Eat: 3 Ingredient, One pan, Summer Dinner

 

In the Summer, I literally dread the idea of cooking on the stove.

I'm fine with turning the oven on and throwing something in {forcefully and with rage}, but to stand over a hot stove and stir hot things around in a hot pan, just sounds too...hot. And sweaty.

No thank you, sir.

So, the other night, as I stood in the grocery store holding a package of Keilbasa sausage and feeling quite at a loss for what the hell I was going to do with it that wouldn't involve my stove, I called my dear friend Camdon, because he is both the master of casseroles, and of lazy cooking.

He's a bachelor, which means that's not an insult.

Anyhow, he suggested I grab some red potatoes, cut everything up into manly chunks, and toss it into a casserole dish, and bake it at 350 for an hour.

Being the rebel that I am, I decided instead to use Yukon Gold potatoes, and to add chopped, fresh broccoli, and then to drizzle it all with olive oil and spice it up with Garlic and Creole seasoning, and bake it at 375 for 40 minutes, instead.

 

I think it's safe to say that you've gotten old, when your greatest form of rebellion is making someone else's recipe slightly differently from the way they told you to make it.

 

In any case, it was delicious.

And so easy!

I just grabbed the potatoes and the broccoli and a bottle of wine, headed home and got to washing and cutting.

I chopped the broccoli heads, tossed them in the pan.

Washed and quartered the potatoes, into the pan.

Cut the sausage into 2 inch chunks, and again, into the pan.

Busted out the olive oil, the garlic powder, the onion powder and the creole seasoning.

Smothered everything with seasony goodness.

Tossed it in the oven.

Then I had some wine and ate some chips and salsa, and 40 minutes later, I had a pan nearly over flowing with delicious, filling, goodness, that didn't have any cheese or cream-of-whatever soup in it at all.

 

So there you have it.

Summer dinner that requires 3 ingredients, one pan, and no stove.

 

You're welcome.



Eat: Chili Lime Grilled Shrimp Tacos with Chipotle Adobo Sauce

It's been a while since we've talked about food, right? 

What is Sarah's blog without some good old fashioned fatty food porn?!

Nothing.

Lately I've had the most ridiculous and incurable craving for grilled shrimp tacos.

Living in Arizona, you would think that awesome tacos would be as common as swimming pools and people who say "Hot enough for ya?"

But honestly, there are so many chain Mexican restaurants run by gringos out here, that really, truly amazing Mexican food can actually be a bit hard to find.

Anytime I go to a restaurant lately that has shrimp tacos on the menu, I have to try them. 

Mostly I've been overcharged, underfed, and sorely disappointed.

What's a girl to do??

Make her own, that's what.

BUT! I knew it wouldn't be as simple as just grilling up some shrimp and dumping it in a tortilla.

I need a good, smoky, spicy chipotle sauce! I need good, flavorful shrimp! I need it all!

I did some research, found some recipes and tips here and there, and thought, I think I'm ready to try this shit.

So I did. 

Surprisingly, they were super easy, and so fucking good.

First we'll start with the ingredients list.

You need:

1 bag of raw shrimp. I get the frozen stuff because it's cheaper, but you have to get the raw ones, and the larger ones the better because they shrink a bit when cooking.

1 can of chipotle peppers in Adobo Sauce. You can find these in the "International" section of your local grocery store. In Arizona this means a lot of Mexican food ingredients, and some boxes of pad Thai. For the adobo sauce, you also need sour cream and fresh limes, and garlic powder. 

If you're like me and like to make your own tortillas, you need 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of water, and three tablespoons of olive oil, plus salt and garlic powder to taste. 

First, thaw out your shrimp under cold running water.

Peel those bitches.

In a big bowl, toss them in 2 tablespoons or so of olive oil, and coat with chili powder, garlic powder and salt. 

Squeeze half a fresh lime over it and put them back in the fridge.

While those are chilling, make the dough for your tortillas. 

Mix the two cups flour with the 1 cup water and 3 tablespoons of olive oil and add a teaspoon or two of salt and garlic powder if you like them like that, which I do.

Mix it up in a big bowl with your hands. We keep it simple, 'round here.

