Tag Archives: food love

Nov 13 2011

Recent Meals, Recipes and Bacon

I keep taking pictures of food I make and leaving the pictures on my phone or camera, so I wanted to update here with some of those.

We’ve been pretty good about making a menu and a list and shopping for only the menu items, and making the meals in the evening so that we have leftovers for lunch.  The big-batch pancakes to freeze has continued to pay off in the mornings, especially yesterday.

Rabbit got up before me, since the one day a week she can sleep in (Saturday) is the day she is up early without complaint.  I heard her banging around in the kitchen and later she came into our room and said “Can I watch TV?”  I said “You need to get yourself some breakfast first.”

“Oh, I already did,” she replied.

“What did you have?”  I fully expected her to tell me she’d eaten Halloween candy or some Ritz crackers.

“Pancakes,” she said.

“Frozen?” I asked in alarm.

“No, I defrosted them.”

“In the microwave?” I was nervous – she’s never used the microwave because we don’t think she’s ready.

“No,” she said, turning to leave.  ”I defrosted them in the toaster. Four of them.  They were good.”

Good girl!

Anyway, we were down to the last baggie of four small pancakes this morning so I made up a fresh large batch after I got up.  This time, I used a recipe from Epicurious.com that I adapted to fit our ingredients (I didn’t have walnuts, so I used pecans):  Maple Walnut Flax Seed Pancakes.  I substituted whole wheat flour for half the white flour.

1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup flaxseed meal (I put flax seed in the blender to grind it)
1/2 cup finely ground pecans (use walnuts if you prefer)
1 tsp baking soda
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Mix together and then add:

2 1/2 (two and a half) cups buttermilk (I never have buttermilk, so I put a couple of tablespoons of vinegar in the measuring cup before adding the milk and it’s just as effective)
1/2 cup maple syrup (I didn’t have maple syrup so I used store-bought pancake syrup)
2 beaten eggs

Stir til ingredients are fully incorporated.  If it looks too runny (as mine did this morning) add a few more tablespoons of flour.

Pour onto lightly oiled or seasoned griddle by scant 1/4 cupfulls.  Cook 2 minutes per side.

I turn them out onto a cold cookie sheet to cool off while I make the next griddle full and after they’re all cooled, I package these two to a bag since they’re pretty rich.  I don’t use the squeeze bottle to put these on the griddle since the walnut/pecan pieces get stuck in the opening.

They don’t need very much syrup! They’re also relatively low in fat and higher in fiber than regular pancakes, from the flaxseed meal and the whole wheat flour.  There’s also protein from the nuts, eggs and the wheat flour.

Dinnerwise, the other night we used up the last of our big bag of frozen tilapia filets from Trader Joe’s.   We’ve cooked them several ways, including sauteing them in butter, or making lemon caper sauce.  This time, I used the recipe on the package, which called for dredging each filet in flour (with salt and pepper in it), then in beaten egg whites, then in a coating of toasted bread crumbs, cornmeal and dried crushed basil.  They then went into a 450 degree oven for 13 minutes.

We served these with Trader Joe’s basmati rice pilaf and broccoli (peas for PC, since he hates broccoli).  The fish was perfect – flaky and not dry at all.  Rabbit ate two pieces!

One of our new favorite really quick meals (as in cook it quick or we’ll go get fast food because we’re starving) is also a Trader Joe’s meal.  First I finely dice 1/2 an onion and put it in a saute pan to carmelize while I get everything else ready.  I dice up two or three chicken breast tenderloins and put them aside.  After the onions are golden, I add a couple of handfuls of french green beans (not french cut from a can, but thin frozen French beans from TJs – if you don’t have them, use regular frozen green beans) that I had thawed in a strainer under warm running water first.

Put the beans in with the onions and add a little salt and saute until they’re heated through and start to pick up a little color.  Then turn it out onto a plate.  Add oil back to the pan and saute the chicken pieces.  When the chicken is cooked through and starting to brown, add two minced cloves of garlic (if you like garlic) and then add the beans and onions back to the pan. Cook til it’s all piping hot.Turn out onto a serving dish (you can double or triple the recipe for your family’s appetite).

