What's For Supper?

Soup! Soup is what's for supper tonight, the recipe for which comes our way thanks to my lovely and talented friend Beth, who brought over a big pot of this crazy deliciousness while I was trapped on the couch recovering from a badly sprained knee and fractured ribs.

Her recipe was modified from the original, and my recipe was modified from hers. As longtime readers of this blog know, my cooking tends to be measured via somes-of-this or until-it-looks-rights of that. So, what follows is how I ended up making the soup pictured here.

Ingredients:

2 tubes Jimmy Dean ground sausage
6 cloves fresh garlic, shaved
1/4 cup onion flakes
Pinch red pepper flakes
1 can white beans
1 can mini red beans
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 3oz jar pesto
Fresh baby spinach
Chicken stock paste

In a large soup pot, brown sausage over medium heat. When mostly cooked, add sliced garlic cloves, onion flakes, and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Add the beans - I didn't drain mine, but if you're making this, it's yo thang, do whatcha wanna do.

Next, add as much or as little water to get the amount of soup you want. Add a little chicken stock paste, and adjust to taste. Stir in the pesto and Parmesan; and a few big handfuls of spinach. Simmer until the spinach has wilted.

Serve with a nice crusty bread, and share some with friends. They'll rave about this soup's comforting goodness and go on and on about it on the internets. Feeding the people you love (or even people you mostly just kind of tolerate :) is a good deed indeed.

BBQ Chicken Pizza

See, Renée said that she loves it when I post about cooking, so here I am again. You can blame it on her, okay? Because as long as I know I've got one entertained reader, you won't ever get me to shut up.

Today we are going to be talking about What I Made For Dinner Last Night, or OMG Neither Kid Complained About Supper At All Not Even Once. To wit: BBQ Chicken Pizza. Capital Letters.

BBQ Chicken Pizza is one of my favorite things to eat, but I don't make it very often, and I don't really know why that is. It's not like it's hard, or takes a lot of obscure ostrich egg-type ingredients, because it's actually pretty darn easy. So, onward!

BBQ Chicken Pizza

All photos can be clicked to embiggen

• Pizza dough, well-rested (I buy this pre-made from Publix. Do what you will.)
• Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Barbecue Sauce. This is my favorite.
• 1 bag of shredded Italian style cheese (2 cups)
• 1 Green bell pepper
• 1 Red onion (I only used one half, because I suffer for the happiness of my children.)
• 3 Roma tomatoes
• Pre-cooked refrigerated grilled chicken breast strips, chopped
  
  

Set your oven to stun (or 450) and begin working with your dough. I'm not going to explain how, because I mostly follow His Majesty Alton Brown's instructions, so I'll just let him tell you his own self.

Once you've got the dough prepared and on whatever surface you have selected (I've got a standard half sheet pan in use, but if you've got a pizza stone, knock yourself out), sauce it. Here we're using barbecue sauce instead of the traditional marina-type sauce. Squirt it on. Spread it out.

Now turn your attention to the vegetable matter. What you see below is one entire green bell pepper, one half of a red onion, and yield from three Roma tomatoes, seeded.

While you weren't looking, I chopped up the chicken and sprinkled it evenly over the sauced dough, then topped it with the entire bag of cheese. I love cheese. Sometimes we invite friends over just so we can eat cheese together. True story.

You'll note I put the chicken under the cheese. This is how I've always done it, for no special reason other than I like it that way, and it's my pizza, so that's how I make it. Follow the cheese layer with your vegetables, like so:

Notice anything there? That's right, there's more sauce, this time on top of the vegetables. Again, because that's the way (uh huh, uh huh) I like it. Now your pizza is ready for the oven: 20 minutes at 450, or until the crust is GBD and the sauce and cheese are burbling. I do love a good burble.

See? That wasn't a hardcore cooking experience at all. You could even add all sorts of different topping variations to make this how you might like it. Jalapeños might be good. Maybe some mushrooms, or an olive or three. I'm pretty sure that the original pizza that inspired this recipe (from a delivery joint in Tigard, OR, nigh 20 years ago) included kidney beans. That's a bit cowboy for my taste, but who am I to judge?

French Onion Soup

A few days ago, I tweeted that I felt a batch of French Onion Soup (hereafter referred to as FOS) coming on. And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted it. By the time I left work it was pretty much a foregone conclusion: There! Would! Be! Soup! I only make it two or three times a year, and it's always a big hit in Husbandville when I do. Okay, I like it a lot too, but wouldn't bother making it just for myself.

This is one of the many meals for which I do not follow a specific recipe. When I first started making it I used a recipe that, if I recall correctly, involved a dark beer. It's been over a decade since then; I no longer remember the recipe or where it came from, and I've modified my approach to better suit my own cooking style. This time I kept track of what I did as I cooked, so as to share my "recipe". As with most things I cook, it's a little bit different every time, depending on what I have on hand (cartons of broth versus bullion, for example), but the end result is usually more or less the same.

Before I list out the ingredients, let me give you the following caveat: I made a gigantic batch of soup. The recipe below fed three hungry adults and two children, with enough left over to serve leftover dinner for four the next day (and even lunch the day after that!). What I'm saying is: LOTS of soup. If you're making this for, say, two people, you may want to halve it (and still plan for leftovers).

French Onion Soup

• 10lbs Frenched onions (sweet or white. I personally believe Walla Wallas to be the gold standard, here)
• 1/2 stick butter
• Bread for toasting (I like Food Lion's take'n'bake, but any baguette will do)
• 4 cans Campbell's Beef Consomme
• Beef base (I used Superior Touch Better Than Bullion), bullion, or broth in cans/cartons
• 1T Cornstarch
• White wine (or whatever liquid)
• Kosher salt
• Pepper
• Granulated Garlic (I did not have minced garlic on hand or I would have used it instead)
• Pam spray (butter or olive oil)
• Cheese (I used two bags of shredded Swiss. Gruyere is great on FOS, if you can find it).

