Braised Chicken with Coconut Milk and Curry

Day 20-Something really is wrong with me, somebody should research me. Cooking and I are just not meshing. The basics are not even possible for me. I should just stick to easy recipes with few ingredients. Once I do those well for awhile, I should then move on to more complicated recipes. After last night I’ve completely lost all confidence in myself. If I felt it was okay to just give up and move on I would, but I don’t feel comfortable giving up. Being someone who gets bored easily I give up more often then not. The minute a task gets just a bit too hard and I can’t really grasp the concept, I quit.

Now this doesn’t apply to my entire life, just to hobbies that I’ve tried out. A perfect example is knitting. I knitted a few scarves and could never master finishing them off. Someone else always had to do it for me. Since it seemed impossible, I gave up on it. Last year I decided to start a walking/jogging/running program, it worked out for a couple of weeks, but then my knees started hurting and I couldn’t run for long, so I quit. When the going gets tough, I get out. It’s not that I don’t like to work at things, I really do. But if I believe I just can’t quite reach the skill level to really do something well, then what’s the point of continuing with it. Folks, my brain is starting to feel this way about cooking.

Last night started off badly. I left work and got caught behind an accident and didn’t get home until an hour later. (My drive is normally about 10-15 minutes.) So I was in a great mood once I got home. Then I was going to cook something completely different, until I realized that one of my ingredients had gone bad. So that was out. Switching my brain over to another recipe is not the easiest thing for me. I get so focused on what I was supposed to cook, that what I end up cooking suffers for it.

Finally I decided to make Braised Chicken with Coconut Milk and Curry and serve it with Spinach Rice. I found this recipe in Reader’s Digest and the picture of the chicken with the rice looked really appetizing. I had to do some digging to find the rice recipe since it wasn’t included in the magazine. The one good thing about this recipe is I discovered a new ingredient I’ve never used it before, Sofrito. The taste was good, kind of like a tomato sauce. So I’m assuming that if you want the flavors of onion, garlic, pepper and tomato in a Latin style dish you can add this. I bet it would be a good addition to ground beef for tacos. I could use it in place of the salsa I normally mix my beef with.

The chicken dish was actually fairly easy to make. It calls for a whole chicken broken down, but obviously I wasn’t going to do that, so I bought chicken thighs. Everything else went really well, I’m not going to bother boring you with the details of how to put it all together (use the link on to the right of this post to see the recipe). The chicken smells awesome while it’s cooking. It has my favorite ingredients of coconut milk and curry, which is one of the reasons I choose to make it. Although it reminds me a bit of an Indian dish, it’s labeled as a classic Latin dish. So while my chicken was becoming tender and filled with flavor I moved onto the rice.

This recipe was a tough one for me. There were parts of it that just didn’t make any sense to me. You start the dish by heating up a ¼ cup of canola oil in a pan. Then you add long grain white rice and salt and coat the rice in the oil. Once the rice looks opaque you: “add enough cold water to cover the rice by the width of 2 fingers (about 1-inch). Bring to a rapid boil, and boil-without stirring!-until the water level reaches the level of the rice. Stir the rice once and reduce the heat to low. Cover and cook 20 minutes.” This is where things went very wrong. I didn’t understand the 2 fingers equal an inch logic. So I poured in what I thought was an inch of water. Then I waited until the water looked like it had reached rice level, though I’m still not completely clear on what that means. Next I stirred it and threw the cover on. 20 minutes later, the rice wasn’t cooked at all! AT ALL!! I have no idea what really went wrong. All I know is that I wasted 4 cups of rice!! I made 4 cups in the hopes of bringing the leftovers to work. HA! I did manage to cook the spinach correctly so I still had that to work with. So Anthony suggested cooking up some instant rice and throwing the spinach in that with olive oil and butter. So I did and it worked out fine.

