Gourmandery

Friday, June 13, 2008

1. Work: I ended up getting a few invoices in the late mail drop yesterday. So I have a little bit to work on while at home. Since my boss and the Chief are out today, I’ll wait to do them on Monday so that they can do their thing to get them paid without the invoices hanging in the ether over the weekend. Confused? We pay most of our bills by ACH anymore.

2. Play: We are making a trip to the used bookstore today. We’re hunting for books for Jesse - Beau wants large picture books for teaching purposes; I want Little Golden Books.

3. Church: Our church is hosting a large homecoming, of sorts, for our overseas missionaries next month. It’s a week-long event and they have asked folks to step up to help with the logistics of hosting such a big thing. I volunteered to cook for some of the meals they have planned - group meals for planned events during the week, not the regular meals they will receive with whomever they are staying at other times, like breakfast.

I initially signed up for a couple of weekend day events since it’s tough for me to participate during the week with my job. And then I got a heads up that the leader of the food team was thinking about asking me to cook the meat for the large dinner where they’re expecting about 250 people. At the time I thought she meant that I would cook some of the meat for that dinner, but I got the email from the leader of the food team yesterday asking if I was up for the challenge of cooking all of the meat (pork tenderloin roasts) for the dinner. She’s estimating 10 large roasts - I told her that might feed everyone if the roasts are huge - you might be able to feed about 12 people from a large tenderloin. Any experienced cooks out there who can verify that quantity of meat will serve 250 people? Will we need more?

The problem is that the dinner is on a Thursday. I can’t take that day off. I proposed pre-cooking the roasts over the prior weekend (it will take the whole weekend) and then freezing them in the interim days before the dinner and then reheating them before slicing for serving. It’s the only way I can do it. She agreed that no matter what, it was probably going to have to be done that way. So it looks like I’ll be cooking a lot of pork tenderloin in a couple of weeks.

The good thing is that I can take advantage of my teleworking on Friday to start cooking then. I figure to get half of them roasted and into the freezer on Friday. Then I finish the other batch on Saturday before we go to church that night and I can take the lot of them to the church with us to put in the freezer there. At that point I have completed my task.

Now I’m working on a plan to cook 10+ pork tenderloins in my regular sized oven when I only have one roasting pan. I may see if I can borrow my mother’s roaster or I may just buy some of those aluminum roasters. And I’m hoping I can fit two roasts into one roasting pan and then two roasting pans into my oven at the same time.

4. Friends: My bridesmaid’s youngest daughter is graduating from high school next week. When I met Scot and Joanie, their baby girl was 9 months old. I remember her as this happy, adorable little girl with white baby chick fuzz on her head that stood straight up. Too cute. She is now a very lovely young lady. I know her parents are proud of her and I am, too.

5. Jesse: He’s teething again. I think he’s got multiple teeth making their way. I don’t know how they endure the pain of it. Poor little guy. Even with that he’s still way too happy. He’s amazing.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

At Epcot, I bought spice packets in Morocco for seasoning meat and chicken for kebabs. I’m excited to experiment with them. The one for meat, I think I’ll try to do with lamb, but I may wuss out and use beef. And then there was a separate packet for chicken that I bought as well. I need to read the packet directions to see what I need to do and also what other odd ingredients we may need that we don’t keep on stock regularly. And I also want to read up on Moroccan food to see what side dishes/bread would be good to serve with them as well.

Also, I wonder how they’d work in the crock pot?

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Dinner with the Sleepys was fun last night. Baby Josh is a sweetie and getting so big. Jesse slept through dinner, which was good. Then he woke up and amused us while he ate his dinner. And then we chilled out while Jesse roamed the living room, had a wonderful dessert of peanut butter brownies and coffee, and enjoyed good conversation.

Our dinner was very good - I think we all agreed that the chicken was delicious. It’s always a gamble to make something new for company, but as I told Beth, sometimes you read a recipe and you just know it’s going to be good. The Chicken with Green Curry Sauce is a winner. Since it is not my own recipe, I’ll let you go to the link to print it out for your own collection. I highly recommend it.