First things first: Prep your onions. I cut off the root and stem, slice in half from stem to root, and then peel each half. When they are all cut and peeled, French cut them. Onion prep (the slicing and the caramelizing) is the most time-intensive part of this recipe - it will take a good hour+, but it's pretty fast moving after that. This is what ten pounds of Frenched onions looked like in my big soup pot:


There are many schools of thought on how to caramelize onions. Some people do it in a crock pot, some do it on the stove over super low heat, and so on. I do it on the stove top, over high heat. (Sidebar: This is not for the faint of heart. Searing, burning, and sticking are all real risks of doing it like I do, and if you're new to cooking or unsure of your ability to manage this, use a lower heat and more time until you're more familiar with the high heat method.)

Melt the butter, add all the onions, crank the heat, and stir constantly. Once the onions start to soften, add a big pinch of salt. Continue stirring. Should the bottom of your pot start to get uncomfortably dark and crusty, deglaze with wine (or broth/water/whatever), and continue cooking, but don't let it get so dark that it's close to burning.

What you're looking for here is a rich dark reddish brown color, but you don't want seared crispy edges. The softening and collapsing of the onions takes the bulk of the time, and once the color starts appearing, reduce the heat just a bit (keep stirring!) and watch closely.Burning can happen quickly here if you're not careful.

The darker your caramelizing the better for FOS, really, but I was hungry and thus gave up about here:

See how the volume of onion has reduced? Switch to medium heat; add a pinch of salt, a few grinds of pepper, and a liberal sprinkle of granulated garlic. Ordinarily I would add a couple of tablespoons of minced garlic from a jar, but I had run out. Stir to combine, cook for a minute or two.

Add all the cans of Consomme. At this point I added hot water about to the level the onions were pre-cooking, and two big scoops of beef base (even if I were making half of this recipe, I would still use all four cans - I would just use less broth.) Then, because I like a little bit of body to my soup, I mixed the cornstarch with some wine and added it in, too. When the soup comes to a boil the cornstarch thickens it just a bit.

So let's pause here to taste what we've got. Adjust for any seasoning you think you may need. More beef base? More garlic? Maybe more salt or wine? Add it in now, and taste until you've got what you want. Let the soup simmer over low heat, and while that's happening, turn your attention to the bread. Slice it, lay the slices out on a cookie sheet, spray with Pam. A sprinkle of garlic, salt, and Parmesan won't hurt, but aren't necessary. Stick them under the broiler (watch carefully!), remove, flip, repeat. Like so:


Most FOS soup recipes are going to instruct you to ladle the soup into individual oven-safe bowls at this point. I'm not, and I'll tell you why: Because it is a bitch to deal with. It just is. Moving multiple bowls full of molten liquid on to a cookie sheet, into the oven, out of the oven... I did that all of once, and never will again. The burns did heal nicely, though, thanks for asking. Anyway.

Turn off the burner under your soup, and set an oven rack to a position which will accommodate your pot. Gently drop slices of toasted bread on to the surface of the soup, being careful not to submerge. When the surface is covered with bread, proceed to cover the bread with cheese. No big clumps at a time or you risk it sinking, but the surface of bread can really handle a truly startling amount of cheese, if you add it evenly. Carefully move your pot into the oven, and broil until the cheese is brown and bubbly, and then ladle it into individual serving bowls. Here is the finished product:


Hooray! Soup! This took me 1.5 hours, from start to finish. You guys, it was really good (if I do say so myself).
For leftovers: I refrigerate the soup in this same pot. To serve I return it to the stove to heat through, then repeat the bread/cheese/oven step.

I Was Wrong, or The Handbag Tortilla Test

As you may or may not be aware, I have long-held the opinion that giant purses are a signifier of The Crazy (diaper bags excepted. If you have a child small enough that you need a diaper bag you have my undying sympathy, I will gladly watch your baby if you need a nap, and btw there is a spit-soaked cheerio in your hair).

Which is not to say that carrying a giant purse automatically means that I would judge you as a Crazy Crazerson, but I would indeed assign a little check mark. In my head. Actually it is more that when a giant purse presents alongside certain other things that I will make my McJudgyface. Listen, I've turned 37 since last this blog was updated, and that means I am (a) old and (b) have lived long enough to collect some wisdom. With that wisdom comes the self-righteousness of passing judgement on teenage girls in hot pants with giant purses and roach clip feather earrings. Do your mothers know what you're wearing? I hope you grow out of this.

So anyway, you guys, I was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. I was WROOOOONG.

You see, a few years back I learned to knit, and since then it's become a thing for me, you know? I do it a lot, as anybody who reads this blog or spends any time talking to me at all would know. So I reached a point where my one teeny little do-it-all purse was still enough to be pursey, but it was not pursey enough to accommodate my knitting. This meant I never took my knitting along unless I was going someplace expressly to knit, thus I decided to suck it up and buy a Mary Poppins/kitchen sink/crazyperson purse. That was months ago. I've kept my eye out, but because I am cheap I could not abide spending $30+ on a purse. Most of the purses throughout my life have been $15 or less, because to me they are not accessories. They are just a means of transporting my stuff, I usually only have one at a time (I'll wait while someone gets the smelling salts for Erin :), and I carry it until it breaks.

