Books and Garlicky Bean Enchiladas

I'm still unemployed, but I'm officially used to it now.  I also know the right job will come along in due time.  Besides job searching and cooking I have been reading a ton.  So I'd like to talk about Goodreads. If you love to read and haven't checked out Goodreads you should.  It's a social network of readers and authors.  You can set up a profile and keep track of all the books you've read and all the books you want to read.  People review books, there are book clubs, reading challenges, author discussions, and even a giveaway section!  This year they added a section where you could set a reading goal for the year.  Feeling hopeful I decided to challenge myself and commit to reading 75 books by the end of the year.  Due to my recent layoff I'm actually almost there!  Today I finished my 57th book (The Healer's Apprentice) and have started the 58th (The Greatest Knight).  Victory should be mine by December!  Once I've reached my goal, I'm going to post a list of the books I read this year on The Hesitant Cook.  Those of you who are interested can check out what I read and how many stars I gave the books.  I'm hoping my challenge to myself will encourage all of you to take some time and read for pleasure, it really is very relaxing.

Reading might be relaxing, but cooking can still get my blood boiling.  A recent event really set me off and I was ready to throw in the towel.  When the weather started to get cooler, I started craving Chicken Pot Pie.  The anticipation was super high and I got as far as getting the pie over to the oven, when all of a sudden it just got to be too heavy (I blame my carpal tunnel for this, although it was probably just clumsiness) and the pie ended up face down on the floor.  The insides broke through the top crust, so there was no saving it.  Devastation is what I felt after that and I didn't have any more of the ingredients to start over.  When this first happened I didn't want to tell anyone, because it was so embarrassing and I felt terrible about what happened.  Luckily, I had a change of heart and decided to tell all of you.  Now that I've told you, if something like that happens to you or has you don't have to feel so alone.  Mistakes in the kitchen happen to everyone, some more than others!

Now on to a success!

Let's talk about Garlicky Bean Enchiladas.  This is a recipe that I use a lot.  In fact not long after making these for THC, I made them again for our supper club (the theme was garlic)!  If you don't like garlic, then you might be a little crazy and you also won't like these enchiladas very much.  Not a problem for me since I can eat garlic like candy (as long as it's cooked!)  The only part of this recipe that is a little bit of a challenge for me is the frying of the corn tortillas.  Frying and I are not compatible, but this is only mild frying so I can handle it.  Another suggestion I would make is to add 3/4 cup-1 cup broth (you can use chicken or vegetable broth).  According to the recipe you need 1/3 of a cup, but from my experience the beans are too dry without more broth.  One of the items in this recipe I really love is the salsa verde.  I can't get enough of that stuff!

                                                           

Bean Mixture

fried corn tortillas, all rolled up and ready to go

                                             and now all dressed up and to the oven they go

                                                                    Finished Product

and yes that red stuff is Sriracha!

Cost:  (I l already had the oil and garlic)

Veggie Oil:  $2.29

Garlic:  $0.50

(2) Cannellini Beans:  $1.58

Broth:  $0.79

Tortillas:  $1.19

Salsa:  $2.99

Cheese:  $2.99

Total Cost:  $15.12 (Note you will have extra broth, oil, and cheese to use for another recipe!)

Not as cheap as I thought it was to make these enchiladas, but there are leftovers for lunch for a few days.  So it's worth it!  You can also make a batch of these and freeze them before you bake for a busy night when all you have time to do is throw something in the oven.  

Next up:  Potato and Leek Pizza (this was super!) I can't wait to make more!

Last Few Weeks

I've finally started to settle in and accept my unemployed status.  It's tough being unemployed and yes I do realize that sounds ridiculous.  You go through so many different emotions.  At first I was sad to leave the working world.  The first week felt like a stay-cation.  I did as much and as little as I wanted to do and that brought me happiness.  Along comes the second week and reality set in pretty quickly.  There was anger (how come everyone else gets to work!), depression (I'm a sad, boring person now and I hate housework), and anxiety (am I ever going to work again?) all thrown into the mix..  And the BOREDOM!  Never in my life have I ever felt this kind of cabin fever before.  Now I get excited to run even the most mundane errands.  Currently I am in my third week of unemployment and I've dropped the anxiety and anger this week (had an interview Monday).  The depression has turned mainly just into boredom.   It's finally the time to get back to blogging.