Final Product:

Just because this dinner was saved in the end, does not mean I am happy about it. I’m super annoyed about the rice. Did I not use enough water? Well, who would know with the crazy finger instructions?! Grrr Argh! The chicken was tasty. I would totally make it again, but forget about that rice. I would rather just cook up some basmati rice with this chicken dish. I would still add the spinach to the rice, because that was a nice addition. Anthony really liked this meal even with the instant rice and asked me why I don't make this more often. That's a good sign. Sorry there are not more pictures, but these two things kept me pretty busy and I couldn’t be bothered with the camera.

I’m supposed to be cooking again tonight, but I might retire the duties to Anthony. I feel so defeated. I need to work my way back into the cooking life slowly. Oh and here is a picture of the Black Bean Lasagna from the other night. It was not all the amazing and I think I'll just stick to the classic lasagna that I make well.

The Joy of... Not Cooking

I’m not sure what I was doing when I last left you all. The one thing I do remember is I wasn’t very happy about cooking. Nothing has changed. While in the kitchen I’m still the most irritable and ill tempered monster lately. Someone please tell me what’s happening to me. In a time not that long ago, I was really enjoying cooking. Now you pretty much have to drag me into the kitchen and hold a gun to my head in order to get me to cook. I really haven’t been doing much cooking since I last left you, which is why I left you.

I made American BBQ Tacos last week. The prep of cutting all the veggies took forever and really got old fast. Then my re-fried beans turned out to be not very good. So that really made me mad. The tacos tasted fine. I could see making them again, plus they a vegetarian which means they are good for you (in my world). At least there was that. Here’s the final product:

This weekend Anthony picked our green tomatoes (we only got two red ones this year) and decided to pickle them like he did last year. Pickled green tomatoes are very nice. I love them! Garlic, dill, onion…yum! Probably in a month or two we will try them. I remember what they tasted like last year and it’s making my mouth water. Also I just love the crunch you get from pickled products.

That same day Anthony made Fried Green Tomato BLT’s. I could eat one of those every day, they were scrumptious. I don’t think he has an actual recipe, but I recently saw this one in Everyday with Rachael Ray. That’s where we got the idea. Green tomatoes might just be better then red tomatoes in my humble opinion. Pickled and fried wins hand down over limp and thrown in a salad. The only good thing about tomatoes, besides ketchup is tomato sauce. Sometimes I can even do without that and will settle for a pesto. So really green tomatoes are better because I said they are.

Last night I worked up some energy and nerve. I entered the kitchen. I should have just turned around and walked right out. My timing was horrendous. I thought I was going to be able to start a Black Bean Lasagna at 6:50 and have it ready and on the table by 8:00. Not! Just call me a loser. It took so long, and I missed the step where the sauce had to simmer for 15 minutes when originally looking at the recipe. So I miscalculated. 7:30 rolled around and Anthony came home. First thing out of my mouth was order us some take out, because this baby (still not in the oven!) will not be done until around 9:00! He did order us white pizza and wings from Mark’s. (Ugh not my favorite, the cheese was burnt! Why can’t Rochester just get it right already?! It’s pizza not Risotto!) The lasagna was finally finished sometime after 8:30. Now it’s waiting for me to reheat it tonight. The good news is I don’t have to cook! No pictures of it yet, but I’ll snap one tonight.

Grilled Salmon Bacon & Feta Packets with Kale Chips

Day 20-I hate admitting this, but my kitchen anxiety is back. Let’s try not to confuse the kitchen anxiety with the kitchen depression. Kitchen anxiety manifested itself again last night in the form of fear, lack of confidence, and feeling very overwhelmed. I had to cook 3 separate things last night, salmon, kale chips, and Rice-a-Roni. The minute I realized I had to cook 3 separate things all at once (even one as easy as Rice-a-Roni), I flipped out. Seriously there was a moment there where I thought I was going to have a complete meltdown. I was annoying myself, so I have no idea how Anthony tolerated me. I took a few deep breathes and berated myself a little before I started to cook. Tonight’s meal is Grilled Salmon, Bacon& Feta Packets and Kale Chips. The salmon is from an issue of EveryDay with Rachel Ray, it’s a 5 ingredient recipe.