Okay, so: that's the back story which brings us to last weekend, when I had to take CJ to the maul so that he could hang out with his ladyfriend. (Sidebar: I hate the mall) He ditched me immediately, like you do when you're 13 and someone you recognize might omg see you with your mama in public, and that was when Mer and I visited Claire's. I found an enormous bag of holding which met all of my criteria: huge, cheap, and able to handle my knitting.

I have been using it for 4 days now. In these 4 short days I have grown incredibly attached to this bag, and I'm about to tell you why. Ready? Tortillas. The purse is so large that I didn't even notice I have been carrying a package of tortillas around for three straight days (I'm going to make soft tacos for dinner at some point this week. That sound you hear is Tim cheering).

Click to embiggen and view with notes

So you guys, I'm here to say it. You were right, and I was wrong. Huge purses aren't the human baboon butt of crazy, oh no! In fact they are the peacock feathers of utility and function.

My future criterion for purse selection: Does it pass the tortilla test? Because the tortilla test is the purse test of AWESOME.

Monte! Cristo! Sandwiches!

On birthdays, the person whose birth is being celebrated gets to choose what dinner shall be. It can be anything: Dining out, take out, fast food, or something I cook. This year, CJ chose mom-made Monte Cristo sandwiches.

Stop right there, because I know what you're thinking. Entire sandwiches coated in egg, deep fried in oil, and then served with sugar and a side of jam? Have the crash cart on standby! Jesus take the wheel! Somebody call FLOTUS! But all things in moderation, kids. I make these maybe once every couple of years. There's also this thing about how three years ago, when last I made these, I lifted one out of the pan and hot oil ran down the inside of the tongs into my hand. Hot oil. My hand. That kind of thing will stay with you.

Anyway. I didn't take a lot of photos, but I did snap a couple of progress photos to share the recipe with you. I'm pretty sure I learned how to make these from my mom.

Monte! Cristo! Sandwiches!

• Pepperidge Farm Buttermilk White bread
• Sliced Swiss cheese
• Thin-sliced honey ham
• Thin-sliced turkey (I used to buy Boar's Head expensive deli meats, but you know what? Oscar Mayer works great.)
• Eggs (It always ends up needing more than I thought. I used 10, should have used 12.)
• Oil for frying
• Seedless red raspberry jam
• Powdered sugar
• Toothpicks
• Candy thermometer

Assemble your sandwiches! One slice of bread. One slice of cheese. Five slices of ham. Five slices of turkey. One more slice of cheese. One more slice of bread. What you have now looks a lot like a boring old sandwich! But wait, there's more!

Make two diagonal cuts across the sandwich so that you have four triangles. Now: Three toothpicks per triangle. No more! No less!

Crack your eggs into a bowl, and beat them well. Pour a few inches of oil into your pan (use one with high sides, please), affix your candy thermometer, and set about heating your oil to 360 degrees.

Checklist: Is your oil hot? Is the bowl of beaten egg directly next to it but not on the heat? Is your pile o'sandwiches directly next to the egg? Congratulations! Let's cook our sandwiches!

Add a sandwich to the egg, turn it all around to coat, drip off the excess, and carefully place it in the hot oil. The size of my pot allows me to cook an entire sandwich (four triangles) without letting the oil drop below 350, but ymmv.

Turn them once (I like to use tongs. Yes, still.) and fry until you've achieved allover GBD. Remove to whatever your drying rig may be (I put down a cutting board, cover it with a kitchen towel, and cover the towel with a layer of paper towels. People smarter than me use a rack over newspaper on a sheet pan.) and rest until they are no longer too hot to handle (but not too cold to hold).

Now it's time to serve. Arrange your sandwiches on a plate, and then dust them with powdered sugar. Add a side of raspberry jam (I like to use a monkey dish (as pictured) but I won't tell anyone if you want to just plop some on the plate.

Now, recite the following to each diner as they receive their plate:

There are three toothpicks in every sandwich. Three. No more. No less. Count each toothpick as you remove it, verifying that there are indeed three toothpicks per triangle. Not more. Not less. We will not be going to the emergency room tonight because you have impaled the roof of your mouth on a Toothpick of Carelessness. Understand? Good. Enjoy.

For Harsh Betty

6:40am. CJ is in the kitchen, making himself an omelet. I am in Meredith's room, digging through the six-inch-deep layer of books, clothes, toys, shoes, and who the hell knows what which always covers her floor, attempting to locate something she's lost. Which: I don't even remember what it was, but she was wailing about it.

My right pinkie finger ever-so-gently brushes against a small tackle box. Not even enough of an impact to register as "I've touched something", but enough to knock the tackle box from its precarious position, which happens to be " completely open and balanced atop one shoe and maybe a barbie head". The box is, of course, full of loose beads that scatter absolutely everywhere, far and wide. There are probably some at your house, in California, that's how many of them there are and that's how big of a more-mess they made. OMG.

So, during the course of the room-mess-digging, CJ yells "Mom? Mom? Mom?" from the kitchen. He never comes to locate and then speak to me, no, he just yells my name until he finds me or I appear. I yell back, "JUST A MINUTE!" and finish explaining to Meredith just how much she will be cleaning her room before she is ever allowed to go anywhere ever again.

I exit her room, and join CJ in the kitchen, where I see that he has extracted a single-serving-size package of cheese cubes from its bag and is attempting to mince the cubes with a steak knife so that it will approximate shredded cheese, and then he intends to add it to his omelet.

Let me take a moment to point out that child had to actually move shredded cheese and sliced cheese out of the way to obtain the single-serving-size-snack-pack-bought-for-his-godforsaken-camp-lunches-which-you-may-have-read-about-on-this here-blog cheese. He informs me that had I appeared when he demanded it to be so, he would have been able to ask me about appropriate cheese, but I didn't, so he was forced to use the only cheese he could possibly find: The snack packs.

