I finally made my calendar recipe from March! I admit, that I didn't follow the directions, but I did use the same ingredients, except that I omitted the artichoke hearts, because I couldn't find any marinated artichoke hearts. I think I should have checked Meijer, but I didn't, so I didn't get them.
I started by making a layer of pea pods on the bottom of my saute pan, and I added less than 1/4 cup water, just enough to cover the bottom and get them wet. I don't like boiling vegetables unless they are potatoes, which are tubers and don't count. So I turned that on to cook off the water and steam the pea pods. In the mean time I took some potatoes that Shane had crinkle cut for me with the Ultimate Mandoline (that's what it's called, and it is pretty cool, so don't knock its name :D) and put them in my large Micro Cooker with 4 cups of water for 15 minutes (which turned out to be too long).
While the peas and potatoes were cooking I chopped 1/3 of one large green bell pepper and 1/3 of one huge red onion. The onion I added right to the peas, along with 1 clove garlic pressed and 1 T olive oil and half of 1 lemon freshly juiced (the water had cooked off by this point). I gave that a nice stir and drained the potatoes and chopped the breast from a rotisserie chicken (so yum!)
In my small size Batter Bowl, which is a large measuring cup that is big enough to mix and make and bake in, I whisked together just under 1/4 olive oil and the other half of that lemon. When it was done it looked sort of like whisked egg yolk, so that was cool and odd. I added some cracked black pepper and added that along with the potatoes to the peas and other things.
When I stirred that all together, the potatoes crumbled and became a mashed potato coating for the other food. Upon tasting this dish, I remembered that I hate lemons and everything that tastes like lemons... I think picture was so pretty I convinced myself that it wouldn't be that lemon-y. I was wrong, it was VERY lemony. I added a pile of salt and that helped (and if you know me you know I don't like salt either). If I make this dish again it is not going to involve lemons. I am considering an orange. And I could use rice or perhaps cook the potatoes less.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Grillin' Easter Eggs
Today I walked out my front door to find my dad in his front yard (directly across from my own front yard). He saw me and instead of waiting to speak to each other face to face, like I assume civilized (boring) people do we shouted across our yards to each other while I walked over. Our conversation had lots to do with where my mom was currently located and what are we eating for Easter dinner?
The first question was easy, she was brushing her hair and easily found. The second question was also fairly simple, we'd be grillin'! Now, I don't know if you readers grill or barbecue (or barbeque) or how or if you prepare food out of doors in the great wilderness of your yard, front side or back. But when we grill, we ALWAYS have macaroni salad with our seared meats. See, I had you all tricked, thinking I'd be the grill master, but no, I am the kitchen wench in this story. It's not so bad though, I get to wear great outfits! (Okay no more Ren Fair references today, promise.)
So I volunteered/was drafted for macaroni salad making. Prep work took less time than usual today, since I only had to boil macaroni - the eggs were already boiled for this venture! My parents, nieces, siblings and I had dyed eggs on Friday. While it was nice to not have to boil eggs, I was sad, as I am every year, when it came time to peel those vibrant shells away from the milky colored egg whites.
Then I had a brilliant, colorful, rainbow-rific idea. I would dye the boiled eggs again... now that they had been peeled! I Googled first and Google found me eHow and eHow said it was an overnight project involving both food coloring and water (with eggs of course) and I said I don't have that kind of time eHow!
Then I remembered that Marna (my Pampered Chef Executive Director) had just sent me a recipe for tulip eggs, which were both artful and delicious. Her instructions were to dye the peeled boiled eggs in food coloring (no water) and then cut with a v-cutter and devil and garnish appropriately. So I compromised and mixed enough water to cover my eggs with my chosen colors of food coloring, which happened to be red, yellow, blue and green because those were the colors of food coloring we had. I sliced all my eggs in half and dumped the yolks into a bowl so I could make the "sauce" for the macaroni salad while the egg whites colored.
I'm sure everyone has their own special secret recipe for macaroni salad, passed down in secret from parent to child. In any case, I do have a special secret recipe, handed down to me from my mother. So I'll tell you SOME of what goes into this particular dish, but it is my special secret family recipe after all!
