Honestly, I'm not sure what led to this. We were brainstorming what to have for dinners this week, and I think we were determined to use what we already had in the house. Incidentally, that wasn't very much.
We cooked elbow macaroni, fried some chicken pieces up in a skillet, and then put them in a bowl and melted some cheese over top. Unfortunately, we only had slices of American cheese. This made for the most white trash dish we have ever created.
We referred to it as "God Bless 'Merrica Casserole." I do not recommend ever trying to recreate this dish as Jeff felt very ill almost immediately after eating his portion. I tried adding some A1 (the truly 'Merrican thing to do), but it didn't really help. Also, if you don't eat it fast enough, the cheese solidifies and congeals in the most unpleasant way.
All around a "let us never speak of this again" kind of dinner.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Mango
I ate my first Mango today.
Hard to believe it hadn't been done, but it's true. In fact, I don't know if I had ever even seen one eaten and paid attention. I was at the grocery store today, and in a weird state so I bought a bunch of off-list stuff. Something I never do. One thing was a pair of Mangoes.
Takeaways:
Hard to believe it hadn't been done, but it's true. In fact, I don't know if I had ever even seen one eaten and paid attention. I was at the grocery store today, and in a weird state so I bought a bunch of off-list stuff. Something I never do. One thing was a pair of Mangoes.
Takeaways:
- I like ripe mangoes. One of the ones I bought was ripe.
- I do not like unripe mangoes. The other was not.
- Red mangoes are riper than green. (regardless of whether or not I am correct on ripeness, I prefer red)
- The skin is not edible.
- They have some sort of solid stringy mass at the center that is hard to cut through. Don't bother. Instead, carve chunks off.
- Unripe (green) mangoes are really bitter and solid. Hard to cut.
- Ripe (red) mangoes are really sweet and smushy.
Fruit Adventures might be a regular feature. I think Aly took some great action shots of me trying to figure it out. I almost bought a (nonstandard) melon at the store, it was white with green stripes. You'll have to wait until next grocery trip to find out for sure.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Cream Stuffed Strawberries
Dinner night with T is usually a fancy affair, so lately I've been trying to keep up by having special desserts planned to complete our sophisticated meals.
Last week at our friend's house (after I gave him his awesome cookies) his stepdad was chatting with Jeff and said that their friend stuffs strawberries with cream cheese for dessert. It sounded simple and awesome, so I thought I'd go for that this week for fancy dessert night.
I mentioned it to my coworker who is an awesome chef (and baker) to see if she had any input, and she suggested I try stuffing the strawberries with that new chocolate cream cheese that Philadelphia put out. I completely agreed and picked some up on the way home from work.
I wanted to stuff the non-chocolate strawberries with something more than just cream cheese, so I added 1/4 cup of sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla and whipped it all together with an electric mixer before stuffing the strawberries. It was a sweet filling and it was very tasty. I didn't alter the chocolate at all because that would be sacrilege.
Both versions were pretty amazing, but the chocolate disappeared from the plate first. I would imagine that finding some way to dip these in chocolate to get a hard shell would be awesome, and I might experiment with that this summer.
-Aly
"Recipe"
Ingredients:
-Strawberries (enough for however many people you're feeding keeping in mind that they'll each want at least 2-3, or more in our case)
- Chocolate Cream Cheese
Cream Cheese Filling: (I halved these ingredients when I made it)
-8 oz Plain Cream Cheese
-1/2 cup Sugar
-1 tsp Vanilla
Directions:
1. Rinse strawberries and cut off the tops with a paring knife in a cone shape to hollow them out (see pics above to see what they should look like)
2. Mix Plain Cream Cheese, Sugar, and Vanilla together with electric mixer until smooth and well blended.
3. Spoon the different fillings into the strawberries and place on a plate to serve.
Last week at our friend's house (after I gave him his awesome cookies) his stepdad was chatting with Jeff and said that their friend stuffs strawberries with cream cheese for dessert. It sounded simple and awesome, so I thought I'd go for that this week for fancy dessert night.
I mentioned it to my coworker who is an awesome chef (and baker) to see if she had any input, and she suggested I try stuffing the strawberries with that new chocolate cream cheese that Philadelphia put out. I completely agreed and picked some up on the way home from work.
I wanted to stuff the non-chocolate strawberries with something more than just cream cheese, so I added 1/4 cup of sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla and whipped it all together with an electric mixer before stuffing the strawberries. It was a sweet filling and it was very tasty. I didn't alter the chocolate at all because that would be sacrilege.
Both versions were pretty amazing, but the chocolate disappeared from the plate first. I would imagine that finding some way to dip these in chocolate to get a hard shell would be awesome, and I might experiment with that this summer.
