The frustration continues. So, I totally meant to write last Thursday, but as you may know I didn't. I didn't because I was frustrated and confused and all aflutter. You see, I went to my interview Thursday afternoon and I was fine. I was calm, cool and confident. I got into the interview and they asked questions and I answered and all was going well. Then just as the interview was wrapping up, they said “And now we need a writing sample. We'll give you 30 minutes to write a one to two minute congratulatory speech on the opening of the new Kia plant in Georgia”. Wah?! To put this in perspective, a one minute speech is about a typed page worth of words. I also know absolutely nothing about Kia. If I had a couple hours, I could probably have whipped up a killer speech about whatever they wanted (clearly I like to write) but 30 minutes isn't even enough time to type out 2 pages worth of material let alone research something that you know nothing about. Well, I researched a little online and came up with some interesting facts about Kia and the new plant they built (they are the only plant in North America to put wood floors on the production line, which is apparently easier on the workers). I had just enough time to write about 2 paragraphs and they came and said time's up. The sentences were disjointed and not cohesive, there was no flow whatsoever, and I hadn't even put any sort of closing on the speech. I was sweating bullets. I know I can write (although it's been a long time since I've written any type of formal speech). I know I can research, and I know that measly handful of sentences was not my best work; it wasn't even mediocre. So, when I got home Thursday night I was in no mood to write or really do much of anything. I spent this whole weekend kicking myself. Ok, so I spent the whole weekend kicking myself minus the time that I partying hardy at a bachelorette party, and that was only because I was too drunk to do so. The kicking recommenced Sunday morning with the added bonus of also getting to kick myself for drinking so much the night before.
Fast forward to yesterday... I got a call. They want to see me again Wednesday because the Consul General wants to ask a few more questions. Arg! How much longer can they string this along? The job is supposed to start this coming Monday. I suppose at least it isn't a no, but I'm not entirely sure what this means. My sister thinks it's so they can offer me the job in person (best case scenario). I think it's because they are waffling between candidates and want to ask more questions (most likely scenario). Of course, they could have been bored and decided to make a game of torturing me (worst case scenario). Meh!
So, needless to say, all I have been able to think about for the past several days has been this job. Clearly I will be thinking about it for a few more days. But... in the meantime you can make my newest recipe: Ranch Chicken. The guys liked it so much that they ran out (over 12lbs of chicken for 24 people).
Ranch Chicken
Serves 6
6 Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts
2 packets of Ranch Salad Dressing Mix
2 cups Milk
2 cups Low Fat or Fat Free Plain Yogurt
2 medium Tomatoes, sliced
12 slices of Bacon
1 cup Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese
Mix together the dressing mix, milk and yogurt. Flatten chicken breasts between two sheets of waxed paper until chicken breasts are an even thickness. Pour over the chicken and refrigerate for 1-3 hours.
Remove chicken and shake off any extra dressing. Broil for approximately 7 minutes per side or until chicken is cooked through. Top each breast with a couple slices of tomato, a couple slices of bacon and a small handful of cheese. Return to the broiler and broil until cheese melts, 2-3 minutes.
Showing posts with label Main Dish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Main Dish. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Life Happens
Ok, so I know I promised you an oven baked fish recipe and a lower calorie mac and cheese recipe. Here’s what happened, it didn’t happen. Friday, the day I had planned to make these delicacies, was A. much to hot for extended oven baking and B. Tyler was supposed to be home at 6pm and he was, but then there was catastrophic failure at work and he had to go back in. So, we had pigs in a blanket because they were fast and didn’t require extended oven usage. Then this weekend was super busy, and it really didn’t happen. What can I say, life happens.
Oh by the way, a shout out to all mothers… Happy Mother’s Day! I would especially like to thank my mother. If you want to know where my love for cooking and creativity in the kitchen comes from, it is most definitely from my mother.
Speaking of life happens, I’m still out of work. Bah humbug. My parents are redoing their kitchen and wanted to repaint… basically the whole house. The problem, dad decided he really didn’t want to paint it himself. So, he asked me if I wanted to paint for a little extra cash. Ok… I’m not sure if I ever mentioned that I do not paint for a living and have never painted for a living. As a matter of fact, I’ve only ever had a few major home décor painting projects and I’ve never painted crown molding (eek, a ladder!). Perhaps I should also mention that my dad is a paint perfectionist. (Perhaps being a second generation in the paint industry has something to do with it). So to say that I was a little nervous getting started today is an understatement. While I don’t mind painting, I think I’d like a real job. Preferably not one an hour an a half away (the commute to my parent’s). Not that I'm not grateful to my excellent parents for enabling me to pay the rent... I'm just fairly sure that I want a real job at a desk not on top of a tall ladder painting crown molding.
The good news is I did come up with a new recipe this weekend. I made some Chicken Fajita Quesadillas. They turned out fabulous. I made them in the oven, which I think is an ingenious way to make quesadillas especially when you want to make several. They crisp up nicely and you only have to turn them once so there’s no worry about everything falling out. There’s also no need to get a silly quesadilla machine. Serve these with a little sour cream, guacamole and a margarita.
Chicken Fajita Quesadillas
Serves 4
1 lb Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast, cut into thin strips
3 cups Shredded Mexican Blend Cheese, divided
8-10 6-inch Tortillas
1 cup Bell Pepper (any color or a mix of colors) cut into strips
1 cup Onion, cut into thin strips
1 medium Tomato, cut into thin wedges
Fajita Mix (use store bought or you can make your own with the recipe below)
Vegetable Oil
Cooking Spray
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large skillet, heat 1 tbs of oil over medium-high heat. Add the peppers and onions and sauté until onion is tender. Remove the vegetables from skillet and add a little extra oil. Brown chicken until cooked through. Add vegetables back into the pan along with the fajita mix and 3 tbs of water. Add in tomato wedges and simmer, uncovered for 3-5 minutes or until water is mostly evaporated. Spray the one side of each of the tortillas with cooking spray and arrange half of them, sprayed side down, on a greased cookie sheet. Using half of the cheese, spread equal amounts of cheese on each of the tortillas. Arrange a layer of chicken and vegetables on each tortilla (try to keep the layers as flat as possible to make for easier handling). Sprinkle the remaining cheese on the top of the chicken and vegetables and top with the remaining tortillas, sprayed side up. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes, turning once halfway through.
Fajita Seasoning Mix
Note: I never seem to have a packet of taco or fajita seasoning on hand when I want it. But with the help of a little internet research, I found that I usually have all the ingredients I need for a good seasoning mix already in my cupboard, plus then I can control how spicy or salty the mix is.
This mix is the equivalent of one spice packet… seasons one pound of meat
1 ½ tsp Chili Powder (I used Chipotle Chili Powder for a smoky kick)
1 tsp Salt
½ tsp Ground Cumin
¼ tsp Onion Powder
½ tsp Garlic Powder
¼ tsp Black Pepper
A pinch of Ground Cayenne Pepper (Optional)
1 tbs Cornstarch
Mix ingredients together and use as you would a packet of fajita seasoning
Oh by the way, a shout out to all mothers… Happy Mother’s Day! I would especially like to thank my mother. If you want to know where my love for cooking and creativity in the kitchen comes from, it is most definitely from my mother.
Speaking of life happens, I’m still out of work. Bah humbug. My parents are redoing their kitchen and wanted to repaint… basically the whole house. The problem, dad decided he really didn’t want to paint it himself. So, he asked me if I wanted to paint for a little extra cash. Ok… I’m not sure if I ever mentioned that I do not paint for a living and have never painted for a living. As a matter of fact, I’ve only ever had a few major home décor painting projects and I’ve never painted crown molding (eek, a ladder!). Perhaps I should also mention that my dad is a paint perfectionist. (Perhaps being a second generation in the paint industry has something to do with it). So to say that I was a little nervous getting started today is an understatement. While I don’t mind painting, I think I’d like a real job. Preferably not one an hour an a half away (the commute to my parent’s). Not that I'm not grateful to my excellent parents for enabling me to pay the rent... I'm just fairly sure that I want a real job at a desk not on top of a tall ladder painting crown molding.
The good news is I did come up with a new recipe this weekend. I made some Chicken Fajita Quesadillas. They turned out fabulous. I made them in the oven, which I think is an ingenious way to make quesadillas especially when you want to make several. They crisp up nicely and you only have to turn them once so there’s no worry about everything falling out. There’s also no need to get a silly quesadilla machine. Serve these with a little sour cream, guacamole and a margarita.
Chicken Fajita Quesadillas
Serves 4
1 lb Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast, cut into thin strips
3 cups Shredded Mexican Blend Cheese, divided
8-10 6-inch Tortillas
1 cup Bell Pepper (any color or a mix of colors) cut into strips
1 cup Onion, cut into thin strips
1 medium Tomato, cut into thin wedges
Fajita Mix (use store bought or you can make your own with the recipe below)
Vegetable Oil
Cooking Spray
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large skillet, heat 1 tbs of oil over medium-high heat. Add the peppers and onions and sauté until onion is tender. Remove the vegetables from skillet and add a little extra oil. Brown chicken until cooked through. Add vegetables back into the pan along with the fajita mix and 3 tbs of water. Add in tomato wedges and simmer, uncovered for 3-5 minutes or until water is mostly evaporated. Spray the one side of each of the tortillas with cooking spray and arrange half of them, sprayed side down, on a greased cookie sheet. Using half of the cheese, spread equal amounts of cheese on each of the tortillas. Arrange a layer of chicken and vegetables on each tortilla (try to keep the layers as flat as possible to make for easier handling). Sprinkle the remaining cheese on the top of the chicken and vegetables and top with the remaining tortillas, sprayed side up. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes, turning once halfway through.
Fajita Seasoning Mix
Note: I never seem to have a packet of taco or fajita seasoning on hand when I want it. But with the help of a little internet research, I found that I usually have all the ingredients I need for a good seasoning mix already in my cupboard, plus then I can control how spicy or salty the mix is.
This mix is the equivalent of one spice packet… seasons one pound of meat
1 ½ tsp Chili Powder (I used Chipotle Chili Powder for a smoky kick)
1 tsp Salt
½ tsp Ground Cumin
¼ tsp Onion Powder
½ tsp Garlic Powder
¼ tsp Black Pepper
A pinch of Ground Cayenne Pepper (Optional)
1 tbs Cornstarch
Mix ingredients together and use as you would a packet of fajita seasoning
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
UPDATE
Lunch: Chicken Quesadillas, Chips and Salsa
Dinner: Chicken Parmesan, Spaghetti and Salad
UPDATE: So, when I arrived at my old landlord’s office yesterday just before 3:30pm, he wasn’t there. Apparently he goes home every day between 2 and 3. Urgh! He said he would call us and let us know when he was available. Well, there’s no way I could leave work early today (I have cinnamon rolls to prep), and I certainly wouldn’t be able to make it from downtown Atlanta all the way out to Conyers (where his office is located) at the drop of a hat. So, poor Tyler had to wake up early and take me to the bus. I must admit, I really don’t feel that bad for Tyler. He completely balked at the idea of having to wake up early, and I had to kindly point out that not only was this a one time deal, but that I have to get up that early every morning (and he’s always poking fun at me because I want to go to bed before 11pm). I hate only having one car.
