Quick chicken, quick chili, quick St. Patty's, and supposed-to-be-quick-but-I-got-distracted mac & cheese

This week I made:
Quick Vinegar-Braised Chicken with Garlic and Celery Leaves, Food & Wine November 2010
Banana-Flax Bread, Everyday with Rachael Ray March 2014
Black Bean Soup-- Vegetarian Black Bean Chili Variation, Everyday with Rachael Ray April 2014
Soda-Bread Biscuits, Food Network
Slow-Cooker Corned Beef and Cabbage, Food Network Magazine March 2010 (as previously made)
Corned Beef Hash, Food Network Magazine March 2010 (as previously made)
Whole-Grain Pancakes, Everyday with Rachael Ray March 2014
No-Boil Mac & Cheese with Bacon, Everyday with Rachael Ray April 2014


Whaaaaat we're starting to repeat recipes! This weekend I remade the cheesy blintz hotcakes, because they were good and we had extra cottage cheese so why not, and then I also repeated the corned beef and cabbage recipe from last year's St. Patty's day. And later this week the hash! So now I can no longer claim to have repeated no recipes in over a year. I think it was true before, in that everything we made from a recipe was a new recipe. Unless G made like cornbread or something. Oh well.

This chicken dish is supposed to be like chicken cacciatore, but uses vinegar instead of wine because it is fewer calories. Huh? Weird. Anyway, although you could certainly smell the vinegar while cooking, it doesn't have too strong of a vinegar flavor. I guess it mostly burns off. It tasted like something we have made before, but I couldn't figure out what. It seemed like something with mustard in the sauce? Maybe it reminded me of this. Anyway, this was quite fast-- it's just a matter of getting a nice brown on the chicken thighs, then quickly adding garlic, then celery leaves, then broth and vinegar for a few minutes. We had extra pasta left over so I threw that in as the sauce was reducing to get it nice and tasty too. The picture in the magazine shows it looking pretty green, with lots of parsley I guess, so it seemed like it already included vegetables, but really it does not, so this needed a side. Otherwise to eat a filling amount, it was just a lot of meat! I ate a small amount, but then was hungry later.

On Sunday I cleaned out our freezer! I threw away a lot of ham from last Easter along with a few other unidentified objects. We took out a lot of old cookies and put them in the lobby for people to enjoy-- you probably only need one batch in the freezer at a time :-P We also found a bunch of frozen bananas, but G said that we should make banana bread instead of tossing them. Lo-and-behold, there was a recipe in the last issue of Rachael Ray (it was a brunch issue, so I haven't made much else from it yet).

It's secretly "healthy" with flaxseed and whole-wheat flour. G's not big on that kind of thing, and he accidentally saw the recipe and found out! We didn't plan this out well, and didn't finish the batter until midnight. Then it takes an hour to bake (when I looked at the recipe, I had previously noticed the 30 minutes quoted for 6-inch loaf pans)! We took it out and went right to sleep, leaving it out to cool. Unfortunately it was kind of dry in the morning. It's still worth eating, but G had previously said that he hates dry banana bread and would rather have undercooked-but-moist banana bread than done-but-dry. Oh well, he was the one who was in charge of testing the loaf!

 Rachael Ray's magazine always includes a pull-out booklet of like "50 burgers" or "50 cookies" etc. The format is usually a few base recipes with several variations for each, and this month's soup feature was similar. There's chicken, potato, caramelized onion, tomato, and black bean soup bases, each with five variations.
This soup really helped with the freezer cleanup! We had a container of broth with a large amount of chili powder mixed in (and some bits of steak too), sauteed poblanos, the final bit of a can of adobo sauce + chipotle peppers that I've used in a bajillion recipes, and some ground beef that all went into this soup! Since a lot of the flavor comes from things like the adobo sauce and chipotle peppers, it's a very quick chili (~20-30 min total) that still packs a lot of flavor. I used a variety of beans to make it more interesting, and I also skipped blending to speed things along and keep dirty dishes to a minimum. Plus, isn't texture good? This was a fast, filling, and yummy meal. It also has a lot of vegetables of course, so it seems well-rounded and pretty healthy (until you add that sour cream and cheese on top I guess). It was pretty spicy, so I was glad to have the dairy to temper it a bit.

