To Eat Out or In...That is *Tonight's* Question

As you may have guessed, I cook a lot.  Like all the damn time.  Like breakfast, lunch and dinner for five people.  The only day that I don't cook dinner is usually Sunday, when we have dinner at my mom's house with her and my sister.  Every other night though, whether I am inspired or dragging my feet, you will find me in the kitchen, whipping something edible up for my family to consume as their nighttime meal.  Some nights, however, I am too tired (or too busy, or too frustrated or too... anything) to cook dinner and we end up going out to a local restaurant or grabbing low-brow burgers to fill our bellies.  Some nights (or in this case, days), I call my husband at work and he casually says, "if you want to go out tonight, we could.  You know...instead of cooking."  I am sorely tempted and then spend the next several hours having this conversation in my head:

Me #1 (also known as the Stingy Chef, a character who despises the waste of food and who intrinsically believes that no one can make food as healthy or as cheaply as she can): *sigh*  "We don't need to go out.  You are going to the grocery store tomorrow and can make do until then.  There are at least two different meal options in the fridge at this very moment."

Me #2 (also known as the Lazy, Harried Mom of Three, a character who procrastinates using food up and who enjoys having anyone else cook for her, not to mention bring her alcoholic drinks): "Awww.....come ON!!  You know you don't want to cook tonight!!  You have a blog post to write, a cake to make tomorrow, the three little people to deal with all afternoon.  Who cares if the tomatoes sit another day?!  *sing-song voice* There might be margaritas...."

Me #1: "Quit whining!!  There won't be enough room in the fridge if we don't finish off the tomatoes and the milk and the bread and the lunchmeat.  Do I really have to go on?!  I will get you a treat at the store tomorrow instead!"

Me #2: "Nah.  I'm still going to think about going out tonight.  I mean, it makes sense, right?  We have an errand to run and there might not be time to do it if we DON'T eat out."

I could go on, but now you just think I am crazy.  Regardless of my mental status, it is a struggle for me to decide how to best spend our money and really how to utilize the food I have already purchased.  Yes, it is nice to eat out and yes, we do that every once in a while, but there are lots of difficulties in doing so on a regular basis.  I have to say that I am leaning towards the Stingy Chef on this one - it would be nice, but there is food in the fridge that needs to be eaten and both meal options should appeal to all five of us.  We will see though - right now it is nap time, the big kids are at school and I am happily typing away at a soon to be finished blog post.  When 4 pm rolls around and I have three screaming banshees running loose and wreaking havoc in my house....well, that margarita might just look too damn good to pass up. 

Happy Memorial Day!

Happy Memorial Day to everyone!  Today, we remember our fallen veterans, who made the ultimate sacrifice and their families that were left behind.  I thank each and every one of you, and as the granddaughter of two veterans (now deceased) of WWII, and the niece of multiple veterans of Vietnam, I respect and honor you all today and everyday.

On a much more superficial note, today we also "officially" kick off the summer season.  My kids still have a week and a half of school to finish, so we are not calling it summer just yet, but it is hot, which, here in Texas (and on my light and fun food blog), means grilling season is in full force.  Fortunately for me, my husband procured a new propane tank for my grill yesterday, not to mention some lovely organic and biodegradable cleaners for said grill.  I decided, at 8:30 last night to try them out; let's just say that, for only owning that grill for a year (maybe not even that), it was NASTY.  Lots of char, lots of grease - it was another fireball waiting to happen.  So, maybe it wasn't the worst thing in the world that my propane ran out mid-dinner preparation the other night.  That sucker needed to be scoured.  So, did that - it's all nice and clean and pretty now.  The plan was to dirty it up again a little with hot dogs for this evening (what kid doesn't love hot dogs, even the nitrate and nitrite free turkey dogs that I insist on buying), but my two year old accidentally kicked me full on in the eye (with shoes on, no less) earlier today, so my throbbing face and I feel that the grill may just be too much freaking trouble for this evening.  Hot dogs taste almost as good cooked in a skillet on the stove, and my family of five will enjoy a fun Memorial Day dinner regardless.  The grill can definitely be dirtied another day. 