In other news, the frat boys have run amuck. Apparently the stress of finals and the upcoming, relative freedom of summer has made them take leave of what little brains and civility they had. They completely cleaned out the fridge over the weekend, and by cleaned I mean ate everything they could find like a bunch of Hoover vacuums. So, if they’re short on chicken quesadillas today because those buttheads ate the tortillas and cheese (again with the cheese!), then I really don’t care. I’m feeling a bit of the end of semester lassez-faire as well. They want to eat the cheese and tortillas? Ok, I’ll put out a big bowl of canned chicken with taco seasoning and call it lunch. They also took an entire gallon of whole milk that was needed for cinnamon rolls. I sent the steward a quick e-mail letting him know I would be unable to make cinnamon rolls because we had no milk. Unsurprisingly, he went out and bought a gallon of milk right away. Ahh the power of cinnamon rolls! In order to discourage any further thieving, I left a note on the whiteboard: “Dear Lodge Inhabitants, If you remove or “borrow” any of the following ingredients, it will result in my being unable to make cinnamon rolls for tomorrow: sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, cinnamon, flour, butter, milk, maple and vanilla” Hopefully, that will deter them. I’m serious about not making cinnamon rolls if any of it’s missing, even if they only wanted a glass of milk.
Today’s recipe is oven-baked chicken parmesan. Tyler’s favorite “Italian” dish is chicken parmesan. I would bet anyone any amount of money that, no matter what Italian restaurant we go to, so long as they have chicken parmesan on the menu, that’s what he’s ordering. I wanted to make it for the guys, sautéing it in oil on the stove would take waaay to long. So I came up with this version. I adapted the coating from my chicken cordon bleu recipe. Dipping the chicken in butter and then in the breading makes the bread crumbs turn crispy (rather than soggy) in the oven. As a plus, because this recipe is done in the oven (rather than on the stove, dripping with oil) it’s also a little healthier. (Note: I said healthier, not calorie free, it still has butter and parmesan cheese). I used chicken tenders, but you can use chicken breasts. If you are using chicken breasts, I would pound them a little to make them thinner so the breading doesn’t burn while you’re waiting for the chicken to get done. This is also an excellent breading recipe for fish (you’ll have to adjust the time though).
Oven Baked Parmesan Cheese
Serves 6
1 ½ lbs Chicken Tenders
1 1/4 cups Bread Crumbs
1 ¼ cups Parmesan
2 ½ tbs Italian Seasoning
2 tsp Garlic Powder
1 cup Butter or Margarine, melted
Salt and Pepper to taste (you’ll only need a little salt because the cheese is salty)
Preheat oven to 350; lightly spray a shallow baking pan (or cookie sheet with sides) with cooking spray. Combine bread crumbs, parmesan, italian seasoning, garlic powder and salt and pepper in a small bowl. Dip chicken in butter and shake off excess. Roll chicken in bread crumb mixture being sure to thoroughly coat with bread crumbs and place on pan in a single layer. Bake for approx 20 minutes turning midway through. Serve with spaghetti and marinara sauce.
Dinner: Chicken Parmesan, Spaghetti and Salad
UPDATE: So, when I arrived at my old landlord’s office yesterday just before 3:30pm, he wasn’t there. Apparently he goes home every day between 2 and 3. Urgh! He said he would call us and let us know when he was available. Well, there’s no way I could leave work early today (I have cinnamon rolls to prep), and I certainly wouldn’t be able to make it from downtown Atlanta all the way out to Conyers (where his office is located) at the drop of a hat. So, poor Tyler had to wake up early and take me to the bus. I must admit, I really don’t feel that bad for Tyler. He completely balked at the idea of having to wake up early, and I had to kindly point out that not only was this a one time deal, but that I have to get up that early every morning (and he’s always poking fun at me because I want to go to bed before 11pm). I hate only having one car.
In other news, the frat boys have run amuck. Apparently the stress of finals and the upcoming, relative freedom of summer has made them take leave of what little brains and civility they had. They completely cleaned out the fridge over the weekend, and by cleaned I mean ate everything they could find like a bunch of Hoover vacuums. So, if they’re short on chicken quesadillas today because those buttheads ate the tortillas and cheese (again with the cheese!), then I really don’t care. I’m feeling a bit of the end of semester lassez-faire as well. They want to eat the cheese and tortillas? Ok, I’ll put out a big bowl of canned chicken with taco seasoning and call it lunch. They also took an entire gallon of whole milk that was needed for cinnamon rolls. I sent the steward a quick e-mail letting him know I would be unable to make cinnamon rolls because we had no milk. Unsurprisingly, he went out and bought a gallon of milk right away. Ahh the power of cinnamon rolls! In order to discourage any further thieving, I left a note on the whiteboard: “Dear Lodge Inhabitants, If you remove or “borrow” any of the following ingredients, it will result in my being unable to make cinnamon rolls for tomorrow: sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, cinnamon, flour, butter, milk, maple and vanilla” Hopefully, that will deter them. I’m serious about not making cinnamon rolls if any of it’s missing, even if they only wanted a glass of milk.
Today’s recipe is oven-baked chicken parmesan. Tyler’s favorite “Italian” dish is chicken parmesan. I would bet anyone any amount of money that, no matter what Italian restaurant we go to, so long as they have chicken parmesan on the menu, that’s what he’s ordering. I wanted to make it for the guys, sautéing it in oil on the stove would take waaay to long. So I came up with this version. I adapted the coating from my chicken cordon bleu recipe. Dipping the chicken in butter and then in the breading makes the bread crumbs turn crispy (rather than soggy) in the oven. As a plus, because this recipe is done in the oven (rather than on the stove, dripping with oil) it’s also a little healthier. (Note: I said healthier, not calorie free, it still has butter and parmesan cheese). I used chicken tenders, but you can use chicken breasts. If you are using chicken breasts, I would pound them a little to make them thinner so the breading doesn’t burn while you’re waiting for the chicken to get done. This is also an excellent breading recipe for fish (you’ll have to adjust the time though).
Oven Baked Parmesan Cheese
Serves 6
1 ½ lbs Chicken Tenders
1 1/4 cups Bread Crumbs
1 ¼ cups Parmesan
2 ½ tbs Italian Seasoning
2 tsp Garlic Powder
1 cup Butter or Margarine, melted
Salt and Pepper to taste (you’ll only need a little salt because the cheese is salty)
Preheat oven to 350; lightly spray a shallow baking pan (or cookie sheet with sides) with cooking spray. Combine bread crumbs, parmesan, italian seasoning, garlic powder and salt and pepper in a small bowl. Dip chicken in butter and shake off excess. Roll chicken in bread crumb mixture being sure to thoroughly coat with bread crumbs and place on pan in a single layer. Bake for approx 20 minutes turning midway through. Serve with spaghetti and marinara sauce.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Shredded
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.
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.
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.
Monday, April 12, 2010
KaBoom!
Lunch: Hot Ham and Cheese Sandwiches, Chips and Pineapple Tidbits
Dinner: Jerked Chicken, Yellow Rice and Veggies
Disaster is temporarily averted. I did not blow up. You may feel free to breathe out a sigh of relief now. In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about, there could have very nearly been a disaster today. I was working in the kitchen as usual (read: dinking around on the internet) when I started to get a terrible headache. I went outside for a little air, and upon returning, noticed the kitchen smelled like gas. I checked all of the knobs on the stove to be sure they were in the proper off position; they were. I asked a passing frat boy if he thought the kitchens smelled like gas, and he confirmed it. I had to get in touch with the higher ups and let them know. They came down and started sniffing around, determined it was one of the stove burners leaking and then shut off the main gas line. Ok… well that makes it hard to cook. So I waited awhile for them to get in contact with someone… then the time for me to start cooking came and went. By the time 3 o’clock rolled around, I was beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just go home. I called the president of the fraternity to determine what was being done. He said they weren’t going to be able to get anyone out there until tomorrow. So, he lit the offending burner and turned it on low. Eeft! I was terrified the whole thing would blow. I let them know that in no uncertain terms would I cook like that again tomorrow. They had to get it fixed, pronto. It’s just too dangerous otherwise. The kitchen is poorly ventilated. What would have happened if I hadn’t discovered it till tomorrow and then went to light the stove…? I say again, eeft!
I really must apologize for my spotty posting of late. I’m in the middle of trying to get our house cleaned, packed and moved. So unless I can get my post done on the bus, then I’m not going to get a post out that night. It isn’t always possible to get a post done on the bus either. Frequently, I’ll have large seat mates who take up more than their own seat so I can’t put my computer on my lap, or the person in front of me will lean their seat back so far they’re practically in my lap (the commuter buses are like greyhound buses). Once, I even had a seat mate that kept falling asleep on me.
If I ever do find a real job (like Pinocchio, he wanted to be a real boy… well, I want to have a real job), I think I know what I’m going to re-name my blog… “Cooking by the Seat of Your Pants” Do you like it? I think it’s a rather apt description of my cooking style. I have a tendency to just throw myself into it and see how it goes. I never follow recipes exactly. I might research different recipes, trying to find one that describes what I’m trying to achieve or to give me ideas on the general method or cook times, but I always end up changing it as I’m going. I frequently, especially at home, just dive into my cupboards to see what will go with what. Although, I’ve become rather accustomed to doing that at work too when the guys thieve my ingredients and I have to make on the fly substitutions. This week I decided to make jerk chicken for the guys. I had a couple jars of jerk seasoning blend leftover from a previous recipe and decided that I would just get some chicken and figure something out. Well, it wouldn’t work just to sprinkle the seasoning on the thighs and legs I got. The skin would be tasty, but the meat would be bland. Well… I served pineapple for lunch, and I always pour the juice off canned pineapple and save it. (I love the juice from a can of pineapple, my siblings and I used to fight over who got to drink the juice when we had canned pineapple at home). But there was only about 3 cups of pineapple juice… not really enough, I needed something else… To the fridge! Hmm… Leftover orange juice from Friday’s lunch? Ok! Mayo… no Mustard…. no… Pickles, probably not. Ah ha! Soy sauce. Pineapple juice and soy sauce make a great base for teriyaki marinade. Asian food has a lot of the same blending of sweet and hot that Jamaican cuisine is known for. We’ll use that! Voila, add in the orange juice and jerk seasoning and you have a respectable marinade. Maybe not authentic, but we’re not necessarily going for authentic; we’re going for tasty. The minute I blended it together I knew we had a winner. And that my friends is a brief glimpse into how I cook.
