when it’s discovered that there will be no cookies this week. I hope they take pictures.
Beef and Beer Irish Stew
Serves 25
12 lbs Stew Meat
15 Carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
8-10 lbs Potatoes, roughly chopped
2 med Onions, roughly chopped
24 oz Tomato Paste
8 cloves Garlic, Crushed
2 quarts Beef Stock
4 ½ cups Dark Beer (Guinness or Amber Bock)
1 tbs Thyme
Salt
Pepper
1 cup Flour
Vegetable Oil
Preheat oven to 300. On the stove, heat oil in a large dutch oven. Mix salt and pepper with flour and dust the stew meat. Brown the stew meat on all sides in the hot oil. You may need to do this in 2 batches. Remove meat and add onion, garlic and tomato paste. Sauté onions until tender, about 5 minutes. Add beer and scrape up any bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Return the meat to the dutch oven and stir in the beef stock, potatoes and carrots. Cover tightly and bake for 2 to 3 hours or until meat is tender. Serve with rye bread (or soda bread, if you dare).
Monday, March 1, 2010
And the Gold Medal for Extreme Grocery Shopping Goes to...
Lunch: Hot Ham and Cheese Sandwiches and Chips
Dinner: Dirty Rice and Green Beans
I am soo tired and soo bored! I am also soo tired of being bored. Between Friday afternoon and Sunday, I probably spent 12-13 hours in the car. It all started Friday afternoon on the way home from work. Traffic is always bad on Friday afternoon, but it doesn’t generally start getting really bad until after 3:30. I got done with groceries early that day (extreme grocery shopping should totally be an Olympic sport) and got out of work around 2:30. I was excited because I thought I was totally going to get home early and bypass the worst of the traffic. Boy was I wrong! It took me nearly an extra hour to get home because of a baby bison on the interstate. No, I’m not kidding. Apparently the bison fell off of a truck and was hit by a car and caused a big pileup. All lanes of traffic were stopped until they could get the cars and the bison off the road. Then Saturday morning we got up early to head down to my hubby’s hometown. The 3 ½ hour drive to this tiny town in the middle of nowhere is quite possibly the longest and most boring drive in the world (unless, that is, you’re driving across Kansas, Wyoming or eastern Colorado). Then we had to turn around and make the trip back again the next day. When we got home Sunday, we had to get back in the car to take the dog up to Conyers to get him bathed. We normally just bathe him outside with the hose, but it was too cold and he desperately needed a bath after my mother-in-law’s drooly mongrel slobbered on him so much that his fur actually stood on end and was crunchy. Come to think of it, this has been a rather traumatic weekend for me and the dog.
So in other news, I think that extreme grocery shopping should totally be an Olympic sport. The event would consist of being given a very long list of groceries which you would then have to go and purchase (using the minimum of at least 2 stores), load and unload the groceries and get them put up. The event would be judged on time it took, how cheaply you were able to get the groceries and style points for how well the groceries were loaded on the carts. Points would be deducted for groceries that fell off the cart or out of the car and forgetting items. The event would require intense training, athleticism and concentration. I’m sure I would medal… possibly even get the platinum. (If you’ve been following the Olympics, you’d get that). Yesterday, I managed to get everything in record time and even came in 50 cents under budget. No mean feat considering the fact that they just docked $20 off my already stretched weekly budget. The question is. is it a summer or a winter sport?
Last tidbit of the day before I get to the recipe:
Here is today’s frat house news. One of the brother’s is sick. He came down hoping for sympathy. In a very sympathetic way, I crossed my fingers, hissed and told him to go away (hey, I don’t get sick days!). In other news, Sun Chips has a new biodegradable bag. The boys especially love cheddar Sun Chips, but they apparently hate the new biodegradable bag. One complained very loudly and persistently that the chip bag was too loud (yeah… I’ll get right on to fixing that). Lastly, hot ham and cheese sandwiches are apparently universally loved at the frat house. They are nothing more than slices of ham and American cheese stacked on toasted French bread, but the guys were gushing about them like it was a feat of sheer culinary genius.
Today’s Recipe:
Dirty Rice
Dirty Rice is great because it’s super cheap to make, easy to make in large quantities and generally very appealing to boys as it is little more than ham, hamburger, rice and Cajun spices. Add a quick salad and you’ve got a meal that children and grown children (guys) will love.
Dirty Rice
Serves 25
3 quarts Long Grain White Rice
1 ½ gallons Chicken Broth
20 cloves Garlic, minced
2 med Onions, diced
3 cups Green Bell Pepper, diced
3 cups Ham, diced
¼ cup Butter
1/8 cup Cajun Seasoning Mix (like Tony Chachere’s or Zatarains)
1/8 cup Tabasco Sauce
2 tbs Dried Thyme
4 Bay Leaves
6 pounds Ground Beef
Melt butter in a large sauté pan. Add onions, garlic, green pepper and ham. Sauté until onions are tender; add Cajun seasoning, tabasco sauce, dried thyme and bay leaves and remove from heat. In a large stock pot, add rice, stock and veggie mix. Stir together and bring to a boil. When rice mixture comes to a rapid boil, lower heat and cover. Simmer for 20 minutes.
In sauté pan, brown hamburger. Season hamburger lightly with salt and pepper. Drain cooked hamburger and add in to rice and veggies.
Dinner: Dirty Rice and Green Beans
I am soo tired and soo bored! I am also soo tired of being bored. Between Friday afternoon and Sunday, I probably spent 12-13 hours in the car. It all started Friday afternoon on the way home from work. Traffic is always bad on Friday afternoon, but it doesn’t generally start getting really bad until after 3:30. I got done with groceries early that day (extreme grocery shopping should totally be an Olympic sport) and got out of work around 2:30. I was excited because I thought I was totally going to get home early and bypass the worst of the traffic. Boy was I wrong! It took me nearly an extra hour to get home because of a baby bison on the interstate. No, I’m not kidding. Apparently the bison fell off of a truck and was hit by a car and caused a big pileup. All lanes of traffic were stopped until they could get the cars and the bison off the road. Then Saturday morning we got up early to head down to my hubby’s hometown. The 3 ½ hour drive to this tiny town in the middle of nowhere is quite possibly the longest and most boring drive in the world (unless, that is, you’re driving across Kansas, Wyoming or eastern Colorado). Then we had to turn around and make the trip back again the next day. When we got home Sunday, we had to get back in the car to take the dog up to Conyers to get him bathed. We normally just bathe him outside with the hose, but it was too cold and he desperately needed a bath after my mother-in-law’s drooly mongrel slobbered on him so much that his fur actually stood on end and was crunchy. Come to think of it, this has been a rather traumatic weekend for me and the dog.