For the "sauce" I crush the yolks, then add whatever spices sound delicious, miracle whip (NEVER mayonnaise), mustard, ranch dressing and a few more things - I whip that up and pour it on the boiled, drained and cooled macaroni. To chop the now colorful eggs I put them in my egg slicer, slice, turn, and slice again. This gives me no hassles, barely any mess and chopped eggs in less than a minute. I love my egg slicer!
To finish this very easy, very tasty dish I stirred in the eggs,
flatten/squish the salad in the bowl with my stir-er (a big serving spoon) and then used a paper towel to clean the edges (it saves on dishes when you mix in the serving bowl!)
Garnish with a light dusting of paprika, chill and serve! It was the most festive macaroni salad our Easter dinner has ever had!
The first question was easy, she was brushing her hair and easily found. The second question was also fairly simple, we'd be grillin'! Now, I don't know if you readers grill or barbecue (or barbeque) or how or if you prepare food out of doors in the great wilderness of your yard, front side or back. But when we grill, we ALWAYS have macaroni salad with our seared meats. See, I had you all tricked, thinking I'd be the grill master, but no, I am the kitchen wench in this story. It's not so bad though, I get to wear great outfits! (Okay no more Ren Fair references today, promise.)
So I volunteered/was drafted for macaroni salad making. Prep work took less time than usual today, since I only had to boil macaroni - the eggs were already boiled for this venture! My parents, nieces, siblings and I had dyed eggs on Friday. While it was nice to not have to boil eggs, I was sad, as I am every year, when it came time to peel those vibrant shells away from the milky colored egg whites.
Then I had a brilliant, colorful, rainbow-rific idea. I would dye the boiled eggs again... now that they had been peeled! I Googled first and Google found me eHow and eHow said it was an overnight project involving both food coloring and water (with eggs of course) and I said I don't have that kind of time eHow!
Then I remembered that Marna (my Pampered Chef Executive Director) had just sent me a recipe for tulip eggs, which were both artful and delicious. Her instructions were to dye the peeled boiled eggs in food coloring (no water) and then cut with a v-cutter and devil and garnish appropriately. So I compromised and mixed enough water to cover my eggs with my chosen colors of food coloring, which happened to be red, yellow, blue and green because those were the colors of food coloring we had. I sliced all my eggs in half and dumped the yolks into a bowl so I could make the "sauce" for the macaroni salad while the egg whites colored.
I'm sure everyone has their own special secret recipe for macaroni salad, passed down in secret from parent to child. In any case, I do have a special secret recipe, handed down to me from my mother. So I'll tell you SOME of what goes into this particular dish, but it is my special secret family recipe after all!
For the "sauce" I crush the yolks, then add whatever spices sound delicious, miracle whip (NEVER mayonnaise), mustard, ranch dressing and a few more things - I whip that up and pour it on the boiled, drained and cooled macaroni. To chop the now colorful eggs I put them in my egg slicer, slice, turn, and slice again. This gives me no hassles, barely any mess and chopped eggs in less than a minute. I love my egg slicer!
To finish this very easy, very tasty dish I stirred in the eggs,
flatten/squish the salad in the bowl with my stir-er (a big serving spoon) and then used a paper towel to clean the edges (it saves on dishes when you mix in the serving bowl!)Garnish with a light dusting of paprika, chill and serve! It was the most festive macaroni salad our Easter dinner has ever had!
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Experimental Dessert: A Brilliant Creation or a Terrible Disaster?
In March I started offering My Pampered Chef Hosts and Hostesses free dessert when they host a party in the month that their birthday is in, and today (Saturday) I needed to provide a free dessert. I actually had this particular culinary adventure on Friday, but it's been a busy weekend (you know, homework, facebook, planning for the Pampered Chef party, facebook, housework, facebook...)
Originally I was going to bake a cake, but then I thought that was too boring. Then I was going to make a cookie dessert pizza thing, but decided that was too much work and too many ingredients. So I looked in my cupboard and I looked at my cookbook and I had a rare moment of total and utter recipe loss - I had no idea what I should make, and I had 12 hours until time to leave for the party (sleep took up a big part of the 12 hours). So I sat down and balanced my checkbook (math soothes me, don't ask because it probably won't make sense to you, I'm just that strange). While balancing the checkbook I came across the receipt from groceries earlier that day and on that reciept was two kinds of cheerios and an idea began to form.
