Gut Bombs Away!

Wow, so it's been a while ... I don't even really know why, but life has been stressful recently. I just took a little solo trip, so I was getting ready for that. We also have some big projects at the house, and my grandma is sick. I don't know if all of that sounds like not enough to justify the level of stress I feel, or if that's even a good question to ask.

Anyway, besides kind of not being in the mood to write, this next recipe didn't turn out all that well. It is another one from allrecipes. Pork butt steaks were on sale, and it was a nice excuse to try cooking a big piece of meat in my new(ish) pans. I think I've mentioned that I'm nervous about doing that, and it is probably why the recipe didn't turn out so well. I used extra butter in the pan to make sure nothing stuck, and in so doing probably made the sauce too rich. I mixed some fried rice in the pan after the pork was cooked, which soaked up all of that rich sauce. It wasn't too bad - it was salty and the pork turned out fine. It was just too rich to be eaten in one sitting. I could see trying something like this again, but I would definitely try to cut the amount of fat next time. Which would probably result in a tuck-to-the-pan disaster... Maybe I won't try this again soon.

Texas Coleslaw

I'm trying to type this out on my phone, so it will be short and sweet!

Recipe 13: Texas Coleslaw

Here is another recipe from AllRecipes. I had a little cabbage left over from St. Patrick's day, so I added a small head of red cabbage, and whipped this up. As you can probably tell, we are a spice loving family, and we were pretty happy with the kick. I did use a little less cumin than called for, and added a scant quarter cup of sugar, partially because I used bottled lime juice, which tends to be bitter. The one thing to note is that it does mess up the refreshing quality of a standard coleslaw.

Speaking of, here is my standard slaw recipe, which is as basic as they come.

1 small head of cabbage, cut into small pieces
2 (or so) grated carrots
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup mayo
1 teaspoon (or more for desired consistency) lemon juice and/or apple cidar vinegar.

"One head of cabbage" isn't exactly a standard unit, of course, so I generally find I need to double the dressing to get everything covered.

Happy Belated St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St Patrick's Day 2016?

Now that we have a toddler on our hands, we can really only celebrate with food, and this year I kind of failed. I didn't plan ahead, so we had corned beef the day after St . Pat's, and it was the saltiest corned beef I've ever made. However it did spawn this sweet double recipe blog update!!!! So, not a total loss.

Recipe 11:  Irish Soda Bread

The http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/16947/amazingly-easy-irish-soda-bread/?internalSource=staff%20pick&referringId=1452&referringContentType=recipe%20hub&page=0>
recipefor this comes from All Recipes, and through serendipity, maybe the very recipe my aunt offered to send me a few days ago.
As promised, it was pretty easy. Combine the dry ingredients, cut in the butter, add the wet ingredients. I used sour milk (1 Tablespoon vinegar in enough milk to make a cup) instead of buttermilk, but I also used butter instead of margarine, so hopefully I didn't lose much flavor.

Normally I would use a pastry knife to cut in the butter on a recipe like this, but my son was "helping", so I just used the stand mixer. I used the paddle instead of the pastry hook, but it worked fine and still did some of the kneading for me.  The dough was very soft, and not too sticky. I brushed the top of the loaf with semi-melted butter with a little milk in it (I got too lazy to try to make the real deal). I don't know why the recipe recommends checking the loaf after 30 minutes. For me, it was nowhere near done.

I don't think I've had soda bread before, and I really liked it. Fresh from the oven the crust was like a thick cracker, and the inside was soft and dense. It wasn't very flavorful, but that was actually a good thing since it was served with the world's saltiest corned beef and cabbage. Unfortunately, it pretty quickly became uniformly dry and crumbly, so if you aren't going to eat it the first night, be prepared for a little disappointment when you get into the leftovers.

Recipe 12: Colcannon




Because the corned beef was so salty, I didn't want to just reheat it, so I found this recipe. For some reason, I thought it would be a soup, which it most certainly is not. It is basically super rich mashed potatoes with boiled cabbage and corned beef.

I really don't know what else needs to be said about this recipe - if that description didn't make your mouth water, you are clearly a robot. The one thing I would note is that salting the water you cook the cabbage in is probably a good idea. I didn't (call me gun shy), and I felt like it was just slightly bland. This recipe is definitely going in the "things to do with leftover meat" file. I could see almost any leftover working really well in this, with the right added spices.



Alright! I think I am caught up! There have been twelve full weeks this year, and I've done twelve recipes! It has been a lot of fun to try new things, and it's been nice to see some views on the blog. If anything I make ever reminds you of a recipe, please send it to me! Maybe you'll see my attempt on these very pages.