One thing I did that I think made it better than it might have been otherwise - I mixed the coconut milk, chilies, and spices together in the morning and put it in the frig to let the flavors meld before cooking. Also, I didn’t have cilantro on hand, so we didn’t have that garnish, but apart from the visual I don’t think it mattered. I’m not a fan of cilantro anyway. Next time I may use the hot madras curry powder that we have instead of the regular curry powder - or maybe half of each.

I made plain couscous and cooked plain old frozen peas. Beth asked what I did to the peas because she normally doesn’t like peas. I seasoned them when I put them in the pot and just covered them with water. Let the water come to a boil and then turned off the heat to let them finish cooking. I did spritz them with Smart Balance spray before serving. That’s it.

Beau went out to an Indian grocery to buy three kinds of flatbread - Nan, Chapati, and some other kind that I can’t remember the name. I am going to try to make my own next time though, since I found Manjula‘s YouTube tutorials. She’s awesome and makes it look super easy.

So today’s cooking tasks are underway in the crock pot, starting with the pulled chicken. Since I started with an entire bag of frozen chicken breasts, I am positive that it will take the full 8 hours (or more) to get it cooked fully. I’ll get home in time to shred it and then I’ll work on the other dishes for tomorrow’s luncheon.

Monday, May 19, 2008

It’s going to be a crazy week.

Today: Work at home. The Sleepy Family comes to dinner - we will be having this chicken curry dish with couscous and peas. I’m sending Beau out for either naan, puri, or roti to go with it all. sleepybeth is bringing dessert, which I’m sure will be awesome. Somehow manage to finish the laundry. Beau will finish the house cleaning and take care of Jesse.

Tuesday: Work at the office. The evening will be spent cooking for a farewell luncheon in my office on Wednesday. The theme is BBQ, so I’m on the hook for pulled chicken, my regular hash brown potato casserole, and baked beans. All shall be crock potted, which is awesome. I think I’ll actually cook the chicken during the day in the crock pot and then pull it in the evening when I get home. To be reheated the following day in the crock pot.

Wednesday: Farewell luncheon at the office. Jesse’s day at Marmie’s. Small group in the evening - must remember to take the bag of clothes and the house key to NH (she is cat checking while we’re away).

Thursday: Pack. I’m sure that will involve last minute laundry, too.

Friday: Annie to kennel in the early AM. Marmie and Pop will meet us at our house to pack their SUV with some of our gear. We’ll load the stuff to go into the Cootie van into our trunk. Hit the road for South Carolina and the beginning of our Grand Disney Adventure.

I will have my laptop on the trip, so there will be the occasional post while we’re away.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Click the link for the original attempt at making my mother’s no fail mushroom chicken recipe without cream of mushroom soup. It involved making my own version of a creamy mushroom soup that was slightly more labor intensive than I’d like for everyday cooking. It’s why I haven’t replicated it in more than a year despite awesome results.

So imagine my delight at finding a crock pot cream of mushroom soup recipe. Super easy and I don’t have to slave over a hot stove. I made it last week (a half recipe since I only had about a pound of mushroom on hand - they had been sliced and frozen - I put the block of frozen ‘shrooms in the pot at the start) with the following differences:

1. I added splash of Worcestershire sauce. I don’t know why, except that the smell of it demanded the additional ingredient.
2. I used rice milk instead of cow’s milk, natch.
3. I added a flour/water slurry to the soup to thicken it slightly prior to pureeing with my stick blender.

I split the soup into two batches in my vacuum sealed quart bags. One went into the frig, the other went into the freezer.

I finally got around to making the mushroom chicken today. So I took a whole package of mostly thawed chicken thighs (11 thighs), seasoned them all with Poultry Magic, then put them into the pot. A quick snip with scissors opened a corner of the soup bag and I poured that all over the chicken. Set the pot on Low for 8 hours. We’re about 3 hours from done time and it smells delicious.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

1. The Crock Pot Indian Chicken: we both liked it a lot. Instead of the yogurt, I did use coconut milk. I also cooked the rice in half coconut milk, half water. It was delicious. I think that next time I need to use more seasonings to counter the sweetness of the coconut milk since yogurt is not nearly as sweet. More garam masala and I might add some curry powder to it as well. I cooked 8 frozen chicken breasts on low for 5.5 hours and the pot reduced to warm where it sat for another hour since Beau came home later than I expected. It was perfectly cooked.

