Food Harlot Club

Mashed Taters

2010-12-14T17:46:00.000-08:00

I can't explain why, but every time I think about mashed potatoes, I always think in my head mashed taters. Rest assured when the phrase "mashed taters" runs through my head, there is a STRONG southern twang. I'm weird like that.

Tis the season to make absurd amounts of food to share with friends, family and co-workers! I've made a million different mashed potato recipes over the years but I think from this point forward, I will stick with this super simple and very tasty version. The thing that I like about these mashed potatoes is that they taste really great without gravy but on the other hand the flavor isn't too distinctive so gravy can definitely be a welcome addition.

I have made these twice and both times it was extremely well received. I made them as part of my contribution to the Thanksgiving dinner and again for a holiday potluck. The kids devoured them which is always a good sign. Then at the potluck, a co-worker said she was going back for mashed potatoes because she rarely enjoyed them. I loved hearing that. Well not the part about rarely enjoying them but you know what I mean.

I used Make-Ahead Potatoes from Allrecipes with a few changes. I used 5lbs of red potatoes, cream cheese, sour cream, 3 cloves of garlic, salt and butter.

After peeling and dicing the potatoes, I added them to a large pot along with the three garlic cloves. Make sure the garlic skin is removed but leave them whole.

Boil the potatoes and garlic cloves for about twenty minutes or until the potatoes are tender. I generously salt the water to boil the potatoes. I essentially treat them like pasta I guess. I once heard the only time you can truly season pasta is when you boil it. The water should be salty like the sea! Now while I know that flavor can DEFINITELY be added to potatoes after the fact, I like to begin the process of flavor as soon as possible. That's also why I added the cloves of garlic.

When draining the potatoes I reserve some of the water. I'll keep this handy to use to thin out the mashed potatoes if they're a thicker consistency than I prefer. I also removed the three garlic cloves and after mashing them into a paste, I added them to my KitchenAid bowl.

To the garlic paste, I added 8 ounces each of cream cheese and sour cream and 6 tablespoons of butter. Honestly next time I'll probably use only 4 tablespoons of butter. I doubt it would make them taste less tasty and I've saved a smidgen on calories.

I then added the potatoes and 1 tablespoon of Kosher salt. Now I know what you're thinking... but no, that's not a typo. I put 1 tablespoon of Kosher salt into these babies. Listen, I like salt and for me, potatoes have a way of needing salt. So I went bold and used a tablespoon. I'll tell ya what though, not a single person will think these potatoes are over-salted. Trust me.

I used my KitchenAid mixer with the flat beater and thoroughly combined the ingredients. I added about a half cup or so of the potato water to thin the potatoes to the consistency I liked. I also saved the rest of the water in case I need to use some for when I served the potatoes the next day.

Oh man, these potatoes are supposedly better the next day but nothing beats piping hot, freshly beat mashed potatoes. Don't get me wrong, these potatoes were fabulous the next day but right out of that Kitchenaid mixer bowl those potatoes were heaven.

Quick tip on how I served them at the potluck. I popped these potatoes out the morning of the potluck and set them to warm up using a double broiler of sorts. I just took the big pot I used to boil the potatoes, filled it about half way up with water then set the crock pot dish of potatoes on top. I set the stove top to about medium to get the water hot, but not high enough that I couldn't leave it unattended. I was able to go about my morning, getting ready and helping Skywalker out the door and in the meanwhile the potatoes were warming up nice and slow. When it was time to head into work, I simply set the crock pot to warm and didn't change the setting again.

One tip I read was to put a towel or something between the lid and the potatoes so the condensation doesn't water the potatoes down. I used paper towels at work and probably replaced the paper towel every hour until it was time for the potluck. Since this keeps the potatoes from getting soupy it is basically removing moisture from the crock pot so if the potatoes get too thick, use some of the saved potato water.

Ingredients:

5 lb bag of red potatoes
8 ounces cream cheese
8 ounces of sour cream
4-6 tbsp butter
3 garlic cloves
1 tbsp of salt

Directions:

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Drop in potatoes and garlic, and cook until tender but still firm, about 20 minutes.
Remove garlic and mash into a paste.
Transfer potatoes to a large bowl, and mix in the cream cheese, sour cream, garlic paste, salt and butter.
Serve immediately or cover, and refrigerate 8 hours, or overnight.
Reheat using double broiler.

Pecan Pie Bake-Off

2010-12-07T16:14:00.000-08:00

I know it’s been too long since I added a new post. I really try to have at least one new post a week and here it’s been a few weeks with nothing! On top of that, my last post wasn’t even a true recipe. Though I will say I’ve made the heck out of some flautas these last few weeks but I digress.

To shake off the cobwebs, I’ve decided to share with you my experience with pecan pie. My mom is a huge pecan pie fan so I decided to make some for Thanksgiving. I knew I wanted to try Pioneer Woman’s version but then I came across this version from Simply Recipes. It was a bit different and had received RAVE reviews so then I decided “Heck, I’ll make ‘em both!”. This IS Thanksgiving after all. I decided to take pictures of them as I made them side by side and then ask my family which they preferred so what we’ve got here folks is a PECAN PIE BAKE-OFF!!!

I liked Pioneer Woman’s version because she coarsely chops all the pecans. In the past I’ve always used whole pecans in my pecan pie so while it is of course scrumptious, it is kind of tricky to slice. The Simply Recipes pecan pie used molasses and less sugar so for anyone who likes pecan pie okay enough but finds it a bit too sweet, this might be the way to go. I adjusted the baking times so they could bake together so the first thing you’ll want to do is preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Quite side note about pecan pies. They are SUPER easy to make as far as putting them together but they are SUPER tricky to bake properly. You want them to have a little bit of jiggle but too much jiggle and the filling won’t properly set, not enough and you’ve over-baked it. I moved last November but in my old house I’d perfected the baking time for my pecan pies. Then I got a new oven and never could get it right again. This is the first time I’ve done pecan pie in probably three or more years. Tricky indeed!

Here’s what I used. On the left hand side are the ingredients needed for molasses pecan pie which include molasses, eggs, salt, flour, butter and pecans. On the right are the ingredients for the classic pecan pie which include salt, eggs, butter but also brown and white sugar. Straight center I set the ingredients that both pies used which are corn syrup and vanilla extract.

Mix all the ingredients together except for the pecans. I’m not sure if you can tell from the pictures, but the molasses pecan pie has less liquid so I know it will make a thinner pecan pie. The batter was also a bit darker from that tablespoon of molasses.

I considered making my own pie crust because really and truly, one day I would like to attempt and then master the art of making my own pie crust but I was also making a couple of other dishes to contribute to the turkey day feast so I opted to use these lovely little things.

Hey, it’s one step above what I used to do which was buy the pie crust plates already set into the aluminum tins! The Pillsbury pie crust box recommended lightly flouring the pie plate and then setting the pie crust into it for pies with high sugar content. This will help prevent the crust from sticking to the pie plate.

I set the pie crust into the pie plate and gently pressed the bottom down all the way across the bottom of the pie plate.

Then I pressed the dough up the sides of the pie plate.

I tucked the excess dough under (for the one plate that had excess dough) and pinched the edges to create a uniform pattern. Next time I will make the pattern a bit more dramatic because after baking, it wasn't nearly as noticeable.

I then added the chopped pecans to each pie plate.

And poured the respective pecan pie filling into each pie plate. To make it look all fancy for the holidays, I took four whole pecans, coated them in the leftover pecan pie filling and placed them on top in the center. Next time I'll add a few more to make it look more like a sunburst. Up the fancy factor on this easy pie! I baked the pies uncovered for about 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes had passed, I went ahead and tented them both with aluminum foil. What that means is you basically take a square of aluminum foil, fold it in half to create a tent, and set over the pie. This helps prevent the crust from getting overly brown. I used to wrap the crust in foil but this was SO much easier and just as effective.

I baked them both for 20 minutes more minutes. After 40 minutes total I checked the jiggle factor on both. The molasses pie was perfect! I went ahead and pulled that one out of the oven and gave the classic pecan pie 10 more minutes.

After 10 minutes had passed, I checked on the remaining pecan pie and the jiggle factor was excellent so out it came.

Mmmmm… pecan pie!

So after we had stuffed ourselves silly with turkey (BEST EVER MOM!!!!!!), stuffing, collards, mashed potatoes, etc., etc., I made sure to tell everyone who was having pecan pie to have a bit of both and tell me which one they preferred. Granted this was only a few people because the kids (who totally outnumbered the adults) were leery of the pecan pies. The general consensus was that the classic pecan pie was the preferred pie.

Here’s the kicker… when I went to my mom’s the next day, the molasses pecan pie was GONE! They’d gobbled it up, assuming they were eating the classic pecan pie!

So obviously neither pie is bad at all. Nobody is going to eat a slice of the molasses pecan pie and think it’s not tasty.

Ingredients:

2 9-inch pie crusts, prepped per directions

flour for sprinkling into bottom of pie plate

Molasses Pecan Pie -

1 1/4 cups chopped pecans

2 eggs, beaten

1 cup light corn syrup

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 Tbsp molasses

2 Tbsp melted butter

2 Tbsp flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

Classic Pecan Pie -

1 cup White Sugar

3 Tablespoons Brown Sugar

½ teaspoons Salt

1 cup Corn Syrup

¾ teaspoons Vanilla

⅓ cups Melted Butter

3 whole eggs Beaten

1 1/4 cups Chopped Pecans

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Mix together all of the ingredients for each pie except for the pecans. Set aside.
Place each pie crust into floured pie plate.
Add proper amount of pecans into each pie plate.
Pour pecan pie mixture over pecans.
If desired, dip whole pecans into pecan pie mixture left in bowls. Place atop pies as decorative touches.
Bake 20 minutes uncovered.
Tent with foil and bake 20 minutes more or until set.
If pie too jiggly, bake for an additional 5-10 minutes at a time until pecan pie jiggles only a bit.

Flautas

2010-11-18T06:11:00.000-08:00

This is another one of those "more of a tip or technique than recipe". I'd made that pork roast and wanted to figure out a way to use leftovers up. The pork roast (Pernil Asada) is very flavorful so transforming those flavors by adding more spices might not work. I essentially wanted to add something to the meat without having to add too many more seasonings to try to make the dish work. I'd recalled seeing a recipe that made taquitos baked instead of fried which I liked for two reasons: healthier and EASIER. Guess which of those reasons is the biggest plus to me. :)

I wanted to use what I had in the house and I recalled this recipe and confirmed I had a can of pinto beans. I also had flour tortillas on hand and in doing some research I learned something new. Flautas are essentially taquitos that are made with flour tortillas instead of corn tortillas! So I preheated the oven to 425 and grabbed the leftover pork roast, some cumin, the can of pinto beans and the flour tortillas.

I rinsed the can of pinto beans and added them to the pork roast I'd already added to the pot to heat up. I also added 1/2 tsp of cumin to the mix.

I knew the pork would be easier to shred once it was heated through so I left it as is and heated on medium, covered for about 5 minutes.

Once the juices from the roast were liquid again and the meat seemed heated through, I grabbed two forks and shredded the meat up.

One "ingredient" I left out of the picture! Cooking spray... I have a couple different version but I went with the Canola Oil cooking spray. For the flautas, I used maybe 1/4 of a cup of the meat and bean mixture in each one? Just eyeball it. I was going for about the size of a fat cigar but this recipe is flexible. After you've rolled the meat and bean mixture in a flour tortilla and placed them seam side down, spray each rolled tortilla with cooking spray. Since I was only making a couple for Skywalker and I, I also sprayed the open space then slide one roll over, sprayed, slide, spray slide. Basically I wanted to get some cooking spray on the bottom of each roll. Why yes, I did forget to spray the bottom of the pan before putting the rolls in! Good guess.

Once they're all ready to go, bake them for 5 to 6 minutes, flip and bake for another 5 to 6 minutes and they're DONE!

