New Year

New Year.  I'm awful at posting things, but DH has told me to start writing again because I keep forgetting recipes.  We went out with friends to celebrate New Years Eve last night.




















2014 was hectic.  Since DH moved in, I published my first paper and went to 3 conferences for work.  DH was accepted to his first choice of med school and was asked to write (and completed his first draft of) a chapter for a text book!  My brother had an adorable baby girl.  DH's sister got married. And sadly, my grandmother passed away.  I am quite excited to not travel very much this next semester.  Classes start on Monday.  I am taking my last required graduate class and TA-ing my first undergrad class.  The teacher asked me if I would like to help teach a couple of lectures which is exciting.  I'm exhausted and need to grocery shop, do laundry, and prepare for next semester to start.

For my future reference, these were the recipes that we thought were worth repeating:

Sweet Potato Hash 

Pie-less Chicken Pot Pie:

2-3 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts (frozen or not)
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can water
1 bag frozen peas
1 bag frozen corn
some diced onion (optional)
salt, pepper, and garlic powder

Put everything in the crock-pot and cook on high for ~ 4 hours or low for ~ 7 hours.  It's done when it shreds easily with 2 forks.  Shred chicken and stir.  Season to taste with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  If too thin add a little flour or cook with top off to thicken sauce.  Serve over rice.


Polish Heritage Recipe (lol):

1/2 package Polska Kielbasa
1/2 bag Sauerkraut
2 tbsp butter

Melt butter in cast iron pan (Med-low heat).  Cut kielbasa into 1/4 inch pieces.  Cook kielbasa in butter, flipping over occasionally, until slightly brown and curving into concave shapes.  Add drained, unwashed sauerkraut (some liquid can be added for a stronger taste).  Cook while stirring until the sauerkraut starts to cook down like onions before they caramelize.

Fast Sourdough-ish Bread

To be updated with recipe.  For now FOOD PICTURES : )

 

Ranch Buffalo Shredded Chicken

To be updated with recipe.  For now FOOD PICTURES : )

Pasta Salad

To be updated with recipe.  For now FOOD PICTURES : )

Soft Boiled Eggs

I will eat breakfast foods at any time of the day.  Cereal, bagels, quiche, waffles...for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or midnight snack.  They are always delicious.  I find that this is true for pizza as well, but I may have less people agree with me on that one.

I've decided recently that I like eating soft-boiled eggs and toast.  This may be aided by the fact that apparently in England they cut the toast into strips and refer to this meal as "eggs and soldiers"...which I find adorable.  As far as I know, eggs are nutritious, inexpensive, and a good source of protein so I am trying to eat them a little more often.

Since my first attempt at soft-boiled eggs was a bit of a fail:

Instructions

1. Fill a pot with water so that (when the eggs are added) there is at least a 1/2 inch of water above the eggs
2. Bring the water to a simmer
3. Using a cooking spoon, lower the eggs into the water and continue to simmer for 1 minute
4. Cover the pot, remove from the heat, and let it sit for approximately 6 minutes

At this point, you can run the pot under cold water and take out your soft-boiled eggs.  Some fancy people have egg cups so that they can simply cut off the top of the egg and eat it with a spoon.  I am not one of those people.  An uninformed person may try to peal the soft-boiled egg.  I tried this, it doesn't work well.  What does work?  Amazingly, if you smack the egg with a knife,  you can then break it in half and scoop the soft-boiled egg halves into a bowl.

We cook: Pumpkin Bread

I made two big loaves of pumpkin bread yesterday, loosely following this recipe.  All I can say is YUM.  I love pumpkin bread...although between the pumpkin bread and the pumpkin beer I drank, I think that my stomach is getting confused and thinking that it's fall already.  I've been craving apple cider : )

Ingredients

• 1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup water
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2-1/2 cup sugar
• 3-1/2 cup flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1-1/2 tsp salt
• 3-1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 
  

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg. F
2. Mix pumpkin, eggs, oil, water, vanilla, and sugar
3. Separately, combine all other dry ingredients
4. Stir dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture
5. Pour into 2 greased 8" x 4" loaf pans
6. Bake for 60-70 minutes at 350 deg. F.

Bread is done when a toothpick or knife comes out clean.

 

We cook: Barbecue Pork

This is the first thing that we cooked with our slow cooker.  Being from SC, DH was very excited to make barbecue and I have to say it was delicious!  This was rather time consuming, but not very complicated and it made enough food for us to have 16 servings of meat (when eating about 1 sandwich worth at a time rather than stuffing your face...which is hard not to do with something like barbecue).  We've eaten half of the meat with dinner for a week and the other half is in the freezer.

