we missed the boat

My parents took us to San Marcos to see the Texas State University-San Marcos Aquarena Center. It used to be the Aquarena Springs Resort complete with underwater mermaid shows and Ralph the diving pig. After the demand for swimming swine dwindled TSU bought it and now use the land to educate the masses about the Edwards Aquifer. The aquifer is the source of the springs, and the springs, the source of the San Marcos River. They have glass-bottomed boats that you can ride on and see the fish, turtles and other animals as well as the water percolating up from the bottom.

We got there are 3:30. The last boat left at two pm. Dang! Don't worry though. We had fun. We walked on all the boardwalks and made a game of finding the turtles and fish hiding among the weeds.

My point in telling you this? Well, we were leaving (around 4:30) and realized we were very hungry. We asked Betty (my Sienna's nav-center) what was around and she let us know that Taco Cabana was nearby.

One fajita steak burrito for me and three cheese quesadilla meals with chips and queso for the kidlings. (What can I say? They like cheese.)

The end.

antithesis

Tonight, I got to meet the parents of my parents' friend. (I'll wait while you figure that out.)

Sweetest people. He's from Monterrey, Mexico and she's from Chile. While I can't speak Spanish worth a plug nickel, I can understand probably 75% of their conversation. It was a ton of fun. We made a three-cheese (read: expensive and super-yummy) fondue and I made a blackout chocolate cake. (A delicious chocolate cake frosted with delicious chocolate pudding that looked just like this cake if you had dropped it and then slid it as best you could back onto the plate.) This wasn't dinner it was "dessert" but I thought you'd like to know. And I was lazy and did not take pictures. Sorry.

Dinner. I don't want to admit it. But my dad picked up Little Sleazers. Two pepperonis. So we had cheap-butt pizza and kick-butt dessert. It is what it is, I guess.

last of the leftovers

We had one turkey breast left. I didn't want to do it, but my uninspiration continued and so I fell back on a turkey favorite, tetrazzini. To be honest, it's still too soon. We just had this a month ago after Thanksgiving. I'm sick of it.

Tetrazzini, my kids love you, but I need space. I just feel like you're smothering me. As far as turkey leftovers go, our relationship can't be exclusive. I'm just not that girl. It's not you, Tetrazzini. It's me. I think it would be best if we spent some time apart. I'm sorry.

inspired and yet not.

Last night I watched Cupcake Wars on the Food Network and now I'm totally making cupcakes for the New Year's shindig I'm going to. I'm so very inspired to create cupcake delishifull-beautiness.

Dinner tonight? Completely UNinspired. I was planning to unleash the kids on Nana's cereal choices while I got cozy with a cheese ball and Ritz. (We're at my parents'. My husband took our oldest son and road-tripped it to Oregon.) Nana wasn't feeling it, though. She made a rather delicious salad topped with the last of the pork loin from Christmas dinner. The kids ate salad instead of cereal. Good job, Nana.

And while the cheese ball was good, I admit I was feeling better after the salad, too. Thanks, Mom.

texas burgers

While on vacation this summer, we tried to visit a Texas Burger. Twice. Both times ended in failure. Tonight as we were headed to San Antonio to visit my parents we purposed to change our Texas Burger destiny.

We succeeded.

As far as fast food is concerned, Texas Burger has earned itself third place in my book, behind #1 Burgerville and #2 In-N-Out. It is a decent burger that is among the upper echelon of fast-food burgers.

That still doesn't make it good for you. It just makes it so that I don't have the double-teaming haunting of bad taste and bad nutrition.

Oh! I almost forgot. I ordered the swiss-mushroom burger with onion rings. Onion rings: delicious. Burger: would have been great with real swiss instead of that processed cheese food they stuck on it. But hey, you get what you pay for, right?

can you guess?

Is there any possible thing we could have had tonight besides leftovers? I think not.