I started with the kale chips. I have become very fascinated by these things. They have been featured on everyone’s blog except for mine. That’s why I had to try them out. I’ve used kale in a few recipes before and use to feed it to my rabbit. Kale is great for you and everyone should add it to their diet, as long as you can handle the bitter taste of it. The first thing you need to do is rinse the kale and tear it into chip sized pieces. Then you need to dry it, I used a salad spinner and I still couldn’t get it completely dry. Then you put it in a large bowl, sprinkle olive oil on it and massage the oil in the leaves. Then you make a spice mix of whatever you want. I used salt, garlic powder, and smoked paprika. You sprinkle the kale with the spice mixture and toss. Next put the kale in a single layer on a foil lined baking sheet. I had to do two batches. Your oven should be set to 350 degrees and you leave the kale in there for about 12 minutes or until it’s crispy.

Next I started the Rice-a-Roni, I was trying my best to time everything. The box says that this takes about 22 minutes to cook, plus time for boiling and sautéing. I figured if I start this while the first batch of kale is cooking that should work out okay. The first batch of kale finished and I prepped the next tray of kale. I needed some cooked and crumbled bacon (for the salmon) so I threw two pieces in the microwave. Then I got the salmon together. Take a square of foil and place the salmon on it. On top of each salmon fillet put 2 tablespoons of ranch dressing. Then you add the crumbled bacon, feta cheese and pepper to the top of the salmon. Fold the sides of the foil up and leave the top open. This recipe calls for putting the foil packets on the grill, but since the oven was already on and in use Anthony suggested I put it in there. So I popped the salmon and the kale chips in the oven with 10 minutes left on the timer for the Rice-a-Roni.

Things seemed to be going well, but after the 10 minutes were up, nothing was finished. The Rice-a-Roni was watery, the salmon was raw, and I knew the kale still needed a few minutes. After 2 more minutes I pulled the kale out. I raised the temperature to 400 degrees for the salmon. The Rice-a-Roni looked better so I turned the heat off of that. Anthony and I checked the salmon after a few minutes and it still wasn’t done, so we left it in about 5 minutes more. Finally dinner was ready and it really wasn’t as stressful as I thought it was going to be. I need to realize nothing bad is going to happen if not everything finishes at the same time.

Final Product:

Okay now I know why people rave about kale chips all the time. They are addictive! We almost ate the whole bowl! The mixture I made was way too salty, but since the kale chips are as addictive as regular chips we couldn’t stop eating them. Next time I think I’m going to do a cumin and curry mixture for them. I’m already planning on making another batch this weekend. Love them! Anthony has made the salmon recipe before on the grill. He said he has no idea why I had problems cooking it in the oven. Overall the taste was the same. Anthony said it could have used more bacon. But of course he would say that! One thing that really annoyed me (this is another Wegman’s rant) was that we both found some bones in the fish. That has never happened before and it confirms in my mind that Wegman’s is slipping.

I’m going to do some deep breathing exercises this afternoon at work. So that when I get home I don’t get another bout of kitchen anxiety. I hate feeling useless and overwhelmed! Next up BBQ Tacos!

Cooking quote of the day:

Cooking Rule... If at first you don't succeed, order pizza.
Anonymous

Organic Frozen Meals

There was no cooking for me last night. I’m seriously in a funk. I can’t determine whether it’s the actual cooking, if I’m bored, if it’s the blog or something else entirely. The only way that the cooking can end is if I win the lottery, but since I haven’t been playing that’s not very likely. Sigh. Someone needs to shake this funk out of me and get me back on track. Although I can’t really complain about it too much since we had sushi delivered for dinner last night. Yum! I promised myself that I would be cooking the Salmon Packets and Kale Chips tonight come hell or high water.