This is definitely a repeater and Beau suggested we consider it as one of our dinners at Disney. Jaynee, would you eat this? Oh, and Jesse loved the chicken - shoveling in the pieces I gave him as fast as his 8.5 teeth could handle.

2. LOST: Thinkling Bill’s live-blog recap is here. Be warned that it is spoiler heavy since he does live blog while watching the show.

3. The Office: This is one of the most uncomfortable TV shows to watch. Michael is such a loser. Ryan is a loser. I’m glad Jan is gone - she always annoyed me. Toby is sad. Jim is awesome as is Daryl (who is hilarious). Pam in her glasses is my hero.

4. Housecleaning: The plan is to steam clean the basement and Jesse’s room carpets today. We’ll see if that actually happens.

5. The Other Boleyn Girl: Yes, I’m still listening to it. I have 3 discs to go. I think after listening for a whole day last week that I overloaded. And I forgot to take the CDs back out to my car. So I started a new book in the car and TOBG languished in my home office all week. I listened to 2 discs yesterday. I’ll try to listen to more today. But really, I’m pretty much done with it - it’s way too long.

6. I am part of a family of freaks. I say this with total love. Here’s the deal - we have a long history of getting into arguments over where we will eat when we eat out. So the amazing thing is that so far in the Disney vacation planning we have not had any arguments about this. We have reservations for lunch at all of the parks already, except for Epcot - I’m sure we’ll get into it on that day because all of us are interested in eating at different countries. But a new debate was started yesterday.

I had suggested that we celebrate Mother’s Day together on our vacation and we gals have been trying to figure out something we can do together while the men watch the kids for a couple/few hours. One suggestion was a spa day or mani-pedis. Then Mom suggested we do tea at the Grand Floridian and a whole new can of worms was opened. Jaynee isn’t interested in tea at all. Dad is interested in going to tea. I think Denis and Beau are neutral on the idea. So now I think some of us might go to tea (on the same afternoon that CG goes to her Alice in Wonderland tea also at the Grand Floridian), but we still need to come up with a gals outing for the Mother’s Day thing. Cracks me up.

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Tomorrow I’m going to try to make this recipe in the Crock Pot. Beau’s making a grocery run in with other errands, so I asked him to buy the Garam Masala spices and yogurt.

“Who’s yogurt?” he asked.

Oh, yeah. He can’t eat that. Dairy allergies/intolerance are a pain when trying to cook, people! And I’m not using a soy equivalent - I loathe all things soy. Gack.

“Um, I’ll leave that out of your portion,” I told him. So now I have to figure out how to keep his portion warm separately from my portion.

I’ll serve it with basmati rice and some other veg. Peas, maybe.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Three things to marvel over on a lovely Sunday morning.

Homemade rolls for our lunch at Beau’s Sis’s later today.

Rain kissed azaleas.

One cute boy.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Wow, it’s Monday again?

Friday night we decided to go out for dinner. We went to Panera and since it was across from Wal-Mart, we went there, too. There is a reason why we don’t shop together, although we laughed that what we spent probably covers what we would spend independently, too.

Saturday dawned early, as usual. Honestly, I can’t remember what I did on Saturday, although I did finish a special order item for a customer. Beau washed and detailed my car, just in time for yesterday’s torrential rains. But my car is lovely clean inside. The only downer is that he inadvertently hit the eject button of the CD player, so the CD did eject. I have no clue where I was on that CD of the book I’m listening to. And four days later (last time listened to was Thursday PM - next time listened to will be Tuesday AM), I’ll have a hard time finding my place. Oh well.

We went to church Saturday night as usual and my parents good friends S & A from Georgia were in town. I wasn’t sure if they’d arrive in time for church, but they did. And Uncle Bill was there, too! The service was good and then we had dinner at my parents’ home, which was fun.