German Feast part zwei.

our great german-american feast

Usually I am one for tradition but this year I just couldn't stomach another roast turkey with stuffing and mashed potatoes right on the heels of Thanksgiving. (Which is saying a lot since mashed potatoes are my most favorite-ist food.) I suggested to my wonderful husband that we might try a German feast this year and the enthusiasm he exhibited would have frightened small children and animals.

Last year my hubbers had made this delicious white-meat turkey stuffed with dark-meat apricot sausage. He wanted to make the sausage again but this time make it into links with a sausage stuffer and everything. He also had made this supremely, delightful cranberry-bourbon relish so we knew that would make another showing.

I checked out Great German-American Feasts from the library and we started searching. From that cookbook we decided on rotkohl (vinegared red cabbage), mustard-glazed carrots, Austrian pork loin, spaetzel (noodley-dumpling things) and maple sweet-potato puff topped with pecans. We also made turkey schnitzel (boneless breast pounded thin, breaded and fried), a cremini-shiitake mushroom sauce, and cheese fondue with homemade pumpernickel, rye and sourdough loaves. (The fondue flopped terribly, to our great sadness. It separated and while it tasted delicious, it was quite disturbing to gaze upon.) Our friends brought over a ham.

For dessert I made a pumpkin pie and we served the leftover cupcakes from my daughter's birthday. Our friends made pumpkin bars, flourless chocolate cake and a truffle layer cake.

I think the word of the day was STUFFED.

Pictured above are: apricot-turkey sausages (Dug added apricots and pinenuts to this recipe), mustard-glazed carrots, Austrian pork loin and cranberry-bourbon relish.

Next we have from front right: turkey schnitzel (in the recipe, we substituted turkey breast slices for the pork and we didn't use the mushroom sauce, although we have in the past and it is good.), a big ol' ham, and rotkohl (red cabbage all spiced-up and yummy).

At the far end of the table we had starting at front right: spaetzle, cremini-shiitake mushroom sauce (Dug's original recipe below) and maple sweet-potato puff topped with pecans.

Lastly, our dessert table: chocolate cupcakes from last night, flourless chocolate cake, truffle cake and pumpkin pie.

Dug's Mushroom Sauce
8 oz sliced mushrooms (get a variety)
2 T chopped onion
1 T butter
1 T olive oil
1/2 c white wine
1 c turkey broth
2 T flour
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tsp dried parsley flakes

Saute mushrooms in butter and oil until mushrooms release juices. Add white wine and bring to boil. Take some of the juices and mix with flour to make a paste. Add flour mixture and broth to mushrooms and reduce til thickened. Add parsley and adjust seasonings to taste. Makes 1 1/2 to 2 cups.

pizza + chocolate cupcakes

Today isn't Christmas Eve in our house until after dinner. From the moment we wake up until dinner is eaten it is our middle daughter's birthday.

In our house when it's your birthday, you get to pick the menu for the day. There are only two rules:

1. Only one meal may be eaten at a restaurant. (This had to be instituted because of our eldest son.)
2. Mom holds veto authority.

For her birthday, my not-as-little-as-she-used-to-be-because-she's-now-seven red-head picked pizza: one cheese, one pineapple and one pepperoni. For dessert she asked for chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate ganache frosting and a cherry on top. Believe me, I was quite ready to fulfill her birthday meal wishes with those choices...