Flour a surface like a wood cutting board, and dump the dough out on it.

Knead it real good, and shape it into a cute little ball like the one you see in the picture above.

Let it sit for a couple minutes and have a beer.

Once your beer is gone, rip the dough ball into smaller balls. Something between a golf ball and a lemon, depending how big you want your tortillas. 

Flour your rolling pin, and roll the dough out into something that sort of resembles a circle.

If you're me, it will never be a circle. You'll just be lucky to get it flat.

Roll them as thin as possible.

Heat up a non-stick skillet, and heat them on both sides until they bubble up a bit and have sexy little brown spots on them like this:

That's a good looking tortilla, am I right?

Now, cook as many as you want/need. The recipe makes quite a few, and you can wrap up the dough and save it in the fridge for later.

It's time to make the shrimp.

In the same hot skillet, wipe out the burnt flour with a cloth, and dump the shrimp right out of the bowl.

Add a little extra lime juice and olive oil, and sprinkle on garlic powder and salt to your liking. 

Grill them up until they plump up, get nice and firm, and the tails curl in a little, like this:

Now turn the heat off and cover those bad boys, but leave them on the burner. 

Make your chipotle sauce. 

Open your adobo peppers, and seperate the whole peppers from the sauce and the little pieces. 

In a bowl, add two or three big, heaping spoonfuls of sour cream. 

Start spooning in your adobo sauce from the can, and the little pieces of peppers, mixing well and tasting it as you go. Keep adding adobo sauce until you've reached the heat and smoky flavor you want.

Add some garlic powder, salt, and a few squirts of fresh lime too if you're feeling fancy, but really the adobo sauce has such a good, deep flavor you may not need anything else. 

And BOOM. 

You're done.

I ate the shrimp on the tortillas with nothing but lime juice and adobo sauce, but my kids like shredded cheese and lettuce and fresh tomato and all that.

Honestly by the time they were done I was so fucking hungry I was not wasting time with additional condiments!

Now, crack open a Corona and eat a few tacos, and look at pictures of the beach. 

Happy Summer.

Recipes: Caprese Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

So I know I said that I wasn't posting this week, and I had every intention of honoring that, but then these sandwiches happened, and I just couldn't keep them secret until next week. 

They were far too delicious, and clearly, they photograph quite well.

I appreciate photogenic foods.

Anyway, enough jibber jabber. Let's get to the good stuff: how to make the sanwiches.

What you're going to need is simple:

Tomatoes {I used Roma and it took two of them to make 4 sandwiches}

1 loaf of french bread

Butter

Olive oil

Garlic powder, salt and pepper

Fresh basil

Mozzarella {the little ball thing of it that you get at the deli. Not the shredded stuff, and for the love of God not the rock hard block of it next to the sandwich meat}

Simple enough, right?

I know for regular Caprese you use Balsamic vinegar, but it really doesn't do well on these sandwiches, so just skip it.

Start off by buttering all the pieces of bread you're going to need on one side in advance. Once the skillet is nice and hot you're going to want to be able to assemble the sandwiches quickly.

Next, spray your pan or use a very very good non-stick one, and heat it to about medium. At least that's the setting on my stove that it should be to grill things without blackening them. You know your stove best.

Next, throw a piece of buttered french bread butter side down in the hot skillet, and add a nice thick slice of mozarella, one or two big basil leaves, and your tomato slices.

Drizzle on top of the tomatoes with a little bit of olive oil, then season with garlic, salt and pepper to taste.

Add the top piece of bread and grill both sides until they're as brown and crispy as you like them. 

The first couple times you flip the sandwich you have to go slow and be careful to hold it together, since it will be rather high until the cheese melts down a bit.

Once it's done, eat it nice and hot with a good crispy deli pickle spear, or garlic stuffed green olives, and then brag about it on Facebook like I did.

These things are way good.

Comfort Food: Sausage Broccoli Mac and Cheese

The comfort we take from food is something that I think we all share. 

Right, wrong, or indifferent, comfort food is called comfort food for a reason: it's hearty and satisfying and makes you feel warm and sleepy when you're done with it.

Comfort food is universal. One of the few links we all share.

My favorite comfort foods involve cheese or have casserole in the name. This is probably surprising to none of you.

