I found this recipe for Cheesesteak Stuffed Bell Peppers on Pinterest, and immediately wanted to try it. Though I don't think bell peppers have any place in civilized cheesesteaks, I love stuffed peppers and thought it sounded delicious.
For me though, something about this recipe was lacking. The stuffed pepper recipe I have in my memory, courtesy of the mom of my college boyfriend Ryan, was pretty much just rice and ground beef and tomatoes. I can't imagine a stuffed pepper without rice. It just seems wrong. So I made up my own hybrid recipe. It was so good I thought I should write it down before I forget about it!
Cheesesteak-Stuffed Peppers
Ingredients:
4 bell peppers*
1 small box Steak-Umms (6 steaks)**
1/2 yellow onion, diced
8 oz. baby portabella mushrooms, sliced
1 bag of boil-in-bag brown rice
1 small can of diced tomatoes
8 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese
salt
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
1. Cut the tops off of the bell peppers, scooping out the seeds and ribs from inside. Dice the onion and slice the mushrooms.
2. Bring about 6" of salted water in a stock pot to a boil. Submerge the peppers in boiling water for 2 minutes each. Use the same pot of water to cook the rice according to package directions.
3. Brown the "steaks" according to package directions, draining the steaks on paper towels as they come out of the pan. Either shred the meat as it cooks, or chop it after removed from heat. Use leftover pan drippings to brown the onions and mushrooms, cooking until soft and lightly caramelized. Drain onions and mushrooms well.
4. Open the canned tomatoes, pouring the liquid from the can into the bottom of the baking dish.
5. Combine rice, tomatoes, steak, onions/mushrooms, and half the cheese in a bowl. This is the time to check your salt level and add more if needed.
6. Place the peppers, cut-side up (duh!) in your baking dish, stuff with filling mixture, top with remaining cheese.
7. Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees, or until cheese on top is browned and beautiful.
* I definitely had enough stuffing for one more pepper, but just cooked the leftovers in a small single-serve dish. If you have someone in your family who is pepper-averse, I recommend the same.
** My cousin Alicia balked at the idea of eating Steak-Umms. You can absolutely substitute thinly-sliced steak, ground beef, slices of roast beef, ground turkey, those vegetarian crumble things... whatever makes you happy!
Last night I tried out a new recipe that I copied out of a magazine at work. The recipe was for chicken gumbo, but I made a few substitutions. It was really tasty, and made a crazy amount of food. I figured I should save the recipe for posterity, so that I won't have to worry about losing the copy I made! The recipe is below, with my substitutions in parentheses.
Easy Chicken (and seafood) Gumbo adapted from Southern Living Magazine, February 2010
Ingredients
1/2 cup peanut oil
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 cup chopped sweet onion
1 cup chopped green bell pepper
1 cup chopped celery
11/2 - 3 tsp. Cajun seasoning
2 tsp. minced garlic
3 (14 oz.) cans chicken broth (I used homemade seafood stock)
1/2 lb. Andouille sausage, cut into 1/4" slices
4 cups chopped cooked chicken (I used 2 cups chicken and 2 cups mixed seafood)
okra pilau (recipe below)
1. Heat oil in large dutch oven or stock pot over medium-high heat; whisk in flour and cook, whisking constantly, 5 minutes or until flour is chocolate-colored. (Do not burn!)
2. Reduce heat to medium. Stir in onion, bell pepper, celery, seasoning, and garlic and cook, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes. Gradually stir in broth and sausage. Increase heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, 20 minutes.
3. Prepare okra pilau.
4. Stir chicken (and seafood) into gumbo, cook 5 minutes. Serve over okra pilau.
Okra Pilau Southern Living Magazine, February 2010
Ingredients
3 bacon slices
1 large sweet onion, chopped
1 lb. frozen sliced okra, thawed
2 (8.5 oz.) packages ready-to-serve Cajun rice (I used Zatarain's reduced-sodium jambalaya mix)
1. Cook bacon in large skillet over medium-high heat 5-7 minutes or until crisp; remove bacon and drain on paper towels. Reserve 2 Tb. drippings in skillet.
2. Sauté onion and okra in hot bacon grease over medium-high heat 6-8 minutes or until tender.
3. Prepare rice according to package directions. Stir rice and crumbled bacon into okra mixture.
Some additional musings on this culinary production:
This is actually the first time I've ever made bacon. (Seriously? Seriously.) And I have to tell you - I think I missed my calling.