Meanwhile, I heat up the oven and bake a package of Trader Joe’s frozen garlic naan bread (Indian flatbread).  It bakes in 3 minutes.

You can use the plain naan bread as well – we just like garlic around here!

We eat the chicken and beans with the naan bread and then if there’s none left and anyone is still hungry, they can have a bowl of cereal.  Rabbit likes the beans because they’re squeaky when she chews them.

But if I had to choose my favorite recent meal, it would be one someone made for me, rather than anything I’d cooked myself.  Last Sunday morning at the youth retreat I was on, I got up early to help supervise waking the kids and make sure everyone was where they were supposed to be.  I passed the church kitchen and thought I smelled bacon, but we don’t serve bacon on the weekend so I was pretty sure I was hallucinating.

Later, I went into the kitchen for coffee and my friend Annette’s husband Pat, who was cooking that weekend, said they had a treat for me.  He uncovered two baking sheets on the stove top to reveal about half a pound of bacon that they had fashioned into letters spelling out my name.

And guess what? I’m not ashamed to say – I ate every piece.


Feb 13 2011

Sweet and Spicy Sweet Potato Soup

Because this weekend was an unmitigated disaster in all respects except perhaps setting a personal record for number of loads of laundry done in 36 hours….because of that, I had to make a pot of soup to keep from chewing through a wall with rage and frustration over the freaking head lice situation visited by fate upon my daughter.

Cooking, when I’m allowed time alone to pursue it, can be a calming activity.  For me, there’s nothing like having PC and Rabbit in the living room playing or watching TV while I’m in the kitchen cooking something we’ll share later, putting my frustrations and anger at the world in general aside to focus on chopping the hell out of vegetables, pounding chicken with a mallet, or kneading bread until I’m out of breath.

So yesterday, I put together a soup based on my foggy memory of something a very calm and perhaps drugged woman on the Cooking Channel had made, mostly because she was so tranquil I had sort of convinced myself that what she’d concocted was some sort of sedative in a pot.

I heated our soup pot on the stove.  It’s a 50+ year old Club aluminum pot (in turquoise color) that used to belong to PC’s grandmother.

I put a few tablespoons of olive oil in the pot, and when it was hot, I added one onion that I’d chopped, and then four coarsely chopped carrots.  The onions became translucent, and then I added one very large sweet potato, which I’d peeled and cut into one-inch cubes.  Then I added four cloves of pressed garlic, and about 1/2 cup of chopped roasted red peppers from a jar.  By now it was smelling amazing.  I added 1 teaspoon of chili powder, a lot of freshly cracked pepper, and about a teaspoon of salt.  To all that, I added a 15-ounce can of stewed tomatoes (on TV, she used diced tomatoes, but I didn’t have any), and six cups of chicken stock.

I brought it to a boil and reduced the heat, letting it simmer for a long time while I did some work in the house.  When the carrots and sweet potatoes were nice and soft, I turned off the heat and let the whole soup cool down a little.

Then, in small batches, I put the soup into the blender to puree it very finely.  About two cups at a time to keep it from blasting out of the top of the blender and spraying all over the kitchen, which happened a couple of years ago and almost blinded me.

When all of the soup was pureed, I put it into a clean pot (actually, the same pot, but I washed it first) and brought it back to a simmer.  Then I added the secret ingredient:  1/4 cup of smooth PEANUT BUTTER.  It melted in and dispersed throughout the soup, giving it a rich and mellow flavor that mellowed some of the heat from the chili powder.

Rabbit and I sat down with Grandpa Bob (PC was out of town and Grandpa had a rough week, so I invited him over for soup) and we had the spicy sweet potato soup, served alongside hot biscuits, a plate of sliced cheese, and some crispy smoked bacon.

This may end up being my go-to comfort food soup.  It really was delicious!

Feb 7 2011

Back in the (Kitchen) Saddle Again

After nearly eight weeks of medication fog, I’ve emerged and am trying to shake off the 10 pounds I gained, and renewing my love of cooking.