You Know That Thing When You are Grilling...

And you have all of your food - veggies and hamburger patties - lined up nice and pretty on your wonderful, propane-powered grill and you go inside and when you come back five minutes later, you wonder why the grill is cold all of a sudden and your food is no longer cooking, but just sitting there having one big cross-contamination par-tay?  Yeah, that super sucks and I discovered why I miss my natural gas grill the other night (despite the fact that I accidentally set that one on fire, and which considering the gas connected directly to the house, it could have been BAD.  Real bad).  My propane ran out, in the middle of cooking dinner for my in-laws, and all I could hear in my head was Hank Hill's voice wondering why I hadn't checked my "propane and propane accessories" before I started cooking.  (I didn't really watch that show much - just enough to get that line good and freaking stuck in my head, especially when it comes to my grill.)  It wasn't that big of a deal, really, but I did have to haul everything off of the stone cold grill and back inside for a mish-mash of stove top and electric grill cooking.  Good times.  Now I get to go to the hardware store and refill my propane tank.  Extra good times. 

Food Budgeting

"Budget" is the equivalent of a four letter word in our house.  Food budgets, in particular...you just go wash your mouth out with soap!  No, really.  I typically don't function on a food budget, but only because my husband and I (we will celebrate our 13th anniversary tomorrow, as a matter of fact) decided a long time ago that we would never, ever fight about spending money on food.  (Don't worry.  There is plenty of other stuff that we each spend money on that we disagree about.  If you know me personally, you know that my husband is a "collector" of "things" that "don't belong in either this hemisphere or in my house".) 

Despite my lack of a true "food budget", I do typically go to the store with savings in mind.  I clip coupons and I try to pay attention to those "daily deals" that the grocery store offers (buy this and get something else I would already have bought for free).  I am also planning to, today as a matter of fact, join a "buying club" that will hopefully allow me to purchase certain items (paper products, organic meats, etc.) in bulk, perhaps saving us a little more money.  I have just been feeling lately that we are spending massive amounts of money on food and I know I am not the only one.  Food prices are going up and as my children grow, so do their appetites.  My oldest daughter eats constantly (or so it would seem) and my son is literally going to eat us out of house and home by the time he is a teenager.  (Also, he eats fruits and vegetables like a fiend - not that I am complaining, mind you.  The girls will at least eat a fair amount of meat, but having a pseudo-vegetarian for a toddler is freaking expensive.)

I decided that the "buying club" place would be a good choice for us, in that I have also gotten pickier about the types of foods that I am willing to buy at the grocery store.  I have been buying organic meats (when I can find them at my local store) and the selection there definitely leaves something to be desired.  I decided that, in any given month, I am going to shoot for 50% of our meals being anchored by a meat dish of some kind and 50% of our meals will be vegetarian (or primarily vegetarian because I can think of a number of recipes right now that are vegetable based, but call for a small amount of pork products of one kind or another....bacon, pancetta, salt pork, etc.).  Planning for approximately 15 meals per month, I feel like I can go to the "buying club" store and purchase a 1/3 red meat, 1/3 chicken breasts and 1/3 chicken thighs with some fish (because my son can eat that now, yay!) thrown in.  (We are doing a shrimp food challenge the day after Memorial Day, so my fingers are crossed that we might be able to eat shrimp again after that.)  We will see if that kind of plan saves us any money, but at the very least, I should be able to find a wider selection of organic meats at this new store. 

So, we remain omnivores and I am unsure how this change will affect my "budget", but regardless, I am going to have to split my grocery shopping loyalties from now on. 