What was in the Fridge Jerk Chicken
serves 24
48 Chicken Legs and/or Thighs
3 cups Pineapple Juice
3 cups Orange Juice
1/3 cup Soy Sauce
2 bottles Jerk Seasoning Blend
Blend the orange juice, pineapple juice, soy sauce and jerk seasoning together. Pour over chicken legs and thighs. Cover and marinate at least 4 hours or overnight (overnight is better).
Preheat oven to 350. Grease a shallow oven proof casserole or roasting pan. Place chicken, skin side up in casserole; discard marinade. Bake for 30-45 minutes or until internal temperature reads 165 degrees. Skin may blacken a little.
(You can use a homemade jerk seasoning blend, there are plenty of recipes out there. Use about 1/3 to ½ cup or seasoning blend for this recipe)
Dinner: Jerked Chicken, Yellow Rice and Veggies
Disaster is temporarily averted. I did not blow up. You may feel free to breathe out a sigh of relief now. In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about, there could have very nearly been a disaster today. I was working in the kitchen as usual (read: dinking around on the internet) when I started to get a terrible headache. I went outside for a little air, and upon returning, noticed the kitchen smelled like gas. I checked all of the knobs on the stove to be sure they were in the proper off position; they were. I asked a passing frat boy if he thought the kitchens smelled like gas, and he confirmed it. I had to get in touch with the higher ups and let them know. They came down and started sniffing around, determined it was one of the stove burners leaking and then shut off the main gas line. Ok… well that makes it hard to cook. So I waited awhile for them to get in contact with someone… then the time for me to start cooking came and went. By the time 3 o’clock rolled around, I was beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just go home. I called the president of the fraternity to determine what was being done. He said they weren’t going to be able to get anyone out there until tomorrow. So, he lit the offending burner and turned it on low. Eeft! I was terrified the whole thing would blow. I let them know that in no uncertain terms would I cook like that again tomorrow. They had to get it fixed, pronto. It’s just too dangerous otherwise. The kitchen is poorly ventilated. What would have happened if I hadn’t discovered it till tomorrow and then went to light the stove…? I say again, eeft!
I really must apologize for my spotty posting of late. I’m in the middle of trying to get our house cleaned, packed and moved. So unless I can get my post done on the bus, then I’m not going to get a post out that night. It isn’t always possible to get a post done on the bus either. Frequently, I’ll have large seat mates who take up more than their own seat so I can’t put my computer on my lap, or the person in front of me will lean their seat back so far they’re practically in my lap (the commuter buses are like greyhound buses). Once, I even had a seat mate that kept falling asleep on me.
If I ever do find a real job (like Pinocchio, he wanted to be a real boy… well, I want to have a real job), I think I know what I’m going to re-name my blog… “Cooking by the Seat of Your Pants” Do you like it? I think it’s a rather apt description of my cooking style. I have a tendency to just throw myself into it and see how it goes. I never follow recipes exactly. I might research different recipes, trying to find one that describes what I’m trying to achieve or to give me ideas on the general method or cook times, but I always end up changing it as I’m going. I frequently, especially at home, just dive into my cupboards to see what will go with what. Although, I’ve become rather accustomed to doing that at work too when the guys thieve my ingredients and I have to make on the fly substitutions. This week I decided to make jerk chicken for the guys. I had a couple jars of jerk seasoning blend leftover from a previous recipe and decided that I would just get some chicken and figure something out. Well, it wouldn’t work just to sprinkle the seasoning on the thighs and legs I got. The skin would be tasty, but the meat would be bland. Well… I served pineapple for lunch, and I always pour the juice off canned pineapple and save it. (I love the juice from a can of pineapple, my siblings and I used to fight over who got to drink the juice when we had canned pineapple at home). But there was only about 3 cups of pineapple juice… not really enough, I needed something else… To the fridge! Hmm… Leftover orange juice from Friday’s lunch? Ok! Mayo… no Mustard…. no… Pickles, probably not. Ah ha! Soy sauce. Pineapple juice and soy sauce make a great base for teriyaki marinade. Asian food has a lot of the same blending of sweet and hot that Jamaican cuisine is known for. We’ll use that! Voila, add in the orange juice and jerk seasoning and you have a respectable marinade. Maybe not authentic, but we’re not necessarily going for authentic; we’re going for tasty. The minute I blended it together I knew we had a winner. And that my friends is a brief glimpse into how I cook.
What was in the Fridge Jerk Chicken
serves 24
48 Chicken Legs and/or Thighs
3 cups Pineapple Juice
3 cups Orange Juice
1/3 cup Soy Sauce
2 bottles Jerk Seasoning Blend
Blend the orange juice, pineapple juice, soy sauce and jerk seasoning together. Pour over chicken legs and thighs. Cover and marinate at least 4 hours or overnight (overnight is better).
Preheat oven to 350. Grease a shallow oven proof casserole or roasting pan. Place chicken, skin side up in casserole; discard marinade. Bake for 30-45 minutes or until internal temperature reads 165 degrees. Skin may blacken a little.
(You can use a homemade jerk seasoning blend, there are plenty of recipes out there. Use about 1/3 to ½ cup or seasoning blend for this recipe)
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.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Sorry I'm a Lazy Butt
Lunch: Bacon Mac and Cheese and Canned Pineapple
Dinner: Russian Chicken, Buttered Noodles and Green Beans
Ok, so I’ve been very bad of late and haven‘t posted for a while… But in my defense it was spring break. Can you forgive me?
No? Oh well, can’t please everybody.
The weather is lovely again and everything is in bloom which means that I’m getting no sleep at night because both my hubby and my dog have allergies which cause them to snore. Yes, that’s right. My dog has seasonal allergies; we give him benedryl. We give him lots of benedryl. He gets 4 wrapped up in a piece of cheese every night (so he won’t spit them out). I feel bad drugging him like that, afterall, 2 knock me out for the night and I’m groggy the next day. I guess it’s just further proof that my dog is, in reality, a horse. Too bad you can’t put breath-right strips on a dog…
The warm weather is bringing more than just sneezing fits… it brings out the exhibitionist frat boys. On the way to the bus yesterday I saw a shirtless frat boy. Ok, I saw lots of shirtless frat boys, but this one caught my eye because he was swinging a large sledge hammer. (In case you’re wondering, no he was not a part of the frat I cook for, thank goodness). Swinging a large sledge hammer, shirtless, in your front yard is strange enough, but even stranger… he was using it to beat the poo out of a large tire. He would swing the hammer, the tire would bounce and then he’d hit it again with the hammer. Over and over. I’m not entirely sure what his motivation was. Perhaps the tire angered him? I mean, despite the fact that he was clearly swinging that hammer with all his might, it didn’t do anything to the tire. The tire just bounced a little and remained intact and unharmed. There were also several of his brothers sitting out in the yard watching him. Maybe he lost a bet… The strangeness of frat boys will never cease to amaze me.
I’m not making any new recipes this week for the guys, just a bunch of tried and true ones that you already have the recipes for. I decided that I couldn’t be bothered last week to research new recipes and come up with a whole new meal plan and grocery list. So I went with the easy stuff, what I knew worked. Call me lazy, but hey, it was spring break. So this week I’ll be giving you some of the recipes I tried out last week for Tyler and I. These will be more family-friendly sizes. The one I’m giving you today is a modification on a recipe I found in one of my cookbooks. The recipe was for lemon-thyme chicken, but I didn’t have any boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I had some boneless pork chops. I was originally going to make braised pork chops… but those took too long. The recipe definitely needed modification anyway. It called for too much lemon. You wouldn’t want a really lemony sauce for pork chops. so this sauce is lovely with just a hint of lemon. The best part… it’s low fat and it takes next to no time to make. Pair it with some brown rice or barley and a salad and voila a delicious, healthy dinner on your table in under 30 minutes. Just call me Rachel Ray (without the weird voice… and I never say yum-o or EVOO)
Skillet Pork Chops with Lemon Thyme Pan Sauce
serves 4
4 Boneless Loin Chops, ½ inch thick
3 tbs Flour
½ tsp Salt
¼ tsp Pepper
½ tsp Garlic Powder
A pinch of Cayenne Pepper (just a little kick)
2 tsp Olive Oil (EVOO… just kidding, you should cook with regular olive oil and save the “EVOO” for salads and dressings)
1 tbs Butter
½ tsp dried Thyme
1 cup Low Sodium Chicken Broth
1 tbs Lemon Juice
Combine flour, salt, pepper and garlic powder in a small dish. Remove 5 tsp of mixture and set aside. Coat both sides of the pork chops with the flour mixture. In a non-stick skillet, heat olive oil. Cook the pork chops in oil for 6-8 minutes on each side, turning once. Remove pork chops and cover.
In the same pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add thyme and the flour mixture that was set-aside. Stir it with a whisk to get rid of any lumps. Allow the flour mixture to cook for a minute, stirring constantly. Gradually add chicken broth and lemon juice, stirring constantly and scraping up browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Bring mixture to a boil and simmer for 2 minutes or until thickened. Serve over pork chops.
Dinner: Russian Chicken, Buttered Noodles and Green Beans
Ok, so I’ve been very bad of late and haven‘t posted for a while… But in my defense it was spring break. Can you forgive me?
No? Oh well, can’t please everybody.
The weather is lovely again and everything is in bloom which means that I’m getting no sleep at night because both my hubby and my dog have allergies which cause them to snore. Yes, that’s right. My dog has seasonal allergies; we give him benedryl. We give him lots of benedryl. He gets 4 wrapped up in a piece of cheese every night (so he won’t spit them out). I feel bad drugging him like that, afterall, 2 knock me out for the night and I’m groggy the next day. I guess it’s just further proof that my dog is, in reality, a horse. Too bad you can’t put breath-right strips on a dog…
The warm weather is bringing more than just sneezing fits… it brings out the exhibitionist frat boys. On the way to the bus yesterday I saw a shirtless frat boy. Ok, I saw lots of shirtless frat boys, but this one caught my eye because he was swinging a large sledge hammer. (In case you’re wondering, no he was not a part of the frat I cook for, thank goodness). Swinging a large sledge hammer, shirtless, in your front yard is strange enough, but even stranger… he was using it to beat the poo out of a large tire. He would swing the hammer, the tire would bounce and then he’d hit it again with the hammer. Over and over. I’m not entirely sure what his motivation was. Perhaps the tire angered him? I mean, despite the fact that he was clearly swinging that hammer with all his might, it didn’t do anything to the tire. The tire just bounced a little and remained intact and unharmed. There were also several of his brothers sitting out in the yard watching him. Maybe he lost a bet… The strangeness of frat boys will never cease to amaze me.
