After a brief hiatus from the blog during which I did actually cook something, but so totally wrong I decided it doesn't count and shan't be remarked on in this forum, today I made Stephanie's Chicken Sausage and Linguine (p. 51). This dish was a delightful departure from our regular spaghetti and marinara dinner. As a plus, as a pasta dish with sauce added at the end of the preparation, it enabled me to re-purpose two extra servings of linguine into kid's dinners with regular pasta sauce.
The dish, amongst other delicious ingredients, included some red wine.
The only regret I have in making this meal today is that I had to take
my son to swim class afterwards, so I could not partake of the rest of
the bottle of wine while cooking and eating. However, I am now settled
down with a glass while I draft this post -- a lovely side effect of making this dinner.
The sausage/sauce had an upscale, adult taste, which I welcomed after face-planting (hands-and-knees-planting?) outside the Acme after buying ingredients, having engaged in a little horseplay with my son in the hopes of running off some of his energy. My knee is still throbbing, but the wine is helping! My husband had to go out to a second store to procure light cream because for some reason the Acme had zero cream on their shelves, light or otherwise. This is often the case and I suspect that when the Acme employees see my headed towards the dairy products they hide them all, for reasons known only to their own sick, twisted hearts.
The preparation was
straightforward, although I still managed to use all four burners at
once (one was the sauce for the kids' dinner, so I guess it doesn't
count!). I think it would have been fabulous with garlic bread, but I was busy with my four burners so I didn't think of that until it was too late. Still, plain bread was fine for sopping the remaining sauce from our plates, and I think everyone was happy with the results of the meal.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Super Salsa (and Cookies!)
Last Sunday was the Super Bowl, so the logical thing to do was to prepare a dip or other party item from the Cookbook. But, not being a logical person is not one of my strong suits. Plus, everything I wanted to make used a crock pot, which is not part of my kitchen arsenal.
Instead, I decided to embrace the wide availability of delicious fresh salsas and make Stephanie's Salsa Chicken and Rice (pp. 69-70). This dish was super easy to put together, and I thought it was delightfully light and tasty. The dish is made by cooking up some diced chicken, then adding chicken broth and salsa, rice, and cheese. I had one deviation to the recipe, which was using regular rice rather than instant, because while I was at the store I thought I had instant rice at home. It turned out to be regular boil-in-bag rice, which I liberated from the bags and used anyway. The recipe worked anyway with the modification of letting the pot sit for 10 minutes rather than 5 minutes, and letting the mixture boil with the rice added for a few minutes instead of just turning off the heat and allowing it to sit. My son, of course, thought the meal was "disgusting" and wanted to know what that "red" was doing in there. I made some broccoli so that he'd have something to eat:
Luckily, I also chose to make Navika's Brownie Cookies (p. 122), which received rave reviews from my son. This is a recipe from our own Nutan's daughter, and they are everything you might want in a cookie - chocolate with chocolate chips. YUM. They turned out crispier than I imagined, but that just makes them excellent with coffee, or hot chocolate, or, as I discovered as the week wore on, dipped into chocolate ice cream.
The cookie recipe made just over 36 cookies, so I must have been making them a little smaller than Navika intended. I took a little less than half of them to work, where they disappeared into many a coworker's belly, as well as my own. Everyone seemed to enjoy them! Luckily we don't have many participants in the Wil Research weight loss challenge this year - particularly in light of my decision to bake all of the chocolate chip cookies in the Cookbook as part of a March Chipness Tournament.
You see, we had agreed that two or more similar (or identically named) recipes should be prepared at the same time, brought into work, and judged in a winner-takes-all (takes what, exactly?) battle for supremacy. But, there are far too many chocolate chip cookie recipes in this cookbook to fathom making them all on the same day, so I decided to set it up tournament style in March. The winner will receive some totally-unexpected token of my appreciation at the end of the competition. More on this later in the month, when all the competitors have been seeded and you can fill out your brackets in the hopes of receiving a much-more-expected-because-you-know-this-is-going-on token of my appreciation!