I refer you to "child had to actually move the shredded cheese and sliced cheese out of the way".

I would like to add: OH NO HE DI'IN. But oh, yes, he did.

The top of my skull removes itself from my head. "THAT IS NOT AN INGREDIENT, THAT IS A SNACK!"* comes flying out of my mouth. CJ looks at me like I've totally gone round the bend - and I make a mental note to tell you about it.

fin.

* "That's not a snack, that's an ingredient" © Harsh Betty

Lunch and Two Snacks?

I need ideas.

One of my children will be attending a fantastic day camp this summer - the director assured me that the children always go home "tired and dirty at the end of each day". Which: PERFECT.

This camp, however, does not feed kids. There is no cafeteria. They require that each camper pack a lunch and two snacks every single day. So, basically, any food that the kids eat has to be prepared and sent from home. For 8 weeks.

Help. Oh, help.

I purchased one of those many-compartmented lunch cooler thing doohickey-mabobbers yesterday, so we have the containment unit handled. I will soon be purchasing some of those cold-brick things to include.

But what to pack? Please (oh please!) share some of your household's lunch-packing standards in the comments. Thank you!

Wheat Meat

Not too long ago, I noticed @carrier talking about something called seitan on The Twitter. Further investigation revealed that she could explain the entire recipe in under three tweets, which to me indicated one thing: Easy - and hey, I like easy! So even though I had no understanding of what the taste/texture should be, I knew I already had all the ingredients on hand, so I might as well try to make some...

And I did! And it didn't seem to be a miserable failure! So then I made some again. And again. And gave some to Tracy. She liked it! That's important, because she's a vegetarian, so it has to be good, right? Anyway, it's become a staple around our house, and folks be wantin' to know how it's made, so here you go.

Seitan

All photos can be clicked to embiggen

• Whole wheat flour
• Water (not pictured)
• Vegetable broth, canned/boxed (not pictured)
• Flavorings: Steak sauce, Soy sauce, various seasonings (in this case: Garlic, pepper, mustard, thyme)

Dump a bunch of flour into a bowl - I use a giant stainless bowl that fits pretty much exactly in one side of my sink. Add enough tepid water to make a kneadable dough:

And then knead. I generally knead for about ten minutes, and I do it right in the same bowl I've been mixing in. If you have a bread machine or a mixer with a dough hook, I'm sure you're already using them by this point, but me? I mix and knead by hand, because I don't have those things. I like it, though - there's something satisfyingly old school about kneading dough by hand. Anyway, after kneading, the dough will look something like this:

Now, fill the bowl with water, because it's time to soak.

...and walk away. Just walk away! The original tweets from Carrie said to soak it for two hours, but I tend to soak it for a minimum of two hours. Which is to say, I just deal with it when I get back around to it. So, go do whatever for awhile. Here are some ideas, from things I've done while seitan soaks: Naps, videogames, showers, rescuing family members from state parks, other naps...

Where was I?

Oh, right. Soaking. So, after you've soaked the dough, it's time to rinse it. You'll find that the dough has relaxed and softened...

...and basically now you're going to squish and squeeze and otherwise manhandle the dough until the water is more or less clear. Fill the bowl with water, manhandle awhile, dump the water out, refill... in other words: Rinse, repeat. What we're doing here is washing away as much starch as possible, to leave behind only the gluten. Wash, wash, wash. This takes long enough that my A.D.D. kicks in and I become convinced that it will never ever be done, so, eh, about fifteen minutes. Here, we're about halfway done with the rinsing. Notice that the mass is reducing in size. It's gonna do that.

By the time I give up and stop rinsing, the mass has reduced by at least half, and what's left is stringy and spongy, and for me evokes-memories-of-brain-dissections-in-high-school, or a bigass lump of chewed gum. I'm pretty sure I've never managed to get it all the way 'clean', but whatever, it's close enough:

Now, the liquid. Again, I don't measure much: I used three cans of generic vegetable stock and the same amount of water. Then I dumped in half a bottle (or so) of steak sauce, a bunch of shots of soy sauce, maybe a tablespoon or so of minced garlic, and ten-ish of shakes of ground mustard, ten-ish shakes of thyme, and about 20 twists of pepper. I know, it's frustrating not to know exactly how much, but it really honestly doesn't matter. The only thing that I find you gotta have is the stock and two sauces - the rest is just whatever seems like it'll work. I bet a couple of bay leaves would be nice, but I don't generally keep them on hand these days. The point is, you want a strongly flavored liquid, because you want to infuse that flavor into the protein. Stir it all together, and bring it to a boil:

Now, squeeze as much water out of your seitan dough as you can. Here is where you have a decision to make. Slice it and throw it in the pot? That's what I do:

...or you can also roll it in cheesecloth and tie it off in a sausage shape before tossing it in the pot (for a more dense and solid texture), or maybe even just drop the entire thing in. Whatever strikes your fancy.

Now, we boil. A low boil, for 30 minutes:

When the timer goes off, fish it out with a slotted spoon. Congratulations, you've made seitan!

I put it all into a container with a tight-fitting lid and put it in the fridge, where I use it over about two weeks. Once it's completely chilled, it can be manipulated in a number of ways: I typically grate it, for a ground beefier texture, then I use it in place of beef in spaghetti sauce, tacos, queso, or wherever else I might use meat. Last night I even sliced it into chunks and tossed it into vegetable soup.

I like not depending so much on meat, all the time, and I like making what essentially amounts to somethin'-outta-nuthin'. I especially like that the kids totally accept it in their normally meaty meals, without complaint.

Wheat meat: Try it!