So in other news, I think that extreme grocery shopping should totally be an Olympic sport. The event would consist of being given a very long list of groceries which you would then have to go and purchase (using the minimum of at least 2 stores), load and unload the groceries and get them put up. The event would be judged on time it took, how cheaply you were able to get the groceries and style points for how well the groceries were loaded on the carts. Points would be deducted for groceries that fell off the cart or out of the car and forgetting items. The event would require intense training, athleticism and concentration. I’m sure I would medal… possibly even get the platinum. (If you’ve been following the Olympics, you’d get that). Yesterday, I managed to get everything in record time and even came in 50 cents under budget. No mean feat considering the fact that they just docked $20 off my already stretched weekly budget. The question is. is it a summer or a winter sport?
Last tidbit of the day before I get to the recipe:
Here is today’s frat house news. One of the brother’s is sick. He came down hoping for sympathy. In a very sympathetic way, I crossed my fingers, hissed and told him to go away (hey, I don’t get sick days!). In other news, Sun Chips has a new biodegradable bag. The boys especially love cheddar Sun Chips, but they apparently hate the new biodegradable bag. One complained very loudly and persistently that the chip bag was too loud (yeah… I’ll get right on to fixing that). Lastly, hot ham and cheese sandwiches are apparently universally loved at the frat house. They are nothing more than slices of ham and American cheese stacked on toasted French bread, but the guys were gushing about them like it was a feat of sheer culinary genius.
Today’s Recipe:
Dirty Rice
Dirty Rice is great because it’s super cheap to make, easy to make in large quantities and generally very appealing to boys as it is little more than ham, hamburger, rice and Cajun spices. Add a quick salad and you’ve got a meal that children and grown children (guys) will love.
Dirty Rice
Serves 25
3 quarts Long Grain White Rice
1 ½ gallons Chicken Broth
20 cloves Garlic, minced
2 med Onions, diced
3 cups Green Bell Pepper, diced
3 cups Ham, diced
¼ cup Butter
1/8 cup Cajun Seasoning Mix (like Tony Chachere’s or Zatarains)
1/8 cup Tabasco Sauce
2 tbs Dried Thyme
4 Bay Leaves
6 pounds Ground Beef
Melt butter in a large sauté pan. Add onions, garlic, green pepper and ham. Sauté until onions are tender; add Cajun seasoning, tabasco sauce, dried thyme and bay leaves and remove from heat. In a large stock pot, add rice, stock and veggie mix. Stir together and bring to a boil. When rice mixture comes to a rapid boil, lower heat and cover. Simmer for 20 minutes.
In sauté pan, brown hamburger. Season hamburger lightly with salt and pepper. Drain cooked hamburger and add in to rice and veggies.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Spaghetti Burgers are Great!
Lunch: Pizza
Dinner: Spaghetti Burgers, Pasta Salad and Veggies
So… the other morning I apparently turned my alarm off without waking up. I was in the middle of this really weird dream; I was being attacked by three tiny old women in big “going to church” hats. Only, I didn’t know they were old women, I thought they were bugs so I swung my arms out to swat them away. Only, I actually swung my arms out and hit the water glass off my night stand and the water in the cup splashed all over the dog, who was apparently still fast asleep, and caused him to wake up and yelp like he was being beaten. I just thought you should know.
Dinner tonight is somewhat of a meat-fest. There is meat in all parts of the dinner, so I’m fairly sure the guys will be pleased. I made Italian pasta salad (pasta, home-made Italian dressing, feta, olives and pepperoni), green beans with bacon and spaghetti burgers. Spaghetti burgers are something I thought up one night when I saw some bulk Italian sausage at the grocery store. They really came about because of Tyler’s peculiar dislikes. He doesn’t like bread unless it’s toasted; he really loves it if it’s garlic toast. He also dislikes most anything you would put on a normal hamburger (ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, tomatoes, lettuce…). I really love hamburgers and I really wanted a burger. Tyler really loves spaghetti. Voila! I made patties with the sausage, threw on some provolone (or mozzarella when we have that) and topped it with some extra thick marinara sauce and put it all on garlic toast. It was fantastic. Over time, it’s evolved into regular hamburger patties with Italian seasonings (sausage patties are way too greasy). My next plan is to try it with ground chicken mixed with a parmesan cheese and a little egg (ground chicken doesn’t hold together as well as hamburger when you put it in a patty, so the addition of a little egg is usually helpful). I will call it a chicken parmesan burger. Perhaps I will submit it to the hamburger cook-off. I think that’s got to be worth a prize, especially if you top it a little crispy pancetta on some toasted ciabatta. Mmmm… Can you tell I’m hungry?
Aside from making delicious and creative burgers ( J ) I also love to tease the guys. There is a large white board on the wall just outside the kitchen. It is used to indicate which of the guys need a “save plate” that night. They guys will also write stupid drunk messages on it when they’re stupid and drunk. I use it to communicate things to the guys. For example, sometimes I serve milk with Friday brunch and it can’t sit out like soda, so I write on the board so the guys know it’s there. Or perhaps, like this evening, there’s a cold side-dish for dinner or there’s cheese or sour cream or something that needs to accompany dinner. I’ve also used it to convey dinner instructions. Last semester I’d made a Moroccan chicken stew. The stew is meant to be served on top of cous cous. Knowing that the guys would not know this instinctively, I wrote some instructions for how to serve themselves. The guys apparently decided that it was an affront; they didn’t require instructions on how to eat. (Of course, clearly some of them didn’t get it because they said the cous cous was tasteless plain. Yeah, it’s meant to have stew on top of it….). They weren’t really insulted, but being the little buttheads that they are they wrote a bunch of snarky comments back on the board. I have since then had fun writing tongue-in-cheek comments on the board to them anytime I’ve needed to convey some sort of special dinner prep instructions. For dinner tonight I thought I should let them know how to build a spaghetti burger, so I put up the anatomy of a spaghetti burger complete with labeled diagram. I can’t wait till tomorrow to see what they had to say about that (or write about it).
Spaghetti Burgers
Serves 25 College Boys
10 + lbs Lean Ground Beef
Seasoning Salt
Italian Herb Mix (Basil, Oregano, Thyme, and Crushed Rosemary)
Seasoning Salt
25 Hamburger Buns
40 Hamburger Buns
Butter
Garlic Powder
40 slices Provolone Cheese
Extra Thick Marinara
There are 2 ways of make the hamburgers, you can either season the meat and then make them into patties or you can make them into patties and then sprinkle them with seasoning. I personally mix a couple handfuls of the Italian herbs into the meat and then season the outside with Lawry’s (ok… so that’s three ways). Make approx. 40 burgers. Then grill, broil, or pan fry your burgers to your desired level of doneness. A few minutes before they’re done, top each patty with a slice of cheese so the cheese will melt a little on the burger.
Meanwhile, butter the insides of the buns and put them on a baking sheet, butter side up. Sprinkle the buns with garlic powder and Italian herbs. Toast them in a hot oven or under the broiler.
Extra Thick Marinara
4 15oz cans Tomato Sauce
4 15oz cans Tomato Purée
6 small cans Tomato Paste
Garlic Powder
Salt and Pepper
Italian Herbs Mix
Mix all ingredients together (season to taste) in a large covered sauce pan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and simmer covered for 15 minutes, stirring frequently.
Note: Do not use jar spaghetti sauce like Prego or Ragu as a substitute for the extra thick marinara. It is too watery and runny and it will just make your bread soggy. You will regret it! If you want a quick substitute, use jar/ canned pizza sauce. Hunt’s pizza sauce works really well, if you can find it. It has a good taste and it’s watery, runny or greasy.
Dinner: Spaghetti Burgers, Pasta Salad and Veggies
So… the other morning I apparently turned my alarm off without waking up. I was in the middle of this really weird dream; I was being attacked by three tiny old women in big “going to church” hats. Only, I didn’t know they were old women, I thought they were bugs so I swung my arms out to swat them away. Only, I actually swung my arms out and hit the water glass off my night stand and the water in the cup splashed all over the dog, who was apparently still fast asleep, and caused him to wake up and yelp like he was being beaten. I just thought you should know.
Dinner tonight is somewhat of a meat-fest. There is meat in all parts of the dinner, so I’m fairly sure the guys will be pleased. I made Italian pasta salad (pasta, home-made Italian dressing, feta, olives and pepperoni), green beans with bacon and spaghetti burgers. Spaghetti burgers are something I thought up one night when I saw some bulk Italian sausage at the grocery store. They really came about because of Tyler’s peculiar dislikes. He doesn’t like bread unless it’s toasted; he really loves it if it’s garlic toast. He also dislikes most anything you would put on a normal hamburger (ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, tomatoes, lettuce…). I really love hamburgers and I really wanted a burger. Tyler really loves spaghetti. Voila! I made patties with the sausage, threw on some provolone (or mozzarella when we have that) and topped it with some extra thick marinara sauce and put it all on garlic toast. It was fantastic. Over time, it’s evolved into regular hamburger patties with Italian seasonings (sausage patties are way too greasy). My next plan is to try it with ground chicken mixed with a parmesan cheese and a little egg (ground chicken doesn’t hold together as well as hamburger when you put it in a patty, so the addition of a little egg is usually helpful). I will call it a chicken parmesan burger. Perhaps I will submit it to the hamburger cook-off. I think that’s got to be worth a prize, especially if you top it a little crispy pancetta on some toasted ciabatta. Mmmm… Can you tell I’m hungry?
Aside from making delicious and creative burgers ( J ) I also love to tease the guys. There is a large white board on the wall just outside the kitchen. It is used to indicate which of the guys need a “save plate” that night. They guys will also write stupid drunk messages on it when they’re stupid and drunk. I use it to communicate things to the guys. For example, sometimes I serve milk with Friday brunch and it can’t sit out like soda, so I write on the board so the guys know it’s there. Or perhaps, like this evening, there’s a cold side-dish for dinner or there’s cheese or sour cream or something that needs to accompany dinner. I’ve also used it to convey dinner instructions. Last semester I’d made a Moroccan chicken stew. The stew is meant to be served on top of cous cous. Knowing that the guys would not know this instinctively, I wrote some instructions for how to serve themselves. The guys apparently decided that it was an affront; they didn’t require instructions on how to eat. (Of course, clearly some of them didn’t get it because they said the cous cous was tasteless plain. Yeah, it’s meant to have stew on top of it….). They weren’t really insulted, but being the little buttheads that they are they wrote a bunch of snarky comments back on the board. I have since then had fun writing tongue-in-cheek comments on the board to them anytime I’ve needed to convey some sort of special dinner prep instructions. For dinner tonight I thought I should let them know how to build a spaghetti burger, so I put up the anatomy of a spaghetti burger complete with labeled diagram. I can’t wait till tomorrow to see what they had to say about that (or write about it).
Spaghetti Burgers
Serves 25 College Boys
10 + lbs Lean Ground Beef
Seasoning Salt
Italian Herb Mix (Basil, Oregano, Thyme, and Crushed Rosemary)
Seasoning Salt
25 Hamburger Buns
40 Hamburger Buns
Butter
Garlic Powder
40 slices Provolone Cheese
Extra Thick Marinara
There are 2 ways of make the hamburgers, you can either season the meat and then make them into patties or you can make them into patties and then sprinkle them with seasoning. I personally mix a couple handfuls of the Italian herbs into the meat and then season the outside with Lawry’s (ok… so that’s three ways). Make approx. 40 burgers. Then grill, broil, or pan fry your burgers to your desired level of doneness. A few minutes before they’re done, top each patty with a slice of cheese so the cheese will melt a little on the burger.
Meanwhile, butter the insides of the buns and put them on a baking sheet, butter side up. Sprinkle the buns with garlic powder and Italian herbs. Toast them in a hot oven or under the broiler.
Extra Thick Marinara
4 15oz cans Tomato Sauce
4 15oz cans Tomato Purée
6 small cans Tomato Paste
Garlic Powder
Salt and Pepper
Italian Herbs Mix
Mix all ingredients together (season to taste) in a large covered sauce pan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and simmer covered for 15 minutes, stirring frequently.
Note: Do not use jar spaghetti sauce like Prego or Ragu as a substitute for the extra thick marinara. It is too watery and runny and it will just make your bread soggy. You will regret it! If you want a quick substitute, use jar/ canned pizza sauce. Hunt’s pizza sauce works really well, if you can find it. It has a good taste and it’s watery, runny or greasy.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
FAIL!
Lunch Menu: Homemade Corn Dogs and French Fries
Dinner: Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, Salad and Breadsticks
Dessert: Peanut Butter Cookies
Ok, so it’s shaping up to be big fat fail week. Yesterday, I missed the bus and had to drive to work (I hate driving to work!). Then when I got to work, the internet wasn’t working. Bah! Today, I thought I’d get all creative and make homemade corn dogs. I found a recipe online for making oven-baked spicy corndogs. Perfect! Or so I thought. The thick batter stuck to the dogs really well, at least until I put them in the oven. The batter sort of slid off and made a pool around the dogs. It looked so bizarre with the hot dog just chilling, naked, in the middle of a cornbread biscuit. The sad part is, the crust tasted really good. It was sweet and spicy and crisp. It was everything you’d want wrapped around your hot dog… it just wasn’t wrapped around the hot dog. Because of their bizarre look, the guys didn’t really go for them. I seeing good food go to waste, but there was nothing I could do. Luckily tonight’s dinner was a safe one. I could make spaghetti with meat sauce in my sleep. By the way, the internet still wasn’t working. It’s really beginning to annoy me. What am I supposed to do in the afternoon if I can’t mess around on the internet? They said they were working on it, but I’ll believe that when I can start reading my 9 Chickweed Lane again every day. (Have you ever read that comic? It’s my favorite because they have a cat that is my George to a T complete with sleeping on the face and random spazz attacks.