DH bought about 5 lbs of pork.  I'm not sure how much it cost, we were hoping to wait for a slightly better sale but were too excited for BBQ!  Still, $15-$20 for 16 meals worth of meat is not too bad : )

YUM!

Ingredients

• Boston Butt Roast
• 1/4 cup water
• Onion
• 1 bottle of your favorite Barbecue Sauce
• Salt & Pepper

Instructions

1. Cut onion in half and place halves in crock pot
2. Add water to crock pot
3. Put pork on top of onion halves and salt and pepper the top slightly
4. Cover and cook on HIGH for 1 hour
5. Cook on LOW for 7 - 9 hours.  You know it's done when it is tender and easily pulls off of the bone/shreds and is not pink.
6. Remove meat, pour out fat, onions, and grease, and clean the pot.
7. Shred the meat with forks and put the shredded meat back into the cleaned crock pot
8. Add barbecue sauce (we used 1 full bottle of sauce but you may want slightly more or less depending on preference and how much meat there is)
9. Cook on low for 1 hour

If you want to freeze the meat, make sure to portion it into sizes that you will want to thaw together.

We cook: Lemon Blueberry Bread

Since I for some reason have 3 bottles of lemon juice in the fridge and have been making blueberry everything, I tried a new recipe: Lemon Blueberry Bread.  I didn't make the glaze because I don't like my breads super sweet and I didn't add the nuts because I didn't have any.  Also, I didn't have any actual lemons, so I added extra lemon juice in place of the lemon zest.  I was hoping for something similar to banana bread or pumpkin bread that I could eat for breakfast or lunch, but the result was much more similar to pound cake.  It is quite tasty but it is much denser than I expected and does taste more like a dessert than a breakfast.

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup butter, melted
• 1 cup sugar
• 4.5 tbsp lemon juice
• 1-1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg. F
2. Beat butter, sugar, lemon juice, and eggs together.
3. Separately, combine flour, baking powder, and salt
4. Alternate adding dry mixture and milk to the egg mixture while stirring
5. Fold in blueberries
6. Pour into greased 8" x 4" loaf pan
7. Bake for 60-70 minutes at 350 deg. F.

Bread is done when a toothpick or knife comes out clean.

We cook: Ricotta Cheese Appetizer with Blueberries

The first time we made this appitizer, it was on fancy ciabatta bread when we had guests over and I forgot to take a picture.  Later that weekend we made it a second time on toasted sourdough bread (in picture).  DH went a little OCD with the blueberries this time : ) While the sourdough didn't look nearly as nice, the flavors worked fine!  This easy appetizer was tasty and looked quite fancy on nice bread.

Simply spread ricotta cheese on the bread, top with blueberries, and drizzle honey over the top.




















I tried to find a recipe to link but each one I can find right now (link) has extra steps like making a lemon ricotta spread and roasting the blueberries.  I'm sure that that would be good, but honestly, I thought it was delicious in its simple version too!  I think it's ridiculous how hard it is to find a bare bones recipe sometimes. I like experimenting, but sometimes just want to know if I can whip something together without buying more than 1 or 2 extra things (See Quiche Recipe).

The ricotta cheese that I bought didn't have any preservatives and specifically said to eat right away once opened, so after we finished with the appetizer I put the left over ricotta cheese into the blender with frozen blueberries and some sugar (amounts to taste) and poured the blended concoction into Pyrex bowls to freeze.  I got the idea from here and I quite like the result for a late night snack.

We cook: Baked Peaches

Another super quick and easy recipe that I have decided to love is baked peaches!  We made these for dessert when we had friends over because the peaches were not quite ripe enough to be sweet and delicious on their own.  The result is basically peach cobbler without the cobbler.

 

Ingredients

• Peaches
• 1/2 tsp Butter / peach half
• 1 tsp Brown Sugar / peach half

Instructions

1. Preheat oven the oven to 375 deg. F
2. Wash and half the peaches.  Remove the pit.
3. Place each peach half on a cookie sheet skin-side-down
4. Add butter and brown sugar to peach halves
5. Bake for 30 minutes at 375 deg. F

We cook: Breakfast Quiche

This is one of my favorites.  I made a quiche on Saturday and have been eating it for breakfast all week.  I don't understand why some people are afraid of cooking these.  It can be SUPER easy to make a basic quiche.  The only thing to be careful of is that if you use too many ingredients that release water (like spinach and tomatoes) the quiche may not set as well.  