I'd be perfectly happy making just the okra rice and stirring some chicken or sausage into it. At that point, it probably is jambalaya. But really, okra cooked in bacon is really delicious.
I think I'd be just as content with plain white rice cooked in stock instead of the Cajun rice, because there are A LOT of flavors in this dish.
If you're making both, make the rice in advance and leave it off the heat with the lid on the pot as long as you need it. This recipe was almost more juggling than I could handle on my own.
I used the weird frozen seafood mix (shrimp, squid, octopus, and mussels) I bought at Bravo. I thawed them, then sautéed in 1 Tb. oil and 1 tsp. minced garlic for 2-3 minutes. Plain old shrimp would work too.
Oh, my dishes! I used 2 skillets, 2 big pots, a bunch of bowls, cutting boards, and other measuring instruments and utensils and I can't figure out how I could have used less.
I actually formed and popped a blister on my finger from chopping all the vegetables. Apparently I'm out of practice!
This was my first time making a dark roux, and I liked that the recipe used peanut oil instead of shortening just to make that process go a little faster. The stuff goes from tan to dark brown in seconds, so don't walk away. Don't even take your eyes off the pot. And have the next ingredients standing by ready to dump in.
I can't say for sure, because I haven't had lunch yet, but this seems like the kind of dish that tastes even better the next day. It's also an incredibly forgiving recipe. It wasn't until I was transcribing the original recipe that I realized I screwed up the amount of stock used. I only used 3 cups, and it should've been almost 6!
I highly recommend making it, and I'm sure I'll be doing it again.
From-scratch day-late free-balled Thanksgiving dinner was delicious, with only a few culinary missteps. The following is more of a "see you next year" reference than anything meant to be read for fun:
Scott's Best Gravy Yet:
3 T butter
3 T AP flour
2 C turkey drippings/chicken stock (or broth)
Make a light roux - 5-10 minutes - and slowly add the liquid, 1/4 c at a time, whisk constantly until gravy thickens to desired consistency.
Use the dinner roll recipe in the Pillsbury cookbook, but don't forget to add the egg before all of that flour!
Sherry has no place in civilized cranberry sauce, but the texture is better when simmered on the stove top than just eaten raw. Try again next year!
Time for a new green vegetable recipe!
Here's the cornbread dressing recipe, which is delicious, but there was WAY too much baking soda in the cornbread. (once doused with gravy, it was still good enough to make again)
Take the turkey out of the roasting bag for the last 45-60 minutes to brown the skin.
Time to give up on apple pie. They're always tasty, but not happy with the texture of the apples.
When I get the cooking bug, it's pretty inconvenient with the working and the studying and the exercise... ok, mostly the working and the studying, but I digress. I have a handful of "low and slow" recipes - ones that take a little prep and then a lot of cooking time. I went back to chicken and dumplings a few weeks back, and though that recipe ended up being a PITA, it got me back into the mood to cook.
And so, it was decided that we'd have short ribs for dinner. These short ribs, in fact. I've made them at least 5 or 6 times now, which is enough to know the ingredients by heart. It helps that this is a "Five Ingredient Fix" recipe! The only change I really make is throwing in a bag of baby carrots to the pot before putting it in the oven. There's something awesome about "drunken carrots" with beef. Trust me. Oh...and really, the jus is sort of a lost cause. Sometimes Scott tries it, but most times we're happy to go without. I think the last time we cooled it, skimmed the fat, and then used the remaining liquid for couscous or something similar a few days later.
I wasn't in the mood to have brown rice or noodles with tonight's meal, and really wanted crusty bread. We spent too much on groceries this week (pro tip: only buy short ribs when they are on sale. even the $5 bottle of wine couldn't save me) and I frankly didn't feel like going back to the store, so no baguette.
Who needs a baguette? I can make bread. And really, the ingredients are basically yeast and flour. I have those in the house! So instead of regular bread, I'm trying out a new recipe for pretzel rolls. My dough is currently on its first rise, and I have it timed pretty closely to the time the meat comes out of the oven. Hopefully that means I'll be having a short rib sandwich on pretzel bread with a little deli mustard in a little over an hour.
