just stuff I threw together

I was talking with my brother on the phone the other day and he was reminiscing about a side dish my mother used to make that we loved as kids. It was basically a casserole made up of tater-tots, mayonnaise and cheese and it was all kinds of brown and bubbly goodness. Now that he has been diagnosed with Diabetes those kind of carbs are off the menu so he has adapted it to use high protein soybeans instead. It sounded intriguing, so I took his idea and ran with it adding some sausage and eggs for a complete one dish meal.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease a 9 x 9 glass baking dish or any medium sized casserole. Layer the following in the bottom:

• 1 can organic soy beans drained but not rinsed
• 1/4 onion, diced
• 2 pre -cooked chicken sausages, 1/4 in slices - mixed into beans

In a bowl combine:

• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1-2 Tbsp Mayonnaise
• 1-2 Tbsp Sour Cream
• 1 tsp garlic (or whatever herb/seasoning you like)
• 1/2 cup shredded cheddar or other real cheese
• salt and pepper

Pour mixture evenly over ingredients in the baking dish and top with an additional 1/4 cup of shredded cheese pushing it down into the mixture a bit.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean and top is golden brown and bubbly.

I used eggs and sour cream instead of the larger amount of mayo originally called for because I was scraping the bottom of the jar, but I think the eggs especially added a nice heft to the dish and maybe even upped the nutrition a bit. The end result was a bit watery in the bottom and next time I will drain the beans much more thoroughly before adding to the pan.

Although it could never be the same as the tater tot version this is a really tasty dish in its own right and one I know we’ll be making again - especially since its so adaptable, fast and easy. If you try it and create your own variation please put it in the comments and let me know how it comes out.

So this may be breaking a bit from the philosophy of this blog (no real recipes followed to the letter) but since I made some additions/substitutions I feel like I can sneak it in. Plus as the title indicates, this is just too easy, fast and delicious not to share.

The original recipe (8 Minute Asparagus Couscous Soup - Quick and Easy) is on Recipezaar, which is really a great resource if you haven’t checked it out yet. Its so simple I hope they don’t mind me paraphrasing it here.

1 cup israeli couscous
1 bunch asparagus
3 cups broth - I used 1 Tbsp Better than Boullion Chicken & 2.5 c h20
parmesan cheese - I didn’t have any so I used a TBsp of leftover Parsley Pesto

Start the broth boiling and snap off the woody ends of the asparagus. Chop into bite size pieces. When the broth boils add couscous and cook 5 min, then add asparagus and boil for 3 minutes more. That’s it. I added the parsley pesto at this point and ladled into bowls. It smelled so good I burned my tongue because I couldn’t wait for it to cool down to taste it. I did end up adding a dash of fresh ground pepper as well but really the asparagus and couscous didn’t need much help and worked perfectly together in this simple dish.

I really wish I had taken a photo because it is truly beautiful with a gorgeous green hue. I was really pleased that the flavor of the fresh asparagus came through and the texture was perfect. This is the first time we have used Israeli Couscous (we bought a couple cups on a whim from the bulk foods aisle) and I have to say we are now big fans and will be using it a lot more. Its more like orzo than traditional couscous with a bit of pearl tapioca mouth feel. I plan to try this approach with other veggies and maybe even some meats. If you experiment with the recipe please let me know in the comments.

Thanks to co-author Alan, I found this great foodie blog called Full Bellies, Happy Kids which is now in the links to the right. This recipe I saw there inspired me to the point of actually buying some ingredients in advance that I wouldn’t normally have on hand. However, being us, we made a bunch of substitutions and in this case completely made up our own dipping sauces. Check out the original recipe for more instructions and ideas.

Had to buy:

• 1 bag tri-color coleslaw mix
• Egg roll wrappers

Had on hand:

• a small Baby Bok Choi
• 4 Green Garlic bulbs (like giant green onions)
• 1/2 lb pre cooked frozen shrimp (TJ’s of course)
• a thumb sized piece of fresh ginger
• canola oil
• soy sauce
• Sriracha (rooster hot sauce)
• salt and pepper

First I thawed the shrimp and let them drain for a while. I combined 1/2 of the package of coleslaw with the finely chopped bok choi, garlic bulbs and added finely minced ginger. I also started the oven pre-heating to 400 degrees- which for my small egg rolls now seems a bit too high.