The Other White Meat

I don't generally dig on swine. Don't look at me like that, all "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BACON PROM, BLAINE?" I don't think I need to tell you I love bacon, because so do you. Bacon tastes gooood.

Bacon is its own food group in my book, so it is exempt from my "Pork? Meh." attitude. Because: Pork? Meh. I think pork loins are far too expensive for what they are, the texture of ham oogs me out like you wouldn't believe, and often I just find the whole pork experience a little... gamey.

What I was really aiming for, anyway, was a cranberry delivery device. Cranberry and turkey together are done to death over the winter holidays, and early April is just too soon thereafter, as far as I'm concerned. But I really wanted cranberry, and it seemed like pork would bear the cranberry tang well, so:

Pork Chops with Red Wine Cranberry Sauce*

Click to embiggen

• 4 boneless pork chops
• 1 small onion (to be minced)
• 1 can whole berry cranberry sauce
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 2/3 cup red wine (shiraz, in this case)
• 3 T olive oil, divided
• 2 T buttah, divided
• granulated garlic
• salt and pepper
• asparagus

Yeah, that's refrigerated mashed potato in the background. Don't judge.

Asparagus Directions

Preheat oven to 400. Wash, trim, and dry the asparagus, then lay it out flat on a baking sheet. Drizzle it with about a tablespoon of olive oil, roll it around to coat, then season with salt, pepper, and a little granulated garlic. Stick it in the oven for 10 minutes, or however long it takes to roast to how you like it. I like mine to be pretty crunchy.

Click to embiggen

Red Wine Cranberry Sauce Directions

Dice, mince, or otherwise disassemble the onion into small pieces. Heat 1 tablespoon butter with 1 tablespoon oil, and then cook your onions until they are soft, translucent, and smelly in a good way rather than smelly in the offend-your-eyes way. Add the wine, broth, cranberry, a pinch of salt, and a few grinds of pepper. Boil this until it reduces to the consistency you like. Some rosemary might be nice, here, but I didn't have any, so whatever.

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Pork Directions

Heat 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon oil in a large nonstick pan. Salt and pepper your chops, then arrange them in the pan so they are all lying flat. Honestly, would you just leave them alone? You don't need to wiggle them around all the time, press down on them, or poke/prod/flip and re-flip. Just let them be while they form a nice caramelized crust for about 5 minutes or so, and then flip them over for another 5 (I like to see 145 degrees on the instant thermometer in the thickest part of the chop). Take the chops out of the pan to rest for a good ten minutes. Be patient. No cutting until the chops have rested!

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While the chops were resting, I microwaved the potatoes. Because really, if I can avoid peeling, boiling, and mashing potatoes? You bet your sweet potatoes I will.

Here's the final product, on the plate:

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CJ refused the sauce, but did "gag down" four whole pieces of asparagus (due in large part to me telling him it would make his pee smell funny (he is a 12 year old boy, after all) and by reminding him that I still hadn't made up my mind about whether or not I would let him go to a pool party at a girl's house. And since we're now on the topic of my 12 year old son being invited to a pool party at a girl's house, can I just say: oh! em! eff! gee!).
*It is my sincere hope that any mention of "cranberry sauce" will evoke memories of the childhood "cranberry sauce song" earworm for my paternal cousins. More cranberry saaaaaaaaaaaaauce!

Alton Smoothies (Not Smoothies Made of Alton)

I haven't seen Alton Brown's "Live and Let Diet" episode yet, but everywhere I look people are talking about his Buff Smoothie. I've been pondering my own struggles with breakfast and vegetation lately, and while there are many things with which I struggle, today I address just those two:

Breakfast and vegetation. I don't like 'em.

Which is to say: I need to be awake for at least an hour before food sounds even remotely appealing (all I want to do is drink coffee for two hours, and then go to work), and if it grows out of the ground I don't really want to eat it. There are a variety of problems caused by these dislikes; one of which is evident to everyone around me if I don't eat for awhile: I become what one might call... "difficult". Yeah, we'll go with "difficult".

So recently when Jim mentioned buying a huge bag of frozen fruit and Ferrett leapt on the Buff Smoothie Wagon, I was reminded that I've been meaning to try smoothie-making. I've been using AB's recipe as a guideline, but I add in whatever I have on hand... What follows is the story of smoothie today, which is different than what will be smoothie tomorrow.

Click to embiggen

Here we have some vanilla protein powder (there was one scoop left, 23g protein), vanilla soy milk (I'm going to try a nut milk next, I can probably find almond at Publix), V8 V-Fusion, frozen fruit, and just look at this awesome banana. I've done wrong here, for the sake of the photo: Usually the liquid goes in before the frozen fruit. Yeah, I do have a little guilt.

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I'm pretty sure there's some pineapple hiding in there, under the peaches, strawberries, and blueberries. Maybe some mango? I don't know: I started with a bag of frozen Dole mixed fruits, and I've added to it, so I'm not sure what's actually there, or not. One thing I am sure of, though, my god y'all the drama when I tried adding blackberries. Never again!

Click to embiggen

There's 1 cup of each soymilk and juice. And then the frozen fruit, and protein powder. Banana lies in wait until the rest is mostly blended before getting dropped in. I follow AB's instructions, blending on a lower speed until the vortex appears, and then really sticking the power to it thereafter.

And then? Smoothies!

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There's a Tim serving, a me serving, and a Mer serving. CJ actually laughed in my face at the idea that he will ever "in a million years" drink a fruit smoothie of any sort. Oh yeah? Game on, little man!

