where does he get this?

The younger of the little demons, er, angels, loves spicy food. Where did that come from. DH & I are not spicy food eaters. I like flavorful stuff but heat turns me off. I am a bland eater. I'm not fond of mexican due to the peppers & I like mild forms of Indian & Thai food. I love the flavors in Japanese food & non-hot Chinese food. I like unusual spices but not heat. DH like thigs a bit hoter than me but even then he is an American Hot sort of eater (as opposed to Mexican Hot or Thai Hot, the grades that appear in several of our local ethnic restuarants). DS2 however likes it HOT. He likes spicy curry. He'll eat Wasabi ranch dip with a fork. He loves spicy taco meat. I am a bland cook & I have joked that I need to just start shaking Tabasco sauce on his food to get him to eat it. Turns out it really isn't a joke. I bought chicken taquitos because the store was out of the usual beef & cheese ones. The chicken ones are bland, even to me (and that is sayin something). DS2 loves taquitos but he doesn't like the chicken ones because thy are bland. The beef ones don't really qualify as spicy but they do at least have a nice flavor. He's only 2 and a half & doens't understand that we don't have the taquitos he wants. He sees the box and wants taquitos. Explaining they are the chicken ones he won't eat makes no difference. All he knows is that I am denying him the taquitos of his dreams. So today I went through my spice rack, looking for something to dress up the taquitos. I'd though I had some red pepper (though why I though I would have that is a mystery). What I found was curry powder (and why I have that is a bigger mystery). I made the taquitos and then sprinkled a bit of curry powder on them. They smelled good. DS2 ate them up with speed and requested more. I made another batch, including some for myself. They were delicious. DS1 was not as approving, but he is a bland eater too. He did eat them eventually.

My quest for this evening is to go through my recipie cards and find the reason I bought the curry powder so I can make it for dinner tomorrow. I'm assuming it was a Rachel Ray meal, the only other cookbook I have been using in the past few months is Giada DiLorentis & curry doens't feature much in Italian food.

Bread, lots of bread

I've been baking. Oh my have I been baking! I bake a loaf of 'sandwich' bread every week, plus I've been experimenting with random specialty loaves once a week as well. Just the past 3 days alone I have made sandwich bread, naan and a most excellent wheaty cheddar bread. I've made more bread this month with no bread machine than I made in half of 2006 with a bread machine. The Kitchen Aid mixer has been getting quite a work out between my bread explorations and DH's weekly cookie bake. We've decided it is time for an upgrade. We have the Heavy Duty version, which actually has the lowest RPMs of any of the mixers and the smallest bowl. It was a gift about 7 years ago. We're going for the 6qt professional model. Just as soon as I come across a factory refurb of an appropriate color. They are $150 less on average, but mostly of that stainless steel or gunmetal gray sort of finish which would look damn odd in my medium wood, slate and cheap white applianced kitchen. Our current one is black, which is ok, I don't want a white one. I'm hoping to find a green one but black will do.

What are your cooking skills? How have they improved/changed??

I'm a pretty good cook & for the most part I enjoy it. It can be frustrating from time to time due to my diners. Little boys are not in general the most appreciative of audiences unless I am heating up Tyson chicken patties.