What I have for you today is two more reviews of frozen meals that I had for lunch this week. I decided to purchase two meals from the organic, natural section of Wegman’s. These always make me a little leery. I was well aware that there was going to be some sort of tofu like product in these meals. Sometimes I can handle tofu and other times it freaks me out just a bit. So I decided to pick out two meals that I recognize and enjoy. I figured if it’s something I normally like, I should be able to find something halfway decent about it.

The first one is Helen’s Kitchen Thai Red Curry. This meal is made with organic butternut squash, green peas, and brown basmati rice. The packaging states that this is 2 servings of vegetables and 11 grams of protein. It also said GMO free (trust me I didn’t know what that was either!), gluten free , and vegan. My first beef is I really didn’t see any butternut squash, well okay I saw two very small pieces of butternut squash. I don’t feel two small pieces is a significant enough amount to advertise this meal as having butternut squash in it. My only other complaint and it is a huge one is the Signature Tofu Steaks, they were icky. There was something about the taste of them that wasn’t appealing and they didn’t skimp on those! There were tons of pieces in there. I don’t know if it was the texture or just the taste, but I couldn’t even eat all of the tofu steaks. I took a few out of the meal and trashed them. I can not eat a tofu steak again. Blah. It was horrifying for me. Truly! I checked the ingredients in the tofu steak and there is nothing weird, so it might just have been the texture combined with the flavors of this dish. No more for me! I say try it if you are a tofu connoisseur, but I have never claimed to be one and I just don’t think I can try another meal from this brand.

The second meal is Amy’s Black Bean Enchilada Whole Meal. Now this one I really liked. The packaging states it is non-dairy, cholesterol free (that’s a plus for me!) and gluten free. The meal is an organic corn tortilla, with organic black beans, tomatoes, zucchini, tofu, black olives, and green chilies. The side dishes are Spanish rice with sweet corn and green peppers and organic pinto beans. There wasn’t much about this that I didn’t enjoy. The rice was even pretty tasty even after having been frozen. I love, love, love pinto beans! The tofu was chopped very small and stuffed into the enchilada so I had no problem with it. The only thing a little off was the enchilada sauce. There was a slightly odd taste to that. I added some Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and that helped. Overall this is probably one of the best frozen meals I’ve ever had and I am definitely buying another to try next week. I say try this meal if you like Mexican food. Obviously it’s not as good as going out to get it or cooking it yourself, but it’s a good representation. Yay for decent frozen food! My life is almost complete now!

I honestly didn’t realize how “crunchy granola” these frozen meals were. I’m glad I was putting something fairly healthy into my body. I do care about where my food comes from; I just don’t have the money to eat that way all the time. As far as frozen meals go these were about average in price. No shoppers club discount available. I wonder if there ever are? Sometimes I speculate if eating less gluten will help with my stomach troubles, so that’s another plus for these meals when it comes to me. I do not have celiac disease thank goodness, because there is no way I could be gluten free all the time. I’d die without my pasta and bread. In fact tomorrow I plan on having Spaghetti O’s with Sliced Franks! Yum! I know, it's a weird thing to enjoy, but I love Spaghetti O's!

Okay so I’m sucking it up tonight and I’m cooking. While I was writing about my frozen meal experience it got me excited for trying kale chips tonight. I know they are super good for me and I really hope I will enjoy them. Maybe I will start craving kale chips instead of tortilla chips. Okay maybe not. I’m wondering if I will be offering Anthony enough to eat with that meal though. Salmon and kale chips. I feel like I need to add a starch of some kind. That’s not a good thing since we have officially run out of potatoes, rice, and couscous. Although we do have a box of Rice-a-Roni I keep around for emergencies. I might have to break that out.