Sopapillas

This was a super quick recipe, so it will be a super quick blog post!

Recipe 10:  Sopapillas

Taking pictures from below an object is pretty much my only trick to make an "artistic" shot. Note the use of the hood light to add an angelic glow...

Does this really count as trying a new recipe if I just used store-bought raw tortillas instead of making them myself? I'm saying it does. This was definitely a skin-of-my-teeth situation, but since I recently had a double recipe week I'm saying it balances out.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to share my mom's recipe for tortillas, which is much simpler than the Food Network recipe above, and I cannot vouch for its deliciousness.

Basic plain tortillas

2 c flour

1 tsp salt

2 Tbsp oil

Stir together the flour and salt, then drizzle the oil over and stir it in. It should break up into little balls/chunks.

Stir in about 3/4 cup of warm water -- the amount depends on your flour -- and knead until a stiff dough forms.

Cut into 8 pieces (I use a bench scraper), and keep the pieces under the inverted bowl while you work.

Roll out one piece at a time and cook in a hot, dry frying pan. Flip when there are bubbles all over one side.

Let rest in a plastic bag.

The main thing to know about mom's recipe is that it is very difficult to roll out. Expect to have your tortillas tear, especially if you are trying to make them very large. I don't know specifically how this recipe would translate into sopapillas, but I would guess quite well.

Now, on to the Food Network recipe. Like I said, I just used raw tortillas from the HEB. They were the smaller palm sized ones, and not very thick. This ended up making them much quicker to cook than the instructions indicated. The instructions say to roll your tortillas out to a 1/4" thickness, which is incredibly thick. They gave their sopapillas 2 minuted on each side, but if mine were in the pan for a minute total, I would be surprised.

Look at em go!

I also wanted to mention that I used coconut oil instead of peanut oil. I really like having coconut oil around. It stays stable in the cupboard, it is supposed to be good for you, and I haven't run into anything I can't make with it. I've made brownies, cookies, and pie crusts with coconut oil, all with good results. The one big difference is that it doesn't taste like anything, but if you want a butter flavor in your baking I've found using half coconut oil half butter works well.

Anyway! Back to the recipe at hand. I thought the sopapillas turned out really well. They were relatively crispy even the next day, not too greasy, and fun to eat. The one thing I should have done is sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar as they came out of the oil, because once they cooled the sugar just rolled right off.

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Indian Butter Chicken

Well, so much for getting caught up! I plan to try another new recipe today, which will put me two behind. Oh well.

Recipe 9: Indian Butter Chicken

The recipe this week is courtesy of my cousin, who posted some delicious looking pictures of this meal when he made it last month.

I jumped on the chance to get a new butter chicken recipe. I had made it in the past, but it was really labor intensive, and involved simmering a sauce made of butter and heavy cream, so I generally managed to "break" it. (For anyone who hasn't broken a sauce here is a good example and instructions on how to fix it.)

This recipe still required multiple steps, but was much easier to complete. I mostly followed the instructions, but I got paranoid about the chicken not cooking completely in six minutes, so I covered it while it cooked. I don't think this was actually necessary, and did make the yogurt mixture the chicken cooked in look a little strange. I also cooked the chicken in the same pan I had cooked the sauce in (does it freak anyone else out when people call sauce that isn't made from fat drippings "gravy"?), I just wiped it out in between steps. I should also mention that I couldn't find Tandoori BBQ mix, so I used Tandoori Marsala mix instead.

The resulting dish was very satisfying, and quite a bit spicier than butter chicken I've made in the past. I had so much sauce (probaby in part because i heated it *very* gently) that a few days later I mixed it into stir fried rice, and got another large and satisfyingly spicy meal out of it. I also wasn't sure how much ginger to buy, and ended up getting twice what I needed, so I have three ounces frozen in cubes in the freezer for the next time I make stir fry.

Plus, now I have a new website to mine for recipes!

Slow Cooking the Winter Away

Alright! Let's power through a couple of posts and catch up!

Recipe 8:  Slow cooker White Chicken Chili

This is yet another recipe fromBudget Bytes.

I decided to make this before going to the store a few weeks ago, but was apparently not committed enough to actually read the instructions before picking up ingredients. So, some winging occurred.

I have a pretty large crock pot, so I doubled the recipe, as recommended. The main change I made was to use five bone-in chicken legs instead of two breasts. Four servings off one chicken breast? I like Budget Bytes, but I'm not willing to cut back my meat intake to save money to the same extent the author is. Even my mother isn't that Scottish. 