I had both chocolate cheerios and cinnamon cheerios and at first I wanted to just cover and smother them all with a simple chocolate coating (2 cups chocolate chips, any kind, and 2T+2tsp shortening). It turned out I didn't have enough chocolate chips for that so I thought about the cheerio flavors - I'd already represented chocolate so more cinnamon would probably bring a nice balance to this thing I was making. I googled "cinnamon fillling" and found an amazing recipe for cinnamon rolls that I promptly stole the cinnamon filling from. I thought I would mix the cheerios in the cinnamon filling and then coat them in chocolate, like little coated candy treats. (Later I saw that cinnamon filling wasn't sticky enough to lend itself to this idea, so I came up with a new one.)
I mixed up a half batch of cinnamon filling in a mixing bowl and then a half batch of simple chocolate coating in the Double Boiler (then set to simmer so it wouldn't re-harden). I checked my cinnamon filling, and for cinnamon rolls, it would have been perfect, but I wasn't going to be making any sort of roll. So I doubled the butter (I know, I'm so bad, but it tastes so good!) and that gave it a smoother more "spreadable" consistency - but not at all sticky the way I had hoped it would be. I had another idea though, so all was not lost. But before I went and ruined two perfectly good things, I took a small bowl and mixed a spoonful of each sweet to give it a taste combined - the taste was good, the chocolate drowned the cinnamon a little in my sample, but overall there was more cinnamon filling than there was simple chocolate coating, so that wouldn't be a problem with the full size mixture.
I added the simple chocolate coating to the cinnamon filling and stirred until they were well combined, then I added 1 cup each of chocolate and cinnamon cheerios and stirred to coat. There was a lot of chocolate-cinnamon goo left so I added another 1 cup of each flavor of cheerios and stirred them in. This time they were all evenly coated without an excess amount of leftover chocolate-cinnamon sauce.
I spread out waxed paper onto two cookie sheets and cleared space in the refrigerator - chocolate sets best when chilled. I used my Small Scoop, which holds about 1 T, to scoop up about 65 of these little cheerio treats. I wanted them small because they had a lot of flavor, and if they ended up too big they'd be too sweet to eat. Once I had dished them all out I put them in the refrigerator overnight.
After packing up all my show supplies (cooking gadgets and toys, catalogs, order forms, netbook, first aid kit and aloe - I'm a little accident prone, and Pink Zebra demo products) I almost didn't remember to pack up my little creations! But luckily for me, since I had promised a free dessert, I did remember to pack them up (after sharing a few with my husband of course!) According to the guests, my brand new Chocolate Cinnamon Cheerio Treats are a brilliant creation, because there were only a handful leftover!
Next time I promise a dish, I think I'll plan ahead. (Even if these did turn out, you never know when a terrible disaster will land on your cookie sheet!)
Originally I was going to bake a cake, but then I thought that was too boring. Then I was going to make a cookie dessert pizza thing, but decided that was too much work and too many ingredients. So I looked in my cupboard and I looked at my cookbook and I had a rare moment of total and utter recipe loss - I had no idea what I should make, and I had 12 hours until time to leave for the party (sleep took up a big part of the 12 hours). So I sat down and balanced my checkbook (math soothes me, don't ask because it probably won't make sense to you, I'm just that strange). While balancing the checkbook I came across the receipt from groceries earlier that day and on that reciept was two kinds of cheerios and an idea began to form.
I had both chocolate cheerios and cinnamon cheerios and at first I wanted to just cover and smother them all with a simple chocolate coating (2 cups chocolate chips, any kind, and 2T+2tsp shortening). It turned out I didn't have enough chocolate chips for that so I thought about the cheerio flavors - I'd already represented chocolate so more cinnamon would probably bring a nice balance to this thing I was making. I googled "cinnamon fillling" and found an amazing recipe for cinnamon rolls that I promptly stole the cinnamon filling from. I thought I would mix the cheerios in the cinnamon filling and then coat them in chocolate, like little coated candy treats. (Later I saw that cinnamon filling wasn't sticky enough to lend itself to this idea, so I came up with a new one.)