Skywalker really enjoyed these and so did I. I'm making them again this weekend (except with homemade tortillas) along with another version with shredded chicken, black bean and cheese. To accompany this weekend's flautas, I'm making salsa and white cheese dip to dip them in. You know that white cheese dip you can order at Mexican restaurants?? I *hopefully* found a recipe to recreate it at home. *fingers crossed*

This technique is so versatile and easy enough to execute that experimentation is encouraged. Make them bigger, make them smaller, use whatever leftover meat, beans, cheese, veggies or anything you think will taste good for the filling. This is a super simple meal that can be fitted to any one's tastes. Give it a try! (I admit, I totally started chowing down on one before I realized I hadn't taken a final picture)

Ingredients:

Leftover pork roast (Pernil Asada) (3 cups worth?)

1 can of Pinto Beans, drained and rinsed

1/2 tsp cumin

flour tortillas

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425F.
Add pork roast, cumin and beans to a pot.
Cook over medium heat until the pork is heated through.
Shred meat, reduce temperature to medium low and let simmer for 5 to 10 minutes.
Add about 1/4 of a cup of meat and bean mixture just off center of a flour tortilla and roll up.
Place seam side down on a baking pan that's already been sprayed with cooking spray.
Continue until desired number of flautas are created.
Bake for 5 to 6 minutes, then flip tortilla rolls over and bake for another 5 to 6 minutes.
Serve immediately and enjoy!

Pernil (Pork Roast)

2010-11-12T08:45:00.000-08:00

Pernil, which is a pork roast, is a classic Puerto Rican dish. The smell of one reminds me of Christmas. We do the traditional turkey for Thanksgiving but Christmas Eve dinner usually consists of Pernil and Arroz con Gandules, along with a millon other things. We like to eat in our family! Let me warn you that this is not my mom's recipe. She has yet to provide that to me although I'm certain she's willing. I came across this Puerto Rican Pork Roast recipe on Allrecipes a few years back and have used it a couple of different times with only slight changes. When I pulled up the recipe again, I read my review and saw that I used minced garlic at the time... JARRED minced garlic. Yeah, I don't do that anymore. It's TOTALLY worth that tiny extra bit of effort to use fresh garlic. Fair warning, this recipe has a lot of steps mainly because I like to reduce the fat count as much as possible and a pork roast is VERY fatty. That being said, you will completely melt into a puddle of happy after your first bite of this roast.

First I preheated the oven to 350 degrees F and started gathering all of the ingredients. I pulled out all the garlic cloves I could find along with Adobo, pepper, oregano, white vinegar, the pork roast and olive oil.

First thing I wanted to do was get the seasoning mix ready to go. I bashed the garlic to easily remove the skin. Take a look at that fresh garlic! *double entendre alert* You see what I saw?? Put some pants on garlic clove!!! I'm sorry... I couldn't help it. I promise to keep my dirty mind in check for the remainder of this post.

As I gazed longingly at my pilon and wondered where the masher part was, I knew I wanted to mash the garlic as best as I could. I finely diced it and then went all MacGuyver. A bit of parchment paper and a mallet worked like a charm. By the way, want to feel real old? Ask a kid if they know who MacGuyver is.

After I mashed up my garlic, I started throwing together the rest of the ingredients and realized I was COMPLETELY out of black pepper in that little canister. Here's the problem. If you've read this blog you might have noticed several references to "freshly ground pepper". I use my pepper grinder ALL.THE.TIME. So I just had no idea I was out of the pre-ground stuff. Can I just say that having to hand grind 3 tablespoons of pepper takes a good minute?? Yeah totally sucked. I can't even pretend that was fun.

Once that task was done, I combined all of the remaining ingredients: 3 tbsp FRESHLY ground black pepper, 1 tsp of oregano, 3 tbsps of Adobo, just under 1 tbsp of white vinegar, 2 tbsp of olive oil and the minced garlic.

Next I removed the pork roast from the wrapping and trimmed some of the fat. Just a bit of the fat off the skin side and all of the fattiness on the side with no skin. I left the skin intact for the most part because I was going to use a different cooking technique that would create a crispy skin. A lot of people LOVE the crispy skin off of a pernil but I just wanted to see if I could do it more than anything. After trimming the roast, I stabbed it a bunch of times. I think women will really enjoy this, ESPECIALLY during the holiday season. Releasing a bit of pent up anger can't be a bad thing right?? What you want to do is create a bunch of incisions in the roast. These pockets (try to go about an inch or two deep) will hold the seasoning paste so you'll want to space them out all over the roast. I only did the sides that didn't have skin. The skin was so thick it was hard to cut through and I knew if I tried too hard, I'd probably end up accidentally slicing my hand. You'll want to do twice as many inciscions as what's shown below.

With the remaining bit of paste or really even with just what's on your hands and already on the roast, you'll want to rub the paste all over the outside of the roast. I HIGHLY recommend using plastic gloves. Although I used a small spoon to put the paste into the inciscions, I still use my fingers to help it along. The smell of the paste is strong and stays on your hands for hours even after a couple of good scrubs with soapy, hot water. I'm sure someone out there has some miracle smell remover (lemon juice??) but just to give everyone fair warning.

I don't have a roasting pan yet. I know! Terrible. So I shoved that roast into my cast iron pot. It wasn't easy cause of that dang bone but I got that roast as snug as a bug in a rug. I roasted it skin side down for 2 hours COVERED.

After two hours (of sleeping in since I put that sucker in at 6am), I flipped the roast to cook for 2 more hours. Pre-flip you can see how the skin has already shrunken back quite a bit to expose the bone.

For the last two hours of roasting, I kept it uncovered to produce that crispy skin I mentioned earlier.

Look at how crispy the skin is!! Can you even tell in pictures? It was super crispy. I tasted a tiny bit and it was nummy.

At this point, after the roast had cooled and while it was still in the pot, I set it in the refrigerator and went off for a couple of hours. The advantage to having to shove that roast into the pot was that it was a bit suspended over the bottom so it hovered over the fat for the most part. When I returned home, I got to work on breaking the roast down.

By breaking it into chunks I was able to remove most of the fat, gristle, bones and pretty much anything that wasn't meat. As I broke it down, I added it back to the pot which had the juices from the roast sans the congealed fat I'd already skimmed off.

As I was cutting the roast up, while already DELICIOUS, I felt it needed to cook a bit more. Plus I had time since I still had to start the rice and let the beans finish cooking. I set it to medium low, added about a cup of water and simmered for about 20 minutes. I added the extra water because I knew the additional cook time would concentrate the juices more. Without that extra water, the flavor of the roast juices would have been too strong. After everything was ready, I turned the heat off and waited 20 minutes to eat. That way we could enjoy dinner without singeing our mouths. :)

This dinner totally hit the spot. The meat was super tender (I cut into bite-sized pieces using a spoon!) and of course with the rice and beans, a little went a long way. I'm totally having leftovers for lunch... and a repeat for dinner. AND leftover meat can be used for carnitas or pork tacos or toasted sandwiches. Oh how I love a tasty roast. Yes this took time but again, it was totally worth it!

Ingredients:
(Adapted from Puerto Rican Pork Roast)

8 lb pork picnic roast
6 garlic cloves
3 tbsp Adobo
3 tbsp black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tsp of dried oregano

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Mash the garlic cloves or add to a food processor.
Add to the mashed garlic Adobo, pepper, oregano, olive oil and the white vinegar. Thoroughly mix until a smooth paste.
Using a knife, make numerous incisions all over the roast. With a small spoon, insert the paste into each incision.
Place the roast skin side down and covered in the oven for 2 hours.
After 2 hours, flip the roast and leave it uncovered. Cook for an additional 2 hours.
Let roast cool. Skim fat off juices and cut roast into chunks, removing excess fat from the meat.
Place the roast chunks back into the pot with the roast juices.
Add one cup of water and simmer on medium low for 20 more minutes or until tender.

PS

My four-legged canine babies TOTALLY got in on the action. Both got to enjoy a hefty pork bone AND a chunk of crispy pork skin. Remember kids, NO CHICKEN BONES, but pork bones are safe.

Veggie Meatball Soup

2010-11-10T03:16:00.000-08:00

I have a confession. I have never made meatballs before. I always feared a bland meatball or a dry meatball and well, let's be honest here... most meatballs require quite a bit of work. The art of laziness is a fine art that requires constant practice and attention. Meatballs are counterproductive to the refinement of my laziness skills. Still, I had some ground beef I wanted to use and I wanted to try something new. I'd eyeballed a few versions of Italian Wedding Soup but I wanted something with a bit more substance. I came across this Hearty Meatball Soup and decided I would use this recipe with a few changes. Here's what I gathered to start the soup: chicken broth, dry onion soup mix, diced tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, ground beef, orzo pasta, Italian bread crumbs, frozen mixed vegetables and black pepper.I also used water, a small can of tomato sauce, salt and adobo (you can use Lawry's or poultry seasoning).

The first thing I decided to do was put the meatball mixture together. I realized at this point that I had 2.25 pounds of ground beef but the recipe only called for 1 pound. I decided I'd make all of the meatballs and just freeze the extra for another day. To the ground beef I added the freshly grated Parmesan cheese, used 3 eggs total, 2 cups of bread crumbs, 2 teaspoons of adobo, 1 teaspoons of salt and 2 teaspoons of pepper. I used my Kitchenaid mixer with the paddle attachment to mix this up.

I set aside the meatball mixture to move on to the next step. I added the chicken broth and 4 cups of water to a pot. I used a box and a can of chicken broth so it equaled about 46 ounces total. To the liquid I added a 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes and a packet of dry onion soup mix.

The broth veggie mix needed to simmer for 15 minutes so while that was doing it's thing, I began rolling out some meatballs. Skywalker was going to help me but I have a sneaking suspicion that the bulk of meat to roll into mini balls seemed rather daunting to her because all of a sudden she had homework to do. What can I do? Encourage my daughter to set aside homework for my own selfish needs?? Of course not.. though let me tell ya, I was tempted! So off I went, all on my own, and rolled out oh, about 150 or so baby meatballs. Before I got too many meatballs made, I realized I wanted the meat mixture to be better combined so I got in there with my hands and kneaded the meat mixture until I felt it was well mixed. I figured squishing it through my hands, besides making me feel like a kid at play, would also help to distribute the flavor throughout. This is how I'll probably always make meatballs from now on. I feel like if I used my hands to mix the meatball mixture from start to finish, a lot of the fattiness from the ground beef would stick to my hands and potentially lead to dry meatballs. Fact? Fable? No idea, but this is what is logical in my mind.

That's a lot of meatballs!!

I added about 54 meatballs into the soup. Did I purposely line up all the meatballs and then count them all in order to do the math to determine approxiamtely a pound of meatballs to add to the soup? No! Cause that would be weird and neurotic. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not weird and neurotic... okay so at the very least they know I'm not neurotic... becuase at least THAT I do a better job at hiding. One by one I plopped in the totally random number of 54 meatballs into the soup, trying to evenly distribute them around the pot. Once they were in, I simmered for about 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes had passed, I added a cup of orzo pasta. I love orzo pasta. I'm not really sure why. Maybe because it's a rice-look-alike and as a kid I used to sit around and eat my mom's white rice like it was the bestest meal ever? No idea. Now the original recipe called for a cup of alphabet pasta which I'm sure would be totally cute. One of the pictures uploaded showed the mini-shells which I'm sure is another good option, but I had orzo in the house and I wanted to use orzo. I debated on adding more than a cup but I'm glad I didn't because it really turned out to be the perfect amount.

This soup was so delicious!! Keep in mind that the meatballs release a LOT of grease while cooking so you definitely want to skim the top of the soup before it is time to serve.

All in all, I was super happy with this recipe. I froze part of it into two separate containers for future meals, left one container in the fridge for leftovers and both Skywalker and I really enjoyed this soup for dinner. The broth was flavorful, the meatballs were tender and tasty and every spoonful included veggies and pasta. Yum! I have to wonder if orzo isn't the best option because a bigger pasta would have taken up too much room. I prefer to have a bit of everything in every bite and that's how this soup turned out.