I’m not making any new recipes this week for the guys, just a bunch of tried and true ones that you already have the recipes for. I decided that I couldn’t be bothered last week to research new recipes and come up with a whole new meal plan and grocery list. So I went with the easy stuff, what I knew worked. Call me lazy, but hey, it was spring break. So this week I’ll be giving you some of the recipes I tried out last week for Tyler and I. These will be more family-friendly sizes. The one I’m giving you today is a modification on a recipe I found in one of my cookbooks. The recipe was for lemon-thyme chicken, but I didn’t have any boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I had some boneless pork chops. I was originally going to make braised pork chops… but those took too long. The recipe definitely needed modification anyway. It called for too much lemon. You wouldn’t want a really lemony sauce for pork chops. so this sauce is lovely with just a hint of lemon. The best part… it’s low fat and it takes next to no time to make. Pair it with some brown rice or barley and a salad and voila a delicious, healthy dinner on your table in under 30 minutes. Just call me Rachel Ray (without the weird voice… and I never say yum-o or EVOO)
Skillet Pork Chops with Lemon Thyme Pan Sauce
serves 4
4 Boneless Loin Chops, ½ inch thick
3 tbs Flour
½ tsp Salt
¼ tsp Pepper
½ tsp Garlic Powder
A pinch of Cayenne Pepper (just a little kick)
2 tsp Olive Oil (EVOO… just kidding, you should cook with regular olive oil and save the “EVOO” for salads and dressings)
1 tbs Butter
½ tsp dried Thyme
1 cup Low Sodium Chicken Broth
1 tbs Lemon Juice
Combine flour, salt, pepper and garlic powder in a small dish. Remove 5 tsp of mixture and set aside. Coat both sides of the pork chops with the flour mixture. In a non-stick skillet, heat olive oil. Cook the pork chops in oil for 6-8 minutes on each side, turning once. Remove pork chops and cover.
In the same pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add thyme and the flour mixture that was set-aside. Stir it with a whisk to get rid of any lumps. Allow the flour mixture to cook for a minute, stirring constantly. Gradually add chicken broth and lemon juice, stirring constantly and scraping up browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Bring mixture to a boil and simmer for 2 minutes or until thickened. Serve over pork chops.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Tyler is soo Totally Lame
Proof that my hubby is totally lame: He apparently has a debilitating fear of landlords. He claims that talking to landlords on the phone gives him mini panic attacks and I’m better at it any way. At least those were his excuses as to why I should try to haggle with our new potential landlord to bring down the price of the rent he’s charging. This from a guy who works in journalism. I thought journalists were supposed to be good at talking to people and getting information and all that? Well, I argued that he’s “much better at cleaning our really messy bedroom” than I am and going into our really messy bedroom gives me mini panic attacks. So, he said he’d clean the bedroom if I talked to the landlord. Well I talked to him; I even got him to lower the rent by $50, and yet our bedroom remains dirty. I think I totally got gypped. Sorry, that might not be totally P.C., I think I got totally screwed. He didn’t even clean the bathroom this weekend and I helped him clean the living (both of which are his responsibilities). Hmm… perhaps the Playstation should have remained broken… Maybe I should pull a page out of my dad’s book and put it up until all his chores are done.
The first official day of spring was this past Saturday, and it was beautiful. It was sunny and blue skies all day long with a balmy 75 degrees. Today it was a not exactly balmy 48 degrees and gray and rainy. Bleh. It’s supposed to be beautiful again tomorrow though. With all this week off, I was really looking forward to taking the dog on long walk everyday. Instead I hid inside and flipped back and forth between Star Trek, The Next Generation and Anthony Bourdain. Woot. At least it was a perfect day to try out my new recipe. I have several recipes I’m looking to try this week and one of them was potato soup. I love rich creamy potato soup, but it’s so calorie laden… Well, I came up with this lighter version which is perfect for a damp rainy night. To make it real loaded baked potato soup (and a little healthier) I added some cooked, cut-up broccoli florets to mine as well as the cheese and bacon. But, it definitely stands well on it’s own and would be good paired with a salad. (No, Tyler didn’t eat any broccoli with his).
Loaded Baked Potato Soup
serves 4
3 lbs Yukon Gold Potatoes, peeled and cubed
½ a large Onion, chopped
3 cloves Garlic, minced
3 cups Chicken Broth (approximate)
½ cup Fat Free Sour Cream
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to Taste
½ lb Turkey Bacon, cooked and crumbled
Shredded Cheddar Cheese, Chopped Chives, Cooked Broccoli Florets as Toppings
Heat a little olive oil over medium heat in the bottom of a large soup pot. Add onions and cook, stirring frequently until onions are soft and translucent. Add garlic and cook for another minute or 2. Turn the heat up to medium high and add in cubed potatoes. Cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring frequently. Add in just enough chicken broth to barely cover the potatoes and bring to a boil. Cover and lower the heat and allow to simmer until potatoes are fork tender, approximately 15-20 minutes.
Remove the pot from heat. Mash the cooked potatoes lightly with a potato masher. Remove approximately half of the potato chunks and set aside. Using a blender or an immersion blender, blend the remaining potato mixture until smooth, add back in the chunks. Stir in the sour cream. Serve hot with shredded cheese, crumbled bacon and your favorite toppings.
The first official day of spring was this past Saturday, and it was beautiful. It was sunny and blue skies all day long with a balmy 75 degrees. Today it was a not exactly balmy 48 degrees and gray and rainy. Bleh. It’s supposed to be beautiful again tomorrow though. With all this week off, I was really looking forward to taking the dog on long walk everyday. Instead I hid inside and flipped back and forth between Star Trek, The Next Generation and Anthony Bourdain. Woot. At least it was a perfect day to try out my new recipe. I have several recipes I’m looking to try this week and one of them was potato soup. I love rich creamy potato soup, but it’s so calorie laden… Well, I came up with this lighter version which is perfect for a damp rainy night. To make it real loaded baked potato soup (and a little healthier) I added some cooked, cut-up broccoli florets to mine as well as the cheese and bacon. But, it definitely stands well on it’s own and would be good paired with a salad. (No, Tyler didn’t eat any broccoli with his).
Loaded Baked Potato Soup
serves 4
3 lbs Yukon Gold Potatoes, peeled and cubed
½ a large Onion, chopped
3 cloves Garlic, minced
3 cups Chicken Broth (approximate)
½ cup Fat Free Sour Cream
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to Taste
½ lb Turkey Bacon, cooked and crumbled
Shredded Cheddar Cheese, Chopped Chives, Cooked Broccoli Florets as Toppings
Heat a little olive oil over medium heat in the bottom of a large soup pot. Add onions and cook, stirring frequently until onions are soft and translucent. Add garlic and cook for another minute or 2. Turn the heat up to medium high and add in cubed potatoes. Cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring frequently. Add in just enough chicken broth to barely cover the potatoes and bring to a boil. Cover and lower the heat and allow to simmer until potatoes are fork tender, approximately 15-20 minutes.
Remove the pot from heat. Mash the cooked potatoes lightly with a potato masher. Remove approximately half of the potato chunks and set aside. Using a blender or an immersion blender, blend the remaining potato mixture until smooth, add back in the chunks. Stir in the sour cream. Serve hot with shredded cheese, crumbled bacon and your favorite toppings.
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).
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Idleness of March
Lunch: Pepperoni and Cheese Calzones and Pineapple
Dinner: Pulled Pork Tacos, Salad and Rice
Dessert: Rice Crispy Treats
Soooo….. nothing much happening today. It is gray and drizzly and rather typically March in Georgia. I took advantage of a dry spell in the middle of the day to take a very long walk (mostly because the internet at work kept going out and I had nothing better to do). Sadly, I missed the bus this morning because of bad traffic and had to drive to work. I hate driving to work. I like leaning back in the comfy bus seats and getting work done. I’ll admit that I usually do my blog writing and compile my grocery lists on the bus. It’s the only time that I’m free from distractions (ie the internet) enough to concentrate on what I’m writing. Yes, grocery lists require a lot of concentration. I need to make sure I get every ingredient and side dish on the list otherwise I will forget that I need it. Woe to the chef that forgets to purchase sour cream for taco night. Frat boys love their sour cream (apparently they can do without the cheese… hint hint, nudge nudge, know what I mean?). There is some talk about getting internet on the bus… I’m not sure I support this, my grocery lists will suffer horribly. I certainly can’t do anything work related when I get home at night, I have TV to watch. Not that I always want to watch TV, there are mandatory TV nights in our house; it changes with the “seasons”. My hubby is a huge TV and movie buff. Honestly, I could do without TV (I never had cable when I lived alone), but if I plan on spending any time with him at night, I have to just suck it up and watch some shows. I’ve been thinking, that as retaliation, I should make him come to a bead show with me (I like to make jewelry). But, then there was the dance class incident, so maybe that’s not such a great idea. Besides, going to a bead show would just want to make me spend money. Eh, at least I draw the line at watching baseball with him (unless I need help falling asleep).
One exciting and sort of strange thing did happen today… Sunchips posted on my blog. Yeah, the company that makes those crackery chips. How did they know about my blog? Why did they bother to post? Can I get free Sunchips? I prefer the cheddar flavor.
I made pulled pork tacos for the guys tonight, and they turned out awesome. Of course, I haven’t gotten feed back from the boys yet so I’m not going to go so far as to say they are a hit with the 12 and under (mentally) crowd. But, I tried the pork and it was killer. It is sweet and spicy and soo easy. I thought about taking the pork home with me. Of course, I’m not sure what the guys would have thought about having cheese and lettuce tacos. I think the Mexican blend cheese might be “highly processed”. But if you’re looking for a different twist on taco night, this is definitely something to try.
Spicy Shredded Pork
Serves 26
12 lbs Pork Shoulder
1 tbs Ground Cumin
1 1/2 tbs Chili Powder
2 Onions, quartered
3 cans Diced Green Peppers
½ cups White Vinegar
½ cup Brown Sugar
1 pinch Cayenne Pepper
1 scant tbs Salt
2 tsp Black Pepper
7 cloves Garlic
Put all ingredients except the pork shoulder in a food processor and blend until it is smooth and there are no chunks; reserve ½ cup of mixture. With a fork, pork several holes all over the pork shoulder. Rub the mixture all over the pork. Place the pork in a deep pan, roaster or crock pot; fill the bottom with 1-2 inches of water. Cover the roast tightly and bake at 300 degrees until fork tender, approximately 5 hours. If cooking in an oven or roaster oven, you will need to monitor the amount of water in the bottom of the pan to be sure it doesn’t get too low. You will also need to turn the roast once every hour. If you’re using a crock pot, cook on high for 5-6 hours. When the roast is fork tender, remove it and shred it with 2 forks. Take 2-2 cups of the liquid from the bottom of the pan and skim off the fat; add in the reserved sauce and mix with the shredded pork. Serve warm on tortillas with your favorite taco toppings.