Obviously I'm still trying to stick with making cheap yet delicious dishes.  Usually while I'm looking through my recipes I'll look at the ingredient list.  If I have a lot of ingredients on the list and the ones I have to purchase are inexpensive that recipe will make the cut.  Since I've been a bit of a slacker when it comes to blogging, I'm going to recap a few recipes I made.


Rachael Ray's Salsa Stoup and Double-Decker Baked Quesadillas:  I love soup and what could be better than turning salsa into a soup! The quesadillas are cheese and scallion; the scallions really gave these more flavor then you normally get with a cheese quesadilla. I will be adding scallions, leek, or shallots to my cheese quesadillas from now on.


Total Cost:  (I already had the oil, onion, garlic and omitted the cilantro and sour cream) $13.49

Mushroom and Sausage Ragu with Polenta:  Yum this was a great meal!  I added some sauteed kale to it because it needed more veggies and the kale was the perfect choice.  Total cost:   (I had the oil, onion, garlic, salt, and butter and substituted baby bella's for creminis)  $11.65

Both of these recipes had enough left over for lunches the next day.  

That's my update for now.  Next up:  Garlic and Bean Enchiladas and Sweet Potato Soup

Meatless Monday-Curried Lentils and Potatoes

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  I only have 3 1/2 more days of work left.  Then I guess you can say that I will be a full time blogger.  Due to the fact that I will be unemployed, I've decided to continue trying recipes that are budget friendly.  I've also decided that anytime I do go out to eat, I will be reviewing the food and the restaurant.  If my unemployment status continues for even longer than I anticipate, I might be changing things up even more.  For now these are the simple changes I will be making.  Nothing too drastic or different.     

Okay back to the food.  I tried another Mark Bittman recipe, Curried Lentils and Potatoes.  That's actually called Dal, in Indian cooking.  I have a new found love of lentils and could eat them daily or at least weekly.  They are also fairly inexpensive ingredient to cook with and are a good source of fiber.  They even have been shown to lower cholesterol and since I'm going to be eating cheaply this is very important to me.  Cheap sometimes means things might be higher in fat, calories, or lacking in nutritional value, and that's why lentils are going to become an even bigger part of my diet. 

Ingredients needed:  1 cup of brown lentils (I'm sure you could use any color you have on hand), 3 1/2 cups of water, coconut milk (my choice!), or stock, 1 tbsp of curry powder, 2 medium potatoes, and salt and pepper. 

Cook the lentils in the liquid of your choice seasoned with the curry powder.  Once you bring the liquid to a boil you bring it down to a simmer and let it cook for about 15 minutes or until the lentils have started absorbing the water.  Next add the potatoes (which should be cut into chunks) and cover the pot, and cook for another 10 minutes.  At this point you need to season it all a bit with some salt.  Then cook for another 5 minutes until everything is tender and add some pepper.  If you make some rice and pick up some Naan bread from Wegman's you have a substantial meal. 

Final Product:

                                         (sorry for the lack of pictures, I forgot to take more!)

My thoughts:  Easy recipe folks, put this one into your weekly rotation or at least your monthly rotation.  You can't go wrong! I'm going to be making this again next week, it's perfect for the Fall and Winter months.

Okay calculation time (remember all my calculations are rough estimates):
Ingredients I already had:  Lentils and Curry

Lentils/$0.75 (I just calculated for half of a bag)
2 Potatoes/$1.19
Curry/$1.50 (split one jar into 4 servings)
2 cans Coconut Milk/$2.78
Naan/$2.99
Rice/$0.20 (1 cup of rice)

Total/$8.66

After seeing the total of this meal I now know it will be used very often while I am unemployed.  We each had a serving for dinner and there was still enough left for us to both have it for lunch too! I love budget meals!! 