I wish I had a picture...I think you'd be impressed. Somehow Scott and I both landed on the idea that we wanted fried egg sandwiches for dinner tonight...but with a twist: eggs over-easy.
For Scott: sandwiches with egg, cheese, bacon, tomato, and mayo on wheat burger buns; plus a green salad with blue cheese dressing and 1/2 piece of leftover bacon crumbled in. (because, frankly, if you're eating your salads without bacon and blue cheese you're doing it wrong! or you're just eating a normal pedestrian salad)
For me: egg, cheese, bacon, and tomato on wheat cooked like a grilled cheese. Oops...squished the sandwich and some yolk ran out and cooked on the outside. DON'T PRESS ON THE SANDWICH AFTER FLIPPING IT, STUPID! My salad was the same as Scott's...with the addition of another over-easy egg smashed into it.
People, you need to run out right now and make this for yourselves! Poached egg would be good, if you're capable of poaching. Use less dressing than you would otherwise, because the egg makes everything richer and creamier and WHY DO MORE PLACES NOT SERVE SALAD LIKE THIS? I mean, if you're going to put hard-boiled, fart-smelling egg on a salad, this is the same calories only awesome!
So...is it obvious from my stream of consciousness that my brain is fried? Maybe poached...I don't know! I'm still plugging along with school. It's the last month of the semester, so I'm keeping my eyes on the prize. My psychology grade is over 96%, which still makes me laugh when I think about it, and my labor grade is currently 92.66% (an A-without-the-minus is 93.1%, so that's my goal). I've blown a few essays for this class, so I'm not completely confident that I won't do something colossally stupid between now and the end of the month, but I'm cautiously optimistic.
Also? Started working out for real this week. In the morning before work. This morning we got out the door a little late, but I was able to do just under 40 minutes on the treadmill (including warm up/cool down) and walked a little over 2 miles. Add that to the leg weight workout I did on Monday, and I'm now having difficulty straightening my legs completely! It's ok though - it's not pain so much as annoyance. Tomorrow I'm learning the upper body circuit, which totally kicked Scott's ass the first time, so I'm hesitant. Then cardio/treadmill on Thursday, and Friday I'll either wake up at the same time and do homework or sleep in for an hour.
I changed my work schedule, and now don't start until 9. This means Scott and I get each other out the door to work out before work. Two days in, and our only problem seems to be underestimating the time it takes to get over there. Tomorrow my appointment with the trainer is at 6:40...and my alarm is set for 5. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to get a quick hot soak in before bed.
I accidentally used a different pie crust recipe for my Thanksgiving apple pie. "Accidentally," you ask? Yes. See, "my" pie crust recipe is from the little spiral-bound booklet that came with my stand mixer. Who'd have thunk that the recipe in the KitchenAid Best-Loved Recipes cookbook (a.k.a the official stand mixer cookbook) would be completely different?
By the time I realized my error, I had 1/2 pound of butter cut into pieces and setting in the freezer. There was no turning back. It turns out that this recipe, along with my own special modifications, was pretty fan-damn-tastic. And so, I'd like to share it with the world (or the three of you who read this).
Jamie's Fan-Damn-Tastic Pie Crust
(adapted from the Pie Dough for a 2-Crust Pie, "KitchenAid Best-Loved Recipes") makes 2 crusts for a 9-9.5" pie
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, each stick cut into 16 pieces and chilled in the freezer for 10-30 minutes
1-2 shots vodka (limoncello, orangecello, or any other flavor-infused vodka may be substituted)
1/4 cup cold water
ice
1. In large mixing bowl, stir together flour, salt, and sugar. Using stand mixer paddle attachment (or food processor, pastry knife, fork, etc.) incorporate butter into flour mixture until pea-sized pieces of butter remain and flour has a coarse texture.
2. In rocks-style glass, combine vodka, water, and ice.
3. With mixer running, add liquid 1 tablespoon at a time until ingredients are moistened and dough begins to hold together. (generally 5-7 Tbs.)
4. Shape dough into a ball and divide in half. Shape each half into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes before rolling out. Finish as your pie recipe directs.
5. The rest of the cocktail is yours to enjoy. Go ahead, you've earned it!
Note: I used limoncello for Thanksgiving because we didn't have vodka in the house. The crust was incredibly sweet (after the cocktail, I kept referring to is as "a damn sugar cookie"). If you use limoncello for a pie with a sweet filling, I'd recommend leaving the sugar out.