Dinner: Pulled Pork Tacos, Salad and Rice
Dessert: Rice Crispy Treats
Soooo….. nothing much happening today. It is gray and drizzly and rather typically March in Georgia. I took advantage of a dry spell in the middle of the day to take a very long walk (mostly because the internet at work kept going out and I had nothing better to do). Sadly, I missed the bus this morning because of bad traffic and had to drive to work. I hate driving to work. I like leaning back in the comfy bus seats and getting work done. I’ll admit that I usually do my blog writing and compile my grocery lists on the bus. It’s the only time that I’m free from distractions (ie the internet) enough to concentrate on what I’m writing. Yes, grocery lists require a lot of concentration. I need to make sure I get every ingredient and side dish on the list otherwise I will forget that I need it. Woe to the chef that forgets to purchase sour cream for taco night. Frat boys love their sour cream (apparently they can do without the cheese… hint hint, nudge nudge, know what I mean?). There is some talk about getting internet on the bus… I’m not sure I support this, my grocery lists will suffer horribly. I certainly can’t do anything work related when I get home at night, I have TV to watch. Not that I always want to watch TV, there are mandatory TV nights in our house; it changes with the “seasons”. My hubby is a huge TV and movie buff. Honestly, I could do without TV (I never had cable when I lived alone), but if I plan on spending any time with him at night, I have to just suck it up and watch some shows. I’ve been thinking, that as retaliation, I should make him come to a bead show with me (I like to make jewelry). But, then there was the dance class incident, so maybe that’s not such a great idea. Besides, going to a bead show would just want to make me spend money. Eh, at least I draw the line at watching baseball with him (unless I need help falling asleep).
One exciting and sort of strange thing did happen today… Sunchips posted on my blog. Yeah, the company that makes those crackery chips. How did they know about my blog? Why did they bother to post? Can I get free Sunchips? I prefer the cheddar flavor.
I made pulled pork tacos for the guys tonight, and they turned out awesome. Of course, I haven’t gotten feed back from the boys yet so I’m not going to go so far as to say they are a hit with the 12 and under (mentally) crowd. But, I tried the pork and it was killer. It is sweet and spicy and soo easy. I thought about taking the pork home with me. Of course, I’m not sure what the guys would have thought about having cheese and lettuce tacos. I think the Mexican blend cheese might be “highly processed”. But if you’re looking for a different twist on taco night, this is definitely something to try.
Spicy Shredded Pork
Serves 26
12 lbs Pork Shoulder
1 tbs Ground Cumin
1 1/2 tbs Chili Powder
2 Onions, quartered
3 cans Diced Green Peppers
½ cups White Vinegar
½ cup Brown Sugar
1 pinch Cayenne Pepper
1 scant tbs Salt
2 tsp Black Pepper
7 cloves Garlic
Put all ingredients except the pork shoulder in a food processor and blend until it is smooth and there are no chunks; reserve ½ cup of mixture. With a fork, pork several holes all over the pork shoulder. Rub the mixture all over the pork. Place the pork in a deep pan, roaster or crock pot; fill the bottom with 1-2 inches of water. Cover the roast tightly and bake at 300 degrees until fork tender, approximately 5 hours. If cooking in an oven or roaster oven, you will need to monitor the amount of water in the bottom of the pan to be sure it doesn’t get too low. You will also need to turn the roast once every hour. If you’re using a crock pot, cook on high for 5-6 hours. When the roast is fork tender, remove it and shred it with 2 forks. Take 2-2 cups of the liquid from the bottom of the pan and skim off the fat; add in the reserved sauce and mix with the shredded pork. Serve warm on tortillas with your favorite taco toppings.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Cheese Platitudes
Lunch: Chicken Nuggets, French Fries, Carrot and Celery and Ranch Dip
Dinner: Spaghetti Burgers, Pasta Salad and Salad
Word to the wise, don’t piss off the chef. If you’re drunk and feel the need to write a treatise on how there’s too much cheese in the fridge on the whiteboard outside the kitchen, don’t. Just don’t. Unless you really want to piss off the chef and she then decides to no longer serve cheese. You might find yourself being chased down by your fraternity brothers with pitchforks when they find out there will be no more bacon (or chicken) mac and cheese. Yes, that’s right, on coming into work today I found a drunken message on the whiteboard outlining why one brother thought there was an excessive amount of cheese in the fridge. Really? Of all the possible culprits… you choose cheese? Of course, I was just a little miffed about the whole thing. I especially liked the notes after each platitude saying “CHEF DO NOT ERASE”. They put little boxes around them to make sure they were noticed. The best part, though, was that in each bulleted point they made sure to point out the expiration date of the cheese and whether or not it was processed. They even underlined the fact that the mozzarella I buy is “highly processed”. Ok… at least none of the cheese was expired. They might have room to complain if there was a fridge full of expired cheese that didn’t get used. But complaining that there were several pounds of cheese in the fridge and that some of it was “highly processed”? I thought I was cooking for a fraternity, not some sorority with recovering processed cheese addicts. Why is there so much cheese (and cheese product) in the fridge? Because that’s how much the guys eat. I didn’t erase the sign; I brought the steward down to see the board. He seemed a little flabbergasted. Seriously? Cheese? He apologized and promised to thoroughly shame the culprit. I kind of wish I knew who it was so I could throw Cheez Whiz at him. I bet he would cry.
I had another surprise today on coming into work. All of the chicken noodle soup I made yesterday was gone. Food being gone is not necessarily news around here, but you have to understand, I made a substantial amount of chicken noodle soup. And, it wasn’t just any kind of chicken noodle soup, homemade chicken noodle soup with homemade broth. I spent all day boiling chicken and vegetables, then picking the chicken thighs and cutting up new vegetables etc etc and ended up with around 28 quarts worth of chicken soup. In case you’re wondering, that’s around 7 gallons of soup. It wasn’t even very soupy as it was chock full of chicken and noodles (and corn and carrots). When I talked to the steward he said that everyone loved the chicken soup, and that they thought it was magic because they kept going back for more and… finding more. It was like magic soup. I tried the soup, and it was pretty magical. Homemade chicken soup takes some time to make, but it blows that mushy canned stuff right out of the water. In fact, my homemade chicken noodle soup is the reason my husband eats soup today (not to brag or anything…). Of course, there are always some dissenters in the group. Apparently the guy who wrote the cheese platitudes didn’t like the soup. How much more natural and unprocessed can you get than homemade chicken noodle soup?
Kristen’s Chicken Noodle Soup
Serves a whole lot of people, a small army or 23 really hungry frat boys
1 ½ gallon water
1 ½ gallon chicken broth
18 lbs chicken thighs
1 tbs Lawry’s Seasoning Salt
3 tbs Old Bay Seasoning
6 Bay Leaves
1 tbs black pepper
1 tbs ground sage
1 tbs celery seed
16 medium carrots
1 bunch of celery
3 large onions
3 lbs of corn
3 lbs egg noodles
Put the chicken in a large stock pot and cover with chicken broth and water. Stir in Lawry’s Seasoning Salt, Old Bay Seasoning, bay leaves, ground sage, black pepper and celery seed. Cut 5 carrots, celery (celery leaves and all) and 1 onion into large chunks and put in the pot. Bring the broth to a boil and then cover and simmer for 1 hour. Using tongs, remove chicken from the broth and set aside to cool. Strain the vegetables out of the broth, and then skim the grease off the top of the broth. (Note: You can make the broth a day ahead and put it in the fridge at this point. The grease will harden over night and you can skim the hardened grease off the top easily). While the chicken is still warm, remove the skin. If you’re having trouble getting the skin off the chicken, warm it up in the microwave for a minute. Pick all of the chicken off the bones and shred it. Chop the remaining carrots and onions into bite-sized pieces.
After you have skimmed the grease from the broth, put it back on the stove. Bring the broth to a boil and add the noodles, carrots and onions. Cook the noodles for the time indicated in the directions. Add in the shredded chicken and frozen corn. You may need to add a few extra quarts of water at this point and adjust the seasonings. Simmer for 10-15. Serve with warm bread.
Dinner: Spaghetti Burgers, Pasta Salad and Salad
Word to the wise, don’t piss off the chef. If you’re drunk and feel the need to write a treatise on how there’s too much cheese in the fridge on the whiteboard outside the kitchen, don’t. Just don’t. Unless you really want to piss off the chef and she then decides to no longer serve cheese. You might find yourself being chased down by your fraternity brothers with pitchforks when they find out there will be no more bacon (or chicken) mac and cheese. Yes, that’s right, on coming into work today I found a drunken message on the whiteboard outlining why one brother thought there was an excessive amount of cheese in the fridge. Really? Of all the possible culprits… you choose cheese? Of course, I was just a little miffed about the whole thing. I especially liked the notes after each platitude saying “CHEF DO NOT ERASE”. They put little boxes around them to make sure they were noticed. The best part, though, was that in each bulleted point they made sure to point out the expiration date of the cheese and whether or not it was processed. They even underlined the fact that the mozzarella I buy is “highly processed”. Ok… at least none of the cheese was expired. They might have room to complain if there was a fridge full of expired cheese that didn’t get used. But complaining that there were several pounds of cheese in the fridge and that some of it was “highly processed”? I thought I was cooking for a fraternity, not some sorority with recovering processed cheese addicts. Why is there so much cheese (and cheese product) in the fridge? Because that’s how much the guys eat. I didn’t erase the sign; I brought the steward down to see the board. He seemed a little flabbergasted. Seriously? Cheese? He apologized and promised to thoroughly shame the culprit. I kind of wish I knew who it was so I could throw Cheez Whiz at him. I bet he would cry.
I had another surprise today on coming into work. All of the chicken noodle soup I made yesterday was gone. Food being gone is not necessarily news around here, but you have to understand, I made a substantial amount of chicken noodle soup. And, it wasn’t just any kind of chicken noodle soup, homemade chicken noodle soup with homemade broth. I spent all day boiling chicken and vegetables, then picking the chicken thighs and cutting up new vegetables etc etc and ended up with around 28 quarts worth of chicken soup. In case you’re wondering, that’s around 7 gallons of soup. It wasn’t even very soupy as it was chock full of chicken and noodles (and corn and carrots). When I talked to the steward he said that everyone loved the chicken soup, and that they thought it was magic because they kept going back for more and… finding more. It was like magic soup. I tried the soup, and it was pretty magical. Homemade chicken soup takes some time to make, but it blows that mushy canned stuff right out of the water. In fact, my homemade chicken noodle soup is the reason my husband eats soup today (not to brag or anything…). Of course, there are always some dissenters in the group. Apparently the guy who wrote the cheese platitudes didn’t like the soup. How much more natural and unprocessed can you get than homemade chicken noodle soup?