I mixed up a half batch of cinnamon filling in a mixing bowl and then a half batch of simple chocolate coating in the Double Boiler (then set to simmer so it wouldn't re-harden). I checked my cinnamon filling, and for cinnamon rolls, it would have been perfect, but I wasn't going to be making any sort of roll. So I doubled the butter (I know, I'm so bad, but it tastes so good!) and that gave it a smoother more "spreadable" consistency - but not at all sticky the way I had hoped it would be. I had another idea though, so all was not lost. But before I went and ruined two perfectly good things, I took a small bowl and mixed a spoonful of each sweet to give it a taste combined - the taste was good, the chocolate drowned the cinnamon a little in my sample, but overall there was more cinnamon filling than there was simple chocolate coating, so that wouldn't be a problem with the full size mixture.
I added the simple chocolate coating to the cinnamon filling and stirred until they were well combined, then I added 1 cup each of chocolate and cinnamon cheerios and stirred to coat. There was a lot of chocolate-cinnamon goo left so I added another 1 cup of each flavor of cheerios and stirred them in. This time they were all evenly coated without an excess amount of leftover chocolate-cinnamon sauce.
I spread out waxed paper onto two cookie sheets and cleared space in the refrigerator - chocolate sets best when chilled. I used my Small Scoop, which holds about 1 T, to scoop up about 65 of these little cheerio treats. I wanted them small because they had a lot of flavor, and if they ended up too big they'd be too sweet to eat. Once I had dished them all out I put them in the refrigerator overnight.
After packing up all my show supplies (cooking gadgets and toys, catalogs, order forms, netbook, first aid kit and aloe - I'm a little accident prone, and Pink Zebra demo products) I almost didn't remember to pack up my little creations! But luckily for me, since I had promised a free dessert, I did remember to pack them up (after sharing a few with my husband of course!) According to the guests, my brand new Chocolate Cinnamon Cheerio Treats are a brilliant creation, because there were only a handful leftover!
Next time I promise a dish, I think I'll plan ahead. (Even if these did turn out, you never know when a terrible disaster will land on your cookie sheet!)
Monday, April 4, 2011
The Invention of my Famous Quick Chicken Goulash
I say famous in the title, because I know that I'm going to be asked to make this one again and again! I was looking at the cupboard and I wasn't sure what I felt like making for dinner so I started setting things on the counter, to visualize the possibilities.
I started with tri-color rotini, because pasta is quick and Shane (husband creature) had to go to work in less than an hour. Also, they are pretty. Next to that box I placed a can of dark red kidney beans and a can of chicken. Ideas began to form in my head so I added a can of diced tomatoes and started the water to boil. I measured my pasta and went to the refrigerator to forage for produce. I found onions, garlic, green bell pepper and tomatoes, but decided it was quicker to use the canned diced tomatoes, so the fresh tomatoes had to stay behind.
The pasta water came to a boil so in the pot with the pasta. Set the timer and give it a stir and it can take care of itself in my non-stick pot, an invention handed straight from the gods to mankind. Nothing sticks to non-stick, not even ignored pasta!
On to my veggies! The onions and peppers I treated the same, almost. Of course, they are different creatures, you don't peel your pepper and you don't de-seed an onion, but I did mince them both with my food chopper. I had decided this dish would be soup-ish so I wanted them really little, I don't like big chunks of pepper or onion in my soup (unless it's French onion, and then peppers aren't invited at all). The onion went into the frying pan with a little sea salt and butter - to start them caramelizing faster. The pepper needed to wait a minute, as it wouldn't be added to the pan until the end. After peeling the garlic I pressed it right into the frying pan with the onions, which were about half way done at that time (I was going for a more light burn than a true caramelization). I added a little more butter and gave it a healthy stir before remembering I hadn't stirred the pasta since I had started it to boil.
So I stirred the pasta and then drained it, reserving 2 cups of my boiling water. To the same non-stick pot I emptied the can of diced tomatoes. I put the kidney beans back in the cupboard because I decided I didn't need competing proteins and I had already decided chicken sounded better. To the diced tomatoes I added the two cups boiling water and I hate to admit it, but 2 chicken bullion cubes (I'm out of canned low sodium stock!) I also added paprika, black pepper, basil and cilantro (I love cilantro, it goes all sorts of places it was probably never meant to go).