A New Vegetable!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about a wonderful three-ingredient pasta recipe that I have and utilize very frequently (often to the dismay of my older kids): Three Ingredient Dinner? Yes, please!  Last night, I played with a variation on that recipe, using organic frozen peas and a new find at my local grocery store, frozen Broccoli Romesco!  I really wish I had taken a picture of either the package or the final product after I was done cooking the meal, but I super suck at remembering to do that, so I will just apologize to my sister (who I know reads my blog and who is constantly telling me that I need to have more pictures and less words and who I apparently don't listen to very often) right now.  Anyway, this Broccoli Romesco stuff is a cross between regular old broccoli and regular old cauliflower and it is the weirdest, prettiest vegetable I think I have ever seen.  You know what broccoli looks like, right?  Tiny, deep emerald green (if you haven't cooked the bejesus out of it) trees?  OK.  Now picture a chartreuse Christmas tree.  Got it?  No?  Well, that is pretty much the only way I can describe this stuff - light, yellowish green and conical shaped.  The flavor was somewhere between that of broccoli and cauliflower (stop saying, "duh"!) - it was lightly nutty and very, very slightly sweet, but completely lacking that kind of sulfurous stank that broccoli can have.  My kids seemed to enjoy it (sort of), but it did get eaten (pretty much).  They all at least tried it and I have to say, I think it really perked up the dish for me.  I also really liked it because it came in a "steams in the bag in the microwave" package, which made it super simple for me to whip together the dinner in less than 30 minutes.  I promise that next time I buy the Broccoli Romesco, I will not only post a picture of the packaging, but also of the resulting dish.

Author's Note: In addition to remembering to take a picture, I also will need to brush up on my Mendelian genetics because my oldest daughter wanted an explanation of how the cross between the broccoli and cauliflower came to pass.  That was fun and you would never know that I had actually studied that stuff in college (I was Pre-Med) the way I was stumbling over terms like "recessive" and "dominant" and "traits".  I am pretty sure she thinks I just made it all up. 

Second Author's Note: The sad part about this story is that I was actually growing purple Broccoli Romesco in my garden and was very excited about it as I had never actually tasted it.  Then, the bunny descended (Gardening Successes and Failures) upon my tender little plants and I am sorry to report that the Broccoli Romesco never had a chance.  Apparently, rabbits know a good thing when they see it as well. 

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

I just want to start this off by saying first, that my mom is an amazing woman and a fantastic cook and second, that she ordered me (really and truly) to NOT get her anything for Mother's Day.  If that is what she wants, fine, but she didn't order me to NOT write a blog post dedicated to her and to the food legacy that she built for me.  So, Mom: this is for you.  Happy Mother's Day, because I love you!

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about the impact my mother's pancakes made on me as a child and as an adult (Fall Way Back).  I was thinking about that post and about how food memories are made when I decided to write this one.  I started thinking about it because we all often have some special person in our lives that cooks something in particular that seems impossible to replicate for one reason or another.  For me, it is not my mom's pancakes (I feel that I have actually mastered that one - I can make some variant of pancakes almost in my sleep now), though, as the other post explains, those particular breakfasts made an indelible impression upon me, even as a small child.  It is not even my grandmother's brownie recipe, which my mom and my aunt have each altered in their own ways and good-naturedly discuss as to which is the "original" recipe and, more specifically, which makes the better brownie.  (I have made my own variations on that one, as well, so I think I've got it down).  No, the one thing that my mother makes that I have tried and tried and tried and tried to cook on my own, but fail miserably every single time: chicken spaghetti, my past, present and future favorite food, its permanency in my life evidenced by my own Mother's Day card this morning, made by my oldest daughter, in which she correctly identified that as my favorite dinner. 