I used this recipe for the chocolate cupcakes. Mmmmmmm.

brisket quesadillas

With christmas shopping and all, we barely had time for dinner preparation tonight. We ended up using the leftover brisket from last night to spice up simple refried bean/cheddar cheese quesadillas. The green in our meal came from some guacamole we mixed up. I'm quite sure that that isn't what they mean by "getting more greens into your diet," though.

brisket + green beans + mashed potatoes

Mom and Dad are here for the Christmas holiday. Dad was out and about and came home with a brisket. We threw it in the oven, made a massive amount of instant mashed potatoes (eaten with equal parts cook's guilt and taste-bud pleasure) and steamed then pan-fried some green beans. Simple meal with delicious consequences.

sausage and veggie chowder + focaccia

I have an unknown-origin recipe in my recipe box for vegetable chowder. It's a great conglomeration of green beans, carrots, potatoes, and onions. I had a head of broccoli and a couple leftover sausages from a previous meal and a real hankering for some creamy soup. I took my chowder recipe nixed the green beans (I was out), added the broccoli and the sausage and threw in a cup or two of cheddar for good measure. Mmmmmm....just what the tummy ordered for cool winter's day.

I also made up a thick garlic-butter focaccia with my handy-dandy pizza dough.

Comfort food at its best.

leftovers

There's nothing new here...

pineapple chicken bake + brown rice pilaf + salad

This was an unintentional Indian-esque dinner. The recipe was blandly named "Pineapple Chicken Bake." With that name would you expect it to be chicken baked in very strong curry-flavored pineapple sauce? I didn't. It was good, but the husband is not the biggest fan of curry. Foreseeing his slight unhappiness at the prominent flavor I halved the curry powder called for. It was the right move because he ended up really liking it.

I paired it with a millet pilaf, subbing brown rice for the millet. (I forgot to buy some.) Of course the kids hated it, what with its fruit and nuts and veggies invasion. But they've got to learn there are times when you are faced with food you think you don't like. (That and I'm a selfish cook: If I'm making it, it's going to be something I'm in the mood for.)

I threw in a salad (Tonight's was topped with my favorite, Annie's Naturals Goddess Dressing.) and considered it a meal.

The Pineapple Chicken Bake came from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. Millet Pilaf materialized off the pages of Moosewood's Low-Fat Favorites.

mel's country cafe

My hubby loves burgers. We live in Texas. We found this blog called "Texas Burger Guy." The author loves burgers and goes all over the state of Texas trying them out and reviewing them. His number four, Mel's Country Cafe, isn't too far from us and we decided to check it out a few months ago.

Oh dear me! Those burgers are sooooo good.

All this to say: We ate there tonight. I got the swiss-mushroom burger. We ordered a basket of tots and basket of their super-delicious onion rings to share with the fam. I was exceedingly and happily full.

I didn't take any pics but they have the Mega-Mel Challenge (eat the Mega-Mel Burger in under two hours and get your name on the Wall of Fame) and thought you might enjoy these shots of random strangers attempting it.

african peanut stew + rice + salad

I love foods with peanut sauces. Indonesian chicken satay, udon noodles with peanut sauce, mmmm...so delicious. I also like dishes that have basic, inexpensive yet nutritious ingredients. West African Peanut Stew from The Vegetarian Family Cookbook has both. This soup had sweet potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, onion and ginger swimming in a sea of broth and peanut butter. Sounds odd, tastes superb.

I served it over rice and would have loved to have added the cayenne but for the sake of everyone but my oldest daughter (she loves spicy, too) I refrained and just added red pepper flakes as a garnish to my bowl. A green salad finished off the meal.

egg salad sandwiches + carrot sticks

Long story, short:
Grocery shopping took too long. Dinner started by oldest son. Boom, boom, bang...egg salad sandwiches. The carrot sticks was my quick and feeble attempt to bring a degree of redemption to the cholesterol laden (and highly delicious) meal.

seitan "meat and potatoes" stew + green beans

Last night I used up the extra seitan that I had made for a pizza about a month ago. (Don't worry I had frozen it.) I decided to make the Seitan "Meat and Potatoes" Stew from The Vegetarian Family Cookbook. It has been colder out which makes stew such a good fit. It's a very simple recipe mainly consisting of potatoes, carrots and the seitan.

Instead of adding green beans to the stew I decided to have them as a side dish instead. My favorite way to prepare them is to steam them for a few minutes and then pan-fry them in olive oil with some Mrs. Dash, garlic powder, salt and pepper. They get a little blackened and are so delicious. Of course they ended up mixing with the stew but they were a much more flavorful addition this way.