The L**apro I was taking injected me with severe inertia and an addiction to flannel pajamas, fleece blankets and hours of Sudoku.  Combined.  I haven’t finished reading a book in weeks, and thanks to Netflix on the Wii, watched over 40 episodes of “Lie to Me” (starring Tim Roth) in ten days.

I had become powerless over laziness and had to admit my weakness in order to move on.

So I went off the medication cold turkey and within a couple of days, I’m feeling miles better.  I’ve been working out (for those of you who go to an actual gym or run miles or whatever, you may scoff, but I’m working out) on the Wii Fit.

The next challenge is food.  Rabbit hasn’t been getting enough vegetables, and PC’s digestive habits don’t do him any favors. Additionally, I’ve wanted to eat more homemade food, relax in the kitchen, and save money.

This weekend, I found a recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies with sunflower seeds.  The cookies are made with white and whole wheat flours, in addition to oatmeal, raisins, lots of cinnamon and sunflower seed kernels, which I adore.  Plus, my friend Mary had given us, for Christmas, homemade vanilla extract – a beautiful tiny ceramic-stoppered bottle in which whole vanilla beans were steeped in vodka.  So the cookie dough was incredibly fragrant, with specks of vanilla bean seeds mixed in with the cinnamon and other ingredients.  PC won’t eat oatmeal cookies, so Rabbit and I have been enjoying them:

Tonight, Rabbit wanted chicken nuggets for dinner.  So I thawed some chicken breast tenderloins and cut them into pieces, and dredged them first in beaten egg and then in a mixture of bread crumbs**, Parmesan cheese, parsley, garlic powder, salt and pepper.  I baked them on a cookie sheet at 400 degrees for 20 minutes and they came out crispy and smelling wonderful.

I had one large-ish sweet potato sitting in the cupboard for over a month, so I peeled it, cut it into one-inch cubes and boiled them for about five minutes.  Then I drained them and added a drizzle of olive oil, a splash of maple syrup, a little balsamic vinegar, some ground ginger, a pinch of salt, a lot of fresh cracked pepper, and a generous dusting of fresh chili powder (I get our chili powder at Open Harvest, the “Hippie Vittles” store I love, where their bulk herbs and spices are ridiculously fresh and inexpensive).  I turned the sweet potato cubes out onto the pan alongside the chicken nuggets to roast in the oven.

My trusty Tupperware veggie steamer (a million thanks to whichever friend gave me this on my 40th birthday) took care of the broccoli, carrots and cauliflower.  I coarsely chopped up three carrots and threw them into the steamer with some broccoli and cauliflower, put about two tablespoons of water in the bottom of the tray, covered it and put it in the microwave on high for four minutes.

Rabbit ate all of her chicken, a generous serving of the steamed veggies, two helpings of the sweet potatoes, and a cookie.  I ate a shamefully large plate of everything myself.  Picky PC loved the chicken, but bypassed the veggies and sweet potatoes.  He had (gag) canned peas.

**I always have bread crumbs on hand, and here’s how.  Homemade bread doesn’t have preservatives in it, so I know that if we don’t eat it all within three days, it’s going to start growing stale and then moldy.  So on day three, I break the bread up into pieces and put it in the food processor, and run it until the crumbs are extra fine.  I dump the crumbs into a gallon freezer bag and keep them in the freezer to use in recipes like the one above.
Also, I use the crumbs for bread crumb cookies, which are wonderfully soft, chocolatey and cakelike cookies, perfect to have with a glass of cold milk.  A perfect way to keep bread crumbs from going to waste.  I only use white bread crumbs for these, and keep the wheat bread crumbs in a separate container.
Oct 17 2010

Onion Pizza Tart

So here’s what you do.

You make a pizza dough and roll out half of it into a small circle.  Crimp the edges and fit it into a round baking dish.  Bake it til the dough starts to turn golden.

Take it out of the oven and fill the middle with a huge amount of golden and sweet carmelized onions.  Top with mozzarella cheese, and then sprinkle just a little garlic salt on top.

Bake for another five minutes, and then finish off with about a minute under the broiler.

Eat until you are drunk with onions and carbs and cheese, and then go to bed.

Yeah. That’s the way to end a weekend.

