Oh Tuna Noodle Casserole!

Oh tuna noodle casserole. I’ve despised the thought of you for so long. I’m actually a big casserole maker. I love that you can have food for days on end when you make a casserole. It’s the tuna part to the noodle casserole that I’m not so fond of. Canned tuna is not good, in my opinion. I’ve never liked it. Tuna is a lost cause for me since it’s always (in my experience) paired with mayonnaise, which I find even grosser then tuna. Plus canned fish hasn’t worked out so well for me (see this post). Being the type of person that loves a challenge though I felt I needed to take tuna noodle casserole on. The one plus being it was easy to make. At least I wouldn’t be wasting tons of valuable time on something that I wasn’t going to like anyway.

The day of this challenge I was super nervous. I really try to like most foods and have a rule about trying something 3 times and 3 different ways before you decide to not like it. (The possible exception to that rule might be snails. I’m not sure how else to try them other than the traditional way and it was really hard for me to swallow them. I feel like they are going to crawl right back up my throat!) Anyway I was worried because I was positive I was not going to like this casserole.

I found a recipe online at eHow. It was a little different than some of the other recipes online. You make your own sauce, instead of using a can of Cream of Mushroom soup and there wasn’t any cheese in this recipe. First you cook the pasta; I used elbow macaroni (egg noodles seemed like an odd choice to me although a lot of recipes say to use those). Then mix ¼ cup of bread crumbs and a tablespoon of melted butter for the topping. You cook celery and onion in a skillet with some butter until the vegetables are tender. Next add a cup of milk and a cup of chicken broth and stir until slightly thickened and bubbling. You then combine everything in the casserole dish the (I did not use pimientos as the recipe did, but added frozen peas instead!) tuna, noodles and sauce and sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Bake it at 375 for about 20 minutes. Viola! Tuna Noodle Casserole!

Final Product:

Not pretty, but it so comforting!

Anthony’s biggest complaint was that I didn’t break up the tuna enough it was too chucky for him. How was I to know? I don’t eat the stuff! Also it was a bit unhealthy with all the butter. If I do it again I think I will use olive oil for the veggies. Overall I actually didn’t mind it at all. The tuna was pretty well hidden with all the other stuff in it. And considering how cheap this recipe is, we will be eating much more of this meal. Tuna noodle casserole isn’t as scary as you might think! Was anyone else scared of it besides me?!

I have a post that I’m excited about coming up soon. I made meatless sloppy joe’s last night and have decided to make meatfull sloppy joe’s next week and do a comparison. I’m pretty sure I know who the winner is going to be.

Chicken Tikka Masala and Minestrone Soup...Not on the Same Day!

I'm positive I've mentioned my love of Indian food numerous times now. Nothing I make at home ever tastes as good as what I get here. Of course I can't always afford to eat out every time I'm craving some Indian flavors. Chicken Tikka Masala is one of the ways that I appease my craving. It's a simple dish to make and if you are not sure about Indian food this is probably one of the more tame dishes to try.

I'm getting much better when prepping my food. I've found a comfortable way to chop onions and you will need one onion chopped for this recipe. For the rest of the prep you will need to crush 1 clove of garlic, grate 2 teaspoons of ginger, and cut 1 1/4 lbs of chicken breast into 1 inch chunks. Nothing too difficult or time consuming.

Your first cooking step is to get your basmati rice started. You have to use basmati rice when making Indian food it's so much better then the normal white rice. If you don't have a cinnamon stick to add to the water, you can add some ground cinnamon like we did this night. Heat oil in a skillet and add the onion and cook for about 6 minutes. Next add the ginger, garlic, and curry paste (I also added a little Tikka Masala Paste too; not necessary I just wanted to finish the jar), cook for 3 minutes. Add the chicken, some salt, and black pepper and cook until chicken in not pink on the outside. Then add 1 can of crushed tomatoes, cover the skillet and cook for 5-6 minutes more. Once the chicken is cooked uncover the skillet and stir in 1/2 cup of half-and-half and the cilantro if you can eat it. That's it. Simple, easy, tasty and cheaper then take out!

