Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Day 28 - In a rut

So I've been struggling a bit lately because my husband has gone on a diet, and the things that I know how to cook and are excited about cooking don't tend to be friendly to his diet. I do have two things that I've cooked and just not posted about, but aside from that we haven't really done much cooking - mostly eating frozen or salads.

I know that I CAN cook food that fits his diet, I'm just not all that excited about it, because I love carbs and cheese and all sorts of other things that he's not eating at the moment. I'm going to do some searching for recipes online, and I'm still going to try to do 365 recipes this year, but I just need to get excited about cooking again.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Dining out - Ethiopian food!

I didn't make it, but I ate it, so I'm posting it anyways

We had time for dinner every night with our staffs during training. During the school year we have to be back by 8:00 because an RA needs to go on duty, but the first night back there weren't any students, so we didn't have then 8:00 curfew. So we decided to go to little Ethiopia, and have Ethiopian food!

We went to Merkato at the suggestion of one of my Resident Ministers, who is very familiar with East African food since he lived there for a while. We basically put the ordering in his hands, and were delivered two large platters with all sorts of food.

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The food is served on a pancake-type bread thingie, which has an odd texture because there are a bunch of bubbles in it. There was lamb, chicken, and beef, all with yummy sauces. There were also some vegetarian sides - cabbage, collared greens, peas, and a pico de gallo-type dish.

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You eat it by ripping off some of the pancake-type stuff, and then picking up the food with it. It was communal, so the 9 of us ate off of two platters.

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We ate it all. Then we ate some of the pancake from the bottom, because it had soaked in all the saucey goodness.

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After dinner we had some coffee, which was ridiculously strong. My RM told us that coffee there is a very social thing, and the drinking can go on all night with the same beans, the coffee getting weaker as the night progresses.

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They were the teeny-sized cups, but we're not all coffee drinkers, so a few of us shared cups. One of our RAs had about 4 cups.

We only had one pot, and it did not get weaker with every drink.

It was very strong coffee.

He was up all night.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Banana Bread!

Day 11: Recipe 9

Late last night I entered the kitchen to get a glass of water, and realized that the bananas we had were getting pretty brown. My husband said to just throw them away, and I briefly considered that, but then I remembered that I had my mom's banana bread recipe! And who wants to waste food when you can make delicious bread instead? Delicious bread it is.

Mom's banana bread
makes 1 loaf

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
3 mashed, RIPE bananas
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 steaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup walnuts or pecan pieces (optional - we opted out)

Preheat your oven to 325, and grease a bread pan.

Mix the sugar and vegetable oil together.

Beat the egg, and add it to the mixture. Mix some more.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and baking soda, then SLOWLY add it to the banana etc mix.

If you're going to throw in the nuts, do it now and mix (gently, so the nuts don't get pulverized.

Pour it into your bread pan, and bake it for an hour.

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Survey says...
I loved it! So did my husband, my coworkers, my RAs, the RAs of the building across the way, and my temporary boss (because my regular boss was out of town). I was a little worried at first because the mix only went halfway up the pan, but it rose like crazy as it baked, and even got that neat little thing where it looks like it broke at the top. I really need to finally upload photos so that you know what I'm talking about. (Done! I uploaded pictures for previous recipes, as well.)

Totally making this again, though probably not for a bit since my husband's on a diet for the new year. Or maybe I'll just make it and eat it all by myself.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Baked Oatmeal - not bad!

Day 9: Recipe 8

I did breakfast again, and again, it worked! I preferred the breakfast casserole, but I really did like the baked oatmeal, too.

Baked Oatmeal (from A Year of Crockpotting)
serves 8+

6 cups rolled oates (not instant, not steel-cut)
1 cup brown sugar
4 tsp cinnamon
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
2 cups milk
4 eggs
4 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup butter, melted

Dump all the dry stuff in the crockpot and mix well. Then beat the eggs and dump in the wet stuff, mixing well again.

Cook on low for about 5 hours. I really wanted to do this overnight, but since I don't have a smart crock pot (one of the kinds that switches to warm after a set time) and I sleep more than 5 hours a night, I bought a light timer (the kind that you use to have your lights turn on and off when you're out of town) and had it shut off after 5 hours. I only did this because the finished product would be shelf-stable, and it worked perfectly!

Let it sit in the cooling crockpot for at least an hour before you try to cut it. The more it sits, the more solid it becomes.