Next up:  Salsa Soup with Cheese Quesadillas

Heading South

When it comes to food, I'm a Southern girl at heart.  There is just something about Southern food that warms you up inside and makes you feel happy.  Sadly I don't come across many recipes for Southern food that are healthy enough for me to eat them every week.  There are recipes where someone thought it was a good idea make a dish like fried chicken and then they go an bake it.  Did you REALLY enjoy that baked "fried" chicken?  Did it make you drool and crave more?  I doubt it!  As they say, everything in moderation!  Don't try to make a dish that is amazing and totally bad for you into something healthy, it won't work.  You won't be satisfied.  Just suck it up and cook the unhealthy way every once in awhile.  It's worth it!

So I was browsing one of my favorite food sites Serious Eats and came across a recipe for Sauteed Andouille,and Green with Grits.  Just looking at the picture my stomach started to growl.  I couldn't wait to go out and get the ingredients for this dish and cook it up!  This recipe required three pots/pans on my stove at once (that always freaks me out!) and only some minor prep work.

In the big pot I boiled the collard greens for about 8-10 minutes.  Yum, I love greens!

While they were cooking I started the grits.  Bring some salted milk and water to a simmer then turn the heat down so you get a low simmer and whisk in the grits.  These will cook for 20 minutes or so.  Meanwhile you should drain your greens and move on to cooking the rest of the vegetables and sausage.  Brown your sliced sausage for a few minutes on each side.  Remove the sausage from the pan and sautee the shallots (I love these things and I love that fact that I have been using them a lot lately!) and red bell pepper in the sausage fat.  My sausage didn't have a lot of fat, so I had to throw in some olive oil.

Once the peppers are cooked, add the greens and sausage to the shallot and pepper mix.  Mix them together and cook until warm. 

When the grits are cooked stir in some butter and cheddar cheese. That's it! Finished!  So while there were a lot of pots, there wasn't really a lot of work involved (there was a lot of clean up though). 

Final Product:

 
My thoughts:  Yum, yum, yum.  Comfort, comfort, comfort.  This was good!  I added some sriracha (hot sauce) to mine since I love everything as spicy as possible. The one ingredient that doesn't need to be included is the red bell pepper.  I didn't feel like it really brought anything to the dish, but it did up the vegetable quotient which is always good.  Cheesy grits are so delicious.  They just melt in your mouth.  This dish can work with shrimp or as a vegetarian dish too without losing it's comfort factor.  You can make it even more comforting by adding some cornbread to the mix.  I just made a box of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix and added some cheese and chopped jalapenos to it.  If you are going to go the unhealthy route take it all the way to the top!

I was also curious how budget friendly this dish was:

Sausage/$4.79
Grits/$1.89
Collard Greens/$1.99
Shallots/$0.70
Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix/$0.55
Red Bell Pepper/$2.99
Block of Cheddar Cheese/$2.29

Total/$15.20

Nowhere near as economical as I have been lately! Although when you really think about it this was a dinner for two, plus enough left over for two lunches.  $15 really is cheap when thought about it in those terms!

Next up:  Mark Bittman's Lentils and Potatoes; Salsa Soup with Cheese Quesadilla's 

One Dish Haddock Dinner

 I only have 12 more days of employment and then I can start working on the Next Great American Novel…or start begging people for a job. Both sound like viable options. Needless to say you will be seeing some creative dinner ideas from me in the near future since money will be a little tight. The great news is I will finally have time to be creative and come up with some recipes of my own. (My husband is probably reading that sentence right now and cringing.) In lieu of this upcoming event (my unemployment) I decided to spend some money and make a fish dish. The fish was not part of the Salmon Club Pack at Wegmans that I typically gravitate too because it’s inexpensive. No this was actually fresh fish from the seafood counter. I had my husband look through a seafood cookbook and pick out something he would like me to try. His pick was a one dish Haddock Bake (I can’t post a link to the recipe because it was from a cookbook (Seafood Secrets) that is not online anywhere and apparently out of stock on Amazon! But email me and I will send you the recipe!)