Loaded mashed potatoes, tater tot casserole with lots of cheese, hash-brown casserole, green bean casserole with extra fried crispy onion straw things.

One of my best friends, Camdon, shares my love of cheese and casseroles, and he gave me this recipe recently. It's hearty, it's filling, it's cheaper than dirt and if you have kids in the house, forget about it, this shit is gone.

What you need...

A 13x9 inch glass casserole dish

A polska kielbasa sausage link...the big one that comes in like the oval shape

A bag of frozen broccoli

two cans of cheddar cheese soup

1 box elbow macaroni

shredded cheese

panko bread crumbs or crushed croutons if you want a crunchy top {we did. shocker I know.}

Slice the sausage into pennies and fry it in a little olive oil until it's brown on the edges or as crispy as you like it. I usually pepper mine with a little garlic powder, onion powder and a dash of Cajun seasoning.

Boil the elbow macaroni until it's the texture you like it, then drain it.

Mix the soup, sausage, frozen broccoli and drained pasta together in the casserole dish. 

Add about a half a cup of shredded cheddar and mix again.

Top with your bread crumbs or crushed croutons, and throw it in a preheated oven at 375 for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and it's hot and bubbly. 

Eat, feel comforted, go for a long walk. 

Enjoy.

Eat: Pesto Chicken Naan Pizza

Things I Don't Know How To Do, Pt. One

I don't know how to make rice. 

There. I said it.

I mean, I get the basic concept of it I guess, but I fail at it almost every time.

This is a running joke with my friends, none of which actually know how to cook, but all of which can still cook rice. 

I am the friend who cooks well.

I am the friend who always has a good recipe for something.

I am the friend you want to know when your family goes to the Bahamas for Thanksgiving and you're looking at a bleak future of hoping the Jack in the Box drive through is open after 4 p.m. that day.

But I can't cook rice.

What the hell is wrong with me? It's irritating because this is the one food that every stoned college kid knows how to make. And they even have like versions of it. Different ways to prepare it so as not to become bored with their 98 cent dinner, three weeks into not being able to afford anything else.

I am getting better at it, and I do believe in the old saying of 'if you can't do, teach.'

So today kids, I am going to teach you how to make rice.

Step one: measure out way less rice than you think you need. Estimating about two cups for three people? Yeah, half that. Rice expands like those little foam pills we used to put in bowls of water as kids, to watch them turn into dinosaurs and kittens and other useless pieces of foam that vaguely resembles animals. 

You will always have too much rice.

Step two: add twice as much water as you added rice. This seems simple, right? 1 cup rice = 2 cups water. 2 cups rice = 4 cups water. Yeah. It's simple until the night you've had four Appletini's and are standing at the sink talk/screaming to your best friend on the phone about how you ran into your asshole ex-boyfriend whilst measuring rice and water and suddenly you realize you've lost count. Did you just add one cup too much, or do you still have one cup to go? DAMN IT. Throw it all out and start over. 

After another Appletini of course.

Step three: find the lid that actually goes to the sauce pan you're using. This is bullshit. With pasta, if you can't find the right lid you can just throw a cookie sheet haphazardly over the top and the shit will still cook. Not so with rice, the smug, persnickety bastard. That shit needs to be practically air tight. Dig through the cabinets, get pissed when everything falls out, jumps out, breaks, becomes a jumbled mess or smashed your toes. Wonder why you decided to cook rice in the first place.

Step four: ponder the AUDACITY of rice to even require so much as TWO steps, let alone FOUR. Place the pot on the stove indignantly. Turn the burner up to whatever temperature it needs to be at to boil shit. My stove is possessed  so that number would be about 4. I've heard other stoves actually need to be on like 8, but whatever. Can't have everything.

Step five: remember that cooking rice is like baking. It's a science, not an art. You have to be exact with your measurements, your timing, your heat. Everything. Don't fuck this up by going to sit down and watch Duck Dynasty with another Appletini. Stand at the stove and watch the rice. You are now the rice's bitch, and don't ever forget that. Once it starts to boil, panic completely and try to decide how long you should let it boil for. The answer is not too long, but exactly long enough. If that shit boils over, you've lost moisture for the rice to absorb, resulting in hard rice. If you have to lift the lid to make the foam go down, you've lost heat. You're basically fucked.