Ingredients:

(Adapted from Hearty Meatball Soup II)

1 (1 ounce) envelope dry onion soup mix

4 cups water

1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes, with juice

3 (14.5 ounce) cans chicken broth

1 (16 ounce) package frozen mixed vegetables

2.25 pounds ground beef

3 egg

2 cup dry bread crumbs

2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

2 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp salt

2 tsp adobo (can substitute poultry seasoning or Lawry's)

1 cup uncooked orzo pasta

8 oz can tomato sauce

Directions:

Combine the ground beef, eggs, bread crumbs, salt, Adobo, black pepper and Parmesan cheese. Set aside.
In a large pot over medium high heat, combine the onion soup mix, frozen mixed vegetables, chicken broth, diced tomatoes and water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, roll the meat mixture into tiny, bite-sized meatballs.
Add the meatballs and a small can of tomato sauce to the soup.
Simmer for another 20 minutes, then add the orzo pasta. Simmer for another 15 minutes or until the meatballs and pasta are fully cooked.

Green Tomatoes Parmesan

2010-11-06T10:44:00.000-07:00

I'm new to the world of fried green tomatoes. The idea just didn't appeal to me so I didn't avoid them per se, but I never initiated a taste either. I can't remember where I first tried fried green tomatoes but I'm pretty sure my sister-in-law, Mrs. FancyPants, had ordered some and I decided to give it a taste. It was good! How could I doubt though?? It's fried! I've since eaten fried green tomatoes from a couple of different places and I feel like the tomato itself is mild in flavor. The key is to make sure the batter is tasty so the end result is scrumptious. I would also suggest that even if you don't like tomatoes, try a fried green tomato next chance you get. You may be surprised!

I came across this recipe in my good friend T-Rae's Taste of Home magazine. It was full of prize winning recipes so I figured a fried green tomato recipe out of this magazine should be good. The original recipe called for 3 tomatoes but I had a four pack so I decided to just keep it simple and double the batter portion of the recipe. Also, I didn't have any garlic salt so I used garlic powder and salt instead. Same difference right! Also with the garlic, salt and green tomatoes, I also used cornmeal, freshly grated Parmesan, 2 eggs, canola oil, pepper and flour.

The first thing you want to do is slice the tomatoes into 1/4 inch slices. Lay them all out on paper towels and liberally sprinkle with salt. The recipe calls for letting the tomatoes sit for 30 to 60 minutes. I decided to let them sit for 60 minutes total because a few of my tomatoes were reddish on the inside which I figured would mean they would benefit from the extra time. The salt draws moisture out of the tomatoes. This technique is called "sweating" and is a common technique used on eggplants when making eggplant parm.

While the green tomatoes were doing their thing, I put the dry batter together. Put all the dry ingredients in a shallow bowl.

Mix the ingredients together. You'll have one bowl of the beaten eggs and one bowl of the batter.

Once the green tomatoes are ready, dip each slice into the beaten eggs, then into the cornmeal batter. I made sure each slice was thoroughly coated and then layed them on a piece of aluminum foil. I would have used wax paper but my mom didn't have any.

I don't fry often so I purposely made this at my mom's house so she could fry these up for me. Plus I knew Skywalker wouldn't be eating them and if we did this during Sunday dinner, there would be plenty of adults and a few adventurous kids willing to scarf them down. So my mom heated the oil to the proper temperature and fried these puppies up.

She fried them until they were perfectly golden brown. One day I'll be as good as my momma!

I realized I didn't create a dipping sauce which is how I've tried them in the past, but these were seasoned just right so no sauce was needed. Everyone seemed to enjoy them and they were gone in no time. Yum!!

Ingredients:

(slightly adapted from Taste of Home's Prize Winning Recipes Green Tomatoes Parmesan)

4 green tomatoes, sliced 1/4 inch thick

salt for sweating
1/2 cup of cornmeal
1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese
4 tbsp of all-purpose flour
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Directions:

Lightly sprinkle tomatoes with salt; drain on paper towels for 30-60 minutes.
Meanwhile combine cornmeal, Parmesan, flour, garlic powder, salt, oregano & pepper in shallow plate.
Dip each tomato slice into the beaten egg mix, then into the cornmeal mixture.
In a medium skillet, heat oil over medium-high. Fry tomatoes, a few at a time, for 2 minutes per side or until golden brown. Drain on paper towel-lined wire rack.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Layered Pie

2010-11-02T14:50:00.000-07:00

Tis the season... when we start seeing pumpkins and sweet potato dishes. I had a block of cream cheese I wanted to use so I started searching for a recipe to try out. I came across this Pumpkin Cheesecake recipe because not only did it have rave reviews, I had everything I needed except for some pumpkin pie spice.

Here's what I needed to make this recipe: Whipped topping, Pumpkin Pie spice, flour, cream cheese, canned pumpkin, Jell-O Instant Vanilla pudding mix, milk, vanilla extract, chopped pecans, confectioner's sugar and a stick of butter. Typically I use unsalted butter when baking but all I had was salted so I went with it.

The first thing I needed to do was preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. The only thing that needs to bake is the crust so make sure you turn it off once the crust is done! I halved the recipe so instead of making a 9 x 13 pan I used my smallest rectangular pan which was 2.2 quart glass pan. For the crust I hand mixed the softened butter, finely chopped pecans and flour. I'll be honest, when making this crust I was worried because I'm not a big fan of pecans and the crust had no sugar so I wasn't sure how it would fare but I decided to stick with it as closely as possible.

After mixing the crust ingredients together, I pressed them evenly into the bottom of the pan and baked it for 15 minutes.

While the crust was baking, I had plenty of time to put the rest of the layers together so although this recipe has several steps, it really doesn't take too long! The key is to make sure the cream cheese and butter are at room temperature and the whipped topping isn't frozen.

Ok so for the next step, I used my KitchenAid Mixer to combine the cream cheese, 1 cup of whipped topping, confectioner's sugar and the vanilla extract.

It is important for the cream cheese to be at room temperature so that when you get to this stage everything blends together smoothly.

I set the blended cream cheese mixture aside for a moment and started assembling the next layer. Into a bowl I added the canned pumpkin, instant vanilla pudding mix, 1 more cup of whipped topping, the milk and about 1 1/2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice. The recipe halved would call for 2 whole tsps of pumpkin pie spice but I recalled reading in a review that someone felt like it was too much. After combining all the ingredients I tasted the pumpkin pie mixture and it tasted fantastic so I left it at 1 1/2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice.

The crust was ready just as I was putting the pumpkin pie layer ingredients together so I removed it from the oven and set it aside to cool down. Upon seeing the complete crust I thought to myself "pecan sandies!". Can't really say if they tasted that way since I haven't had a pecan sandy in FOREVER but that's what it reminded me of.

After all the layers were ready for assembly and the crust was sufficiently cooled, I coated the crust with the cream cheese layer.

Next I dropped blobs of the pumpkin pie mixture on top. Pretty eh?? haha! Ok, so not very attractive at this point HOWEVER I did this so I could easily smooth the pumpkin pie mixture over the cream cheese mixture without the two getting combined together.

Worked like a charm!

After the cream cheese and pumpkin pie layers were added, I topped it off with a final layer of whipped topping.

The hardest step of all? Letting it chill for a minimum of two hours.

The parts I tried separately were so tasty that I actually cranked the refrigerator up but left it in there for an hour and twenty minutes. I wanted a solid hour but wanted to make sure it would chill properly. Knowing we'd probably be in and out the fridge, I figured the extra time and lowered temperature would help ensure it would be ready to dig into after an hour and twenty minutes.

There are numerous steps to this Pumpkin Cheesecake but it was TOTALLY worth it!!! OH MY GOODNESS!!! Dangerous. It's one of those recipes. It was like a slice of pumpkin pied topped with whipped topping nestled on top of a no-bake cheesecake with this lovely, crumbly, wonderful crust.

Listen, if you do nothing else... make this recipe. Make it this weekend. Make it today. And share! Because otherwise you will eat the entire thing yourself and then you'll be upset with yourself and I don't want to be the reason anyone feels any self-loathing. But trust me... make this recipe. You will not regret it.

Ingredients:
(Slightly Adapted from Pumpkin Cheesecake I)

1 cups all-purpose flour
1 stick of butter, softened
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
20 ounces frozen whipped topping, thawed
1 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
3.5 ounce package instant vanilla pudding mix
1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a medium mixing bowl combine flour, butter or margarine, and 1/2 cup chopped pecans. Beat until thoroughly combined. Press mixture into a 2 quart glass baking dish.
Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes. Set aside to cool.
In a medium mixing bowl combine cream cheese, 1 cup of the whipped topping, confectioners' sugar, and vanilla extract. Beat until smooth. Spread evenly over cooled crust.
In a large mixing bowl combine pudding, milk, pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, and 1 more cups of whipped topping. Stir until thoroughly combined. Spoon mixture over cream cheese layer. Top off with whipped topping as final layer.

NOT Jim N Nick's Cheese Biscuits

2010-10-29T06:06:00.000-07:00

Have you eaten at Jim N Nick's Bar-B-Q?? I think it's a chain restaurant but the food is pretty tasty. I've had their classic pulled pork sandwich, macaroni and cheese, fried catfish sandwich and fish tacos (not all in one sitting mind you!) and they were all quite good. What I LOVE about Jim N Nick's are these delectable little sweet cheese muffins they bring to the table. The first time I tried them, I knew I had to try to make them at home. The recipe is online, a million times over. I checked three or four different version and they were all the same. Thing is, this is NOT Jim N Nick's cheese biscuits. Yes they're yummy. Of course I ate the heck out of them. The taste is extremely similar if not spot on... the problem is texture. These had more of a cupcake or muffin texture and the true Jim N Nick's cheese biscuits are more dough-y. So why am I sharing this recipe? Well, like I said they really are good. What I'm really hoping though is for someone to share a secret or a tip on how to adjust this recipe to be more like Jim N Nick's cheese biscuits. Here's hoping!

Okay so on to what you'll need to recreate the non-JnN cheese biscuits. We have flour, sugar, freshly grated cheddar cheese, 2% milk, eggs, butter and baking powder. I doubled the original recipe in the hopes that it would be so dang tasty, I would have regretted not doubling.

First you'll want to preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Every recipe basically said "mix ingredients and bake" so I mixed the ingredients and completely forgot to take a picture of the batter apparently. I DID however get an action shot of adding the batter to the mini muffin pans.

Double batch made a LOT of mini muffins. I baked them for about 9 minutes.

All these recipes I came across online called for making them in a muffin tin but everyone who's eaten at Jim N Nick's knows that their cheese biscuits are definitely bite size. As I said, these were tasty but they were NOT Jim N Nick's. In hindsight I thought maybe using freshly grated cheese was the wrong way to go because I'm sure a large restaurant uses pre-shredded cheese so that may change the consistency.

Ingredients:

(Doubled from Jim N Nicks Cheese Biscuit)

3 cups flour
2 cup sugar
2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 1/2 cup milk (2% works best)
2 eggs, beaten well
1 stick of butter, softened
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Mix all of the ingredients together except the shredded cheddar cheese.
Once mixed, fold in the cheese.
Fill mini muffin tin about 3/4 full.
Bake 9 to 12 minutes until done.

One Hour (or less!) Roasted Chicken

2010-10-27T05:24:00.000-07:00

This recipe is my first attempt at providing a blog that’s “semi-homemade”. A good friend of mine, who despises cooking almost as much as she despises calamari, requested a semi-homemade recipe. So I have to admit right away that this recipe isn’t semi-homemade BUT this is definitely a component to a semi-home cooked meal! Serve it with some boxed side (Skywalker and I love cheesy broccoli Rice-A-Roni) and some Jazzed up Green Beans and you’ve got dinner on the table in no time with only one component made from scratch.

