Links and Thinks

Is the title too twee and/or dorky?

1. I've been making good headway on a few of my resolutions already. My 45th birthday (!!!!) is this March, and the day falls in the middle of the week. I had a few grandiose plans for celebrating but those usually end up getting scrapped. Instead I decided to give myself a gift I sorely need: I am taking the entire week off. A birthday staycation!

I am already counting down the days: 45 business days to go. Seriously.

2.  Also from the resolution front: I dropped off a couple of bags of food at the Food Pantry, added this Donate page to my bookmarks, did my monthly edits/purchases post, and got the 3 posts in last week.

3. I am also working on the budgeting. For years I used Quicken on Windows, and loved the program. It was linked to all my accounts, I could categorize all my purchases easily, and setting up budgets was a breeze. Switching to a Mac changed all that; Intuit refuses to make a good version of Quicken for the Mac, so I had to abandon my beloved program. I've been half-heartedly using Mint, but my Nordstrom account doesn't link to it, and after all this time, I just don't love the idea of doing all of my financial planning up in the clouds. I have online banking so it seems like a weird tic, but when I pull all my accounts together in one place with their account numbers, I just feel better if it is on my computer.

So I have been comparing programs and I am torn between two: iBank and Moneydance. Anyone have any experience with either? Thoughts?

4. I want to add Helen's dinner-table "aspiration" as an addendum to my own New Years resolutions; we have a great kitchen table, and we only use it with company. Not only is it a great way to truly slow down and appreciate our food (when I did Core we sat at the table all the time), but it is a way to spend more time together, take a breath between working and laying on the couch watching TV, and most of all, will eliminate most of the food stains on our clothes, laps, computers, and rug. ;-D

5. Lest you think all of this resolution business is a waste of time, a recent study showed that our personalities are changing all the time even though we think they are not. Science! (TM Jessie) It's never too late to change yourself.

6.



This is what I needed the plastic shoe boxes for. ;-D

Yes, those are all of my frozen bagged foods. I made tomato sauce and a batch of Sheila's green pasta sauce, and froze them flat on a cookie sheet.



Then I stacked them in the plastic boxes, alongside another container of soups. They had been scattered throughout the freezer, and I realized we weren't eating them as much as we should. This should help with that.



That's chicken noodle, smoky black bean, Tuscan bean, and butternut squash-carrot soup on the right. My friend Amanda created another recipe for a savory parmesan-nutmeg muffin that I am going to try, and I think we will be making quick work of some of these soups this week. (I will post the muffin recipe once I have tried them out!)

P.S. I stole the shoebox idea from Kat at Corporette, from a post from many moons ago. The frozen baggies idea I incorporated immediately, but I waited on the shoe box until now. It felt way too anal-retentive organized, but...that's what I am! Might as well make it work for us. :)

7. Meal planning frequently falls apart for me when I try to do it over the course of a week, and sometimes (like this one) even Sunday Cooking doesn't get done. I think sometimes I am just too ambitious; I buy all the ingredients but for whatever reason I just don't feel like doing the work, and the food goes bad and we order pizza instead.

So when my friend A linked this cooking challenge, it was a light bulb moment. OH! Not every meal is made for the same reasons, or with the same amount of effort -- and even comfort non-cooking foods have their place in meal planning!

I can use my own lists of known classics and my Pinterest board for new ideas, but this categorization from that post is one I want to use over and over:

• Classic Weeknight – Exactly what it sounds like. Quick, simple, healthy, meals that require minimal effort when you are charged with getting dinner on the table fast.
• Make-Ahead – Some of these would also fall under “Classic Weeknight,” but the beauty of them is that you can do a large chunk of the work on the weekend and store in the freezer.
• Keep the Spark Alive – These are a little more involved than regular weeknight dinners, but they are every bit as crucial to your psychological health because they take time and love and have the potential to get you excited about cooking again.
• Security Blankets – These are not recipes, per se, but suggestions for finger-foody things (peanut butter, hummus, baby carrots) that don’t need to be cooked.