Ingredients

• Pie Crust (I use the pie crusts that come in the metal tinfoil pan in the freezer section of the grocery store, but I really need to upgrade to an actual pie pan)
• 5-8 Eggs (my pie plate holds 5 eggs.  If you aren't sure how many you need, start low and then add extras later if needed)
• Milk (optional)
• Salt & Pepper (optional)
• Extras (in this quiche I put 1 diced tomato and some slices of Emmentaler Swiss Cheese)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg. F
2. Crack eggs into a bowl; add a small amount of milk, salt, and pepper; and mix as if you were going to pour them into a frying pan for scrambled eggs 
3. Cut up Extras (tomato and cheese) and place them in the bottom of the pie crust
4. Pour scrambled eggs over the top.  The pie crust should be filled up to the top (it doesn't rise much at all)
5. Bake for 35-45 minutes at 350 deg. F.

Done!  I have found the timing to be variable depending on how big the pie plate is and what extras I've added.  Just check the quiche occasionally.  It is done when you can stab it with a knife and the knife comes out clean.

Warning:  The hardest part of the entire process (especially if you're using a flimsy tinfoil pie pan) is transferring the quiche to the oven.  It is very easy to spill and eggs are obnoxious to clean up from an oven.

We cook: Chicken Parmesan

It may be embarrassing to admit, but I have never cooked chicken before.  I find raw chicken gross.  DH, however, showed me recently how easy it is to fry chicken at home and I may have to get over my aversion because it was delicious.  For dinner a few weeks ago we made spaghetti with a normal jar of tomato sauce and then fried chicken to make chicken parmesan as well.  We didn't happen to have many ingredients in the kitchen at the time so this was a very bare bones recipe, but it turned out pretty well all the same...really if you cover something fried in cheese, how bad can it be??

Ingredients

• Chicken breasts
• Flour
• Spices
• Vegetable Oil
• Spaghetti Sauce
• Cheese

Instructions

1. Butterfly the chicken breasts. Directions
2. Mix flour with seasoned salt, pepper, and garlic salt to taste (this can pretty much be any seasonings that you have on hand.  You want to flavor it a little bit more strongly than you think is necessary)
3. Heat about half an inch of oil in a frying pan until it sizzles when you throw in a drop of water 
4. Dip the chicken in the flour to coat both sides and then put it in the pan
5. When chicken is mostly cooked, flip to the second side
6. Carefully re-dip the chicken in the flour to coat both sides a second time 
7. Re-cook chicken in the oil on both sides briefly

When you take the chicken out, you can pat some of the oil off with paper towels and cut into the thickest part of the chicken breast to check that it is fully cooked.  Then dump some tomato sauce and cheese on top.  We used Parmesan cheese because it was all we had at the time.   You can then throw them in the oven or toaster oven on broil to melt the cheese if you want to.

We cook: Almond, Raisin Biscuits

I know how to cook basics.  I can make pasta or rice, throw a fish fillet in a frying pan, follow directions to make a basic stew, and cook scrambled eggs/grits/pancakes on a moments notice...and that sadly is about it.  I can follow directions reasonably well to cook from recipes, but I do not have practice making many different meals or experience to know what flavors taste good together. My knowledge of vegetables and spices are especially lacking.

In an attempt to eat healthier, stop spending so much money on restaurants and take-out, and not waste all of the new kitchen equipment we received as wedding presents, I am learning to cook!

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For a girls night this past Thursday, I modified an easy oatmeal raisin cookie recipe: http://bakerbettie.com/perfect-oatmeal-raisin-cookies-with-only-6-ingredients/

I love this recipe because it boils oatmeal raisin cookies down to the bare essentials.  I am so happy whenever (1) I can make recipes without going to the grocery store and (2) a recipe actually tells me which ingredients are necessary and which ones are optional.  It makes life so much easier for a minimally experienced cook.  Here, I wanted to make a hearty, slightly healthy version of oatmeal raisin cookies that could potentially be eaten for breakfast instead of dessert.

















They were definitely not super sweet, but they tasted healthy and the almonds made them much heartier.  I ate these for breakfast on a couple of road trips this weekend and they worked rather well : )

Ingredients

• 3/4 STICK SOFTENED BUTTER (3/8 cup) 
• 1/2 CUP SUGAR
• 1/4 CUP HONEY
• 1 EGG
• 1 TSP BAKING POWDER (optional)
• 1 CUP PLUS 2 TBSP FLOUR
• 1 CUP RAISINS
• 1 1/2 CUPS ROLLED OATS
• 1/2 to 1 CUP CHOPPED ALMONDS 

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.
2. Mix the butter and sugar together until completely combined.
3. Add the egg and honey and mix until incorporated. If using, add the vanilla, baking powder, and cinnamon and mix until incorporated.
4. Stir in the flour then the raisins, almonds, and then oatmeal until combined.
5. Drop rounded mounds of dough on greased (she called for ungreased, but that never seems to work out for me) cookie sheets and sprinkle with salt if using. Flatten the dough mounds slightly before baking.
6. Bake at 350ºF until just lightly browned on the edges and middle still looks undercooked, about 9 minutes (it took me about 14 minutes).