I've always enjoyed cooking and been fairly good at it when I wanted to be. What I have been working on the since the boys were born was planning. Before them I would call DH at 10am and say "What do you want for dinner?" and search up recipes on the web & buy the stuff I needed on the way home from work. And if I didn't feel like cooking it was no big deal because the other person in my house was a grown adult who could find himself something to eat on his own (and was a short order cook in college). Now I have other people to feed & dinner by Tyson every night is just not my style. I end up feeling bad for eating all the processed foods. Don't get me wrong, I *like* processed foods, especially breakfast cereal, but apart from that I think it should be kept to a minimum. But lack of sleep & 2 babies pushed me into lots of boxes of meals for a couple years & I lost interest in food really. I have been slowly getting back to where I was, which makes me feel more like me again. But I have had to get a handle on planning. I make long range goals. My goal in 2004 was just to make 4 meals a week. From scratch mostly, no Hamburger Helper (HH was for the other 3 nights). I also got my recipe collection organized & went through my several dozen cookbooks and did up cards on any recipe I found interesting. For 2005 it was 5 meals a week with one new or rarely made recipe a week. Plus start keeping a log of how they turned out and changes I made. My 2006 goal was planning for 2 weeks of dinners, using the leftovers from a couple of meals creatively in other meals in the period. And baking at least a couple loaves of bread a month. My 2007 goals were to get a handle on side dishes (insread of just nuking whatever frozen veggie I have on hand or making a spinach salad. I don't like veggies but I can't let the boys know that so I need to make interesting veggie dishes to interest all of us) and to prep ahead, like when I make crock pot beef stew - prep 2 or 3 times as many veggies and freeze them so next time all I have to do is open a bag. And since my bread machine finally died on me in February while kneading a loaf of Pepperoni Pecarino Bread, I am making bread without it. The variety and scope of my bread making has expanded greatly since the machine died & in the end I think I am probably not going to replace it.

Apart from bread I don't bake. Baking requires an attention to detail I don't have. DH bakes. He has spent the past year perfecting his chocolate chip cookies. Now he is branching out into mousse! :)

Back to Blogging

It's August, the last VBS is over & school starts in 2 weeks, so it is time to get back to the routine.  That means trying to blog regularly again.

It's Lammas today, the festival of the first wheat harvest of the year, the loaf-mass.  Given that i am so fond of baking bread, I naturally planned to make a loaf for the occasion & had considered a few of my favorites.  By morning I had decided that family dynamics required pizza for dinner so I would make pizza dough.  Well, the morning went by.  I took DS1 to VBS, did laundry, I did some homework, I read to DS2, & then it was time to pick DS1 up and no dough had been started.  I knew I wouldn't get home in time to start some for dinner so I decided to buy some, even if it meant going into the crappy Food Lion (I like most Food Lions, it's just this one that sucks).  As usual the Food Lion lived up to my expectations - no frozen dough, no premade crusts, not even Chef Boyardee Pizza in a box. I ended up buying crescent rolls, generic ones because they were out of Pillsbury, and using them.  I should have just made a biscuit crust but that didn't occur to me until after dinner.  So for Lammas we had 'bread' about as far removed from fresh ground wheat as you can possibly get.  My sabbat intentions always fall through.  However, last Sunday I prepared a feast for a dozen people that included hot flat bread grilled by me on open fire (ok it was a gas grill, but there was actual fire & I have the scorched arm hair to prove it).  everyone said the meal was delicious & satisfying & this sunday I am making cheese bread for our coven's Lammas feast.  I think that covers me.  I may not have celebrated on the exact day, but I did and will be celebrating anyway.

it's not that I didn't have a plan

for the month of Feb. I did. I had put together 2 menus of 10 meals each as usual. But stomach illnesses and new flooring & DH's long work nights meant that only 13 of 20 meals actually got made.

Last week I wrecked my car. I failed to miss a chunk of tree limb in the middle of the road and did, according to my mechanic, "Significant damage" to my car. So far it looks like I owe my $500 deductible and $14 a day insurance on my rental car. The rest of the repairs and the cost of the rental are covered by my insurance. Unless it turns out that my transmission is significantly damaged. They they may call my car totalled. Add to that what will not doubt be an exorbitant electric bill because the heat ran almost non-stop through all of Feb adnthe fact that we just paid for flooring to be installed and there is no money to eat out and the grocery bill will have to be very small for the next couple of months. Planning & sticking to a menu to necessary. But planning more than 8-10 meals at a time is a bit too much for me (unless I am planning to double the amount & freeze half) so I am just doing a week at a time for now.

