A Soup and a Pie

I needed to get back to cooking this week. It’s hard, but I’m pushing through. Nothing has turned out spectacular so far. I made two meals this week, Onion Chowder with Cheese Popovers and Sweet Potato Topped Shepherd’s Pie. Both recipes are from Everyday with Rachael Ray Magazine. I’ve made the chowder before, but I had never tried the shepherd’s pie and thought it seemed like a good Fall dish. The only complaint cooking wise that I have for the week is those dang onions. They are killer to my eyes. I feel like the pain will never end! It’s on my list to try cooking something without onions! Sadly even though my kitchen experience this week has been going fairly well, the food just hasn’t been up to par.

The soup was a bit too oniony. I probably didn’t cook the onion long enough. There really isn’t anything other than onions, chicken broth, and milk in the chowder. It was also too watery to be chowder. Chowder is supposed to be a bit thick. Not quite a stew, but like a stews little brother. The popovers are normally good, but not this time. They were starting to brown so I pulled them out and still they didn’t cook all the way through after 35 minutes in the oven. Are you kidding me?! The popovers are good with any soup; they have a piece of cheddar cheese in the middle of them. I will be making them again, but I think the soup is a lost cause and I won’t be attempting that again. I’d rather just make French Onion Soup if I’m going to make onion soup. Anthony agrees that I didn’t cook the onions enough and that the popovers were not quite done. I’m sad about that, he usually loves those popovers.

Final Product:

On to the Sweet Potato Topped Shepherd’s Pie! It seemed like a good idea at the time, now that I’ve thought about it for awhile I guess it really isn’t a good idea. I have this issue where if I already know how to make something (Shepherd’s Pie), then I have to try to one up it with a different version of it. Anthony always tells me I should leave well enough alone, but I just don’t learn. I honestly don’t think that it has ever worked out in my favor when I’ve tried cooking something a little different then I have cooked it in the past. At one point I had 3 pots on the stove which is never a good idea when I’m cooking. I can only truly concentrate on one item at a time. In one pot was sweet potatoes, another had the ground beef mixture, and another had the sauce/gravy. That is way too much stimulation for me. Nothing turned out bad. I did have to use pumpkin beer in the gravy since that’s all we had in the house. I also forgot to add the peas to the beef, onion, garlic, mushroom mixture. Oops! The gravy tasted fine, but was too thin. Using sweet potatoes didn’t ruin the Shepherd’s Pie, but it certainly didn’t bring anything to the table. I would rather have it the good old fashioned way. Anthony just thought this was weird. It didn’t taste bad, but it isn’t worth the effort. It's also not very attractive. Just look!

Final Product:

It looks as if my rut is continuing. What can I do?! If tonight’s meal doesn’t turn out awesome I am going to get really sad. At first this was just making me mad, now I’m starting to feel depressed about. STOP MESSING WITH MY EMOTIONS COOKING!! WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU?!

Tonight is Shrimp and Grits with Okra, southern food here I come! COOKING YOU BETTER STOP MESSING WITH ME!

Do You Miss Me?

After all the terrible food I made last week, I just haven't really had the desire to make any meals that I haven't tried before. We have been eating raviloi, chinese take out, japenese resturant food, and not a whole lot of anything else. I plan on working up the nerve to try all over again next week. Not having the time to go grocery shopping this week, I didn't get a chance to pull a menu together. We are flying by the seat of our pants when it comes to dinner.

I asked my friend and follow blogger for ideas for something fast and easy. She told me to make a southwest influenced soup that she had posted on her blog. Thank goodness for friends! It was fast, easy, and it tasted really good. Plus it made enough soup for plenty of leftovers! Yay finally something has gone right. Here is where you can find the post about the southwestern soup: Edible Healing. I might have to steal a few more recipes from her if they all are going to turn out this well!

Final Product:

Make it, your stomach will thank you!

Tonight we are having leftover Chinese. The hope is that by the weekend I will get so tired of easy meals that I will be ready to venture into the unknown again. Cross your fingers!