Gentleman Vegetables*

"Give me cauliflower, or give me death!", I bellowed at Tim as he got into the car. Okay, so that's a lie, but I did tell him I was going to die if I didn't get some carrots and cauliflower. This prompted a brief "What? Since when doesn't Tim like cauliflower?" conversation (apparently it doesn't count as "liking cauliflower" fingerquote fingerquote if it's also "covered with cheese" fingerquote fingerquote), and we aimed our car for our friendly neighborhood Food Lion. We performed a synchronized couples shop with Tracy and Aaron (he gave me a parking ticket! Not my spatula! Exclamation point! Bang!) and then: Vegetables! Were! Purchased!

Roasted Vegetables

• Vegetables (On this day: 3 sweet potatoes, 1 head of cauliflower, 1 pint of button mushrooms and 1 lb baby carrots)
• Lube (olive oil works, but so does sesame oil, or whatever oil, or Pam spray)
• McCormick Slow Cookers Savory Pot Roast Seasoning

Directions

Preheat oven to 425.

While that's happening, clean and dry your vegetables, cut up whatever needs cutting (sweet potatoes, I'm looking at you) so that everything is more or less the same size, then apportion across as many sheet pans as necessary to achieve one single layer. For this batch, it was two half sheet pans, but do what you gotta do. Apply the lubricant of your choice; I sprayed them with Pam. Sidebar: If you're using mushrooms, don't put them in now. Set them aside for a bit.

Next, and this is honestly the very super most important part: Sprinkle on the seasoning (save a little bit for mushrooms later). Sure, it's made to go in a slow cooker, but so what? Now, I don't know about you, but I know about me, sort of, and I know about the people to whom I've served these vegetables. Even heathens who "hate vegetables" like these, and it's because of the seasoning. It's magical. I'm not going to come right out and say that it's made of baby giggles and unicorn love and rainbows, but... pretty close. (When you add this to your vegetables, they come out tasting like roaring fires and grandma's house and the Snuggie-dreams of generations past.) Post-sprinkle, agitate. Your lubricated and sprinkled vegetables should look similar to this:

Click to embiggen

Put them in the oven, and ignore them for awhile. 20 minutes, maybe. Then, add your mushrooms (sprinkle them!), and put them back in for another ten minutes or so. Because I like "caramelization", I use the broiler, too. I'm not ashamed. When the vegetables are the color and texture you prefer, take them out. For me, they look like this:

Click to embiggen

I put these in a big sealed container, and stuck them in the icebox last night. This morning I nearly plotzed when CJ, who "hates vegetables", loaded up a monkey dish and chowed down. That's right, people. They're that good.

*I will never again be able to use the word "vegetables" without hearing James May say "gentleman vegetables" in my head.

Julie's Supper Club: Reuben Sandwiches

I make Reuben sandwiches my way. I'm the Frank Sinatra of mother effing Reuben sandwiches, man.

Which isn't to say that I make Reuben sandwiches the wrong way: Of this I am unsure, for I have never thought to visit the Google or the Wikipedia or any of the myriad recipe sites to find out just how, exactly, one should make a Reuben. I just... make them. I make them the only way I know how... and that's just a little bit more than the law will allow.

Reuben Sandwiches

• Pam spray - Butter
• Hillshire Farm Deli Select Ultra Thin Pastrami
• Sliced swiss cheese
• Kraft Free Thousand Island dressing
• Sauerkraut, drained
• Pepperidge Farm seedless rye bread

Directions

I use a griddle, these days, and I preheat it to 350 or so. While it's heating, I open the bread and lay out as many slices as I plan to make sandwiches. Then I spray them all liberally with Pam, and flip them over (spray-side down!) to begin the actual sandwich-building.

Plurp on some thouisle dressing, and spread it out, or not. Add, oh, five-ish slices of the pastrami, and then atop that add a layer of kraut. Next comes the slice'o'swiss, at which point in your sandwich building things will be looking as such:

Click to embiggen

Put an un-sprayed slice of bread on top of this, so that you have a very nearly complete sandwich. At this point, pick up each sandwich (still with the spray-side down!) and move them to the griddle. Good. Got 'em all on? Now spray the slices of bread that are on top. Cook until the cheese is melty and the bread is GBD... and then flip. I had to use an offset metal spatula (! on my nonstick griddle! OH EM GEE!) in the instance below; my silicone spatula is still in Aaron's car, since we used it as a snow-scraper on my birthday. What?

I digress. Here's what the sandwiches look like, post-flip:

Click to embiggen

Julie's Supper Club: Frozen Pizza

Oy, you guys. Today is One Of Those Days. One of those days when I need to be in precisely sixteen places at the very same moment, which is not this moment but is a moment that looms ever closer, and I am already tired about it in like sixteen different ways.

So:

The freezer pizza picturated above is California Kitchen's Crispy Thin Crust White,
and it is my very super favorite.

Tonight, that means Tim is making (what we call) freezer pizza. And then (hopefully) when the rest of us walk in the door after CJ's track meet, said pizza will be ready and waiting for us, and I can just Not Worry About It. Because that's what I want more than anything in the world right at this moment.

Julie's Supper Club: Sgt. Grumbles Makes Chicken Pasta

Wow, ask me what's for dinner and I can post forever. While I'm at it, here's a picture of my kitchen (taken a couple of years ago) for no real reason at all other than, hey, I cook there!

So, anyway, what's for dinner? You've probably already sussed out that I'm In Charge of Dinner. It's for the best, and if you ask me, I'll tell you I like cooking... but I don't like being the one who HAS to cook. If you ask me what's for dinner, suddenly there's a shift from me wanting to cook to me having to cook... like it's expected of me. Which: Of course it is, but I hate to admit it and I go all Sgt. Grumbles about it. What is up with that, anyway? I'm so weird.