Happy tummies.

baked potatoes

Continuing with the leftover beans...Baked Potato Night!
We had the leftover Cuban beans, broccoli, cheddar, and sour cream as options for our spuds. It was supposed to have barbacoa meat as well, but I forgot to defrost it and...well...you know.

The kids are not the greatest lovers of baked potatoes but if they ate their food they got to eat a pecan bar cookie that I made today from my favorite cookie cookbook, Martha Stewart's Cookies. Believe me, it was worth choking down that tater.

PS - There really is a potato under there.

leftovers

A sort of fend-for-yourself, leftovers kinda night. I had this dinner sans cornbread.

a night divided

I had to do some face painting at a church Angel Tree party. They served lasagna, salad, bread and dessert. My family ordered pizza. (Since I wasn't there, not a single veggie in sight!)

That's the report.

joe's crab shack

Remember me saying I would give Joe's Crab Shack another shot? Tonight, apparently, was the night to do so. We had to drop our daughter off at a cookie decorating party at 6pm. It was sufficiently far enough away that we'd have to eat dinner a little before five. I'm sorry. That's just not going to happen in our house. So we decided to go out to eat after ditching the daughter.

We moved to Texas about a year ago and our house is now in a neighborhood that makes going out to eat much more difficult than eating at home. Because of this, I'm getting to be quite a food snob. The hubby and I love good food. We love making and eating good food. And lately, every time I eat out I'm disappointed. The food isn't terrible it's just not great and amazing. We are also sufficiently new that we haven't found all the good independently-owned restaurants to try. Sorry to get on my little whine-y train here, I'm just so sad. Chain restaurants just serve boring food, in general.

I had the Fisherman's Platter or Plate or something at Joe's tonight. It consisted of calimari, shrimp, Great Balls of Fire (cream cheese, crab, shrimp and jalapeno balls breaded and deep-fried) and a piece of some fish, I can't remember what. (That's exactly what I'm talking about. Completely unremarkable.) Besides the Great Balls, there was nothing to differentiate this food from any other fish place. *heavy sigh*

Sorry this is such a downer. I'm just a little sad. We used to live in a college town that was brimming with independently-owned restaurants serving ethnically diverse food. I just miss it I guess. And I hate spending money on food that doesn't make me close my eyes so I can better focus on the flavor.

Tonight's meal descriptor: mediocrity.

beans + cornbread

I have a recipe for Cuban Black Beans that I gleaned off the internet a few years ago. (I have no idea where, sorry.) It is one of my go-to pantry recipes. I usually have all the ingredients no matter how long it's been since I went grocery shopping.

Tonight I made a double batch but used 1/2 black beans and 1/2 kidney beans, rather than all black. It was a nice change. Topped it off with some sour cream, cheddar and jalapenos. Delicious! I made a batch of my favorite cornbread and voila! Dinner.

Here's the recipe. It's super simple.

1lb black beans (soaked overnight)
1/4 c olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 can tomato paste
1 (4oz) jar pimentos (I usually leave this out because I rarely keep them on hand.)
1 Tb balsamic vinegar
3 tsp salt
1 tsp white sugar
5 c water
1 tsp pepper

Saute the onion, pepper and garlic in the oil. (Sometimes I skip that step if I'm lazy.) Add everything else, cover and let simmer for 2 hrs.

pumpkin waffles redux

Once again the dinner hour snuck up and attacked me from out of nowhere. Because of a women's Christmas tea at our church, we didn't have Daddy's Waffles on Saturday. Those two facts when added together came up with my answer for our hungry tummies: Pumpkin Waffles.

We've had these waffles before but they just weren't pumpkin-y enough. Tonight I decided to see if I could bring out the pumpkin-ness by adding more of the spices. I did and it did. If you're following the Vegan with a Vengeance recipe just increase the spices by fifty percent. Mmmmmmmmm.

