Crazy leftover baked eggs recipe

 Husband said "surprise me" when I asked him what he wanted for breakfast. Ok, boss. hehehehe

 

2 eggs

1/2 cup diced mushrooms

1/2 cup diced onions

1/2 cup diced broccoli

1 slice proscuitto

1.5 tbsp Mustard gravy

1 slice muenster cheese

1 slice leftover pork tenderloin medallion

black pepper

1 packet mini takis, fuego flavor

1/4 c bread crumbs 

spray grease

4 cup pyrex bowl.

Mixing bowl

Dice and cook proscuitto, remove and place in mixing bowl. 

Cook diced veg until fork tender and add to mixing bowl. 

Dice medallion and add to mixing bowl.

While this cools, crush bag of takis until resembles coarse sand, add breadrumbs and mix thoroughly.

Spray the inside of your pyrex, pour in the taki crumb mix and spray again with grease. Form gently across the bottom and up the sides of the bowl. 

Beat one egg into the stuff in the mixing bowl, add pepper to taste.

Crack on egg into the pyrex on top of the taki crust.

Add egg and veg mixture on top.

Bake at 350 for 15-16 minutes.

Place a small plate on top of the pyrex bowl and flip over to release your creation.

Quickly heat the mustard gravy in the pan. Won't take more than 2 minutes.

Place the cheese slice on top of the pink mound while your gravy is reheating.

Drizzle gravy over top of cheese.

Serve.

Apologize to the dogs, they will not be getting nibbles.

Grandma's Holiday Recipes

My MIL has these recipes that hubs thinks are the bee's knees. I'm sharing so that I have a good place to find them for next year.

Cranberry Fluff

1 can Cranberry Jelly
1 can Cranberry Jelly with Cranberries
2 tsp lemon juice
4oz cream cheese - softened
1/4c mayo
1/4c powdered sugar
1 8oz tub cool whip

Stir 1 tsp lemon juice into cranberry jelly, spread into bowl.
Stir 1 tsp lemon juice into cranberry jelly with cranberries, spread on top of other jelly.
Freeze until set.

Mix cream cheese, mayo and sugar until smooth and combined.
Gently fold in the whole tub of cool whip.
Spread across the frozen cranberry stuff and refrigerate until time to serve.

Fruit Fluff

1 can cherry pie filling
1 8oz can crushed pineapple
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 12 oz tub cool whip

Drain the crushed pineapple very well. Mix into the cherry pie filling, add condensed milk. Stir until well combined. Fold in cool whip. Refrigerate until time to serve.

*** Personally, I'd serve this on dessert cups. The ones you get in packs of 6 - made from angel food cake with a bit of grated chocolate on top.

Freezing soup bases and the magic of Kiinde bags, plus recipes.

I'm cheap and poor and creative. Waste makes me crazy. Our family is small, just the 3 of us. When I buy celery - and my kid is an anomaly who looks at peanut butter celery like I'm feeding her a bleeding rat skull - it tends to go bad before I've used the entire stalk. Same goes for carrots. I buy a pound and end up with 3 or 4 sad, wizened orange-black things in the drawer of the fridge. The same goes for ginger root, cilantro and certain one off sauces. I went searching for useful recipes to not have to chuck dead veggies.

And the hunt began. How to freeze or use this stuff, keeping my waste as low as possible.

Recaito and mirepoix seemed to be the best options.

Mirepoix is a french thing. It's just chopped carrots, celery, onion and maybe garlic. Most of the time when I've seen it, it's a chunky frozen bag of stuff. I wanted something a little less obvious. Did I mention we have a devoted anti-veg human in the house? Yeah. So much that. Finding a way to hide the veg is a super bonus around these parts. Life has made me a ninja when it comes to hiding vegetables in stuff.

The first few times I made this, I was freezing it in star wars jello trays then sticking the cubes into a zippered freezer bag. Sadly, the frost monster kept killing my mirepoix. Freezer burned like mad.

And off on the next hunt - How to not have to freezer burned mirepoix. I tried coating it in butter or olive oil. Nope. Different qualities/brands of freezer bag. Nope. Then I found Kiinde twist bags. These are made for freezing breast milk and baby puree. It's true. They're little 6oz bags with a teensy funnel for filling them. Also reusable, so Yay! for not adding to the plastic waste in the world. When it comes to cost, if you use one bag 4x, it equals the price of individual zipper freezer bags.  Gotta say. I love these things. I now have them filled with frozen recaito, minced ginger, (not frozen) crock pot caramel, thai sweet chili sauce and of course, mirepoix. It's not all beauty, though. It does take some effort to squeeze out the last of the stuff in the pouch. I whack the little bags against the edge of my pot to shake those last bits in, then scrape the exterior of the bag and whack some more. Waste not, my darlings. Once I've emptied a bag, I rinse it well and fill with about 2oz of water, squeeze out the air and toss it back into the freezer. When it's time to use them again, I gather a handful, defrost the ice inside and wash them with soapy water just prior to refilling them. Google these suckers, it's worth it.

Mirepoix is a good base for lots of recipes. It's a savory thing. I cook it down and add it to my beans when making beans and rice. I put it in most of my soups and chili.

Mirepoix

Carrots
Celery
Onion
Garlic (optional)
Butter or olive oil

Try to go with equal parts of carrots, celery and onion. If the parts aren't perfectly equal, that's ok too. I adjust depending on what's left in the drawer, but not ranging too far from the mostly equal area. I like to throw a whole head of garlic in there as well. Put each veg into a food processor and chop until fine - almost a paste. Mix em all together until well combined. Get out the cast iron and heat your oil or melt your butter. About 1tbsp, add more if you need it as it cooks. Throw the minced veg and stir a bit. Let it cook down and start to brown. Stir occasionally. The more carmelized this gets, the more the flavor develops. I'm impatient and almost never let it cook to a good carmelization. Once it's where you're happy, take it off the eye and let it cool. Spoon into Kiinde bags or however you wanna store it. I put about 1/2c in each bag. Squeeze out any spare air and freeze it till you need it.