I also bought canned green chilies instead of salsa verde, so I had to add a cup of red salsa to compensate. This made the chili more tea colored then white, but didn't taste too out of place. I also used a yellow bell pepper instead of a jalapeño, because I wanted to be able to offer the chili to my baby.

I also took this opportunity to use up the rest of the great northern beans I had purchased for the White Beans and Sausage. I remembered to soak them overnight this time, and cooked them all day in the crock pot, but they were still a little waxy for my taste. I guess that is just how they are. 

The yeild on this recipe was very good. I believe we ate two dinners and a lunch from it, without really adding sides. I thought it was a little bland at first, so when I reheated it, I added some lime juice, which perked it up. I'm completely willing to conceed that my alterations are probably what made it bland in the first place, so I'll have to try it again sometime with the right ingredients. Since winter seems to be lingering where I live, I'm sure I'll have an opportunity sooner rather than later.

Muffins, muffins everywhere

Well, I've gotten pretty far behind on updating, although I've done alright on the cooking new food front. My husband has been sick in a pretty serious way, although he is getting better now, so hopefully the rhythm of the house will go back to normal. (Edit: Aaaaand, now our son is sick...)

Recipe 7:  Blueberry Muffins Two Ways

I made these at the same time, so I'm going to count them as one recipe now, although I might come back and count them separately if I come up short at the end of the year.

Recipe 7.1:  Blueberry and Banana Whole Wheat Muffins

I like baking with whole wheat because it feels healthier and more satisfying. These muffins, however, did end up a bit heavy and mealy, which can be the downside of whole wheat. They were also bit bland. I'm not sure whether to blame that on the lack of additional sugar, or the complete lack of salt. They were fine, but more "mature", I guess, and tasted like health food. They also started to mold after only a few days on the counter.

Oh, final caveat: this recipe fit just fine in 12 muffin cups. If I had spread the batter between 18 cups as recommended, I think they would have been disappointingly small.

Recipe 7.2: Blueberry Applesauce Whole Wheat Muffins

These turned out much better. They were both sweeter (not surprising, since they have 3/4 cup sugar), and lighter. They had more of the springy, cake-like texture I want in a muffin. While I think the other recipe will be left on the shelf, this will probably make it into the pre-planned breakfast rotation.

Crafts: Magnets from Christmas 2014

This blog is the thing I do when I don't feel like cleaning my house, so I'm going to start a second update for this week.  I doubt that I'll finish it on the day I start it, so I'll get to avoid mopping for several days!  Lucky me! (Edit:  Yep, I started this update before Valentine's Day.)

Anyway!  On to the meat and potatoes of this update.  I want to bring this blog back to its roots with this one, and make an update on some of the crafts I've completed recently.

Since I stopped working, my husband and I have been a little bit more careful with our gift giving, and the past two years we hand made our Christmas gifts.  The year before last I baked biscotti, which went over well (although I forgot my sister is allergic to almonds ... sorry), but this past Christmas I wanted to step it up a notch and make something permanent.  When we brought out son up north to visit relatives last year, I had seen my mother-in-law do some decoupage, and it looked super fun. I had made my sister a decoupaged box for her birthday, so I figured I would do something similar for Christmas.

After much hemming and hawing (and wandering around the craft store), I decided to do magnets.  They are small enough to be easy to make, are nominally useful, and wouldn't be a big knickknack for the recipients to deal with storing or displaying.

I used sheets of foam as the backing, and to make various foreground images stand out.  The pictures were cut out of fashion magazines.  For all of the magnets, the base is wrapped with images to hide the foam, but the foam is visible on the sides of the raised images.  The magnets came as a roll with a paper backing and built in adhesive.  These were okay, but refused to be flattened even after being pressed under books.  I had to resort to super glue to get them to stop separating from the picture.  In the future, I would use the magnets that come in little sheets instead.

For:  My Brother

 

This one is the first one I made, and I'm afraid it shows in the wrinkly paper and foam peaking out from behind the letters.  Overall, though, I have to say I like it. The image (which I will credit if I can find the photographer) is just the strangest, coolest picture, and totally appropriate for my brother. The text, "PQMR" is kind of an inside joke.  I figured a weird picture and some nonsense deserved a background made a few different types of leopard print. Overall, it's not the most perfect magnet, but interesting.