Another note: I've heard that super-cold ingredients make a flakier crust, thus frozen butter and wet ingredients on the rocks. I've also heard that vodka makes a flakier crust because it has a lower evaporation point and therefore leaves less liquid in the crust. This crust was definitely flaky! I can also tell you for sure that there was plenty of dough for a 2-crust pie and it was easy to roll out, if slightly delicate.
We're in a bit of a money crunch right now. Between paying off my college debt (you know, so I can accrue new college debt), my new car, and last month's road trip, our savings are way lower than I'm comfortable with and my credit card debt is way higher. All in all, not an ideal situation.
So we're eating out a lot less.
And I've gotten really sick of the same chicken breast/pork chop with brown rice and veggies. Blahhhh...
I'm also watching (but not completely avoiding) sodium, which rules out most easy foods that come frozen, boxed, or bagged. I should also be avoiding red meat and butter, but I've slipped off that wagon.
And since we're attempting to be thrifty, I've started reading the weekly sale flyers from Publix. I'm looking for whatever random cut of meat is on sale, and then searching the Food Network website for a recipe to go along with it.
Inspired by a restaurant at Downtown Disney, I first tired my hand at pork ragu. The recipe was moderately successful, considering I substituted the dutch oven for a crock pot. The veggies, even after 6 hours of cooking, still weren't soft enough to dissolve in the sauce the way I wanted. I loved starting a recipe at 10 am and then having it for dinner that night, and for a while we were contemplating buying a new crock pot. We haven't though, so this recipe is bookmarked to return to another time.
Short ribs were next. Scott expected to be disappointed by this recipe, since it's from the lady who only uses 5 ingredients. No celery/carrots/onion? Are you mad? I guess the vegetable stock makes a huge impact. The depth of flavor was impressive, the meat actually fell right off the bones (I thought it was just an expression!), and the second time I made it we used the leftover braising liquid for shepherd's pie. The last time the meat was on sale, I actually made a mid-week trip back to the store to get more to freeze.
This week I had a craving for chicken & dumplings. I grew up on Sweet Sue, and occasionally get them from Cracker Barrel. This recipe was nothing like either of those. Unlike the chicken and thick noodles in slime from the can (which, by the way, I still super-puffy-heart love), this was a creamy chicken stew with veggies. The dumplings looked like giant puffy matzoh balls, but were ridiculously airy, tasted like the chicken stock they were poached in, and melted in your mouth. Of course, with both buttermilk and heavy cream, this recipe can't go in heavy rotation!
Here are some things I've learned from my recent culinary exploration:
The dutch oven is my favorite cooking vessel...but probably wouldn't be if I was the one who had to hand-wash it every time.
A 3.5 lb. chicken will not completely submerge in said vessel for poaching unless chopped up.
I am emotionally strong enough to butcher a raw whole chicken (not neatly, but well enough)
You can really make chicken stock from scratch
I make awesome chicken stock!
You could simmer a shoe in red wine and vegetable stock and it'll be delicious and tender
I'm getting better at dicing vegetables
If the house smells delicious when he comes home, Scott might not notice that I haven't showered yet
I really enjoy cooking, but only when I haven't worked 8 hours first
I think the next project is going to involve oxtails, since I have a tray of those in the freezer. I'm still looking for a good recipe.
You may have seen this t-shirt or at least heard the comment before. It's a concept Scott and I laugh about a lot. Watch enough food/travel shows, and you're going to see all sorts of animals - from cows to fish - killed and cooked. Everyone knows that meat used to breathe and think.
I, of course, am more of a supermarket murderer. By the time I get my food, it's long-dead. I never saw its face, never watched it breathe, and certainly didn't help kill it. Heck, I've never even caught a fish that didn't get released back into the water!
The Story:
Scott and I were told a perishable food-related thank you gift was to be delivered to us yesterday morning. We were expecting an edible arrangement. After all, the thank-you was for something we genuinely didn't expect to be thanked for! And so, imagine my surprise when the doorbell rang and I opened the door to find a very large box under the welcome mat. (about that: the UPS driver often "hides" our packages under our doormat. it's always obvious - even a small package makes the mat look like a cat is hiding under it - but yesterday's was just-plain comical. the box was at least a foot tall, and about the same other dimensions as the mat that was covering it!) The box had a big logo on the side - LobsterGram!
