I made two new recipes this week, both “borrowed” from others.
Homemade pot pie (thanks Brookey!)
Shepherd’s pie (thanks Chef Ramsey!)
Plates were licked, so Success!
What yummy meals have you made lately?
I know I just posted, but I had to share my morning’s inspiration to add instant spice to our day:
What’s your recipe for instant spice?
The other night my wonderful fiance introduced me to my new favorite meal–a Frito boat. It was fun to eat (I felt about 5) and super yummy. Enjoy 
Ingredients:
1 small bag Frito corn chips per person
1 large can chili
grated cheese
Instructions:
1) Heat chili
2) Open bag of corn chips
3) Grate cheese
4) Pour chili into bag of chips and top with cheese
5) Eat!
Does anyone have any fun (and maybe slightly embarassing…) meals to share? Frito-Lay ingredients admired but not required
OK, the title of the post is a little groan worthy. But you know you love Abba. And Erasure. (You really should go check out both videos, it will make your day a little gigglier.)
Anyway.
Yesterday I hosted book club at my home, and as with any good gathering, we had to have food. We read To Kill A Mockingbird, and as it is full of mentions of food, we decided to have refreshments that were mentioned in the book. If you’ve read the book (and if you haven’t, go read it!), you’ll remember the scene toward the end where Scout is dressed as a ham for a play. So of course, we had to have something with ham, in honor of Scout.
I had something roughly in mind, but when I came across this recipe, I decided to go for it, despite the fact that I don’t like Dijon mustard and am somewhat afraid of Gruyere cheese.
Oh.
My.
Goodness.
So good.
This was great as a savory refreshment (our other offering was angel food cake with strawberries- definitely on the sweet side), but it would be absolutely divine as a rainy day lunch.
Or dinner.
Or both.
I might make it again tomorrow.
So without any further ado, and with all credit to Ina Garten, the lovely Barefoot Contessa herself, the recipe.
Wait- a little further ado. I really do suggest sticking to the recipe, just to try it. Don’t just substitute Cheddar like I always do. Go with the Dijon. Splurge a little. It’s so worth it.
Oh, and I’ll also mention, the recipe says this makes 6 servings. Just so you know. If you were just making it for yourself, I’d only make 1/2, it doesn’t keep well.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Place a piece of parchment paper on a sheet pan.
Lay 1 sheet of puff pastry on a floured board and carefully roll it out to 10 by 12 inches. Place it on a sheet pan and brush the center with the mustard, leaving a 1-inch border around the edge. Place a layer first of ham and then cheese, also leaving a 1-inch border. Brush the border with the egg wash.
Place the second sheet of puff pastry on the floured board and roll it out to 10 by 12inches. Place the second sheet on top of the filled pastry, lining up the edges. Cut the edges straight with a small, sharp knife and press together lightly. Brush the top with egg wash and cut a few slits in the top to allow steam to escape.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until puffed and golden brown. Allow to cool for a few minutes and serve hot or warm.
NOTE: I baked it for 25 minutes at 400 degrees (I saw it suggested multiple times in the comments) and it came out perfectly. Your oven may vary.
The best thing, well, one of at least, about being an adult is not having to wait for cookies. Right now, it’s getting late in the evening, but I just pulled a batch of warm cookies out of the oven. Baked because it’s going to rain tonight (I hope) and it’s fall and my husband and I just wanted cookies. Sometimes you have to give in and let go and bake cookies.
To this end, I am sharing a recipe. I love these cookies. Addictive, easy, and almost healthy. But don’t let that stop you from whipping up a batch when the mood strikes. Go on. Share some with someone you love.
Chocolate Cherry Cookies
makes about 3 dozen
Ingredient List:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup high-fiber cereal with flakes and twigs (I use “Twigs Flakes and Clusters” from Trader Joe’s. Kashi “Good Friends” is another good choice)
1 cup dried cherries, sour cherries are the best
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Method:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Cream together the sugar and the butter until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla, beat until well incorporated.
In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda and spices.
In a medium bowl, stir together the oats, cereal, cherries and chocolate chips.
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and slowly blend (on low if using a stand mixer) until just mixed. Add the oat mixture and blend (on low if using a stand mixer) until the dough comes together and the ingredients are distributed fairly evenly throughout.
The dough will be very soft and clumpy because of all the good stuff in there.
Drop dough in rounded tablespoon fulls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Make sure to keep the dough mounded–the cookies will flatten out in the oven. Bake for 12 minutes or until the centers are just set but still look a bit underdone. Let cool on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes before removing to a cooling rack.
The cookies will keep for about a week in an air-tight container. But I doubt you’ll be able to keep them around that long.
I attempted to make the beef wellington from the above video Sunday night. Joey watches Dexter (which is super scary, as an FYI…), and we invited over his good friends JJ and Georgina to watch it and eat a yummy meal.