Step six: at exactly the right moment, switch off the burner, but leave the pot there. It will keep simmering for a bit, and then being the greedy motherfucker that rice is, it will start to absorb the water and freakishly expand into way more rice than you're ever going to need. Leave the lid on. 

Under no circumstances should you follow your natural cooking instincts. It looks done? Well it's not. You feel like it's been enough time? Nope. Better let it sit there for another five million hours while you're children starve and you run out of Vodka.

Step seven: after you've spent you're entire life waiting on this shit, it will finally be done. Life the lid and taste a tiny bit from the BOTTOM of the pan. If it's soft and edible, the rest should be too. If it's hard and crunchy and tastes like shame and failure, give up, order Chinese food and ask for a rice cooker for Christmas.

I hope we all learned something here today.

And that is that rice is an asshole, and Appletini's are good.

The end. 

Recipe: Chicken Enchilada Soup

Even though I live in Arizona, where the weather doesn't actually change much {but I pretend it does by dressing as if I live in Boston} it occurred to me that not all my readers live in Arizona. Some of you are lucky enough to live places with actual seasons, and it being the end of November, it might actually be cold where you are right now.

Want some soup?

Don't be silly, of course you do.

Chicken Enchilada Soup

1 bag frozen corn

1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

1-2 lbs frozen boneless skinless chicken breast

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 big can of your favorite enchilada sauce

1 can Mexican style stewed tomatoes

Throw all the veggies and beans in the bottom of your crock pot, put the frozen chicken on top, pour the cream of chicken soup over it, and pour the enchilada sauce over top of that, and mix the sauce together just until it's combined.

Cook on low for 4-6 hours or until the chicken is done.

Take the chicken out, shred it with a fork, throw it back in and serve the soup with shredded cheese and sour cream.

Bada bing.

It's the EASIEST soup ever, and it is so good, I literally make myself sick from eating so much of it every time I make it.

The kids love it too and it's in our regular rotation, which means I make it like twice a month at least.

Anyway, I hope y'all stay warm. 

Send me some of your cold weather if you can.

Friday Diary: Holy Crap It's Back

Happy Friday everybody!

I felt like it was time to do a Friday Diary since we haven't done one in a while. 

I know you're all very excited.

Try not to urinate on yourselves.

...

This song has been on repeat for like, ever in my house. Lainie and I like to dance to it in the kitchen when we're cooking, and we kind of white boy rap it back and forth to each other.
It's fun.

...

Overheard:
Me: Come on Jackie baby, get in the car.
Jackson: I'm not a baby. I'm a grown up. I'm a motorcycle driver who builds rocket ships and airplanes and is a Power Ranger.
Me; You're pretty busy
Jackson: Yeah, that's why I drink so much milk and always get out of bed when you telled me not to.

...

Letters:
Dear Bill: You give perfect hugs and are the world's best scary movie buddy. You're awesome.
Dear Lainie: You never eat any of the dinners I make you anymore and the other day you told me you're too old to hold my hand at the grocery store. Stop it. Just stop it.
Dear Dad: No matter how old I get I will still love watching movies with you until 1 in the morning, even though I have work the next day and should be sleeping.
Dear Megan: I don't know if you still read this, but if you do, your birthday was yesterday. Happy birthday. I hope it was super awesome.

...

Made:

Black bean fritters, found here.

They were good. My kids seemed indifferent about them, but they ate them, and my dad loved them to death. He thought they were hamburgers with black beans in them though...

...

Pinterested:


...

Read:

15 Ways to Stay Married.
No, I am not married, nor do I plan to be in the near future, but still, this is some solid love advice in my opinion. My heart was nodding along with every word, and it's not the usual cheesy shit, like "Have sex, make date nights, don't stab each other blah blah blah" that's regurgitated in EVERY love advice article.

...

And now, some laughs from the land of internet.
Enjoy.


Well, that's it folks.
Happy Friday.
Don't do anything I wouldn't do this weekend.

Or, more importantly, don't do anything I would do.

