Not in the Mood...

...To cook! What did you think I was going to say?! I'm not getting that personal, this is just a food blog after all.  I haven't been in the mood to cook recently, for some reason.  I guess I've been adding up the fat content of some of my meals lately and....well, this may come as a shock, but it's pretty hard to cook a gourmet meal every night and stay thin. I'm just putting that out there. I've been running at least 3 times a week, but all it seems to do is barely balance out the pasta and homemade pies and cookies that I've eaten during the day. Who has the energy to run 10 miles just so you can eat chicken in butter sauce over linguine, which you have to spend another hour in the kitchen making anyhow?!!

While I try to get back my previous holiday inspiration, I'll show you some of the things that I have been dragging myself into the kitchen to make....

Tandori-Style Chicken 

The spices I used were: Cayenne Pepper, Nutmeg, Cinnamon, Ginger, and Curry Powder

Chicken Pot Pie

 

I made this with a bag of mixed veggies, a can of cream of mushroom soup, and Pillsbury crescent rolls. Is that cheating?

Sage Pork Chops with Apple Slaw and Yam Chips

I never made my Turkey Roulade for Thanksgiving, although it would have been twice as much turkey as anyone would have wanted, but I still feel disappointed. I couldn't find all of the ingredients, and I was in my downward spiral of decreasing motivation. Maybe I'll work on making it for Christmas, once I get my holiday cheer back in order. We'll see. For now, I'm just taking it one dinner at a time. I'm making spaghetti tonight and pot roast tomorrow. Thank goodness for crock pots!  Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and THANKS for reading my thoughts about food.

....And a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Ok, well I'm not practicing my Christmas carols yet, nor have I slaughtered any turtle doves, but I did cook some French Hens! To be honest they were Tyson's brand Cornish Hens, but that's pretty much the same, right? I'm getting into the Holiday spirit a little bit early this year because Greg and I are going to Florida for Christmas to see his family. I have never been away from home for Christmas, so I'm becoming a tad sad and a bit out-of-sorts with the thought of not hanging lights outside, or throwing a holiday party, or even putting up a tree!

Being in the holiday spirit, I decided to take on a little project, which of course for me ended up as an ordeal because, well...it's me.

The Birds.

I made some rice and stuffed the hens. It is an odd thing - to stuff a bird, if you haven't done it before..

I scattered the rest of the rice in the pan so it would soak up some of the flavor. Then I drizzled olive oil on the hens and seasoned them with salt and pepper. I took them out once to check the doneness and drizzled some more olive oil. It gave them a nice crispy skin.

 Here's the finished product! Nice and golden brown

 I steamed up some fresh green beans on the side, but I put 3 cloves of smashed garlic in when I steamed them. The flavor was just enough. It was really good.

It was somewhat awkward to have the whole Cornish Hen on the plate at the dinner table, especially since they were still stuffed. When I had to stick my fork in to get out the rice, I almost felt like I needed a little privacy curtain. Then, eating it was no less strange. I really had to dismember the thing at the table to get any meat. It was messy, sort of like eating lobster at the table. You need a bib, special tools, and a discard bowl for the non-edible stuff. I guess that's why people eat just the lobster tails (although the claws are my favorite part). It's a lot less messy. I had a heck of a time tugging and ripping (because that's what I did) the breast meat off. By the time I was done with that, I was too grossed out to even eat any of it. I saved it for left overs, which I enjoyed two days later when the trauma of the event wore off.

 They do make  pretty picture though.

So besides the indecency of picking rice out of the cavity of a stuffed bird, or breaking wings and legs off of the poor little carcass, I also didn't think about the fact that a whole hen per person would be a bit too much to eat. I felt guilty wasting so much and didn't want the bird's death to be in vain, so while Greg studied at the table, I sat across from him picking at every last morsel to save for the dogs as training treats. After fanatically picking, deeply lost in my thoughts, I looked up and saw Greg looking at me, almost green. Only then did I realize the intensity with which I was absorbed picking the bones of the poor little thing. I'll admit, it was straight up nasty. I was up to my wrists in oil and grossness. I'll spare you the rest of the details, but lets just say, I don't think Greg will ever look at me the same way again.

Chicken Parm

I made a Chicken Parmesan recipe from one of the cookbooks that I just borrowed from the library. It was so yummy and super easy. It was a great dinner.