Oct 10 2010

Beef Soup Basic Recipe

It got cloudy this afternoon, and when I got home from my meeting, I went to the basement deep freeze and got out a Tupperware container of frozen soup.  After a fifteen minute defrost in the microwave, it’s bubbling away on the stove.  When Rabbit and PC get home, I’ll add some barley to the soup and we’ll have it with bread and butter.

The soup tonight it my basic beef soup, which is wonderful with barley, and also good with noodles (although to me, noodles in soup belong with poultry, not beef).

BEEF SOUP:

  • One beef shank, with bone, cut about 1 1/2 inches thick.  (If you don’t know what this is, look in the meat department at the grocery store, or ask the meat dept. manager.)
  • 3 carrots, peeled and cut into big chunks
  • The top 1/4 of an entire bunch of celery, leaves included, cut into 1/2″ slices.
  • 2 small yellow onions, or one and a half medium onions, coarsely chopped (I cut the onion in half, then peel it, then cut each half into six or eight wedges.)
  • 3-5 cloves of garlic, depending on your preference and if you have any other plans the rest of the day that require you to smell good.
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 2 quarts water
  • 2 tablespoons beef soup base (powdered, NOT bouillon; beef soup base is dry and densely packed into jars with almost the consistency of brown sugar.  You can skip this step if you like, but it is helpful).
  • Olive oil

In a large pot (6-8 quart pot), heat 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil on medium high heat.  Lay the beef shank in the oil to sear the outside for about 2 minutes on the first side.  Turn it over.  About a minute into the second side, add the carrots, onion and celery to the pan and cook all for about 5-6 minutes until vegetables look roasty and onions are translucent and beginning to carmelize.  Then add garlic.  Add soup base powder now if using, stirring well to coat all the vegetables.  Add coarse salt and freshly ground pepper (about a teaspoon of salt).  Cook for another minute or two.

Now add the water and turn the heat up to high.  Add the bay leaf.  While the water comes to a boil, stir soup to loosen any meat or vegetables from the bottom of the pan.  When it hits a good rolling boil, turn it down to low heat and let it simmer, covered, for at least two hours. (My soup, my rules).

Turn the heat off and remove the beef shank from the soup.  If the marrow is still in the bone, put it into the broth (don’t worry about this if you’re squeamish).  Put the meat aside to cool.

Strain the broth into a large bowl or another pot.  Discard the bay leaf.  Put cooked vegetables into food processor or blender, about 1/3 at a time, with a little of the broth, and puree.

Add the pureed vegetables back to the broth, and stir till all combined.

Remove fat from the meat, discard.  Throw away the bone, even if your daughter asks if she can have it for a souvenir.  Break the meat into little pieces.  It is very rich so you don’t need a lot.  Put meat back into broth.

When cooking it from this point, you can add a tablespoon of tomato paste, or a small can of tomato sauce.  We do that once in a while.  Or you can skip that.

If adding noodles, cook in the broth instead of water, according to package instructions. If adding homemade noodles, make the noodles, toss them in flour to keep them from sticking together, and then add directly to the soup.

We like this soup with barley.  Take about 1 cup of pearled barley (easy to find at the store, either in the section where the cereal is, or in the bulk section) and add it to the simmering soup and cook for about 20 minutes.  (You might check this; I don’t set a timer.  I just eyeball it).

To finish off any soup, I often add a tablespoon of butter and some chopped parsley.  I’m not fancy; I use dried parsley in a bottle.  Add salt and pepper to taste. If the soup seems thin, I’ll make a slurry of flour and softened butter and add it with a whisk.  Taste the soup first, though.  This one might be rich enough not to need butter, and that’s saying something!

This soup is hearty and amazingly good with homemade bread and butter, or with a loaf of crispy garlic bread.

If you see a package of meat in the store that is cubed beef with the label “beef for stew” I suggest passing it up.  For beef soup cooked slow, you need meat with marbling and enough fat to give it flavor.  Fat is not going to ruin you when you’re making soup.  The proportion of meat to everything else in this dish is low, but the marbling (and the marrow in the bone) gives it a very rich flavor.