We had ceramics class on St. Patrick's Day, so we had corned beef etc. the day after instead. A few friends were able to join us. This was all the same stuff as last year, except the soda bread biscuits and horseradish-sour cream sauce. G doesn't like horseradish, so when it was just the two of us it didn't seem worth making the sauce. But actually it was really good! The rest of us liked it. The biscuits I made because the food kind of cooked down and I had a moment of worry that it might not be enough food. They really just tasted like scones... other than having baking soda, I'm not sure what the difference was! It called for currants, but I used cranberries instead. It got some extra flavor because something was burnt on the bottom of the oven. This always happens-- something spills over and it's too hot to clean up. We forget about it once it's cooled. Then, the next time I bake something, I preheat the oven and when I open it up smoke billows out! So these biscuits tasted like they were smoked (because they were, I guess). If only we had been roasting some meat or something...

Thanks to the slow cooker (which was only big enough to fit the beef, turnip, carrots, and leek), the rest of the meal (cabbage, potatoes, sauce, biscuits) was able to be put together in 30 minutes. Not bad! That's the secret to a weeknight dinner party.

There was enough left over to make hash on Thursday:

Which we basically didn't eat, because we had had extensive hor d'oeuvres at an Amazon networking event (this event didn't make sense. We were invited I guess because G has a job there starting in the fall, but he doesn't know who he'll be working with or under, so we didn't actually meet anyone from there. Instead, there were just a bunch of random mostly-young professionals who weren't working at Amazon. Huh? But the food was 10/10 would eat again). We had it for breakfast the next day instead!

For dinner on Friday we made this no-boil mac & cheese. It's supposed to be "faster" because the noodles cook in the sauce, but then the sauce takes more than the boiling time to make, so... :-P It was really tasty, with leek and bacon in it. It had 1.5 cups of cheese (fontina, gouda, and cheddar), but didn't come out tasting too cheesy. Other than the top, which was a bit cohesive, the inner part was more just like pasta in some sort of white sauce. While it was baking, I got distracted by G watching gravity, so it baked for almost an hour instead of 30 minutes. Oops! Some of the pasta was hard, but I don't know if it was al dente from not being boiled or if it got rehydrated and then redehydrated from being cooked too long. I think if I made this again I would probably parboil the noodles just in case, and then make sure to take it out in time! The leeks managed to create quite a complex flavor. I could've sworn there was onion and garlic, but no... just leeks, bacon, and salt.
 
For breakfast on Saturday we wanted to make pancakes. This recipe was from the same person who made the banana bread recipe from last week, and it has flaxseed too. The picture in the magazine looks like a nice stack of typically-shaped pancakes. But ours looked like:

What happened? At first the batter was super thick, but I realized it's because at one point I was thinking of halving it (that was the point when I defrosted the buttermilk) but ended up making the full recipe of everything except the liquid. But even when I added the rest of the liquid, it was still pretty thick. It went onto the skillet in clumps, but then puffed up a lot to make these biscuit-like cakes. And then since they were so thick, they kind of singed before cooking all the way through. Pfft. We're not keeping this recipe.

Eggplant-Parm sandwiches, Curry, Salad, Cajun chicken, and Blintz Hotcakes

This week I made:

• Eggplant-Parm Grilled Cheese, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014
• Thai Pork Chops, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014
• Butternut Squash & Arugula Salad, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014
• served with steak
• Blackened Chicken with Broccoli Slaw, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014
• served with black beans and rice from a package that was G's favorite when we made it a few months ago, but he didn't remember it :(
• Cheese Blintz Hotcakes, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014

We got to the end of Sunday and were suddenly really hungry! I had planned to make the butternut squash salad, but we didn't want to wait for the squash to bake, so we looked for a fast recipe instead. This one sounded like it would be good, and G always likes to put his George Foreman grill to use with hot sandwiches. In this recipe, the eggplant is broiled in the oven. You cook up some garlic until golden-crispy too. But other than that, it's just cutting up some cheese, tomatoes, and basil, so it's pretty simple. 

The only annoying thing is that it calls for pressing the buttered bread into 1.5 c grated Parmigiano-Reggiano before grilling. First, that's a waste of $, since that amount is uncalled for. Second, it basically all falls off anyway. Or maybe that's because I used no-name parmesan cheese and it knew it didn't fit in?? Anyway, I guess she had to put it so that it would really be eggplant-parm, but it didn't seem to work that well. The recipe was also funny because it calls for a whole eggplant, sliced very thin. And yet each sandwich (makes 4-6) only has a single slice?? It could use some more (and we did, for leftovers).

On Monday we have ceramics, so we always need to cook a quick recipe. (And even then, we are usually late! :-/) This curry was pretty fast, starting with jarred red curry paste. The recipe called for bell peppers, but we had some sweet peas so I put that in too. I guess there's not too much to say about this, because it really depends on the red curry that you choose-- ours was a little more spicy than I would have preferred!