I had some leftover whipping cream from making cookies with my son so I whipped it up. In hindsight I should have spiced it up with some nutmeg. (My friend loves nutmeg and has inspired me to think of ways to use the oft-overlooked spice.) Despite my oversight, the waffles topped with maple syrup and whipped cream were heavenly. Just right for the season surrounding a divine birth.

vegetable phylo roll extravaganza + salad

I'm thinking the authors of Moosewood Low-Fat Favorites stuck the name Vegetable Phyllo Roll Extravaganza on this recipe thinking they would go back and change it later. The problem is that that they didn't. They plum forgot. So now I'm stuck having to write it on my blog post. I mean, seriously. Extravaganza?

Don't get me wrong. The breadcrumb, parmesan and garlic layered phyllo wrapped around sauteed veggies (yellow squash, carrots, red pepper, and mushrooms) was delicious. So much so that I ate three of my kids' leftovers (Mom! There are mushrooms in this!) including my own servings. But extravaganza? It makes it sound like some over-the-top sales event. Come one, come all, to the vegtetable phyllo roll extravaganza you've been waiting for!

Naming blunders notwithstanding this meal was superb. The only mistake being that I didn't make two rolls. There was just enough that I was comfortably full, but it tasted so good I wanted to be painfully full. My tummy might have had enough but my mouth wanted more of that crunch of flaky crust and that satisfying mmmmm of savory filling. I was far from satiated.

Next time I make the Extravaganza I will definitely double it and, to be nice to my kiddos, I'll omit the mushrooms from one roll. I could add chicken to it* but we'll see. It was really good as a vegetarian dish.

*My husband's usual response to vegetarian food is as follows:
Hub: This is really good. You know what would make it even better?
Me: No, honey, what?
Hub: Some meat!

caribbean stew + brown rice + jerk chicken

Tonight we tasted the flavors of Jamaica. (Sort of. I mean, I've never been there so there's no way for me to tell you how "Jamaica" this was except that the Moosewood Low-Fat Favorites author assured me it was.)

First up: Caribbean Stew. Basically a vegetarian stew of sweet potato, yellow squash, and kale. I screwed it up. I dumped in the can of diced tomatoes only to realize (literally one second later) that I had grabbed a can seasoned with garlic and oregano. While the final result was still tasty, I'm sure Italian tomatoes kinda push this stew off the Tower of Authenticity. Oh well.

I also made Jerk Chicken from the cookbook. Technically it was supposed to be Jerk Tofu, but I didn't have any and really wanted a meat in the meal. The recipe called for three chiles. I added 1/2 of one and the oldest daughter ended up with all the other kids' chicken. ("It's too spicy, Mom!") So that leaves us with a total of three for six with the chicken. I'll take those numbers.

The meal was not a hit with the kids, but as usual, I don't really care too much. I thought it was good. (More importantly, the husband liked it.) And boy did the house smell delicious with the aromas from the stew on the stove and the spices from the chicken in the oven. Perfect for a cold, rainy winter day.

leftovers + joe's crab shack

The family ate leftovers.

I, on the other hand, had a date with my also-moved-from-Oregon-to-the-Houston-area good friend, Amy. She had some coupons for the Crabby Apple Crumble at Joe's Crab Shack and asked if we wanted to meet up there. Free dessert and a new place I hadn't been? I was definitely for it!

We decided to share an appetizer sampler and then I tacked on a cup of clam chowder because...well...it's clam chowder. And I'm a fan.

We left stuffed and at our monthly limit of fat, I'm sure. Cream cheese and deep-fry. That about sums it up I think. I won't judge them too hard though. I mean, we got an appetizer and a dessert. Not exactly the healthiest sections of the menu.