Quick tangent on the term “semi-homemade”. Unfortunately that term makes me think of Sandra Lee and sorry, but I don’t like her. I’ve seen her cooking show a few times. As you may have guessed, she creates meals with pre-made products. I have no qualms with her show. My issue has to do with a cookbook of hers that my niece owns. Some time ago, she decided she wanted to make a spaghetti recipe from aforementioned cookbook. Well let me tell ya, the measurements were WAY off. If I hadn’t been there to assist and realize how off it was, the recipe would have been a massive fail. Not cool for a new cook! Or really any cook for that matter. Yeah, sure, it’s probably not Sandra Lee’s fault. Heck maybe she even submitted the correct recipe and the editor or someone messed it up. But I have to blame someone and I blame her. Who said dislikes had to be rational??

Ok so back to this homemade component of a semi-homemade meal. Here’s what you’ll need (please excuse my chicken as it apparently needed a facelift). Begin by preheating the oven to 500 degrees.

Once you remove the innards of the whole chicken, you’ll want to rinse it inside and out. Pat the chicken dry, rub it down with the olive oil and set aside. The next thing I did was chopped up the cloves of garlic. I wanted them to be small so I ran my knife through the minced garlic so it was a very fine mince. This would have been a good time to use a pilon. We’ll learn about those another time.

After prepping the garlic, I combined all of the dry ingredients. There's oregano, the sazon packet, salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper, crushed basil and adobo. Look how pretty it looks!

I wasn’t sure how to approach incorporating the garlic into the seasoning mix but I figured, I'll just add the garlic right in. So I did and mashed it up some more. Once again visions of a pilon danced through my head.

I then took the garlic spice mixture and rubbed it BENEATH the chicken’s skin. I wiggled my way into the legs, wings, all over. I wanted my chicken to be full of flavor so I made sure to get it wherever I could. I also put about ¼ of the mixture inside of the chicken cavity. Once the garlic spice mixture was all used up, I shoved green pepper into the chicken cavity. If I had onion, it would have been onion. But I had half a green pepper and it needed to be used, so used it was. Look, you can see up the chicken’s skirt! At this point I also sprinkled the chicken skin with some freshly ground pepper and Kosher salt.

So here’s the neat part. This almost 5 pound chicken will be done in and hour or less. You can use this technique and change up the seasonings to use whatever floats your boat. Once you’ve got your chicken all prepped and ready to go, stick it in a roasting pan BREAST SIDE DOWN. You may have learned this before but think about it. All that fatty dark meat will be releasing liquids as it cooks… which will run down the chicken towards the breast meat so it's sorta continually basting the chicken breast thus creating juicy goodness. I have yet to acquire a roasting pan so my lovely Dutch oven was put into use.

Roast the whole chicken for 15 minutes uncovered. Already we can see some changes after 15 minutes. There’s very little liquid at this point but baste as best as you can.

Lower the temperature of the oven to 450 and roast another 15 minutes, repeating the process of basting before resuming the roasting process.

Reduce the oven temperature to 425, baste the chicken and finish roasting for about 20 – 30 minutes. To ensure juicy, yet fully cooked chicken, I STRONGLY recommend a meat thermometer. You want the thigh meat to register 165 degrees. I cooked the chicken for 30 more minutes. Aight she a beaut???

I will say that while the breast meat was nowhere near dry, it wasn’t as juicy as I’d hoped. This is why I say check it at the 20 minute mark, depending on the size of your chicken. I’m willing to bet a cool dollar that I could have pulled it out five or so minutes early and hit perfection.

As it stands, Skywalker and I had some delicious chicken with a side of… you guessed it, cheesy broccoli Rice-A-Roni.

Ingredients:

4.5 lb Whole Chicken

1/2 green pepper, de-seeded

1 packet of Sazon seasoning (equal to about 1tsp for substitution purposes)

1 tsp adobo

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp crushed basil

3 garlic cloves, minced and mashed

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Directions:

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.
Rinse chicken thoroughly inside and out under cold running water and remove all fat. Pat dry with paper towels and coat with 1 tbsp of olive oil.
Mix the salt, pepper, oregano, basil, paprika, adobo, sazon packet and cayenne pepper together.
Add crushed/minced garlic to spice mix.
Rub mixture under the skin, all over the chicken and a small bit inside of the chicken cavity.
Place halved green pepper into chicken cavity.
Roast the chicken in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Lower the oven to 450 degrees, baste the chicken and continue roasting 15 more minutes. Lower the oven to 425 degrees, baste the chicken and continue roasting for 20 to 30 minutes until a minimum internal temperature of 165 degrees is reached in the thigh area.
Let cool 15 minutes and serve.

Sinfully Simple Alfredo Sauce

2010-10-21T18:46:00.000-07:00

This recipe is neither for the faint of heart nor for the food purist. You will not find a classic recipe, a low fat recipe or a complex recipe. I'm just trying to balance things out since my last recipe was so dang healthy.

This is a simple sauce that you can make in a short amount of time. Get crazy with the sauce. Add vegetables, add seafood, add chicken. Use it as a base for a different twist for your next pizza or lasagna. It's so darn simple that it's worth making and throwing in your own special touches. For dinner tonight I simply tossed it with some pasta and served it as a side dish. I found this Quick and Easy Alfredo Sauce on Allrecipes. It had decent reviews and looked super easy so I knew I wanted to try it. I made a few slight changes. I made sure to buy a block of Parmesan to grate myself and instead of garlic powder I opted for fresh garlic. I doubled the original recipe so this made about 12 servings. The original recipe also says it makes 4 servings. Definitely closer to 6 meal (not side dish) portion servings. Well for a normal family anyhow. For my family the original recipe would make 6 side dish portion servings.

As you'll recall, I mentioned this recipe is not for the faint of heart. First thing you gotta do is melt some sticks of butter over medium heat. PHEW!!! That's a lot of butter!! My mom tried to talk me into using less but I refused. Alfredo sauce is supposed to be super fattening right??

Next I added in three cloves of freshly crushed garlic to cook a bit as the butter melted all the way down to a liquid state.

Once the butter was completely melted, I added 16 ounces (two small tubs) of room temperature cream cheese.

I used a whisk to break the cream cheese apart and start mixing it in with the butter. Quick word about this whisk. I was at my mom's house making this dish so I was using all of her kitchen supplies. I was leery about this whisk at first. I have a good old fashioned wire whisk at home that's firm. This nylon one was flimsy. Anyone who's used a nylon cake or muffin pan knows what I'm talking about. I should have known better than to doubt the nylon whisk. I love how great my nylon molds work and I fell in love with my mom's nylon whisk! Not only does it execute the job beautifully, there is no worry or concern wasted on scratching your pan. Yay nylon whisk!!!

Look how pretty it looks after the cream cheese has been thoroughly whisked and de-lump-ified. Actually it reminds me of cheesecake batter. Mmmm.... cheesecake. Ok, FOCUS!

Next I slowly whisked in the milk. I used 2% milk with zero issues. I used 4 cups total and initially added half a cup, thoroughly mixed in, added another half cup. About half way through I added more liquid at a time because the risk of lumps had passed.

Next was to add in the freshly grated Parmesan. The original recipe would have called for a cup and a half but I like even numbers so I added two cups total, half a cup at a time. THIS is the time to really make sure you're whisking. I wanted to make sure the Parmesan cheese melted completely into the sauce.

Once the Parmesan seems to be completely incorporated into the sauce, I added three shakes of nutmeg. One of the reviews on Allrecipes mentioned to do so and I figured I'd follow that advice! I also added in some black pepper at this point.

I then cooked and stirred and whisked for about 15 more minutes to allow the sauce to thicken into a nice consistency. Keep in mind that once it cools, as any melted cheese will do, it will thicken up. If this happens and it is too thick to your liking, simply add some hot milk until it returns to the desired consistency.

My biggest critics are the kids and they gave the dish a two thumbs up!! They totally scarfed it down so yes, I would say it was a success. Easy, fast, tasty... yeah, that's about my ideal dish. Oh and I did add a sprinkling of salt to my serving. No one else did but I'm a salt-a-holic. Also, the salt in the water for the pasta wasn't added in the beginning so I'm willing to bet had it been properly salted pasta water, I wouldn't feel the need to add any salt to the final dish.

Ingredients:
(Slightly modified from Quick and Easy Alfredo Sauce)
doubled = approx 12 servings

1 cup of butter
16 ounces cream cheese
12 ounces of freshly shredded Parmesan
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
4 cups of 2% milk
1 tsp of nutmeg
1/4 tsp of pepper

Directions:

Melt butter in a non-stick saucepan over medium heat. Add crushed garlic while melting.
Add cream cheese, stirring with wire whisk until smooth.
Add milk, a little at a time, whisking to smooth out lumps.
Stir in Parmesan about 1/2 cup at a time, whisking to maintain smooth texture.
Sprinkle in nutmeg and pepper.
Remove from heat when sauce reaches desired consistency.
Toss with hot pasta to serve.

Ful Medames

2010-10-14T15:53:00.000-07:00

Skywalker is studying Egyptian history. What I really love about her teacher is she does not like reading out of the textbook. I appreciate her style of teaching because I was bored to tears in about 95% of my Social Studies classes. It was by far my least favorite class but that's just me. I did have ONE college professor who made the class interesting. So much so that 15 years later, I still have the textbook for that class. Oh man, I feel old all of a sudden.

Anyhow, so part of Skywalker's Egyptian studies requires the class to make an Egyptian dish to bring in for a potluck. I love being given inspiration to try to a new dish! I really wanted Skywalker to make the dish herself since I found a relatively simple one but she has Taekwon Do on Wednesday evenings and I was unable to find fava beans when I went looking on Tuesday. This dish is traditionally served for breakfast with a fried egg on top and a sprinkle of fresh parsley. I'm forgoing the egg and the parsley for the school dish.I figured fried eggs wouldn't be very appetizing hours after cooking and some of the recipes for this dish lacked parsley anyhow.

I searched for a good recipe and came across this one from Serious Eats (I read this blog regularly) but decided to work with this one from Allrecipes. In actuality I took information from numerous sources (vegan blog, reviewers tips, etc) in order to create this dish. Here's what I used to make a double batch.

I could not find fava beans. If I'd had more time I would have checked to see if there was a middle eastern specialty shop but I had to settle for a substitution. Lima beans and Butter Beans came up several times. I recalled something about using a bigger bean so I went with the Butter Bean.

The first task was to dice the onions. The recipe I was using most called for 2 large onions but it felt like a LOT of onions for two cans of beans!! So I kinda chickened out. I only bought one onion. Then I reconsidered because not a single reviewer said "too oniony" or "next time I'll reduce onion" so I scrounged up a half onion from the fridge to add to the dish. This picture does not do justice at the volume of onions.

I used my onion chopper again for two reasons. I was a bit short on time and I wanted the onions to be finely diced since this meal was going to be consumed mostly by kids. It was already going to be an odd dish to them so let me reduce the "ew" factor by masking the onions as best as possible. My onion chopper comes with two different attachments to have either a really fine dice or larger dice. I used the smaller dice for the onions.

First I sauteed the onions in about 3 tablespoons of olive oil for several minutes over medium high heat.

As the onions cooked, I diced the tomatoes. First I sliced them into thick slices.

Then cut them into strips, lined the strips up and diced. Since I knew I would be cooking the tomatoes, I zipped through this process as I knew I wouldn't need to worry about a pretty dice for presentation's sake.

Once the onions were soft I added the tomatoes and sauteed for a few more minutes. As you can see, I really let the onions cook and soften up before adding the tomatoes.

While the tomatoes and onions cooked, I grabbed my garlic. I found some recipes that called for as much as five cloves for one can of beans so I was tempted to add more but since this was for "middle school kid" consumption, I decided to stay with six cloves total.