It was an epic fail. I just couldn’t get anything to work out…I bought the wrong meat, the mushrooms wouldn’t puree, I didn’t give myself enough time, etc. To top it all off, trying to comfort me, Joey reminded me that “No one cares about the food, Brandy.” This had the opposite effect of what was intended, as now I was grumpy that no one cared even though I was going to all this trouble.
Long story short, we ordered pizza and it was fine. Fun, even.
Last night I tried to rescue the ingredients I had spent so much money and time on. I seasoned and sauted some red potatoes and made a green salad with mustard dressing. I pan friend the beef steaks.
Joey ate two servings. Meal=salvaged
Any stories of salvaging a meal?
Well, everyone and no one is the answer to the title question. I used to cook under the catch phrase, “If it doesn’t take an hour or more, it’s not cooking.”
I say “used to” because one day I found myself holding a very small child in one arm and wondering “How am I going to chop onions now?” and breaking down in tears. And now with three small girls ruling my life and running my house, the luxury I enjoyed as an under-employed home maker–you know, spending half a day on one meal–has flown out the window and left me searching for ways to make my desire to create in the kitchen mesh with the needs of my young family. It’s a struggle.
Let me share my vision with you. What is food? Simply, energy for your body. Every body needs basic nutrients everyday to live. What is cooking? To me, cooking is the way we transcend meeting the basic needs of our bodies and create foods that do indeed nourish our traditions and our souls as well as our bodies. What is a meal, then? Every meal is an opportunity to use food to express some aspect of ourselves to those we are feeding. Even if that person is you.
To this respect, one doesn’t have to master the art of French cooking to be a fine cook. After I had my first child and stood in the kitchen crying about no longer being able to spend two hours on dinner I realized I had to change my idea of what cooking was. For me cooking evolved from mastering exotic cuisine (I have made my own Indian curry blends…grinding seeds and spices by hand for the authentic flavor and textures) to mastering the art of a fresh delicious fast meal. I think the disservice that food television and the lovely glossy magazines and the oh so wonderful food memoirs has done to the home cook is to make us feel like we have to spend hours over a stove or we’re not really cooking. I know that’s exactly how I felt. As working women–be it career wise or mommy wise–can’t be expected to spend as many hours in the kitchen as a professional cook does. Julia Child, as much as I respect the work she did to increase the awareness of good food to Americans, didn’t cook with kids under foot.
I have turned back to so many home-style basics some of my culinary school classmates would chide me as hopelessly old-fashioned. But they work. And by looking to healthy short cuts and meals that can prepped during nap time then popped in an oven later on or even utilizing a slow cooker I can have a dinner on the table I’m proud to serve and still have a day to spend with my girls doing the things that matter to them.
In terms of practicality I focus on one large meal a day. As much as I would love to bake muffins and pastries in the morning, I love how late my girls sleep in and relish my late nights with my husband. I am not waking up before six to cook. And so, breakfast is a mostly cold cereal affair. Sometimes we have oatmeal. Sometimes French toast. We do eat it together and take our time. We linger over milk and bananas and coffee instead of hot buttery croissants. It makes us happy and I know the kids are starting off with tummies full and a less stressed mom.
Lunch is a challenge, as two to three days a week we picnic it and my girls do not eat well with the distraction of friends and fun around them.When we are at home, I serve toddler food. I make a meal in 15 minutes or less because that’s what I’ve got to work with. We have a whole lot of chicken tenders and pasta with butter. I do serve veggies we all love and I again, sit and eat a meal with them. My focus at lunch is to round out nutritional needs and make sure another good meal gets into their systems. I don’t fight or stress over lunch choices. A well stocked freezer and snack pantry is my friend for lunch.
Dinner is hard. I know it is. But I believe it is important so I make it a goal to cook for my family every night I can. Dinner is the meal I cook for myself and my husband. Dinner is the meal I use to expand palettes. Dinner is also the meal I don’t worry about if it doesn’t get eaten because I’ve tried to meet the needs of the kids throughout the day. So I can enjoy my meal and know that one day my adventurous eater will return because I’ve properly set the stage (this is the mantra that gets me through all the ‘but I don’t like thaaaaat’ whining happening here right now).
So let’s talk about dinner. Dinner has become the cornerstone of my day. I plan my weeks around dinner and my dinners around my weeks. I make a dinner schedule. I sit down either Friday night with a couple of my favorite cookbooks (I’ll post some titles at the end of this missive) and decide what I want to make based on the weather, how we’re feeling, what we’ve had the previous week and how busy our week is going to be. I have a white board I stick on the fridge with the meal plan written out so I don’t forget what I’m cooking. If I’m using a recipe (I don’t always) I have the cookbook and page number written next to it.