I stir-fried the veggies in olive oil and added the finely chopped shrimp at the end with a good strong dash of soy sauce, a small bit of the sriracha, and salt and pepper. This yielded a pretty wet mix, probably due to not draining and drying the shrimp enough, so we put it in a strainer over a bowl to get the good stuff high and dry.

On an oiled nonstick baking sheet we assembled the egg rolls following the folding directions on the package and also found in the recipe link above. After brushing the tops of our cute little rollups with some additional oil we popped them in the oven and set the timer for 18 minutes since we know our oven runs a bit hot.

Its a good thing I checked them early because they were done - more than done really about 4 minutes early. I was pretty sparing with the filling and next time - and there WILL be a next time - I will really load them up. These were so easy and so good that I am really wishing I had made more filling.

For our dipping sauces I decided to play around a bit and came up with the following quick and dirty and delicious condiments.

Mustard Teriyaki
This is simple but very tasty - I just mixed equal parts Dijon Mustard and Sesame Teriyaki Sauce (TJ’s again). This was just right with the egg rolls, spicy but not too hot for my husband.

Heather’s Generic Dipping Sauce
Equal parts Soy Sauce and Rice Wine Vinegar mixed together with a few drops of chile oil, a pinch of minced ginger, a pinch of minced garlic and this time a pinch of fresh ground horseradish. We usually make something similar to dip almost any Asian food into.

I hope you try these and enjoy them as much as we did.

I am one of those people who would rather die than put margarine on anything. Butter is a staple in our household, and it’s excellent on almost everything. Ever fried bacon in butter? Your arteries will cringe, but your tastebuds will leap for joy, trust me. 

Sadly, I needed a grilled cheese sandwich, badly, one afternoon. No prob: I have some homemade bread, some american cheese (yeah, the kind wrapped in individual slices)…and –OH NOES–NO BUTTER! 

Rather than turn away from the kitchen and head out to the local store for butter, I grabbed the olive oil, spiraled a little bit around in the pan, and grilled the sandwich con olio d’oliva. You have to watch the sandwich carefully, since the oil will absorb into the bread, and the bread will burn more quickly than with butter. Keep the heat a little lower than you’re used to, and you should be fine. 

The end result was dee-lish. The olive oil imparted another layer of flavor to the sandwich, and next time I have some fancy brie or camembert laying around, I’ll try this recipe with that instead, for a more “authentic” eurpoean grilled cheese. In the photo at right you can see the darker areas of the bread where the oil swirls were…the oil does spread out from there, and the contrast in taste between the darker areas and lighter areas are lovely.

Thanks to fellow blog author and master gardener Julie, I found myself with 4 absolutely beautiful but mysterious green tomatoes. I decided to see what the nets had out there on green tomato salsa. Turns out there are quite a lot of recipes, but of course I decided after reading 4 or 5 to wing it and just sort of make it up as I went along. Besides, I am low on supplies right now so was out of most ingredients they called for. Here’s what I ended up doing:

4 medium green tomatoes, seeded and chopped fine, salted and put under a weight for 30 minutes,
drained
4 small pickled jalapeno chili peppers, seeded and chopped fine
2 cloves garlic minced
1 small roasted red pepper (from jar) chopped fine

Mixed these together in a hot dry skillet then I heated mixing continually until tomatoes were softened and changed color and some roasty-ness appeared on everything. I didn’t have an onion in the house but would have added some minced red onion here if i did.

Added 2 tbsp limeade, since I didn’t have fresh limes in the house and wanted the extra sweetness to counter the tart tomatoes anyhow.

I let this cool slightly and added 2 tsp chopped cilantro (little frozen cubes from where else? Trader Joe’s), a dash of cumin, 1 tb olive oil, another 2 Tbsp limeade, a tsp of brown sugar and 1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar. I used a handblender to mush this up and some of the liquids added above were mostly to get it loose enough to blend.