I prefer to smash my cloves with the side of my knife to prep them for chopping or smashing. You simply take the flat part of the knife, position it over one clove and just hit the blade with the palm of your hand to smash the clove a bit. Doing that makes removing the papery skin a cinch! For mincing garlic, I then cut into strips and then dice, similar to how I did the tomato. If the clove is really big and thick, I'll cut into slices, then strips and then proceed to dice.

After sauteeing the tomatoes for about 3 more minutes (or until soft) I added the garlic. With there being so very little liquid, I didn't want to take the chance of burning the garlic which is why I added the garlic about five minutes before I was going to add the beans. I also added 2 teaspoons of cumin, 3 teaspoons of Kosher salt, a healthy dose of freshly cracked pepper and about 1 tablespoon of Tahini sauce.

I let the mixture cook for about five minutes.I lightly rinsed the Butter Beans and then added them to the sauteed vegetables. Once dumping them in and stirring, I let the mixture cook for about five minutes. After the bean mixture cooked some, I started mashing the beans up with my wooden spoon and stirred occasionally. Keep in mind that there's very little liquid and we're cooking at medium to medium high heat so you want to stir regularly to avoid burning the mixture.

It was so tasty and of course it's got to be healthy right? That's my claim anyhow. The lemon I sliced into wedges to send as a garnish. Some recipes called for adding the lemon in and others called for adding it at the end with a sprinkle of freshly chopped parsley. Since I didn't want to use up a lemon wedge for my personal gluttony, I only tried the dish on some pita bread. Although I didn't eat them with fried eggs, I did finish the below serving for breakfast. Very filling and pretty darned scrumptious AND the kids loved the dish. Not a bit of it made it home.

Ingredients:
(Adapted from Fava Bean Breakfast Spread)

2 16oz cans of Butter Beans, drained and rinsed
1 to 2 onions, diced
2 tomatoes, diced
6 cloves of garlic, minced
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp of Tahini sauce
3 tsp Kosher salt
2 tsp cumin
pepper to taste
fresh lemon juice as garnish

Over medium high, add olive oil and the onions. Saute for 7 to 10 minutes, stirring regularly.
Add the tomatoes, saute for 5 minutes. Add the garlic and spices then continue to cook for another 5 minutes.
Stir in the Butter Beans. After cooking for about 5 minutes, mash the beans with a spoon.
Cook for an additional 5 to 10 minutes.
Serve with fresh lemon juice squeezed over mixture and eat on pita wedges.

Jazzed up Green Beans

2010-10-13T18:39:00.000-07:00

This is not really a recipe. What I mean to say is there's not much to this. The only reason I've decided to post this... tip (that feels like a better label for this) is because my friend T-Rae told me that ever since I shared this with her, she makes her green beans this way all the time.

I honestly can't remember if I learned this from my mom, but I'm giving her all the credit. At the very least if I didn't learn this from her, I inherited her inventive cooking skillz. Yes, I said skillz.

Okay, here's what you need.

Now don't go and make the mistake I did. 50% less salt?? Why!? Maybe that's just me, being a salt addict and all, but 50% less salt means I have to ADD more salt. Sheesh. I obviously wasn't paying attention when I bought this can of green beans. With a normal can of green beans you just use one chicken bouillon cube. You can dump that can of green beans in a small pot, add the chicken cube and heat the green beans through. Typically I like to give the green beans about 20 minutes on low just so they really absorb the flavor. If you're in a super big hurry, throw the green beans in a microwave safe container, add the chicken cube and I add a tiny bit more water just so the green beans are covered in liquid. Zap it for about 3 to 5 minutes, depending on your microwave. Let it stand for about five minutes which will allow the flavors to absorb a bit and help you avoid boiling your tongue.

With this particular can of green beans, since I was working with less flavor, I also added in a packet of this.

In fact, Skywalker prefers I use this seasoning packet when I make the green beans with a regular can of green beans. I'm not sure if it's the flavors she prefers or the fact that the green beans take on a reddish tinge. Blurry pic but you get the idea.

Still with words like this, you can't go wrong.

No-Can-Allowed Sloppy Joes

2010-10-07T05:05:00.000-07:00

Hey you! Yes you. I understand that you don't really cook much, if at all. But seriously, you can make this sloppy joe and avoid that canned starter nonsense that many first think of when a sloppy joe is mentioned. Truth be told, I don't think I've ever had sloppy joes before trying this recipe. The idea kind of repulsed me to be honest. I grew up on home cooking. My momma is Puerto Rican. Sure we've got some Americanized meals in the rotation but she never made us any sloppy joes. If you know me and we've talked food, you probably know I love finding recipes from Allrecipes. I love this site because it reviews the recipes AND you can sort the reviews by "most helpful" so you can see what others did that made it really tasty. That's where I found the recipe that I made yesterday, with a few changes of course. I first made this recipe years ago and it's been a while (as in three years) but for some reason I decided it was time to revisit the sloppy joe. Boy was Skywalker happy about that!

Below are the ingredients I thought I might use. I was short on the amount of ketchup I wanted to use so I thought I might just use that can of tomato sauce but I didn't. So just ignore that little fella. We'll just pretend he was there for moral support.

The first thing I did was dice up the onions and peppers. I had just over two pounds of ground beef so I wanted a "full" half cup of each.What do I mean by a "full" cup? It's piled a bit high when measuring it out.

Okay so typically I hand dice and why not? It's such a small amount it wouldn't have been too much work but I wanted it to be a small dice and I remembered my handy gadget! I first saw this little beauty at my mom's house. I used it and immediately was overcome with kitchen-gadget-envy. My mommy loves me and bought me one! Yay! I think you can use it for various things however I use it for onions about 95% of the time. So you there... the one that's averse to chopping onions? This gadget is for you.

Look how pretty and delicate that dice is?!? Honestly I could have added more onions and green peppers. Skywalker would have been none the wiser - they were so tiny! Next time I'm going for a full cup of each.

Also, notice I added about a tsp of olive oil. I had the heat on medium and I wanted to cook the onions and peppers for about five minutes before I added the ground beef. I only used a tiny bit of olive oil because I knew once the ground beef was added, there would be plenty of fat.

After the onions and peppers were able to get a head start I added the ground beef and cooked it until it was brown. You want to make sure to stir and kinda chop up the ground beef so there are no big chunks. That will ensure it cooks evenly AND every single bit of beef will get coated in sloppy joe goodness. Small chunks are fine. Once the beef was brown, I drained the liquid. I drained it over a colander to catch any beef that fell out but I didn't dump all of the ground beef in there. I figured any remaining liquid wouldn't be a bad thing so I wasn't overly concerned with getting every drop out. Look at that cool plume of steam!!

Next I added the ketchup, garlic powder and brown sugar. This is also the step where you're supposed to add in mustard but I didn't have any. No regular mustard, no Dijon mustard, no Dijonnaise, not even any mustard powder! Honestly I figured I'd have SOME kind of mustard something to add but oh well. Next time.

Dear blogspot, please allow me to rotate pictures after upload.

Once you've mixed the ingredients in, you'll want to reduce the heat to low and simmer covered for 30 minutes. I bought kaiser rolls for my sloppy joes. I lightly spread butter on the inside of each bun half and toasted the bread. After the sloppy joe mixture had cooked through, I added about 1 tsp of Kosher salt and about 1/2 tsp of freshly ground pepper but basically you just salt and pepper to taste. I slapped that saucy, meaty goodness on my kaiser buns and ate the tasty mess!

Easy. Tasty. AND you know exactly what's going into your sloppy joes. Make this for your kiddies. Make this for yourself. Just don't forget the napkins!

A handy tip to make life easier? Make a double batch and freeze the extra for future meals. One of the reviewers from Allrecipes recommended freezing the mixture in muffin tins. Makes for a perfect single sandwich serving. I decided to use my pumpkin shaped cupcake mold because it's my biggest silicone one.

I figured if it was a silicone type mold, it would be easy to remove. Tada!

Ingredients:
(Adapted from Sloppy Joes II)

2.25 lbs of ground beef
1/2 "full" cup onions
1/2 "full" cup green pepper
2 cups ketchup
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp olive oil
2 tsp yellow mustard (if you've got it!)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

In a skillet over medium heat add 1tsp of olive oil, the onions and green peppers. Cook for about 5 minutes stirring occasionally.
Add ground beef and cook until brown, stirring occasionally.
Drain liquids and add in the ketchup, mustard, brown sugar and garlic powder. Mix thoroughly.
Reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.

Wildtree at Cajun Kountry Kitchen Cafe (CKKC)

2010-10-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

Cajun Kountry Kitchen Cafe is a little restaurant that serves up BIG flavors. The chef, Chef Frisco, obviously has a passion for cooking and is also versatile and creative. The current location isn't the best so while the lunch crowd is strong, their dinner service is very slow. I've eaten there a couple of times and they even catered my niece's quinceanera so I speak from firsthand experience when I say they have some GOOD EATING!!

As some of you may have caught on, my sister-in-law is a Wildtree representative. If you're not familiar with Wildtree, they sell all natural herbs, grape seed oil, bread mixes, all sorts of stuff. The company started out as a way to offer busy parents a quick jump start to a healthy meal. FancyPants, as Skywalker likes to call my sister-in-law, decided to do a Wildtree fundraiser at CKKC with all proceeds going to CKKC to help them out. She gave him some Wildtree products to use in creating the spread. The menu looked so good; I couldn't wait to start sampling.

First Chef Frisco shared with the attendees cooking tips.

I knew some of them already but I learned stuff too. Here's a pasta cooking tip: you don't need to add oil! The key to making sure pasta doesn't stick together is making sure you have enough water and space in the pot for the noodles. When the noodles cook, they release starch. If the pasta is too snug, that starch will make the pasta stick together. Also, before adding the pasta, you'll want to salt the water. This is really the only time to flavor pasta. I do the same thing that Chef Frisco advised us to do... make that water salty like the sea!

A second tip Chef Frisco shared was making sure to add a "flavor conductor" to all marinades. Most "flavor conductors" we are familiar with are things like oil and vinegar. Chef Frisco explained that without that conductor, all that fantastic flavor from any marinade won't make it INTO the cut of meat you are using so it is critical to add that component. Did you know that honey is also a flavor conductor?? Neither did I! Honey is made from bee's saliva and I'm sure we all know that saliva breaks things down so once Chef Frisco pointed that out, it all made sense. So honey, although it works a bit slower, is also a "flavor conductor".

Throughout the tip sharing process, Chef Frisco also shared jokes and made us laugh. He's funny, personable and down to earth so even before we started stuffing our faces, we all were having a wonderful time. And don't get me started on his wife, Dana. LOVE HER!! Actually I think Dana and I got fussed at because we were so busy yakking it up and not paying attention when they were ready to start. Oops!

Once Chef Frisco shared some of his trade secrets, we were able to make our plates.

Sometimes looks are deceiving. Not in this case. Or maybe it was deceiving because it tasted BETTER than it looked!! Honestly, I'm certain that Chef Frisco could make cruddy ingredients taste good but man oh man, the creations he came up with using the Wildtree products?? Slap yo momma good!

Had to have a bowl of Seafood Scampi over pasta... of course. Chef Frisco actually went to Sam's and bought a bag of frozen seafood meant for paella. Then he used the Wildtree Scampi seasoning mix and butter to create the sauce. Just goes to show you that you can make a simple and delicious meal.

The Wildtree Rotisserie Chicken was juicy and super flavorful.

The Moroccan Grilled Chicken Sliders were beautiful little bites.

The Wildtree Carrot Cake Cups weren't overly sweet and so moist. They complimented the Cream Cheese frosting perfectly AND the frosting comes with the cake mix. How cool is that??

We all had a fantastic time, enjoy some wonderful food and helped out Cajun Kountry Kitchen Cafe just a bit.

If you're nearby, stop in and enjoy some of Chef Frisco's amazing culinary delights at CKKC! I promise you won't regret it.