 

Even though I've made this before, the recipe was slightly different than my own cookbook. It is fun to mix it up. My advice, to keep cooking interesting, go to the library and find some new books and recipes. Cookbooks are expensive and not worth it if you aren't going to like most of the recipes. Give some books a test drive by borrowing them for a week. If you don't like it, no problem, find something new! After the holidays I'm going back to the library to borrow and Indian cookbook. I'm looking forward to making some Tikka Masala!

Thanks for reading my thoughts about food!

Apple Pie

This is my 3rd or 4th attempt at making an apple pie. This pie, was much better than the previous apple pies. I used a combination of Granny Smith and Fugi apples. The result was delightful!

I started with about 4 green apples and 2 red apples.
 

 I peeled one all the way around!

 Then I cut the slices into small THIN pieces. This is what Greg and I like about my apple pies. If the apple slices are too big, they can be too sweet, or too tart and ruin the experience!

 
This is a flour, cinamon, sugar, nutmeg combo.

It goes right in to the apple. I splash some lemon juice on the apples first so they don't turn brown while they're waiting. 

 
Stir it all up!

Sugar and spice coated apple.

I mixed the dough (just flour and crisco with 10 tablespoons of water added one at a time)

I roll the crust up on the rolling pin so it doesn't stretch out and then unroll it on the pie plate. 
 

Then I added the apples.

 Here's the lid. I tried to make this one into more of a circle.

 Then I laid it on top of the pie.

 I trimmed up the edges...
 and cut in the breathing slats.

The baked final product! Still some cosmetic imperfections, but it tasted yum, yum, yum!

I'm making Cornish Hens tonight! Wish me luck!

Why Don't You Have Any Pants On?

I wish I could be endearingly awkward. Instead I'm just...well..awkward. If I was clumsy in a cute way, I might be sitting at a posh coffee shop and may, perhaps, get a tiny bit of foam from my latte on my upper lip. It would be so adorable that Greg would just have to kiss it off. Or maybe, I would drop a handkerchief in the path of a knight riding on a white horse and..... Ok, ok...but you get the picture. 

In my non-fairy tale life, I am constantly making a fool of myself by dropping a whole bowl of crab soup in my lap as the waiter is handing it to me or bumping my beer over at happy hour..on  Friday... in front of a whole table...of new co-workers. Dang it. 

In middle school, I once sneezed and chewed up carrot came out of my nose and squirted all over the lunch table. Another time, I was harshly pointing my fork at my sister while giving her my two cents about some (now long-forgotten) topic and the maccaroni noodle flug from my fork and landed (and stuck to) the tip of her nose. Her terrified eyes crossed staring down at her nose with the noodle sticking straight up into the air. 

Today at lunch I was cutting my apple pie and the hard crust broke off, launched into the air, and hit a co-worker right in the breast. Good Lord. 

But, by far, the worst recent calamity happened just a few months ago and it wasn't even close to endearing.  It was still my first week at my new school. The kids hadn't even come back yet. We had a faculty meeting that morning, so the whole staff was going to be there. I got up bright and early, showered, and put on my brand new linen shorts and a shirt. I realized that it was pouring down rain, but I had to let the dogs out. While they did their business, I turned the dyer on to fluff up the laundry that had finished the night before. Then, I made a large cup of coffee and placed it on the dining room table. I went back into the mud room and opened the door for the dogs. Rylee came in chewing on something enormous in his tiny little mouth. He chews on mulch sometimes, so I dug my finger in there to pull it out. Except it wasn't mulch. It was a giant, gooey, disgusting cicada! All that I could distinguish was that there were guts and a wing left. The bug stuck to my index finger, I screamed and flung it on the mud room floor. I ran, squealing, into the dining room flapping my hands to get any residual bug-gunk off. I decided to let Greg clean up the carcass, so I left it there, not a smart plan I would find out.  Trying to get a grip, but still in a tizzy, I took my running clothes out of my work bag, since it was raining. In the process, I knocked over the large cup of coffee, which I didn't realize had been teetering on the edge of a stack of papers. It fell squarely on my new shorts, right in the crotch, spreading from pocket to pocket. Fuming, I ripped off my shorts in the middle of the dining room (surely waking up Greg by this point) and stomped into the mud room to get a new pair of pants from the dryer. Obviously I wasn't that affected by the squashed cicada, because as I stomped in, I mashed the cold gloppy bug guts into the arch of my foot. Again I screamed, but this time it was like a growl-scream, angry and terrified. In my underwear, I flapped and kicked my foot every which way until the goo finally slapped onto the side of the washing machine. I came out of the mud room looking frazzled and distraught and there was Greg standing in his sweats rubbing sleep from his eyes. He looked at me bewildered and said confusedly, "Why don't you have any pants on?"