Coffee Spill

Remember to take yesterday's coffee out of the pot before today's coffee brews. 


Also, we're kind of digging the ripply, bubbly look of this dried on spill, so we're not doing anything about it. 

English Muffins - not quite there yet

Seitan and Collards Quesadilla

Do you know what goes inside a quesadilla?  Whatever you want.   That's the beauty of it.  Ok, so really, it's whatever you want, plus cheese, but you wanted cheese, right?


It's a grilled cheese sandwich on a tortilla.  With stuff inside.  And it's great for using up what needs to be used.  Last time I posted a quesadilla, it was a clean-out-the-fridge meal.  This time it was just the collards that needed to be used.   And of course, we bought five pounds of seitan a while back, so we're all set on proteins.

Hot Tip: How not to make balsamic reduction

You make balsamic reduction by heating balsamic vinegar.  You stir this.  You can add sugar or other things.  It thickens and makes a glaze. 

Frosting fail

It's been a while since I've posted a fail.  I think of that as a personal accomplishment, because it's not like I'm hiding kitchen drama over here and not telling you about it.  Basically, if I make something I haven't made before, you're going to hear about it, success or not.   But this frosting, whoa... this frosting. 

Thai Green Curry with Vegetables and/or Chicken

Yeah I said and/or.  Because the chicken was good and all, but the veg were spectacular, so you could skip the chicken. 


Tonight was one of those nights where Sous Chef Brian was on top of things, and I was not.  As we finished dinner, he looked to the pile of dishes and said, "Are you going to go blog now?"


Me.  "No.  Tomorrow is the farmshare post and I already have that written."


Him.  "Maybe you want to get this down while it's fresh."


Me. "No."


Him. "How about I get on these dishes, and you start writing."  


Thanks, Mom.  "Honey, have you blogged tonight?" "Are you getting enough blogging in?" "Have you had enough blog?"


The reality is, he's a smart boy and I have a backlog of posts of things I don't quite have recipes for anymore.  Things I just made and set aside.  Like, maybe I made this pasta sauce two weeks ago.  


So hows that for your fourth wall?


Tonight I made a Thai curry dish that we had at the house of friends a couple weeks ago.  A week ago.  In the past.  We were there, and they were cooking and they were making Pina Coladas and suddenly I realized why - there was an open can of coconut milk... there was coconut milk in the dish.  Damnit.  You never want to be the person who doesn't want to eat what they're served, but I can't stand coconut milk (or coconut for that matter) and Brian is even more opposed... the coconut he's fine with but the milk...ugh the milk.  So that's what goes in the Pina Coladas.  The drink I can't drink even though I really like: 1. pineapple and 2. drinks. 

Oatmeal Cookie Fail

I say that I don't bake and then take it back when I make bread or crackers.  I can't be trusted with sugar.  That's the thing. Sugar doesn't work for me.  A pinch here or there, sure, but once I'm using a measuring cup, it's all out the window. 


But, I cook all the time, and that gives me this false confidence that I can just handle whatever comes my way in the kitchen.  


So maybe we're on the couch watching the Hulu at 9:30 PM and Sous Chef Brian asks if we have cookies.  No, we don't have cookies because I haven't made any.  I make a pretty mean chocolate chip (I know this is contradicting the above) and I tend to keep the dough in the freezer but there's none on hand.  Sometimes I keep the cookies in the freezer.  But no, nothing.  I offer him frozen blueberries.  


He sighs.  I jump into wife mode.  I will make cookies.  Then he says he doesn't want chocolate chip.  I start rattling off cookie types (none of which do I have a reliable, go-to recipe for).

Couscous fail

Couscous is delicious and easy and you can do anything you want to it. Which is one (3?) of the reasons I've never been making couscous for dinner, thinking to myself, I should take pictures of this for the blog. It's easier than a grilled cheese sandwich.

So while dealing with the farmshare foods (making salad, washing things, determining if anything needed to be frozen) on Tuesday, I decided to do up some couscous for our lunches, using the fluffy chard we got. I sauteed up some chard in garlic and cooked the couscous in homemade veg stock and chopped sundried tomatoes, and a fontina rind. Black pepper. Done. It took 10 minutes.

Three Pepper Chicken Kabobs

I know you don't want to read me bitching about chicken again right? Or is that what you come here for? I'll cut to the chase for those of you who like to skip ahead: theres no real recipe here, but you'd like this, it was good, and I'm sure the day you make it, it won't go as badly as it did for me.

Chicken Saltimbocca

I wish dinner wasn't delicious.