Tasty, tasty!! We enjoy this dish a lot. I recommend it to any of you!

On to the Minestrone Soup. I'm constantly looking for ways to exclude meat from our diet. It much healthier to eat meatless a few times a week. I'm not saying you should cut out meat from your diet every day, but a couple times a week is definitely heart healthy! Soup is also something I'm a big believer in making because it's normally quite easy to make and you usually have leftovers for lunch the next day.

This soup was great. I'm really glad I found this recipe in Food Network Magazine. So as not to bore you with all the details of how to make this recipe I'll just let you know what's in it. The main ingredients are onion, garlic, celery, carrot, green beans, diced tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, kidney beans, elbow pasta, and parmesan cheese. There are a few other basic ingredients, but if you like all of the items I just listed you will like this soup. Now start cooking! This will be great leftover! Next time I make it I'm going to double the recipe and freeze what we don't eat. Super yummy and basically healthy. I love soup! Have I told you guys that yet! Delicious!

Final Product:

My next two posts will be the beer brewing process and the results of the tuna noodle casserole. Let's just say I didn't hate it.

Tuna Noodle Casserole...REALLY?!

I have to catch up on some blog posts, it's been super busy so I haven't had time to do anything!! This weekend I'm sitting down and telling you about my beer making, Tika Masala, and Minestrone Soup.

The big story is tonight I am making Tuna Noodle Casserole. I'm taking my own advice and trying tuna again. Tuna = horrible nasty gross to me. Thinking back to one of my first blog posts, I told all of you to give something 3 tries and if you still don't like it then don't eat it. So I'm trying tuna again tonight. I figure with the sauce and the cheese I should be able to choke it down if nothing else.

I'll keep you updated.

Christmas Lasagna and Homemade Sauce

I cooked once or twice over the holidays and nothing turned out horrible. In fact Anthony told me that the lasagna I made Christmas was my best one ever. The sauce came out wonderfully. It had the perfect amount of spice to it. Yum! I tried to replicate the sauce for New Year's Eve and it didn’t come out the same. Guess I should have paid more attention to how I made it Christmas. I’m a reformed sauce in a jar user. It was just so simple and cheap to buy a premade sauce. The only time I ever made sauce from scratch was when making lasagna; a recipe that I got from Rocco Dispirito and have been using for years now. It’s just a simple cheese lasagna. I’m not even sure if there is anything unique about it.

I decided not to boil the noodles this time around. If you’ve ever made lasagna and boiled noodles you know that it’s not fun. The noodles typically will start breaking once they are cooked and you just have a mess you didn’t really need in the first place. I soaked the noodles in a casserole dish of hot water until I was ready to use them. The rest is a cinch to make, you can either used jar or homemade sauce and you have to make up an egg and ricotta mix. You spread a good bit of sauce in the bottom of a casserole dish (so the noodles have liquid to cook in), add a layer of noodles, then spread on the ricotta-egg mixture, top with shredded mozzarella and grated parmesan (I grated my own parmesan, but I didn’t shred the mozzarella. I got to take some shortcuts somewhere!), top with sauce and repeat the process until you have a good solid lasagna. Stick it in the oven at 350 degrees and bake for an hour. You can cover it for 40 minutes with foil and take the foil off for the last 10 minutes if you want to. I didn’t cover mine, I don’t remember if it’s because I forgot or if it was a conscience decision.

I started making homemade sauce and used Rocco’s Mama’s Marinara recipe. Since I first started making this sauce I’ve added things to it to make it my own. The key for my sauce is chili powder, red pepper flakes, sometimes I add some Frank’s Red Hot or Sriracha, and a lot of fresh basil. The dried stuff just isn’t as good for sauce. I like sauce with a little heat behind it! Once you try making your own sauce and see how easy it is you will be a convert. Just make sure to make big batches on the weekend (it needs to simmer for an hour) and freeze for the coming week or whenever!