 On Wednesday we had a bit more time, so we made the butternut squash salad. Actually, since I used frozen butternut squash (cut pretty small, too), it didn't take as long as it called for. I left it in for a while anyway though (and forgot about it until some of the smaller pieces burnt and the rest were nice and crispy #overlyhonestmethods). Meanwhile, we made some steak. When I asked G what he wanted to eat with the salad, he chose steak and talked as if he knew exactly how to make it, but then when it came time to cook it he said he didn't want to do it because he didn't know how! We sauteed it in the cast iron skillet and then stuck the pan in the oven for a while after, since we (I?) like steak to be cooked all the way through. It was pretty good-- I sometimes don't like beef that much, but every once in a while I'm hungry or iron-deficient or something and it tastes amazing. I think there was a lot of fat. Oh, and we put a pat of butter on top when we put it in the oven too.
The salad was good too. We didn't have any dijon, so the dressing was just vinegar, brown sugar, and EVOO. It was really thick!

This blackened chicken is super fast and easy, because it's just rubbed with Cajun seasoning and pan-fried. The slaw is just a bagged slaw tossed with lemon juice and mayo. We don't really like mayo that much, so I guess we should've done something else for the side. But the chicken was good! I think this was our first time using the Cajun seasoning that came with the set of spices G has had for an embarrassingly long amount of time. I know that spices aren't supposed to be as good after a while, but they all seem pretty fragrant still!

These pancakes were so good! They're really easy, because it's just mixed in a blender, and can then be poured straight into the pan (another #overlyhonestmethod-- I made big pancakes instead of small ones because the lid of the blender fell off while I was pouring and smushed my nice small batter puddles into a big pond). It's a mix of eggs, flour, milk, sugar, baking powder, and cottage cheese. It's moist and the cottage cheese gives it a good texture. We didn't have any jams except ones so old the caps are stuck on, so we topped them with fresh mango instead. Yum! This is such a simple and great breakfast recipe-- definitely keeping :)

Quick burritos, pasta, and chicken parm sliders

This week I made:
Chicken and Black Bean-Stuffed Burritos, Cooking Light December 2010
Citrus and Radish Salad, Cooking Light December 2010
Sausage Ragu with Pappardelle, Rachael Ray December 2013
Chicken Parmesan Burgers, Cooking Light April 2011
served with steamed broccoli and a dash of lemon

We didn't have much time on Wednesday and were hungry, so I made this ready-in-30-minutes meal. It's speeded along by using rotisserie chicken  in the filling along with black beans that have been mixed with salsa. The chicken is boiled briefly with lime juice, chili powder, cumin, and black and red pepper to give it a little extra oompf. After wrapping up the burrito, it's toasted on each side (as you can see from the picture, a little too much), which makes it nice and crispy.
On the side is a salad with a citrusy dressing. Maybe our dressing to salad ratio was off though, because it wasn't very pronounced, even though it had potential.

On Thursday I made this sausage ragu. G picked out the next couple of recipes from the recipe binder, and I think it reminded him of some of the past meat sauces that we've had and he liked.

 The recipe calls for pappardelle, but the kind our supermarket carries isn't quite as wide as the magazine pictures. The sauce was good, but it was overpowered by a strange taste that the pasta had. We think we might keep the recipe, but will use a different brand of pasta next time!

On Friday I made these chicken parm burgers. It looks pretty monotone in this picture,  but in the magazine's cut-through view it's red, white and green. It's put on ciabatta rolls that are toasted and then rubbed with garlic. The patty is a mix of ground chicken, marinara, and some spices. They're cooked in the skillet and then put into the oven with a little mozzarella to melt. It's layered in the ciabatta roll with some basil leaves and more marinara sauce. 

The addition of the marinara to the ground chicken seeemed to mabe make it a little too moist, and I'm not sure that the flavor was very apparent. G makes some great Italian-spiced hamburgers (stuffed with cheese), so I would rather eat those :) I don't think we'll save this recipe, but it's an interesting idea I guess.

One Grocery Bag, 3 Great Meals

This week I made:
Chicken Turkey Meatball & Vegetable Soup, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014
Chicken Turkey & Broccoli Stromboli, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014
Asian Chicken Turkey Lettuce Cups, Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2014

These three recipes were grouped as 3 great meals that could be made with one grocery bag. It kind of seems like most three meals could probably fit in one bag, but I guess this is special because you should be able to pass through the express lane since it's just 10 unique items (although I feel like 2 cans would count as 2 items for express lane purposes. And the express line doesn't let you get your Monopoly tickets to participate in this year's edition of the frustratingly-never-even-win-$2 promotion).