I think I'd like to give them another chance to show me what they're all about. I saw these steampots that looked pretty tasty. Big buckets of seafood...yum.

pizza

Pizza night again.

In order to control our fat along with my ongoing (and ever-failing) endeavor to not eat the swine, I (re)discovered turkey bacon. It's not bacon, but it's not bad. Our choices tonight were

• cheese (as always)
• turkey bacon and pineapple
• bbq chicken, turkey bacon, pineapple and carmelized onions.
  

That last one was a tasty, tasty morsel. (Pictured below, ready to be plucked from the oven)

spaghetti + meatballs + corn + bread

Tonight is a first. I made meatballs. Never, in my recollection or in my husband's, has this occurred.

Other than that this meal was unremarkable and rather atypical. I used not only store-bought sauce, but a baguette as well. Even the parmesan was pre-shredded. Why this aberration? Our grocery store, HEB, has these Meal Deals where you buy one item and get four or five free things with it. Usually this is something I would never use like a pre-made lasagna or two tubs of pre-seasoned, shredded barbecue beef, but today they had a special in which you buy two pounds of ground beef and get a baguette, a pound of pasta, a bag of salad, a bag of shredded fancy cheese (whatever that means), and a jar of spaghetti sauce for free. Except for the bag of salad (I hate the smell of pre-bagged lettuce) I would actually use all that stuff. I normally make my own pasta sauce but I like to keep a jar on hand "just in case."

All this to say that I found myself needing to put dinner on the table, incorporate a fresh baguette and get it done rather quickly since it was already 7pm. The meatballs came from my ATK's Family Cookbook and were a tasty addition to an otherwise unimaginative meal.

That's all. No gems from the sky tonight. And yes, that meal desperately needed something green it it.

beans + bread

Man, it is so hard to take appetizing pictures of brown food.

Tonight was great northern beans with barbacoa and foccacia. We've got a friend in San Antonio who hooks us up with the barbacoa. It's beef and that's as much as I'll say. It's good, but I don't want to dive in too deep about where on the cow it's located.

Super simple dinner. A pound of beans with some spices and a pound of barbacoa. I used my pizza dough to make some bread. One was just salt and pepper, the other cinnamon and sugar. (for dessert)

I've got a headache coming on and I'm tired. The wit just isn't making it past those two tonight.

leftover turkey usage

My parents sent the leftover turkey home with us. Besides sandwiches (and just recently a kick-butt stromboli) turkey tetrazzini is the first thing I make after Thanksgiving. I used this recipe. It was good. The kids were happy. And besides the four cups of cheddar that it called for, it isn't too bad in the fat department. I used whole wheat spaghetti noodles and Smart Balance Light instead of butter. (I'm not sure which is worse: high-in-saturated-fat butter or questionable-man-made margarine. I go back and forth.) Finished her off with some steamed broccoli.

when freezers break...it's feast time!

Our friends had their freezer breakdown on them. That's the bad news. The good news is that they invited us over to help them eat their turkey, ham, roast beef, spinach, mashed potatoes, carrots, baby potatoes and pear pie. We decided to be that kind of friend that helps when needed. They called. We answered. That's just who we are.

ps - Visiting my parents, I didn't really have a chance to update. Now I'm five days behind. I'm just gonna start from today and pretend I'm caught up. OK?

my mommy's takin' care o' me

We're in San Antonio visiting my parents for the Thanksgiving holiday. Mom had grilled chicken (grilled by Dad, of course), green salad, fruit salad and rolls waiting for us when we arrived. For that I am truly thankful, especially since we are currently sans barbecue grill at home and I miss those delicious char marks.

