Poaching Eggs and Frozen Meals

Wednesday night's meal, sliders with chipotle mayo and potato wedges while good, does not rate its own blog post. Besides, Anthony made the burgers and we didn’t take pictures of anything except for the chipotle mayo. Sliders are cool and trendy so I like them. Anthony doesn’t seem to really see the point of them, which I can understand. You can have 3 little burgers or one regular sized burger, there really isn’t much of a difference. I just think sliders are cute and fun. They also remind me of White Castle, which is my all time favorite! I’ll even eat the frozen White Castle burgers, since there are no White Castles in Rochester.

I’m very excited for my upcoming poaching an egg challenge. I’ve never seen it done and have never even thought about trying it before, so this should be interesting. I have some older eggs in the fridge which I’m going to use to practice on and then I’m going to buy new eggs and hopefully have a perfect edible one to offer to Anthony. I might be excited about making a poached egg, but I can not eat one. The pain that I would experience after eating an egg would ruin the whole event for me.

Another item I would like to discuss is frozen meals such as Smart Ones, Lean Cuisine, and Healthy Choice. Typically if there are no leftovers or something else more exciting to eat, I will bring a frozen meal for lunch. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve actually eaten a frozen meal and liked it. The one I had today Lean Cuisine Spa Cuisine Chicken Mediterranean which is grilled white meat chicken, zucchini, tomatoes, and whole wheat pasta in a tomato sauce. I should have known better then to buy this when I saw whole wheat pasta. The pasta was blah at best, the sauce was watery, I don’t even remember seeing zucchini in there. Looking at the reviews on the website, 4 stars, I’m shocked. Someone even mentioned you can’t tell it’s whole wheat pasta! What? It tasted like doughy cardboard; that is NOT how pasta should taste. They also mentioned that it had so much flavor. Just looking at it I knew it didn’t and doused it with Frank’s Red Hot. The meal was so hopeless the hot sauce didn’t make a dent in its lack of taste. Have these people lost their taste buds? I could not even finish eating it. Yuck!

Why can’t these frozen meals taste better? I just don’t understand why they are never good. Typically the only way I can eat them is with a ton of hot sauce. Eating lunch is a pain in the butt. I need to stay clear of these frozen meals, does anyone have any tasty, healthy, cheap ideas for lunches? Oh and remember that these need to be easy and quick to make too. I’m already cooking dinner daily and that’s about all the intense cooking I can take in a day. Please comment below. I need all the ideas I can get!

Milanese Gnocchi and Vegetable Stew

Day 15-First let me discuss the reality shows I viewed this week. One non-cooking show that I have to complain about is The Real Housewives of NJ. Joe’s story about how he got into his car accident and that he drank right after the accident happened before the police came not while driving. Really?! Do you really think anyone believes you Joe?! And seriously could Teresa and Joe’s children been any more annoying. Every time they were screaming or running or doing who knows what last night I was cringing. Holy cow, if I were Caroline and Albert I would have said no way to babysitting on the cruise. Poor people, I wouldn’t be able to tolerate those children.

Onto the Next Food Network Star. I say thank goodness for Aria finally leaving! I’ve never like her and her stupid family style point of view. I’m pulling for Aarti or Tom to win this thing. Although lately Aarti has really been screwing up, so maybe Tom deserves it more. Hell’s Kitchen update and spoiler alert: Holli won! Yay! I was pulling for either of them, but her son is so dang cute and for that I wanted her to win a little bit more. Holli have fun in London! Lucky duck! MasterChef was much better this week, with the contestants being challenged to slice and dice a ton of onions perfectly. I noticed some contestants struggling with their onions like I do, and for that they were kicked off the show! The egg challenge was next. They each got one egg and had to cook a dish with the egg being the star. I would have failed at that since I don’t eat eggs and have only cooked eggs once or twice. The woman with the same issue ended up baking her egg perfectly though, and she made it through. Poaching is the way to go, and I think I’m going to have to challenging myself with poaching some eggs. I’ll be blogging about the challenge after my vacation.

And then there was me. The minute I got into the kitchen to cook, I checked to make sure all my produce looked okay. Luckily it did. Whew, sigh of relief. Another mold sighting and I would have completely lost my mind. Looking at the page in the cookbook that the recipe was on, I knew I was going to have an easy night. This recipe said that if you eat one bowl of this stew you become 4.7 days younger. I guess that’s better then nothing. None of the other recipes I've made have claimed something like this.