For:  My Dad

 

This is a set of magnets on a piece of cardboard to make wrapping it easier.  I used origami paper for the background because I couldn't find an image in the magazines that looked nice, and I think the geometric pattern is more masculine anyway.  This one was hard to make because finding interesting looking words and letter is surprisingly difficult.  "Everything looks bad if you remember it" is from the Insanity Pepper episode of The Simpsons, and I remember it was a favorite of my father's.  So, there you go. 

For:  My Father-in-Law

Finding this image was a huge score, since my father-in-law likes The Wizard of Oz. For the background I used a scarf, a smear of lipstick, one of those lip balms that looks like an egg, and crushed blush.  I like how the different textures in the background work together to make the image pop.

For:  My Grandparents-in-Law

This is a combined gift for my husband's maternal grandparents.  They have a pretty good collection of "boozy" decorations around their house, including a pillow that reads "Life is too short to drink bad wine".  So I thought this would be appropriate.  You can also see how I started making magnets that were much too large as I started finding larger images. I think this one measures something like 3" by 4". So it's more a fridge decoration than a functional magnet.

For:  My Sister-in-Law

When I asked my husband what I should make for his sister, he said, "Anything with attitude."  This is another 3x4 behemoth, and really not for any good reason. I thought it would look crowded if I made the background smaller, but really, I could have put a quarter inch on each side and been fine. The picture is of Naomie Harris from a shoot she did after Skyfall. The background is a variety of sequined clothes. I should have probably used more blue/silver pieces for the background, because I think it looks a little flat. This was definitely a learning experience.

For:  My Mother-in-Law

All of the images in this magnet are hair, which I think is neat. I was hoping it would look a bit like wood, and I think to some extent it does. This is the only specifically holiday themed magnet I made - a holly and mistletoe wreath. I will admit that all of my knowledge of Yule comes from the internet, but my much more knowledgeable mother-in-law seemed pleased, so I must not have missed the mark too badly. The one thing I would do differently here is use lighter pieces for the holly leaves, so they pop a little more. 

For: My Sister

My sister and I weren't raised to be girly-girls, and while I still struggle to not dress myself like a teenage boy, she has blossomed into quite the fashionista. I liked how fancy the lipsticks looked, and the smile (I think it is from one of Pink's ads) is just so happy. This is another big one - three inches across - but I don't think it would look as cool if it were smaller.

For:  My Paternal Grandma

This was the second magnet I made. For my Dad's mom I wanted something simple and nice. This turned out a little "sweeter" than I wanted. I would also probably move the flower up a bit next time. I think I got the middle of the flower in the middle of the background, but because it is lopsided, it looks a bit off.

For:  Bunka (My Maternal Grandma)

I went with the same sort of design for this one as for my other Grandma, but with a little more edge. The background is all leather, which amuses me. I also drew and cut the oval background freehand, which turned out pretty nice, I think.

For: My Mom

This one is my favorite. Like the one for my mother-in-law, all of the pictures are hair. The heart in the middle of the tree say "GMA", for Grandma. The one issue I see with it is that the ground isn't straight, which is aggravating because I did draw guide lines. Other than that, I really couldn't be happier.

I will definitely be making more decoupage stuff in the future. It is really relaxing to gather the images, the process is pretty easy, and the results are nice.

A (Work) Week of Meat

I try to give the whole meat department a good once over, when I go to the store, and a few weeks ago that paid off when I found 7.5 lbs of Boston Butt pork roast for $13.30.  This was actually the smallest cut I could find, and I left without buying it on the first trip because that is a seriously daunting amount of meat.  I was lured back, though, by the promise of not having to cook more than once, and getting to brag about it on this blog.

Recipe 6:  Crock Pot Boston Butt Roast

I wanted to fuss with this thing as little as possible, and make it as versatile as I could, so I used this recipe.  It's so simple, I'll just paraphrase it here:  Put the roast into a pot with onions, crushed garlic, and Worcestershire sauce.   The recipe was for a 4 lb roast, so I doubled everything.

 

Here it is, in all of it's porky glory.  I put it in the crock pot with all of the wrapping still on, just to make sure it would fit. 

 

And it did.  Barely.  

The meat was marbled with fat, which meant that it turned out rather "rich" (read:  greasy) when everything melted.  Unlike with beef shoulder roasts, where I can generally remove a good amount of the fat after it has cooked, that wasn't really an option here.  While it was heavy, I didn't find it unpleasant.

Below are pictures of the meals we made with the behemoth.

Night 1:  Pork on a plate.

For the first night, I just served a chunk of the roast on a plate with the onions on the side. It was extremely tender, and while the meat itself was a little bland, the onions soaked up the Worcestershire sauce nicely. A bite of the pork with a little onion and a little potato was a nice mouthful.