Some other stuff I cooked over the holidays was chicken wing dip, artichoke dip, and chili cheese dip. I also made cookies, but ran into some problems making them. Never substitute Splenda for real sugar, it just doesn’t work out well. Lesson learned.

My next post will be about my beer brewing experience. Yes, I am going to try to brew my very own Nut Brown Ale (with Anthony’s help) tomorrow. This should be an interesting event and who knows, maybe I will pick up a new hobby.

Also I’m very close to making a decision on writing a book. Do I think it will be a best seller? No, but it’s something I’ve started and stopped numerous times and I just feel like now might be the right time to dig in and start writing. More details to follow.

Stew and Soup to Warm You Up!

I’m back! It’s been busy around these parts, so I haven’t really had time to blog about my cooking. I HAVE been cooking and it seems to be going better. I wonder if that has anything to do with the no blogging. Maybe it’s less pressure or maybe I’ve just been cooking easy things.

It’s my favorite and yet least favorite time of the year. I love the holidays! The decorations, the music, the togetherness, and the food all make me happy. Unfortunately I live in Upstate NY, so along with all the cheer and festivities we have snow. The madness has started intensely this year. I don’t think we normally have the amount of snow we are getting right now until January or February. The cold, the wet, the driving…bah humbug!

Taking into account the snowy weather I decided to make a stew and a soup. Both are super easy to make so I wanted to share them with you in case you are also knee deep in snow and need heating up.

The stew was just a basic chicken stew. You take a pound of chicken breast and cut it into ½ inch cubes. I browned it with ½ of a chopped onion. Then you add whatever vegetables you want. I put in some celery, carrots, and peas. The recipe calls for a 16oz bag of frozen stew vegetables. I didn’t see that at Wegman’s, so I added fresh veggies except for the peas, they were frozen. You are supposed to add one jar of gravy. I forgot to buy that so Anthony made some from scratch. He used the juices from the browned chicken, flour, water, butter, and salt (I think that’s it). Last I added some rubbed sage, dried thyme, and ground black pepper. Let that simmer on the stove for 15-20 minutes.

Final Product:
It was quite tasty and it just felt really comforting to eat. Anthony’s home made gravy was much better than the jarred kind. I’m glad I forgot to buy it. I will definitely make this again and maybe add some potatoes next time.

Soup is wonderful. I just love it. I could probably eat it every day as long as I was given a variety. I saw a recipe for Refried Bean Soup on a blog recently that looked delicious and as I was browsing my cook books I found a recipe for it. I’m not sure if the blog recipe was more complicated than the one I found, but I was happy to see how simple this soup is too make. Take a big can (28 oz) of crushed tomato and 1 small chopped onion and bring that to a boil. Once it boils, lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. After that you add refried beans (I used two 15 oz cans), 1 can of chicken broth, and some spices. The recipe just calls for cilantro, but we don’t use that in our house so I added chili powder and parsley. You stir that together and let it simmer for 15 minutes. That’s it people! It’s that simple. If you would like some crunch; take some corn tortillas and cut them into strips. Bake them at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. Top with whatever other garnishes you want. We used sour cream and Monterey jack cheese.

Final Product:
This is a very hearty soup. You probably won’t want to have grilled cheese or anything with it. We just had sourdough bread with both of the recipes (Anthony loves sourdough bread!). I’m going to find the other recipe for this soup and see what the differences are, but this was satisfying and I would have it again.

I’m cooking one more time this week and maybe again on the weekend. I plan on posting my holiday cookie making too! I missed blogging! This is fun!

I Did Cook, I Have Proof!

Finally I have a chance to let you know how my week of cooking has been going. I cooked dinner Monday (with help from Anthony) and Tuesday. Wednesday night I had a headache and was not in the mood to cook so we ordered take-out sushi. Call me crazy, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be cooking every single night this week. Turns out I also won’t be cooking dinner Friday since Anthony is working that night. The two meals that were cooked this week turned out to be pretty bland.