Well, lunch may have been a big fat fail, but dinner last night wasn’t. I made red beans and rice with smoked sausage. I knew it was going to be popular when I had several guys come down to investigate what smelled so good. If the pied piper wanted to attract frat boys instead of rats, all he would have to do is put down his flute and sauté some sausage, onions and garlic together. I was going to grill the sausage, but it was really cold and windy yesterday. You can’t make me grill when the wind chill is 15. But, I didn’t hear any complaints. Next week I might be sneaky and do the spaghetti burgers on the griddle rather than on the grill…
Red Beans and Rice with Smoked Sausage
Serves 26-30
8 lbs Smoked Sausage
2 cups Onion, chopped
5 cloves Garlic, minced
1/3 cup Hot Sauce
2 ½ tsp salt
1 tsp Black Pepper
6 cans Diced Tomatoes, drained
10 cups Chicken Broth
5 cups Rice
5 cans Red Beans, drained (if you can’t find canned red beans, you can cook 2 lbs of the dried ones according to the directions on the bag)
Vegetable Oil
Slice the sausage into approx. ½ inch slices, cut in half again. Sauté half of the onion, garlic and sausage over medium high heat until onions are soft and translucent. Repeat with the remaining sausage garlic and onions. In a large stock pot, add meat, garlic and onions to the remaining ingredients. Stir well and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes or until rice is tender.
Note: You can grill the sausage, just omit it from the recipe and follow the directions for the rice and serve the sausage alongside the rice. You can make this meal lighter by substituting turkey sausage and brown rice.
Dinner: Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, Salad and Breadsticks
Dessert: Peanut Butter Cookies
Ok, so it’s shaping up to be big fat fail week. Yesterday, I missed the bus and had to drive to work (I hate driving to work!). Then when I got to work, the internet wasn’t working. Bah! Today, I thought I’d get all creative and make homemade corn dogs. I found a recipe online for making oven-baked spicy corndogs. Perfect! Or so I thought. The thick batter stuck to the dogs really well, at least until I put them in the oven. The batter sort of slid off and made a pool around the dogs. It looked so bizarre with the hot dog just chilling, naked, in the middle of a cornbread biscuit. The sad part is, the crust tasted really good. It was sweet and spicy and crisp. It was everything you’d want wrapped around your hot dog… it just wasn’t wrapped around the hot dog. Because of their bizarre look, the guys didn’t really go for them. I seeing good food go to waste, but there was nothing I could do. Luckily tonight’s dinner was a safe one. I could make spaghetti with meat sauce in my sleep. By the way, the internet still wasn’t working. It’s really beginning to annoy me. What am I supposed to do in the afternoon if I can’t mess around on the internet? They said they were working on it, but I’ll believe that when I can start reading my 9 Chickweed Lane again every day. (Have you ever read that comic? It’s my favorite because they have a cat that is my George to a T complete with sleeping on the face and random spazz attacks.
Well, lunch may have been a big fat fail, but dinner last night wasn’t. I made red beans and rice with smoked sausage. I knew it was going to be popular when I had several guys come down to investigate what smelled so good. If the pied piper wanted to attract frat boys instead of rats, all he would have to do is put down his flute and sauté some sausage, onions and garlic together. I was going to grill the sausage, but it was really cold and windy yesterday. You can’t make me grill when the wind chill is 15. But, I didn’t hear any complaints. Next week I might be sneaky and do the spaghetti burgers on the griddle rather than on the grill…
Red Beans and Rice with Smoked Sausage
Serves 26-30
8 lbs Smoked Sausage
2 cups Onion, chopped
5 cloves Garlic, minced
1/3 cup Hot Sauce
2 ½ tsp salt
1 tsp Black Pepper
6 cans Diced Tomatoes, drained
10 cups Chicken Broth
5 cups Rice
5 cans Red Beans, drained (if you can’t find canned red beans, you can cook 2 lbs of the dried ones according to the directions on the bag)
Vegetable Oil
Slice the sausage into approx. ½ inch slices, cut in half again. Sauté half of the onion, garlic and sausage over medium high heat until onions are soft and translucent. Repeat with the remaining sausage garlic and onions. In a large stock pot, add meat, garlic and onions to the remaining ingredients. Stir well and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes or until rice is tender.
Note: You can grill the sausage, just omit it from the recipe and follow the directions for the rice and serve the sausage alongside the rice. You can make this meal lighter by substituting turkey sausage and brown rice.
Monday, February 1, 2010
The Mondays
Meh… I’ve really got a case of the Monday’s. While I do enjoy my job, it is still a job and there are times that I simply don’t want to do it. I most certainly did not want to get up at 6am so I could stand be standing in the cold at the bus stop at dawn only to find the bus was 10 minutes late. I didn’t really want to walk a mile from the bus stop to work in the cold. I really didn’t want to have to track down someone with a key to open the pantry when I found it locked this morning (why don’t I have a key?). Then I had to make chicken quesadillas, which seemed suddenly very irksome and boring. It was definitely a case of the Mondays. I felt better after I went for a long walk around lunch time (a good start to my “mini French” diet/ new routine/lifestyle). After all the hullabaloo and stress over work the past few weeks, I’m glad things are getting back to a somewhat functioning “normal”. But, life at a frat house is never really normal. There are constant surprises and quandaries (why, for example, don’t they like strawberry Jello? I made a whole tray of it and they didn’t touch it. Perhaps I should have made jigglers and cut them into shapes…) There was also a nearly full case of beer in the fridge. This is truly a quandary because generally on Monday there’s only an empty cardboard case that the beer came in residing in the fridge. There was, however, an empty pan that contained the dregs of the chicken and dumpling I made last Thursday night. Apparently they really liked it, despite the fact that it was chock full of veggies. I’ll have to put up that recipe later on this week.
It is now nearly 10pm and I’m feeling like the Mondays might be spreading and become the Tuesdays… After all the bus home was 15 minutes late and then there was a big pile up on I-20. And if all that didn’t make the trip home long enough, on the way to dropping people off at one of the stops on the way home, we watched a large truck turn over on the on-ramp. No one was hurt, but the truck completely blocked the on ramp meaning that the bus had to take an alternate route and we got in 45 minutes late. Also it’s Monday night, Tyler’s big TV watching night which means I’m hiding in the bed room with head phones on. I hate 24; I think it’s stupid and really loud. Is it wrong of me to wish that our surround sound would mysteriously get “sick” every Monday night?