The challenge is that you look at your calendar for the week, and see which nights should be Security Blankets or Make Aheads, which are ones that you have time to try new things (Keep Spark Alive), when you can prepare Make Aheads or just Classic Weeknights. You are supposed to pick a couple from each, and Security Blankets for the rest of the days.

I LOVE THIS IDEA. I can tweak it for us so easily, to ensure we definitely do more home cooking, with a reasonable mix of new, favorites, easy, hard and pre-made, or just a happy PB&J or baked potato.

8. Doesn't this sandwich look amazing? I don't know why it never occurred to me that we could make reubens at home. We can make reubens at home, OMG. And it can be a healthier version too: turkey pastrami, good sauerkraut and rye bread, a light Thousand Island...my husband is going to love this one. Oh my yes.

9. Did everyone see Ally's trick for wearing collared shirts under crewneck sweaters? She doesn't button the shirt underneath except for the top and bottom buttons, and tucks the rest to the sides. As I commented on her blog: Woman, you are a genius.

10. Is it time for my birthday staycation yet?

Sunday Cooking: Mission Aborted

Did everyone have a nice Easter/Passover/Spring Weekend Holiday? I was a busy little bee, prepping the kitchen area on Saturday for the painter. I realized that I had let the clutter expand in there and it was going to take two days to get it all done.

This is what I started with.







I had already re-organized most of the cabinets about six months earlier, but there were two left, one under the junk drawer on the outside of the island and one under the sink, where I knew we we were not utilizing the space properly. Once I cleared those out, a good proportion of what was on the counters were going to find new permanent homes.

Under the junk drawer was first. It's where we were keeping our tools, electronics, etc. Lo and behold, we were storing some electronics that we definitely did not need anymore. Check these out!



Anyone need to send a fax? Can't do it here, we don't have a landline anymore!



A real answering machine! I hated the voicemail that came with the phone lines, and stuck with this answering machine right up until the moment I switched to a cell phone. This is the machine the President of Pizza Hut left a message on, thanking us personally for our business. (True story!)



The base for our wireless phone. God only knows where the phone is. Look, caller ID!! It was top of the line, back in the day.



We had this princess phone for emergencies; if the power went out, the wireless phones went dead, but we had this one with its dirty, tortured cord to keep us connected to the world. I think I had this phone in college and in my first couple of apartments, thus the sprung-out cord. I walked all over my place with it in hand, talking to my girlfriends back home. Ah, good times.

Once I cleared those out, re-arranging the rest was a breeze. I next tackled under the sink and threw out bottles of cleaners that we never use (yay, cleaning ladies! All of their products are in the basement). Then I stored most of the remaining counter stuff in the basement temporarily so it wouldn't be in the painter's way. By the end of Saturday, the kitchen looked like this:







Then the painter called on Saturday evening, and cancelled Monday's appointment.

ARGH.

He is rescheduling with my husband for either Friday or the following Monday. If he defers again, I am stepping in.

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What does that have to do with food? Nothing! I just wanted to show you what I did this weekend. :)

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Sunday was Easter, and I had plans for my pal J to come visit during the day so we could watch The Office Christmas special (UK version), and then we were going in the late afternoon to our other friend J's for Easter dinner. I had decided on Saturday (before we got The Call) that since our kitchen would be out of commission for a good part of the week, it was a week for quiche and salad.

While J was here, I roasted cauliflower and garlic for a replay of that amazing mustard quiche, and made a quick broccoli slaw with honey mustard yogurt dressing that I had first seen on Pinterest.

My plan was to pop a couple of quiches in the oven and marinate some chicken breasts for cooking that night. Then we sat down to watch TV and gab. We lost track of time and had to rush to cook up the pierogis to take to my girlfriends. Thus my Sunday Cooking ended up as aborted as my painting did. Whoops!

Luckily, on Monday night, I forced myself to complete the quiches; it occurred to me that the half-hour of work they needed were all that stood between us and a week of takeout. I held strong!

The second quiche was to use up some items in the fridge. I had bought a chicken sausage the week before that I was dying to eat; I had had it long ago at Fredhots as one of their specialty sausages, and the flavors were so rich and amazing I scooped up a package as soon as I saw it at Whole Foods: AmyLu's Cranberry and Cognac Chicken Sausage. We both give this one two-thumbs-up approval, and Hubby doesn't even really like cranberries.