REALLY?!!

The burrito recipe I found was horrible. I've yet to understand why someone would want to eat that. People gave it really good reviews. I'm not even giving the recipe the privilege of being posted anywhere on my blog. The recipe had black beans, canned tomatoes, garlic, onion, red pepper, cream cheese, cumin, and chili powder. It was blah at best. Way too soupy to go into a tortilla. Anthony helped me by adding the bean mixture to the yellow rice I made for a side. We were able to get it a little less wet that way.

Picture of the inside:

No final picture necessary; it wasn't good. I'm sticking with the turkey burritos I normally make and NEVER trying something like this recipe again. What is going on??? Why is nothing going right in the kitchen?! It's icky food every day that keeps leaving my kitchen! Let's say it's just this week and that next week things will turn around. I need to be more optimistic. If I don't keep optimistic I'll give up and start blogging about something else. Don't worry I refuse to give up yet. If my cube steaks come out good tonight, then a turn around is a coming. Stay tuned!

Getting Bored

I've been super busy and haven't had a lot of time for blogging. I also didn't bother cooking Friday or Saturday this weekend. We went out for Japanese food at Blue Ocean. It opened last year near where we live and it was so exciting for us since there are no other sushi places where we live. And we love our sushi! On this occasion we decided to try something different and both ordered Bento boxes instead. I got mine with Tempura Shrimp and Teriyaki Beef and Anthony got Tempura Shrimp and Chicken Teriyaki. The bento boxes come with miso soup, salad, a California Roll, tempura veggies, and sticky rice. These were actually really good. I'm glad we branched out and tried something more then sushi. I'm also grateful that our town finally has some ethnic food other then Italian. We do have a very good Chinese take out place, I would say it's one of the best I've ever had, New Fong Kitchen. Anthony suggested I do some research on the demographics of our town and write an editorial for the local paper about why we need more diversity in our food choices around our town. I would die for some good Thai, Indian, and Mexican!

I made a few dinners this week. The first was Caramelized Chile Shrimp from Good Housekeeping magazine. I was very hopeful and that should have been a sign. It really wasn't very good. The sauce burned a bit and it was sticky. I hate sticky! The noodles were cold (intentionally) and I found that odd. Also I substituted parsley for cilantro and ended up over doing the parsley. That was basically all you could taste on the shrimp. Boo to this meal. I will not be trying this recipe again, there wasn't anything super appealing about it.

Final Product:

The other meal I cooked was Sausage-Cauliflower Spaghetti, from Food Network magazine. Thank goodness I got that great soup in the acorn squash recipe from this issue or this issue would have been trash. Pasta and I just don't mix and I should realize that and move on. It's not that this dish tasted bad, it was fine. Possibly a little bit bland, but it just wasn't great! There was nothing about it that made it memorable and it seemed like a waste of time.

Final Product:

Maybe I'm becoming bitter I hate cooking Kim again. I'm just not impressed with this whole cooking process. It's dull and boring and the end result hasn't blown my mind this last week. I need something to awaken my taste buds, until then I'll continue to be bitter and bored.

Next up Bean Burritos, I need to go back to making stuff that I can handle and that I won't hate to eat. Does anyone have any recipes that might get me back into the swing of things? If you do comment below!

Easy Salmon Cakes

When planning this week’s menu I enlisted Anthony. I’m having trouble coming up with things to eat 5-6 days a week. It’s not the easiest thing to do. I like to have a balance of fish, meat, and no-meat dishes. So I can usually come up with 3-4 meals on my own and then I can’t find 1 or 2 more meals that sound appealing and fit into my balance structure. This week Anthony chose to make fried rice for dinner and he suggested that I make salmon cakes. Salmon anything usually sounds good to me and I found a recipe for salmon cakes on eatingwell.com. Sounds healthy to me!