No way!
Yes, way!
So I hauled the box into the house and put it up on the dining room table, grabbed Scott's pocket knife and pulled out the shipping manifest. Now having some clue about the contents, I though I should probably open the box. So I did. And inside was a giant styrofoam cooler. I opened that lid, pulled off a layer of bubble wrap, and saw a wax paper sort of thing. I picked up the corner, enough to see a rubber-banded claw that was definitely not bright red. I put everything back in, closed the cooler, backed away slowly, and took the shipping paper upstairs to Scott (who had been in the shower).
He came back downstairs with me and agreed that yes, there were two lobsters in the box. That were moving. In our house!
In retrospect, I think we both probably made the face new parents make the first time their precious miracle has an explosive poo. You know you should DO something, and quickly, but all you can really do is stand there frozen and staring. It was really a "umm...what do we do now" moment. Scott then covered the lobsters back up and closed the cooler. I should mention that neither of us really has a humanitarian hang-up about lobster. Like all sorts of other creatures of the sea, they also fall into the "tasty, tasty murder" category. But I think maybe because I had fish tanks growing up, the sight of a lobster in a tank at the grocery store is really no different to me than the sight of fish waiting to come home with you and live in your house.
We of course knew right away that we weren't going to look a gift-lobster in the mouth, and started reading their enclosed cooking manual (how's that for a "To Serve Man" type fate?). The paper that was on top of the cooler suggested that we pose our lobsters for fun pictures before cooking them. I thought that was pretty mean-spirited, though did have a momentary flash of "Mary and Richard playing with lobsters?" that quickly passed. Scott also read in the manual that sometimes the lobster tails will splash boiling water when you put them in the pot. Yikes! So we followed the sage advice of Alton Brown and put them in the freezer to stupefy them while the water came to a boil.
When the time came, I held the pot lid, Scott deposited them into the water, and I put the lid back on. And the worst was officially behind us. I guess the freezer trick really worked, because this scene from "Julie & Julia" certainly didn't happen to us...
(coincidentally enough, I just saw this movie for the first time this morning. oh how I laughed!)
Nine minutes after the water came back to a boil, they were cooked. Scott did the ripping and rinsing, and I got the clarified butter, a few glasses of chardonnay, and all the appropriate tools together at the table. While Scott was still working on cleaning his lobster, I grabbed one of the legs off my plate and sucked the meat out of it. And in that moment, I had a food-piphany. Lobster is so good that it gives you lobster-prep amnesia!
The parts of the meal where we were able to extract actual big chunks of lobster meat from the shells were even more amazing. I might have shattered-claw-shell shrapnel buried in my face (came close to getting my safety classes out of my work bag...for real), but that's half the fun of eating crustaceans. I barely touched the butter. The meat was just so perfect without it!
I get it now - why foodies are so willing to kill and eat lobsters in their own homes. I don't think I'm at the point emotionally where I could go to the store and pick one out of a tank... but I could probably give someone else the money to go buy one for me!
Epilogue:
We had sort of a weird schedule yesterday, and actually ate the lobsters for lunch. Tonight, we're having the rest of the stuff that came in the cooler with the lobsters. It's the gift that keeps on giving! And now I can add lobster to the list of things I can cook...with a little (ok, a lot of) help from my hubby!
The oven timer has about 45 minutes left on it, though dinner certainly isn't going to be before 5, since that's when Scott gets home from work. I'm trying my hand at making Sunday pork ragout (a.k.a. my attempt at being an Italian grandmother, which is difficult, since I'm neither Italian nor have a grandmother to teach me how to make recipes from the old country!) again. The last time I tried it, the pork was tasty, but not tender enough to shred, and the vegetables hadn't turned mushy enough even after a whirr with the stick blender.
The recipe calls for a slow cooker, which I don't have. So I found out what temperature "low" is on a slow cooker and cooked dinner in the oven in a heavy pot with a lid. I read that "low" is 150-175, so last time I cooked the meat on 150, and then raised the temperature at the end to get it to safe eating temperature. This time, I'm cooking it on 175 and not even thinking about testing for done-ness until 7 hours in. I also cut my vegetables into smaller pieces - not quite a dice, but closer to that that the stew-worthy chunks I did last time.