Survey says...
I served it with yogurt and fresh fruit and my RAs and I all liked it! It tasted kind of like a cinnamon oatmeal cookie. My husband didn't get to try it (and sounds a bit bitter about that) but I'm pretty sure he would have liked it. If I'd been just making it for us I'd have added dried fruit or something that I knew that we liked (maybe chocolate chips?) but since I was making for 8 people, I figured I'd stay generic and let people just add what they wanted.

Overall? I'll definitely make this again. Oh, and it made our apartment smell amazing for a full day.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Breakfast Casserole - Success!

Day 8: Recipe 7

I cooked breakfast for my staff for the first time EVER! I'm totally in love with my crock pot.

Breakfast Casserole (mostly from A Year of Crockpotting)
serves a bunch - 10+

30 oz package of plain frozen hash browns
4 breakfast sausages, cooked (we used veggie)
1/2 onion, diced
1 bell pepper, dice
2 cups shredded cheese
12 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt

Dump the hash browns in the crockpot. Make sure it's all broken up and spread out evenly.

Cut up the sausages. In a seperate bowl, mix the eggs with the milk, salt, pepper, cheese, sausage, and veggies. Dump it on top of the hash browns.

Cover it, and cook on low for about 8 hours. It's done when the edges start to pull away a bit.

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Survey says...
The husband and my RAs really liked it! I enjoyed it, but wish I had some salsa to eat it with, because I love salsa on my eggs.

I want to try it again with bacon. If my husband liked tomatoes and mushrooms I'd want to add them too. It's kind of a really thick omelette with potatoes.

Basically, it was good, but I think it'd be awesome with salsa.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

An end to the laziness!

Turns out I'm not going to be lazy all week! I realized I have to feed my staff, so I'm going to feed them breakfast in overnight crock pot recipes. I really kind of wish that I had a smart crock pot though, because then you can set the time and they'll switch from 'cooking' to 'warm' when the cook time is up. As a hack I think I'm going to have to buy a timer like what you do for lights, so that the crock pot turns off at a certain time and the baked oatmeal doesn't overcook. I can't do that with real food, but since the baked oatmeal doesn't need to be refrigerated after cooking, it should work for this.

So I'm off to make the breakfast casserole, but I'll post the full thing and the recipe tomorrow, so that I can also write the review of it at that time.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Laziness, part 2

I totally didn't cook today. We reheated a friend's frozen lasagna for dinner. It was really good, but I can't claim any credit.

I probably won't cook again until maybe Saturday, when I do something in the crock pot. Such is life during RA training.

Monday, January 5, 2009

"Indian" Crockpot Chicken

Day 5: Recipe 6

First day back at work, and I'm still cooking! Go me!

I was actually pretty worried about this dish because I stuck everything in the crock pot in the afternoon and then turned it on, but when I came back a couple of hours later the crock pot was cold! Turns out the reset button thingie on the power outlet had to be reset, so it hadn't turned on. Really upset I called my mom to see if it'd be okay to cook it (yes really, I called my mom) and she said that if the chicken was still cold it should be fine. The chicken was mostly frozen, so I went ahead and did it anyways.

You may have noticed that this is only labeled with flop. That's because I didn't really like it and thought it was, well, a flop.

"Indian" Crockpot Chicken (mostly from A Year of Crockpotting)
serves 2

two frozen chicken breasts
1 can diced tomatoes, drained
1/2 diced onion
1/2 tsp fresh minced ginger
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 t garam masala
1/2 cup plain yogurt

Stick the chicken in the crockpot, and add almost all the spices - save 1/2 tsp of the garam masala. Then add the tomatoes and everything else.

Cook on high for 3 hours. I mixed it up once about halfway through.

30 minutes before you're done, stir in the yogurt and taste. If you feel like you need to, go ahead and add the rest of the garam masala (we did).

At this point our sauce was really liquidy, so we left it on high for the last half hour, but took the top off, to help some of the condensation evaporate. If yours is looking less liquid, cover it, and put it on low.

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Survey says...
Meh. There was a lot of spice, but at the same time it was really bland - I'm not sure how that worked. Looking at the original recipe it seems like another woman who used chicken breasts instead of thighs had the same result, so I'm not sure if it was based on the kind of chicken I used, or what. We both tried it, but ended up eating the leftover enchiladas.

Overall? I don't think I'd try this one again. I'm still going to try to find a good Indian recipe or two, though!

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Laziness = No recipe, but caramely goodness

Nothing in the way of 'real' recipes today. I did, however, put a can of sweetened condensed milk in my crockpot at high overnight, and this morning had an amazing can of caramely goodness. I did it after spending at least an hour (probably more) online trying to figure out how to do it without making it explode, because apparently it can do that. It happened to my mom's cousin once! And I'm really lazy and didn't want to clean up exploded caramel from all over my tiny apartment, much less get my face all burned and end up in the hospital. But it appears that I lucked out, so yay!