It turned out amazing - and addictive - and HOT. That kind of creeper hot that keeps you coming back for more. Next time, if there is a next time I will use less salt (I added a bit more than a tsp in the beginning) and less hot peppers - maybe 3 small to 4 med tomatoes. And I am really really wishing I had that onion around. Since its so spicy I am thinking of using this sauce, thinned out a bit for enchiladas with melty cheese. That is if it lasts long enough. Thanks for the inspiration Julie!

Okay, after what seems like forever I am finally posting something…

Since the weather is now getting cold, and I want to go out to the grocery even less than usual, I have started to make dinner with what ever is on hand. I tend to make a lot of soups and stews because I can make them in the morning or the day before and let them slow cook all day. They is very little prep involved and they cook a long time all by themselves. And let me say nothing is better to coming home to the yummy smell of stew cooking. I have never made two stews exactly the same and I don’t like to measure anything, but the basics of any stew are all the same. You need a base, some meat and/or veggies, some spices, and a Crock-pot. The following is the stew I made yesterday.

First, I browned some cube steak in dash of olive oil in a skillet. You can really use any cut of meat you have on hand, rump, round steak, cube, roast, what ever. I was using some of our lovely organic cow that we purchased this past summer. I must say that the better the quality of the meat the better the stew in the end. While you are browning the meat add whatever seasoning you like. It is best to add things that go well with the meat as this seasoning will not really penetrate the whole stew but will stay in the meat. I used some dry thyme, coriander, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. As far a how much of everything, they are in order of greatest to least… it was mostly thyme and a small dash of nutmeg. When the meat was browned on all sides, but not over cooked I covered it with red wine. I used pinot noir, but again use what you like. If you like to drink it, it will taste good in your stew.

For other stews I have used beer as the base, but had a bottle of wine opened so I used that. For beer I prefer the stouter variety for stew, but have used just about everything that is amber to black in color… My husband’s homebrew is my favorite.

While browning the meat I start to throw the other stuff into the Crock-pot. I used a can of chicken stock (beef, chicken, vegetable stock, whatever you have) Some more of the red wine, maybe a cup or two, kind of depends on how much stew you are making. The rule of thumb is that you just want enough liquid ingredients to cover the meat and veggies so nothing get scorched in the cooking process, also the liquid will cook down quite a bit. I added about 4 potatoes peeled and chopped, and handful of chopped carrots. I usually like more veggies, but having not gone to the store the pickings were slim this time. In the past I have used frozen and fresh veggies. Both work but the frozen tend to break down more than the fresh, they still taste great but kind of disappear visually. I also added a spoon full of horseradish, a good squirt of spicy mustard (you can use dry if you have it, but regular old sandwich mustard works just fine),a spoonful of beef bouillon, and some butter (about 1/4 a stick).

Next I added the meat to the Crock-pot and that’s it. Let cook for anywhere from 3-8 hours on low. Just cook till everything is nice and soft. You can turn it on in the morning before work and it will be nice and ready when you get home. One final thing you can do if you want is when you are about ready to eat take some of the broth out and put it in a jar and add a spoon or two of flour to it, shake vigorously to mix and then add back in to the stew and let cook for a few more minutes. This will thicken up the base a little bit and make it more stewy. Enjoy and have fun.

brocslaw

Last weekend our friend Lori hosted an outrageous Survivor themed multi-cause celebration and potluck. Steve cooked up some awesome terkyaki burgers to go with. It was going to be another hot one in the 90’s, so I wanted to make something fresh and cool.

I always look at potlucks as a time to get creative. This is usually because I didn’t think ahead to have the ingredients on hand to do a specific recipe and improvisation becomes a necessity. Mother of invention and all that,.

Taking inventory of the fridge turned up lots of broccoli and carrots and luckily we had just been to the farmers market the day before so we also had some lovely basil, zucchini and green onions on hand.