Recaito is a spanish base. I use it in my empanadas and anything nacho, taco, burrito or chimichanga like. When I buy cilantro, it's a huge bunch that wilts and dies and makes me sad. I don't like it enough to eat it in every other meal until it's gone, but I don't hate it enough to wish it such a sad demise, either. This isn't exactly recaito - I'm not buying culantro for it, but it's close.

Recaito

1.5 heads of garlic
1# sweet onions
1 bunch of cilantro
2 bags of mini sweet peppers (generally 1# each, but some are 12oz instead. Use what's on sale)

Remove stems and seeds of the peppers. Mince in food processor.  Quarter the onion and mince that too. Skin and chunk the garlic, then mince in the food processor. Same goes for the cilantro. Chop it roughly and mince it. Mix all ingredients thoroughly. Bag it by the 1/2cup and freeze till you need it.

Thai sweet chili sauce - kinda. I had a few of those mini peppers left and wanted to do something funky. I found a recipe for thai sweet chili sauce. I didn't have some of the ingredients, so it was time to get creative. We were out of cayenne (bad bad foodie, sit in the corner and think about what you've done!) but we did have some Mad Dog 357 with #9 plutonium. I've poured this sweet, tangy, spicy sauce on cooking pork chops as a finish. Hubs loved it.

Sweet Inferno  (my version of Thai Sweet Chili Sauce)

.5 cup White Vinegar
.75 cup Sugar
1 Tbsp Soy Sauce
1 cup water
6 Garlic cloves
8 sweet mini peppers
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp Mad Dog 357 (or any hot sauce that grooves you, adjust to your heat level)
1 Tbsp Corn starch
2-3 Tbsp Water

Remove stems and seeds from peppers and skin the garlic. Toss into food processor and dice.

Put the first 4 things in the pot and start it cooking on medium heat. Stir while you are dissolving the sugar. Listen to your child complain about the smell of cooking vinegar. (Silently agree) Turn it up a little and bring to a boil. Stir occasionally and let it thicken slightly. Add everything except for the last two ingredients, stir  and turn it down a little to simmer. Make a roux of the cornstarch and water. Add the roux while stirring. The goal is to thicken the sauce until it coats the back of a spoon. You want to make sure the cornstarch is cooked in, and doesn't taste floury. Take off the eye and let cool. Bag it and tag it. Freeze what you aren't going to use soon.

Chicken Veloute Soup

Sounds posh, innit? Chicken Veloute is just fancy talk for cream of chicken soup with wine, rosemary and leeks. The creamy part is pretty much the same as how you make southern sausage gravy, except with heavy cream instead of milk. This recipe makes a very rich and velvety soup that's good for about 6 bowls. As with any soup, find someone to send some over to the next day. Sharing is caring, kids. We need more of that in the world.

I'm always on the lookout for new things to do with leeks. I like them in my chicken and dumplings soup (I say as my father rolls in his grave.) However, they always come in a group of 3 that is far too much for my single recipe. This was a recipe I tried to use up some of my leek bounty. Husband loved it, kid loved it, dog loved it... so I guess it's a winner enough to add to the winter soup recipe pile.

I go French with it and do use actual butter and heavy cream. I also add mirepoix, but it's a ghetto version that I make once every two months and store in the freezer in baby squeeze bags- see recipe on the blog. After serious research, I learned that cheap wine is best for cooking. I mean real cheap, like "dig through the cushions for change and add a ripped single or two" cheap. The bottle I used was $4 for 750ml, I went through about half of it.

It go like this, here we go.

Chicken Veloute Soup

1 large chicken breast (about 1#)
1 leek
1 Tbsp Fresh minced rosemary
1.5 cups stupid cheap Sauvignon Blanc
1 bag mirepoix
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 cubes Telma chicken bullion
1.5 cups flour
1 box Chicken bone broth
16 oz heavy whipping cream
1/2 stick butter
one strip of bacon per person (plus one for the dog or whichever cat shows up first)
olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Dice small/med and rough then rinse the leek. Pat dry.  Toss with olive oil and roast for 10 mins at 400 degrees on a flat pan. Stir and roast em for another 15 minutes. Set to the side.

Coat chicken in olive oil. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. Let chicken rest in it's juices for at least 10 minutes then cube chicken into 1/4in nibbly bits and toss back into the drippings.

Cook bacon until crisp. Chop into bits and set to the side.

Pour the bacon grease into the soup pot. Add the butter and let it melt. Squeeze in the mirepoix, crumbled bullion cubes and rosemary. Cook it down stirring occasionally until the mixture turns lightly caramel colored and not so liquidy. Add the flour and stir. Cook the flour mix but don't let it brown. It will suck up all the grease and liquid and become a thick doughy glob. Add the wine and whisk like you've lost your mind. Take a swig out of the bottle and say "To Julia!" The goal is to get rid of the lumps and have something that's about the texture of pancake batter. I use a slotted spoon to dig around and make sure I've gotten all the lumps out. Add in the broth and garlic powder. Stir some more. Once combined and gently bubbling, add the chicken and leeks. Stir until combined and let it cook for another 10 minutes while you clean a bit of this and that. Turn the soup down and add the heavy cream and stir until incorporated. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve with bacon bits crumbled across the top.

Eggplant Parmesan sandwiches with tomato, olive, mushroom paste.