I use the season and the weather as inspiration. I like to make sure I’m planning a variety of proteins, balancing red meat, pork, chicken and fish and at least one meatless meal throughout the week. And I do find inspiration in food magazines. I love Bon Appetit. They have a few regular features that work for me. I love the “Dinner for Four and Leftovers” which is a kid friendly meal all planned out that uses the leftovers for lunch the next day. And “Fast Easy Fresh” utilizes seasonal ingredients in recipes that take 20-45 minutes to prepare.
I shop once and (try to) obtain everything I need for a weeks worth of cooking because nothing is more frustrating than staring at a cupboard with no clue as to it’s contents and no idea how to put them together anyway. Like any craft, having the right tools will make your project more fun.
Food should be fun. I think we as home cooks also lose sight of that simple fact in the rush to get food to the table and the cajoling to get kids to eat or in the balancing act of cooking for one. Food is fun. We could all drink protein shakes and take vitamins and survive. Cooking transforms the cook as well as the food. It builds us up on many levels. It doesn’t have to be tricky. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be done with love.
I could go on…but maybe I’ll let you all digest this meal. I will recommend this cookbook even thought it’s out of print: The Working Stiff Cookbook
One great feature is the “Well Stocked Pantry” page with suggestions of basics to keep around for cooking these, and many other, tasty meals. There are also very easy versions of exotic foods that use familiar ingredients and are a good place to begin the introduction of, say, curry to a three-year-old.
Also check out A Year of Slow Cooking for slow-cooker inspiration. This is my saving grace on days when I know we’re going to be out of the house for most of the day. And honestly, nothing is better than walking into your own home and smelling dinner cooking deliciously away.
They say the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one, right?
Well here we go: I don’t understand food.
I know that it’s fuel for our bodies, that it’s necessary to keep us alive and functioning.
I know that it can be delicious, and function as a bonding and binding ritual.
I know it can nurture body, spirit and relationships.
I know that variety is important, that partaking in different taste experiences can refresh our bodies and open our minds.
I get it on a conceptual level, like I understand how a car works, but where it all falls apart for me is the practical level. I’m experiencing the equivalent of popping the hood and staring helplessly at the motor when the car breaks down.
Problem # 1: I don’t know what to cook.
I have a bunch of cookbooks, and often buy magazines full of recipes, but mostly end up using the types of recipes that are already in my wheelhouse. Eating the same 10 meals over and over gets boring. I don’t know how to break out of that.
Problem #2: I have a really picky 3 year old eater.
Seriously, she’d just eat hot dogs and peanut butter sandwiches every day if I’d let her. And most days I do. And I know that her behavior is normal, I’d just like to stretch her horizons (and her nutrient intake).
Problem #3: Meals come at really inconvenient times.
I’d love to make delicious breakfasts to start my family off right every morning, but sheesh it’s early in the morning. And I’m tired. And lunch is right before naps, when the kids are all feisty, and dinner is right when they’re all wound up and losing it at the end of the day. It’s so much easier to cop out and rush something to the table than try to cook and solve the house’s problems at the same time.
I’ve considered those services that just pre-prepare the meals for you, but I really feel like there’s something I’m supposed to learn about cooking for my family, and important things they get from me cooking for them.
Problem #4: I just can’t catch the vision.
I feel that if I could catch the vision of what meals could be, I could overcome the other issues I’m dealing with. But I can’t seem to do that. And that’s why I’m turning to you.
I’m a reader, and I get inspired most by reading. SO…. give me books, websites, magazines, anything that can help me out. I’ve read Julie and Julia, which I enjoyed, but which convinced me to stay (FAR!) away from French cooking. I’m currently reading My Life in France by Julia Child, which I highly recommend; I love how years after the fact she can recall what she ate and where, and I want to be more like that, but the book does not give good clues as to how to do that.
Where do you get your recipes?
When you want to cook something new, where do you look for ideas?
Any good memoirs/books that inspire your creative cooking juices?
Help!!
And don’t forget to go here and enter the giveaway! We know you’re here, why aren’t you entering? Seriously! It’s easy! And the prizes are awesome! Are you afraid you’ll be too disappointed if you don’t win? Well you won’t even have a chance if you don’t enter! Go go!
Later after I married and had a child, I learned to find equal meaning in the repeated rituals of domestic life. Setting the table. Lighting the candles. Building the fire. Cooking. All those souffles, all that creme caramel, all those daubes and albondigas and gumbos. Clean sheets, stacks of clean towels, hurricane lamps for storms, enough water and food to see us through whatever geological event came our way. These fragments I have shared against my ruins were the words that came to mind then. These fragments mattered to me. I believed in them.
What rituals of domestic life do you find meaning in?
a book? I’m only partway through it, but it’s fascinating so far.
You can get it here for $6. (Woo hoo, bargain books!) It’s all about why we feel the need for speed (historically and sociologically speaking), and the movement to take back control over our own time. It may have just given me the inspiration I needed to tackle more hands on cooking – what will it inspire you to do?
I’ll post a more comprehensive review once I’ve finished it, but for now, if it sounds interesting to you, go take a look!