It's a strange feeling for me, setting my alarm for 8 am on a Sunday to get up and chop veggies, brown an enormous chunk of meat, and stick dinner in the oven...and then to do morning things like shower and have breakfast. I doubt I'd ever do this stuff regularly, but I do enjoy it occasionally.
When the timer goes off, I'm going to check the temperature of my meat and check the tenderness of my veggies. And unlike last time, I'm not going to rush this. If the stuff in the pot isn't ready, I'll stick it back in for another 45 minutes and not check again until then.
...but I hope it's ready, because it smells really good and I'm already getting sort of hungry!
Allow me to preface this blog post by stating unequivocally that I do not feel taken for granted at home. If anything, I don't do enough to tell Scott how much I appreciate him. But this post is all about work.
As you know if you're caught up on my Twitter or Facebook accounts, I made sticky buns for the 3rd shift safety meeting. This was a three-day process that caused me to bail on a friend's holiday party Wednesday (though as it turns out, Scott's day got all haywire and we wouldn't have been able to make it anyway) and not sing in a previously scheduled show of Candlelight on Thursday. But I promised them a month ago.
It turns out one of my 3rd shift managers had a family emergency and had to go out of town (which, by the way, sucks any time but double-sucks right before Christmas), and one of our attractions had some big issue that took another manager away. So this morning was a small crew. I begged them to eat, begged them to take some back for people not in the area, and still had 1/3 of their batch left.
(their batch - an entire 9x13 Pyrex dish - spent 45 minutes in a warm oven and was transported in a thermal carrier so that they would be warm and gooey. you're right mom, I do spoil them!)
I also had packed a separate container for my core group that I work with every day. So I spent much of this morning trying to give away sticky buns to everyone who walked in (or past) my office*. Everyone who took one pretty much gave me some version of "wow, that's really tasty," but my crowning achievement came just a little while before I left.
One of our electricians took a sticky bun to be polite. Really, when I offered it the first time he said "I'll come back after I eat my sandwich," and I didn't think he's come back. He did come back, took a small bun, and left. About 45 seconds later he came back, plate clean, mouth full, and exclaimed, "oh my God Jamie that was the best thing I ever ate. I need another one!" He grabbed a second one out of the container and left. And I almost melted in a big puddle of happy-to-be-appreciated goo!
To be fair, I'd never brought anything more culinarily complex than an apple pie to The Restaurant. But it's tough to "wow" people who generally eat scraps of 5-diamond food for dinner every night. There, I often felt invisible or, in the case of pot-luck dinners, out-matched. Now, every day I'm thanked for something. And the only thing I've brought in that didn't end up completely eaten was the cranberry sauce I brought in for Thanksgiving.
I know that a time will probably come when I no longer LOVE my job and LOVE my co-workers and LOVE the people I support and LOVE my office-mate. But right now, I really do love them, at least in part because they love me.
*I was SHOCKED by how many people had never heard the term "sticky bun" before. I weep for those people and their hollow, empty lives!
I had a lightning bolt shaped cookie cutter made for me by someone at work.
Weird, right?
Well, probably, but it works for me. See, we are in the midst of this huge new electrical safety program roll-out at work, requiring most of my guys to sit through an hour-long online class and a 2-3 hour actual class. So the cookie cutter was made for me so that I could make "congratulations on finishing" cookies.
The first of my six departments finished their training last week, so I planned to make cookies for them this weekend. I just gave up after 30ish cookies. I got into a good groove, but damn - there's a reason sugar cookies are Christmas/winter staples. It's hot work, and ambient temperature around 80 makes it nearly impossibly to work with the dough.
Oh, and a lightning bolt has a zillion angles, which make it even harder to cut them out and move them around. But I figured out a workaround and they're coming out well - but only 6-7 on one sheet. So it's a slow process. I'll finish them tomorrow night and bring them with me on Tuesday.
For now, I'll just sit and enjoy the cookie smell.
I woke up this morning an hour early to bake a loaf of banana bread to take to work. Of course, I didn't have the recipe. I believe I got the ingredients correct, but had no idea whether the oven was supposed to be set to 325 or 350. I had a strong feeling that it was supposed to be 325, but didn't have time or ingredients to fix a mistake. I checked 5 recipes on foodnetwork.com, and 4 of them said 350. So I went with that. That recipe is pretty forgiving, so I'm hoping that it comes out ok.