Sidebar: Almost every day, on the drive home from work, Tim will lovingly look deep into my cheekbone (because I'm watching the road, right?) and sweetly ask me the following question...

"What would you like to do for dinner?"

This makes me irrationally angry (and yes, I do know it is irrational, see how I used "irrationally"?) because it's not about what I want to do for dinner, it's never about what I want to do for dinner! After doing stuff for everybody else since the minute I get up, and working all day, and picking everybody up and driving everybody home, what I want to do for dinner is exercise my takeout-ordering dialing finger, or have somebody else cook, or just generally have dinner magically appear (and have a clean kitchen at the end of it, thanks). The real question, I posit, is "What are you, my wife, the same person who cooks dinner almost every night, going to be cooking for dinner on this night? BTW did I mention I'm hungry?" but Tim swears that he asks me what I want to do for dinner because he's being considerate... and because sometimes I tell him to microwave queso. Which: true. (And he's very sweet, and I can be... cranky. Ish. SHUT UP.)

Anyway.

Tonight, I'm going to make what I call Chicken Pasta. Generic, no? But my family knows what it means when I say that, so that's what I call it. Again, this is not a test of precise measuring and if you ask me how much of what goes in I'm likely to tell you "a bunch", or "some", or "whatever looks right". Typically, I make enough food to feed an army/pack for lunch the next day.

Chicken Pasta

• Pasta (I like this Penne Rigate), and I use the whole 13.5oz box
• Chicken (use whatever you want, but know this: Popcorn chicken is the best.)
• 2 cans Del Monte Petite Cut Diced Tomatoes with garlic and olive oil (you can use spaghetti sauce, or whatever - you'll see what I do with these below)
• Mozzarella cheese

Directions

While the pasta is cooking according to package directions, cook the chicken (as much as you need to feed your number of people) in a large pan or pot sprayed with nonstick stuff. Cook until it's hot (for frozen pre-cooked popcorn, this is generally until it is heated through). After it's hot, reduce the heat, and add tomatoes.

Now, what I do with the tomatoes depends on my mood. Sometimes I just dump both cans into the chicken, sometimes I dump one can in as-is and puree the other. Up to you. Once the tomato is in and hot, drain the pasta and mix it in.

Click to embiggen

Cut your mozz into 1/4 inch cubes, sprinkle it over the top of the chicken/sauce/pasta, and cover the whole thing for a couple minutes until the cheese is soft. Don't stir too much or you'll make a big cheeseball mess.

I like to have a salad with this - my current favorite is Fresh Express Sweet Butter Lettuce salad in the bag, and now I wish I'd never, ever, Googled bagged salad. I can't un-know those things, Internet Nation! Why do you ruin everything I love? WHY?

Julie's Supper Club: Tortilla Soup

"What's for dinner?", asks my aunt Julie on her new blog: Julie's Supper Club. That's her on the right, with my uncle Larry sporting the tres-cool double thumbs up, in an image I totally lifted from her aforementioned blog. You've met her before, when I talked about her Cabbage Salad back in January.

So, WFD? Today, it's leftover soup. This recipe isn't precisely in-line with my aunt's search for dinners that don't take forever to make after work, because it does take... awhile. That's why I made it yesterday (on a Sunday) when I had the time, and serving it for dinner tonight will be as easy as punching buttons on the microwave.

I'll give you the "recipe", but be advised that I'm not much of a recipe-follower when it comes to meal cooking (baking is an entirely different story. Baking is chemistry. Cooking is chemistry of the heart. Or soul. Or something that comes from a love-place that doesn't require precise measurements. Work with me, people!). The recipe is easily scalable and will accommodate however much of whatever you want to put in; what follows is how I made it yesterday:

Tortilla Soup

• Chicken (I used 4 boneless/skinless breasts plus some leftover thighs I had in the freezer)
• Prepared chicken broth (I used one 49oz can of Swanson's; you'll want enough to cover the chicken.)
• 2 cans Ro*tel Lime & Cilantro (use whichever flavor/heat you prefer. We're wimpy.)
• 1 can black beans
• 1 can red kidney beans
• 2 cans hominy
• 2 cans (or use frozen) sweet whole kernel corn
• 1 bag bite size corn chips (I like Tostitos white corn)
• 1 bag shredded cheese (I prefer jack, but the non-seasoned 'mexi-' blends work fine.)
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro
• Fresh limes

Directions

Put chicken into a stock pot, and add enough broth to cover. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer until the chicken is cooked through, at which point you'll remove it and set it aside until it is cool enough to handle. While the chicken cools, skim the broth.

Sidebar: At this point I sometimes throw everything into the icebox. This makes removing the fat and ick from the broth a whole lot easier, so long as you've used boneless meat. If you use bone-in meat you're likely to get a gelatin out of chilling it). Isn't it so quaint how I said "icebox" right then? Onward:

Add both cans of Ro*tel (do not drain).

Drain, rinse, and add all remaining canned items (black beans, kidney beans, hominy, corn). You don't need to do this, but it's how I do it. I've made it without draining the hominy and corn, and it turns out just fine, but I will always (always) rinse the beans. Bring this all back up to a gentle boil... not much more than a simmer, really. You don't want it at a rolling boil.

Next, turn your attention to the chicken. Some people don't mind (even like, I guess) bits of skin and fat and gristly gack in their soup. We are not these people. Thus, I very carefully go through all of the chicken by hand, cleaning and tearing bite size bits of meat (and only meat) to toss back into the pot.

Once you've got the chicken appropriately cleaned and sized bite-ably, return it to the pot and simmer for, you know, awhile.

Chop up the cilantro, and cut limes in half.