Kristen’s Chicken Noodle Soup
Serves a whole lot of people, a small army or 23 really hungry frat boys
1 ½ gallon water
1 ½ gallon chicken broth
18 lbs chicken thighs
1 tbs Lawry’s Seasoning Salt
3 tbs Old Bay Seasoning
6 Bay Leaves
1 tbs black pepper
1 tbs ground sage
1 tbs celery seed
16 medium carrots
1 bunch of celery
3 large onions
3 lbs of corn
3 lbs egg noodles
Put the chicken in a large stock pot and cover with chicken broth and water. Stir in Lawry’s Seasoning Salt, Old Bay Seasoning, bay leaves, ground sage, black pepper and celery seed. Cut 5 carrots, celery (celery leaves and all) and 1 onion into large chunks and put in the pot. Bring the broth to a boil and then cover and simmer for 1 hour. Using tongs, remove chicken from the broth and set aside to cool. Strain the vegetables out of the broth, and then skim the grease off the top of the broth. (Note: You can make the broth a day ahead and put it in the fridge at this point. The grease will harden over night and you can skim the hardened grease off the top easily). While the chicken is still warm, remove the skin. If you’re having trouble getting the skin off the chicken, warm it up in the microwave for a minute. Pick all of the chicken off the bones and shred it. Chop the remaining carrots and onions into bite-sized pieces.
After you have skimmed the grease from the broth, put it back on the stove. Bring the broth to a boil and add the noodles, carrots and onions. Cook the noodles for the time indicated in the directions. Add in the shredded chicken and frozen corn. You may need to add a few extra quarts of water at this point and adjust the seasonings. Simmer for 10-15. Serve with warm bread.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Bus Battle
Lunch: Barbecue Chicken Sandwiches
Dinner: Meatloaf, Baked Potatoes and Green Beans
Today may very well be one of the most beautiful days of the year. It was a balmy 68 and sunny today. Days like this are rare in good ol’ Georgia. Generally it goes from being relatively cold to being really hot in a matter of days. Therefore, you can’t take days like today for granted. Back in my college days, on beautiful days like today, I would cut class and find a grassy spot to stretch out on and revel in the beautiful weather. It seems the students at Tech decided to follow my lead. While out for my daily walk, 5 of the 8 frat houses I passed had moved their living rooms out onto the front lawn. I’m not kidding either; they dragged chairs and couches and coffee tables out onto their lawns and were lounging (many of them, rather unfortunately, shirtless… Not a thing you want to see on a bunch of pale Tech boys). There were countless games of Frisbee and random lounging in the sun on every available grassy spot. There was also the usual contingent of boys in hats playing guitar. You can’t walk across a college campus on a sunny day and not find a boy in a hat playing guitar for the ladies. I’m fairly sure it’s written in some international college guideline that you can’t be an accredited college without at least one guitar-playing-hat-wearing guy.
While the day was beautiful, it didn’t start off so pretty for me. Usually my morning bus ride is uneventful. People either sleep, read or fiddle with some electronic device for an hour. Rarely is there any talking or noise of any kind aside from the occasional clack of keys. In the afternoons, a few people might chat or talk on the phone, but in general people respect each other’s right to not be bothered. This morning however a man and a woman broke the silence. The man was texting and had his ringer on (quite possibly the world’s most annoying ringer too, it was some stupid rap song) so every minute or so, it went off. The woman sitting next to him asked him to turn the sound off. Rather than acquiesce to this simple request, he shouted at the top of his lungs “I can text if I want b*tch!”. Now, the woman could have changed seats and moved away from him or she could have kept her trap shut and left him alone. Of course, she didn’t do either. No, she started shouting back at him at the top of her lungs. They yelled at each other like a couple of crude children letting each other know where they could stick what and what they thought of the other’s mother. I plugged in my headphones and turned them up, but, unfortunately, they were right behind me and there was no escaping it. The rest of the bus patrons were looking back and shaking there heads; it being rather obvious that there was no shutting the two of them up. Finally, the woman moved to the front of the bus, but the guy didn’t shut up for the entire bus ride. I would have given anything for a tranquilizer gun. I will never understand some people and how they can behave so poorly. My 2 year old nephew has better manners and he still poops in his pants.
After such an eventful and stressful bus ride (I kept waiting for someone to throw a punch) I was really glad I’d planned an easy meal to start the week off. I like to plan something simple for Monday mornings to ease me into the work week. Today’s lunch was barbecue chicken sandwiches, and there are few things simpler. Although you could make it really easy on yourself and just used canned chicken, but I think canned chicken tastes a little like canned tuna which does not strike me as something I want to put barbeque sauce on… But, that’s just me. You can go ahead and do whatever floats your boat (how well would a boat float in canned chicken?)
Barbeque Chicken Sandwiches
serves 12
6 lbs Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast
Your Favorite BBQ Rub (See mine below*)
2-4 cups Barbeque Sauce
Preheat the oven to 375. Spray a large baking pan with cooking spray. Rub with plenty of BBQ rub . Place in baking dish, cover and bake for 20-25 minutes cooked throughout. Allow the breasts to cool enough so you can handle them. When they are cool, shred them. You can shred them with 2 forks, but I find that it works best just to pull them apart with your fingers. Place shredded chicken into a saucepan and cover with just enough ;barbeque sauce to coat chicken pieces. Cover and cook over medium heat for 10-15 minutes or until hot, stirring occasionally. Serve on hamburger buns with pickle slices.
*My Favorite BBQ Rub
Note: I don’t have measurements for this because I tend to just dump stuff together until it tastes right to me that day. I promise sometime in the future I’ll figure out the right measurements.
Chili Powder
A Pinch of Cumin
A Dash of Cayenne Pepper
Brown Sugar
Garlic Powder
A Dash of Onion Powder
Salt
Black Pepper or a medley of different peppers (I have a grinder with pink, black, green and white pepper corns)
Dinner: Meatloaf, Baked Potatoes and Green Beans
Today may very well be one of the most beautiful days of the year. It was a balmy 68 and sunny today. Days like this are rare in good ol’ Georgia. Generally it goes from being relatively cold to being really hot in a matter of days. Therefore, you can’t take days like today for granted. Back in my college days, on beautiful days like today, I would cut class and find a grassy spot to stretch out on and revel in the beautiful weather. It seems the students at Tech decided to follow my lead. While out for my daily walk, 5 of the 8 frat houses I passed had moved their living rooms out onto the front lawn. I’m not kidding either; they dragged chairs and couches and coffee tables out onto their lawns and were lounging (many of them, rather unfortunately, shirtless… Not a thing you want to see on a bunch of pale Tech boys). There were countless games of Frisbee and random lounging in the sun on every available grassy spot. There was also the usual contingent of boys in hats playing guitar. You can’t walk across a college campus on a sunny day and not find a boy in a hat playing guitar for the ladies. I’m fairly sure it’s written in some international college guideline that you can’t be an accredited college without at least one guitar-playing-hat-wearing guy.
While the day was beautiful, it didn’t start off so pretty for me. Usually my morning bus ride is uneventful. People either sleep, read or fiddle with some electronic device for an hour. Rarely is there any talking or noise of any kind aside from the occasional clack of keys. In the afternoons, a few people might chat or talk on the phone, but in general people respect each other’s right to not be bothered. This morning however a man and a woman broke the silence. The man was texting and had his ringer on (quite possibly the world’s most annoying ringer too, it was some stupid rap song) so every minute or so, it went off. The woman sitting next to him asked him to turn the sound off. Rather than acquiesce to this simple request, he shouted at the top of his lungs “I can text if I want b*tch!”. Now, the woman could have changed seats and moved away from him or she could have kept her trap shut and left him alone. Of course, she didn’t do either. No, she started shouting back at him at the top of her lungs. They yelled at each other like a couple of crude children letting each other know where they could stick what and what they thought of the other’s mother. I plugged in my headphones and turned them up, but, unfortunately, they were right behind me and there was no escaping it. The rest of the bus patrons were looking back and shaking there heads; it being rather obvious that there was no shutting the two of them up. Finally, the woman moved to the front of the bus, but the guy didn’t shut up for the entire bus ride. I would have given anything for a tranquilizer gun. I will never understand some people and how they can behave so poorly. My 2 year old nephew has better manners and he still poops in his pants.
After such an eventful and stressful bus ride (I kept waiting for someone to throw a punch) I was really glad I’d planned an easy meal to start the week off. I like to plan something simple for Monday mornings to ease me into the work week. Today’s lunch was barbecue chicken sandwiches, and there are few things simpler. Although you could make it really easy on yourself and just used canned chicken, but I think canned chicken tastes a little like canned tuna which does not strike me as something I want to put barbeque sauce on… But, that’s just me. You can go ahead and do whatever floats your boat (how well would a boat float in canned chicken?)
Barbeque Chicken Sandwiches
serves 12
6 lbs Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast
Your Favorite BBQ Rub (See mine below*)
2-4 cups Barbeque Sauce
Preheat the oven to 375. Spray a large baking pan with cooking spray. Rub with plenty of BBQ rub . Place in baking dish, cover and bake for 20-25 minutes cooked throughout. Allow the breasts to cool enough so you can handle them. When they are cool, shred them. You can shred them with 2 forks, but I find that it works best just to pull them apart with your fingers. Place shredded chicken into a saucepan and cover with just enough ;barbeque sauce to coat chicken pieces. Cover and cook over medium heat for 10-15 minutes or until hot, stirring occasionally. Serve on hamburger buns with pickle slices.
*My Favorite BBQ Rub
Note: I don’t have measurements for this because I tend to just dump stuff together until it tastes right to me that day. I promise sometime in the future I’ll figure out the right measurements.
Chili Powder
A Pinch of Cumin
A Dash of Cayenne Pepper
Brown Sugar
Garlic Powder
A Dash of Onion Powder
Salt
Black Pepper or a medley of different peppers (I have a grinder with pink, black, green and white pepper corns)
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Who Do You Call? Ghostbusters!
Lunch: Chicken Quesadillas, Tortilla Chips and Salsa
Dinner: Sausage and Pepper Baked Ziti and Salad
Dessert: Funfetti Cupcakes
While I cannot say there is never a dull moment at the frat (there are, lots of them), the dull moments are soon left behind and superseded by much hullabaloo. This morning when I got to the lodge (did I ever explained that they call the frat house the lodge?) there was a large pile of equipment on one of the dining room tables. I ignored it and went about my work. Soon, however, a troupe of rather nerdy looking guys carrying strange ghostbuster-esque equipment invaded my kitchen. They pointed lasers and took pictures and held weird looking instruments in the air. They looked like they might have been from the Ghost Hunters tv show except they weren’t being followed around by camera men and I highly doubt the frat house is haunted. Or is it? Perhaps that’s why my stuff keeps going missing and things keep getting moved around and misplaced… or that could just be because I work at a fraternity. Come to find out they were testing the lodge for drafts. The VP told me that, apparently, their power bill had been astronomical this past month, and in an attempt to cut back on power usage, they were checking for air leaks that they could stop. Personally I think they could save thousands if they cut back on pulling all-nighters studying. It seems not a day goes by without one of the brothers complaining about not getting any sleep because they stayed up all night cramming. Think of how much electricity that uses… not to mention that all night cramming is useless.