Here's a picture of the cookies to whet your appetites:
Instead, I decided to embrace the wide availability of delicious fresh salsas and make Stephanie's Salsa Chicken and Rice (pp. 69-70). This dish was super easy to put together, and I thought it was delightfully light and tasty. The dish is made by cooking up some diced chicken, then adding chicken broth and salsa, rice, and cheese. I had one deviation to the recipe, which was using regular rice rather than instant, because while I was at the store I thought I had instant rice at home. It turned out to be regular boil-in-bag rice, which I liberated from the bags and used anyway. The recipe worked anyway with the modification of letting the pot sit for 10 minutes rather than 5 minutes, and letting the mixture boil with the rice added for a few minutes instead of just turning off the heat and allowing it to sit. My son, of course, thought the meal was "disgusting" and wanted to know what that "red" was doing in there. I made some broccoli so that he'd have something to eat:
Luckily, I also chose to make Navika's Brownie Cookies (p. 122), which received rave reviews from my son. This is a recipe from our own Nutan's daughter, and they are everything you might want in a cookie - chocolate with chocolate chips. YUM. They turned out crispier than I imagined, but that just makes them excellent with coffee, or hot chocolate, or, as I discovered as the week wore on, dipped into chocolate ice cream.
The cookie recipe made just over 36 cookies, so I must have been making them a little smaller than Navika intended. I took a little less than half of them to work, where they disappeared into many a coworker's belly, as well as my own. Everyone seemed to enjoy them! Luckily we don't have many participants in the Wil Research weight loss challenge this year - particularly in light of my decision to bake all of the chocolate chip cookies in the Cookbook as part of a March Chipness Tournament.
You see, we had agreed that two or more similar (or identically named) recipes should be prepared at the same time, brought into work, and judged in a winner-takes-all (takes what, exactly?) battle for supremacy. But, there are far too many chocolate chip cookie recipes in this cookbook to fathom making them all on the same day, so I decided to set it up tournament style in March. The winner will receive some totally-unexpected token of my appreciation at the end of the competition. More on this later in the month, when all the competitors have been seeded and you can fill out your brackets in the hopes of receiving a much-more-expected-because-you-know-this-is-going-on token of my appreciation!
Here's a picture of the cookies to whet your appetites:
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Happy Belated Birthday Post
I have been negligent with my posts for two weeks now, to the extent that I had to spend some time today getting my blog's password reset since I managed to forget it in that time span. My only excuse is a flurry of birthday activities for my son (now 5!). We usually have both a family party and a friends party, which leads to so much partying in January we are grateful at last to settle into February with its almost complete lack of plans!
For my son's "family" party, I decided to make Sarah's Hamburger Sausage Dip (p. 3) and Wanda's Meatballs (p. 63). Unfortunately both recipes called for slow cookers, and I had only procured the use of one from my mother-in-law, so the meatballs got top honors and were done in the slow cooker and the dip was heated on the stovetop (actually a great deal faster than intended, since I lost track of time and started this late - still melted together fine, FYI).
There was a heavy contingent at the party that loved the hamburger sausage dip. I mean LOVED. I had put a small amount out near to the chips and at one point heard my sister tell her husband, "Don't worry, there's a whole pot in the kitchen", whereupon he ran off to the kitchen to get a plateful for himself. Later in the party he told me he was going to do his best to eat all the remaining dip. My friend Marlene was also a big fan. Despite their efforts, we had leftovers of the dip, which I enjoyed slathered on pretty much anything I could find.