Recipe: Caprese Salad

Recently I did something I would consider pretty stellar: I got two weeks of groceries with one weeks grocery budget.

It was amazing.

I stood there at the check out counter with baited breath, watching the total add up, just hoping it would ring up at least 1 cent under the 100 I had decided to try to stretch twice as far as it normally does. Not for any big reason other than my life is boring and playing games with myself in the grocery store is a source of entertainment for me these days.

Anyway, when the total popped up $98.76, I almost cried.

One of the things I attribute to my success was when I planned my menu, I planned in 3 meatless meals.

Meat, in any form, be it fish, chicken, beef or sausage-basically any food with a face-is getting higher and high in price it's unbelievable!

So, three of the 14 meals I planned would be meatless, and I think I saved at least 20 bucks by just doing those three meals that way.

One of the meatless dinners I planned was Caprese pasta.

Bill and I love Caprese, and we find excuses to make it as often as possible. It's delicious, it's good for you {except the cheese, but who's counting} and in hot summers it's so refreshing it's ridiculous.

So, I figured why not throw it in some pasta with butter and Parmesan and call it a meal?

So I did.

What You Need:

About 1 cup fresh mozzarella cheese {by fresh I just mean the softer stuff, not the shredded or block stuff they sell at the stores. Look for those squishy balls of it in the produce/deli section}

+

1 carton cherry tomatoes {firm ones are better}

+

1 box of your favorite pasta {we like Rotini}

+

Fresh Basil

+

Olive Oil, Balsamic Vinegar, Minced Garlic

+

Butter and Parmesan cheese.

This is so easy it's hardly even a recipe, but here you go:

Cube up about 1 cup of mozzarella-or really however much you want. We're cheese people, so I did more. Heat some olive oil in a skillet with a little minced garlic. Throw the tomatoes in and rip up the basil. Throw that in too. Mix it up and add a splash of Balsamic vinegar and some salt and pepper {sea sea and cracked pepper are best} Let that saute/simmer until the tomatoes are soft {but not mushy} and hot. Remove from burner and cover until your noodles are done.

When the noodles are done, drain but don't rinse, and then add a couple good heaping tablespoons of butter {or some olive oil, whatever you like} and mix it up until the butter melts.

Douse with Parmesan cheese and toss until the noodles are lightly coated {this is more to taste, however much cheese you want}.

Now throw in your tomato/Basil mixture and as much chunked up mozzarella as you want, and enjoy!

We ate this with piping hot garlic bread since I didn't think I'd get the kids to eat this, plus more veggies in a salad.

In case you're wondering how much this meal cost:

Pasta: %1.00

Tomatoes: $2.00

Cheese: On sale for $2.50

Basil: .97 cents

Garlic bread: 1.99

Parmesan cheese: $1.77, which will probably last another 20 meals, easily.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total: $10.23

$1.70 per serving 

It fed all three of us once, and there are plenty of left overs for a second meal for each of us which makes it a six serving meal at least.

This was the most expensive meal we planned for the two weeks of groceries we bought, but considering it made enough for two meals, I'd consider it about average per serving with all the other meals.

Recipe: Egg Muffin Things!

Breakfast foods are delicious, I think we can all agree on that!

But, a lot of them are bad for you and the ones that aren't never seem to fill me up, and bananas make my stomach hurt.

I only add that because people are always screaming about bananas in or around my breakfast foods, and I'm here to tell you: it's not like the mascot fruit of morning meals, ok?

Geeze.

Anyway, when I was in high school I could totally go all morning without eating a bite, and not feel hungry until around noon.

Yeah.

Not so much anymore.

It seems like every year older I get the earlier I need to eat. I should transition nicely into senior citizenship, seeing as how I'm only a cup of coffee with my 4 p.m. dinner away from being my Nana. 

Now that I do need breakfast, I've also learned I need protein.

So step the fuck off cereal, cuz you don't do shit for me!

The solution?

EGGS!

I love eggs in the morning. 2 hardboiled eggs will fill me up and carry me through to 11:30 for lunch without a problem. It's awesome.

But, after eating 2 hard boiled eggs every morning at work for 2 weeks, I'm fucking over it.

Looking for a way to spice it up, I went to the only place that understands me: Pinterest. 