The shopping list:

We had an incredibly cold, windy, snowy, rainy day on Thursday, so it was great to follow up with a warm bowl of soup.

This soup was very fast and easy. A lot of the seasoning just comes from the Italian-style canned tomatoes. The onion and carrot are sauteed a little first, but then the broccoli, orzo, and meatballs are just cooked in the broth so it simmers for a little while. I don't usually use Italian-style tomatoes, but it's nice to think that with that and some random vegetables you could make a soup almost any time. I guess that sprinkling in some Italian seasoning isn't the time-consuming step, though :-P And don't seasoned tomatoes probably have more sodium or something bad like that? Oh well.

For Valentine's Day we ate in and I made stromboli:

I don't know if this is really a stromboli though. I guess it's more like a calzone except it's log-shaped. A stromboli (according to Google) seems more like a roll. Like a cinnamon roll with salami and cheese instead of cinnamon. But this one was just closed up (and barely... I didn't do a good job rolling out the dough and so it got a lot of hole) as a tube, not a pinwheel. The filling was onion, broccoli, ground turkey, and cheese, and it was topped with more Italian-style tomatoes. So... a lot more of the same flavors as the previous dish. But I guess if it tasted good the first time, it's not bad to have it a second time? I used a pillsbury can of whole wheat pizza dough, and it tasted better than I expected it to.

On Monday we finished up the trio of meals with these lettuce cups:

The problem is that butter lettuce really doesn't want to make cups. This was the super messiest meal to eat. It tasted fine, although it wasn't anything too extremely compelling.

Apps from the freezer

Tonight was Open Doors Night, a biannual event at our dorm. The past two times we've gone easy and just put together a cheese platter and some truffles or other chocolate. This time, emboldened by his success with the meatball sliders he made for Superbowl, G wanted us to make some of the other recipes in the group. The theme was appetizers that can be made very quickly from a small number of ingredients, mostly from the frozen food section or pantry. The meatball sliders for example used frozen meatballs.

Today we made:
Chicken 'N' Mini Waffles, Every Day with Rachael Ray November 2013
Lemony-Dill Salmon Cakes, Every Day with Rachael Ray November 2013
Bacon-Tater Bites, Every Day with Rachael Ray November 2013
Ginger-Miso Sweet Pea Spread, Food & Wine December 2010 (not pictured)

The chicken and waffles sounded really cool, except for the fact that it literally is just a chicken nugget on top of an Eggo mini waffle. There's not too much to it! But luckily there is a sauce, which made it seem like it was something. The sauce is just honey and Sriracha (6:1), but is pretty tasty.
The lemony salmon cakes were a bit more complex. It's smoked salmon on top of a blend of feta, cream cheese, and lemon zest, on top of a mini pancake. The feta/cream cheese mix was kind of odd, but good, and the Aunt Jemima Frozen Lil' Griddles Mini-Pancakes were nice and sweet :)
The bacon-tater bites were just bacon wrapped around tater tots. We didn't make the sour cream + chive dip.
Individually, these were each super easy. But, since they were all frozen things, there wasn't a whole lot of space in the oven! So it was hard to get everything together and be warm at the same time. We baked the waffles and chicken nuggets separately, although I guess you could have baked them as assembled units to save on space if you wanted. The pancakes could be microwaved, but the tater tots and bacon needed to be cooked briefly separately before being wrapped and then baked for longer. That was a sight to be seen. Basically, the bacon and probably the tater tots too were just sweating grease. We poured off a lot after the first bake, but when we checked on them later during the second bake to see if they were crispy, they were just bathed in grease! I guess that's what makes them taste so good....
Almost everything was eaten, except a couple of the salmon pancakes and two waffles which were left behind by someone who just took off the chicken nuggets (!)
Noticing that these three apps all had meat, I wanted to make a veggie option too. I made this ginger-miso sweet pea spread, which is incidentally also from a frozen food. It's thawed frozen peas blended with green onions, ginger, jalapeño, and some miso. It makes for a kind of strange flavor combination. Everyone, upon hearing the ingredients, was really excited to try it. But, I don't think that many people went back for seconds or thirds. It's a little too odd, or maybe everyone was just full from bacon. I wonder if it would be better with edamame or something instead of the green peas.

