Gypsy Soup from The New Moosewood Cookbook

I went to the library yesterday and checked out a few cookbooks. It's a great way to explore the books you think might be worth purchasing or just find a few new recipes you like and then take the book back until you want it again.

One of the books I've heard is quite good is the vegetarian The New Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen
I was looking for a new soup for my "soup and sandwich Sunday" theme... I substituted canned tomatoes for fresh, used a can of garbanzo beans (aren't they the same as chickpeas?), and added a carrot.

The soup was good...but I think next time I'll cut down on the turmeric and perhaps leave out the cinnamon.

1 Tbs oil
2 small onions, diced (about 2 cups)
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 sweet potato, peeled and diced (about 2 cups)
1 carrot, diced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp turmeric (although I'd leave this out or lessen next time)
1 tsp dried basil
a dash of cinnamon (optional)
1 bay leaf
3 cups water
1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 small green pepper, seeded and diced
1 can diced tomatoes, with juice

Saute the onion, celery, sweet potato, and carrot in the oil for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the salt, paprika, turmeric (if using), basil, cinnamon (if using), bay leaf, and water. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook until everything is soft, about 15 minutes.

Add the garbanzo beans, green pepper, and tomatoes. Cover and simmer another 10 minutes or so, until everything is as soft as you like.

I found this a bit sweet, perhaps the turmeric and cinnamon. Perhaps my addition of carrot influenced that as well. The green peppers were still a bit crunchy, which made a nice contrast with everything else. I'm used to making soup with chicken broth, so perhaps I'd like this better with chicken broth. It was good, just not great.

Boneless Pork Ribs in the Slow Cooker

I bought a new crockpot a while ago. For years I had a great crockpot that turned out wonderful food. It finally broke apart, with the knob coming off so it had to be turned with a screwdriver and then the inner pot itself cracked, so I finally threw it away. I bought a new one that cooked fine, but the bottom got way too hot, to the point that I was stacking it on several layers of things so as to not damage my countertop, which is a Corian-like surface. Once, when I didn't do that, the counter actually split apart, splintering in a weird way. The counter guy came and fixed it, said he'd never seen anything like it and he knew people used crockpots on them all the time. I love the counters but that sure made me nervous, even though you cannot find where the split occurred. But I kept reading that the newer slow cookers cook hotter than the old ones and wrote it off to that until I was at a neighbors and felt underneath her slow cooker and felt NO heat coming out! I went home and threw that one away and bought a new one.

The new one spits and gets far hotter inside than I expected, but has almost no heat coming out of the bottom. However, I'm unwilling to leave it on while I'm away for hours at a time like I used to do. And things cook way too fast. I put these ribs in on low at noon and they were overdone by 6pm. I think I'll write to the manufacturer this time rather than assuming it's normal. The liquid is literally boiling (more than a slow simmer for sure). I like the idea of this one, with an automatic switching from cooking temperature to "warm" but I feel like I should be cooking on the warm setting at this point.

Anyway, here's the very easy recipe, if you can stretch the definition, for ribs in the winter. In the summer, I would either parboil and then quickly barbecue or barbecue on very low with a dry rub for many hours, my favorite if I'm around to turn them now and then.

Pork ribs (I used boneless)
barbecue sauce (Your favorite homemade or a bottle of store-bought)

Put the ribs in the slow cooker and cover with a barbecue sauce (however much it takes to coat them well). Cook on low for ...hmmm...what do I say here? In the old slow cooker, I would have said 8 hours. In the new one, 6 was too many and they came out a bit dry because so much of the sauce had evaporated.

Maybe I should go haunt the thrift shops and find a good old fashioned cooker.

They go great with cornbread. I have a few different cornbread recipes I use dependent on what I have around. This one requires nothing extraordinary in the pantry and uses some brown sugar for sweetener. This one uses less milk and adds sour cream or yogurt instead.

Oh, if you're looking for slow cooker recipes, check out Fix It and Forget It. I picked this up at Costco a year or so ago and have had fun exploring the different ideas. There are multiple similar recipes, which I like because I can read through several and get the basic gist and then get creative. Others might be frustrated by the repetition. I see there's a new "light" version out now but haven't picked it up yet.