The ingredients you will need for this recipe: haddock, onions, mushrooms, new potatoes, dry white wine, water, bay leaf, bread crumbs, melted butter, salt, pepper, and parsley. You are going to put all of the ingredients in one buttered casserole dish. The recipe calls for 4 onions sliced. I thought four onions would be way too many, so I only sliced two onions and that was more than enough. Place the fish on top of the sliced onions and surround the fish with quartered mushrooms and sliced new potatoes. Pour one cup of white wine and one cup of water over the fish, than add a bay leaf. Next sprinkle the fish with bread crumbs and pour melted butter over everything; season with salt and pepper.

Bake this at 350 degrees. It took me an hour to get the potatoes cooked. The recipe suggests that this only takes 30-40 minutes to cook.

Final Product:

I also made Vermicelli rice pilaf from Mark Bittman's book.  I didn't realise how easy it was to make rice pilaf!  Yay! No more of the boxed stuff for me!  All you need is butter, onion, stock, parsley, salt, pepper, and vermicelli or angel hair if you want to make it the way I did.  It only takes about 30 minutes to make.  The only problem I ran into was forgetting that I wanted to add the pasta and I didn't have it broken up.  So I ended up breaking it up right when it needed to go in and the pasta was in all different sizes since I just broke it by hand.  It still tasted really good!  I encourage all of you to try it!

Final Product:

Final Plate:

My thoughts on the haddock: This was a very good recipe! Even though it took longer to cook then I was hoping it would, it turned out very well. The fish was moist, the veggies were good. I’m sure everything having a little butter on it helped with the enjoyment factor. I’m not sure why so many onions are needed, but having two in this recipe was bearable. I can’t imagine what it would have been like using four. You should try this recipe because it was tasty and everything is cooked in one dish. You can’t get much better than that!

Next Up: Andouille Sausage, Collard Greens, and Grits, sounds delicious!

And Then There Was This...

You can't always walk into the kitchen and come out with something that you are proud of.  I have to admit that when picking out this recipe,  Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons & Parsley Brown Butter, I assumed it was going to be good and that I wouldn't have any issues making it.  Doesn't the title make it sound like a worry free night?  Boil some pasta, cut some zucchini and cover it all in a butter sauce.   

The first thing I had to learn how to do was use a mandoline.  It's never a good idea to let me be around sharp objects.  I'd already been cut once by this mandoline when washing dishes while it was in the sink.  Anthony demonstrated how to use it and I was able to make a few zucchini ribbons with it, but it still made me nervous so I let him make the majority of the ribbons.

The other prep was easy enough chopping shallots and halving cherry tomatoes. 

First you need to boil water for your gnocchi.  I used the packaged kind you find in the pasta aisle.  You could also use frozen.  Then melt the butter in a pan and cook until it's just starting to brown.  Next add the shallots and zucchini.  After adding the zucchini ribbons they just seemed too big for the pan so I sliced them all in half.  The recipe doesn't say to do this, but I couldn't see myself eating pieces of zucchini that big in pasta. 

Once that is soft add the tomatoes, salt, nutmeg and pepper, cook for another 2 minutes.  Stir in the Parmesan cheese (I used the shake kind from Wegman's) and parsley.  Put the gnocchi in and mix until coated. 

Final Product:

(Doesn't this look like a squishy mess?!)

My thoughts:  While this was an easy recipe to make.  The zucchini came out mushy.  I like a more crisp zucchini.  So everything was the same texture...soft. It really needed something in there that would make a little crunch.  This is not something I plan on trying again.  I just don't feel like it's that good of a recipe to start with.