In other news, I watched two episodes of Glee last night - my first two episodes - and enjoyed it, but it didn't immediately hook me. The shows that I consider appointment TV (or at least DVR TV) are ones that I loved from the first episode I saw. So I think that Glee might be "if nothing else is on" viewing, but not much else. Jane Lynch, however, totally deserved that Emmy. She's a total scene stealer!
Speaking of appointment TV, David Hasselhoff and Jennifer "Baby" Grey are on DWTS this season!!! Also appearing will be Florence Henderson, Brandy, Michael Bolton, some athletes, some reality TV yahoos, and Bristol Palin (I think I might like her, despite her last name, but I'd like to know who's watching the baby while she's in Los Angeles). That starts this month, and I can't wait to see who will be the train wreck this year.
Tonight's dinner will be a ridiculously ambitious endeavor:
Pasta with...
Sauce from scratch (starting with canned tomatoes) and
French bread from scratch
The occasion? None. Scott came home from work early under the weather, so I stayed home. We convalesced together, and in another 45 minutes we'll be feasting together. We both hope it doesn't suck!
Bon apetit!
UPDATE (the next morning): the bread smells and tastes exactly like the french bread you buy from the bakery at the grocery store. It's fine, but I have this philosophy that anything that takes 4 hours to make better taste better than if it's store-bought. It did, however, make some fan-frigging-tastic double-French toast for breakfast this morning!
I made sticky buns for breakfast. I started the sticky buns around 8:30 last night, and we just ate them. I regret to say there are no pictures of Phase I (last night), which included mixing and kneading the dough. I had a few moments when I really thought there would be no sticky buns at all, given my few stupid screw-ups. There are plenty of pictures from this morning though. Below you will see the rolls in the pan-o-goop, the rolls after 90 minutes of rising, the rolls straight out of the oven, and the rolls "unmolded" onto a baking sheet.This experience was definitely a labor of love. I had more than one temper tantrum moment when I almost threw the whole thing away, with my brand new pastry mat. (here's a hint: weigh down the corners if you don't want your "floured surface" to fling flour all over the kitchen!) In the end, the bread is on par with the best sticky buns I've ever had. The glaze - Bobby Flay's orange-honey glaze from the sticky bun episode of 'Throw Down' - isn't quite right. If you're not a huge fan of honey (or orange for that matter), this isn't the product for you.
Not to sound immodest, but I couldn't be prouder of the way these came out. You can tell in the pictures that I didn't do such a great job rolling the dough, but you can also tell that a lot of work and love went into this. And you can taste it. No lie, despite the killer sweetness of the honey, they are delicious.
I will definitely make them again, though probably not for a few months until my blood sugar goes back down to normal levels, and when I do I'll find a new glaze recipe. Or skip the glaze and do cream cheese frosting instead. But then they wouldn't be sticky buns, and isn't that the point?
I still haven't mastered the art of the beautiful crust, but who cares?
This isn't really an Easter pie. I made it last month, but never published the picture. (the pie, of course, was eaten) Anyway, happy Easter. Have a Cadbury (caramel) Egg for me!
I realized something recently: tomato soup, when not out of a can, is really freaking delicious! There are two restaurants at Disney (one to which we will not return thanks to their dismal service) that have sublime tomato soup, and I've been inspired to try my hand at it.
Side note: my desire to make soup from scratch centers around the first time I made chicken pot pies from scratch and I realized that sauteing onion, celery, carrot, and garlic makes your whole house smell like you are cooking from scratch. I don't know why people don't do that when they are selling a house instead of baking brownies!
So I searched "Sanaa tomato soup recipe" and "Turf Club tomato soup recipe" online to no avail. Turf Club's tomato soup is really just sort of normal tomato soup, served with a giant blob of goat cheese in the middle, and with toasted baguette slices all around the bowl. Sanaa's is more like a bowl of delicious roasted tomato with none of the other crap. Theirs has chunks of paneer cheese, which is this weird non-melting cheese the consistency of tofu. Sounds gross, but it isn't. But that's neither here nor there, because I can't find either recipe.