Aug 21 2010

Groceries, Week Something or Other

 

There are some other items I picked up on Tuesday from Target that are not in this picture:  chocolate chips, snack crackers for Rabbit to have after school, etc.  Then on Thursday, I spent $18 on food to keep in my office at work so I would have options if I didn’t take leftovers in.

Today I spent $50.47.  Most of the items will last a couple of weeks.  I had planned to spend less, but the ground beef I thought HyVee had on sale was only a special for Thursday and Friday ($1.49/lb — I’m just sick that I missed it) so I got a 3lb package for $8.88.   Popcorn for snacks.  A couple of pluots, a cantaloupe for $0.99.  We were out of onions and garlic, and there’s a watermelon that I got but forgot to put in the picture.

The milk was $0.99 per half gallon, which was a major deal, as well as $1.68 for the apple juice.  I had spaghetti sauce on my list and when I saw that they had Valentino’s brand I had to get it, even though it was twice the price of Ragu.  However, Ragu is always so bland we have to doctor it up, with mixed results, but we LOVE the Val’s sauce.   The chicken was a steal: leg quarters for $0.59/lb.  Those two giant packages ended up costing only about $5.00 total.

I have a batch of bread dough raising in the kitchen, and we just finished dinner.  Shake and Bake chicken legs and thighs, buttered corn, and baby potatoes (in photo) with garlic and parsley.  One of the chicken leg quarters from the package went into a stock pot with carrots, celery, onion, garlic and bay leaf to make stock.  The chicken I pull off the bones later will go in the freezer til later in the week when I’ll either make chicken pot pie or something else.

After Rabbit has her shower, I’ll put the bread in the oven and we’ll sit down to watch “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” on DVD.  This frugal life ain’t glamorous, but it also ain’t half bad.

Aug 14 2010

Groceries, Week 6

Week five was kind of a wash because I spent a ton more money than we had planned, but the week before we had barely spent any.

This week, I was down to the low end of my supply of basic pantry staples like yeast and bay leaf and so on.  Additionally, we were in a rut with fruit and since I needed to go to the organic/bulk food store for yeast and herbs/spices, I decided to take about $30 of our grocery cash and see what else I could get.

The total for all of that shown above was just over $26.00.  If you live in Lincoln, you have to check out Open Harvest.  Great, clean and friendly.  In the foreground, the three mottled looking little fruits are pluots (plum + apricot), which I had only heard of this past week.  Behind that are two gorgeous white peaches I got for PC and Rabbit.  Six organic, locally grown carrots.  A beautiful locally grown eggplant (for eggplant parm). Two pink lady apples (purchased because Rabbit liked the name).   A gallon of milk from a nearby local dairy that produces hormone-free milk.  There’s also a bunch of stuff from their bulk section, including a bag of dry cannelini beans for a dish I’m making later this week, a large bag containing a pound of active dry yeast, some organic chili powder, some minced dried onion, and the best bargain of all:  bay leaves.

Let me tell you a little something about the bulk herbs and spices at this place:  They are fresher and healthier and cheaper than any other place in town.  Take the bay leaf for example.  In a grocery store, I can get a jar of bay leaves, containing about ten leaves, for between $3 and $5.  At Open Harvest, they charge by the pound.  You get your own, put them in a plastic bag, and these small dried leaves are so light….my bag of bay leaves, rougly 20 of them (twice what you get in a store container) cost twenty-five CENTS. 

The yeast, same story.  A jar of Fleischmann’s yeast in the grocery store, containing 4 ounces of yeast, costs $7.45, or $29.80/lb.  If you buy yeast in the little envelopes, three to a packet, that comes out to about three quarters of an ounce of yeast for $1.99, which is $2.65/ounce, or $42.45/pound.   This bulk yeast from Open Harvest, very fresh, was $6.50 a pound.

The milk was $3.65 for a gallon, very competitive with the least expensive milk I have found at other stores.  The produce was more expensive than in other grocery stores, but it’s organic and we only bought enough for the week and to supplement what we still have leftover in the house.

The pluots:

Holy cow, these were so good.  Rabbit and I sliced one up this evening and ate it before she went to bed.  She was in ecstasy over how fresh and delicious they were.