After the first meal, I shredded the rest, which left a good amount of shredded pork.

Night 2:  Pulled Pork Sandwiches

I love sandwiches to stretch meat, because you can use just a little and it still feels like a satisfying meal. 

Night 3:  Pulled Pork Sandwiches ... the Revenge!

I was actually smart enough to put barbecue sauce in the meat while I was reheating it this time.  I should mention that I also drained as much fat as possible from the meat while I was heating it.  That didn't prevent the last few bites of role from being soggy, but it helped.

For the next several days, I made taco meat out of the remaining pork.  To do this I heated it in the microwave enough to pour most of the fat off, then mixed in cumin, seasoning salt, chili powder, and garlic powder before heating it in the oven to finish drying it out.  The first night I let it sit a little too long in the oven, and the edges got too crispy.  Below is a picture of the more successful second attempt.

Night 4:  Taco Salad

Okay, I'll admit, this isn't much of a salad.  Most of the time, I'll put a lot more green in a salad, but I didn't realize we were almost out until after I was committed.  At least the pepper added a few more veggie points.

Night 5:  Quesadillas

And finally, the last of the pork went into quesadialls.  This was a pretty heavy meal, and I probably could have scraped one more dish out of it, but I figured it was time to just be done an move on.

At the end of the day, I would definitely pick up this cut of meat again.  The food all turned out fine, and it was nice to be able to throw something together each night, and not have too many dishes at the end of it. 

Sorry it took so long to write this update.  The boy has been sick, and he's been less tolerant of me using the computer while he sleeps, and I've been less willing to try to type all of this on my tablet.  I will try to put out at least one more post this week (I've already done the next set of recipes).  Thank you for all of the views - it has been very motivating to stick with this blog.

Curried Lentils

Some weeks, I have a lot of banter stored up, but not today, so I'll just cut to the chase:

Recipe 5:  Curried Lentils

For this recipe, I turned once again to Budget Bytes.  I had seen the recipe for curried lentils a few weeks ago, and kept it in mind. Last week I picked up a pack of chicken legs on sale, and had too many for one pot of chicken and dumplings, but too few for two meals with chicken as the main protien. Lentils + chicken seemed like the perfect solution.

I was happy to have an excuse to try the recipe, because we are a lentil eating family. Generally, I'll throw a bag of lentils in the crock pot with some carrots, onions, a bay leaf or oregano, and some broth or bullion. Top that with two pieces of bacon, and you've got a hearty, nutritious
(if somewhat unappealing looking) soup. We are moving out of winter, though, and soon earthy flavors will seem a bit heavy. So another use for lentils was very welcome.The dish went together pretty easily. Often, I find that my cooking times are longer than the recipe calls for, which I think is because I'm still getting used to cooking on stainless steel, so I use lower heat than I really should. In addition to cooking the vegitables longer, I had to boil the lentils maybe 10 minutes longer than recommended, and they were still a bit unevenly cooked. Next time, I might try using a bigger pot or keeping the temperature up a bit (I turned it down to three). I could just be overcooking my lentils when I do them in the crock pot, of course, so maybe they are supposed to retain a bit of resistance.

The flavor was very nice. Two tablespoons of curry powder is quite a bit, so each bite had a nice slow burn. Our son didn't have much that day, but did have some when I ate the leftovers cold as a snack (of course, that may have had more to do with needing to mooch on Mom's food than actually enjoying the flavor).

To me, the one flaw was the amount of tomato sauce. It ended up feeling a bit thick, and I thought the tomato flavor was a little overwhelming. Because the recipe calls for one can of sauce, the next time I make it, I might try doubling all of the other ingredients, and maybe save a little of the liquid the lentils cooked in to thin it a bit.

Overall, though, it was a nice dish that I think will make it into the regular rotation of recipes to make when meat is expensive.

It tastes like burning...

Hey there. I know I said that I would write again on Monday, but life has been a bit hectic. Our son is sick, and hasn't been napping well. I'm trying to be extra quiet so that this nap lasts as long as possible. Let's see if I can get a blog post out before he wakes up! (Edit: I didn't make it, but he is sleeping peacefully for the night after starting antibiotics for an ear infection.)

Recipe 4:  Caramelized Turnips

During my first search for new recipes, I came across one for something like pork shanks and turnips. It made me realize that in my thirty years on earth, I have never knowingly eaten a turnip. So last week when I was at the grocery store I decided to remedy that problem. It is pretty obvious that HEB does not do a brisk business in turnips. The tiny bin in the unfashionable corner of the produce department was half full of dented, topless bulbs, but I felt committed, so I took home four of the nicer looking specimens.