Superbowl Spread

Today I made:
Meatball Sub Sliders, Every Day with Rachael Ray November 2013
Veggie Taco Bowls (made as a layered dip, not put into bowls), Family Circle September 2013
Tricolor Trio-- Kale, White Bean, what Chile Crostini, Every Day with Rachael Ray December 2013
Sweet Chile Hot Wings Drumsticks , Every Day with Rachael Ray January/February 2013
Guacamole

So I've never really watched football. I don't think G really does either, but anyway on Saturday he was bemoaning the fact that all of our friends were going to be watching the Super Bowl and we hadn't been invited to anyone's parties. (...maybe because we are homebodies who don't often go to parties even when we are invited...) I suggested that we throw our own party, because it would be fun to do the cooking thing, and we sent an email out to the dorm to see who else was "homeless" for the event. It turned out to be a party's worth! 

I've never been to a Super Bowl party, but the Internet told me that you've got to have some sort of wings, some sliders, chips and dips, and some veggie sticks (gotta pretend to be healthy, right?). We selected several recipes that seemed like they'd be pretty quick.

Although each dish was less than 15 minutes of hands on time, I started a few hours before the party to do whatever seemed like it could be done in advance. And at this leisurely pace, it took up basically the whole time until people arrived.

The sweet chile hot drumsticks were definitely the star food, and they got eaten up quickly. They're just slow cooked with soy sauce, honey, and sriracha (4:4:1 ratio, plus broth or water to cover) for a few hours, then broiled to get nicer looking. After slow cooking they looked pretty gross, but after baking they looked much nicer. We ended up baking them for longer than recommended, because the slow cooker took a while to get up to speed and we wanted to make sure it was cooked through.

The close second hit were the meatball subs. That was G's pick to make. They all got eaten too, and we made a second batch partway through the evening which also got devoured even though everyone was pretty full by that point. They're simply assemblies of purchased items, so they're very easy. It's jarred marinara, frozen meatballs, and slider buns. The buns are broiled with cheese (we used provolone), the meatballs are heated up in the marinara, and other than that it's just a bit of torn up basil.

The odd-one-out was the kale and white bean crostini. Too healthy? Not flavorful enough amongst all the other intensely spiced items? At the end of the evening we had several of these left, along with some dips. We repurposed the veggie taco bowl filling (beans, corn, spices) as quesadilla filling the next day for dinner.

Month 12 day 12: Quesadillas and cupcakes

Today I made:
Escarole, Sausage, and Fontina Mozzarella Quesadillas, Cooking Light January 2011
Take 5 Carrot Cupcakes, Food & Wine January 2011

(Cupcakes not pictured)

Tonight was book club again, so I wanted a fast dinner. I made these hearty quesadillas. They seem kind of fancy with their escarole and sausage, and it was pretty tasty. I'm not sure if the escarole added a whole lot of extra flavor, but I guess it's healthy? I could imagine using fennel or something would be yummy too. Instead of being cooked in the skillet, these are baked. I'd never considered making quesadillas that way before, but it would be a good way to make several at once instead of serially cooking them in the skillet and having the first one get cold and soggy by the time the last is made.

The cupcake recipe was from that same general store that made the chicken parmesan from this month. If all their recipes are like these two, then it's worth a stop if you're ever in Seattle! I'm normally not really into carrot cake, but these were delicious. They were surprisingly fast and easy too, once the carrot was all grated. That was by far the most time-consuming step. The cupcakes came out really moist (from using oil instead of butter?), lightly spiced, and didn't have any of the nuts or raisins which I normally don't like in carrot cake-- they were nice and smooth. Not too many people ate them at book club, but my lab enjoyed them the next day, and I felt like they were breakfast appropriate. Right? Anything with cream cheese frosting is a breakfast food, or something like that. And it's healthy, because vegetables. Yep...

Month 12 day 11: Flourless peanut butter chocolate cookies

Today I made:
Peanut butter and chocolate cookies, Every Day with Rachael Ray October 2011

(Sorry, no picture!)

For book club tonight I looked through the archives (my large, accordion file folder in which I've been storing all the extra delicious-looking recipes at the end of each month). One of the members is gluten-free, so I was excited to find this flourless cookie recipe. It's super simple:

• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chunks
• Beat first four ingredients. Stir in chocolate. Bake at 350 F for 10 min.

This is one of those recipes you could just always remember, like crepes are for my dad.