I sliced up some onions on the mandolin and sauteed them in a bit of olive oil. While they were cooking I chopped up two sausages and added them to the pan. Then I dropped a half-bag of frozen cut leaf spinach into the pan, and used kosher salt, cracked pepper, and a bit of Penzey's salt-free Pasta Sprinkle (basil, oregano, thyme) to season it.





Then I poured this into a whole-wheat pie shell and covered it with some fresh grated gruyere cheese and 6 mixed eggs, also seasoned with Pasta Sprinkle. Cook at 350 for 40 minutes, and we were good to go!

I am not gonna lie; I couldn't fit all of it in the pie shell, and while the quiches were in the oven cooking, Hubby and I ate the remaining spinach and sausage chunks with our hands. We might have made happy mouth noises, too; it was just that good. Funny, the quiche turned out fine, but the mixture outside of the quiche was even better. I have two more links (100 calories each!) and extra frozen spinach; I may just make another saute pan of it and have that for dinner this week.

(Don't tell Hubby; I don't want to share it with him. LOL!)

So in the end, I was able to complete the mission even after it got scrubbed. And I am ready for the painter whenever he gets here!

Sunday Cooking: In which I make chicken stock

It turns out I had a LOT of food in my tiny little freezer! There is still plenty of food left so it was another easy week of Sunday cooking. I ended up making building blocks instead of meals, but that's okay: I am getting a little restless to cook so being able to put something together each night has more appeal than usual.

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My husband cooked dinner for us on Saturday, and it was so good I have to share. We usually have one night on the weekend (sometimes two) where the meals are a little richer than usual; this was one of those. But it was so good! (I should know, I bought all the ingredients. LOL.)



He started with some Italian chicken sausage with mozzarella inside, slicing and frying it up in a non-stick pan until it was really crispy. He also added some Penzey's Italian seasoning to deepen the flavors.



I had found this gorgonzola ravioli at my favorite grocery store, and had to give it a try. Hubby asked me to pick up some pesto to go with it, since there isn't any decent fresh basil around right now. This was his presentation when he was done. I had to get the camera!



Oh boy, it was rich, and GOOD. I haven't had pesto in years, but it was perfect for the pasta.  

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This week's building blocks include chicken, spaghetti and butternut squash. All I did to prepare the squash was heat the oven to 350 degrees, carefully cut them in half and place them in roasting pans with bit of water on the bottom. Very fancy.




The spaghetti squash will be a couple of meals with defrosted tomato sauce and some remaining Italian seasoned chicken sausage. My favorite comfort diet meal!

I also made boiled chicken. This was a multi-purpose cooking method; I wanted shredded chicken *and* chicken stock. I cribbed off the chicken noodle soup recipe from a couple of weeks ago, and a standard chicken stock recipe, and added a few seasoning touches.

Here's how I made it:

1. Heated a little olive oil in the bottom of a stockpot.
2. Seasoned the bone-in skinless split chicken breasts with kosher salt, Worchestershire and Penzey's Northwoods seasoning. (Note: this all gave the chicken stock a darker color and a spicier flavor than usual. Since the stock is going in soup anyway,  I didn't care.) See my messy cooking space!



3. Browned the breasts in the stockpot, just enough to sear some of the flavor in.



4. Removed the breasts onto a plate.



5. Added some pieces of carrot, celery and a quartered onion into the pot to let them soak up some of the chicken seasoning flavors on the bottom of the pot. Tossed in some whole peppercorns, a bay leaf, and kosher salt for more seasoning.





6. Added 10-12 cups of water and brought it to a boil. Added the chicken back in and let it simmer for an hour.

7. Removed the chicken from the stock and shredded it up.



8. I wanted to throw the bones back into the pot and let them continue to cook on low for another couple of hours, but they were were all tiny bones and cartilage and it made me nervous. Instead I pulled out a chicken carcass I had been storing in the freezer (for stock! not because I like to store chicken carcasses in my house!) and used that instead.