In case you're interested in doing it yourself (which you shouldn't because it can explode!), here's what I learned:
Take the label off.

There are two different kinds of cans that these things come in - the pop-top, and the can-opener-needed. The can-opener-needed is the one to use because the pop-top will, well, pop when the temperature gets too high, causing an explosion.

The can needs to be submerged the whole time. I'd tested my crockpot before and knew that water doesn't really evaporate with it, so I didn't have to worry about the water level getting too low, but if your water does evaporate, make sure you're topping it off with hot water. When you're keeping it in the water, the temperature doesn't get above 212 degrees, which is what the water's at. If the water level gets too low, then the can gets too hot, and that's what can cause an explosion.

Make sure the can has fully cooled before taking it out of the water and opening it. If the inside is still hot, then the temperature change (of taking it out of the water) or the pressure change (of opening it) can cause an explosion.

There are people who said that they'd been doing it for years, and they did everything right, but it still happened. So I'm not saying you should do it yourself, because it's dangerous and all that.


Other ways of doing it that were suggested as safe alternatives were (a) putting them in canning jars and doing them that way (that's what canning jars are for, after all), (b) pouring it into a pie plate which is also in a pan half-full of water in a 425 degree oven 60 minutes (stirring occasionally) and (c) double boiler, on the stove, stirring occasionally, for 60 minutes.

However you do it (though you should do it one of the safe ways) it's some caramely goodness.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Apple Crumble, and a bonus recipe

Day 3: Recipe 5 (and a bonus)

My husband and I kinda wanted to go out for dinner tonight, but I didn't want to lose my momentum, so I decided I wanted to make a dessert for my recipe today. I was looking through the bookmarked recipes I had and came across an apple crumble one, but then decided that I've made a number of apple pies before, so I wanted to try this one on my own! The recipe is inspired by random ones I found online, and thrown together by me.

Apple Crumble
serves 6-8ish, with leftovers

For the apple filling:
3 medium-sized apples (I used Granny Smith)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp butter, melted


Core the apples, then chop them up into thin slices, and then smaller pieces from that. I left the skin on because (a) my dad has always said it's a good source of fiber and (b) I'm lazy. If you think the texture change will bug you, then peel them also.

Throw them in a container and then toss in the cinnamon, allspice, sugar, lemon juice, and melted butter. Mix it thoroughly so that all the goodness gets on all the apple pieces. What I did is throw it in a Tupperware container and then just shake it up.

(optional) Stick it in the fridge for about an hour. I got this tip from my brother-in-law's girlfriend, and she said it helps the flavors sink in. It also gets you a little bit of juice right away. While it's in the fridge, work on the crumble.

For the crumble:
2 cup oats
1 cup crumbled graham crackers
1/2 cup yellow cake mix
4 tbsp butter, cold

Stick the oats, crumbs, and cake mix in a food processor and mix until the oats are completely ground and it's all thoroughly integrated.

Cut the butter into small cubes, and add them to the food processor a little at a time. Keep going until you can't really see the butter anymore, and the crumble has gotten, well, crumbly.

Take a medium-sized pan and pour in all the apple goodness, then top it with the crumbly goodness. Since the crumble was pretty loose at this point, I just kind of pushed it down with my hands to make sure that it was packed in tight.

Stick it in a 350 degree preheated oven for 30 minutes.

Let it cool, and eat. We especially liked it with ice cream.

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Bonus Recipe - Really Easy but Super Trashy Dump Apple Crumble
So the reason I had yellow cake mix sitting around was because about a month ago we'd had a holiday dinner at work, and I'd brought an apple crumble to that. However, the recipe that I'd made wasn't nearly as fancy as this one - it's basically a dump cake, and has exactly three ingredients:

1 can of apple pie filling
1 box of yellow cake mix
1 stick of butter

Dump the apple pie filling in a pie tin or medium pan.

Pour some of the yellow cake mix on top.

Dot the top of the yellow cake mix with butter, covering as much as possible.

Cook in a 350 degree oven for 20-30 minutes.

This is so good, but I hesitate to call it an actual recipe, so I'm not going to count it towards my 365. If I get behind nearing day 300, though, I'm probably going to go back and edit all my posts and pretend like I always counted this, so be warned.

Survey says...
I feel like the crumble was a little too crumbly, but I'm not sure how to transfer that from 'crumble' to 'crunchy crumble' so that's something I'm going to work on. The cake mix added a bit more vanilla and butter flavor to the crumble that I really liked, so I'm going to give myself props for thinking of it.