Monday night I decided to make Anthony’s father’s pasta e fagiloi. The recipe we had for it didn’t seem very complete so we improvised parts of it. Anthony seemed interested in helping me make this, I think partly because the recipe wasn’t complete and partly because it’s his father’s recipe. We sautéed chopped onion, celery (with the celery leaves), and garlic. Then we added chicken broth about 2 cups and brought it to a boil and added a cup of ditalini pasta. You have to keep stirring it because the pasta will stick otherwise. Once the pasta is cooked you add cannellini beans. Let them heat through and then stir in some grated parmesan, salt, and pepper. That’s it; it’s a very simple easy and delicious recipe. Ours turned out a bit bland. It needed more salt and pepper. Everything always tastes better when someone else cooks it, so hopefully next time when his parents visit his dad can make some!

Final Product:

Tuesday night I was supposed to make Chicken Vindaloo. I don’t have all the spices that you need to make an Indian recipe from scratch so normally I will buy the already made pastes that you can buy at Wegmans. They did not have the Vindaloo paste when I went shopping this weekend. Instead I bought a Hot Curry Paste. Any Vindaloo dish I have had has been really spicy and I wanted to get something that would compare to that. So I made the Hot Curry Chicken the same way I make Chicken Vindaloo. I sautéed a cup of chopped onion, then added 1 pound of chopped chicken breast and cooked it until it was white. Then I added 3 medium cubed red potatoes, 4 tablespoons of the Hot Curry Paste, and enough water so that everything was almost covered (that’s what the recipe says to do) and simmered it for about 20 minutes until the potatoes were tender. The end result was pretty watery, I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be. I served it over Basmati Rice and the rice just sucked up all the sauce, the chicken was also a bit over cooked. It just wasn’t Chicken Vindaloo and we found it a little bit bland (that’s becoming a theme with my cooking). A little odd that it was bland considering I put 4 tablespoons of the curry paste in. Guess I won’t be making that again, unless I can find the Vindaloo paste or can make it from scratch. I also served it with Naan Bread and Daal (Indian Lentils). The already cooked lentils was a great idea, they were nice and spicy. If you mixed them into the chicken and rice you got some more flavor out of the meal.

Final Product:

Let's Get Cookin'

Halloween has come and gone. I’ve had way too much candy! I don’t really have a sweet tooth except for when candy is around. There is no way for me to ignore it, I must eat it.

To ease myself back into cooking I made a Crockpot dish last week. I love the Crockpot! Throw everything in and do nothing with it for 8 hours and then it’s time to eat. How could you not love that?! The recipe is very simple and just contains a can of tomato soup, water, garlic, spices, potatoes, onions, carrots, and turkey thighs. You put the veggies in the Crockpot and lay the turkey thighs on top. Mix up the sauce and pour it onto the turkey thighs. The end result is very tender, fall-off-the-bone turkey meat. It’s a very simple dish, but it's well worth pulling the Crockpot out to make.

Final Product:

In the last week or two I've also made:

Pumpkin Penne

Shrimp and Grits

I know I have been M.I.A. lately, but I plan on coming back strong this week. My menu is: Pasta e Fagioli (my father-in-laws recipe), Mini Cheese Meat Loafs, Buenos Burritos (turkey burritos), Vindaloo Chicken, and Lentil, Spinach, and Bulgur Stew. I don’t except to run into any problems. I’ve made the meat loafs, burritos, and chicken before and the soup and stew don’t seem difficult to make. Of course there is a chance that take-out might play a part again this week, but I’m really going to try to cook Monday-Thursday and one night this weekend.

If you want to try any of the above recipes click on the link to the right of the post call Recipes Used for The Hesitant Cook.

"There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't and that's a wife who can't cook and will."
Robert Frost (1847-1963)