Chicken spaghetti, in my mom's excellent hands, is a very odd combination of chicken (of course), onions, cream of mushroom soup, V-8 juice, Worcestershire sauce and garlic powder, often with a green bell pepper or a package of fresh mushrooms thrown in for good measure, and, traditionally, served over plain spaghetti noodles.  I know the recipe by heart and though I consider myself quite adept at actually following a written recipe, I have never NEVER been able to fix this meal that in any way compares to my mom's version.  Honestly, I have completely stopped trying, even though my oldest daughter also adores the meal.  Is it the little changes that I tried to make over the years - subbing out a lower fat version of the soup or possibly adding extra, fresh garlic? Maybe it was the introduction of whole wheat pasta into my repertoire?   Hell if I know.  What I do know is that, when I make it, it doesn't taste right.  My mom has made successful changes in the recipe, though.  When my son was diagnosed with food allergies, she dutifully switched to a vegan Worcestershire sauce (the original version contains anchovies) as well as to a different brand of pasta (100% whole wheat and not processed with eggs).  Even with those changes, hers still tastes vastly better than anything I have ever made.

My mom and I have often discussed my inability to adequately cook chicken spaghetti.  To a certain extent, she thinks it is all in my head - my perception that I suck at chicken spaghetti has become my reality.  She does, however, admit that she too has a recipe of my grandmother's that she won't attempt: fried pork chops.  I am not sure that this particular recipe was ever written down, but, as I was thinking about writing this post this morning, I convinced myself that pork chops were not a common menu item in my house when I was growing up.  I actually remember my grandmother cooking pork chops during a summer we spent with them in their old house in Las Vegas, but, for the life of me, I cannot come up with a time that my mom tried to recreate that particular meal.  (She does cook pork by the way - roasts and other cuts - just not chops.)  She has a pork chop block, just like I have a chicken spaghetti block. 

My mother may think that my chicken spaghetti ineptitude may be mostly mental, but, God love her, she triples every batch of chicken spaghetti she makes now - enough to feed her, my sister and my entire family, plus enough sauce for me to take home, freeze and use to feed my family for another night.  (Chicken spaghetti is almost better when frozen, defrosted and reheated another day.  It is the weirdest recipe.  For reals.)  Oddly enough, I am also conscripted, every single time, to taste the sauce before it is deemed worthy to dress the pasta and serve.  Sometimes, more often than not, it is perfectly seasoned, but very occasionally, I suggest adding more Worcestershire sauce or garlic powder.  She will adjust the seasoning, I will taste and together we will make sure the chicken spaghetti is right. 

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!  I love you for so many reasons, all beyond your unique ability to cook chicken spaghetti!  You have made me the person I am today and I can only hope that I am creating the same kind of food legacy for my kids as you have created for me.  I wonder what their "chicken spaghetti block" will be....

Cuban Black Beans and Rice

I intended this to be a much longer post, but I am short on time as I am between family activities for the day.  We had my oldest's final softball games this morning and my younger daughter needs to be chauffeured to a birthday party in, like, 10 minutes, so this is going to be super fast with the recipe to follow. 

One of my favorite things to cook when I have few ideas, little inspiration and the need to clean a bunch of stuff out of the fridge is beans and rice.  I tend to dislike Cajun food, so I don't typically go for the red beans and rice variety, but I LOVE Cuban food, so I switch it up and reach for black beans, cilantro and tomatoes instead.  I use a pilaf (or even a bit of a risotto) method for cooking the rice - saute onions, garlic and peppers in oil, add rice in on top, saute until chalky and then add liquid to cook the rice grains.  After the rice is almost completely tender, I add drained and rinsed cans of no salt added black beans and whatever else I need to toss in to clear out the crisper drawer.  The other night, I used up a semi-manky poblano chile, onion and tomatoes in our Cuban-style black beans and rice.  (You can make it Southwestern-style black beans and rice by adding in frozen corn kernels or heck, you could make it Thai-style black beans and rice by subbing out jasmine or basmati rice for the brown rice I usually use, adding soy sauce or fish sauce....really, the possibilities are endless.)  So, I also made tostones (fried plantain slices) to go with the beans and rice, which is very Cuban indeed.  My kids, oddly enough, didn't love the plantains (How many bananas do we freaking eat every week?!), but my husband and I find them tasty and a good way to round out a very vegetarian meal.