Sunday dawned super early - 4:45am with Annie barking. Beau got up to try to let me sleep later, but I was fully awake and when he came back at 5:30am I gave up the battle and got up. I turned off the baby monitor so that Beau could sleep even after Jesse woke up. I spent a quiet morning drinking fresh coffee and fast forwarding through Survivor and Battlestar Galactica on the DVR. The rest of our dreary and rainy Sunday was spent lazing about. Jesse woke up at about 7:30am - I dressed and fed him and then we played for a bit before I put him in the playyard. Beau woke up later and took Jesse so that I could catnap. Then I spent the afternoon working on jewelry before we watched I Am Legend. After dinner with watched the final episode of John Adams - such a good miniseries. Really well done.

Today, Annie woke up again at 4:45am. I got up and made a fresh pot of coffee, then went down to laze in the recliner while I woke up more. Then I started to work at about 6:30am. And I goofed off perusing the Disney World website - Moms Forum - to find answers to my questions about taking a toddler under 3 to the parks. Turns out it’s easy-peasy.

Last thing - we all needed a haircut so we decided to all go to Cartoon Cuts since they cater well to kids. Jesse went first and was incredibly traumatized, but the stylist was great to keep going even when Jesse was screaming-crying and wiggling to get away. He’s got a cute haircut (pictures to be taken later - he’s napping) and looks more like a little boy. I went next since he wanted to be held by Daddy as he recovered from the trauma. By the time I was done, he was giggling and happy again, and then Beau got his hair cut. There followed a lunch at Chik-Fil-A and then back home.

And about now I’m so ready for a nap. *yawn*

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Yesterday’s crock pot experiment was a success. Huzzah!

Since I didn’t have time to make mushroom soup for my version of Mom’s No Fail Chicken, I tried the following (with Beau’s help).

Crock Pot Mushroom Chicken

8-10 bone-in chicken thighs
Poultry Magic, to taste
1 package fresh, sliced mushrooms
2 tsp onion powder
2 tsp garlic powder
1-2 tsp dried tarragon
salt and pepper, to taste
1 cup chicken stock

Season all chicken pieces with Poultry Magic and then place the pieces into crock pot. Cover with mushrooms and sprinkle top with onion, garlic, and tarragon. Salt and pepper to taste. Cover all with chicken stock (ours was shattered pieces of frozen stock).

Set crock pot on High for 2 hours, then reduce to Low for another 2 hours or so.

The plan was for Beau to start the pot at about 1:30 or so and have the thing cook entirely on LOW. But he got started late, so he did the mix of settings and we had perfectly cooked chicken. When I got home from work I could smell the warm aroma of the mushrooms. When I took the lid off the pot to inspect, I smelled the sweetness of the tarragon.

What I’ll change:

1. Less stock, especially if the chicken has skin on. Although we have a new batch of stock now, too.

2. I’d really like to sear the chicken before putting it into the crock pot next time. Crisps up the skin and gives it nice color.

3. It tasted really good, but it needed something a bit more. I may switch the tarragon to thyme next time. That might blend with the mushrooms better.

4. Use Lipton onion soup mix next time? We were out, but I think that would have made a nice gravy that we didn’t get since we couldn’t use the cream of mushroom soup.

Overall I was happy with the results and I’ll try it again.

Monday, April 14, 2008

I searched first because I was sure I posted about the crock pot pork chops we tried a few months ago. I found no post. This is a repeat of a successful boneless meat crock pot experiment. I believe searing the chops makes the difference. This is a slightly modified recipe from a book I got for Christmas.

Crock Pot Pork Chops

6-8 boneless pork chops
Meat Magic, to taste
1 Tbsp olive oil

14-16 oz veggie or chicken stock
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Heat a sauté pan to medium high. While the pan is heating, sprinkle one side of each chop with Meat Magic. Pour oil into pan and swirl to coat bottom. Place 3-4 chops into the pan, seasoned side down. Sprinkle the tops with Meat Magic. Sear for 1 minute and then turn the chops over to sear the other side for 1 minute. Place seared chops into crock pot. Repeat with the remaining chops.