Insanely Delicious Italian Drip Beef

2010-09-30T17:11:00.000-07:00

Italian drip in the crockpot! In the past I wasn't a big proponent of the crockpot. There were few recipes that I tried and liked as I felt that everything usually comes out like a big pot of bland mush. Over the years though, I have learned that the crockpot is wonderful for very specific things. Dried beans come out fantastic after a day in the crockpot and I find it very convenient to throw a couple of pounds of chicken breasts in to cook and then shred for later use in various casseroles, enchiladas and chicken salad. Now I will add Italian drip beef to the rotation thanks to Pioneer Woman's recipe. It was fantastic, flavorful and it will conveniently feed a crowd.

First I threw the roast in the pot. Then I added chopped onion and garlic.

Next I dumped in three heaping tablespoons of Italian seasonings. Don't get scared. I did because it looked like a lot, but it came out great. Put in 1/3 of the jar of peppers and pour in 1/3 of the juices from the jar. Because of the peppers, I didn't put in black pepper, but I did shake in some salt. Lastly I poured in the can of broth, put the lid on, turned it to low and went to work. I timed myself and the whole thing, fridge to lid, took me 8 minutes and that included the time it took to take the pictures!

8 and some hours later I was home from work and the chuck roast had shrunk considerably. Not to worry. It was tender to the point of falling apart, and I helped it along by shredding it with two forks.

I took out the peppers just as a personal preference--wanting the flavor but not the bite. I buttered and toasted two buns, dumped on the meat, slapped on some provolone, and melted it in my toaster oven. At the point where I put some of the drippings in a bowl to use for au jus I realized that I never put in the 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water called for in the recipe. Again, no worries, it was fantastic.

Since I was the only one eating there was a ton leftover. After being in the fridge overnight I was surprised to see that there wasn't a lot of fat. The original recipe claimed there would be a lot of fat and that it should be skimmed off after being refrigerated but it also called for cooking in the oven or on the stovetop. I don't know if the lack of fat in my version was because of the crockpot cooking method, or just the cut of meat but either way it worked for me. Less fat, and so so so quick, easy, and convenient. Perfect for the next family visit.

Ingredients:
(Adapted from Italian Drip Beef)

3-4 lb Chuck roast
half an onion, cut into chunks
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp salt
8 oz jar Pepperoncini peppers
3 tbsp Italian seasoning
15oz can of beef broth

Directions:

Add roast to slow cooker and top with the onions and garlic.
Add to roast the Italian seasonings, Pepperoncini peppers and Pepperoncini juices along with a teaspoon of salt.
Pour in the can of beef broth and cook on low for about 8 hours.
Remove roast and shred with two forks.
Serve on buttered, toasted bread. Top with cheese of choice and broil. Serve with a side of juice from the slow cooker.

~K-Bomb

Guilt-ridden Split Pea Soup

2010-09-30T16:18:00.000-07:00

So there's a story behind the name of this soup. My co-worker, who we'll call PanDuh (he knows why) has a tendency to step on others' toes. He obviously is aware when he inadvertently upsets someone so as a mea culpa, he'll do something nice. Well recently he must have really smashed some toes because he ended up buying a ham from Honey Baked Ham. If you're familiar with Honey Baked Ham then you know that not only are they tasty, but they aren't cheap either! Well PanDuh's latest victim declined the ham (but hopefully accepted the apology??) so PanDuh left it for all of his co-workers to enjoy. After a few days of munching, I decided to take the ham bone home to make some soup. I thought about lima bean soup or black-eye pea soup but I settled on split pea soup. Honestly, I'm not even sure if I've ever had split pea soup before but for the most part I like beans so I figured with the right recipe, it's going to taste good! I found Alton Brown's recipe and decided that would be the one I would use with a few adjustments to incorporate the ham bone. The thing that I liked best about his version was that it used curry... I love curry! And if you've ever had honey curried chicken then you KNOW honey and curry go well together so I figured the ham bone would compliment this soup quite nicely. Here's what I needed for the soup.

Please notice the spanking new box of Kosher Salt!! Finally I don't have to face that poor, battered old box. I started the soup the night before by soaking the peas after going through them to make sure no rocks were in there. Who knew split peas grew in rocks!! Okay, that was cheesy. Anyhow, after soaking the peas overnight, I diced up the onion and garlic. Over medium low heat I melted the butter. Once melted I added the diced onions and a healthy pinch of salt. After cooking for about 3 minutes, you'll be ready to add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes. You're actually sweating the onions and garlic so you want to make sure it doesn't sizzle and you definitely don't want the onions or garlic to brown.

After the onions and garlic were properly sweated, I added the chicken broth, curry and split peas. Here's where the first part of my adjustment to the recipe comes into play. As usual, I didn't have any chicken broth. Why buy it when I can make it?? So I used three Knorr chicken cubes and seven cups of water. The recipe only calls for five cups of water but I also had a 16 ounce bag of split peas versus the 12 ounces the recipe calls for. So I figured 7 cups of water would prevent the extra chicken cubes and ham bone from making the soup too salty but it wouldn't dilute the split pea factor since I was working with more than the original recipe called for. Once I'd added the broth, curry and peas to the pot, I added the ham bone.

I brought the soup to a boil then covered and reduced to low to simmer for about a hour. After an hour had passed I pulled out the ham bone and set it aside. I noticed that there was still a good amount of meat on the bone so once it was cooled I would pull off the meat to add to the soup. In the meantime I used a blender to puree the soup mixture. This would be a good time to have an immersion blender! If you're working with a blender like I did, this will take about three or four batches. Don't fill it up too much and make sure to keep a a hand on the lid as the soup mixture may jump up some especially with it being warm. After each batch I poured the soup through a strainer into a container. Ideally if you have a cheese cloth you can pour the mixture through that so it ends up with a very smooth puree but I worked with what I had!

Once the entire soup was pureed I turned to the ham bone and picked off the meat. It was a decent amount! And look, you can see how the ham has really absorbed the curry coloring.

I added the meat to the completed soup and decided to store it in the fridge for a couple of hours in order to allow the fat to solidify at the top so it could easily be removed. Well guess what... barely any fat!!! It was a tiny, thin layer. Still, I removed it so I made a healthy soup even healthier.

So the real test would be Skywalker. We're talking about a green liquid... I'd force her to try it BUT would she like it?? I warmed a bowl up and crossed my fingers.

Not only did she like it, she LOVED IT!!! Once it was done, it was PERFECTLY seasoned which, if you know me, is a big deal. I'm a bit of a salt-a-holic but the flavor was so perfect the idea of adding salt just never crossed my mind. Oh and yeah, I never did get around to using any black pepper either.

Who knew guilt could produce great soup??

Ingredients:
(Adapted from Curried Split Pea Soup)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup chopped onion
Kosher salt
1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic
16 ounces dried green split peas, picked over and rinsed
7 cups water
3 Knorr chicken bouillon cubes
1 tablespoon curry powder

Directions:

Rinse and pick through split peas. Soak in water overnight.
Over medium-low heat, melt butter in a pot (at least 4 quart). Add chopped onions and a healthy pinch of salt.
Sweat the onions for about 3 minutes. Add minced garlic and continue cooking for about 2 minutes being careful to avoid allowing the garlic or onions to brown.
Add the peas, chicken broth and curry powder. Stir to mix.
Add ham bone then increase heat to high. Once boiling, reduce to low and simmer for about an hour.
Puree soup with either an immersion blender or a regular blender, taking care to avoid hot splatters.
Add salt if needed.

Sour Cream Banana Bread

2010-09-22T11:32:00.000-07:00

There is no finer fruit than the banana. What other fruit can see potential in when rotten?? Bananas are similar to plantains in that they can be used in different ways in their various stages of the ripening process. A green, unripe banana is less sweet and can be used in a few ways. I have to admit I've never made anything with a green banana so maybe I'll challenge myself one day soon. A perfectly yellow, ripe banana can be eaten as is, sliced into cereal, enjoyed with a slather of peanut butter... you get the gist. An overripe banana means DESSERT!!! When I see overripe bananas I see banana bread, I see banana muffins, I see mini-banana cupcakes. All sorts of yummy baked goods. I was on a kick in which I baked various overripe banana goodies and had shared some with co-workers. One day my co-worker mentioned that he had some overripe bananas and his goal was to best my creation. By the way, that creation was this. And let me tell you, it was SO GOOD! In fact, because I love you, I will recreate that recipe one day soon so I can capture the process... recreating it has nothing to do with the fact that I'll get to enjoy it again. :)

Okay so back to my co-worker. So of course when I hear he has NINE overripe bananas I ask (okay, so I kinda begged) that he please bring me two so I can make something. He agrees and then the next day he hands over two bags of overripe bananas!!! I guess he decided trying to beat me at baking was futile and decided to throw in the towel before even trying. At first I was like WTF but then I got kind of excited and starting looking for overripe banana recipes to try out. I made some Banana Pumpkin mini-muffins, Oatmeal Banana bread and Banana Sour Cream Bread. I picked this Banana Sour Cream Bread recipe because of it's rave reviews. How could I not try it out?? So after setting the over to preheat at 300 degrees, here's what I gathered up to use.

I halved the original recipe because I wanted to make a couple of different banana bread recipes and figured two loaves of this one would be plenty. The first thing I did was spray my glass bread loaf pan with cooking spray. The next step is to mix 1/4 cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. I set half aside and sprinkled the other half over the bottom of the glass bread pan. So here's a secret. I forgot to half that part of the recipe so it was twice as much as topping as each loaf was supposed to have. Was that a bad thing?? Nope! It gave the bread a nice, caramelized sweet bottom crust.

Next I threw the softened butter and sugar together. You don't add the eggs to this portion so it was a bit drier than when you mix butter and sugar together for cookies, for example. Just make sure you've got it pretty evenly mixed and you're good to go.

Into the mixing bowl I added the mashed bananas, eggs, vanilla and sour cream. In a seperate bowl I mixed the flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda together. Once combined I added this dry mixture to the large bowl containing the wet mixture. Although I used my KitchenAid mixer to combine the sugar and butter, I hand mixed the other ingredients together as suggested in one of the reviews, which helped avoid over-mixing the batter. After adding about 1/2 cup of chopped macadamia nuts, I poured the batter into the sugar-cinnamon coated loaf pan and baked it for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Actually I'm pretty sure that 30 seconds shy of the end time something distracted me so it very well likely went over by ten minutes... oops! No matter, it was still very moist, very tasty and that crust was a nice and unexpected twist on banana bread.

I took one loaf into work (of course!) and I shared the other one with my family. It just so happened my mom was just getting back into town after being gone for what felt like forever so this bread helped make that day a mini-celebration. Everyone seemed to enjoy it at work as well... I know I sure did!

Ingredients:

(Adapted from Banana Sour Cream Bread)

2 tablespoons white sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

6 tablespoons butter

1-1/2 cups white sugar

2 eggs

3 very ripe bananas, mashed

1 (8 ounce) container sour cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda

2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2/3 full cup chopped macadamia nuts

Directions:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Combine ¼ cup of sugar and 1 tsp of cinnamon.
Grease two bread loaf pans and dust each with half of the cinnamon and sugar mixture.
In a large bowl, cream the butter and 3 cups of sugar together. Add the eggs, mashed bananas, sour cream and vanilla and mix until just combined.
In a small bowl, combine cinnamon, salt, baking soda and flour together and then add to the large bowl mixture. Next fold in ½ cup of macadamia nuts.
Pour batter into bread loaf pans and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Pico de Gallo Pilaf

2010-09-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

When I bought the ingredients for the Pico de Gallo I made over the weekend, I ended up purchasing too many limes and jalapenos. Plus since the recipe only called for half of an onion, I still had the other half so I decided to make another batch of Pico de Gallo since all I really needed was more tomatoes. The idea was to make chicken quesadillas for dinner buuuuut whoopsie! I checked the fridge this morning and only had three small flour tortillas left which I knew might not be enough for dinner and definitely wouldn't be enough to use up the Pico de Gallo batch I'd just made.