What's my point here?  I guess if it wasn't delicious, I could post this as a fail and move on.  Big picture?  This blog is not about "check out my innovative new recipe you've never heard of" or "look at my impeccable technique."  It's about "look what I made for dinner."  Sure, I want it to say, "you too can make awesome sandwich bread/crackers/sweet and sour seitan," but I guess the part that follows that is "since I did it, and I'm not good at this sometimes."  I just posted a fail (there was the invisible cashew cream sauce with the chicken and black bean egg rolls) and I hate to do it again...  but this is about what I made for dinner.

Some nights I don't want to cook.  I don't know why I can't just take the tortilla soup out of the freezer and go with that, but I make something new instead.   Tonight, I didn't even have to think of something to make - it came from the comments, when I asked what to do with the leftover prosciutto from the spaghetti squash, Cheryl said "saltimbocca."  I've stuffed chicken before.  This is not a technique that I'm unable to handle.  But somehow, everything about it was.

Black Bean and Chicken Egg Rolls

This is, apparently, the only pose I can imagine for the egg rolls -I used it last week too. 

A week ago I made Red Cabbage Egg Rolls, and I had about half* the wrappers left over, so here's what happened with that. These are much like some Southwestern Egg Rolls we've had in chain restaurants, but made of food and baked.

Collards and Beans and Rice and Such

A warning for those of you who need it - bacon ahead.


We've discussed my disinterest in recipes - spoiler alert - no recipe today.  How long do I simmer it?  Until you're done with that other thing you're doing.  Seriously.  How much onion do I add?  I don't know, how much onion do you have handy?


That's how I cook most things.   As is convenient.  Baking is different and I don't do much of it.   The lack of planning and disdain for mise en place does get in the way sometimes, but I can't imagine I'm the only one who cooks up a half-crappy dinner now and again.   Do I want to stress myself out to do that slightly less often?  Probably not.


So dinner is as it comes together.  Oh, we have some more of that?  Add it in. 

Two Day Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread from a Magazine

So I've been making this bread, from a recipe. It takes days.

I've made bread before.   I make sandwich bread on the weekend, every other weekend, and freeze it, and we cut off slices and defrost throughout the week.  I thought I was all set with this oatmeal sandwich bread that turns out all pretty.

this is a pre-blog photo, when everything was yellow

But it's heavy, and oatmealy, and after a while I got tired of it.

Then this issue of Cook's Illustrated came in.  I love Cook's Illustrated, I've had a subscription for years (thanks Kristen!) and I read it the second it comes in, every time.  Cover to cover in one shot.  I usually pour myself a glass of wine and settle in in my jammies on the couch and just read.  But I've never cooked from it.  I'm just not a recipe girl.  I don't know what my excuse is.   And then this issue was like a sign - I need a whole wheat sandwich bread, and Cook's Illustrated is promising one.

Butter fail

I use the defrost setting on my microwave to soften butter.  You only need a few seconds.  Just don't accidentally set it for a few minutes and walk away. 

That's my kitchen tip of the day. 

Jalapeno Fail

I like spicy food.  I used feel like I was in a privileged class of people who could eat hotter food than most, but in recent years I've become aware of my limitations.  Maybe five years ago I burned my hand on a habanero and realized I needed to use gloves to cut some peppers. I guess that was the beginning of the end of me bragging about spicy food.

Then when we started eating banh mi, there were a few incidents.  There is one long slice of jalapeno on this sandwich, and maybe a tenth of the times I've eaten it, it's burned my face.  Burned my face, like caused me to mentally go through all those TV shows like Good Eats and Food Detectives (whoa, I can't find a clip of either, what's wrong with the internet?) that described scoville heat units and what to do to cool a burning mouth (milk, beer, sugar).  I finally settled on rubbing alcohol (not for inside the mouth, for outside the mouth) which I hear only works for some people.  So since then, I've typically taken the seeds out of the jalapeno, or torn the pepper into bits to distribute throughout the sandwich. 

So yesterday my shopping list included a single jalapeno, for a meal I was planning, but Trader Joes only had them in a box of ten (ten jalapenos for $1.59, compared to one jalapeno for $1.59 at Whole Foods) so I got the box.  Then I sat around thinking about what I could do with nine jalapenos.  I read a few canning articles, and scared myself again.  I thought about poppers but I don't really like them (but Brian does) and I don't have cream cheese, and how else do you get the cheese to stay in during breading?  And then remembered years ago some chain restaurant we went to had deep fried breaded jalapeno disks that we used to love.  So I went for it. Panko, egg, salt, jalapeno slices, and I was going to do it in the oven.

Shepherd's Pie

Brian requested Shepherd's pie, and that's perfect, because I have tired vegetables in the freezer.


I don't recipe, of course, so here's what I threw together. 


[Edited to add: There's a Vegan Shepherd's Pie here.]


I found something magical in the freezer: