I noted in number 5 of my “21 things about me” that I can only cook with a recipe. In contrast, FirstHusband cooks like a mad scientist – he invents. Sometimes the results are . . . disappointing. Like Fish Grits. (He wouldn’t even eat them.)
Many times, the invention turns out to be very, very good. Sometimes it’s “You should become a chef after your mid-life crisis” good. When that happens, there’s always a plea for him to write down what he did so he might possibly be able to repeat it. A while ago, he created a one pot meal that we all loved and he did write down the ingredients. Unfortunately, is seems an engineer’s handwriting is worse than a doctor’s. Check it out. (Click on the photo to see a larger image.)
Can you guess the ingredients? There are twelve lines here. I’ve figured out all but one, but I don’t want to spoil the game, so I’ll only reveal a couple of the easy ones.
1. white wine/sherry
2. (UPDATE – Correct! 3 chicken breasts, cut up)
3. one box spinach
4. (UPDATE – Correct! 1 can of tomatoes)
5. (UPDATE – Correct! 1 can of chickpeas)
6. THIS IS THE ONE THAT I STILL CAN’T FIGURE OUT! Make a guess or a suggestion!
7. (UPDATE – Correct! 1 can of cream of mushroom soup)
8. (UPDATE – Correct! 1 can of cream of celery soup)
9. boil (UPDATE – I’ve been corrected! It is BASIL.)
10. rosemary garlic (seasoning – we have a big Sam’s Club jar of it.)
11.
12. garlic (we keep a jar of minced garlic in the fridge.)
And this is a game after all, so there needs to be a prize. How about a cookbook? It was Whale of a Sale this past weekend, so I picked up a few gently used cookbooks to choose from. Click on the links to read the Amazon descriptions.
If you play the “missing ingredient” game, specify your book choice in your comment.
Instead of a cookbook, a shrink wrapped hardback copy of the Southern Living Wine Guide and Journal
Enter to win by commenting and guessing a missing ingredient. OR SUGGEST a possible ingredient for #6! Depending on the response, I might fill some in as they are correctly guessed or I might wait a week. Either way, I’ll randomly pick a winner on Tuesday, October 14th, so check back!
Back in April, I posted one of our family’s favorite recipes, “Cream Cheese Chicken..” (The original post has a printable version of the recipe in PDF.)
Yesterday, we made a little change and it turned out pretty good, so I thought I’d share.
First, I doubled the recipe except for the chicken and the cream cheese (I have a large crockpot). But this time, we rolled everything up in flour tortillas and made burritos! Next time I either need to use less salsa or maybe just take the lid off and let the mixture stand a little to thicken up, the burritos were a little too runny. But they were GOOD.
It does take an extra few minutes to roll burritos after everything is cooked, but it’s still only 5 minutes to prepare on the front end!
What is FavoriteSon’s favorite school lunch these days?
Cold pizza.
The “take and bake” Walmart pizzas for $8.00 are an easy way to go on this one. We bake the pizza on Sunday, cut it up into 10 pieces and FavoriteSon packs 2 slices in his lunch every day. Of course, since he’s 13, that’s not ALL he takes for lunch, but it’s a good start.
This week, he talked me into taking him (and his sister) to American Pie for dinner while FirstHusband was on travel, so he’s eating Amercian Pie leftovers for the next few days. That wasn’t $8.00.
Posting this tip was FavoriteSon’s idea. Good job, bud.
Way back in May, in a post entitled “5 minute Panera Wannabe Salad,” I mentioned that I stored veggies pre-prepped and that I would post more on it someday. It is someday.
This idea was an accident. It was January of 2008. Mexican night. The table was covered with lots and lots of small bowls with “fixins” like diced tomatoes, shredded lettuce, chopped onions, diced red bell pepper and of course shredded cheese, salsa, queso and more. At cleanup time, we put everything into individual Rubbermaid containers and piled them in the fridge.
The next night, we had salad with dinner and pulled out all the little containers to add the fixins to our salad. At cleanup time, the lids went back on and everything went back into the fridge. THAT was easy! We liked the convenience so much we decided to add some other pre-prepped veggies into the mix for future salad building. Soon we had individual containers of (raw) broccoli florets, cauliflower florets, red, yellow and green diced bell peppers, scallions, carrots, mushrooms – we went all out.
The problem was that when we tried to get something from the fridge, these little individual containers would fall over and out onto the floor. (Is this the underwear principle at work or what?)
Here were the pros:
We liked that we didn’t have to prep veggies every time we wanted to eat them. Sure veggie prep took longer, but that’s because we were prepping about a week’s worth at a time! Far less than the cumulative time it took before – and we didn’t have to wash the Chop Wizard so often!
We were eating more fresh veggies because it was so flippin EASY.
The individual containers took up less room than un-prepped veggies because we were no longer storing the veggie parts we don’t eat.
Unlike shrink wrapped broccoli or a bag of bell peppers, the containers were STACKABLE.
With small, individual containers, we only grabbed the veggies we wanted. (I had originally considered a multi compartment veggie tray with a lid – but we would have to take the entire thing out even if we only wanted one thing. Besides. They were all round.)
The veggies were staying fresh longer because we were lining and layering the containers with dry paper towels. (Amazing discovery! Works great with mushrooms, lettuce and fresh spinach!)
We were no longer sacrificing still packaged but rotten veggies to the mold gods every week.
No more dry heaves while cleaning out the fridge. (The “what was this?” fridge cleaning game is rarely played in our house anymore.)
Now the cons:
We had to prep veggies. (Unfortunately, since we don’t want to pay for pre-prepped veggies, we weren’t going to get around this one.)
The individual containers were getting knocked over and falling out of the fridge way too easily.
There was a problem with our “system.”
So, as I mentioned, I shopped/researched what container solutions were available. I finally settled on an unused rectangular plastic box I happened to have. It was the perfect height and depth. I packed it with all the individual containers. Again. Perfect. It’s been working for nearly a year. We can either remove one or two containers or we can slide the box all the way out of the fridge like a drawer. The actual veggies and individual containers change all the time, but the are always stored in the veggie box. And yes. Those are actually oblong containers not square or rectangle, but they work in the veggie box, so they may stay.
We’ve also added two large rectangular containers to sit alongside the veggie box. One with a romaine mix and one with fresh spinach. The photos below only show one – we were out of romaine.
UPDATE: (Inspired by Endless Freebies comment below.)
The photos may be misleading. They only show one configuration of the box. We usually use the smallest containers we can and when space is needed for more veggies, we size down as we use the contents. And we have multiple sizes and shapes!
With regard to the box size – that was a process. (Like I said, The Underwear Principle at work!) We tried a smaller veggie box size, but we had a few problems:
1. When the depth of the box didn’t equal the depth of the fridge we had wasted space behind or in front of it. (Wasted space? Not on my watch.) We tried pushing the box to the back and using the extra space in front for other things, but we HATED moving the stuff to get to the box. Storing anything behind the box? We would forget about it and have to play the “What WAS that?” fridge game later.
2. We tried a shorter box and storing it on an adjustable shelf, but we had too many veggies and needed to stack. When we did, stuff fell out because the sides of the box were too short.
3. The day the above photo was taken, the veggie box wasn’t full. We didn’t have any onions or scallions and only one color bell pepper. Sometimes we have shredded carrots, asparagus, avocado, diced or sliced tomatoes, sliced zucchini or squash – LOTS of choices. So while a smaller box would have worked THAT day, it doesn’t work every day.
I eat a fair amount of salad and we use LOTS of spinach, so the big rectangular containers along the side work out the best for us. (We put fresh spinach in LOTS of things – especially omelets!)
I’m charging the camera battery right now, but later I’ll take another photo of TODAY’s configuration as a comparison.
Sometimes my blog stats spike. Usually due to a Mr. Linky post from another site or a kind “shout out” from another blog. But this week just confuses me. Take a look:
My September 8th Google search strings included:
watermelon (31),
square watermelon (8),
square watermelons (5)
resulting in 60 VIEWS of the “my kind of watermelon” post
My September 9th Google search strings included:
watermelon (19),
square watermelon (8),
square watermelons (6)
resulting in 70 VIEWS of the “my kind of watermelon” post
And as of 6:55 p.m. (eastern time) on September 10th stats:
watermelon (26),
square watermelon (10),
square watermelons (2),
square water melon (2),
water melon square (2) AND “καρπούζι τετράγωνο” (1) (which, when Googled – showed THIS page)
resulting in 66 VIEWS of the “my kind of watermelon” post
Look in my sidebar under “Top 10” posts. It’s moved to the top of the list.
I don’t get it. Do I just need to watch the news more? Disney’s Pass the Plate? Listen to NPR? Anyone?
UPDATE: I did figure out that the referring site is Google Images. Search for “watermelon” in Google Images and I’m on the first row. I guess when you’ve got a photo of watermelon showing up on the first page of Google Images, everyone in the world who searches for watermelon could potentially click on the image to see it better. Lucky me.
Before I met FirstHusband, I had never heard of this product. Now, it’s the key ingredient to a standard recipe in our house. And the key component in the phenomenon of the disappearing carrots.
Here’s what we do:
1. Brown a roast (usually a chuck roast), put it in the bottom of the crock pot.
2. Top off the crock pot with peeled and cut potatoes on one side, baby carrots on the other.
3. Add water till it covers the carrots and potatoes.
4. Pour in Kitchen Bouquet until the water is . . . dark brown.
(sorry, I have NO measurement for you.)
5. Turn the crock pot on high for 4 to 5 hours.
6. Scoop out the potatoes into one bowl, the carrots into another and the roast onto a serving platter.
(we like our food separated. if you want vegetable chaos, mix them together, we don’t mind.)
7. Make some gravy with some of the broth. Save the rest of the broth for freezing.
8. Enjoy!
(There are never any leftover carrots. PinkGirl ate them like M&Ms on Monday night and asked for more on Tuesday. Luckily we have the leftover broth – cause THAT’s what makes the carrots so irresistible.)