I browsed online until I came across this. With there being two RR references in recent blogs you might think I'm an uber fan but I'm not. It's just a coincidence. I used to enjoy watching that show of hers where she went around and ate with a budget of $40 or so dollars for the entire day. Not too long ago I came across her 30 min meals show and noticed that she just doesn't seem HAPPY. Take a moment and check out her show. Maybe record an episode so you get a chance to do this. When you do, tell me how often she genuinely smiles. Or even fake smiles enough for you to be convinced it might be real. It's so rare it's kind of odd and sad even. She gives this friendly, peppy presentation but if you mute the television and just watch her I doubt you'd think to yourself "she's happy".

Ok, enough about Mrs RR, we got some Pico de Gallo to use up! This recipe only calls for a few ingredients and is a wonderfully unique way to use Pico de Gallo.

Pico de Gallo is really super simple to make. I chopped and threw everything together in the morning and still made it to work at my regular time. I can't lie though, I didn't leisurely take my time getting ready that morning, but seriously very fast!

The first thing I did was heat up 1 tablespoon of Goya olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. I added 1/2 cup of orzo pasta to the heated oil. I have a tendency to get impatient so I simultaneously prepped the chicken thighs that I was making to accompany the pilaf so I avoided going stir crazy (double entendre!). I continuously stirred the orzo pasta until it was a nice golden brown.

Once the pasta was nicely toasted, I added the cup of rice and two cups of chicken broth. I actually didn't have any broth on hand so I used a chicken cube. I just added it to the water and zapped it in the microwave for about two minutes which got the water hot enough for the chicken cube to dissolve. I brought the pasta rice mixture to a boil, then covered, reduced heat to low and simmered for 17 minutes. I also realized "Hey! This is like making Rice-A-Roni but probably WAY better!" so yeah, don't be surprised if there's a future post for Cheesy Broccoli Rice because that one and the Four Cheese one happen to be mine and Skywalker's favorite ones.

After the rice pilaf was cooked, I fluffed the rice and added the Pico de Gallo. Now really I should have measured the Pico de Gallo so I could tell you "add X amount of Pico de Gallo" but I didn't. If I had to guess I'd say about 2 cups?? Of course though, you can add as much or as little Pico as you'd like. Also, my Pico de Gallo was a tad salty (I added almost a full tablespoon of salt to the second batch of Pico de Gallo even though it apparently was a lesser amount) so I made sure the pilaf remained on the blander side so once I combined the two, the saltiness would balance out.

This recipe was SO GOOD!!! I had visions of serving this with tequila lime chicken or something. I'll bet it would be SUPER tasty in a burrito too! Skygirl wasn't a huge fan (I guess if it doesn't accompany the fatty goodness of carnitas she's less of a fan) but it was just the onions she avoided as she happily scarfed down all the other pilaf parts.

Ingredients:
(Adapted from Pico de Gallo Pilaf)

1 cup long grain rice
1/2 cup orzo
2 cups of chicken broth
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cups of Pico de Gallo

Directions:

Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in large saucepan over medium heat.
Add the orzo pasta and toast until deep golden brown, stirring continuously.
Stir in rice and broth, bringing to a boil.
Reduce heat to low and simmer covered for about 17 minutes.
Once the rice is cooked, stir to fluff and mix in about 2 cups of the Pico de Gallo.
Salt to taste.

Mexi-Fun at the Farm

2010-09-15T04:56:00.000-07:00

Okay so T-Rae's house really isn't on a farm HOWEVER she's shared that land with chickens, ducks, geese, dogs, cats and a couple pigs for good measure. So compared to my humble one dog and one cat, her home is a farm! Plus it's on a lot of land so there's that whole "massive amounts of yard work" which is another reason I like to call it a farm. I enjoy going over to T-Rae's house because we both enjoy so many of the same things and have the same sense of humor. Plus there's ALWAYS food and wine involved so really, it's a perfect little mini-getaway for me. T-Rae invited us over so we could cook up some mexican delights. It started as an invite to cook and she had a yearning to make some black bean soup so the other dishes (for the most part) were picked to compliment that. Of course I also intended to take pictures and end up with a couple of recipes to blog about. Not all of the recipes will make it however there are some really fun pics so I decided to share!

I threw the Pico de Gallo together while at home and shortly after Skywalker and I arrived, I got to making the White Cheese Mexican Dip. After it was done we called the kids over to try it out.

That's Ms Alycat on the left and Skywalker holding Baby Bruce. Skywalker LOVES babies so anytime one is near she wants to hold him or her. As you can see, it was hard for everyone's grubby little fingers to resist the cheesy deliciousness.

The black bean soup was a tricky little sucker. We're busy moms. Who has time to think "hey, I might need to adjust the liquids since I'm not starting with dry beans." Yeah, duh moment but being the true cooks we are, we doctored that up into a DELISH soup! As far as the end recipe? No clue. :)

When Alycat said "mmmm, I like cheese!" I figured she was adding some to her black bean soup. When I looked up, I realized she had the bowl of cheese smack dab in front of her as the main dish to her side of soup! Ah the power of cheese.

Did I mention we had Carnitas with fresh Pico de Gallo and diced avocado?? Oh my heavens. Those suckers were GOOD. And that fruity drink on the upper right was some homemade Sangria. The first sip made me cough which is that key sign you know it's good and STRONG! It was super tasty and it was full of fruit so that automatically makes it super healthy as well. Right?!

The recipe said it made 10 servings but it was actually 10 MASSIVE servings. T-Rae and I tried but I'm not sure we put a dent in it LOL!

Pico de gallo

2010-09-13T05:03:00.000-07:00

I emailed my friend T-Rae and mentioned to her that I had a hankering for cooking up some goodies so those were my weekend plans. She suggested we get together and cook up a menu of yum-ness. She wanted to make a black bean soup so I suggested some carnitas and white cheese dip to accompany the meal. I took on making the pico de gallo to go along with the carnitas. I checked one of my favorite websites Allrecipes to look for a recipe and came across this one. Since the recipe's serving size was for 25 I halved the recipe, I used white onion because that's what I had and didn't use any black pepper. Other reviewers suggested using red wine vinegar and less oil than the recipe called for so I did that as well. I started with one bowl and kept adding the ingredients and stirring as I prepared the recipe.

I only needed 1 tablespoon of lime juice which one lime provided. One tip to remember when needing to getting citrus juice is before cutting into the fruit you'll want to roll it around to prep the fruit so you get the most juice possible. I typically roll it and press hard with the heel of my palm. For the one cup of cilantro, after rinsing, I roughly chopped about half of a bunch. You don't want to chop the cilantro too small. On a side note, I LOVE cilantro and never omit it from any recipe I'm making if I can help it. I was ready to kick myself because I was supposed to bring the remaining cilantro for the black bean soup and TOTALLY forgot it. I love cilantro so much that whenever I buy some fresh cilantro, I can't help but give it a big whiff!

Next go ahead and dice the onions and tomatoes. You'll want to dice both a similar size. The recipe says 1/4 of an inch but of course I didn't measure. I just eyeballed what I figured would be a good size and it worked beautifully. Since I was using Roma tomatoes, I sliced either end off, then sliced the tomato into thick slices, cut into three or four strips, then rotated and cut three or four more times across to create the dice.

Once the onions and tomatoes are diced I added them to the lime juice and cilantro. I saved the jalapeno for last. This was my first time working with a jalapeno. I decided to err on the side of wussy and used plastic gloves. I constantly touch my face and eyes and I just KNOW I would have ended with burning eyes if I didn't protect my hands. T-Rae shared with me that she likes to walk on the wild side and goes glove-free when using jalapenos AND she happened to mention that citrus juice worked beautifully in removing the jalapeno juices. I lopped off the top and bottom tip of the jalapeno and then made a slice lengthwise to open the jalapeno into one flat piece. I removed the white membrane and all of the seeds, sliced into strips and then minced the strips. Once the jalapeno was minced, I ran my knife through again to make it a fine mince. The photo below shows the result before the final knife run that resulted in a fine mince.

After adding the finely minced jalapeno to the mixture, I finely mince and add about 2 cloves of garlic, 1/4 cup of red wine vinegar and l/8 or so of a cup of vegetable oil. I added a tablespoon of salt which kind of scared me! It just seemed like a lot and this is coming from a salt-lover. No worries though, it was definitely no where near salty much less too salty. I added 1 teaspoon of cumin which wasn't a part of the original recipe and thoroughly stirred the mixture to make sure the spices were evenly distributed. The end result was BEAUTIFUL! The below picture was right after I finished making it. Of course you'll want to make it a couple of hours before you plan to eat it because that gives the flavors time to really meld. After a few hours the mixture created much more liquid.

This was not only super pretty but the PERFECT accompaniment to the carnitas and really the possibilities are endless for this pico de gallo. I think though next time I make it, I'm going to omit the oil completely and see how that goes.

Ingredients:

6-7 Roma tomatoes
1/2 white onion
1 cup chopped cilantro
1 lime, juiced
1 jalepeno
2 garlic cloves, finely diced
1/4 cup of red wine vinegar
less than 1/4 cup of vegetable oil (or omit completely!)

1 tbsp of salt
1 tsp cumin

Roasted Garlic Twice-Baked Potatoes

2010-09-12T14:31:00.000-07:00

I love garlic so when I was looking for a recipe for twice-baked potatoes and came across Kraft's recipe for Roasted Garlic Twice-Baked Potatoes I knew I found the one I wanted to try. I did make some adaptations of course. Kraft's presentation was a bit unusual in that it directs you to cut the potatoes crosswise but I decided to stick with the classic serving manner. I also decided to use cheddar instead of Velveeta and didn't have Parmesan but if I did I would have added it! My sister-in-law Dee asked me to make twice baked potatoes for my nephew Jay's birthday party so I tripled the recipe to use about twelve potatoes. I had no idea that she was making lasagna otherwise I definitely would have made less! Then again, I kept three at home to use as a meal accompaniment for Sky-girl and me later in the week so it all worked out.

The first thing you want to do is cook the potatoes so preheat the oven to 400 degrees. I baked the potatoes and garlic one night and did the rest of the steps the following day. If you do the entire process at one time, just remember after the potatoes and garlic are baked you'll want to reduce the heat to 350 degrees for the second round of baking the potatoes. Speaking of potatoes, you want to use baking potatoes specifically whenever you're making twice-baked potatoes. The skin on twice-baked potatoes is thicker which helps to prevent the shell from falling apart while you're working with it. There are several ways to cook baking potatoes for twice-baked potatoes. No matter which method you choose, you want to scrub the potato skins clean, then poke all over the potato with a fork or knife. The easiest way is zapping them in the microwave. Heck newer microwaves even come with a baked potato setting! Since I was making these for a party, I decided to bake them in the oven. After patting the potatoes to remove the excess moisture from washing them, I coated them lightly with the Goya olive oil which is my EVOO of choice. I then sprinkled them with Kosher salt and set them aside. The garlic will roast at the same time as the potatoes so next I prepped them. I used three bulbs total so I lop off the tops (how often do you get to use the word "lop"?!?).

I ended up having to use parchment paper because I was COMPLETELY out of aluminum foil!! I hate when I run out of those kitchen items you should always have. I ran out of vanilla extract not too long ago but that's a different story. Anyhow, so I drizzled the garlic bulbs with a bit of olive oil and loosely folded the paper to enclose the bulbs. I did not wrap the potatoes for baking but that was a decision made before I realized I was out of foil. I wanted the skin a bit crispy. I put the bulbs and the potatoes into the oven. While the potatoes and garlic baked, I microwaved the bacon. I did about 1 to 2 slices per potato. Once the bacon was cooked I roughly chopped the bacon. It was crispy enough that it crumbled which is why a rough chop was all I needed. I removed the garlic bulbs after an hour to let them cool but since the potatoes were rather large, I left them in the oven for about another half hour. When I removed them from the oven, my stab marks were pretty evident!