Scott and I searched all of our cook books last night, and found a whopping two tomato soup recipes. One had mashed potato flakes (because nothing says 'cooking from scratch' like adding a product that's more sodium than calories) and the other had chicken stock. I passed on both.
I finally found a recipe online for tomato-basil cream soup that's simple enough that I know I can handle it. And it starts with onion, garlic, celery, and carrot. Sadly, it ends with 3 cups of heavy cream. I suggested substituting milk, but Scott doesn't like that idea. We may compromise with half of each.
And I need to email Disney to ask for the other two recipes.
(I was going for a clever play on 'Pride and Prejudice' but I think I failed)
So...I gave up publicly complaining about my job for Lent. Not really. I'm just trying to cut back because complaining doesn't do anything but allow me to mire in misery. And you know, that's no good for anyone. And today I'm not going to complain about my job, but it might seem that way!
One of our part-timers got another job. And frankly, I'm thrilled for her. The Restaurant has never been the perfect fit for her, and she's definitely had some trying times. Last Wednesday when she told me she was going to be leaving, I told her I'd make her a pie. And then we realized that due to my Birthday Weekend o Fun, the next day (last Thursday...c'mon...try to keep up!) would be our last day working together. Obviously I wasn't going to make a pie that night! So I told her I'd stop in another day this week and bring her a pie - half peach, half blueberry (and make an identical pie for me and Scott). And over the weekend, I bought a goodbye card for the other girls to sign.
Well, another of our part-timers had a family emergency yesterday and she couldn't work yesterday or today. She called the departing one and asked her to cover yesterday, and was told no. I sent her a text yesterday and asked if she'd be able to help out today, and she didn't even bother to respond.
You can tell a lot about a person in the way they work during their 'lame duck' period. In this case, I've decided that this isn't the type of person that I want to spend my birthday baking a pie for. It's obvious she wouldn't go to half the trouble for me... or even for a co-worker she really likes. In fact, at this point I almost regret spending the money on the card.
I did buy the world's largest bag of frozen blueberries, and did promise Scott that I'd be making him a pie. So I might still be doing that at some point this weekend. After all, what else are we going to do with the gallon of Breyers Vanilla in the freezer?
It's a thing of beauty, in the homemade-and-therefore-doesn't-look-like-it-would-in-a-restaurant sense. It's tart and sweet. It can't possibly be bad for you - it's 4 cups of fruit (with sugar, shortening, and butter).
It's the Black- and Blueberry Pie!
It was supposed to be a blueberry pie. I made chicken pot pies for dinner yesterday, and had the dough for a single-crust pie in the fridge. And I also had a bag of frozen blueberries in the freezer (which had been bought for blueberry pancakes). Unfortunately, the recipe called for 4 cups of fruit and there were only 2 cups in the bag. So I used 2 cups of blackberries to round out the recipe.
The filling recipe was super-easy: 4 1/2 cups of blueberries, a squeeze of lemon juice, 5 Tbs of flour, and 1/2 cup of sugar tossed together and dumped into the pie shell. I also am slowly but surely improving on the crumble topping. The peach pie basically had a sugar crust on top. At least this one resembles crumbs!
I'll make this again, though with the correct amount of blueberries, and maybe with 2 crusts. Or maybe I'll wait until summer when I can get some other fresh berries to add. This is looking like it could be a contender for a holiday dinner or office potluck. And special bonus: it's purple! Scott said we should eat it in the bathroom.
And in case you were wondering, this picture is also currently the outside screen picture on my phone. That's how much I love pie!
...this concludes today's example of "This is Why I'm Fat."
Last night's dinner: chicken pot pie. Dessert: banana tart.
What's the big deal? I freaking cooked all of it from scratch! Scott cooked the chicken and chopped the vegetables for me, but I cooked it! I sauteed, I boiled, I baked, and I made PIE CRUST! (yes, it was just an excuse to eat more pie crust, I admit it)
...and it was damn good. It wasn't perfect, but it was a great jumping off point. And I know every single ingredient that went into it.
The banana tart was sort of just leftovers - the pie crust scraps rolled out into an amoeba shape and filled with 2 will-be-rotten-tomorrow bananas tossed with some melted butter and brown sugar. It wasn't pretty, but I'm seriously trying to figure out why people don't eat banana pie!
Well, I should stop patting myself on the back so I can go unload the dishwasher. What gets cooked must be cleaned!