Turnips in hand, I found this recipe.  This is my kind of recipe. Simple ingredients, and the instructions are basically "don't let the food burn".
At this point, I realized that I don't really know if all of the turnip root is edible, so I once again turned to the Internet for answers. This site let me know that I didn't have to peal turnips ... and that I was probably in for some trouble. The mangy roots I had picked up didn't seem to fit the bill of firm, small, young turnips that they recommend. Still, maybe they would turn out okay with sugar on them.
The recipe went together just fine (the one real change I made was to use honey - based on a recommendation from the comments on allrecipes - instead of sugar).  My husband liked it enough to finish his serving. The texture came out like a firm potato or boiled carrot. The flavor as he described it was like a raw broccoli stem. I totally get that description. I also think "peppery" is fair. To my mouth, though, the best comparison is to poison. After about ten bites, I had to stop eating. As soon as I put a bite in, my body had a strong "this is not food" reaction.

So, I'm not going to be rushing out to try turnips again any time soon. I think the fault is mostly in these individual turnips. They were probably too old and too large for a turnip novice like me. At least according tomy favorite nutrition data site I'm not missing much. I'm pretty sure there are more fun ways to get vitamin C and fiber.

In Which the Author Realizes that She is a Creature of Habit.

So, over the weekend I tried my third NYR recipe, based on a Budget Bytes email.  I've been receiving these emails for over a year, and largely ignoring them.  That is one of the reasons I decided to make my New Year's Resolution to cook a new recipe every week.  It was starting to make me feel dumb that I was getting all kinds of new recipes sent to me, but I was still cooking the same handful of meals week after week.

I like Budget Bytes because the author really seems to try to present simple recipes.  She also breaks down what she paid for each ingredient, and calculates the cost per serving for her dishes.

So, without further ado...

Recipe 3:  White Beans with Tomato and Sausage

Here is the recipe.  I won't copy it out again here because I actually managed to make this dish without meaningful substitutions!


Wait a second, you are probably saying, what does "meaningful" mean?  Well, I didn't put whole wheat flour where only white belonged, or switch around a bunch of acids, so I consider my changes to be minimal.

The first change I made was to use dried great northern beans (btw, are these from Canada?  I can't think of them as anything other than "Great White Northern" beans) instead of canned.  Beth of Budget Bytes talks about how they are less expensive than cannellini beans, but I still couldn't find any for less than $2.50 a can at my grocery store.  Maybe they have a secret low class name with a cheaper price, or maybe Texans just don't eat them.  In any case, I went with the $.88 a pound dried beans instead.  I bought two 1 pound bags at the grocery store, but thankfully looked here and realized that just one pound dried beans would do the duty for two 15 oz cans.

Now, here we come to the inspiration for the title of this blog post.  I picked this recipe and bought the ingredients on Monday.  I planned to cook it over the weekend.  I thought about it all week.

Did I soak the beans on Friday, or even Saturday night?  Nope.  Apparently if I don't normally do something after dinner, I have to write myself a note backwards on my forehead to actually make sure it gets done.

Thankfully, there was a "quick soak" cooking method listed on the package.  So, now I can pass this mistake off as wanting to provide extra information to my blog readers.  The method they recommended was to rinse the beans, put them in a pot with 2" of water covering them, then boil for two minutes and let sit covered for an hour.  I had to repeat this twice, draining the water in between, to get them to cook, and even then they were a little more firm than I think they should have been.  This was my first time cooking great northern beans, though, so it's possible it is how they are supposed to be.  (They also way more than doubled in volume, creating probably three and a half cups of leftover beans.) In any case, I'm glad I was able to proceed with the recipe, but I'll have to be extra careful the next time I want to do something with dried beans.

Once I had fixed my bean mistake, the recipe went together with relatively little fuss.  I used stewed tomatoes instead of crushed, because that is what I keep in my pantry.  I think this added to the cooking time because I had to chop up the tomatoes after adding them to the pan, and I believe they are packed in a little more liquid than crushed tomatoes are.

Overall, I think the dish came together well, and made a good meal.  There are just two things I am disappointed about with this recipe.  First, there isn't enough meat.  Two sausage links, especially cut into rounds, made it seem like most bites didn't have meat in them.  In the future, I think I'll either cook the sausage without the casing, so that it distributes more evenly, or just put more in.  The second complaint is a bit of a nit-pick.  I went with extra finely chopped frozen spinach, because I couldn't find the big blocks of spinach in the freezer case. The spinach basically dissolved, turning the lovely red sauce into a murky brown. Not a huge problem, but a little annoying.