Once the garlic bulbs have cooled enough to handle, all you have to do is squeeze starting from the root to the tops squeezing like a tube of toothpaste. The roasted garlic will come out easily and by the way, SMELLS HEAVENLY! Set the roasted garlic aside to add to the potato pulp. On to the potatoes! Cut each potato lengthwise. I've found the easiest way to remove the potato pulp is to use a big spoon. You'll want to leave about an inch of potato so the remaining shell doesn't end up too flimsy.

Make sure the oven is preheating to 350 degrees. The potato pulp should be in a big enough bowl. I added about three cups of both sour cream and shredded cheddar cheese, the bacon, roasted garlic then sprinkled salt and pepper to taste. The pulp isn't too hot which prevents it from melting the cheddar which is good. After being satisfied with the taste of the mixture, it is easiest to fill the shells using a piping bag. It aids in achieving a clean presentation and it's faster. Since my kitchen was covered in shells awaiting the heavenly filling, I wanted an easier method. I don't own a piping bag so instead I filled a freezer storage bag with the mixture, cut the tip of one corner off, and filled the shells.

I sprinkled the tops with a little bit more shredded cheddar cheese then baked the potatoes for about half an hour. These came out so good that Sky-girl talked about them for about a week after they were long gone!

Ingredients:

3 heads Garlic

3 tsp olive oil

12 large baking potatoes

3 cups sour cream

3 cups sharp cheddar cheese

12 to 18 slices bacon, cooked, crumbled

salt & pepper to taste

24 servings

Easy Pesto

2010-09-08T14:42:00.000-07:00

First, the pesto recipe that I just happened to find in today's paper:

2 garlic cloves
1/2 cup of pistachios
2 cups basil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup e.v. Olive oil
1/4 cup parm reg cheese

I'm kind of a fly by the seat of my pants cook (except when it comes to baking) and right off the bat I knew that I would not be using pistachios for my pesto. They aren't my favorite and I didn't have any on hand. The traditional nuts to use are pine nuts, but I didn't have those either. I'm pretty sure you can use any nut you want or leave them out altogether in pesto but I had slivered almonds so I used them. I toasted them first, then cooled them off, then dumped them in my trusty Wal-mart food processor along with the garlic.

Then I rinsed off the basil that my dad brought me from his garden. If you've ever wanted to grow herbs definitely start with basil. It's super easy, super hardy, and the more you pick it, the more it grows. I've seen someone lay a cinder block on it's side, fill the holes with potting soil and stick a basil plant in each side. They grew!

Threw the basil on top of the garlic/nuts I had already spun a couple times to get started.

Then while the basil was spinning I added olive oil and lemon juice down the chute. I didn't measure. I just keep in mind the amount the recipe calls for and eyeball it. In this case I used half a lemon, and poured the oil until I saw the mixture get to the consistency I wanted. I stopped it, added salt, black pepper, and a teeny bit of cayenne pepper and the cheese. I had some Parmesan (sans reggiano) leftover from earlier in the week and dumped it all in.

I spun it a little bit more and then tasted. It was spot on! So I scooped half in a Tupperware to use for the Zaida pizza I'm making tomorrow or the next day and put the rest in a bag to freeze. Pesto freezes well and in the past I've done the trick where you put it in an ice tray and freeze it then pop out the cubes and store them in a bag. That's a great idea bc you can use as much or as little as you want for soups,stews,beans, marinades etc, but in this case I didn't make a large amount and I figured I'd just keep the other half for another pizza down the road.

~K-Bomb

Tomato Pesto Pizza

2010-08-31T18:28:00.000-07:00

This recipe actually came from The Pioneer Woman and she called it Tomato Basil pizza HOWEVER, since the only basil is in pesto form, I've decided to dub this pizza Tomato Pesto pizza. I'll often make things at home with no regard for whether my pre-teen daughter will like it or not. Sure I WANT her to and sometimes she does and other times she doesn't but I've never let the fear of her potentially not liking it stop me from trying something new. Worst case if she doesn't like what I make for dinner, she can have a bowl of cereal (or twenty as young people are apt to do!). I did wonder if the pesto base would scare her off but not only did she like the pizza, this is her FAVORITE! Whenever I mention we're having pizza for dinner, her eyes light up and she asks "The green one?!". Anyhow, so when my girlfriends and I got together for a pizza party, I knew I wanted to make this Tomato Pesto Pizza. Even better, I recruited my daughter to help put it together. If you're feeling plucky, make your own pesto. It's easy! Or so I hear... I hadn't gotten around to doing that yet. My favorite pre-packaged pesto to use is by Buitoni and it can be found in the refrigerated deli section before you get to the fruits and vegetables (at least in all my area stores). I also buy the shredded Parmesan and fresh mozzarella in this section. Feel free to buy a hunk of Parmesan and shred it yourself but PLEASE do not skimp on the fresh mozzarella. PW shared a tip about freezing the mozzarella for about 1/5 hour to make it easier to slice. I hadn't had a chance to try that tip yet but I make sure to use a sharp knife. I always stick to Roma tomatoes but I suppose any type of tomato would probably be fine in a pinch.

You'll want to thinly slice the tomatoes which will allow you to cover the entire pizza in tomatoes without their moisture making a mess of the end result. You'll want to do the same with the mozzarella... thin slices covering almost every visible inch.

Let's keep it real kids. You may have already guessed from the fact that my pesto is store-bought that I'm no snob when it comes to using some pre-made products. It's just a fact of life. Sometimes it'll be made from scratch and sometimes there will be short-cuts. In the past I've used the Pillsbury pizza crust but most recently I used the Boboli crust. Either way worked in the end. So you start with your crust of choice and add a layer of pesto. Not too thick but enough to cover the entire surface. Skywalker laid on a bit thick per my direction. I got pesto-happy! Oops!

Sprinkle the pesto with Kosher salt, layer on the thinly sliced mozzarella and then the tomato slices. I sprinkle the tomatoes with freshly cracked peppers THEN sprinkle generously with the Parmesan. Don't be shy!

Bake in the oven per the crust directions but I'm prefer sure both were around 15 minutes at 450 (I think that's right, ha!).

Listen... this is dangerous. Skywalker and I POLISH this off. Every time... no matter how big or small that pizza is... we simply cannot stop eating it.

Roasted Leg Quarters

2010-08-31T14:59:00.000-07:00

You know what’s awesome? A ten pound bag of leg quarters for .49 cents a pound!! Oh yeah, I snagged a bag this weekend. Leg quarters are SO versatile. Plus I’m a fan of chicken. Oh who am I kidding, I’m a fan of food! Anyhow, this recipe is not my mom’s recipe (that’ll come) but it is inspired by one of her meals. Her roasted chicken legs are the BEST! I can not begin to explain. But anyone can make some really tasty roasted chicken. It’s a super delish main dish (say that 3x really fast!), slap a couple of sides together and you have one lovely Sunday dinner! Oh and don’t forget that roasted leg quarters are an easy way to feed a large group of people.

The first thing we have to do, after removing the excess fat and skin, is season them and good. Now about the whole chicken skin debate. I often cook with it on… fat adds flavor. Sorry! HOWEVER, I will remove it afterwards and not eat it. Kinda like patting my slice of pizza. I feel better because although I COULD have made it with LESS fat, I did in the end reduce the amount of fat I consumed. So I win, right?!
Ingredients:

Shout out to my SIL Dee... the Wildtree products are FANTASTIC!!! All natural and many other advantages that I can’t quite recall at the moment but I do know I love to use ‘em. As you might have guessed, I’m a fan of garlic so this is why there are three layers of garlic in the ingredients I chose to use when I seasoned the leg quarters. After rinsing and patting the leg quarters dry, I drizzled the grapeseed garlic oil on them. Keep in mind this is dark meat and thus has a higher fat content. Don’t use too much oil! Just enough to lightly coat the chicken. Then I finely minced two cloves of garlic and added to the chicken. I sprinkled the seasonings along with salt and pepper to taste. I mixed the leg quarters around to thoroughly coat. I may have even rubbed the herbs in. It can’t hurt right?

I had one leg quarter that was much larger than the rest so I scooted the similar sized pieces close together and left Sasquatch all by his lonesome. I did this to try to ensure they all cooked evenly. I baked this at 400 for 30 minutes, flipped it over and basted and baked it for 10 more minutes. I flipped it over one last time, basted and cooked it for 10 more minutes. DO NOT COVER! You want that skin to crisp up and brown nicely.

Oh it was good.. so, so good… tender and full of flavor. And the juices it made? Shut up. YUM! Now I will say next time I’m gonna bake them at 425 for 45 minutes because I want to get more brown into that skin (yes, the skin I don’t eat) but really, roasted chicken is super versatile, quick and simple.

6 leg quarters
1 tbsp WildTree grapeseed garlic oil (sub plain olive oil)
adobo (sub chicken flavored seasoning)
WildTree garlic & herb mix (experiment with whatever herbs you have on hand!)
freshly ground pepper
2 garlic cloves
Kosher salt

Easy Cheesy Good

2010-08-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

I love easy recipes that are also tasty. This recipe is SUPER easy. Like “I just graduated from Ramen noodles” easy. The original recipe had literally only three ingredients so hey, feel free to try it that way. I, of course, could not leave well enough alone so I added a couple of other “flavor enhancers” if you will. Anyhow, it came out pretty darn good. Even better? It’s easy enough that I can make my daughter Skywalker make it! Suddenly the recipe has been transformed to super, duper easy.
Original Ingredients:

Spiral Noodles, Block of Cheddar, Can of Stewed Tomatoes

Real quick I have to go on a quick shredded cheese tangent. Thanks to Ree the Pioneer Woman I came to realize there are some things just worth the effort. Did you know that pre-shredded cheese is coated with stuff (no, I have no idea what this stuff is) that affects not only the taste but consistency of cheese. I love cheese. I just can’t buy pre-shredded cheese knowing that with a little extra effort, I could have a much better end result. PLUS it’s cheaper to buy the block o’ cheese! Veering off my cheese tangent real quick to say that supposedly it is key to use stewed tomatoes. Now ya can’t say you didn’t know.

My extras:

One clove of garlic and 1/4 of an onion, both finely chopped.

Another tangent!! So I’m lazy. I can admit it and honestly that’s one of those negative traits that I am not terribly concerned about. I kinda like being lazy! Anyhow, my lazy ways allowed me to start relying on jarred minced garlic. NO! Bad, bad, bad. I mean it’s not baaaad, but listen, when you compare jarred minced garlic to freshly minced garlic, you just can’t compare!! The investment is so worth the rewards. I threw my jar of minced garlic AWAY!! Never again! I am now and forever more a garlic mincing fool. Join me.

Okay so tangent's over. I took one clove of garlic and about 1/4 of one white onion and finely chopped them. While I was grating the cheddar and chopping the onions and garlic, the water was bowling for the pasta. Always make sure to season your pasta water!! Someone many years ago taught me that. Rachael? I dunno. Anyhow, make it taste like salt water. This is the only time to really season the pasta. Or at least that’s what they told me. Once the water is boiling, I decide to add the garlic and onion along with the pasta (only using half of that box). I boiled for about 9 minutes (or however long the box tells you to boil the noodles).

Once the noodles are cooked, I drain them reserving some of the pasta water. I add the shredded cheese and stewed tomatoes to the pot, throw the noodles back in and add maybe 1/2 cup of the pasta water and mix it all up. The recipe calls for baking it but I purposely cooked the pasta a bit longer so I could just heat through on the stove top instead of baking it. I also mash some of the tomato pieces with the back of a wooden spoon.


Tastes like a grilled cheese sandwich with a fat, slice of tomato.

This dish is one ooey, gooey, cheesy mess and it is SO GOOD!

1/4 white onion, finely diced

1 clove of garlic, finely minced

8 oz cheddar cheese

8 oz of macaroni (I used spiral)

1 15oz can of Stewed tomatoes