Another Cauliflower Thing...

I have been trying to use seasonal vegetables more and cauliflower keeps jumping into the grocery cart. I like it raw, dipped in something preferably. I did like it fried. It's good covered in cheese sauce, but what isn't? I tried a sort of healthy cheese cauliflower thing tonight and will probably not repeat it. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good. Just sort of there. The recipe was from Recipes from a Kitchen Garden, where I've certainly found other good ideas for vegetables. It comes from Shepherd's Seeds where I often buy my garden seeds and is filled with cute drawings. Maybe I should actually grow it in order to really enjoy it. Maybe it was the Swiss cheese... Cheddar is more to my pedestrian tastes I admit.

1 head cauliflower, cut in florets
2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs milk
1/2 cup grated Swiss cheese (or something!)
3 Tbs bread crumbs (I used Panko)
3 Tbs grated Parmesan
dash of nutmeg

Steam or simmer the cauliflower until soft, then drain. Mash with the butter, milk, and Swiss cheese. Put in a greased shallow casserole dish, sprinkle with the bread crumbs, Parmesan, and nutmeg. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Chicken Coconut Soup

I ended up doing two recipes from The Minimalist Cooks Dinner by Mark Bittman last night, both of which I'd cooked before. I really like this book and need to remember to get it out more often. The recipes are generally quite suitable for weeknight cooking, with a lot of fish and seafood recipes. Since I'm trying to eat more fish lately, this is a big help! Last night I made the Shrimp with Worcestershire Sauce and the Coconut Rice with Red Beans.

Then because I had two cans of coconut milk in the pantry, I decided to make some soup as well. I ended up trying the Chicken Coconut Soup from Simply Thai Cooking. It was much milder than I expected, but quite good. The kids were not impressed, but then they were too busy scarfing down the shrimp to notice I think. I didn't have lemongrass but had recently bought a tube of it that I'd seen at the grocery store. I also didn't have lime leaves so used lime juice, as suggested.

1 15 ounce can coconut milk
1 cup water
1 inch ginger, sliced
1 squirt lemongrass
1 boneless skinless chicken breast, sliced thinly
1 Tbs lime juice
2 Tbs lemon juice
1 Tbs fish sauce
1 Tbs sugar

Bring the coconut milk and water to just under a simmer with the ginger, lemongrass, and lime juice. Heat for a few minutes while you slice up the chicken breast. (It's easiest to slice meat thinly when it's partially frozen. I used a breast from the freezer last night so just thawed it partially.)

Add the chicken slices and cook until done, about 10 minutes. Add the lime juice, lemon juice, fish sauce, and sugar and heat through. Taste and adjust. (If I'd had lime leaves, they would have been added with the ginger and lemongrass at the beginning.)

Don't eat the ginger slices!

Butternut Squash Soup

I've been experimenting with new vegetables this winter and the butternut squash has become a favorite. I kept seeing recipes for soup with it and finally got a chance to try it this weekend. Dang, it was good! I had a recipe from Bon Appetit that I'd been eyeballing, but then searched online and found this one at Elise's Simply Recipes and decided to go with that one. They both had an apple with the squash, but the Bon Appetit one had no carrot and celery. I always think of sauteed onion, carrot, and celery as a 'three sisters' kind of base for so many things. They smell heavenly cooking and are the basis for some many good things.

I served this soup as a first course for some turkey tetrazinni, using some leftover diced cooked turkey. I didn't actually vary much, unusual these days, but as written the recipe just sounded "right". I did saute the vegetables in a combination of olive oil and butter, as I normally do. And I had thawed 6 cups of chicken broth and only needed 2 for the turkey tetrazinni so used a bit more broth here.

1 pat of butter (about 1/2 a tablespoon)
1 dollop of olive oil (about 1/2 a tablespoon)
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 green apple, peeled, cored, and chopped
1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and chopped
4 cups chicken broth
dash each cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and pepper
sour cream as garnish

Heat the oil and butter, then saute the onion, carrot, and celery about 5 minutes, until softened. Add the squash, apple, chicken broth, and spices and simmer until the squash is soft. I had large chunks so this took about 30 minutes but I wasn't in a hurry. It may have been done sooner and I just didn't check.

Puree the soup. I love my hand immersion blender for stuff like this. Serve with a dollop of sour cream in each bowl. Follow the link above for a picture--it's a much nicer one than I would have managed!

I served this again as leftovers last night, with some barbecued pork tenderloin and sauteed apples. It is really quite good!

Salmon Cakes

I stole a recipe from my all time favorite Fannie Farmer cookbook and turned crab cakes into salmon cakes tonight, using the salmon leftover from last night, breadcrumbs and all. Another hit!

1 pound cooked salmon

1 egg
6 Tbs mayonnaise
2 Tbs lemon juice
1 Tbs Dijon mustard
1 green onion, minced
1 Tbs dried parsley
a dash or two or three of cayenne

1 1/2 cups bread crumbs

1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup oil

Mix the egg, mayo, lemon juice, mustard, green onion, parsley, and cayenne. Add the salmon (or crab, as I've done in the past) and mix well. This actually came out a bit moister than necessary. It tasted absolutely wonderful but might have been a bit easier to handle had I started with 3-4 Tbs of mayo and increased as needed. Still, it worked. Anyway, mix it all together, add the salmon and mix well. Taste and adjust. I ended up doubling the amount of mustard called for in the original and getting brave enough to add the cayenne even though I was cooking for kids. It was tasty, but not too spicy, and the kids devoured it!

Heat the oil and butter over medium high heat. I made bread crumbs by putting a couple of slices of bread in the food processor and whirling it into crumbs only, I admit, because I'd run out of the dried Progresso crumbs I normally keep on hand. But they were great. I used to always make my own bread crumbs (from the heels no one wants to eat) and have gotten out of the habit, a flaw I think I will rectify.

Put your bread crumbs on some small plate or pie pan. Pick up a handful of the salmon mixture and pat it into a patty shape, then press down into the crumbs. Turn over and press down, then gently pick up and place in the hot oil and butter. Repeat until your pan is full, but not crowded. After a couple of minutes, slice the patties around so any hot spots get shared. When they're browned on the one side, flip them over carefully and cook until browned on the other side, about 4 minutes on each side.


Serve hot as is, or with the tartar sauce of your choice. A simple mixture of mayonnaise, lemon juice, and capers goes very well! If you need it red, add a shot of ketchup. And/or serve with slices of lemon.

My kids devoured these, but then, they're both salmon lovers. One has put dibs in on one of the three patties that were left for her lunch tomorrow. I have made similar fish cakes with leftover crab before and I believe once with canned salmon. These were unbelievably better. One of the better "leftover" recipes I have I think.

Slow Baked Salmon

My parents came down yesterday. Everyone but me loves salmon so I decided to fix that, plus it went with my kid-oriented Valentine theme of pink and red. I also had red potatoes, hearts of palm salad, and asparagus. Okay, the asparagus sort of blew the theme but we all love it. The girls had the day off school and baked a cake with pink frosting for dessert and I bought some strawberry ice cream to go with it. All in all, a wonderful meal with wonderful company! (Hi Mom!)

My mom cooks salmon much more often than I do so I was a bit nervous. In the past, I've poached it or barbecued it and made my mom's mango-salsa that I love. The last time I cooked salmon I'd noted Jacques Pepin's slow cook method and noted it in my mental list of "want to try." Last night, I did, skipping his salsa-Mayo based dressing but following slow cooked method of baking the salmon at 200 degrees F, although I forgot to put his herbs on at the end. This was delicious! Even I liked it...

salmon filet(s)
oil
salt and pepper
bread crumbs with hazelnuts

I took some whole grain bread and put it in the food processor with some hazelnuts I had in the freezer, that my sister and I had picked up at Trader Joe's a while ago.

Jacques says you can cook this on your serving platter, due to the low oven temperature, but I didn't have a serving platter large enough, so we did it on a jelly roll pan covered with some foil.

I preheated the oven to 200 while I rubbed the foil with some olive oil, put the salmon skin-side down, sprinkled with salt and pepper and put the bread crumb-hazelnut mixture on top. I popped the pan in the oven and went and sat in the living room with a glass of wine and visited with my parents for a while. Part of what attracted me to this recipe was the idea of being able to do prep work ahead of time and then visit with guests! Jacques says to cook it for 45 minutes but it was still a touch rare for our tastes at that point so we cooked it another 20 minutes or so while microwaving the red potatoes, cooking up the asparagus, and making the salad.

We also mixed up some mayonnaise, lemon juice, and capers for the salmon.

We ate a lot of salmon and it was really good! Of course, I bought too much, always preferring to be forced into creativity with leftovers than not have enough food. Tonight I made salmon cakes with the leftovers and they were great also. Perhaps, the salmon itself (fresh Pacific) was especially good because I just ate salmon for dinner two nights in a row and loved it both nights.

Dinner Bread

Mark Brittman has this recipe but calls for "instant yeast" and says you can skip the rise. I just buy the 2 pound packs of regular yeast at Costco. I keep a small jar in the refrigerator and keep the rest in the freezer. Since I don't have the "instant yeast" around I find the rising time necessary, but you can still turn out a small loaf of bread in a couple of hours that is decent and home-baked. I also make this in my KitchenAid mixer with the dough hook periodically.

2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp yeast
1 1/4 cup warm water

In a food processor, mix the flour, yeast, and salt until blended. Add the water and mix about 30 seconds. Shape into a loaf, round or oblong, and place on a greased pan. Cover with a towel and let rise in a warm place for an hour. (You can get by with less if need be. I like to turn the oven on for a minute, then turn it off and put the bread in there to rise if I don't need the oven in the meantime.)

Preheat the oven to 425 and bake for 30 to 40 minutes. Let sit for 10 minutes before slicing.

Baked Creamy Cauliflower

Searching through the vegetable bin this evening, I saw the cauliflower I'd bought earlier. My cauliflower always ends up with (or starts with?) grey spots on it, but I just cut them off. I'm guessing that just means they're a bit older than they should be. The joys of supermarket shopping. Anyway, I've done Fried Cauliflower, Cauliflower and Carrots, and Zucchini, and a plain cheese sauce on cauliflower but none of those sounded good tonight. I had torn out a recipe for a mashed cauliflower (a la mashed potatoes) but couldn't find it, so I tried this.

1 head cauliflower, cut in florets
1/3 cup milk
1 egg
1/4 cup grated Swiss cheese
3 Tbs butter, divided
salt and pepper
1-2 Tbs bread crumbs

Cook the cauliflower in simmering water until soft, about 15-20 minutes. Drain. (On the CheapCooking theme, save the water for some soup.)

Mash the cauliflower, milk, egg, cheese, and 2 Tbs of the butter together. Spread in a greased loaf pan or small casserole dish. Sprinkle the bread crumbs on the top and dot the last tablespoon of butter on it.

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or so.

Sauteed Chicken with Olives, Capers, and Onions

The first time I made a piccata sauce I was up at Sea Ranch with a friend, staying in a rental house. We had some leftover boneless pork chops and I searched through some Internet recipe sites looking for ideas. For some reason we had capers, and an onion, and a lemon. It's tough cooking in a rental house, but fun. You don't have your pantry items that you can count on and yet, being on vacation, you're in an experimental mood. I can't think why we would have had the small jar of capers, but they must have been leftover from something earlier in the week. We pounded the meat, dredged it in flour, and cooked it up like this. Now I mostly do it with chicken breasts but every time I make this, I think of that house on the cliff, sitting in the hot tub with the fog rolling over the hills at night, hearing the waves break on the beach, sipping a glass of wine after a delicious dinner.

I did a piccata variation tonight, mainly because I started out to make one thing, realized I had misread the recipe and needed to make some adjustments. I had already opened a can of black olives before I noted the recipe called for bone-in chicken breasts and I had boneless skinless chicken breasts. I decided to just do the chicken piccata we love but add some black olives to it. The recipe I'd been looking at, from the Mark Bittman book The Minimalist Cooks Dinner, had some diced tomatoes, black olives and capers, which sounded really good to me. But this piccata variation was a bit quicker and the olives added a nice touch.