To wrap this up, I want to apologize for publishing this so late. I started writing it on Monday, but the kiddo has been getting up really early and there has been a lot of housework to do. I also started The Red Queen by Phillippa Gregory, and of course a new book can be a time suck.  I tried my next recipe last night, so I'll try to get another update out tomorrow.

Mini Update: Cauliflower, websites, and NYR #1 Update

Just a mini update to justify sitting on my butt instead of mopping. It's supposed to rain today anyway, so why mop before the dogs come through and put paw and belly prints all over the ground anyway?

When I made my last recipe I bought a head of cauliflower, then didn't get around to cooking it because I had my son with me while I got everything ready for the oven. He wasn't going to play quietly while I cut vegetables, so it had to be put off. I made it up yesterday, and it turned out okay. I cut it up in the morning, put olive oil and salt and pepper on it, and put it back in the fridge. Last night I cooked it in a 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes, stirring every 10 or so minutes.

It was still a bit crunchy, and tasted mostly of pepper. I don't think this is how it was supposed to turn out. I suspect that oiling it ahead of time allowed the oil to soak in, and probably changed how the heat effected the veggies. The dish it cooked in was also cold from the fridge, which probably also had an effect. It is hard for me to remember sometimes that cooking is science, and you can't just throw the right ingredients together, the conditions also have to be right. I have about one serving left, so I might look into chopping it up and putting it on some spaghetti sauce I'm going to make for dinner.

So you've probably read this far and are thinking, "Is this all I'm going to get? She's just going to tell us she botched roasting cauliflower?"

To make this post worth your time, I also wanted to share a website I like to look at sometimes. Self.com has this fun nutrition data, which includes (if you have flash player) some fun colorful graphs. I have gone there in past to check if/how nutritious various foods, especially vegetables, are. It isn't perfect; as you can see, they didn't have roasted cauliflower listed, just boiled cauliflower.  But I went from having no idea what nutrients I was consuming to knowing I got some decent vitamin A, so that's something.

Finally, I thawed one of the newton cookie loafs I made for my first NYR recipe. It turned out just fine, in my opinion - no more soggy or crumbly than it was before I froze it. That is a huge plus, and means I will probably make that recipe again. If it hadn't frozen well, it would have been far too big a recipe to eat everything before it went bad.

I have my next recipe picked out, but I'm going to wait until the weekend to make it, in case it is a pain in the butt. So have a good weekend, and see you Monday.

Recipe #2, Italian Marinaded Chicken

So, Thursday I made my second NYR recipe:

Recipe 2: Italian Marinaded Chicken

The recipe is here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/melissa-darabian/italian-marinated-chicken-with-red-potatoes-recipe.html

(Note to self, make these links look nicer in future posts. What kind of amateur hour nonsense is this?)

Of course, I once again didn't have all of the ingredients the recipe called for. I ended up doubling the recipe, so what I actually used was something like this:

6 T olive oil
6 T Apple cider vinegar
3 T Rice wine vinegar
The juice of 2 limes (Okay, 1.5 limes. I was trying not to get lime juice on my dry winter hands and ended up dropping half of a lime.)
4 small cloves of garlic, sliced
~1 T Oregano
~2 t Rosemary
Some salt and pepper

I was pretty confident this would work alright, because I looked online and found that vinegar is less acidic than lemons, but lemons are less acidic than limes. So where I was using some vinegar and some lime (instead of some vinegar and some lemon), I figured it would work out okay. Also, I just didn't have lemon, so what's a girl to do? (Clearly not pick a recipe where she has all of the required ingredients, that would be silly.)

I also didn't use the chili flakes, which is a pretty major change. I do own chili flakes, but I wanted to be sure that the chicken was palatable to my son, and I wasn't entirely confident that the acid mix I was using would mesh well with heat.

The final substitution I made is to use bone-in chicken breasts instead of legs, but I consider that a fairly minor change.

I cut everything up and put it in two freezer bags at about 7am, and got them in the oven at about 5pm. I put the veggies and two of the chicken breasts in a 9x13 pan, and the other two breasts in 9 inch square pans. The breasts were large enough that if I had tried to bake them all together, they would have completely filled the 9x13 pan. The marinade did a goo d job coating everything, but what was left in the bags was extremely thin, so I'm not sure if pouring it over everything right before baking did any good.