There I found this recipe:

For egg sandwiches.

Really I didn't have much intention to make egg sandwiches, but I liked the idea of cooking eggs in a muffin pan in the oven instead of on the stove, and I thought to myself "Self! You could add shit to the eggs whilst they're cooking and make them even more delicious!"

It was a stroke of genius.

So, I made these:

Egg Muffin Things!

I know, brilliant name. Nobody steal it, ok?

Basically I just dropped some muffin liners into a muffin pan {because even with Pam eggs can stick to muffin pans REAL BAD. Just ask my friend Chris's old muffin pan. It's in the trash now.} and cracked one egg into each liner. 

Like so.

Then I chopped up some spinach and tomato to make these a little more flavorful but still healthy.

Then I baked them at 350 for 15 minutes.

After that amount of time they were still runny in the middle, so back in the oven they went.

Five minutes later they were perfect, and looked like this:

Before baking them I'd also thrown in some salt, pepper and garlic powder for taste.

In the end they were delicious. They tasted like the egg sandwich patties on the Egg McMuffins at McDonalds, only real and less greasy.

Next time I might do a few with salsa and a few with breakfast sausage or bacon and cheese or something.

Hey, you can't eat healthy ALL the time, right?!

{No, the answer is no. Stop saying yes, yes you can. BECAUSE YOU CAN'T.}

Recipe: Individual Pot Pies

I have a confession. It's something you've probably already guessed or figured out about me on your own. I am a comfort food junkie. I love it. All kinds of it. If I could have a super power, it'd be really hard not to choose "Eating Everything Without Getting Fat or Unhealthy".

I like to think that's every girls dream. 

I digress.

Among the many comfort foods that I love, pot pies have always been one of my favorites.

I like them so much that when I first moved out on my own I even bought the shitty, death in a box 79 cent ones from Walmart because I was broke, but still couldn't live without their warm flaky goodness.

When I saw this recipe on Pinterest, I thought to myself "Self, you can totally make those"

And I did.

Except I didn't have Bisquick so I subbed in two sheets of seamless Pillsbury crescent roll dough instead, and cut out circles the size of the holes in my muffin pan, one for the top and one for the bottom of each pie.

I boiled 1 lb of boneless, skinless chicken tenders and shredded them, then mixed 1/2 of the chicken with 1 can cream of chicken soup, and 2 cups frozen mixed veggies.

I seasoned that mix with garlic powder, salt, pepper and cajun seasoning {i put that shit on everything}

I sprayed my muffin pan with a ton of Pam so the pies wouldn't stick, and placed a dough circle in each muffin hole.

I spooned the chicken mixture in, careful not to overfill the holes, sprinkled with cheese, and covered with the top dough circle.

Then I kind of tucked the top piece of dough down around the sides of the filling so it'd get as close to the bottom piece as possible hoping that the two pieces would rise to meet each other and hold the filling in, which they pretty much did.

Then I baked them at 350 for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, I pulled them out, brushed the tops with melted butter and sprinkled with Oregano and a little more garlic powder, and popped them back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Perfection!

My kids went nuts over them. Lainie-who normally eats like a little bird, ate 3 of them, and wolfed them down at that, and Jackson, who has a big appetite but always fights me at dinner time over eating all his food these days, ate 2 of them with no complaint or struggle!

I call that a hearty success.

Our Weekend: Peanut Butter Cookie TIme!

The kids, sitting at separate tables at Subway, lest they kill each other or spill something on my food, me rocking the au naturale summer time hair in the middle of a 114 degree day, and then some of the very BEST Reese's Peanut Butter cookies that Lainie and I made. 

Want the recipe?

Sure thing:

2 cups peanut butter

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 cap full of vanilla extract {I couldn't find my measuring spoons}

Mix it up,  drop rounded spoonfuls onto a Pam sprayed cookie sheet, dip a wet fork in sugar and do the criss cross thing on top of it, but gently because these flatten out a decent amount.

Break a Reese's Peanut Butter cup into quarters and shove the pieces into the cookies.

Bake at 350 for 8 minutes. 

Easy Peezy Lemon Squeezy!

At least that's what Lainie says :)

Happy Sunday!