Anyway, recipe on this is to follow when I have more time and look for a special post tomorrow for Mother's Day.  Until then....

Gardening Successes and Failures

One of the million things I do these days is keep a garden plot in the community garden at our YMCA.  In theory, it is a fantastic idea - you get a 16 foot by 16 foot plot of land with free watering provided by the Y and you can plant pretty much anything your little heart desires (within the bounds of the law, people; i.e. no pot growing operation).  We have been planting ours for almost a year now and have seen success and failure in equal measure.  The days here in Texas are slowly growing warmer (then colder, then warmer, then colder) and as we get further into Spring, I know that it is past time for me to rip out all my cold weather vegetables (most of which were decimated by a bunny attack earlier this year) and plant spring and summer selections.  Honestly, I am not sure if I have the energy for it at this point.  We have had a REALLY long softball season with our oldest daughter and that, coupled with, like I said, the other million things that I do, I haven't even started thinking about what I want to put into the ground.  You would think that, feeling the gardening fatigue and seeing almost $80 worth of produce go into a small varmint's (I apparently don't have Yosemite Sam Spell Check on here, so I am not sure if that is spelled right) digestive tract, that I would just give up the gardening plot.  I would, but for.....

This.  This is one of the main reasons that I am resisting giving up the garden plot.  It is a freaking artichoke, y'all.  And I freaking grew it!  As a matter of fact, we freaking ate the one you are looking at last night!  And it was pretty freaking good!  As you can see in the picture, I have a few more coming in and I am pretty excited!  I cleaned this artichoke (sadly almost a week after we took it off of the plant - I know, what's the point of growing your own food if you are not going to eat it right away?  I'm lazy, that's what.) by taking off the bottom couple of rows of leaves, and clipping the spiny tips off of the leaves that I left.  I cut the stem end off (usually also edible, as part of the heart structure, but this was way past its expiration date) to create a flat bottom and put it in a little pan, with a little bit of water, slapped a lid on it and set it on medium heat to steam.  Of course, as per usual, when cooking artichokes, I let it go a bit too long and the water dried out, so the bottom burned, but I almost like them better that way.  Yeah, that's it.

Anyway, I don't know if you have ever seen an artichoke plant in person.  I actually had not until my husband (boyfriend at the time) and I took a road trip up to DC (geez....16 years ago.  *sigh*), by way of Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia.  Apparently, Thomas Jefferson, like myself, had a fondness for this particularly tasty thistle and had rows upon rows of giant artichoke plants on his plantation.  (If you have never been to this area and to Virginia in particular - it is spectacular.  One of the best places we have ever been.)  The point is that artichoke plants are HUGE and I am unlikely to plant one in our backyard garden.  It seems a shame to give up a planting space that is actually producing my very favorite vegetable, so...I probably won't.  I will probably keep going with it because, truly, the successes in the garden are so much fun and tend to cancel out the more appalling failures (bunny attacks).  I remember how excited I was last year when I grew my one and only zucchini (before the squash bugs descended and decimated those plants).  I never expected to see artichokes on my plant (they are not actually supposed to be very suited for Texas weather), but I was beyond thrilled to see them there.  I was also beyond thrilled to eat my success last night and will be pleased to do so again very soon.  I guess I also need to get busy deciding what is going in our plot soon.  The artichoke needs some company and I'm gonna need some more home grown veggies to enjoy. 