Back at the frying pan the onions were starting to get a nice crispy sort of brown, so I added the peppers and stirred them. Then stirred the soup, and then I opened the canned chicken, because yes it is edible, and rinsed it REALLY well. The onions were added to the soup and the chicken went into the pan to cook off the extra water. At this point I felt my soup was too thin, so I added about 1/2 can of tomato paste. I then decided it didn't have enough vegetables and it wasn't yet colorful enough so I added a can of corn, I normally use frozen, I really don't care for canned vegetables, BUT canned corn that is going to become part of soup is my one exception. I didn't even drain it, as I had added a bit much tomato paste and it would add a little bit of sweet and salty flavor.
By this time I had almost forgotten about the pasta again, but it was still hot when I added it to my soup, which I promptly decided was more like goulash than soup, so now it was a goulash (you see how recipe naming works now, don't you?) I also added the chicken, and debated adding black beans, decided against and stirred vigorously. This broke the rotini a bit, but that was fine with me. I let it simmer maybe 6-8 minutes before serving, allowing to cool for about 2 minutes and eating.
It was super yum, and Shane only poked it once to find out what all was in it before eating the whole bowl!
I started with tri-color rotini, because pasta is quick and Shane (husband creature) had to go to work in less than an hour. Also, they are pretty. Next to that box I placed a can of dark red kidney beans and a can of chicken. Ideas began to form in my head so I added a can of diced tomatoes and started the water to boil. I measured my pasta and went to the refrigerator to forage for produce. I found onions, garlic, green bell pepper and tomatoes, but decided it was quicker to use the canned diced tomatoes, so the fresh tomatoes had to stay behind.
The pasta water came to a boil so in the pot with the pasta. Set the timer and give it a stir and it can take care of itself in my non-stick pot, an invention handed straight from the gods to mankind. Nothing sticks to non-stick, not even ignored pasta!
On to my veggies! The onions and peppers I treated the same, almost. Of course, they are different creatures, you don't peel your pepper and you don't de-seed an onion, but I did mince them both with my food chopper. I had decided this dish would be soup-ish so I wanted them really little, I don't like big chunks of pepper or onion in my soup (unless it's French onion, and then peppers aren't invited at all). The onion went into the frying pan with a little sea salt and butter - to start them caramelizing faster. The pepper needed to wait a minute, as it wouldn't be added to the pan until the end. After peeling the garlic I pressed it right into the frying pan with the onions, which were about half way done at that time (I was going for a more light burn than a true caramelization). I added a little more butter and gave it a healthy stir before remembering I hadn't stirred the pasta since I had started it to boil.
So I stirred the pasta and then drained it, reserving 2 cups of my boiling water. To the same non-stick pot I emptied the can of diced tomatoes. I put the kidney beans back in the cupboard because I decided I didn't need competing proteins and I had already decided chicken sounded better. To the diced tomatoes I added the two cups boiling water and I hate to admit it, but 2 chicken bullion cubes (I'm out of canned low sodium stock!) I also added paprika, black pepper, basil and cilantro (I love cilantro, it goes all sorts of places it was probably never meant to go).
Back at the frying pan the onions were starting to get a nice crispy sort of brown, so I added the peppers and stirred them. Then stirred the soup, and then I opened the canned chicken, because yes it is edible, and rinsed it REALLY well. The onions were added to the soup and the chicken went into the pan to cook off the extra water. At this point I felt my soup was too thin, so I added about 1/2 can of tomato paste. I then decided it didn't have enough vegetables and it wasn't yet colorful enough so I added a can of corn, I normally use frozen, I really don't care for canned vegetables, BUT canned corn that is going to become part of soup is my one exception. I didn't even drain it, as I had added a bit much tomato paste and it would add a little bit of sweet and salty flavor.
By this time I had almost forgotten about the pasta again, but it was still hot when I added it to my soup, which I promptly decided was more like goulash than soup, so now it was a goulash (you see how recipe naming works now, don't you?) I also added the chicken, and debated adding black beans, decided against and stirred vigorously. This broke the rotini a bit, but that was fine with me. I let it simmer maybe 6-8 minutes before serving, allowing to cool for about 2 minutes and eating.
It was super yum, and Shane only poked it once to find out what all was in it before eating the whole bowl!
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