I did get to try a new recipe today, Italian Meatball Soup from the Pioneer Woman. As any good soup, it is a little time-consuming. If making it in bulk, it really requires a lot of chopping (4 cups each of potatoes, onions, celery, and carrots and 2 small cabbages) I also made home-made meatballs for it rather than cheating and getting the frozen mini meatballs. While I doubt the guys will appreciate the hard work of homemade meatballs, I don’t think the soup would have been nearly as fantabulous without them. They had lemon juice in them, very different but very tasty. Because I have the Mondays, I’m going to cheat a little and just post a link to the site. Because I’d never made it before, I didn’t really deviate from the recipe. I tried a little of it before I left, and it was heavenly. Fate will determine if the guys liked it, but it certainly filled the whole lodge with the most fabulous beefy, oniony homey smell (good smells in a frat house are none just a rarity but really unheard of). It hit levels of nirvana when I pulled the dinner rolls out of the oven. So here is the recipe in all of its glory: Italian-Meatball-Soup
Note: I did change how much meat was in the soup. I made a quadruple batch of the soup, but doubled the meat for that. So, if you quadruple the recipe it calls for 3 pounds of ground beef, well I did about 6.5-7. I feed frat boys. If I’m going to convince them to eat a soup full of cabbage and carrots, it better have meat in every bite. It worked out rather well and made for a very hearty soup. I also had to up the dose on all the other meatball ingredients. So, to recap I quadrupled the soup ingredients and octupled the meatball recipe. (Ok, octuple is a word, I double checked it at dictionary.com, so why is my spell check saying it’s wrong?)
It is now nearly 10pm and I’m feeling like the Mondays might be spreading and become the Tuesdays… After all the bus home was 15 minutes late and then there was a big pile up on I-20. And if all that didn’t make the trip home long enough, on the way to dropping people off at one of the stops on the way home, we watched a large truck turn over on the on-ramp. No one was hurt, but the truck completely blocked the on ramp meaning that the bus had to take an alternate route and we got in 45 minutes late. Also it’s Monday night, Tyler’s big TV watching night which means I’m hiding in the bed room with head phones on. I hate 24; I think it’s stupid and really loud. Is it wrong of me to wish that our surround sound would mysteriously get “sick” every Monday night?
I did get to try a new recipe today, Italian Meatball Soup from the Pioneer Woman. As any good soup, it is a little time-consuming. If making it in bulk, it really requires a lot of chopping (4 cups each of potatoes, onions, celery, and carrots and 2 small cabbages) I also made home-made meatballs for it rather than cheating and getting the frozen mini meatballs. While I doubt the guys will appreciate the hard work of homemade meatballs, I don’t think the soup would have been nearly as fantabulous without them. They had lemon juice in them, very different but very tasty. Because I have the Mondays, I’m going to cheat a little and just post a link to the site. Because I’d never made it before, I didn’t really deviate from the recipe. I tried a little of it before I left, and it was heavenly. Fate will determine if the guys liked it, but it certainly filled the whole lodge with the most fabulous beefy, oniony homey smell (good smells in a frat house are none just a rarity but really unheard of). It hit levels of nirvana when I pulled the dinner rolls out of the oven. So here is the recipe in all of its glory: Italian-Meatball-Soup
Note: I did change how much meat was in the soup. I made a quadruple batch of the soup, but doubled the meat for that. So, if you quadruple the recipe it calls for 3 pounds of ground beef, well I did about 6.5-7. I feed frat boys. If I’m going to convince them to eat a soup full of cabbage and carrots, it better have meat in every bite. It worked out rather well and made for a very hearty soup. I also had to up the dose on all the other meatball ingredients. So, to recap I quadrupled the soup ingredients and octupled the meatball recipe. (Ok, octuple is a word, I double checked it at dictionary.com, so why is my spell check saying it’s wrong?)
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Hidden Tomatoes
Lunch Menu: Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, Chicken Noodle Soup and Tomato Soup
Dinner Menu: Roast Chicken, Roasted Red Potatoes and Green Beans
So… this is a frat kitchen and things break. Things break all the time because a. the things were cheap to begin with, frat boys don’t tend to purchase things with thoughts of them enduring beyond their stay here and b. it’s a frat house and things get used, abused and just plain trashed. Yesterday I noticed that the BBQ chicken I had put out for lunch was cold after an hour. I had put it on the black and decker griddle turned warming plate (they are after all, essentially the same thing), turned the griddle on and left it as usual. The guys, oddly, didn’t say anything about the cold chicken. (Eww… hot things should be kept at 160 otherwise they become a bacterial breeding ground. Besides who wants to eat a cold BBQ chicken sandwich?) I mentioned that we needed a new one to the guys in charge, but in the mean time I have to find a way to keep stuff warm over lunch. While some might enjoy cold tomato soup, I doubt gazpacho is something the guys will go for. Because of this, I have guys traipsing in and out of my kitchen (grrr!). However, it did lead to me to an interesting insight. One of the guys, in complementing the lovely meal I made last night (Swedish meatballs, buttered egg noodles and broccoli and cauliflower), let me know that none of the guys ate the veggies. He said, “We’re just not veggie people”. Then he filled up a big bowl of tomato soup and said, “Mmm, grilled cheese and tomato soup, my favorite!”. One of my rotational lunches is grilled cheese and a choice of chicken noodle or tomato soup. It’s easy and cheap and generally well liked (they are gourmands, not gourmets). While none of the guys may have touched the veggies last night, it seems that tomato soup is the favorite today. Never having monitored the soup intake before, I find it rather amusing. I didn’t even hide the veggie here. It’s right out there in all its pureed goodness. The most amusing part is that the same gentleman from above let me know that I put too many tomatoes in my chili. Yet here he is filling up on tomato soup. Some things I will never understand.
I had my first taste of Swedish meatballs at Ikea. At first I wouldn’t try them because with the light tan gravy, they look a little like they’re covered in snot. Then I tried them, and I found that I loved them. Tyler and I used to live rather close to Ikea and would sometimes go for a lunch of meatballs and walk it off looking at the interesting room configurations (if you’re going, plan on spending an afternoon and coming out with at least 3 things you didn’t plan on purchasing… like a room-size rug and an giant stuffed rat). Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Eww… over processed, mass-produced meatballs from a furniture store?”. Well, we all have our dirty little secrets and one of mine is meatballs. (So you can just hush! I won’t say anything about the McDonalds cheeseburger/ stadium nachos/ movie theater popcorn drowned in “butter” habit you have). Now that we no longer live within lunching distance of Ikea, I had to find another way to get my Swedish meatball fix. I researched recipes on the web, and came across one that looked promising, a little complicated, but promising. Well… it was ruination and a trip to pizza hut that night. With humiliation, I shelved my Swedish meatball dreams and stuck to random trips to the big blue box (Ikea…). Then… it crept back up. I was flipping through my Rachel Ray Orange Cookbook over the holidays trying to come up with some new meal ideas for the upcoming semester when I saw it, a recipe for Swedish meatballs. Say what you will about her, but Rachel Ray’s recipes are usually simple, straight forward and many of them are guy friendly. Well, I tried it out, making a couple changes as per usual, and found it was easy and resulted in a very tasty meatball and gravy. It was perfect to serve to the guys, and I could make a few changes for home to make it more figure friendly (I’m not going to bother with figure friendly for the guys; it’s wasted on them). Besides, who doesn’t love the novelty of a surprise ingredient? Cookies in the gravy…
Swedish Meatballs
Serves 25
10 lbs Ground Beef
1 cup Flour
2 cups Butter
7 ½ cups low sodium Beef Stock*
7 ½ cups low sodium Chicken Stock*
Salt and Pepper
14 slices White Bread, torn up
1 ¾ cups Milk
7 Eggs
2 tbs and 1 tsp Ground Allspice
35 Gingersnap Cookies, ground fine**
Pre heat oven to 375. In a bowl, pour milk over bread slices and soak briefly. Remove bread, squeezing to get rid of excess milk. In a mixer combine bread, ground beef, allspice, eggs, salt and pepper. Mix until combine thoroughly. Using a cookie scoop or your hands, portion out meatballs so they are roughly the size of a walnut (about a large tablespoon’s worth). Arrange meatballs on a cookie sheet so they are about ½ inch apart. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until cooked all the way through.
Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, melt butter. When butter is completely melted, whisk in flour; cook for 1 minute. Add chicken stock and beef stock to the saucepan slowly, whisking while you do to prevent clumps. Season with salt and pepper. Bring mixture to a boil then lower the temperature and simmer for 10 minutes. The gravy should be on the thin side. Add in ground gingersnap cookies, whisking to prevent clumps. Add the gingersnap cookies, whisking to prevent clumps (they will thicken the gravy). Add in the meatballs and simmer for 5 minutes. Serve over noodles, mashed potatoes, rice, etc.
* You may need more stock depending on how thick the gravy turns out; you don’t want it to be too thick as the gingersnaps will thicken it later.
**If get small cookies, you may want to do 40-45 cookies. I used about ¾ a pound of gingersnaps.
A family friendly/ Slightly Healthier version:
Serves 5
1 ½ lbs Ground Turkey Breast or Ground Chicken Breast
¼ cup Low-Cal Butter (Yay Smart Balance)
2 tbs Flour
1 cup low sodium Beef Stock
1 cup low sodium Chicken Stock
2 slices Whole Wheat Bread, torn
¼ cup Skim Milk
1 egg
1 tsp Ground Allspice
Salt and Pepper
Follow the directions from above
Dinner Menu: Roast Chicken, Roasted Red Potatoes and Green Beans
So… this is a frat kitchen and things break. Things break all the time because a. the things were cheap to begin with, frat boys don’t tend to purchase things with thoughts of them enduring beyond their stay here and b. it’s a frat house and things get used, abused and just plain trashed. Yesterday I noticed that the BBQ chicken I had put out for lunch was cold after an hour. I had put it on the black and decker griddle turned warming plate (they are after all, essentially the same thing), turned the griddle on and left it as usual. The guys, oddly, didn’t say anything about the cold chicken. (Eww… hot things should be kept at 160 otherwise they become a bacterial breeding ground. Besides who wants to eat a cold BBQ chicken sandwich?) I mentioned that we needed a new one to the guys in charge, but in the mean time I have to find a way to keep stuff warm over lunch. While some might enjoy cold tomato soup, I doubt gazpacho is something the guys will go for. Because of this, I have guys traipsing in and out of my kitchen (grrr!). However, it did lead to me to an interesting insight. One of the guys, in complementing the lovely meal I made last night (Swedish meatballs, buttered egg noodles and broccoli and cauliflower), let me know that none of the guys ate the veggies. He said, “We’re just not veggie people”. Then he filled up a big bowl of tomato soup and said, “Mmm, grilled cheese and tomato soup, my favorite!”. One of my rotational lunches is grilled cheese and a choice of chicken noodle or tomato soup. It’s easy and cheap and generally well liked (they are gourmands, not gourmets). While none of the guys may have touched the veggies last night, it seems that tomato soup is the favorite today. Never having monitored the soup intake before, I find it rather amusing. I didn’t even hide the veggie here. It’s right out there in all its pureed goodness. The most amusing part is that the same gentleman from above let me know that I put too many tomatoes in my chili. Yet here he is filling up on tomato soup. Some things I will never understand.
I had my first taste of Swedish meatballs at Ikea. At first I wouldn’t try them because with the light tan gravy, they look a little like they’re covered in snot. Then I tried them, and I found that I loved them. Tyler and I used to live rather close to Ikea and would sometimes go for a lunch of meatballs and walk it off looking at the interesting room configurations (if you’re going, plan on spending an afternoon and coming out with at least 3 things you didn’t plan on purchasing… like a room-size rug and an giant stuffed rat). Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Eww… over processed, mass-produced meatballs from a furniture store?”. Well, we all have our dirty little secrets and one of mine is meatballs. (So you can just hush! I won’t say anything about the McDonalds cheeseburger/ stadium nachos/ movie theater popcorn drowned in “butter” habit you have). Now that we no longer live within lunching distance of Ikea, I had to find another way to get my Swedish meatball fix. I researched recipes on the web, and came across one that looked promising, a little complicated, but promising. Well… it was ruination and a trip to pizza hut that night. With humiliation, I shelved my Swedish meatball dreams and stuck to random trips to the big blue box (Ikea…). Then… it crept back up. I was flipping through my Rachel Ray Orange Cookbook over the holidays trying to come up with some new meal ideas for the upcoming semester when I saw it, a recipe for Swedish meatballs. Say what you will about her, but Rachel Ray’s recipes are usually simple, straight forward and many of them are guy friendly. Well, I tried it out, making a couple changes as per usual, and found it was easy and resulted in a very tasty meatball and gravy. It was perfect to serve to the guys, and I could make a few changes for home to make it more figure friendly (I’m not going to bother with figure friendly for the guys; it’s wasted on them). Besides, who doesn’t love the novelty of a surprise ingredient? Cookies in the gravy…
Swedish Meatballs
Serves 25
10 lbs Ground Beef
1 cup Flour
2 cups Butter
7 ½ cups low sodium Beef Stock*
7 ½ cups low sodium Chicken Stock*
Salt and Pepper
14 slices White Bread, torn up
1 ¾ cups Milk
7 Eggs
2 tbs and 1 tsp Ground Allspice
35 Gingersnap Cookies, ground fine**
Pre heat oven to 375. In a bowl, pour milk over bread slices and soak briefly. Remove bread, squeezing to get rid of excess milk. In a mixer combine bread, ground beef, allspice, eggs, salt and pepper. Mix until combine thoroughly. Using a cookie scoop or your hands, portion out meatballs so they are roughly the size of a walnut (about a large tablespoon’s worth). Arrange meatballs on a cookie sheet so they are about ½ inch apart. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until cooked all the way through.
Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, melt butter. When butter is completely melted, whisk in flour; cook for 1 minute. Add chicken stock and beef stock to the saucepan slowly, whisking while you do to prevent clumps. Season with salt and pepper. Bring mixture to a boil then lower the temperature and simmer for 10 minutes. The gravy should be on the thin side. Add in ground gingersnap cookies, whisking to prevent clumps. Add the gingersnap cookies, whisking to prevent clumps (they will thicken the gravy). Add in the meatballs and simmer for 5 minutes. Serve over noodles, mashed potatoes, rice, etc.
* You may need more stock depending on how thick the gravy turns out; you don’t want it to be too thick as the gingersnaps will thicken it later.
**If get small cookies, you may want to do 40-45 cookies. I used about ¾ a pound of gingersnaps.
A family friendly/ Slightly Healthier version:
Serves 5
1 ½ lbs Ground Turkey Breast or Ground Chicken Breast
¼ cup Low-Cal Butter (Yay Smart Balance)
2 tbs Flour
1 cup low sodium Beef Stock
1 cup low sodium Chicken Stock
2 slices Whole Wheat Bread, torn
¼ cup Skim Milk
1 egg
1 tsp Ground Allspice
Salt and Pepper
Follow the directions from above
Monday, December 14, 2009
Picky Picky Picky
Sorry for another soup entry, but it’s been rather dismal weather here. It’s been foggy and rainy and just plain blah. Plus, my husband loves soup. A fact I find hilarious, as when I first met him he said that he hated soup, all soup. Perhaps I should tell you a little something about my husband. He is one of the world’s pickiest eaters. If he tried something once when he was younger, and didn’t like, it and anything sort of like it are relegated to the land of things Tyler won’t eat. And let me tell you, just a quarter of what’s in that land could feed the world for at least a year. Soup, all kinds and forms of soup, were residents of that land. I couldn’t figure this out. All soup? How is that even possible? The truth was, he didn’t really like canned soup. He’d never had homemade soup. So because he didn’t like Campbell’s chicken and stars, all soup was out.
I don’t really skip for joy over canned soup either, but I was lucky. My mother is an excellent cook who tries all sorts of new things, and is an excellent maker of soup. It also helped that picky wasn’t tolerated at our house. You ate what was on the table, and if you didn’t like something, you had to take at least a bite of it anyway. While there are some critics of this method, it does have its good points; after all, our tastes change as we grow. I hated sausage when I was little, and though it’s still not my favorite I’ll eat it sometimes and I’ll even cook with it. I have an excellent recipe for sausage kabobs… Well, that’s not how my husband was raised and it drives me nuts. I love variety, and nothing makes me happier than getting in the kitchen and trying something new. It has been a trial with Tyler, but he’s slowly coming around. For the curious, here’s a list of things he was sure he hated when I first met him that he now either loves or at least tolerates: any kind of soup (he will now eat turkey noodle, chicken noodle, chili, and Italian chicken and sausage soup), barbeque (I know, the ultimate man food right?), fresh green beans, zucchini, homemade spaghetti sauce, pork chops or pork tenderloin, summer squash, mashed potatoes (actually any kind of potato that wasn’t fried), hummus or Greek food, and lasagna.
P.S. I love you Tyler, even if you don’t like veggies!
Easy Chili
Serves 5
1 ½ pound Lean Ground Beef
1 med Onion, chopped fine
2 cloves Garlic
1 can Diced Tomatoes, 15 oz
1 can Tomato Sauce, 15 oz
1 can Chili Beans, 15 oz
1 can Kidney Beans, 15 oz drained
1 tbs Chili Powder
2 tsp Cumin
1 tsp Ground Cayenne (Optional)
2 tsp Dried Oregano
Salt to taste
In a 5 qt dutch oven or soup pot, brown hamburger with onions and garlic. Drain and return to pot. Stir in remaining ingredients and simmer covered for 15-20 minutes stirring occasionally.
The seasoning measurements are really more suggestions. I tend to like a spicy chili, so I use more chili powder and cayenne than I put in the recipe. I find this recipe is one of those taste as you go sort of things.
I don’t really skip for joy over canned soup either, but I was lucky. My mother is an excellent cook who tries all sorts of new things, and is an excellent maker of soup. It also helped that picky wasn’t tolerated at our house. You ate what was on the table, and if you didn’t like something, you had to take at least a bite of it anyway. While there are some critics of this method, it does have its good points; after all, our tastes change as we grow. I hated sausage when I was little, and though it’s still not my favorite I’ll eat it sometimes and I’ll even cook with it. I have an excellent recipe for sausage kabobs… Well, that’s not how my husband was raised and it drives me nuts. I love variety, and nothing makes me happier than getting in the kitchen and trying something new. It has been a trial with Tyler, but he’s slowly coming around. For the curious, here’s a list of things he was sure he hated when I first met him that he now either loves or at least tolerates: any kind of soup (he will now eat turkey noodle, chicken noodle, chili, and Italian chicken and sausage soup), barbeque (I know, the ultimate man food right?), fresh green beans, zucchini, homemade spaghetti sauce, pork chops or pork tenderloin, summer squash, mashed potatoes (actually any kind of potato that wasn’t fried), hummus or Greek food, and lasagna.
P.S. I love you Tyler, even if you don’t like veggies!
Easy Chili
Serves 5
1 ½ pound Lean Ground Beef
1 med Onion, chopped fine
2 cloves Garlic
1 can Diced Tomatoes, 15 oz
1 can Tomato Sauce, 15 oz
1 can Chili Beans, 15 oz
1 can Kidney Beans, 15 oz drained
1 tbs Chili Powder
2 tsp Cumin
1 tsp Ground Cayenne (Optional)
2 tsp Dried Oregano
Salt to taste
In a 5 qt dutch oven or soup pot, brown hamburger with onions and garlic. Drain and return to pot. Stir in remaining ingredients and simmer covered for 15-20 minutes stirring occasionally.