My typical hunt of the internet for some recipes to borrow from turned up lots of ramen noodle varieties and a yummy sounding broccoli coleslaw recipe to work from.

Alas, we don’t have a decent shredder and only a mini food processor bought from a friend’s moving across the country sale years ago and never really put to the test. I tested its limits with this dish though and more or less it passed.

This one came out well enough that several people have asked for the recipe and there were no leftovers at the host’s house or ours.

Broccoli Confetti Slaw
About 3 cups shredded, finely diced or mini-food processed broccoli
About 1 and a half cups shredded, finely diced or mini-food processed carrots
and for fun and because they were fresh I threw in a couple baby zucchinis as I was pulsing and chopping.

The mini food processor yielded the confetti texture which bemused some folks and more than one person asked me what it was and how you eat it. Someone even put it on their burger, which looked good to me.

I also ran 2 cloves of garlic and a small bunch of green onions through the chopper and sliced up a bunch of basil as finely as I could.

Once I had the base well mixed, I toasted about a half a cup of pine nuts, let them cool and gave them a coarse chop and tossed them in.

I also used the mini processor for the dressing, which i haven’t done before but will again. The dressing consisted of:

• 2 cloves of garlic which I roasted and cooled for a bit of sweetening,
• another couple green onions,
• 1/3 cup EVO (extra virgin olive oil),
• 1/3 cup of apple cider vinegar (which was actually half balsamic vinegar)
• some sea salt and fresh ground pepper.

I whirled it all up and poured it over.

I think as the original recipe author did, letting this sit together to blend, meld and get to know each other is a key ingredient. So thankfully I had my butt in gear early enough to allow for a decent setting time before we ate. I think I’ll make some more this week.

If you try this or adapt it let me know what you think.

I was out on the web looking for some broccoli slaw recipes since I have a potluck to attend and lots of broccoli. After learning how to spell broccoli (2 c’s one l) I came across the “What Geeks Eat” blog. Well, as a geek, of course I had to check it out. Not only did the recipe sound great but also down-to-earth-doable for those of us that spend way too much time on the computer. Plus, the author is a fan of fresh local food - so I have a new food blog on the links here and in my RSS reader. I’ll be trying this recipe out later today. If it comes out well and I remember to take a photo, I’ll post my version (full of substitutions as always) here.

Meantime check out What Geeks Eat for some new ideas and delicious brain food.

Summer has come to our little corner of the woods, but no summer break in the craziness. So when I felt the need for fresh baked goods I had to fall back on good old “just add water” Marie Callender’s Cornbread mix. As a way to sneak some additional veggies into our diet I decided that grated carrots would be a good addition. And since I was getting creative anyhow, I decided to add some grated lemon peel and powdered ginger too. After smelling it in the oven, I was really glad I did. Jim was late for work but stuck around long enough to try some and declare it delicious enough to blog about - so here it is. Just follow the recipe on the package for an 8 x 8 pan and cut the water back to just over a cup for about 1/2 cup of grated carrots and add the rest to taste.

I’ve been making up recipes for years. I think it all started when it was my job to have the family dinner on the table by the time mom came home from work. Ah nothing like the pressure of cooking everyday with limited store bought ingredients, but plenty of frozen & canned meats, fruits & veggies from the garden to get those creative juices flowing.

Here’s one I made up in college, flexing my skills on the fast, easy, available, pre-made foods. I gotta say it became a favorite among my friends. This one also works wonders for those last minute potlucks too. Just double the recipe to 6 cans & 2 boxes & use a larger cake pan. Guys at potlucks love this stuff & clean the plate every time! Go figure…

Three Cans & a Box

1 Can Tamales
1 Can Chili
1 Can Corn
1 Box Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix + milk & egg

Pre-heat oven 350°

Open can of tamales & dump into 9×9 pan. Remove the pieces of paper surrounding each tamale & chop into bite size pieces. Open can of chili & add the pan. Open can of corn, use lid to drain juice & add to the pan. Mix ingredients together. Make corn muffin mix by following directions on the back of the box. Spoon batter over the top of the chili mixture & bake until the top is golden brown.