One of the items I had to buy for the salmon cakes was 15 ounces of canned salmon. I’ve never bought canned salmon. When I’ve made salad and wanted salmon on it I bought it in a one of those pouch/bag type things. I wasn’t ready for what was going to greet me in a can of salmon. I assumed it would be a little like tuna fish. (On another note, I am not a fan of tuna fish, because I don’t really like tuna unless it’s in sushi.) This was NOTHING like tuna fish. The minute I opened it I was scared. The first thing I noticed was the skin on the fish. Ew. Then I noticed that there were bones!! Bones and skin, what the heck! Now skin is fine if I’m pan frying fish on the stove or grilling it. It is not okay if it needs to be removed in order for me to make patties out of it. So I started cleaning the skin off the fish. That was when I noticed the most horrifying item, the spinal cord!! This fish still had a spine people!! That is not okay. That will never be okay to me! I HAD to clean all the bones off this fish. I wasn’t eating any, that’s for sure. SO I pushed the bones off the fish with a knife, one vertebra at a time. I’m still uneasy about this whole experience. I will not be rushing out to buy more canned salmon anytime soon. I googled canned salmon later and found out that some people are actually eating it with the skin and bones still there. Apparently this is possible because it’s mostly cartilage. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to eat cartilage either. You should see how picky I am when eating chicken wings. Forget it! Eating bones is not an option people!

The rest of this was a breeze compared to that first step. In a skillet with oil, cook the chopped onion and celery until soft. Then take it off the heat and stir in the parsley. Next you add an egg and mustard to the salmon and mix that well. You then add the onion mix, breadcrumbs, and ground pepper and mix that well too. Form the mixture into 8 patties and put them in a skillet with some oil and cook the patties until their undersides are golden. Then flip them over onto a baking sheet and place in the oven at 450 degrees for 15-20 minutes. .

Final Product:

The salmon came out pretty well. Both of us enjoyed the flavor of the cakes. They were more bready and dense than I typically like my seafood cakes. I’m a more seafood, less bread type of girl. I used a little less then a cup of breadcrumbs and the recipe calls for 1 3/4 cups. That is way too much and even what I put in was too much, so I would start with ½ a cup of breadcrumbs if you decide to try this recipe. It was nice having a salad for a side dish, instead of our usual starch. I also made Creamy Dill sauce to dip the salmon cakes into. That is just mayo, plain yogurt, scallions, dill, lemon juice, and black pepper. It wasn’t bad, though I don’t really love mayonnaise.

I’m not sure what I’m cooking next; depends on what I might be in the mood for. Maybe shrimp. I do love me some shrimp!

Chicken, Biscuits, and Gravy Casserole

I stopped numbering my days. It didn’t really make sense anymore since I’ve been cooking some days and then have 3-4 days of no cooking. I’m up to 47 posts though which I found pretty impressive. I’ve been eating out and not cooking this last week. We went to Jasmine’s Asian Fusion one night. They have food from various Asian area’s of the world. I had a $25 gift certificate from Restaurants .com. I love this site. It’s really good when you can get the gift certificates at 80-90% off. I bought 3 more the other day because they we 90% off. Give it a try. It’s pretty cool.

We had the fresh spring rolls to start off with. Unfortunately in the description it didn’t say that they had cilantro in them. Anthony ate one and discovered that and I had to eat the rest. Luckily it also came with a carrot salad, so he ate that. Then we both ordered the Red Curry Chicken with Jasmine and Sticky Rice. Very good and pretty darn spicy! We also ordered the Black Rice Pudding. It had a good texture and a delicious coconut flavor. I love coconut! You should definitely give Restaurants.com a try, it’s made me try different places and most of them we have really liked.

I wanted to make something easy Sunday after the Hilton Apple Festival. We had some amazing apple crisp, apple sausage and hot mulled apple cider at the festival.for lunch and then had pumpkin custard from Abbot’s for dessert. Yum. It was a brisk Fall day so I thought a casserole would be perfect for dinner. So Chicken, Biscuits ‘n’ Gravy Casserole was on the menu. This is from a really old issue of Everyday with Rachel Ray. It’s a very simple recipe. The thing I love about this is you use a rotisserie chicken. I love rotisserie chickens from Wegmans. They make the car smell so amazing! I get hungry just being around rotisserie chicken.