-Aly
"Recipe"
Ingredients:
-Strawberries (enough for however many people you're feeding keeping in mind that they'll each want at least 2-3, or more in our case)
- Chocolate Cream Cheese
Cream Cheese Filling: (I halved these ingredients when I made it)
-8 oz Plain Cream Cheese
-1/2 cup Sugar
-1 tsp Vanilla
Directions:
1. Rinse strawberries and cut off the tops with a paring knife in a cone shape to hollow them out (see pics above to see what they should look like)
2. Mix Plain Cream Cheese, Sugar, and Vanilla together with electric mixer until smooth and well blended.
3. Spoon the different fillings into the strawberries and place on a plate to serve.
Lamb: the King of Meat
So, we were hanging with T at our friend's house and the question of what the best meat was came up. I threw out lamb, because I'm Greek and that's the stereotype. Also it's delicious. It came out that I'm the only one who could remember eating it, and so we decided that's what we would be cooking this week. Lamb chops.
I recently installed a new app for my iPod, Ziplist. It's a grocery list/recipe organizer that seems neat. So I used it to find a recipe for Greek Grilled Lamb Chops which seemed straight forward and it was. It was also delicious and everyone (as far as I can tell) agreed. I was pretty pleased with the meal.
Step 1- Marinate the lamb chops (4) in a cup of olive oil, 6 minced garlic cloves and a half cup of oregano for an hour and a half. Again, apparently we are stereotypical Greeks (neither Aly nor T are Greek). I cut the oregano down to an eighth cup and it was still tons, but didn't hurt the taste. I also forgot to marinate before T got there, so we only did that for 40ish min while we made the side dishes.
Step 2 - Grill on high for 6 min each side.
Step 3 - ????
Step 4 - Profit!
It was great. The recipe called for us to squeeze a quarter slice of lemon on each one but I tried it before doing that and preferred it that way. I think everyone else used less lemon.
We also found the mother -in-law's "biggest loser" cookbook and it had a sweet potato fry recipe in it. I clarify that it wasn't my book because after reading the rest of the recipes, it didn't have any others that were good, and this was just OK.
For the fries we sliced two sweet potatoes into fry shapes. I went short fries and cut the first potato in half, but T was offended, and so we did the other one really long. From here, we tossed them in 1 tbs of olive oil, some amount of garlic salt and very little Parmesan cheese. (And a pinch of cayenne pepper?). Then baked 8 min, flipped them and baked 12. End of the day, I'd bake them longer, and add more garlic salt/cheese. They were sort of bland, and not super hot like I'd like.
Aly made some horseradish and something or other dip to go with them. I think everyone agreed it was not bad, but weird with the fries. Like, I'd put this on a burger, but not my sweet potato fries. Maybe even normal fries.
Also what is "A pinch"? I just pinched the pile of spice and threw what I got into the pot, and it was very little. Is that correct?
-Jeff
--
New feature in the future: that mystery friend has expressed interest in doing a featured blog post every so often. Keep an eye out for a new author. (not T)
I recently installed a new app for my iPod, Ziplist. It's a grocery list/recipe organizer that seems neat. So I used it to find a recipe for Greek Grilled Lamb Chops which seemed straight forward and it was. It was also delicious and everyone (as far as I can tell) agreed. I was pretty pleased with the meal.
Step 1- Marinate the lamb chops (4) in a cup of olive oil, 6 minced garlic cloves and a half cup of oregano for an hour and a half. Again, apparently we are stereotypical Greeks (neither Aly nor T are Greek). I cut the oregano down to an eighth cup and it was still tons, but didn't hurt the taste. I also forgot to marinate before T got there, so we only did that for 40ish min while we made the side dishes.
Step 2 - Grill on high for 6 min each side.
Step 3 - ????
Step 4 - Profit!
It was great. The recipe called for us to squeeze a quarter slice of lemon on each one but I tried it before doing that and preferred it that way. I think everyone else used less lemon.
We also found the mother -in-law's "biggest loser" cookbook and it had a sweet potato fry recipe in it. I clarify that it wasn't my book because after reading the rest of the recipes, it didn't have any others that were good, and this was just OK.
For the fries we sliced two sweet potatoes into fry shapes. I went short fries and cut the first potato in half, but T was offended, and so we did the other one really long. From here, we tossed them in 1 tbs of olive oil, some amount of garlic salt and very little Parmesan cheese. (And a pinch of cayenne pepper?). Then baked 8 min, flipped them and baked 12. End of the day, I'd bake them longer, and add more garlic salt/cheese. They were sort of bland, and not super hot like I'd like.
Aly made some horseradish and something or other dip to go with them. I think everyone agreed it was not bad, but weird with the fries. Like, I'd put this on a burger, but not my sweet potato fries. Maybe even normal fries.
Also what is "A pinch"? I just pinched the pile of spice and threw what I got into the pot, and it was very little. Is that correct?
-Jeff
--
New feature in the future: that mystery friend has expressed interest in doing a featured blog post every so often. Keep an eye out for a new author. (not T)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)