This week (probably in this order):
Indian Inspired Chicken with curried broccoli
Butoni tortellini & salad
Meatloaf with hidden veggies & corn
Veggie soup & grilled cheese
Broiled whitefish & veggie TBB
pizza - toppings TBD
Pork loin (to become BBQ sandwiches next week)

Target just opened recently & I've been trying out their Archer Farms snacks. We love the spinach & artichoke tortilla chips so I think I will make some sort of loaded nacho dish & serve with spinach salad. I suspect black bean soup is in my near future as well. It's been on my mind a lot. I may make it instead of the veggie soup. It might be good with the chips too. And maybe I'll make that Coq au vin from Cooks Illustrated again next week as well. Next Wednesday is Ostara so we'll have an omlette or frittata that night, maybe a quiche. Maybe some chicken & sweet potato salad on night as well. And i'll see what beef product is on sale next week for the last meal, or maybe we can grill some of those rib eyes we have if it is nice enough. Some beets with them perhaps, or turnips.

Current Menu options

Pork Schnitzel with baked zucchini
Stuffed turkey breast (Assuming I can find one not already marinated & beaten flat) and broccoli
Rosemary Beef Roast & mashed veg (crock pot)
Braciole and polenta
Pork filled Acorn Squash *new
Monte Cristo & salad
Pizza (TBD by leftovers)
Roasted chicken & vegetables
Swiss Chicken (crock pot) and glazed carrots & parsnips
Soup (TBD by leftovers) & salad.

I was going to do the schnizel last night but had a bad case of the chills & went to bed with a mug of chicken broth as soon as DH came home. He & the boys ate many Tyson Chicken Patties & leftover meatloaf.

Me & a pan of hot oil.

It's never been a good idea, but it is slowly becoming more common as I expand my repetoir. Generally speaking, in this house, if the recipe calls for more than a tablespoon or so of oil in the pan, the recipe does not get made. This is not for reasons of health but for reasons of fear - fear of burns, fear of fire, fear of smoke alarms, fear of the greasy spattered mess to clean. But today I once again ventured into the fry arena. This time it was Rachel Ray's chicken tenders. i won, but it was a struggle. The problem again was equipment. To bread the chicken you need a plate of flour, a plate with eggs and a plate of breadcrumbs. 3 plates. and since the breading takes a bit of time for me I need a cooling rack to let them rest while I get 6 of them ready for the skillet. I lack contiguous counter space of suffient size. (say that 3 times fast) So here is my problem. There is no way to be food safe & bread chicken at the same time. You don't want to be spreading raw chicken all over your counters. (not to mention the counters have plates & things on them already) So I used very tiny plates and very very slowly breaded 6 pieces of chicken. They fried up well & then went into the oven to finish cooking. I'm not good with oil due to lack of experience so it got a little to hot & a couple pieces got browner than needed but nothing burned.

The boys wouldn't eat it. It's breaded fried chicken. The one thing in the whole of the vast world of food that the little demons can be counted on to eat and they wouldn't eat it. It is very very frustrating. I don't know that they actually disliked it so much as they just were not in the mood to eat. DS2 had 2 bites of chicken and a few more of spinach salad. DS1 ended up eating maybe 4 bites of chicken & 2 of salad. It had been 3 hours since they last ate, so they should have been hungry, but all they really wanted to do was goof off. Thats been the thing lately, goof off & not eat. I think we give them plenty of time. Really 30 minutes to eat 8 bites of chicken & some spinach salad is plenty. We gave them a 10 minute warning (at the end of the 30 minutes), which was when DS1 actually ate something, and when the time was up the food was gone. Suddenly drama about being SO HUNGRY!!! Oh but not for that chicken. I'm so tired of this.

I wonder if they will eat it on the pizza tomorrow?

Bad week so far

Monday - DH calls & says he'll be home after 7p. Boys have taquitos & spinach salad for dinner. I have a danish.

Tuesday - Bunco night & I am unable to make the planned pizza because we did not have the chicken last night for me to have leftovers. Boys have mac & cheese with peas. I ate at Bunco later

Wednesday - DH calls & says he will be home around 8p. Boys have oatmeal & apples for dinner. I have a bowl of cereal.