Even though there is no flour, these end up being a pretty normal cookie dough texture. After baking, they're a bit crumbly, but otherwise just seem like completely normal cookies. It's kind of magic! They get nicely puffy because of the baking soda (I guess) and have a good texture. We don't eat peanut butter that often, so it's actually not a staple for me that's always around. But if it is something you have on hand, then this is a great recipe to have in your back pocket for when you want a treat with minimal fuss or time.

Month 12 day 6: "Healthy" cookies

Today I made:
Chocolate-Cherry Heart Smart Cookies, Cooking Light January/February 2010

((Didn't take a photo, but they look like normal chocolate chip oatmeal cookies))

Tonight was the inaugural meeting of a book club to discuss "The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women." We're going to discuss its 12 chapters over 4 meetings. In addition to some carrots and fruit and other things, I made these cookies to serve. They are described in the magazine as not being bad for you. I guess, sure there is a bit of whole-wheat flour and oats, but I think it's funny that sometimes it seems like people use brown sugar instead of white or something and then it's healthy. Or bittersweet chocolate instead of milk chocolate. Just because there are dried cherries and oatmeal doesn't make something healthy... it is still a cookie :-P But given that it is described as "healthy" I decided that it means I can eat leftovers for breakfast. It's basically like eating oatmeal, amirite??

These are pretty good, although I am not really into dried cherries. The dried cherries cost like $8, too. They're just too .... sour? sweet? not sure. They're just too much something, and they don't taste like normal cherries, which are some of the best things ever. I will keep this recipe as a base, but I don't think I'll put in dried cherries next time.

Month 12 day 4: Chicken and Bell peppers

Today I made:
Roast Chicken with Balsamic Bell Peppers, Cooking Light January/February 2010
with non-marscapone mashed potatoes

Once when G and I first started getting involved in our dorm's house government, we had a long night of interviews for the various officer positions we'd be managing all year long. We had just about 30 minutes and were lamenting that there was no time for dinner, but I sent G off to his first interview and got to work in the kitchen (I didn't need to be there until the second interview). Following one of the Cooking Light's quick recipes, I whipped up a pork tenderloin with balsamic bell peppers served on pasta alongside a salad. G was floored, and he couldn't believe I made it so fast. We've made it since then, and I've never found it to be quite as good as in my memory, but it's still something G loves. It was our first time cooking with pork tenderloin and we've been set on that cut ever since. I think we'll always remember that meal.

Anyway, so this recipe sparked my memory, and I wanted to try it out. It's fairly similar, with rosemary, garlic, balsamic vinegar, and red and yellow bell peppers. I used chicken tenderloin, actually, although I didn't realize the coincidence until just now :) But this chicken is rubbed with fennel seeds before getting baked, which adds quite a different note. It's pretty good. The recipe was paired with one for marscapone mashed potatoes, but I forgot to pick up marscapone so just made normal noes. Pretty good! But, I don't know if G would let me make this-- I think he'd just want the pork :)

Month 11 day 16: Korean BBQ (for the third time?)

Today I made:
Korean Short Ribs, Food & Wine Magazine December 2010
Gingered Green Beans, Food & Wine Magazine December 2010

G likes short ribs, so we've done a few recipes over the year. Here was one more, by Food & Wine. It was sort of a peculiar recipe, with daikon and an Asian pear (although G went grocery shopping, and could only find western pears) in the marinade. It seemed like a waste! These were good, but not spectacularly better than the ones we've had so far, so we're not keeping this recipe.

I served it with rice and these gingered green beans. Although they refer to ginger in their name, the real dominant flavor is spice! They have a good helping of red pepper in them. You could barely taste the ginger at all. They were good, but I don't think we'll keep that recipe either. I like green beans that are sautéed with a lot of garlic though, yum!

Month 11 day 15: Kale and bacon pasta and banana cocoa

Today I made:
Orecchiette with Kale, Bacon, and Sun-Dried Tomatoes, Cooking Light December 2010
Banana Cream, Food Network Magazine December 2009

For dinner we made this light pasta, which is seemingly-healthy, except that everything is cooked in bacon fat-- yum! It's a very quick recipe. The kale is thrown in with the pasta for the last couple minutes to cook. The garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and red pepper are cooked in the drippings from the bacon, which is crumbled over the top. Everything is just thrown together at the end and topped with some lemon juice, which gives it a sort of odd, out of place tang.