Apparently, the guys also came up with another way to save money last night. They let me know about their brilliant plan this morning at lunch. Are you ready for it? Ok, here it is… They proposed that I cut vegetables out of the budget and spend the money saved on extra meat and potatoes (or noodles). Yup, that was their brilliant plan, to cut vegetables out of the menu as a way of saving money. Yeah… too bad I already had a good answer for that. A food service size can of green beans, which is enough one meal, only costs $2.50-$3. In fact, at any given meal, I only spend between $2 and $5 on vegetables. Furthermore, I pointed out, if only 5 guys eat the vegetables, that would save about 1 serving of meat/ potatoes (because those 5 people would take less of the other stuff). That serving of meat and potatoes would most likely cost more than $2.50. Ah the wonders of irrefutable logic! I have to give them credit though; that is a rather creative way to attempt to get rid of vegetables.
In other news, I was very surprised by my husband the other night. Tyler likes to cook on occasion, and he does help out a lot by starting or even making dinner on weeknights. Of course, when he makes dinner, it’s usually either something he really likes or something relatively easy (like box dinners or spaghetti). He surprised me last night by not only making dinner, but researching and making a new recipe. He usually leaves all that to me, and rarely makes anything that requires a recipe. But when I came home last night, he had his computer in the kitchen and was following along with a recipe to make lemon rosemary broiled chicken breasts. So not only was it something new, it was healthy. Along with the chicken, we had spinach salad and barley cooked in chicken broth (Tyler’s new favorite). It was all very delicious. Who knows, maybe he’ll start his own cooking blog…
I made baked ziti (ok… I used penne, they didn’t have ziti at Sam’s). This dish is very simple, cheap and super quick to make (which was probably good because they kicked me out for 45 minutes so they could do one of their air leak tests in the kitchen). Add a salad, and voila, dinner is ready in no time.
Sausage and Pepper Baked Ziti
Serves 25
3 lbs Ziti (or Penne)
7 lbs Italian Sausage (I used both spicy and mild)
6 Green Bell Peppers, cut into thing strips
2 bulk-sized can, approx 106oz, Spaghetti Sauce
8 cups Shredded Mozzarella
In a large skillet, cook sausages until done. Set sausages aside to cool. Meanwhile, prepare pasta according to directions on package or until al dente. When sausage is cooled enough to handle, cut into bite-sized pieces. When the pasta is done, mix it in a large baking dish with the sausage, spaghetti sauce and green bell peppers; top with mozzarella cheese. Bake in an oven preheated to 375 for 20 minutes or until sauce is bubbly and cheese is melted and browned.
Dinner: Sausage and Pepper Baked Ziti and Salad
Dessert: Funfetti Cupcakes
While I cannot say there is never a dull moment at the frat (there are, lots of them), the dull moments are soon left behind and superseded by much hullabaloo. This morning when I got to the lodge (did I ever explained that they call the frat house the lodge?) there was a large pile of equipment on one of the dining room tables. I ignored it and went about my work. Soon, however, a troupe of rather nerdy looking guys carrying strange ghostbuster-esque equipment invaded my kitchen. They pointed lasers and took pictures and held weird looking instruments in the air. They looked like they might have been from the Ghost Hunters tv show except they weren’t being followed around by camera men and I highly doubt the frat house is haunted. Or is it? Perhaps that’s why my stuff keeps going missing and things keep getting moved around and misplaced… or that could just be because I work at a fraternity. Come to find out they were testing the lodge for drafts. The VP told me that, apparently, their power bill had been astronomical this past month, and in an attempt to cut back on power usage, they were checking for air leaks that they could stop. Personally I think they could save thousands if they cut back on pulling all-nighters studying. It seems not a day goes by without one of the brothers complaining about not getting any sleep because they stayed up all night cramming. Think of how much electricity that uses… not to mention that all night cramming is useless.
Apparently, the guys also came up with another way to save money last night. They let me know about their brilliant plan this morning at lunch. Are you ready for it? Ok, here it is… They proposed that I cut vegetables out of the budget and spend the money saved on extra meat and potatoes (or noodles). Yup, that was their brilliant plan, to cut vegetables out of the menu as a way of saving money. Yeah… too bad I already had a good answer for that. A food service size can of green beans, which is enough one meal, only costs $2.50-$3. In fact, at any given meal, I only spend between $2 and $5 on vegetables. Furthermore, I pointed out, if only 5 guys eat the vegetables, that would save about 1 serving of meat/ potatoes (because those 5 people would take less of the other stuff). That serving of meat and potatoes would most likely cost more than $2.50. Ah the wonders of irrefutable logic! I have to give them credit though; that is a rather creative way to attempt to get rid of vegetables.
In other news, I was very surprised by my husband the other night. Tyler likes to cook on occasion, and he does help out a lot by starting or even making dinner on weeknights. Of course, when he makes dinner, it’s usually either something he really likes or something relatively easy (like box dinners or spaghetti). He surprised me last night by not only making dinner, but researching and making a new recipe. He usually leaves all that to me, and rarely makes anything that requires a recipe. But when I came home last night, he had his computer in the kitchen and was following along with a recipe to make lemon rosemary broiled chicken breasts. So not only was it something new, it was healthy. Along with the chicken, we had spinach salad and barley cooked in chicken broth (Tyler’s new favorite). It was all very delicious. Who knows, maybe he’ll start his own cooking blog…
I made baked ziti (ok… I used penne, they didn’t have ziti at Sam’s). This dish is very simple, cheap and super quick to make (which was probably good because they kicked me out for 45 minutes so they could do one of their air leak tests in the kitchen). Add a salad, and voila, dinner is ready in no time.
Sausage and Pepper Baked Ziti
Serves 25
3 lbs Ziti (or Penne)
7 lbs Italian Sausage (I used both spicy and mild)
6 Green Bell Peppers, cut into thing strips
2 bulk-sized can, approx 106oz, Spaghetti Sauce
8 cups Shredded Mozzarella
In a large skillet, cook sausages until done. Set sausages aside to cool. Meanwhile, prepare pasta according to directions on package or until al dente. When sausage is cooled enough to handle, cut into bite-sized pieces. When the pasta is done, mix it in a large baking dish with the sausage, spaghetti sauce and green bell peppers; top with mozzarella cheese. Bake in an oven preheated to 375 for 20 minutes or until sauce is bubbly and cheese is melted and browned.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Yurt!
Lunch: Bacon Mac and Cheese and Fruit Salad
Dinner: Herb and Garlic Roast Pork Loin, Gravy, Mashed Potatoes and Green Beans
Apparently, I didn’t do too bad in the meal planning so far this week. I was a bit worried because the budget cut caused me to really pare down my menus. Sure, it was only twenty dollars, but we’re looking at a three hundred dollar difference between this semester and last semester while we’re only looking at the difference of around 10 guys per meal. So I have the guys on a poor man’s menu plan. It’s a menu plan I’m rather familiar with because Tyler and I were have been on it since we got married. Hamburger is cut with ground turkey because the turkey is cheaper and doesn’t shrink as much but since it‘s mixed with hamburger you still get a beef taste. Meals have more “filler” such as rice or beans which allows me to stretch out the servings. I make less sides. Sure there is a meat, a veggie and a starch with every meal, there just isn’t anything beyond that. I might have served a salad along side chili and cornbread; now I just serve chili and cornbread. I might have served rolls or biscuits with tonight’s dinner last semester, but they aren’t in the budget for this semester. I also make things that have fewer ingredients or less expensive ingredients. Let’s just say there will be no barbeque ribs this semester where I made them once a month last semester. But, a poor man’s menu plan doesn’t mean you have to suffer. In fact, most of what we call “comfort food” is relatively inexpensive to prepare. Take the cinnamon rolls I’ll be making for Friday… butter, flour, yeast, milk, sugar and cinnamon… these are things I generally keep on hand (ok, maybe not the yeast… I don’t like yeast, it gives me the heebie-jeebies). Even if I didn’t already have most of this on hand, none of it is really bank breaking. The most expensive thing on that list was probably the cinnamon, and I got a huge jar of it for $5. After years of budget menu planning, I think I could probably teach a class. You know, in these times they really should have degree on frugal living. Perhaps it would involve a yurt. Maybe the class could be taught in a yurt. I want to go yurt camping. Did you know several state and national parks rent yurts? If Tyler and I ever get around to going on our honeymoon, maybe we can rent a yurt. I doubt we’ll ever be able to afford anything swankier (unless we win the lottery… I have my ticket. I’ll let you know). I like the word yurt. I mean, it is kind hard to say yurt without the !. Sort of like “nee!”. You know, like the knights who say nee… from Monty Python… No? You have no sense of humor. Well, yurt makes me smile at least. Yurt yurt yurt yurt puma yurt! Hee hee… puma.
Sorry about that… I get easily distracted sometimes. I promise it won’t happen again. (Yurt!) Anyway, the herb and garlic roast pork loin is an excellent example of how you can make something tasty and delicious without breaking the bank. Hey, it’s even something that looks and tastes fancy enough to serve to guests… but at $1.77/lb (Sam’s Club) it’s cheaper than just about anything out there (except maybe chicken leg quarters, which were 97¢/lb).
As an aside… my favorite words are so far pamplemousse, parapluie, puma and yurt (Yurt!). Am I the only one who is dorky enough to have favorite words? Do any of you guys have favorite words?
Herb and Garlic Roasted Pork Loin
serves 8-10
3 ½ - 4 lbs Pork Loin Roast**
6 cloves Garlic, peeled
1/3 cup Vegetable Oil
1 tbs Dried Rosemary
2 tps Thyme
Seasoning Salt
Black Pepper
Pre heat oven to 400. Do not trim the fat from the roast, leaving it on will help keep the roast moist and tender. With fat side up, make 6 deep cuts in the meat just big enough to stuff in a clove of garlic. If the garlic cloves are really large, you can cut them in half. Stuff a clove of garlic down each hole. Drizzle the oil over the roast, be sure to coat it on all sides. Rub all sides of the roast with rosemary and thyme and sprinkle with seasoning salt and black pepper. Put roast fat side up in a roasting pan on the roasting rack. Bake at 400 hundred for 10 minutes then turn the temperature down to 250. Roast for 1 -1 ½ hours, until the roast’s internal temperature reaches 160 degrees. (Should take approx 20 minutes per pound, but be sure to check your roast with a meat thermometer as it can take more or less time, depending on the size and shape of the meat.) Remove roast to a platter and allow to set for 10-15 minutes before slices. While you wait for the roast to rest, you can make a pan sauce or a gravy with the drippings in the bottom of the pan. (Yurt!)