Skillet Chicken Tamale Pie

Yes, you read that right - Skillet Chicken Tamale Pie was FINALLY on the menu for dinner this week.  (I mean, it has been on the menu for, like, weeks now, but I FINALLY made it this week!)  This all started when a friend of mine shared some of her family's Easter tamales with us and my oldest claimed that tamales are her favorite food. (My youngest daughter then regaled us with the claim that she does NOT like tamales, but that is neither here nor there...for this post at least.  Obviously, we have to have some kind of intervention for her, because - WHO doesn't like tamales?!)  Anyway, the tamales were amazing - clearly homemade with a meat filling that practically fell apart and masa that was perfectly seasoned and moist.  We enjoyed them.  Thoroughly.  Of course, that brought up the question, again from my oldest: "Mommy, why don't you ever make tamales?"  I tried explaining to her the time consuming factor of making tamales, among other issues, then, when my excuses continued to fall upon deaf nine-year-old-tamale-craving ears, I took a look at one of my favorite cookbooks, "America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook".  Lo and behold, there was an "easy" recipe for Skillet Chicken Tamale Pie.  She seemed excited about this new recipe and a twist on traditional tamales, so I thought we would give it a try.

Now, I put the word easy in quotations for a reason: ATK recipes are typically not what I would classify as "easy", especially for a weeknight, family meal.  They typically involve ALOT of extra steps (and thus ALOT of extra dishes), so I tend to distill their recipes down into a more manageable and efficient procedure.  This recipe was no different - the intention is obviously to make this a one pot/skillet meal, but, if you are like me and forgot (AGAIN) to defrost the meat the night before, it becomes necessary to accomplish this in a different series of steps. 

The original recipe says to heat a skillet in a 400 degree oven until it is smoking hot and then to sear the chicken thighs in the skillet, thus quickly rendering their fat.  You then use part of the rendered fat to saute the vegetables, returning the meat to the sauce at the end to finish cooking in more of a braise method.  Like I said, I was defrosting my chicken thighs in a sinkful of water at 5 pm that day and I needed dinner on the table no later than 6:15 pm, so I changed things up a bit.  While said chicken was defrosting, I chopped all the veggies (onions from my garden, and the manky old poblano chiles - hey!  They did not have mold on them!  Don't judge. - plus garlic and cilantro to add towards the end of the cooking process.) I sauteed them in a scant tablespoon of olive oil until they started to soften, then added a bag of frozen, organic corn.  (Another substitution - the original recipe calls for fresh corn or for defrosted and patted dry frozen corn.  Duh - I didn't have time to pat the freaking corn dry.)  I then sprinkled about a tablespoon of flour over the top, cooked it for about 30 seconds and, once I had some nice color on the corn, I added the garlic, cooked until fragrant, then added the cilantro, a can of chopped green chiles, a can of white hominy (drained and rinsed) and about a cup and a half of chicken stock.  I brought all of that to a low simmer, thickened the sauce, then added about a cup of medium cheddar cheese, off the heat.  I poured all of that into a 9 x 13 inch casserole dish and stuck it in my microwave to keep warm until I was ready for it.  I wiped out the skillet, added a tiny bit of olive oil and sauteed the chicken thighs, which were, by this time, partially defrosted.  I rendered the fat of the skin and browned it on all sides before sticking it in the microwave (after removing my casserole dish) to finish cooking it (really to nuke the crap out of it - I don't mess around with undercooked chicken by any means).  While that was cooking, I made the "masa" topping - 3/4 cup each of flour and cornmeal, 3 tablespoons of sugar, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 3/4 cup buttermilk, 1 egg and 1 tablespoon of butter, melted and cooled.  I shredded the nuclear chicken, mixed it in with the corn/pepper mixture in the casserole dish, dolloped the masa topping, spread it out and baked that sucker in the oven at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes, until bubbly and nicely golden brown. 

The result: pretty tasty!  I definitely made it more complicated than the original recipe was supposed to be, but it worked.  It was very slightly spicy and the heat was more than tempered by the sweet corn bread topping.  The chicken was chewier than it should have been - especially considering that it was mostly supposed to be braised - but what are you going to do?  I had the leftovers for lunch the next day and I have to say - the flavors continued to develop and meld.  I think it might have been better the next day than it was the first time around.  I don't know if I will make the recipe again, especially since my tamale lover was not completely blown away by it, but it was a decent Wednesday night meal.  Everybody ate it, so, as you well know - that's a winner in my book!