I don't normally choose recipes with sun-dried tomatoes since I don't like them very much, but G commented that he really likes them. I didn't remember that! So maybe we should try it more often. This was a good recipe, although G pointed out that he liked the Sunday Sauce more! It's hard for vegetables to compete with meat, I guess :-P

After dinner I whipped up this cocoa. The recipe isn't online, but it's just 1.5 c milk, 1/2 banana, 1 T sugar, 1/2 t cinnamon, and 2.5 oz chocolate chips melted in. You're supposed to puree it, but I didn't want to dirty another dish so I just mashed up the banana as I stirred. It's ok, but not spectacular. Blending it might have helped, but I think also it might just make a better milkshake than a cocoa.

Month 11 day 11: Thai fish chowder

Today I made:
Thai Fish Chowder, Every Day with Rachael Ray December 2011

Mom saw this recipe on my list and thought it sounded really good. It was a really fast, one-pot recipe, so I think it had that appeal too after yesterday's multi-hour, multi-dirty-dish, pokey croquembouche adventure. It has very few ingredients (it's in the $12 dinner section of the magazine), with no prep since it uses coleslaw mix. We couldn't get green curry paste at Trader Joe's, so we used about a third of a bottle of their green curry simmer sauce. It did end up costing just about $12 and 10-20 minutes. It tasted great, too! Nice and fresh. This recipe is definitely a keeper.

Today we also assembled a yule log (of sorts) from the extra cream filling from the croquembouche. Mom made a cake from one of her cookbooks, since the recipe I had in mind from Saveur had pretty poor reviews. Since we used filling and not normal frosting, it came out pretty terrible looking and the "branch" on top slipped off! Oh well, it tasted good. Luckily we had some plastic decorations that made it look more deliberate.

Nailed it!

Month 11 day 8: Vanilla-spiced Nuts and buttermilk chicken

Today I made:
Vanilla-Spice Nuts, Cooking Light December 2010
and G made:
Buttermilk Ranch Chicken, Every Day with Rachael Ray December 2011 (not pictured)

Originally I tried to organize a cookie exchange party for today, but only one person signed up :( He decided to make cookies anyway and bring them to G and me, so I made these nuts to share with him. I also baked up some brown sugar cookies from dough that has been in our freezer, but they all got stuck to the cookie sheet and broke :( I ended up eating them all myself instead of sharing the broken shards. These nuts were super easy to make, but I wasn't sure about the flavor in the end. It tasted too strongly of egg for me.
We had another potluck to go to today, so while the nuts were in the oven I mixed up the marinade for the buttermilk ranch chicken. Then I had to tutor, so it was actually G who cooked the chicken up. He liked the recipe because it was easy (easy when someone does all the marinating for you ;) ). The chicken was really juicy-- maybe because of the buttermilk? It all got eaten at the potluck, so I guess other people liked it too!

Month 11 day 3: Polenta and mushrooms

Today I made:
Fontal Polenta with Mushroom Sauté, Cooking Light December 2010
Braised Kale, Cooking Light December 2010

Here's a dinner that is vegetarian but it very hearty.* And fast, too! The braised kale takes the longest (30 minutes). The polenta with mushrooms is pretty fast. The mushrooms are just cooked with some herbs, and polenta is just a matter of boiling liquid (in this case, a mix of broth and milk) and stirring in the polenta and some cheese. It could be done at this point, but the recipe has you put the polenta into dishes and broil it for 5 minutes before topping with the mushrooms.
We do like polenta, and of course kale. I feel like most kale recipes are the same, or very slight variations of the same thing. I guess as long as you like it, it's ok for it to be the same? G likes kale a lot. He liked the polenta and mushrooms too. These days it's not that common for him to remark on the food (he's spoiled!) but today he said it was good.

* And high volume! The kale overflowed the Dutch oven before it cooked down, the polenta was about to the brim of the saucepan I used, and the mushrooms were definitely crowded-- Julia Child would have disapproved!

Month 10 day 15: White bean soup

Today I made:
White Bean Soup with Kale Spinach and Chorizo Chorico, Cooking Light November 2010
Served with baked sweet potatoes

It's back to just the two of us again.

I was already hungry when I got home, but we didn't have anything to cook with on hand. Then, when I went to Shaw's, they had no kale and had rearranged their produce section (again). I started getting pretty hangry, but eventually just grabbed some spinach and got cooking. It's sad though, because kale in soup is one of the best things ever.