Forgive me, foodies, for I have sinned. It's been a while since my last post...

I've been pinching pennies like mad lately. This recipe comes from partially internet scavenged recipes and stuff I figured out whilst digging in the sad back corners of the pantry.

I picked up some eggplant when it was on sale $1 each. The tomato paste was 89 cents, the mushrooms cost another $1, as did the can of pitted black olives. Pick your own sliced cheese, I've tried both sharp cheddar and provolone and prefer the cheddar. Do what grooves you. If'n you dig mozzarella or pepper jack, go ahead. The rest of the ingredients are all things that I keep on hand.

I made this with the specific intent of freezing it and was able to get three meals and a lunch for 3 people. Only two of the meals had the sauce, but that's the way it goes sometimes. Personally, I prefer to keep the skin on my veg. The skins on the eggplant did NOT freeze well, so bye bye skins.

"Special sauce"

1 can Tomato paste with Basil and Oregano
1 c white mushrooms
1 can pitted black olives

Chop the olives and mushrooms in your handy dandy food chopper until they are minced finely but not ground into a paste. Mix with the tomato paste. Add a sprinkle of italian herbs and 1tsp sugar to cut the acid. Cook on low/medium until the paste goes from red to brownish. Stir and remove from heat.

Eggplant Parmesan

2 medium/large eggplant
2 eggs
2.5 cups breadcrumbs
1 cup parmesan cheese
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp Adobo criollo
Olive oil

Skin and slice the eggplant into 1/4" to 1/2" thick rounds. Try not to go thicker than 1/2". Beat the eggs. Mix dry ingredients.

Put some olive oil in a non stick pan and let it get good and hot.
Dip eggplant in egg, dredge in the breadcrumb mixture, fry in the lightly oiled pan until it's a lovely deep golden brown and flip em to get the other side. Place on a plate to let them rest. Keep going until you're done with all the eggplant.If you notice the pan getting dry, hit it with another drizzle of oil and keep rocking and rolling.

Two slices per person, bag tag and chuck em in the freezer - except what you'll be eating tonight and maybe lunch tomorrow. Divide the sauce in half and freeze that for later.

Assembly

Lightly spread butter on sliced bread, add italian herbs and garlic powder. Toast em in the oven until nice and crisp. Spread special sauce on top, add a round of the eggplant, add slice of cheese, spread with more special sauce, top with a light sprinkle of parmesan. You can toss it back in the oven for a couple of minutes to get the cheese nice and melty if'n you want to. The eggplant should still be warm enough to melt the cheese. Yummy, open faced, veggie wonderfulness!

Recook

Once the eggplant is defrosted, you can refry the rounds on a hot non stick pan. You won't need to oil the pan this time. Once that is complete, assemble as you would normally.

Ok, but now I'm out of that tomato stuff...

You can always make more, Grasshopper. Or you can make some veg pasta and toss a can of sauce on it, throw the refried rounds on top with cheese and herbs, bake it and grub out on the normal version.

Creamy crazy cock a leekie soup

Cock a leekie is a traditional Scottish soup of leeks and chicken. Winter is coming. That's soup time over here. I'm dusting off some fridge cleaning soup recipes. This is one of my favourites to do after I've made Chicken Soup because I usually have a few leeks left over. This is not a THE traditional way to do the soup. I do most of this in the crock pot, but you can do it stovetop.

Let's get into trouble!

Soup:
2 lg Boxes Reduced Sodium Chicken Stock
3 Reduced Sodium Telma Chicken Consumme Cubes
1 med Red Onion - Minced
1 Tbsp Worchestershire Sauce
2 large Leeks - Diced
1 stalk Celery - Minced
2 sm Yellow Squash - Diced
1 Tbsp Italian Seasoning Blend

Toss into the crock, put it on low and come back in 5- 8 hours.

Then:
1.5# Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast
2 Tbsp Ceasar Dressing
1 Tbsp Honey
1 tsp Lemon Pepper Seasoning

Trim Chicken breast. Place foil on a cookie sheet or baking pan. Place chicken on foil and cover with Dressing, honey and lemon pepper. Close foil to keep the juices inside. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, use a stick blender to puree the soup in the crock pot.

When the chicken is finished, let it rest for 5 minutes before dicing. Pour the juice from the cooked
chicken that is reserved nicely in your foil packet into the soup and give it a bit of the stick.

Toss the diced chicken in a bowl with 2 Tbsp of cornstarch before putting them into the soup. Stir. The cornstarch will thicken the soup slightly. Turn off the crock pot. Serve.

If you want to get super crazy with the creamy aspect, before you add the chicken - throw in half a bar of reduced fat cream cheese and blend that sucker good with your immersion blender stick.

Nothing on tv? Time to whip out some YouTube channels!

When we cut the cable and started streaming, it took a little while to get into a good swing. Currently, I find that television programs worth watching are becoming more and more rare. Worse, the really good ones are getting cancelled or have fewer episodes than the cake-for-the-masses horrific pablum clogging our airwaves. 

Between seasons, I go on a hunt of YouTube for stuff to watch usually while I'm folding laundry, mopping or cooking. Must keep the brain active, so I won't go full tilt Stepford Betty Crocker.

Before I start with the list of my favorite super nifty You Tube Channels to check out, ask yourself 3 questions.

1. Do I know the difference between Star Wars & Star Trek?
2. Do I know the proper name of 6 different named weapons from books or film?
3. Can I name 10 different fictional alien species?
bonus question : Hodor?

If you could answer all three questions, come take a look at the list. If not... um, how did you find this page, anyhow? The answer to the bonus question is Hodor. (But, I'm sure you knew that already...)

Click on the name of the channel to go to the channel. (See, I made it easy!)

I like movie reviews and news about upcoming releases. That lead me to these sites:

Nerdist
Gamer news, movie news, geekity fun good times. Their daily Nerdist News is worth a gander.

Machinima
The same kind of stuff as with Nerdist, but with more manliness. Or 12 year old boy humor. Whatever you wanna call it...

Black Nerd Comedy
Hands down my favorite movie reviewer. Love this dude, so so much. Unapologetically goofy.

Screen Junkies
These are the guys that do "Honest Movie Trailers". Fun stuff!

Geek & Sundry

Their low budget program The Guild is what brought me over. It's a fun show for anyone who has played or knows people who do play online RPG games like WoW. I'm a Wil Wheaton fan, too. He does a show called Tabletop where he and his buddies play tabletop games like Munchkin or Settlers of Catan. It's nice to see different games being played - lets me know which ones to put on the list to buy or the list to avoid. 

Emergency Awesome

This dude is a supernerd. He seems happily obsessed with all the minutiae of certain tv shows and movies. And guy is serious about it. Seriously. He does breakdowns of Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, Marvel & DC anything and Walking Dead. Plus other shows as well. He digs out the literature and 'splains to all us lazy bastards who don't read the pulp. It's kind of like Vlog form Nerdy Cliff Notes. Respect and thanks!

PewDiePie

He's top dog on YouTube atm and I do enjoy some of his videos. Watching his playthrough of Deadpool is what sold me on the game. TBH, I only eyeball about 1 out of 8 episodes that he posts.  Are you a bro, yet? Tee hee.

And then there's Music....

ERB
Epic Rap Battles. Some rock, some suck but they're all pretty darned creative. If you haven't heard of these folks yet, climb out from under your rock, man.

AVByte
Oh the musicality. Oh the nerdy joy. While not every one is a hit, the orchestration and lyric work is fricking a-ma-zing. Luna found them because of their Doctor Who musical numbers.

Tempura Batter for Meat or Veg

I try to keep from deep frying anything. Yeah, I live in the South. I'm sure this fried food avoidance puts me on some kind of old school cookery hit list. :) Maybe I'll fry something once a week, usually it's more like once a month.

A single recipe of this is supposed to coat 4 cups of Veg or 1 pound of meat. I'll probably have to double it for what I'm testing tonight. I used an amber lager rather than water for my test batch and was singularly unimpressed.

This batter comes out like Chinese Takeaway Sweet & Sour Chicken/Pork. Kind of bready, kind of crunchy and ready to sop up whatever delicious sauce you've got ready on the side.

Tempura Batter


3/4c Cornstarch
1/4 c Flour (I'll prolly use Whole Wheat)
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Adobo (Spanish Garlic Salt with herbs)
1/2 tsp Onion Powder
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1 slightly beaten egg
1 c Very Cold Water

Mix the dry ingredients together. Take 1/4c out and put in a separate dredge bowl.
Add the wet to the larger amount of dry and beat it well. The batter should be a little thick like waffle batter. A bit thicker than pancake batter but nowhere near as thick as brownie mix. If you need to add a bit more water, don't be scared - just mix it on in there.

Get your oil ready to fry. I prefer to use peanut oil, but I'm broooOooke right now so we're using canola. I'll edit this later with a temperature, but for now - the oil should spit if you throw a couple of drops of water into it. 

Dredge your whatever into the dry mix, shake it off and dip it into the liquid batter. To avoid club hand - use one hand for dredging and the other for dipping. The liquid batter will run off your item. That's ok, just try to keep it in the bowl, Beavis.  You will have some batter that drips into your oil. Yay, crunchies!

Fry your goody until it's a nice golden brown, flip it when you think it's ready. When it's finished, place it on paper towels or a handy brown bag to drain off the excess oil.

Keep the meat chunks to the small side, you want them to cook all the way through without burning the crap out of your batter. Chicken chunks are 1/2" cubes or fingers, Zucchini is 1/4" or 1/2" strips, Fish is 1/4th of a filet. Use your common sense. If you don't have any on hand, maybe you shouldn't be frying stuff anyway...

Pita Summer

The summers here in Florida are beastly hot. I'm not the one to be sweating my na-na's off cooking hot food from after June till about October. This summer, I'm leaning towards flatbread sammies and pitas. Stuff as much veg as you can into a flat breadish food holder, add meat + cheese and top with some handy variant of Ken's Salad Dressing. (The Buttermilk Ranch and Sweet Vidalia Onion are our favourites!)

Whole Wheat Pita Recipe
1 packet Yeast
2/3cup Warm Water
1 Tbsp Molasses or Honey

Mix the molasses, water and yeast in a bowl and let it proof for 10 minutes or so.

2 cups Whole Wheat Flour
1 cup White Flour
1 Tbsp Vital Wheat Gluten
1 tsp Salt
1 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Mix dry ingredients together and add to the foamy yeast. Drizzle olive oil on top and let the mixer do it's job. Once the dough is holding together nicely, turn it onto a floured board and knead until you have a smooth, elastic, happy dough ball. Put it in a greased bowl, covered with a damp towel in a warm room. Let the dough rise for about an hour, till it's doubled. Cut into 6 chunks and hand roll them into balls. Put those on a cookie sheet, covered with wet paper towels until you're ready to roll them into discs.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Roll out the dough balls one at a time to a thickness of between 1/4 and 1/8 inch on a lightly floured board. You don't want the dough to stick to your pin or board, but you don't want them all sandy and floury either. Just a touch of moderation, Grasshopper.

My discs end up about the length of my hand, maybe a little shy of it.

See how many you can fit on one cookie sheet. I'm working with a toaster oven, so I can only do em one at a time. Bake disks for 2-3 minutes. The high heat will steam the dough as it cooks and create the big bubble that becomes your pita pocket when you slice em in half. If you have rolled the dough too thin, they won't inflate properly. See? Nice and puffy!

When you have finished baking your pitas, cover with a damp towel for about 5 minutes, letting them rest.

Slice, stuff and Nom!

Johnnybread, Johnnycakes & Johnnywaffles, oh my!

Coming from the south, my parents taught me all sorts of odd recipes that aren't common yankee fare. Dad loved his johnnycakes. Just simple Jiffy cornbread mix pancakes cooked on the griddle. Johnnybread is the same as Johnnycakes, regional differences cause the name change, I suppose.

A Johnnywaffle is what you get when your stove AND oven are broken or gone, but you do have a waffle iron. :)  Truth enough, I prefer the waffle variant to the cake one. Those little squares hold gravy and/or butter mighty nice!

Just make your standard cornbread recipe or use good ol' Jiffy mix and add a little extra milk to it. You don't want it quite as thin as pancake batter but thinner than the cornbread batter.

Cook em like you cook your standard pancakes or waffles and enjoy!

Make em Gluten free if that's what works for you.
Add chopped onions, jalapenos or kernel corn to make em funky.
Cheese tends to overcook and may be hard to get off your waffle iron or griddle... go ahead if you want to, you were warned. :)
 

Another Banana Bread Recipe

Banana bread. We've all got a recipe somewhere for it. Everybody swears theirs is moist and wonderful...blah, banana, blah blah. Here's mine to throw into the ring. Special points : no oil plus whole wheat flour, flax and honey peanut butter.

It go like this here it go:

Banana Bread with Peanut Butter

3-4 Elderly Bananas
3/4 c Brown Sugar
1 Tbsp Molasses
1/2 c Honey Peanut Butter
1/4 tsp Salt
1.5 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 c Ground Flax Seed
2/3 c White Flour
1 c Whole Wheat Flour
1 tsp Almond or Walnut Extract

Mash bananas, add sugar & mix. Beat 2 eggs & mix them in as well. Add salt, baking soda, molasses and flax beating after each addition. Add flour and stir until it's well combined. Not too much, but do get the floury lumps out.

Spray grease loaf pan then pour batter in. Bake at 350 degrees for an hour or so. Check with a toothpick - nothing is worse than half baked gloppy banana bread. Let it rest 10-15 mins then turn it out onto a plate.

A loaf rarely makes it past three days over here. Hehehe.

Note: Why no vanilla? Cheap vanilla might contain the juice of a beaver butt gland. I'll be making my own vanilla here in the not so distant future - without the butt goo.
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Flatbread craziness

I had a moment and decided to make some flatbread, using my standard bread recipe. I did switch it up a little and used 1 cup of semolina rather than whole wheat flour. What I ended up with was 16 dinner plate sized flatbreads. They were on the thin side, but that's so they will handle better as a folded sandwich.

What the hell do you do with 16 big flatbreads and a family of 3?

The first one gets eaten straight off the griddle... shared with the pups, of course. Taste tester seems to be a hobby around here.

I made pizza for two days as lunch for my daughter and m'self. One round was just the right size for us to share with a side of fresh fruit. A light slather of tomato paste, a bit of thin sliced ham, some shredded spinach, italian spices, garlic, a dust of parmesan and some shredded jack = YUM!

Warm flatbread to dip into gravy with dinner the first night.

A turkey & veg sandwich for Mr. Man's lunch for two days.

One to give to a chum to test out.

Turkey & Bacon Flatbread Dagwoods for dinner on night two.

Ham & Cheese & Veg Foldover Sandwiches on night three.

....and that's all of them. 3 dinners and 2 lunches.


Cheap? Pshaw yeahhh

Milk = 20 cents
Egg =  8 cents
Oil = 15 cents
Flax = 40 cents
Sugar = 20 cents
Flour =  50 cents
Salt = 2 cents
Yeast = 67 cents

Total is $2.22 - however call it a simple $3. I prefer to round up as you can't always catch a good sale.

No preservatives. Better for you ingredients than store bought. More expensive than cheap white bread but less than packaged flatbread. Oh yeah, it tasted mighty fine as well. :)

Yam and Pineapple Breakfast Bread

I recently found myself in possession of a half dozen giant sized sweet potatoes. These suckers are about two fists big. Yeah. I've tried my hand at baked sweet potato fries a good dozen times and have never gotten them to cook properly. Around Thanksgiving, I buy one of these and make both candied sweet potatoes and a pie with it - more than enough for three adults and a child.  My brain got locked in a war between "WTF do I do with all these fonging yams??" and "Yams are a great source of vitamins - Hooray for fresh veg!"

Necessity breeds invention and all that, I guess. I ran to the Google and found a recipe for Yam Brownies.  *rant* Brownies have cocoa powder in them. Blondies do not. If you're gonna call something a brownie and that treat is lacking any form of chocolate, I'm gonna bust your balls over it. As a devoted Chocolate Whore, I say - tease the beast at your own peril.  *end rant*

The recipe I found was very sugar heavy. What good is it to use a vegetable to make a special something and then put SO much sugar in that you lose all the benefits? It's that Diet Coke and a Snickers lunch idea. They don't balance each other and you'll never convince me they do. (SO there! Pbbbth) 

This is what I came up with:

Yam and Pineapple Breakfast Bread

1 Huge Sweet Potato

1 can crushed Pineapple

1 tbsp Orange Juice Concentrate

1.5 tsp Almond Extract

 4 Large Eggs

1/2c ground Flax Seed

1 c All Purpose Flour

1 c Whole Wheat Flour

1 + 1/3 c Brown Sugar

2 tsp Cinnamon

1/2 tsp Allspice or Nutmeg

1 c Butter

1 tsp Salt

1.5 tsp Baking Powder

Peel and grate the yam. Use the small grater holes instead of the large ones if you can. It took me about 40 minutes to do one by hand. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, mix the raw grated yam with the can of crushed pineapple and it's juice. Add the OJ concentrate, Almond extract, allspice and cinnamon. Fold it all together then stick it in the fridge.

In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs and mix until well combined. Add the salt and baking powder, keep mixing. Add the flax, white flour and wheat flour. Mix until combined. Add the yam mixture and mix it some more. 

Spray grease a 13 x 9 baking pan and scrape the batter into it. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes or until it springs back lightly at the touch. 

Dust it with powdered sugar and cinnamon or hit it with some cream cheese frosting or eat it as is. 

Nom on, my friend. Nom on.

Kids and the Kinect

We've had our Kinect for the xbox 360 for about 6 months and have been through the wringer with this sucker. It's neat. Absolutely! Pain in the buttocks? Mmhm. I'm gonna break this down into sections...

Gaming Issues
While the Kinect is a groovy idea, sometimes the idea and the reality don't quite jive. Before you shell our your heard earned schekels take the time and read some reviews. I lurves me some Raving Rabbids, oh yes I do. The main reviewed complaint about the Kinect game with those bwah happy little critters is that the games are super short and you spend more time getting to the game than playing the game. Which makes it a no-dice for me and thanks for helping a sister out, reviewers!

Tech Problems
My man is basketball tall and my daughter only reaches his waist. The kinect will snap to him every time when they're trying to play together. Doesn't matter what I do - and believe me, the plenty I tried was WAY above and beyond your average Wiley Coyote measures. - it's just like that. When my daughter plays with friends who are of similar height, we have no problems with multiplayer games. She does have some problems with the Kinect "hearing" her, but that seems to be with one game so far. She LOVES bossing the Netflix around using the Kinect voice commands.

You MUST have good lighting to make the kinect work properly and try not to Goth out or Chameleon yourself with the background color. We had to hang our Kinect really high so that it could see my man from Head to Feets.We bought a Zoom attachment to see if that fixed our spacing issues and nope it didn't. I can see where it would, it just didn't do the trick for us.

My kid is too engrossed with the screen to worry about such boring things as where her feet happen to be at the time. She'd get mad that the game wasn't working because she'd wandered out of the camera "sweet spot".  I bought a rubber bottom bathrug and throw that down on the floor when she's going to play. If she's on the rug, she's in The Zone. It gives her a tactile reminder of where she should be to best play the games. It's not as effective as I'd hoped, but she knows where to return to when problems start happening in the gameplay.

Nickels and Dimes
This is pretty much my mantra for anything... I want to get it for 50% off list retail and 30% or less is my supergoal. I take a look at what Gamestop is charging, then I go take a peek at their used selection. (Generally perusing the reviews as I pass by) Then I wander over to Ebay and Amazon to see what used are going for on those  planets.  Can it be found within my price parameters or should I wait 3 months or try the pawn shop? Ebay will not only show you what current bids are for items, you can also see what they have been selling for during the last month, so you have a better idea of their usual target price.

Can I buy it as a download or just a disc? Download codes are WAY cheaper than buying the disc, usually. We got Fruit Ninja Kinect download card for free by asking the clerk at GameStop about it. (Pure luck) I picked up another game or two from Ebay for $5 per code. The Xbox Game Site wanted $10, $25 or $30 bucks for these games. They also had some games recently for $1 to download. Not all games have codes, sometimes you get lucky.

How long ago was the game released? If it was released less than 6 months ago, the only way you might get it for less than 80% of list is to get lucky in a pawn shop. Unless it sucks, then you'll find em scattered for bargain prices. 

Games that Rock for Kids - Mostly
Kinect Adventures -
This one isn't a bad starter for the system. It teaches the kids how to move and how to interact with the Kinect properly.

Kinect Star Wars - 
If you like candy, you'll dig this. It's not meant to be anything more than it is - a fun and odd romp through different SW games and environments. Not too easy for the little kids. I'd wait till 8 or so to let em give it a whack.

Kinect Party -
This is a game that has no rules or scores. It's great for the little ones. It really shows off the capabilities of the Kinect itself. Our problem with it is that the Kinect can't "hear" my daughter, so we're always having to yell at the system to change the games for her. She loves it and will wear herself out playing with these little games. 

Kinect Carnival - 
Harder than it looks and not worth much money, to be honest. There are very limited games within the Carnival and it doesn't look like it is a game that has long time play options. I'd say if you really wanna try it, go ahead but I wouldn't spend more than $4 on it, if that.

The Gunstringer - 
Not for little kids. It's a bit graphic about some things - but the gameplay is smooth and it's a fun character to play. It's built for adults and only involves using your arms - no jumping or dodging or any of that action.

Kinect Fruit Ninja - 
If your kid keeps jacking your tablet to play Fruit Ninja, this will get em outta your hair for hours.

Kinect Mini Ninja - 
Decent little game. Monk is digging being a ninja. It's not for the eensy tykes, but it is pretty cool to watch em make choices and analyze different areas of the screen.

Kinect FreeFall Racers - 
A flying race game where you get to be a flying squirrel. Fun! My kid isn't so into the race games, but Daddy seems to dig this one. :)

Creamy Mostly Veg soup

Tonight, I dug through the veg in the fridge and came up with a pile of stuff. It was getting cold, so my genetic code was screaming "Soup Time, Woman!" And I just went with it...too chilly to argue, anyhow.

It go like this, here it go:

1 cup diced celery  (leaves and all)
1 head cauliflower
1 med-large yellow squash
1.5 broccoli crowns
1 can evaporated milk
2/3 bar Cream cheese
1 box Chicken stock
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1.5 tsp Adobo Crillolo
.5 tsp White Pepper
.5 tsp Onion Powder
1/2c Italian Blend Shredded cheese (mozzarella, asiago and provologne mix)

Put the Chicken Broth and Cream of Mushroom soup in a pot. Bring it to a gentle boil while whisking. Add diced and chunked veg. All the veg now belong to the Soup. Let it simmer until the veggies are super tenderized. Turn off the pot and hit it with an immersion blender. Blend until smooth. Add pepper, onion powder and Adobo. Stir the pot. Add the cream cheese in slivers and chunks and the evaporated milk, too. Stir until the cream cheese has become one with the soup rather than floating about in odd lumps. Add the Italian blend cheese and mix that in until it disappears. Add more salt, pepper or onion powder until the taste grooves you. Serve and get down, babycakes!

I told my kid that I'd used "herbs and spices" to make all the little flecks she was seeing in the soup.
(Yeah, Dude, I'll lie straight in a kid's face about vegetable content in what they're eating and not even feel guilty. Not for a second.) She ate  everything in her bowl and enjoyed it!

Induction Cooktop Insane Easy Caramel

With the holidays rolling around, people are FB posting all their favorite sweet recipes. My cooking buddy was excited about her cousin Bobby's crock pot caramel recipe. She tried it with great result. There were many variables that made no logical sense to me. Things I've been told one must never ever do, unless you're TRYING to make somebody's day a little less bright. After a quick search of internet recipes to see what the common points and not so common variations are, I learned this:

Don't make yo shit harder than it needs to be. Science can be simple.

Hold your questions till the end, kids.

It goes like this, here it go:

Set the temp on your induction cooktop to 195.  Put an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk into a pot and fill the pot until you have covered the can with at least a 1/2 inch of water. Put the lid on and set the cooktop for 6 1/2 hours. Once the cooking cycle is complete, let the can sit in the covered water bath for another hour and a half. Transfer unopened can to fridge until you're ready to do something with your caramel.

Seriously, that's it. When the caramelish stuff has chilled, it will have a thick texture and lovely colour. The texture is not quite as stiff as the cellophane wrapped caramel candies and the colour is just a bit darker than those. It's not a chewy stringy substance, it's more spreadable like a thick Nutella. 

Questions and concerns:

1. This isn't really true caramel, it's dulce de leche. My unrefined hippy tastebuds can't tell a difference. It's yummy. I swear.
2. Quite a few blogs say that you MUST use Eagle brand. All I had in the cabinet was Great Value and it turned out just fine.
3. The caramel is quite thick once it's cooled. Feel free to add stuff when you use it... butter for a more caramel-y flavoured caramel. Salt for a salted caramel. Vanilla... you get the picture. Don't be skerred, it's just minor tweaks to make it groove for you.
4. Yes, Beavis, take the label off the can before you cook it.
5.  If your can seeps condensed milk into the pot, you're boned - start over with a new not-jacked-out can.
6.  No, the can will not explode (when you cook it at 195 degrees) and leave your kitchen a sticky horror. I was worried myself. We even talked about cooking it outside in case of splosion. Nope. Green lights all the way, man.
7. If your stuff turns out lumpy, you probably cooked it at too high a temperature. Since we can set the temp with an induction cooktop, that's not a problem.
8. If you MUST see what's going on in the can during the cooking process, use ball jars with the lid and all that.
9. This is NOT shelf stable, it must be refrigerated. It's milk.
10. You may need to thin it down with milk or cream to make it more easily pourable when warmed. Play around with it to get the texture you want.
11. Keep an eye on it while it cooks. The water must cover the can at all times.

Enjoy, y'all!

Side note: I am not responsible for the dimples on your behind once you get addicted to this super easy caramel. Heh!

Sock Monster freedom! Hallelujer, I say!

I've been the Sock Monster's bitch since I was 15. It only got worse as I aged and started accumulating humans. Bipedal life forms of any age in my vicinity develop severe Sock Monster Syndrome. Dunno why. That's like contemplating the color blue - it's an IS. Finding pairs of mated socks is darned near impossible. I do find single socks under beds, in between couch cushions, on dodgy ledges and occasionally in the wrong drawers. I gave up on matching Luna's cute little patterned socks by the time she was 3. There are only so many hours of the day I can spend digging under furniture. Ask, beg, threaten all with no discernible change in where the socks end up. I have a grown human who will wear a single pair of socks until they have so many holes he can't wear them or a clean pair appears in his drawer. All without a single request to have socks laundered.

When I had 5 kids and two mates, I was writing letters in sharpie on socks, buying different styles and colors and even laying paws on some sock clips that hold socks together in the laundry. Nope. Still the sock monster's bitch. Go in any room and open the sock drawer, you'd find 3+ unmatched socks, at least one pair of  someone else's socks and a handful of socks that should have been thrown out two sock purchases ago... and if you're lucky one pair of matched socks of the correct size and style.

Then I bought my Sweetness a pair o these:

Vibram Fivefinger Toe Shoes

I am free of the Sock Monster at last. That assclown can starve. No more socks! Well... on rare occasion. My daughter is begging for a pair of shoes like Daddy's. If I can get her hooked as well.. oh YES!!! *giggling maniacally*  I live My life in a pair of Birkenstocks but neither Man nor Child have hippie feet.  Shame, but that's the way of it.

Hallelujer!
Damn skippy, Skippy.

May not be the perfect plan, but the break will be nice!