9. After another hour (I got bored), I strained the stock into a fine mesh strainer. Had to do it couple of times, first to get rid of the larger pieces, then to get rid of the bits of seasoning, etc.

10. Let it cool, then skimmed most of the fat off the top (from the olive oil early on, and a bit of skin leftover on the carcass, I think.) Poured it into a couple of containers. I'll skim the rest of the fat after it's been in the fridge for a day. Whatever doesn't get used this week will go in the freezer for my next soup!



Stock and butternut squash will make a great soup by about Tuesday.

There was another recipe/experiment I tried from Pinterest, just to see: glitter grapes. I didn't read the reviewer's comment about using similar colors of grapes and gelatin in time, so mine didn't look all that great. I used green grapes and sugar-free raspberry. But it tasted great; the bowl of them is already gone. :) I might try green with key lime jello next time. The sweet-tart addition and crunchy coat was  just a different way to eat some standard fruit. Not something I will do regularly, though. I like plain grapes just fine!



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For dinner tonight, I made chicken salad sandwiches.  I am so glad I came up with a chicken salad recipe I like as much as I like this one. It's so easy. Shredded chicken, light mayo, celery, and chopped cranberries. Plus a good amount of Penzey's Wall of Flavor. Yum-O.



Chicken salad should only ever be eaten on toast; it gives you bread that is firm enough against the heavy salad, and the crunch goes well with the celery and eliminates the texture need for chips.

As a final shot, here is what I wore during my cooking spree.




Ha, I did not even know that George had snuck in there until I downloaded these to my camera. He's such a ham.

 How was your weekend?

Sunday Cooking: Mustard Quiche

After a few months of Sunday Cooking, I've stocked up a good amount of frozen soups, sauce, burgers, pulled BBQ pork, and other foodstuffs. This weekend, I just wasn't in the mood for an all-day cooking extravaganza, so I took stock of what I had already prepared, and added just a few key items to my grocery list.

Instead of making a weekly soup, I will be eating my choice of (canned or frozen): smoky black bean, tomato, split pea, chicken noodle, butternut squash or carrot-ginger.

For veggies, I was in the mood for salad, so I picked up some romaine hearts and a bag of baby sweet peppers. There are various cheeses, dried cranberries and other little dribs and drabs to sprinkle on top and plenty of frozen chicken thighs to heat up and put on top. There are also oranges, grapes, blackberries, and canteloupe (hope it doesn't give me e.coli, LOL.)

For main dishes, we have our choice of: spaghetti squash with chicken sausage, chicken sausage on buns, BBQ pulled pork on cauliflower pancakes, chicken florentine (for me) and burgers (for him) patties, and even some gorgonzola ravioli and frozen spinach if we want to indulge one night.

 I think it's time to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

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That said, I did make a quiche this week. (Two, to be precise; it was a double batch.) We had a couple slices of it last night during the Oscars, and my husband declared it my best quiche yet. I have to agree, it came out really great. The idea came from this pin that Anne had on Pinterest for a caulifower and caramelized onion tart. I was completely enamored of the idea once I looked at the recipe on Smitten Kitchen, especially the schmear of dijon mustard at the bottom of the pie shell. Cauliflower is the blandest vegetable on earth, and it takes a ton of seasoning to give it even a little oomph. I thought the mustard would be great at livening the dish up. But the recipe was much too rich, with marscapone cheese, whipping cream, and Gruyere -- no, I didn't want a tart, I wanted a quiche. So I riffed off the original and made my own recipe.

Mustard Quiche
(makes two quiches)

1 head cauliflower, cut into pieces
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 garlic bulb
olive oil
12 eggs (or egg substitute)
dried thyme
Penzey's Wall of Flavor seasoning
kosher salt
2 frozen pie shells
at least 2 TBSP Dijon mustard
2 ounces grated romano or parmesan cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. In a baking pan, place cut up cauliflower pieces and toss with olive oil, Wall of Flavor, dried thyme and a pinch of kosher salt. Cut the top off the garlic bulb and nestle into the cauliflower, drizzling a little more olive oil on its top.