Bacon Wrapped Chicken

Day 19-Did my kitchen depression carry on? Yes and no. I did want to get into the kitchen and cook last night, but only because I wanted to get it over with. The passion is gone people, at least for this week. Being the amazing person I am, I carried on with cooking as planned. No take out tonight! I had a feeling this meal was actually going to taste pretty good so that was the goal that I kept looking towards in order to get through the process.

I wanted to make something with bacon in it this week to honor Anthony, my bacon fanatic husband. I came across a recipe for Bacon Wrapped Chicken on Taste of Home. This is a pretty fattening recipe so if you are looking for something dainty and healthy check out my other posts. Last night I still really didn’t have a side dish in mind for this chicken. I bought some zucchini at the store on Sunday, so I needed to do something with that. I looked through the cupboards and found a partially used box of plain couscous. Perfect! Since I was flying by the seat of my pants with this one, I asked Anthony what I should add to zucchini sautéed in olive oil. He said it would probably only need some onion sautéed with it. Onion! My mortal enemy. Why do we always need to use it?! But alas I decided that would be the best option.

Did I mention this recipe is quick? It’s great for a weeknight dinner. So I started getting the chicken ready. I pounded the chicken out until it was pretty thin. Then I took the chive and onion cream cheese and spread it onto each chicken breast. I think I went a little overboard and could probably use a little less cream cheese next time. Then for whatever reason the recipe says to put a few dabs of butter on top of the cream cheese, so I did. Anyone know what that would be for?? I’m not sure it’s necessary, since I can’t figure out what the butter’s purpose is. Don’t forget some salt after you add the butter. Once that is finished, you roll the chicken breasts and wrap one piece of bacon around each one. Place the chicken breasts seam-side down on a greased baking pan. Pop them in the oven at 400 degrees for 35 minutes.

After the chicken was in the oven I chopped up the zucchini and onion. Once the chicken had been cooking for a bit I started sautéing the zucchini and onion in olive oil. But as is typical with my brain it must have shut down and I put the zucchini and onions in the pan at the same time. Oops! Not a huge ordeal, the onion just didn’t cook the way I really wanted it to. I added some salt and pepper to the vegetables. Once the veggies were nicely sautéed I started the couscous. I love couscous, it cooks so fast! Yay!

Now the chicken is ready to be put under the broiler for 5 minutes. I had to go to the bathroom at this point in the process, so I left the kitchen for a few seconds. Next thing I know the smoke detector is going off. I tell Anthony to deal with it since I was in the bathroom. He comes into the kitchen and checks the chicken and says he saw a fire in the oven. So he shut the oven off and apparently everything was all better. I did notice that there was bacon grease splattered on the oven door, but I never saw a fire just a little smoke inside the oven. If only one person see's the fire, then the fire doesn't exist. Right?

The couscous was mixed into the zucchini and onion mixture, with a tablespoon of olive oil. Looking good, if I do say so myself. The chicken smelled and looked pretty good too. I’m not a good chicken cooker. Chicken makes me nervous, since I’ve gotten food poisoning twice from chicken. Never any cooked at home though, so that makes me feel a bit better about the situation. Plus this chicken was on “fire” so it must be done!

Final Product:

All of this tasted good to me! No complaints. I think I could have done without the extra grease sitting under the chicken. A broiler pan might be the better pan to use next time. When eating the chicken with each bite you get some of the cream cheese goodness and the bacon flavor. Anthony added some parmesan cheese to the top of the couscous and it was the perfect addition. Yum! As far as I know Anthony also liked this meal, but since I’m not sure if he is telling me the truth I’m suspicious!

Totals: 10 minutes prep, 40 minutes cooking time, 1 baking pan.