The other day G said we should make a white bean soup (specifically). When I asked why white beans, he observed that we've made a few soups with white beans in it, and those have been good. True, but I don't know if the beans are to credit. This soup was a little funny, for example, maybe because of the lack of kale :( Shaw's doesn't carry Spanish chorizo, but it has Portuguese chorico, which is apparently quite similar. The one they have isn't very flavorful though, so it just doesn't add much to the soup at all. Then, some of the beans were supposed to get mashed, which thickened the soup a little but made it a less enjoyable texture, I think. There really wasn't that much seasoning in this soup, and I wasn't impressed. Which is weird, because a soup I really like is essentially the same except for a can of tomatoes and subbing spicy portuguese sausage for the chorico. I dunno-- is it really just the tomatoes? Or would this have been amazing if it weren't for the spinach? I would really appreciate it if the grocery store could have some things more consistently :-P

In other news, I really should eat more sweet potatoes. They are pretty perfect.

Month 10 day 13: Panini and apple salad

Today we made:
Fall Apple Salad, Cooking Light 2010
Non-recipe panini with sautéed kale, Swiss cheese, and some deli turkey with red peppers or something in it.

We had a late lunch, after a morning in Harvard square drinking L.A. Burdicks hot chocolate and such.
G is a panini master with his George Foreman, so he put these together. (I was doing it wrong, not respecting that the cheese should be a moisture buffer between the bread and the kale, and that the multiple slices of meat and cheese should be alternated instead of clumped together.)
Meanwhile, I made this simple salad. Shockingly, the recipe is not online! But the dressing is as follows: 1 Tbs red wine vinegar, 1.5 tsp honey, 1 tsp Dijon, 1/4 tsp black pepper, 1/8 tsp salt, 1 minced garlic clove, and 2 Tbs. EVOO. It's meant to have butter lettuce, endive, and radicchio, but I just used a spring mix. And of course, an apple. Mom and Dad liked the dressing, and I thought it was pretty good too.

Month 10 day 12: Maple chicken and herbed biscuits

Today w made:
Maple-Glazed Chicken with Apple Brussels Sprout Slaw, Cooking Light November 2010
Herb-Scented Drop Biscuits, Cooking Light November 2010

Another 20-minute entree, paired with biscuits that don't take much longer. Mom made the biscuits while I made the chicken and slaw.

After cooking the chicken, it's glazed in a mix of red wine vinegar and maple syrup. It seems weird to add vinegar to the syrup, but its flavor didn't end up coming through much, so this was just nice and sweet. Everyone liked the chicken a lot.

I thought it would be weird to eat raw Brussels sprouts, so I decided to just cook the slaw through a bit. That ended up being pretty good, so I was glad that I did that. I think Brussels sprouts are best sautéed in olive oil with some cracked pepper.

These biscuits were great too. We didn't have any fresh thyme on hand, but we did have fresh rosemary, so Mom used that instead. It was really nice-- rosemary is so good! These had a nice texture--crunchy-toasty on the outside, but very soft and almost spongy on the inside (maybe from the yogurt in the dough?) I'd definitely want to make these biscuits again, and the chicken.

Month 10 day 11: Beef & Kale Stir-Fry

Today I made:
Beef & Kale Stir-Fry, Every Day with Rachael Ray November 2011

Here was another fast recipe while my parents are visiting. Can't spend the whole time cooking! In this, the beef gets browned, then the aromatics are added for 30 seconds. The kale gets simmered for 5 minutes, and then the sauce gets added and warmed through. Pretty quick! The rice is the part that takes the longest.

I think it's unusual to have kale in an Asiany dish (not that this is authentic), so this was kind of interesting. I liked the water chestnuts a lot and think I should add them to things more. When I went to Vietnam a couple of years ago, we took a boat tour of the Mekong Delta, including a visit to one of those floating markets. Our guides asked us what we wanted, and for some reason we chose water chestnuts, which they bought for us and opened fresh with a knife. I guess in America they're always canned, though. Maybe the demand is too low? Anyway, they have a good texture.

Month 10 day 10: Chicken Piccata

Today I made:
Chicken Piccata with Orzo, Cooking Light November 2010
Collard Greens with Tomatoes and Garlic, Food & Wine November 2010

Today my parents came to visit! They were coming around dinner time, so I made this to be ready when they arrived. I don't really like capers that much, but this chicken dish was nice and lemony. It was very fast ("SuperFast 20-Minute Cooking") and easy too, and I love orzo. I will definitely save this recipe. It's not a lot of chicken, though! I guess a quarter pound is chicken's serving size, but at 345 calories for a dinner this is certainly a Cooking Light recipe. That's a snack!

The collards were fine, but I think I'm just not really that into collards. I diced the jalapeño instead of putting it in halved and taking it out later, so I was a little worried that it might be too spicy, but it wasn't spicy at all (no seeds).