In a bowl, combine the stock, mustard, and garlic powder together with a whisk until well blended. Pour over chops in crock pot.

Cover and set crock pot on Low for 5-6 hours.

The cookbook recommends serving mashed potatoes and to make a gravy by adding a slurry to the liquid in the pot after removing the chops. I did this the first time and it was delicious. This time I plan to make Basmati rice and to make the gravy to pour over the rice. I have fresh broccoli as well.

They smell delicious.

I made a new batch of cake mix cookies yesterday. Here’s the recipe:

Vanilla Cake Chocolate Chip Cookies
Yields about 2 dozen cookies

1 box French Vanilla cake mix
1.5 cups quick oats
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup water
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Line baking sheet(s) with parchment paper.

Blend all ingredients together until well mixed. This dough will be slightly sticky. Drop dough by rounded spoonfuls onto parchment paper lined sheets. Spray bottom of glass with cooking spray and press dough balls flat.

Bake for about 12 minutes. Let cook on baking sheet for 1-2 minutes before removing to cooling rack.

Of the chocolate chip cookies I’ve made with cake mixes, these turned out the best. However, Beau was eating one yesterday and said, “I think it needs orange or something.” So next time I try this version, I’ll include a little orange zest, because I think he’s right.

They are nice and moist, probably because of the pudding in the cake mix and I’m guessing the addition of the water, which I have not added before.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

So we had crock pot pot roast on Wednesday. It was very good - Lipton onion soup mix and two small cans of sliced mushrooms with the liquid and the water called for on the soup mix box. And Beau used the probe feature with the new crock pot. The meat was tender and the flavor was delicious.

The roast was 4 lbs, so we had a lot of leftover meat. So yesterday I was trying to figure out a good alternative for the leftovers to change things up a bit and I Googled “leftover pot roast recipes” and got a ton of hits. Two options stood out - beef pot pie or pot roast Shepherd’s pie. Since I didn’t feel like dealing with a crust, I opted for the Shepherd’s pie.

It took time to cube the roast, but it was totally worth it. The meal was hearty and wonderful.

And we have a lot of lovely broth and mushrooms leftover still - I think I’ll cook some chicken in the crock pot on Monday with it. A variation of my mother’s no fail chicken recipe.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Going back to this, which still cracks me up, there’s this:

Created by OnePlusYou

Monday, April 07, 2008

I saw this recipe at A Year of Crockpotting and had to try it. I substituted a couple of things and marked them in italics.

The Ingredients.

--2 largish pieces of salmon
--2 T brown sugar
--1 t paprika
--1 t cumin
--1/2 t crushed garlic (garlic powder)
--1/2 t oregano (Italian seasoning)
--1/2 t kosher salt
--1/2 t red pepper
--aluminum foil

The Directions.

--in a medium-sized dish or small pan ( I used a glass pie plate), combine all of your spices with the brown sugar
--spread out a length of foil on the counter for each piece of fish
--put each piece of fish in the center of it’s own foil
--rub the top of the salmon with your spice and sugar mixture (it’s okay to mound up the spice a bit, and it is fine to only rub the top)

--fold the foil over and crimp up the sides to make a contained packet

--put the foil packets into a dry crockpot

--cover and cook on high for 2-3 hours, or on low for 3-5.

--serve with rice or quinoa and some steamed or roasted vegetables.

I had two thawed pieces of salmon and 2 still frozen pieces. I decided to take the frozen pieces out of the freezer and put them on the bottom of the pot to be eaten tomorrow as leftovers. Tonight we ate the top two pieces - they cooked a wee bit too long, but the flavor was very good. I’ll be interested to see how the other two came out when we open the foil packets (I popped them in the frig untouched).

What I’ll change next time:

1. I’ll kick up the spices a bit more.
2. Less time in the crockpot, unless the frozen pieces turned out better. In that case, I’ll start with frozen salmon fillets.

We had basmati rice and baked beans on the side.