In the evening, I made homemade pizza.  I tried a different dough recipe, which didn’t turn out too bad.  One pizza was topped with the leftover spaghetti sauce we had the other night, along with cheese.  The other pizza was Rabbit’s and my favorite, although PC didn’t enjoy it as much.  We put just a little sauce on the dough, and then covered it with carmelized Vidalia onion, some garlic powder, and lots of cheese.  The cheese made a little shell over the sweet, candy-like onions and she and I ate piece after piece (Rabbit had FOUR slices!).

Now PC is resting and I’m ready to fall asleep.  It was one of the most pleasant, relaxing and happy Saturdays I have had in months and months.

Aug 10 2010

Hot Tamales

No, literally.  Hot tamales.

My friend Mary came over this afternoon and we made homemade tamales. She shopped for the ingredients and borrowed my pressure cooker to cook the meat.  Then she got to my house with all the ingredients and we went to work.

First of all, the recipe we used was different, very different, from the one I grew up seeing made.  But she had it from a cookbook compiled by a local legend from where she lived in California, and we went with it.

First, we put something like (and I am not making this up) a pound and a half of lard into the KitchenAid and whipped it until it looked like fluffy frosting.  Seriously, it was beautiful to look at, almost like meringue. 

Then we added salt and baking powder and put it all in a giant bowl and added masa, a finely ground corn flour used in all manner of Mexican food, including mixing it with straight water to form the dough for corn tortillas (a project for another day).

We used about 3lbs of masa, and had to take turns mixing it with a wooden spoon.  We also added the cooking liquid we’d strained from the pork roasts Mary had cooked for the filling.  She’d pressure cooked the meat with bay leaf, a little water, onions and garlic. 

When the masa mixture was the consistency of whipped cream (but heavier, waaayyyy heavier), we turned our attention to the pork.  We shredded it with forks and added some tomato sauce that had Mexican seasoning and lemon in it, and lots of chili powder. 

Mary had gotten dried corn husks from the store and steeped them in boiling water to soften them.  We sat at the table and spooned first the masa mixture onto the husks, and spread it out. Then on top of it, we put some of the meat mixture. Then we folded over the softened husks to envelope the meat in the dough, and then rolled it up like a sausage.  We tore long strips of corn husk off the smaller sections and used these “strings” to tie off the ends of the tamales.

A dozen at a time, we put the tamales into a hammock I had formed out of a flour-sack dish towel tied to the handles over the top of a large enamel canner, in which a couple of inches of water boiled at the bottom. 

 We had two canners going at the same time. I put the lids on and we steamed them for about 45 minutes.  I had the fan going in the kitchen to help the AC along, but Mary and I couldn’t help noting that it’s no wonder that tamales are a traditional wintertime/Christmas treat for Mexican families.  It would have simply been too dreadfully hot to make them in the summer in the days before central air conditioning.

When they were done, I took them out with tongs and stacked them in one of my big Tupperware bowls.  Mary took the remaining half of the tamales home with her to steam at her place, since it was getting on toward evening and she had to get home to her family.

The tamales will go into the freezer to be enjoyed a few at a time.  But first, I had to try one.

Okay, one or two.  They turned out to be really good!  I’m not sure I would use the same masa mixture the next time I make tamales — and there WILL be a next time! — but these were very good nonetheless.

The nice thing is that a project like this, so daunting on your own, is fun when you split the work and the expense with a friend.  Mary decided after borrowing my pressure cooker that she’s probably going to get one of her own.  And the cost of the ingredients was less than $15 each, with a lot of left over masa, lard and corn husks. 

Is there a food or special dish you enjoyed as a child that you never thought you could or would make for yourself? Is it overwhelming?  Try pairing up with a friend or family member and see if you can make it.  Even if, or especially if, you don’t think you are a very good cook or you haven’t enjoyed cooking before.  Even if you don’t do the cooking, participate in getting the ingredients, help with cleanup, get involved in the process. 

Having someone to share the work and talk to and laugh with while you work is truly a joy.  I’m issuing a challenge to you right now to try it. If you blog, email me with a link to a post on your project and I will do a follow up post with links to your project in a couple of weeks.

Have fun!