Next up: Grilled Salmon Bacon and Feta Packets with Kale Chips

Beef Strips with Orange and Ginger

Day 18-I’m lacking confidence and I’m not feeling excited about my cooking either. Going into the kitchen these last few days I’ve felt the dread return. I have no idea why I’ve regressed. It might possibly be because I still wish I was on vacation. It’s what I’m going to call kitchen depression. You feel super every where else, but the minute you start thinking about cooking or walk into the kitchen you feel as blue as Eeyore. It certainly doesn’t help that I just found out that Anthony has not been completely honest with me on how my food has turned out. There have been times when he said it was a good meal, but really was thinking that the shrimp were overcooked (or something to that effect). Not cool. I need to know if something I am serving isn’t good, so that I don’t make the same mistake again!!

Anyway, feeling like Eeyore I walked into the kitchen Friday night to make a stir-fry. I’ve never made a stir-fry from scratch, I buy the frozen ones! This was from scratch and involved beef. Scary. I knew it wouldn’t be hard to make, but my kitchen depression was bad. So I put on my fun apron and slowly got started. I chopped up some carrots from the garden, an onion, and ginger. Then I thinly sliced the meat (sirloin). That part wasn’t my favorite. There were hard little bits of fat in it towards the end, so I cut those out. Yuck. The rest of the meal was pretty simple, it was ONLY a stir-fry. You marinate the steak strips in the juice of one orange and the orange zest. You reserve the liquid once you are through marinating the beef. Then you make a mixture of soy sauce, ginger, and cornstarch and mix that into the meat. Then you heat up sunflower oil, add the beef and cook until there is a little color. Then you add the carrots and cook until the meat is done. The last step is stirring in the scallions and reserved liquid. I think I over did the sesame oil at the end and the meat was a little over done, I really don’t cook meat so I knew it wouldn’t be perfect.

Final Product:

Thoughts? It was okay. Another one that I’m not rushing to make again. I really just didn’t enjoy my time in the kitchen tonight. Someone needs to slap this lack of confidence and desire out of me. I wasn’t motivated and I really just didn’t care.

Totals: 20 minutes marinate, 10-15 minutes prep, 10 minutes cooking time 1 wok or big skillet, 1 bowl.

I avoided the kitchen at dinner time for the rest of the weekend. I did make an apple cake, which basically was a mix, though I did have to chop 6 apples. Other then that moment, there was no dinner made by me this weekend. It was a kitchen protest. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m really hoping my kitchen issue ends tonight, because my budget can’t afford for me to stop cooking.

On to some fun: I finally got around to poaching eggs. I don’t eat eggs, because they do not agree with my system. After watching Masterchef and seeing people poaching eggs I really wanted to try it out. So as a reminder on how to do it, I watched two videos on youtube.com of people poaching eggs. It seemed pretty straightforward, the only part that I knew would be trouble for me, was getting the temperature of the water right. Unlike one of the chefs in the video, I do no carry a pocket thermometer around with me.

First things first you crack an egg into a little bowl, making sure not to break the yoke. Then you fill a pot of water 2/3 of the way full and bring it to a boil. Once the water boils, you turn the temperature down to where the water is just starting to have bubbles, but they are not breaking the surface. Then you add some salt (1 tsp) and some vinegar (1 oz) to the water. The vinegar will help the egg white to stay together. The next step was the most fun for me, you put a spoon in the water and create a whirlpool effect. Then you carefully drop the egg in the middle of the whirlpool. After the egg is in for a few seconds run the spoon underneath the egg to make sure it isn’t sticking.

Then you wait for the egg to start rising which is supposed to mean it’s done. I don’t really agree. I tried 3 different eggs. With the first egg the yoke was a bit too runny. The 2^nd eggs yoke was really too runny. And the third was the best. The yoke was just about to start firming up, but had a less runniness to it. I would say the egg could be done anywhere between 90 seconds to 3 minutes. You just really have to watch it. I’m pretty positive my water was not at the correct temperature, which might be why it took 3 minutes for my egg to finally look correctly poached. Overall I had a good time doing it and I’m going to have to make poached eggs for people when they come to visit. Assuming they can eat eggs.

1^st try

2^nd try

3^rd try