Overall? It was really tasty and it went especially well with ice cream. I'm also really proud of myself for coming up with a recipe that's more complex than 'marinate chicken breasts in salad dressing and then throw it on the grill!'

Also, I gave some of it to a friend of mine, and got the following text back as a reply: "Mmmm apple crisp... so good... make me talk like caveman."

Friday, January 2, 2009

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas and Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Jalapenos

Day 2: Recipes 3 & 4

You know, it's a good thing I'm getting ahead, because next week I'm in charge of January Training for 100 RAs, so I'm going to be pretty busy, and probably eating lots of pizza.

Living on a college campus at 27 is pretty weird sometimes, but one of the cool parts is that if you're friends with your coworkers, you have friends that live really nearby! Tonight my husband and I went over to a friend's apartment, where said friend and I cooked and our significant others watched TV and talked video games until dinner was ready.

Each of us had brought a recipe, but we helped each other with our recipes, so I'm going to count both. The enchilada recipe is my mother in law's, and I'd made it once about 5 years ago when my husband and I were in the early days of our relationship, but we'd since lost the recipe and didn't get it back until we were visiting his family over Christmas. It uses cream of chicken soup, and I know that some people are morally opposed to that, so fair warning. The jalapenos were completely new, and the first time I'd really worked with them, aside from just chopping some up for chili. We also had a side of mexican rice, but that came from a package.

Sour Cream Chicken Enchilada (from my mother in law)
serves 4-6

6-9 corn tortillas
1 large cream of chicken soup
large container of sour cream
1 bunch of green onions
16 ounces shredded cheddar cheese
4 chicken breasts

In a large bowl, combine the cream of chicken soup and sour cream. Mix it up well. Cook the chicken breasts and shred them up, and chop up the green onions. Shred the cheese, if you haven't already. Then line up the soup mixture, green onions, cheese, and chicken in separate bowls.

Put light layer of the sour cream mixture on the bottom of a rectangular glass plan.

This next part didn't work for me, but I'm going to include it because I think it would have softened the tortillas some. Heat up a pan of oil, about one inch deep, and saute a tortilla to soften it up. Do it quickly enough that it doesn't get crisp.

Move the tortilla to a paper towel. Then put some sour cream mix, chicken, cheese, and green onions in the tortilla. Roll the tortilla up, and put it, seam side down, in the glass pan, on top of the sour cream mixture.

Keep doing this until all are done and the pan is full. We only managed to fit 7, so there was some chicken left at this point - I just stuck it along the sides of the pan, since there was room at the top and bottom of the enchiladas.

Take the remaining sauce and pour it all over the enchiladas, then throw the rest of cheese on there, and sprinkle the green onions, too.

Stick it in the oven at 350, and cook it until it's bubbly and the cheese is melted - probably around 20-30 minutes.

Stuffed Jalapenos Wrapped in Bacon (from The "Taste of Home" Cookbook)
makes 15 jalapenos, so how many it serves really depends on how well you like them

15 large jalapenos
2 cups shredded Monterrey Jack cheese
4 ounces of cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup minced cilantro
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp paprika
15 strips of bacon

Cut the stems off the jalapenos, and remove the seeds and the membranes. If you haven't worked with jalapenos before, know that you should probably get some gloves to do this with, because those buggers are hot! Make sure not to touch your eyes (or your mouth, or really anything but the jalapenos) when you've got the juices on you, because it'll burn. And when you're removing the seeds, make sure you get the ones way down at the bottom of the pepper.

Mix up the cheese, cilantro, garlic and paprika, until it's blended well and pretty smooth.

Stuff the cheese mixture into the jalapenos, and then wrap the bacon around them.

Grill them until the bacon is crisp and the filling is heated - around 4-5 minutes. Make sure you're rolling around so that the bacon gets cooked on all sides.

Eat!

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Survey says...
The enchiladas totally fell apart because I failed at the whole "cooking the tortillas in oil" thing. They were really good though, and we started talking about ways to modify it, like maybe making a casserole or layered-type dish. My husband wants to try mixing chips in, because he wants to mix chips in everything. (But this time, he might have a point - I think the texture difference would be good.)

The jalapenos were crazy spicy! We think that we might not have done the seeds and membrane right, because they really were hot. However the inside was really great, and who doesn't love bacon? I'd totally try this again and do a little more research on how the prepare the actual peppers.