Simple, simple, simple. You heat some olive oil (from the jar of sun dried tomatoes) in a pan with garlic. Add 3 cups of chicken or veggie broth; I used chicken. Bring it to a boil, add your prepackaged gnocchi (you didn’t think I actually made it did you?) and sun dried tomatoes. Cook until the gnocchi are done, which is when they are floating to the top. Stir in 2 cups of escarole, and cook another minute. Stir in diced plum tomatoes and serve in bowls. Top with gorgonzola cheese (we used feta), sage, and hot red pepper flakes.

Final Product:

Loved it! I thought it was super. I will definitely be making this recipe again. I figure if I eat enough of it I could be 30 again in another year! (It’s a joke people; the book claims that you decrease your RealAge by eating this meal.) Anthony seemed to like it too, so it’s a keeper. No changes needed to the recipe, unless you also don’t like gorgonzola.

The blog isn’t a long one today. I’m too tired to write. I think all of the ranting yesterday exhausted all of my energy. Tonight I’m making sliders with chipotle mayo and wedge potatoes. Hoping it’s as yum as it sounds. Think I’ll pull some carrots from the garden and cook them up too.

Skewered Chicken with Blackberry Sauce

Day 14-I’ll start out by saying sometimes I can be a complainer. Sometimes that complaining is not validated. There are other times it is. I have a beef to pick with Wegmans. I know it’s almost impossible for you Wegmans-is-like-a-higher-god people to believe. This is not the first time I’ve had a complaint about Wegmans, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I’m a pessimist.

My story starts with the fact that grocery shopping is a chore for me. I find no enjoyment in it (sometimes if I get a free sample and it’s tasty, there is a little joy). While I love food, I wouldn’t mind having it shipped to my house and never stepping foot into a grocery store again. I am also a list maker. I stick to my lists and very rarely do I buy anything not on the list, unless it’s something I remember I need while shopping. I want to get in and out as fast as possible. If I forget to buy something I get very cranky.

Sunday I was took my normal trip to the grocery stores, Aldi’s and Wegmans. Aldi’s is my go to place for certain items like yogurt, tortilla chips, and cheese. They are cheaper there and just as delicious. Wegmans is typically good for all my fresh ingredients and specialty items like my ethnic ingredients. I trust Wegmans a little more with my fresh items then other places. So putting my trust into Wegmans, I bought produce there for tonight’s recipe, a container of blackberries. After a quick glance at the container I deemed the berries as okay. As I stated earlier these grocery shopping trips need to be fast; the longer I am there the more agitated I get.

I was excited to cook tonight’s recipe. It sounded very gourmet, Skewered Chicken with Blackberry Sauce, not your everyday weeknight meal. I prepped the chicken and left it to marinate in white wine, fresh chopped rosemary, and black pepper for an hour. Once the hour was up I got the chicken pieces onto the skewers and put them in the oven to broil. Next I had to make the blackberry sauce. I needed to put the blackberries into a saucepan with the marinade and get them soft. I opened the container and started taking the blackberries out. The first couple looked normal, the next one had a little bit of mold at the top so I cut it off. No big deal. I grabbed the next one and it was covered in mold. WTH?! I looked into the container and moved some berries aside and realized all the ones in the bottom of the container were pretty moldy. I couldn’t have been more upset. I know mold is an easy issue to deal with since it’s pretty much only on the surface. There was no way I was going to run to the store now with the chicken already in the oven. So I sorted through and picked out all the berries where I could easily cut away the mold. I was not a happy camper though.

I trust Wegmans to use all the employees that are always standing around in the produce department wisely. They should be going through all the produce and making sure it’s still suitable to be bought and used by their customers. Apparently they do not do this. I mentioned this to Anthony and he said they can’t be expected to go through everything, but I disagree. If they are all about quality and service then this shouldn’t be too big of a job for them and they should want to do this. There is no way they have touched those berries in days. I bought them Sunday (from the top of the pile mind you) and used them Monday. How could they have gone moldy overnight? There is no way! This is not the first time I’ve bought something and in my rush to get out, not noticed it was bad. It’s almost always happened at Wegmans. Top quality products? I’m not so sure anymore. I could blame myself for hating shopping and just wanting to get out as soon as possible, but I don’t think all the blame can be put on me. And in closing that’s my beef with Wegmans. I’m probably not the only person with this beef. Let me know if you’ve had similar issues.