** This is a pork loin roast, not a tenderloin. The tender loin is the smaller, skinnier cut. It’s usually only about 1 pound. The pork loin is much larger, usually found between 2-5 pounds and is usually around 4 inches in diameter.
(Yurt!)
Dinner: Herb and Garlic Roast Pork Loin, Gravy, Mashed Potatoes and Green Beans
Apparently, I didn’t do too bad in the meal planning so far this week. I was a bit worried because the budget cut caused me to really pare down my menus. Sure, it was only twenty dollars, but we’re looking at a three hundred dollar difference between this semester and last semester while we’re only looking at the difference of around 10 guys per meal. So I have the guys on a poor man’s menu plan. It’s a menu plan I’m rather familiar with because Tyler and I were have been on it since we got married. Hamburger is cut with ground turkey because the turkey is cheaper and doesn’t shrink as much but since it‘s mixed with hamburger you still get a beef taste. Meals have more “filler” such as rice or beans which allows me to stretch out the servings. I make less sides. Sure there is a meat, a veggie and a starch with every meal, there just isn’t anything beyond that. I might have served a salad along side chili and cornbread; now I just serve chili and cornbread. I might have served rolls or biscuits with tonight’s dinner last semester, but they aren’t in the budget for this semester. I also make things that have fewer ingredients or less expensive ingredients. Let’s just say there will be no barbeque ribs this semester where I made them once a month last semester. But, a poor man’s menu plan doesn’t mean you have to suffer. In fact, most of what we call “comfort food” is relatively inexpensive to prepare. Take the cinnamon rolls I’ll be making for Friday… butter, flour, yeast, milk, sugar and cinnamon… these are things I generally keep on hand (ok, maybe not the yeast… I don’t like yeast, it gives me the heebie-jeebies). Even if I didn’t already have most of this on hand, none of it is really bank breaking. The most expensive thing on that list was probably the cinnamon, and I got a huge jar of it for $5. After years of budget menu planning, I think I could probably teach a class. You know, in these times they really should have degree on frugal living. Perhaps it would involve a yurt. Maybe the class could be taught in a yurt. I want to go yurt camping. Did you know several state and national parks rent yurts? If Tyler and I ever get around to going on our honeymoon, maybe we can rent a yurt. I doubt we’ll ever be able to afford anything swankier (unless we win the lottery… I have my ticket. I’ll let you know). I like the word yurt. I mean, it is kind hard to say yurt without the !. Sort of like “nee!”. You know, like the knights who say nee… from Monty Python… No? You have no sense of humor. Well, yurt makes me smile at least. Yurt yurt yurt yurt puma yurt! Hee hee… puma.
Sorry about that… I get easily distracted sometimes. I promise it won’t happen again. (Yurt!) Anyway, the herb and garlic roast pork loin is an excellent example of how you can make something tasty and delicious without breaking the bank. Hey, it’s even something that looks and tastes fancy enough to serve to guests… but at $1.77/lb (Sam’s Club) it’s cheaper than just about anything out there (except maybe chicken leg quarters, which were 97¢/lb).
As an aside… my favorite words are so far pamplemousse, parapluie, puma and yurt (Yurt!). Am I the only one who is dorky enough to have favorite words? Do any of you guys have favorite words?
Herb and Garlic Roasted Pork Loin
serves 8-10
3 ½ - 4 lbs Pork Loin Roast**
6 cloves Garlic, peeled
1/3 cup Vegetable Oil
1 tbs Dried Rosemary
2 tps Thyme
Seasoning Salt
Black Pepper
Pre heat oven to 400. Do not trim the fat from the roast, leaving it on will help keep the roast moist and tender. With fat side up, make 6 deep cuts in the meat just big enough to stuff in a clove of garlic. If the garlic cloves are really large, you can cut them in half. Stuff a clove of garlic down each hole. Drizzle the oil over the roast, be sure to coat it on all sides. Rub all sides of the roast with rosemary and thyme and sprinkle with seasoning salt and black pepper. Put roast fat side up in a roasting pan on the roasting rack. Bake at 400 hundred for 10 minutes then turn the temperature down to 250. Roast for 1 -1 ½ hours, until the roast’s internal temperature reaches 160 degrees. (Should take approx 20 minutes per pound, but be sure to check your roast with a meat thermometer as it can take more or less time, depending on the size and shape of the meat.) Remove roast to a platter and allow to set for 10-15 minutes before slices. While you wait for the roast to rest, you can make a pan sauce or a gravy with the drippings in the bottom of the pan. (Yurt!)
** This is a pork loin roast, not a tenderloin. The tender loin is the smaller, skinnier cut. It’s usually only about 1 pound. The pork loin is much larger, usually found between 2-5 pounds and is usually around 4 inches in diameter.
(Yurt!)
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 24, 2010
Pearls Before Frat Boys
Lunch: Chili Cheese Fries
Dinner: Ham and Cheese Potatoes and Corn
Ok, so it is really hard to keep up with eating healthy when the kitchen smells like bacon… or like chili cheese fries. Yesterday I made coq au vin for the guys. Coq au vin is a traditional French dish of chicken, bacon and vegetables simmered in red wine. It has to simmer for hours, so when I was sitting down to my pathetic lunch of a lean cuisine the kitchen was already smelling like bacon heaven. One of the guys actually came into the kitchen for lunch disappointed because he smelled bacon upstairs only to discover that the bacon was not for lunch. I bet I could put out a large tray of bacon for lunch one day and not only would no one care that all they were having for lunch was a large tray of bacon, I would most likely also get complements on the excellence of the lunch. Again, why do I bother casting pearls before frat boys? My sister had to remind me the title of this blog is gourmand not gourmet. In all fairness, coq au vin is one of those meals that is easier to prepare in bulk than it is for 2. I also pared the recipe down a bit to make it easier and more frat boy friendly (only 1 type of onion). The bacon aside, it is also not that bad for you or that expense (I used a cheap jug of wine… I‘m not sure if frat boys are even aware that there is any other kind of wine). I received Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child for Valentine’s Day, and I have been itching to try it out. I wonder if coq au vin is in there? The plan is to have a Julia Child party sometime in the near future with my family (my dad has recently become a huge Julia Child fan… you should hear his impersonation). I’ll have to let you know how that turns out.
(Relatively) Easy, Pared-Down Coq au Vin
serves 25
24 Slices Bacon
3 lbs Mushrooms, sliced**
28 lbs Chicken Thighs and Legs, skinned
Salt and Pepper
10 medium Carrots, chopped
6 medium Yellow Onions, chopped
3 heads Garlic, minced
8 cups Dry Red Wine (I used a jug of cheap table wine)
3 6oz cans of Tomato Paste
8 Bay Leaves
6 cups Chicken Broth
Vegetable Oil (or leftover grease from bacon)
Cook bacon in the oven at 400 until crisp, 5-10 minutes, then set aside on a paper towel to drain. Crumble the bacon when it is cool enough to handle.
Sprinkle Chicken pieces with salt and pepper. In a large skillet heat oil (or you can use bacon grease) and brown chicken on all sides, about 10 minutes per batch. You will most likely have to do several batches. Remove the chicken and dump the remaining grease. Add in the carrots and onions and sauté until onion softens and is translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook for an additional minute. Add in wine, chicken stock, and tomato paste and stir until well combined.
In a large crock pot (I used a roaster oven set to 250) combine the chicken, mushrooms, red wine and carrot mixture, and crumbled bacon. Cover and simmer for 4 hours. You may want to stir the chicken several times to ensure that the chicken at the top doesn’t dry out. The chicken should be almost falling off the bone. Serve chicken with buttered, boiled potatoes with wine and veggie sauce poured over the chicken and potatoes.
** Note: You can substitute drained, canned mushrooms is you want a less mushroomy flavor.
*** How many times can a person say bacon in one paragraphy? I think I may have broken some kind of record
Dinner: Ham and Cheese Potatoes and Corn
Ok, so it is really hard to keep up with eating healthy when the kitchen smells like bacon… or like chili cheese fries. Yesterday I made coq au vin for the guys. Coq au vin is a traditional French dish of chicken, bacon and vegetables simmered in red wine. It has to simmer for hours, so when I was sitting down to my pathetic lunch of a lean cuisine the kitchen was already smelling like bacon heaven. One of the guys actually came into the kitchen for lunch disappointed because he smelled bacon upstairs only to discover that the bacon was not for lunch. I bet I could put out a large tray of bacon for lunch one day and not only would no one care that all they were having for lunch was a large tray of bacon, I would most likely also get complements on the excellence of the lunch. Again, why do I bother casting pearls before frat boys? My sister had to remind me the title of this blog is gourmand not gourmet. In all fairness, coq au vin is one of those meals that is easier to prepare in bulk than it is for 2. I also pared the recipe down a bit to make it easier and more frat boy friendly (only 1 type of onion). The bacon aside, it is also not that bad for you or that expense (I used a cheap jug of wine… I‘m not sure if frat boys are even aware that there is any other kind of wine). I received Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child for Valentine’s Day, and I have been itching to try it out. I wonder if coq au vin is in there? The plan is to have a Julia Child party sometime in the near future with my family (my dad has recently become a huge Julia Child fan… you should hear his impersonation). I’ll have to let you know how that turns out.
(Relatively) Easy, Pared-Down Coq au Vin
serves 25
24 Slices Bacon
3 lbs Mushrooms, sliced**
28 lbs Chicken Thighs and Legs, skinned
Salt and Pepper
10 medium Carrots, chopped
6 medium Yellow Onions, chopped
3 heads Garlic, minced
8 cups Dry Red Wine (I used a jug of cheap table wine)
3 6oz cans of Tomato Paste
8 Bay Leaves
6 cups Chicken Broth
Vegetable Oil (or leftover grease from bacon)
Cook bacon in the oven at 400 until crisp, 5-10 minutes, then set aside on a paper towel to drain. Crumble the bacon when it is cool enough to handle.
Sprinkle Chicken pieces with salt and pepper. In a large skillet heat oil (or you can use bacon grease) and brown chicken on all sides, about 10 minutes per batch. You will most likely have to do several batches. Remove the chicken and dump the remaining grease. Add in the carrots and onions and sauté until onion softens and is translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook for an additional minute. Add in wine, chicken stock, and tomato paste and stir until well combined.
In a large crock pot (I used a roaster oven set to 250) combine the chicken, mushrooms, red wine and carrot mixture, and crumbled bacon. Cover and simmer for 4 hours. You may want to stir the chicken several times to ensure that the chicken at the top doesn’t dry out. The chicken should be almost falling off the bone. Serve chicken with buttered, boiled potatoes with wine and veggie sauce poured over the chicken and potatoes.
** Note: You can substitute drained, canned mushrooms is you want a less mushroomy flavor.
*** How many times can a person say bacon in one paragraphy? I think I may have broken some kind of record
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