To serve:

Put a handful of chips into a soup bowl; top with shredded cheese and chopped cilantro. Ladle hot soup in gently, and top with a few squeezes of lime. Enjoy!

Aunt Julie's Cabbage Salad

In honor of my mother's sister, my Adorable Aunt Julie (who I also call Auntie Ted, but never Auntie Julie or Aunt Ted - always Aunt Julie and Auntie Ted), I offer you one of my favorite recipes: Cabbage Salad. I made this last night to send with Tim for his office potluck today; he ended up with five requests for the recipe.

Since I typed it up to send him, I figured: Why not post it, too? Oh, and if you look over there, at the photo: That's Adorable Aunt Julie the tiny pixie, and my bigass pumpkin head.

What follows is the original recipe that Adorable Aunt Julie gave me a decade ago, with my modifications/notes in parentheses (which is to say that's how I do it, when I make it):

Aunt Julie's Cabbage Salad

1 head cabbage, chopped (2 bags pre-sliced/bagged 'slaw' without carrots.)

4-5 green onions, chopped (Just buy and chop one whole bunch, green part only)

3oz sesame seeds (I just use one of those little 1oz McCormick containers sold near/with the spices.)

1/2c sliced almonds (Or whatever quantity you prefer. I like a lot of almonds.)

2 packages uncooked ramen noodles (Break up before opening the package. Either throw out the seasoning packets, or amass a stockpile you'll never ever use.)

Dressing

1/2c sesame oil

1/2c vegetable oil (I omit.)

6T rice vinegar (or more, to taste; I like 8.)

4T sugar

1t salt

1t pepper

Brown sesame seeds and almonds, using your favorite method (stovetop, oven, microwave), but do it separately as they brown at very different speeds. I'm partial to the microwave, although they go from 'raw' to 'Aiie! Fire! Fire!' super fast - after the first 3 minutes or so (almonds), stir every 30 seconds.

In a large bowl, whisk together all the dressing ingredients. Throw in the rest of the ingredients, toss. I think it's better the second day, but good luck waiting. :)

Weekend Cookery

As I mentioned on Twitter (and thus Facebook), I often spend a fair amount of time cooking on the weekends.

I do this because a) that's when I have the time, and b) it helps keep the weekday bitching-at-mom to a minimum. Don't get me wrong, the kids are still going to bitch, because that's what they do, but yeah - a minimum.

There are three things I typically make during weekend cookery: Waffles, muffins, and wraps. I don't really use "recipes" - mostly I just throw things together and hope for the best - but I'm going to do my best to explain these concoctions in "recipe form" for you now. Ready?

Waffles

Bisquick "Heart Smart" low-fat baking mix

Nonfat or 1% milk

Eggs

Protein powder (23g per scoop, please, and vanilla whey is great)

Nonstick spray

Waffle iron (I got mine for $3 at the Goodwill)

Here's where I'm going to upset the But How Much of What People: I don't know how much of what. Sorry. I dump a bunch of Bisquick into a bowl (3/4 of the box, or maybe more), add six or seven scoops of protein powder, two or three eggs, and then enough milk to make it into an acceptable batter. Use the waffle iron and nonstick spray as directed.

Once I've turned all the batter into waffles, I bag them two-by-two in ziptop bags and stash them in the freezer. They can be toasted or microwaved, and best of all: The people I live with can accomplish the toasting or microwaving themselves! Okay, the real best part is that the kids are all do ya like waffles yeah we like waffles! Because waffles are exciting! And full of carbs! Which seems to be the criteria by which all foods are judged if your name happens to rhyme with Schmee Shay - when really they SEEM like carb-bombs but they're high protein and served with sugar-free Maple Syrup Flavor Product. Because that's how I roll.

Muffins

1 box Pillsbury "Moist Supreme" Reduced Sugar cake mix (Devil's food)

1 15oz can Libby's pumpkin (not pie mix)

Nonstick spray

Muffin tin

That right there is the basic recipe. Actually, the Real Basic Recipe uses regular cake mix, but I prefer the low-sugar, so there. So yeah. Mix those two ingredients together, fill muffin tins 3/4 full, bake for 20 minutes at 350. I modify that recipe as follows:

2 boxen above noted cake mix

1 large or 2 15oz can(s) of Libby's pumpkin

1/2 cup sifted dark cocoa powder (unsweetened)

Protein powder (23g per scoop, this time I use chocolate flavor)

1/2 c mini chocolate chips

2/3c hot water

I mix the pumpkin, water, and the dry ingredients, then fold in the mini chocolate chips. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes - this makes 22-24 hefty muffins, which should be cooled completely before storage (sidebar: I have this green-handled ice cream scoop I got from Sam's Club which is the PERFECT muffin batter scoop. I have no idea what the ounce measurement is.) Look! Again with the high protein, and this time vitamin A, too! The kids are all "ooh ooh can we have a MUFFIN?!" and I'm like "oh... okay... I guess..." and then I do a little mom-touchdown victory dance when they're not looking.

Both of the recipes above are very forgiving and modify well with all kinds of substitutions. I've added ground flax meal, soy flour, Egg Beaters, and various other things with no real change in quality.

Meredith's Must-have Wrap

1 La Banderita Fat Free Tortilla

1 T Philadelphia Garden Vegetable Cream Cheese

1 T Hormel "Real Crumbled Bacon"

Diced tomato

Fresh spinach

Spread the cream cheese on the tortilla. Sprinkle with the "bacon". Add tomato and spinach to your liking, roll it up, slice it in half, wrap it in foil/plastic wrap. I make these on Sundays and they last the work/school week.

So, there you have it. This week's weekend bulk cookery. Enjoy!