Pork and Veg Tomato-ish Soup

Winter is coming, the days are getting colder and I'm ready to start doing weekly soups. Family and friends have their favourites but every once in a while I'm game for something new. This week I decided to wander into the land of pork with a tomato groove to it. It's more of a soup than my usual, meaning it's a thin but savoury liquid with teeny bits of this and that floating about in it. My man dug it in a big way and I was able to modify it when sending it along as his lunch one day.

I cook my soups in a crock pot and let em simmer all day, it makes the house smell amazing!

It go like this here it go...

Part 1: Meat!

1 24oz Hormel Pork Sirloin - Garlic & Herb flavoured.
1/3 c Ken's Sweet Vidalia Onion Dressing
1/3 c Ken's Balsamic Vinaigrette
1 c White Wine
1 tsp Adobo Crillollo
1 Tbsp Molasses

Cook the meat in the crock pot till done. It takes about 3 hours or so. Let it rest until it's cool enough to handle. I took the meat out of the juice, strained the juice and put it back in the crock. This can be done the night before if you can't be there during the day to deal with it. Cut the meat up into small bits, about 1/2" cubes is good enough and throw it back into the juice.

Part 2: Souptastic goodness!

1 Lg Yellow squash - diced
3 Med Carrots - diced
1 Med Sweet onion - diced
1 Med-Lg Leek - sliced & chopped
2 c Mushrooms - diced
2 small cans Hunts Tomato Paste with Basil, Garlic and Oregano
1 can Cream of Celery Soup
2 Boxes Swanson Chicken Broth
2 Tbsp Italian Dried Herb Mixture
Reserved Juice and Pork bits
1 tsp Adobo Crillollo

Throw the canned stuff and broth into the crock pot and wisk until smooth. Toss in everything else and give it a stir. Let it grok in the crock on HI for 5 hours or so. It's a crock pot soup, you really can't overcook it unless you forget about it for a couple of days. Check the veggies, when they're as tender as you want em to be it's done. Salt and pepper to taste when your veggies are ready. This makes about 12 cups of soup as near as I can figure.

I served it with Jiffy cornbread because I was feeling lazy. :)

Soup Mod!
I wanted to make some changes for the third serve of this soup and added diced smoked sausage, minced garlic and hidden veggie macaroni elbows. I transferred the last of the soup to a pot and put it on the stove. The macaroni cooked in the broth along with the rest of my new additions.  Pasta done? Serve it!

Sorry there's not a photo. I've been sick. *bleah*

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I saw a photo of  some Spider Chip cookies and knew that my little Goth Empress would lose her mind over them. Followed the art direction... Fail. Cookies tasted great. Did the chips end up looking like little spiders? No, they looked like chocolate chips the cats had taste tested while the dominant female human wasn't looking...

You know me, can't see a recipe without wanting to put my own thoughts and imaginings in the mix.  A quick search netted the Toll House recipe. Mhmm. White flour. Pfffft. Man I wish I had some peppermint extract. Oh well, I've got peppermint mocha creamer. Let's get into trouble, Baby!

*edit* Yeah, the creamer didn't pack as much of a punch as I'd hoped.

So I did this with it:

1/2 c Cheap ass Margarine
1/2 c Shortening
1 c Brown Sugar
1/2 c White Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
2 Tbsp Peppermint Mocha Creamer

Toss it in your mixer and cream it all together. Throw in two eggs and 3/4 tsp salt. Keep on beating.

Whisk together in a separate bowl:
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 c Milled golden Flax seed
1 c Oat Flour (Ground down plain oatmeal)
1/2 c Whole Wheat Flour
3/4 c All Purpose White Flour

Add the flour to the goo in your mixing bowl and whup it good.

Once combined, add in a whole packet of semi sweet chocolate chips. The dough is gonna be a little loose. Chuck it into the Frigidaire for at least an hour to firm it up. I might let it sit in there overnight.. Or you can throw it into the freezer to firm it up faster.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Drop by heaping teaspoonful onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.

Cool the cookies on a wire rack. Nom nom nommity!

Duck me? Duck You! (Sauce)

I've been threatening to make Egg Rolls from scratch over here for the longest. Gotta have a fab duck sauce to go with. Some people dig the hot mustard, others want em au natural. Not me. I adore that sweetish yellowy orange goo. I ran through the recipe areas to see what's in it. Looks easy enough - but some of the stuff isn't stuff I keep around the house. Dry mustard? I've used it but spice goes over in a year and I'd never use a whole teensy tub o the stuff. I keep the prepared version in the fridge at all times. Red chili flakes? Yeah, not so much. Tiger Sauce, tho? Can't live without it. Time to jack around with some substitutions and my own brain sparkles and see what we get.

It go like this, here it go...

1 Pluot (It's a plum/apricot hybrid or you can use a regular plum)
1/2 c Apricot Preserves
1 tsp Yellow Mustard
1 tsp Tiger Sauce
1 tsp shaved Ginger Root
1 tsp Molasses
2 Tbsp Rice Wine Vinegar (or balsamic vinegar or apple cider vinegar)
1 Tbsp Brown Sugar
1 100% Apple Juice 10 oz juice box

Chunk up the fruit and throw it in the pot with everything else. Bring it to a boil, stirring occasionally. Simmer for 30 mins. Make sure the fruit is soft. Throw it all in a food processor, blender or hit it with an immersion blender. Blend until smooth. Let it cool. Done!

*takes a bow*

Remember, this is from scratch, ghetto style. It will not taste like the packet goo with all the preservatives and etc. If you want it sweeter, make it sweeter. If you like a sour groove, add a touch more vinegar. The point is you can tweak it to be the kitten's whiskers with a little effort. :)