The chicken cooked in about the 40 minutes the recipe predicted, but I was very disappointed to find that the veggies were still firm. I left everything in the oven for an additional ten minutes, but the carrots especially were still hard, and most of the potatoes were also underdone. I'm not sure why this happened. Maybe I should have crowded the pan with chicken? Would that have steamed the veggies more? Maybe it was the glass pan? (If anyone knows what I did wrong, please tell me!)

In any case, it is extremely disappointing to cook a side, then end up having to serve instant mashed potatoes and canned green beans instead.

The chicken itself turned out very nice. Normally when I cook chicken, I use frozen chicken breasts and just slather them with olive oil and coat them with spices. They end up pretty flavorful, but often dry.  Even after being cooked for ten minutes past done, this chicken was very moist (I am tempted to characterize it as damp, but that is a very unappetizing word to use). It had a nice roasted flavor, but otherwise I found it somewhat bland. I was a little stuffed up, though, and my husband thought it was flavorful enough. (The kiddo just chewed it up and spat it out, but he is going through a phase where he does that with food I know he likes.)

We ended up eating the veggies last night, and it made me wish they had made it on the plate with the chicken. They really soaked up the vinegar, and were very tangy. I had left them in the turned-off oven while we ate on Thursday, and my husband warmed them in foil on the grill last night, so they had some nicely browned bits as well.

Over all, while I might not use this exact recipe again, I plan to use marinades more in the future. It was easy enough,and resulted in noticeably better quality food (eventually). I'm also guessing that if I did the math, I'm probably paying a heavy premium for the convenience of the frozen chicken breasts.

I still have to pick this week's recipe. I got a couple of suggestions of places to look last week, so I'll be scouring those while we eat up the grillables from yesterday. I'm going to try to actually follow a recipe to the letter this week. We'll see if I make it.

New Year's Resolution

So, I've made a New Year's resolution, and I thought I would use this blog to track it.

I've decided to try a new recipe every week this year. I figure this will shake up our routine, and hopefully out of ~52 recipes, I'll end up with at least a few that I like enough to put into regular rotation.

This reaolution got off to a roaring start with exactly zero recipes tried last week. I didn't *quite* do nothing; I checked out a cookbook based on the show Good Eats, and read through a couple chapters of Mark Brittman's Quick and Easy Recipes from the New York Times. I hope to find something in the former, but I'm a bit dispairing of the latter. Sorry, Mr. Brittman, but with a toddler, carefully watching something under the broiler doesn't count as "easy".

This week I am trying to make up for lost time by making two new things.  Here is the first one.

Recipe 1: Sort of newton-esque cookies

I hadn't intended to bake for my first recipe, but after dithering for a week I thought I had to just pick something. I wanted to do a fig newton style cookie because I had picked up some fancy baby newtons for my son, which he really liked, but which are too expensive to buy regularly.

The Recipe:  http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/10760/prune-and-raisin-filled-cookies/

To call what I did "following" this recipe would be a stretch. This was the closest thing I could find to what I wanted, but it didn't seem terribly toddler compatible. Instead of prunes and raisins I reduced about 4 cups of frozen strawberries with about 1\2 cup of sugar. I also used 3 cups of whole wheat flour and 3 cups of white flour instead of just white.  I was originally going to cut the recipe in half, then saw that it calls for three eggs, then ended up using flax seed meal instead of eggs. (I look back on this string of decisions and just have to shake my head. Listening to podcasts while cooking is apparently too much for me.) I completely forgot about the lemon zest (which I would have had to use lime or orange zest for anyway), and didn't make a glaze.

So, yeah. What I made was a "riff" on this recipe? Thumbs up?

The results were not bad, really. The strawberries didn't really get enough body to make a satisfying filling, and spread a lot when I put them on the dough. To combat this I rolled two of the sides up to partially contain them, then folded the other two sides up to enclose the top. This made for pretty thick filling-free ends, but otherwise worked well. The end result reads more as sweet bread enfused with strawberry than cookie filled with jam, but the kiddo likes it. Which is good, because I have an infinite amount of it. I'm hoping it freezes well, because there is no way to eat this much pastry before it goes bad.

Okay, the boy is starting to roll around, so I'll end on that note. Tonight I am cooking recipe #2, so I will be back over the weekend or early next week to report on how it went.

Still Alive!

So... I kind of forgot about this blog? Or rather, I had a bunch of life happen and just sort of stopped.

So, since last writing I gave up on the supper ambitious Bellingham Betties project, made a much smaller project for Sadie, gave birth to my son, and became a stay at home mom. My project tie has become extremely limited, but recently I have worked on a few things that I will post about later.