Tomorrow I'll hit Safeway for lunchmeat (the Food Lion selection was unappealing & I don't trust the prices) and plan for either the Tandoori Chicken (if DH deigns to come home for dinner) or the Monte Cristo sandwiches.

turkey cutlets

I made Rachel Ray's turkey cutlets for dinner last night. They were very good. I had to make some modifications to method & ingredient but I like the result. My biggest problem with RR meals is the number of pots & pans used. I have a 10 year old bottom of the line stove. 2 large burners, 2 small burners. I have little storage so I am not stocked with a wide variety of stuff & assorted sizes. I don't own a pasta pot but regularly make spaghetti in what would be called 'too little water' by damn near everyone. But I have no place for a big pasta pot, so oversized soup pan it is! I have one large skillet, one small skillet and a cast iron pan of the standard size you think of when you think of a cast iron pan. I have 2 small pots and 2 soup sized pots and the oversized soup pot. I also have a dutch oven & assorted silicone bakeware. RR's equipment list can be a challenge for me, especially if you need to have more than 2 burners going. For this meal I needed a pasta pot, a large skillet and a medium skillet. Assuming I owned all these things, I could not actually have all of them on the stove at once (at least not at an effective heat because one of them would be on a small burner). I ended up with my large pot & using my large skillet twice, which meant the turkey got a little cool. I'm also lacking in counter space which made the 'dust the pasta' part of the cooking go a bit slowly & I ended up dusting a fair amount of the kitchen floor in the process. Having made the meal I am wondering how she cooked the pasta effectively in the medium skillet as I used a large one & still needed to do it in 2 batches. The sauce needed thickening with a roux I think. Also I am glad I stuck with one lemon instead of using the 2 recommended as the first words out of DH's mouth were "Thats lemony!" I will be making the cutlets again. Not with the pasta though, or not with the pasta in that way. I like pasta crisped up in a skillet but the little boys do not & wouldn't eat it. However I think just regular cooked pasta served with the thicker sauce on it and the turkey would go over well.

so far so good

This week we have had

Pesto Tortellini w/raddichio salad
Ham Scones with spinach salad
Potato & Leek soup Baked Potato Soup
Beef Ragou w/grilled winter veggies

Thursday night we had something random & Friday we had take out. The boys ate dinner every night but Saturday, when we had the ragu. They don't really care for steak, ground beef is ok but not whole bits of steak. Plus daddy had given them each a coupe mugs of hot chocolate within an hour or so of dinner. everything turned out really well, except the roasted veggies last night. The pan was on too low of a rack & should have had more oil. tonight I am going to make the Turkey cutlets one, which is new for me. We'll see how that goes.

Menu Jan 8 to Jan 21

I sat down at lunchtime & assembled a menu.

Pesto Tortellini w/raddichio salad
Fake Tandoori chicken w/grilled squash & couscous
Potato & Leek soup
Fish Cakes w/herb roasted veggies
Turkey Cutlets & Ravioli w/garlic sauteed broccoli
Ham Scones with spinach salad
Pizza
Beef Ragou w/grilled winter veggies
Chicken Tenders Parmesan w/pasta
Monte Cristo sandwich with salad

That is 10 meals, most of which have sides and one new meal (the turkey cutlets). 5 of the meals are from Rachel Ray as I had suspected might happen.

I will also be attempting banana bread and pesto bread sticks.

no menu

ok, so its the 5th and I have no menu yet. This week we ate homemade pizza (with a spinach basil crust that was really good if I do say so myself), spinach ravioli with spinach pesto, then lobster bisque from Safeway with spinach salad (Sensing a theme?), then we had chinese take out (no spinach) and tonight we had meatloaf with microwaved Green Giant mixed veggies (including spinach, what can I say, it's the only thing my kids will eat).

So far I suck at my resolutions. But i have all weekend to get my act together for the next 2 weeks & I plan to do so. I am already looking at things to do with broccoli.