Can you spot the garlic?

3. Roast veggies for 1 hour until softened and with a nice color. Let cool for about 15 minutes.

4. While the veggies are roasting, heat a teaspoon of olive oil in saute pan and cut the onion into thin slices. I use a mandolin (which took a while to figure out how to use safely, but I got it now!) Makes them look so tasty and professional!



Cook them on low heat until they go from this...



to this...



5. Let onions cool.

6. When you are ready to assemble and bake the quiche, make sure oven is again preheated to 350.

7. Schmear dijon mustard on the bottom of the pie shell. Hubby was very suspicious of this step, but even he admitted this was the secret ingredient that made the whole dish.



8. Chop the cauliflower into tiny pieces. Squeeze the soft, sweet garlic out of the bulb and chop that up too.



9. Place the cauliflower and onions on the bottom of the pan. Since I was making a double batch, I split it between the two shells. I left some of the onions to the side for a few minutes.



10. Crack 6 eggs into bowl and mix with fork. Season with kosher salt and more Wall of Flavor. Add in half the garlic and mix that in too.  

11. Pour into one shell. Repeat step #10 and pour into second shell. (I find it impossible to split evenly if I made all the egg mix in one step.)

12. Sprinkle an ounce of grated romano cheese on top. Add remaining onions on top.



13. Bake for 35-40 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.



14. Let rest 10 minutes before slicing.





Funny how all the ingredients were white, but it ended up with a nice color in the end, isn't it?

I would love to do this as a frittata and lose the pie shell altogether, but I have to think about how else I would get the mustard in there. It had to be dijon; dry mustard would be too sharp, grainy mustard too grainy, yellow mustard too bright and one-note. I guess I could fold it straight into the egg mix...

Anyway, this one is a keeper. Quiche and nice salad for several lunches or dinners this week? Yum.

Not bad for a week where I didn't do a lot of cooking!

Sunday Cooking: Building Blocks

I dunno, you guys, this week I was not feeling it.

My general malaise is probably related to the fact that I am fighting the flu/strep. It kicked up mid-Sunday, and I've been in the grips of it ever since. Worked a half-day on Monday, and took all day today off. If the fever breaks today I'll go in tomorrow. Hopefully.

I still managed to get some cooking done on Sunday. I call this the Polack version of the foodstyle:



All meat, just like every good Polish meal, heehee!

I made my standard meatloaf. (Hubby's request.)



And Brown Sugar Chicken in the slow cooker.



Then I fried up some bacon, just because.



Who needs anything else?

KIDDING. It wasn't all meat. I also baked two kinds of squash, and two pans of roasted veggies: cauliflower, carrots, and some yukon gold potatoes.





Problem was, I didn't really want any of it. The chicken was a little too weirdly sweet and vinegary (it got better after a couple of days), and everything else was just...okay. I should clarify, my husband has been gobbling it up so the taste of it was fine. I just wasn't interested.

Maybe being sick had something to do with it, but it wasn't until today that I realized the problem: all I had made were building blocks for "real dishes". I'm so used to roasting squash as a precursor to making soup or cooking a meat to then put into a casserole that when faced with the foods as themselves, I was bored.

So today I took the chicken and made it into this chicken kale casserole. Mmmm! (The proportions on the recipe are weird. I used a quarter of the ricotta and it came out fine.)



I also have plans to make a cheddar, bacon and spinach quiche (thus the bacon), and maybe a kale brussels sprouts bacon salad. Depending on how I am feeling as the week progresses.

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Hillary has been doing a hilarious comparison of Pinterest food portraits to what she has made, called Pinterest Versus Reality. Since Pinterest is my new recipe book, I have two to share!

This was the original Brown Sugar Chicken versus what I made:

Source: crockpot365.blogspot.com via LowFatDressing on Pinterest

This was the Chicken Kale Casserole.

Source: marthastewart.com via LowFatDressing on Pinterest

Funny thing is, the casserole recipe and picture came from Martha Stewart, and the chicken from a blogger. Who would have ever thunk that Martha Stewart would have the more realistic food photography?!