This was supposed to be another budget meal.  Let's see how much it cost:

Items I already had:  butter, nutmeg, salt, and pepper

Gnocchi/$2.79
2 Shallots/$0.41
2 Zucchini/$1.94
Cherry Tomatoes/$3.69
Parsley/$0.75 (split in half with another meal)
Parmesan Cheese/$2.89

Total/$12.47 

I feel like this wasn't really a good deal.  The cherry tomatoes where just too expensive.  Although when you really think about $12.47 for a dinner for two (with enough leftovers for one person's lunch) is pretty damn cheap.  To compare:  when we go out to dinner we typically spend between $40-50 on a dinner for two.  Even buying a pizza would have been more expensive.  You can see the benefit of cooking at home when you think about it that way. 

Next Up:  One Dish Haddock and Rice Pilaf



 

Meatless Monday!

For all those participating in Meatless Mondays, this post is for you.  As I've mentioned a gazillion times I love Mexican flavors and foods.  This recipe has those flavors without all the pressure of needing to know how to cook.  While I wouldn't call this dish " Real Mexican", it's American Mexican and it's delicious and easy!  I found the recipe for Black Bean and Tortilla Bake on Food.com (this site has a ton of recipes on it, check it out!).  Just looking at this recipe I knew that I would like it since I love all the ingredients in it.  The real test was whether or not Anthony would enjoy it.  He isn't a huge fans of casseroles and this kind of reminds me of a casserole, just a little smaller in size.

The BBTB is super for a weeknight meal and it's meatless which makes it perfect for Meatless Monday's. (I prefer to be meatless more than one day a week, but this is a good start for those just trying out this meatless thing).  I altered the recipe a bit after looking at the reviews, people had some good ideas of how to make this tastier and heartier.  So in addition to the recipe get another can of black beans (2 total), 1 can of chopped green chilies, a can of diced tomatoes, and salsa.  You don't need to buy a tomato if you used the diced canned tomatoes instead.  The other thing you will need to do is double up on the onion, garlic, and spices since you are adding more beans to this dish. 

First step is sauteing the onion, garlic, chilies, green onion, cumin, and chili powder, until the veggies are tender.

Then add the can of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce; cook for another 5 minutes or so.

Stir in your beans, cilantro (parsley in this house), salt and pepper.

You are going to want to cook this in a square baking dish make sure to coat it with some cooking spray.  I also coated the bottom of the dish with salsa.

Now you build the "bake" by layering 4 corn tortillas on the bottom of the baking dish, then some cheese, and some of the bean mixture.  Repeat 2 more times.

Top this with 2 tablespoons of cheese.  I only bought one package of corn tortillas and there were only 10 in a pack, so I improvised and it still worked out fine.  Don't for obligated to buy a bigger pack, but you will need at least 10 to make this work.  The recipe says to bake covered for 20 minutes at 350 degrees and uncovered for 10 minutes.  Not sure if this is necessary or not, but I followed the instructions.

Final Product:

My thoughts:  It's not much to look at, but it was really good.  I could eat this quite often although it's right up my ally.  Of course I added some sriracha when I was eating it, because I can't get enough of that stuff.   Also decided to make some rice and served it with sour cream.  I wanted this meatless meal to seem filling and satisfying.  Anthony told me he really liked it! Yay!  Finally a casserole type dinner that isn't so horrible! We had leftovers for 2 days of lunches too!  Very economical.

Okay this was supposed to be another budget meal so let's see how much it costs:

Items I already had:  Garlic (minced from a jar, chili powder, cumin, 1 can black beans, salsa
Onion/$0.24
1 can Diced Tomato/$0.79
Green Onions/$0.85
1 can Tomato Sauce/$0.39
1 can Black Beans/$0.79
Parsley/$0.75
Corn Tortillas/$1.19
Cheddar Cheese (shredded)/$2.29
1 can Chilies/$1.49

Total/$8.78

Under $10 and was good for three meals for the two of us (2 lunches (4 servings) and 1 dinner (2 servings).  I'd have to say that's worth it!  Yes, I know if you didn't have all of the things that I had it would be more expensive, but I think that spices like chili powder and cumin should be a staple in your cabinet.  Along with a jar of salsa, it has so many different uses when it comes to cooking.

Next Up:  Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons and Brown Butter Parsley (this one didn't work out so well, but I don't feel defeated because of it!)