Overall? Definitely trying both again, and I want to figure out how to make my own cream of chicken soup and use that in the enchiladas!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Pollo Rosa Maria knockoff and Alfredo sauce

Day 1: Recipes 1 & 2

I figured I might as well get ahead on the first day, so tonight we had a chicken dish and pasta alfredo. The chicken dish is meant to be similar to Carrabba's Pollo Rosa Maria, and the pasta is supposed to be an alfredo, but we made some modifications, so a purist might argue that they're not really.

I'd made the chicken a few years ago, but I've never tried to make my own alfredo sauce. Both of these are incredibly unhealthy, which means that they're kind of amazing.

Pollo Rosa Maria knockoff (modified from here)
serves 2

2 skinless, boneless, chicken breasts
2 slices prosciuto ham
1/4 cup fontina cheese
1/4 cup clarified butter - see Notes, below
2 small cloves garlic - minced
1/4 sm. yellow onion - chopped
1/8 cup dry white wine
3 sliced mushrooms
2 Tbls. butter
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh sweet basil (we used 1/8 cup dry basil because the grocery store was out, but fresh'd be better)
1 Tbls lemon juice

Butterfly the chicken breasts and cook them in a pan over medium heat. If you have pan that's not non-stick that'd be better because you're going to deglaze the pan in a bit, but we didn't and it turned out fine anyways.

While that's cooking chop up the onion and mushrooms, and minced the garlic.

You need to let the chicken cool a bit and then stuff the inside of it with a slice of prosciutto and half the fontina cheese. If the all cheese doesn't fit, just stick the rest on top. Then find a way to keep it warm - I just wrapped it in foil and put it in a warm oven.

The chicken had left all sorts nice little brown bits on the pan, so take it off the heat and add the white wine to deglaze the pan. Then toss in the clarified butter, the garlic and the onion and saute it over medium heat, until the onions are clear.

Add the mushrooms, butter (the non-clarified bit), salt, and pepper, and then saute it a bit more, until the mushrooms are tender. Stir in the basil and lemon juice and stir a bit more. Maybe 2-3 minutes.

Pour the sauce over the stuffed chicken and you're done!

White Alfredo-ish sauce (modified from here)
serves 3-ish

1/4 cup butter
1 garlic clove, minced
1 cup heavy cream
1/8 tsp pepper
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup shredded fontina cheese

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Then add the garlic, cream, and pepper, and bring it all to a simmer. Make sure you stir it often. I just put my husband in front of it, and told him to stir it constantly.

Once it's simmering, add the parmesan cheese and simmer again, stirring regularly, until the sauce has thickened a bit, and is smooth.

When that's done, add the fontina cheese bit by bit and stir constantly, until it's smooth.

Voila! White alfredo-ish sauce.

Recipe 1


Survey says...

The chicken was a little dry, so I'll have to try this again and find a way to keep that from happening. It might have been from the time in the oven, or it might have been from the fact that I didn't cook it with anything. We'll work on that for next time.

The alfredo sauce was a little grainy, but I don't know if that's because of the alterations I made or something wrong with all the cooking. That just affected the texture, though - not the taste.

Overall? We'll definitely make the chicken again, though I'll probably follow the recipe exactly for the alfredo sauce next time, and see if that fixes the issue.

First Post!

Towards the end of 2008, I started cooking regularly, and realized how much I really missed it! However, I'm really good at getting all excited about things, but then not following through. I came across A Year of Crockpotting in late December, where a woman made a crockpot recipe every day for a year and blogged about it in order to keep herself accountable to her resolution, so I decided to do something like that!

It should be noted that 365 recipes means 365 unique recipes, but does not mean a recipe a day. My job takes up a lot of time so I can't cook fresh every day, and my husband and I also like to eat out. Pair that along with the vacations I plan on taking in 2009, and that means there are going to be a bunch of days that I'm not going to cook. So 365 recipes means just that - 365 recipes in one year. If for dinner I try out a new marinade for steak and a new mashed potato recipe, that's two recipes, freeing me up to skip a day.

The recipes will likely not be complex (at first, at least) and will probably be from various magazines, websites, and friends and family members. Oh, and cookbooks. I have about a billion cookbooks. If you're a cooking snob you'll probably be bored or maybe even a bit offended by what I'm cooking because, yes, even Rachel Ray has a spot among my cookbooks.

Knowing myself and my habit to procrastinate, it's quite possible that this blog will lie dormant for a week or two, and then I'll realize it and make a 10 course meal. Or, it may lie dormant for a week or two, and then I realize and ignore it on purpose because I'm so embarrassed.

But this is the first post, and we'll see where it goes! Now I should probably figure out what I'm cooking for dinner, so that I start this out on the right foot...