Once I accepted the fact that I was going to have to use the good parts of the moldy berries, I moved on. I softened the berries and put them into a strainer and pushed on them with a wooden spoon to extract the juice. I mean I guess this is the point, the recipe doesn’t really say what we are trying to get from these softened berries. Then you put the juice back into the saucepan with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons of red currant jelly and a ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg. You leave it boil and reduce it about 1/3.

All of this, minus the moldy berries sounds like it should have tasted divine. Ah…not so much. The chicken came out dry, this might have been because of my need to make sure chicken is seriously cooked (I’ve had food poisoning from chicken a few times). There was way too much rosemary. I found another blog that had used this same recipe and someone else commented on there being too much rosemary. So I would cut that down to 1 tablespoon. The other problem was the sauce. It didn’t really taste like much. It seems like this is a common complaint and people have spiced it up with orange juice and red wine vinegar. Another person used habaneros and someone else changed the recipe and used raspberries with some honey to sweeten it up. Any of these changes sound good to me depending on the taste you are going for. I think it I try it again I will go the spicier route. Of course that is if I ever buy berries from Wegmans again. I might have to get them at the Farmer’s Market instead or even frozen.

Final Product:

Totals: 5 minutes prep, 1 hour marinate, 15 mins cooking time,1 bowl, 1 saucepan, 1 strainer, 1 broiler pan.

The produce I’m using tonight better look healthy or I will be complaining to Wegmans. Some of you are not yet aware of my food being “bad” hang-ups. I will let you in on my fear in a later blog installment. It’s not pretty.

Broiled Fish Fillets and Cheesy Grits

Day 13-This should have been an unlucky night, but it wasn’t. Thank goodness! After a few days of restaurant food and take-out it was time to get back to cooking. I tried to plan a menu this week that Anthony might enjoy. I tried to keep meals with a lot of veggies away and bring in some side dishes other then rice. I knew that he was going to like what I was making tonight. I first encountered Justin Wilson while I was living in Pensacola, Fl. I watched an old episode of his show. He was from Louisiana and cooked Cajun food. Most of his food is hearty and you can tell that he really liked to eat. I choose to make the one recipe in his cookbook; Justin Wilson’s Homegrown Louisiana Cookin’ , that he states was diet food for him.

Anthony has made this recipe a few times. I figured I couldn’t go wrong then, in trying it myself. The recipe leaves it up to you to decide what sort of fish fillets you would like to use. I choice catfish fillets in keeping with the Southern theme of the meal. We like catfish and used to eat it a lot more often when we lived in the South. You can follow his recipe exactly and I’m sure your fish will turn out quite tasty. I didn't follow his recipe completely. Anthony and I are really into the taste of Frank’s Red Hot and use it on everything. So to make this recipe have some more kick to it, we make the sauce with more hot sauce then his recipe calls for. So after remembering to halve the recipe I took ½ a stick of butter and melted that in a small sauce pan. Then I added ½ tbsp of lemon juice, ¼ tsp of onion powder, ½ tbsp dried parsley and the biggest change, ¼ cup of hot sauce. Yum!! If you don’t love hot sauce as much as me, then you might just want to stick to the original recipe. If you want to give it some pizzazz, then give it a try.

Then instead of spreading the butter onto the broiler pan, we spread it on both sides of the catfish. Put it in the broiler, until the fish is cooked. It turns out this was the one issue I had. I have never cooked catfish, it’s a little thicker then the only fish I’ve ever cooked which is tilapia (besides my recent foray into salmon). So I left it in for 12 minutes, checked it and put it back in for 3 more minutes. It really did looked cook! Meanwhile as the fish is cooking, I decided what better to pair with this dish then cheesy grits with some hot sauce in them. There is nothing like down home southern cooking. The only things missing were the cornbread and collard greens. I probably put a little too much cheese in the grits, but it’s cheese who doesn’t love cheese?!

The fish was now cooked and I spread some more of the butter hot sauce mixture on top. Once I plated the dish and we started eating the fish, we realized that the thicker parts were not completely cooked. Oh well, you can’t win them all. I’m certainly not the first one to undercook something; I see it happen a lot on those reality cooking shows I talked about earlier. We just ate around the uncooked part. I have to tell you though cooking seems to either be becoming easier or I’m just picking easier things to cook. Let’s just says it’s a combination. That will make me happier!

Final Product:

Not pretty, but tasty!

I will be making this dish again and I will be adding some collard greens to the meal. Yum! I love this style of food. It makes me feel all happy inside. The grits recipe is available, along with all the other recipes I have made through the link on the right, Recipes Used for The Hesitant Cook.

Totals: 15 minutes cooking time, 2 pans. Hmmm noticing the lack of prep time needed to make this recipe, I’ve now decided this is why I didn’t hate cooking last night. Well at least I now know why I liked it.

Next up: Blackberry Chicken Skewers

Reality Television

Last night I had a dream about my upcoming Young Adult novel (haha, upcoming who am I kidding) and how popular it became and how the movie deals were coming in. I was sitting on a couch with all of The View chicks talking about how I went from a nobody to a somebody, and to think it all started with a little cooking blog. Now that I mentioned a possible book I’d like to get away from that topic and get back to reality.

Reality television shows to be precise. I’ve loved reality television ever since I saw the first episode of Real World back in 1992. Oh the drama. I couldn’t wait to be 18 and old enough to possibly get a spot on Real World. The year of my 18^th birthday was 1997 so I could possibly have been on the Boston or Hawaii seasons neither of which is on my list of top seasons ever and so luckily after awhile the thrill wore off. I went to college and forgot about The Real World. Then Survivor aired, in 2000. Ah Survivor, I knew with almost certainty that I could Outwit, Outplay, and Outlast all of the other contestants, from the comfort of my living room. No way was I ever actually going to apply to be on that show! Then there was Fear Factor in 2001 (another show I knew I could beat everyone at) and The Amazing Race, although I have not been watching that since it aired for the first time in 2001. I really would love to do The Amazing Race, except from all of the excitement I would probably need a bathroom every few minutes and would make my team lose. I’d be known as The Girl with the Small Bladder, no thanks. I’ve also regularly watched American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, and America’s Got Talent, none of which I could be on some day.

Lately there is only one kind of reality show that I really love and those are the cooking reality shows. I watch most of them, from Cake Boss to Top Chef. I obviously could never be on any of the ones where you have to be a chef, but what about a show where you don’t have to be a chef? Could I be on one of those? I’ve always wanted to be on television. For awhile I really thought that I wanted to be a news anchor. Then I worked at a news station as an intern and realized I really didn’t want to do that. Being an actress was also not my cup of tea, but when reality shows became this worldwide phenomenon, I thought this might be what I’m destined for. Now I’ve never actually applied to be on anything. Typically what happens is I start doubting myself and decide it’s not worth it for me to put my energy into something like that.

Recently someone mentioned two cooking shows that are casting now, The Next Food Network Star and Worst Cooks in America. I would not be able to handle the pressure that goes along with The Next Food Network Star. I’ve seen WC in A briefly when it was on last season and it just didn’t strike me as being a title that I want. Anthony firmly believes that I should have applied for WC in A. It most likely is the only cooking reality show that I could possibly get on. I can’t really cook and every other show you really need to know what you are doing. So now I have to decide if I will try for the next season (if there is one) or move onto something else, like a makeover show! I’d love free clothes and a new hair do! J What does everyone think about me trying to get onto a reality show? Good idea, bad idea? What shows should I apply to become a contestant on?

Here are my thoughts on this week in cooking reality television, August 1-6. Spoiler Alert: I was very disappointed with The Next Food Network Star on Sunday night. Kicking off Brad was not the right call. Brad Sorenson was one of my favorites, I’m not sure if it’s just because he is cute or if it’s because he can cook. Anyway it is definitely time for Aria Kagan to go home. I’ve had enough of her annoying voice and her point of view is nothing new. She better go home next! Cake Boss: Typical episode, the mechanical bull cake was pretty cool, but the barber shop looked not so good to me. The outcome for the final two on Hell’s Kitchen was predictable, Holly vs. Jay. Since I’m a firm believer in girls kicking guys’ butts, I hope she wins next week! Go Holly! I’m so jealous of whoever wins, I love London! MasterChef is still boring me. Next week the real competition starts, with the contestants having to use some basic cooking skills, it should get better! There is a possibility that I could try out for MasterChef, if I get a little better with my cooking skills. I have not watched Top Chef yet, so nobody tell me what happened!! I’m watching it tonight!

As you can probably see I didn’t cook last night and just wanted to blog about something. Something is sometimes better then nothing, I’m not so sure in this case. This only showed everyone that I’m a bit of a television addict and that I’m desperate for my 15 minutes of fame. I’ll be back with a new recipe on Sunday!

Food/Cooking Quote of the Day:

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. ~Voltaire