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

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!