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1/4 cup flour
salt and pepper
1 Tbs oil
1 Tbs butter
1/4 cup onion, diced
1/4 cup black olives, chopped
2 Tbs capers
the juice from 1/3 of a lemon
1/2 cup liquid (chicken broth and/or white wine)

If you like, pound the chicken until thin. It cooks more quickly this way and tastes better to me, but takes a bit more effort. Either way, salt and pepper the chicken breasts. Heat the oil and butter, dredge the chicken breasts in flour, and then lay them in the pan. Cook a couple of minutes and turn the meat around (but not over) to cook evenly. A few minutes later, turn the chicken breasts and cook until done. Remove to a platter and keep warm in a 200 degree oven.

Add the onion and cook a few minutes until softened. Turn the heat up to medium high and add the wine and/or broth. I like to use about half and half if I have both available but either one by itself works fine, too. Scrape the pan to loosen up any bits, then add the capers and olives and lemon juice. Simmer until the liquid is reduced by half. Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve.

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The basics of this sauce, to me, are the wine, capers, and lemon juice. You can add onions, mushrooms, peppers, and, now, black olives as desired. Use pork or chicken. And I think veal is the original meat for piccata but I've never cooked it.

"Italian" Funeral Potatoes

There's a very old recipe called Funeral Potatoes, which includes frozen hash browns, cream of chicken soup, butter, grated Cheddar cheese, sour cream, and usually some sort of butter and cereal crumb topping, made from Corn Flakes. In my ongoing pantry challenge to use up a few things I decided to do something with the bag of hashbrown potatoes last night for dinner, but didn't have any cream of chicken soup (and didn't feel like making any from scratch, although it's easy enough) and didn't have any Cheddar cheese either. What I did have was cream of mushroom soup and the dregs in a couple of bags of shredded cheese a friend had brought for something. Here's what I did:

1 pound frozen shredded (hash brown) potatoes
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup butter, melted (could easily do with 1/4 next time, or even skip)
1/2 cup or so grated mozzarella
1/4 cup or so grated Parmesan
1/2 cup or so sour cream (I just emptied what was left in my container)

Mix it all together and put in an 8x8 pan. (You could grease this first for easier clean-up.) Bake at 350 for 1 hour or so.

This is not a diet dish obviously! I really liked the milder flavors of the mozzarella rather than the sharper Cheddar for a change. You could easily lighten this by using yogurt instead of sour cream, fat-free cream of whatever soup, and totally skipping the butter I think. It went great with the Catalina Apricot Chicken I made and bakes in the same time frame, which is always a bonus.

Catalina Apricot Chicken

I was looking for a way to bake some bone-in chicken last night and wanted something other than my usuals so went thumbing through a few "community fundraiser" cookbooks. I had picked up half a dozen of them at the last library book sale for about 25 cents each. Eventually I'll donate most of the back again and they can resell them. I tweaked an easy one so I could use up some Catalina dressing I had sitting around. This made more sauce than I needed for the 4 thighs I was making, but probably wouldn't have been enough for twice that.

1/2 a bottle Catalina dressing
1 packet onion soup mix
1/4 cup or so of apricot jam
4 bone-in chicken thighs

Mix the dressing, soup mix, and jam together. Put the chicken in a baking dish, skin side up, and pour the dressing mix over the chicken. Bake at 350 until done, about 1 hour.

This came out great! The dressing and apricot mix gave the skin a wonderful flavor. The skin got crisp but not blackened at all. The chicken was very moist and flavorful. It was just perfect.

The original recipe called for more dressing and jam, basically double this. But I could tell that would be way too much. I didn't bother splitting the onion soup mix in half since I like the onion flavor. The original recipe also called for Russian dressing. I found a recipe for that in an old cookbook but opted to experiment and use up the Catalina since I'd been looking for something easy. Definitely a repeat here. It was so good I forgot to take pictures!

Yellow Squash with Pepperoni

I was looking for a side dish that would get a few vegetables in with our pepperoncini beef sandwiches tonight. We've had asparagus, spinach, and carrots this week so I wanted something of a different color. I settled on some yellow squash from Recipes from a Kitchen Garden, although I didn't have any fresh basil and thought the oil and butter would be a bit heavy, so decreased them.

2 yellow squash, cubed
2 tsp oil and 2 tsp butter
1/2 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced pepperoni
1/4/ cup grated Parmesan

Saute the squash in the butter and oil. Add the onion and pepperoni and continue cooking until the squash is tender but not mush and the pepperoni is a bit crispy and the onions are soft. Sprinkle with Parmesan, toss, and serve.

Slow Cooker Roast with Pepperoncini

I have seen various recipes about cooking a beef or pork roast in the crockpot with a jar of pepperoncini and finally tried it today. I had bought a new crockpot recently. My old one always felt too hot on the bottom and in fact one day caused my Corian-like (but not Corian) counter to actually split apart from the heat one day. They were able to repair it so that you cannot see a thing but it worried me. I had heard that the newer crockpots were hotter than the old ones and had put it off to that. But when I was at a friend's recently she had a brand new crockpot and it didn't get near as hot on the bottom as mine did. So I tossed mine and bought a new one. This was the break-in night.

The recipes varied quite a bit, with some having just a roast and a 16 ounce jar of pepperoncini dumped over it to others that had the roast with garlic cloves inserted in slits. Some said put the roast on slices of onion; others just had the roast sit in the crockpot. Some had a packet of dry Italian dressing mix sprinkled over the roast; others had Italian herbs. Some had a can or bottle of beer poured over the roast; others had a cup or two of beef broth. One had both. One had nothing.

What I did:

one beef roast
1 onion, sliced
salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a packet of Italian dressing mix
1 16 ounce jar of pepperoncini and liquid
1 12 oz bottle of beer
enough water to cover the roast

I laid the onion slices on the bottom of the pot, put the roast on top, sprinkled the roast with salt, pepper, garlic powder and Italian seasoning mix. I then poured the whole jar of pepperoncini over the roast, and added the beer. I then added enough water to cover the roast.

I cooked it on low all day, from 8:30 am to about 6pm. Low on this crockpot has the liquid sputtering and the lid spitting out bits of hot liquid. This is apparently normal for newer crockpots. On the plus side, the bottom of the crockpot did not emit much eat so I can probably forego my double-stacking of hot plates and so forth to protect the counter.

When I went to slice the meat for sandwiches, it literally fell apart. Self-shredding roast is not a bad thing for sandwiches, but obviously these do cook much at a much higher temperature than I'm used to. I used to leave food in crockpots all day and sometimes a roast would still be rare.

I put the shredded meat on a French roll along with some shredded mozzarella. On mine, I added some of the peppers (after tearing of the stems) and onion. Oh, heaven! A spicy, tasty, juicy, sweet and hot sandwich. Really, really good.

Alas, it was a bit spicy for the kids even though they did not put any peppers on their sandwiches. One thought it was fine after sprinkling a bit of salt on it to cut the spice. They both liked them, but would have preferred the meat a bit milder. I think the leftovers are all mine. And there are way more peppers than I needed for a roast of this size. Or else we like meatier sandwiches.

Notes for next time: Fewer peppers, more water.

Corn & Potato Chowder, BBQ Beef Sandwiches

I had a boring cooking week, as I mentioned before. Then we ordered a pizza on Friday night and I was out to a friend's last night. Tonight I needed to use up some of the leftover London Broil I fixed Thursday night. In fact, I should probably freeze the rest of it as it's getting near the end of my comfort zone in terms of food safety.

But tonight, I sliced up some of the beef and heated it up with some honey barbecue sauce from a jar. I served it up on some French rolls and it was great.

My youngest had requested potato soup the other night so I set out to make some. My favorite potato soup requires starting with baked potatoes, and is roughly like this. I will periodically buy a 10 pound bag of potatoes and bake most of them up, making twice baked potatoes with about half of them and potato soup with the rest. I find it freezes well and we all like it. But tonight I didn't want to bake potatoes and I've been on a kick to use up some pantry items, like some canned creamed corn I had around.

1/2 cup water
2 Russet potatoes, peeled and diced
1/2 tsp salt
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 celery stalks, diced
2 15 oz cans of creamed corn
1.5 cups of milk
1/2 cup grated Cheddar

Bring the water to a simmer and add the potato, salt, carrots, and celery. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the creamed corn and simmer another 10 minutes. Add the milk and cheese and heat through.

This was really quite good. Simple but good. I think were I to do it again I might add some diced red pepper, to add a bit of color and a little burst of flavor.

Everyday cooking

I actually sat down and planned the week's menus on Sunday morning, perusing the grocery ads for the loss leaders and planning around them. I knew I had a heavy work load this week, plus a few other "life" interruptions, like getting the fostered puppies neutered, taking delivery of the new washer and dryer (I swear those puppies wore out that old dryer!), lunch with a friend...

But I ended up cooking almost nothing new! So what to write? I do like having a record of sorts of what I fixed for company but if I'm not experimenting or trying something new, the daily meals get a bit boring to document. And if they're boring to me to write, they must doubly boring to read!

I did make naan with the butter chicken this time. A basic bread dough with yogurt, rolled into small circles and baked quickly. They were okay. Not great. Nothing like in the Indian restaurants I enjoy so much. The butter chicken itself is always delicious and actually pretty easy and quick. The only trick these days is finding the blender parts as my kids are into making smoothies these days for an after school snack.

I decided to make a light soup after dinner so I could have some for lunch tomorrow with some leftover eggplant Parmesan. I eat at home most days and am usually trying to eat as quickly as possible so I can get my work done before the kids get home. I had some leftover stir-fried vegetables from dinner (carrots, yellow zucchini, green onions, and broccoli) and decided to just simmer those plus a diced white onion and an extra carrot, grated. (I just use the peeler rather than actually grating them and dirtying another thing!) I brought some water to boil, added the new vegetables and then the older ones, threw in some chopped fresh spinach, and, a la Jacques Pepin's Fast Food My Way, some instant grits. (I'm not sure why I even had instant grits in the pantry, to be honest. Perhaps when I was exploring other breakfast grains for the child who loves corn meal mush.) A bit of salt and pepper and then simmer a few minutes. I'll try to remember to post a review tomorrow. I took a few sips after dinner tonight and it tasted light, but good. A bit of cheese on it tomorrow and it should be just about right.

Meal Building Blocks in the Freezer

I know a lot of people like to cook ahead and have a stash of prepared meals in their freezers. I prefer to have building blocks of meals, giving me the ultimate flexibility. I might boil or brown a few pounds of hamburger at a time, then freeze in 2 cup portions. I can then later pull out a package for spaghetti sauce, tacos, shepherd's pie, or chili and skip the whole browning step. I freeze some meats in marinades so that I can pull out a package and let it defrost, then cook it without having to mix up any marinades. This works great for flank steak, chicken, pork tenderloins, and more. I almost always have some cooked beans and some soups in there as well, also chicken broth in 1, 2 and 4 cup portions.

Tonight I concocted a "freshly cooked" meal from my freezer. Over the weekend I had breaded and fried a couple of eggplants and then frozen them. Late last summer I had cooked up a bunch of marinara sauce from the tomatoes in my garden. And at some point a few weeks ago I made garlic bread and frozen half the loaf, all buttered and ready to go. I could have pulled the grated cheese out of the freezer as well, but didn't tonight.

I defrosted the sauce, actually two smaller packages. One turned out to have some sausage slices in it (whoops! Bad labeling!) but I decided to use it anyway. I layered the eggplant, the sauce, and the cheeses, then baked for 45 minutes. When the eggplant Parmesan was done, I popped the garlic bread in the oven. It was mostly defrosted by this time and heated right up.

This turned out good and the small bit of sausage in there was actually quite excellent, adding just a bit of spice and texture.