Entries Tagged 'Busy busy busy' ↓

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.

Once again there has been too much to do and no time to shop. And yet we need to eat. Foraging in the freezer I turned up the last 2 salmon patties from Costco - wild alaskan salmon in burger format, one of our favorites. We were out of bread products but still had the last packet of Trader Joe frozen Jasmine rice. So we have protein and carbs - but what about veggies?

Rummaging through the crisper (my friend says it should more accurately be called the rotter) I turned up a few mushrooms and a bit of kale that needed some serious sorting through. Not quite enough for a meal for 2 so I needed something else. The cupboards yielded pineapple which inspired a sweet and sour stir fry. It turned out amazingly well considering its origins.

Here’s how it went down:

Fried up the salmon patties in a little oil and removed to keep them crisp. Quick and easy - about 4 minutes a side.
In the same pan I added the mushrooms, a bit of onion, kale and finally half a can of pineapple with just a bit of the juice.

For flavor some soy sauces and sweet chili sauce and for sour some rice wine vinegar.

I let that cook down a bit and poured the lot over the salmon patties nested on a bed of rice.

Turns out that pineapple works well with salmon after all and does a bang up job standing in for vegetables some times.

Welcome Alan Bucknam as our newest author on the blog! He and his wife Robyn have been our go-to’s for fast easy and yummy things to cook for years so I know his posts will be things I want to try Plus with their having precocious twin girls, I am betting they are child friendly as well. Yay Alan!

I asked my friend Nzinga to write some blog posts too because although she is always VERY busy she actually knows how to cook! Add in an adventurous streak and you know we will be seeing some excellent made up food. Thanks for adding your voice Nzinga!

It was unexpectedly bloody hot and humid today - a day filled with numerous technical snafus and stress. But I was hungry anyhow and this is what I threw together. All I can say is that it was tasty enough to inspire this blog.

Cold Spicy Somen Noodle Salad
here’s what’s in it:

1 packet somen noodles (1 serving)
8 mint leaves finely sliced
hot and sweet asian chile sauce
soy sauce
rice wine vinegar

I added what i had left of pickled herring and onions in wine sauce - about 1/2 cup rinsed thoroughly and drained

Toss the seasonings and herring/onions in a bowl while the noodles are cooking. Rinse the noodles under really cold water and stir in.

total time - about 10 min.

I’m thinking I could do this with canned tuna or a nicer protein if I wanted to serve it to others…

First off this is a NOT a blog about imaginary food - it is a blog about real food for people with real lives. Real food I “make up” as I go along and really eat. I do this a lot when things are super busy and I don’t have time to really cook. But the food you will find here is 100% real.

So, when I am overwhelmed by all my work work and all the life work that needs to be done, what do I do? Start a new project of course. And so on a particularly hot hectic day in August this blog was born. I decided that there can never be too many blogs about Life Hacking or food so I started my own and hope you find a useful tidbit or two in here.

The inspiration was tonight’s dinner. My husband teaches classes several nights a week and I am a work-a-holic web person, so cooking falls pretty far down the list of to-do items as does shopping for food sometimes. This has led me to be adventurous and try out some interesting combinations of items that are at hand. I mix a little of this and a dash of that and call it a meal. A “made up” meal.

I have a true love/hate relationship with food, and that goes for all phases, shopping, cooking and eating. I am an impatient person by nature so what you will find here will generally be fast and easy to prepare with no meticulously crafted recipes. What you will find are edibles that when thrown together are decently delicious (or not) and maybe some ideas for a healthy-ish quick fix it food when you are too pooped to ponder or go to the store. And just for laughs I will post my conspicuous failures as well.

Always on the look out for something fresh and tasty, I’m hoping others will add their experiments and success to this blog so that I can try ‘em out. Philosophy about food prep and ingredient combining equally welcome. If this sounds like you, too and you want to share what you have come up with as a regular author shoot me an email at cookin@madeupfood.com

So the next post is my first made up food and that’s it for now - I’ll come back and prettify this blog when I have time… um, yeah, right.

Meanwhile a quick and dirty google search turned up this early adopter:
http://www.doesntsuck.com/archives/002369.html
Beer Hash Browns sound good!

And if you want to see how real women cook check out this foodie blog with pretty pictures and great recipes.

http://table-4-two.blogspot.com/