You pull the chicken off the bone and shred it either with a knife or your fingers. In a skillet you melt some butter and add mushrooms, onion, and celery. Cook until the mushrooms are browned; lower the heat, add flour and cook for a minute.

Then stir in the chicken broth, bring it to a simmer and cook until thickened. Next you add some milk and simmer for another minute. You remove it from the heat and finish off the gravy with some lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Pour the gravy over the chicken, which should be in a butter greased casserole dish.

Then you make some garlic butter for the biscuits. Your biscuits consist of baking mix (Bisquick), milk, and shredded cheddar cheese. Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture on top of the casserole and brush them with the garlic butter. Put the casserole in the oven at 425 degrees and bake for about 25 minutes. You can brush the biscuits with the garlic butter again about halfway though.

Final Product:

Anthony swears this came out differently than it has in the past. He thought it should have been made in a small dish with less biscuits. I think he is thinking of a different casserole. It tasted good regardless and it’s one of those quick and easy meals that everyone likes to make! Plus it’s comfort food, which makes everyone happy and comforted.

Next up is Salmon Cakes and boy was I in for a shock!!

Coriander Crusted Sea Bass and Asparagus over Sweet Potato Puree

I wonder at times where people come up with some of the recipes they create. When I picked out the recipe for our meal Saturday night, I just wanted it to be healthy. So I decided to get a recipe out of Cooking the Real Age Way. This is the second recipe I’ve made from this cookbook. It doesn’t seem to be a great book. The meals are a little weird. I didn’t really think about what I picked out until after I cooked it and Anthony said, “None of this stuff goes together!” I have a feeling that one of the doctors Dr. John La Puma came up with these recipes. He has taught nutrition and cooking classes for people and has a book called Chef MD. Maybe the doctors should leave the cooking to the chefs or at least the creating of recipes.

I made Coriander Crusted Sea Bass and Asparagus over Sweet Potato Puree, but I used haddock instead of sea bass. There was no way I was spending $21.99 a pound for sea bass and I think haddock is just as tasty. I’ve never paid attention to coriander before and didn’t really know what it was. I was also scared to try a whole seed of it, because I didn’t know if I would like the taste. Sometimes I like a flavor when it’s mixed with other things and not own it’s on. Coriander seemed to me like something I wouldn’t like on it’s own and I didn’t want to ruin the moment. I was cooking basically without complaint and feeling good in the kitchen. Once I had everything prepped and the sweet potatoes were cooking it was time for the fish.

I am not good at cooking fish. It always falls apart on me. Fish is healthy and I love it so I will continue to cook it even if I’m ruining it! I sprinkled some of each seasoning on the fish: the ground coriander, salt, cayenne pepper. Then I pressed some coriander seeds into the fish as the recipe suggests. The fish of course immediately stuck to the skillet and started falling apart. Then with Anthony’s help I got the fish flipped over without it breaking too much and threw it in the oven. The asparagus was already in the oven. You just put it in a baking pan and sprinkle it with olive oil. Everything was timed pretty perfectly. I mashed the sweet potatoes and I was done.

Final Product:

My Thoughts? Just look at the plate above. Doesn’t it all seem a little awkward and odd? There was way too much coriander on the fish. I’m not sure if that was my fault or the recipe. It turns out I don’t really care for coriander and neither does Anthony. Or at least not that much coriander! So we tried eating around it on the fish and didn’t bother eating the pieces covered in it. We ate the potatoes and asparagus which were both good. The meal was just too strange to have again. Each would have been individually good (without the coriander), but they really don’t mesh well together.

Next up is Chicken, Gravy, and Dumpling Casserole. I didn’t cook as much as I thought I would last week. This week I will be cooking more often. So stay tuned!