Wanda's Meatballs recipe starts with 2lbs of meatballs, pre-made, much to the merriment of my husband ("leave it to the Wil Research Cookbook to have a meatball recipe that starts with frozen meatballs"). This recipe is all about the sauce, which is an interesting blend of pineapples, brown sugar, vinegar, and tomato soup. The sauce is surprisingly sweet, with an almost Asian flavor, and I found it surprisingly delightful and a nice departure from regular marinara sauce. My sister almost tried it, but then someone told her what was in it (pineapple). She loves to have them around to look at (her husband loves them) but never to eat them. Everyone else (none of them have a weird relationship with pineapples) seemed to like them a lot. Even my son ate some (and more and more as leftovers during the next week), so he must have thought they were pretty good!
After the party, my friend Marlene whisked me off to a quilt shop (yay!), and ended up staying for dinner. To accompany dinner, I decided to make Howard's Winter Fruit Salad with Lemon Poppy Seed Dressing. I've had my eye on this recipe for awhile because it is very similar to one I make regularly. The differences are:
As for item 1, I would prefer blue cheese but can certainly see where many, many people would opt for swiss, since blue cheese is a love it or hate it sort of food. For item 2, Granny Smiths are not my favorite, but they did taste delicious with the dressing. For item 3, I'm pretty proud of myself for making this dressing. It wasn't terribly difficult, as I had long suspected oil-based dressings might be. And, it was yummy. And, now I know that if I don't have salad dressing, but happen to have lemons, onion, and poppy seeds laying around I am in business.
For my son's "family" party, I decided to make Sarah's Hamburger Sausage Dip (p. 3) and Wanda's Meatballs (p. 63). Unfortunately both recipes called for slow cookers, and I had only procured the use of one from my mother-in-law, so the meatballs got top honors and were done in the slow cooker and the dip was heated on the stovetop (actually a great deal faster than intended, since I lost track of time and started this late - still melted together fine, FYI).
There was a heavy contingent at the party that loved the hamburger sausage dip. I mean LOVED. I had put a small amount out near to the chips and at one point heard my sister tell her husband, "Don't worry, there's a whole pot in the kitchen", whereupon he ran off to the kitchen to get a plateful for himself. Later in the party he told me he was going to do his best to eat all the remaining dip. My friend Marlene was also a big fan. Despite their efforts, we had leftovers of the dip, which I enjoyed slathered on pretty much anything I could find.
Wanda's Meatballs recipe starts with 2lbs of meatballs, pre-made, much to the merriment of my husband ("leave it to the Wil Research Cookbook to have a meatball recipe that starts with frozen meatballs"). This recipe is all about the sauce, which is an interesting blend of pineapples, brown sugar, vinegar, and tomato soup. The sauce is surprisingly sweet, with an almost Asian flavor, and I found it surprisingly delightful and a nice departure from regular marinara sauce. My sister almost tried it, but then someone told her what was in it (pineapple). She loves to have them around to look at (her husband loves them) but never to eat them. Everyone else (none of them have a weird relationship with pineapples) seemed to like them a lot. Even my son ate some (and more and more as leftovers during the next week), so he must have thought they were pretty good!
After the party, my friend Marlene whisked me off to a quilt shop (yay!), and ended up staying for dinner. To accompany dinner, I decided to make Howard's Winter Fruit Salad with Lemon Poppy Seed Dressing. I've had my eye on this recipe for awhile because it is very similar to one I make regularly. The differences are:
- Use of swiss cheese rather than blue cheese
- Specifically uses a Granny Smith apple rather than any apple you happen to have on hand
- I have never bothered to make the dressing for the other recipe but I suspect it is different
As for item 1, I would prefer blue cheese but can certainly see where many, many people would opt for swiss, since blue cheese is a love it or hate it sort of food. For item 2, Granny Smiths are not my favorite, but they did taste delicious with the dressing. For item 3, I'm pretty proud of myself for making this dressing. It wasn't terribly difficult, as I had long suspected oil-based dressings might be. And, it was yummy. And, now I know that if I don't have salad dressing, but happen to have lemons, onion, and poppy seeds laying around I am in business.
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