The seasoning measurements are really more suggestions. I tend to like a spicy chili, so I use more chili powder and cayenne than I put in the recipe. I find this recipe is one of those taste as you go sort of things.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
2 for Tuesday, Round 2
Tuesday Menu: Lunch: Pizza (Pepperoni, Buffalo Chicken, Ham, and Supreme)
Dinner: Roast Beef, Garlic Cheese Potatoes, Veggie and Rolls
Is it nap time? After all the rush and confusion of the past couple weeks, a regular old Tuesday seems a little sleepy. Or maybe I’m just a little sleepy. I don’t need to put the roast in until 2… Sadly, I don’t think a nap will be possible. I could just imagine the guys coming down to get pizza, poking their head in the kitchen and seeming me snoring away… Yeah, probably not a good idea. Besides, this chair (I stole it from the dining area) is not all that comfortable. I’m probably giving myself scoliosis as we speak (type? blog? whatever)
So, as a nap is out of the question (well… mostly out of the question, we’ll see how the next couple hours go) I’ve been perusing the internet, checking out my favorite food blogs, facebook stalking and trying to decide what seasoning I want to rub onto tonight’s roast. So, why not share with you all a few of my favorite sites. Now, this doesn’t mean you can stop coming back here… I’m just giving you options for a sleepy Tuesday afternoon, when you’re done reading my blog of course.
www.ThePioneerWoman.com : This is probably one of my favorite blogs, it’s got it all. A love story, excellent recipes, beautiful photography (and hints on how to make yours pretty too!), funny dogs, and give aways. I haven’t won anything yet… but I’m going to continue to try. I’m really hoping for one of those Le Creuset sets.
www.cookingforengineers.com: I just thought this one was funny. I cook for engineers (it’s GA tech, most of them are going to be engineers of one form or another) and this site is a breakdown of cooking and recipes for people with analytical minds (not me necessarily but I still like it)
www.threemanycooks.com: this one is mostly just about the recipes, although the stories are interesting. I feel like a lot of it could be part of a conversation between my sister, my mom and I (minus the fact that none of us are exactly published cooking professionals)
www.mylifeisaverage.com : Wait… did I put that there… I mean… no uh this doesn’t belong here, I don’t know how it got there… (guilty pleasure?)
**** Some time later****
Alright… I think I’ve discovered the formula for seasoning my roasts:
Roast Beef ala Kristen
20 lbs Sirloin Tip Roast (the ones with the strings around them)
Olive Oil
Salt
Coarse Ground Pepper
Rosemary
Thyme
Approx 32 whole cloves of garlic
(ok… so there aren’t exact measurements, but they really aren’t needed for this recipe)
Bring roast(s) to room temperature 1 hour before cooking. Preheat oven to 375. Cut small slits in roast, just big enough to stick your finger down. Shove a garlic in each little slit so there are approx 8 in each roast (depending on how big the roast is… etc). Drizzle a few tablespoons of olive oil over roast, sprinkle with salt, rosemary, thyme and a generous sprinkle of pepper. Rub evenly over top of roast. Turn roast over and drizzle bottom with olive oil and salt and pepper and herbs. Put the beef in a roasting pan with a rack. Cook for 30 minutes. Lower temp to 275 and cook until internal temperature comes to: 130 rare, 145 medium rare, 160 medium, 170 well done (approx 1 ½-2 hours more). Allow the roast to sit for 15 minutes under a foil tent. Slice and serve with gravy.
So as I promised, today is 2 for Tuesday… this next recipe isn’t on tonight’s menu, but I’ve made it before and absolutely love it. It’s super easy and makes an excellent side dish for Russian Chicken (see previous post) or for just about anything. Try it sometime instead of going for the Lipton noodles or Rice-A-Roni.
Buttered Noodles
Serves 28
5 lbs Egg noodles, cooked according to package instructions (the good kind of egg noodles that are thick and opaque white)
2 cups Melted butter
2 tbs Garlic Powder (or more depending on taste)
¼ cup Dried Parsley
Salt and Pepper
Combine and serve hot.
Dinner: Roast Beef, Garlic Cheese Potatoes, Veggie and Rolls
Is it nap time? After all the rush and confusion of the past couple weeks, a regular old Tuesday seems a little sleepy. Or maybe I’m just a little sleepy. I don’t need to put the roast in until 2… Sadly, I don’t think a nap will be possible. I could just imagine the guys coming down to get pizza, poking their head in the kitchen and seeming me snoring away… Yeah, probably not a good idea. Besides, this chair (I stole it from the dining area) is not all that comfortable. I’m probably giving myself scoliosis as we speak (type? blog? whatever)
So, as a nap is out of the question (well… mostly out of the question, we’ll see how the next couple hours go) I’ve been perusing the internet, checking out my favorite food blogs, facebook stalking and trying to decide what seasoning I want to rub onto tonight’s roast. So, why not share with you all a few of my favorite sites. Now, this doesn’t mean you can stop coming back here… I’m just giving you options for a sleepy Tuesday afternoon, when you’re done reading my blog of course.
www.ThePioneerWoman.com : This is probably one of my favorite blogs, it’s got it all. A love story, excellent recipes, beautiful photography (and hints on how to make yours pretty too!), funny dogs, and give aways. I haven’t won anything yet… but I’m going to continue to try. I’m really hoping for one of those Le Creuset sets.
www.cookingforengineers.com: I just thought this one was funny. I cook for engineers (it’s GA tech, most of them are going to be engineers of one form or another) and this site is a breakdown of cooking and recipes for people with analytical minds (not me necessarily but I still like it)
www.threemanycooks.com: this one is mostly just about the recipes, although the stories are interesting. I feel like a lot of it could be part of a conversation between my sister, my mom and I (minus the fact that none of us are exactly published cooking professionals)
www.mylifeisaverage.com : Wait… did I put that there… I mean… no uh this doesn’t belong here, I don’t know how it got there… (guilty pleasure?)
**** Some time later****
Alright… I think I’ve discovered the formula for seasoning my roasts:
Roast Beef ala Kristen
20 lbs Sirloin Tip Roast (the ones with the strings around them)
Olive Oil
Salt
Coarse Ground Pepper
Rosemary
Thyme
Approx 32 whole cloves of garlic
(ok… so there aren’t exact measurements, but they really aren’t needed for this recipe)
Bring roast(s) to room temperature 1 hour before cooking. Preheat oven to 375. Cut small slits in roast, just big enough to stick your finger down. Shove a garlic in each little slit so there are approx 8 in each roast (depending on how big the roast is… etc). Drizzle a few tablespoons of olive oil over roast, sprinkle with salt, rosemary, thyme and a generous sprinkle of pepper. Rub evenly over top of roast. Turn roast over and drizzle bottom with olive oil and salt and pepper and herbs. Put the beef in a roasting pan with a rack. Cook for 30 minutes. Lower temp to 275 and cook until internal temperature comes to: 130 rare, 145 medium rare, 160 medium, 170 well done (approx 1 ½-2 hours more). Allow the roast to sit for 15 minutes under a foil tent. Slice and serve with gravy.
So as I promised, today is 2 for Tuesday… this next recipe isn’t on tonight’s menu, but I’ve made it before and absolutely love it. It’s super easy and makes an excellent side dish for Russian Chicken (see previous post) or for just about anything. Try it sometime instead of going for the Lipton noodles or Rice-A-Roni.
Buttered Noodles
Serves 28
5 lbs Egg noodles, cooked according to package instructions (the good kind of egg noodles that are thick and opaque white)
2 cups Melted butter
2 tbs Garlic Powder (or more depending on taste)
¼ cup Dried Parsley
Salt and Pepper
Combine and serve hot.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)