No pics tonight, but just wait. I made three pies today to accompany the feast that Mom and I will make tomorrow. I promise pics galore. (Not that it will look much different than your feast, but you know...)

sandwiches

Lessons learned:

1. Do not go grocery shopping two days before Thanksgiving.
   
2. Do not go grocery shopping at 5pm.
3. Do not go grocery shopping two days before Thanksgiving at 5pm.

It was insane. So insane that the bumper to bumper grocery carts made me forget to pick up chicken for dinner and the turkey bacon for breakfast. The insanity crept into my bones and made me forget to take pics of dinner tonight. My brain was all "rush, rush, you've got to get it done." I wasn't like this prior to the supermarket. And I'm not like it now after watching LOTR The Two Towers. Whoa! Talk about digression. This isn't day-in-the-life-of-a-grocery-shopper. Sorry.

Tonight we had turkey sandwiches. We were supposed to have broiled chicken, but per previous paragraph you know why we didn't. Thinking about this after the fact, I realize that turkey was a bad choice. I mean, come on, what are we going to be eating for the next week? And I jumped onto the turkey bandwagon two days early? What was I thinking?

Good news was that we had green leaf lettuce. Finally! Something fresh and green. I made pita bread and hummus for lunch so we ate our sandwiches with the fresh pita. Yum! My sandwich had hummus, turkey and lettuce. I was happy enough with that flavor combo that I made myself one more 1/2 way through the movie. I mean, come on. They were in the Battle of Helm's Deep. I had to keep up my strength.

sushi

I haven't gone shopping yet. I think most of my posts start out like this, don't they? Well...

I was looking in the pantry. I guess "staring blankly" is a more accurate descriptor. All the sudden I realized "SUSHI!" I had all the makings of sushi. In the end we found out that we were out of pickled ginger and were very sad, but it didn't dampen our spirits too bad.

In our house, sushi dinners are usually three-fold.

1. Tamago Nigiri (sweet omelet sushi)
2. California Rolls (at the bare minimum we at least have the krab. like tonight)
3. Miso Soup

The tamago is a must. It is pretty easy to make and almost everyone's favorite. But to make the tamago you need dashi. Dashi is the broth that you use to make miso soup. And since I need dashi for the tamago, might as well make the miso soup while I'm at it. And since you need sushi rice to make the tamago into tamago nigiri...well, you can see how this all works out.

Tonight our roll options were krab, sesame seeds, salmon furikake, wasabi, and shrimp furikake. It was a little sparse, but with three different courses, it was still good. Hubsters was happy. I was happy. Kids were happy. (Well, except the sick one. But she was happier once she ate a slice of tamago!)

The tamago recipe is here. You really should go to an Asian Market and get yourself a tamago pan if you want to make tamago. I don't know how'd you do it otherwise. Don't buy it online if you can help it since they are more expensive. They are really cheap at a market.

I use this sushi rice recipe with good results. Tonight I had to use long-grain rice and it was okay. If you use actual sushi rice it is sublime.

I always make shiitake dashi for two reasons. Dried shiitakes last forever in the pantry. They're always ready for me. Also, my husband is not a big lover of fish and traditional dashi is made with fish flakes. I use this recipe and after I take out the amount I need for the tamago I use the rest to make miso soup. I just add two green onions, a pinch of salt, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce and 2 tablespoons of miso. Sometimes I add wakame (seaweed) and sometimes tofu. Not tonight.

I'm always so happy when I can scratch out one. more. meal. Especially if it tastes so gosh darn good.

thank heaven for friends

I wasn't feeling well. Thought I might have a kidney stone. (didn't. Thank God!) Got home from church and slept until the phone rang and our friends invited us over for beef stew and cornbread. Despite my desire to keep sleeping, I wasn't about to turn down already made dinner when I felt like...well...let's just say "not good." Thank you, friends! Thank you!

ridiculousness

Tonight is a night I DO NOT want to admit what we ate. This is a humbling post. A post that brings truth to my blog title.

I need to go to the store so very badly. I have exactly eleven cans of food in my pantry: three evaporated skim milk, two tomato pastes, four pumpkin purees, one coconut milk, and one sweet corn. And while I have many pounds of dried beans and rice, the dinner hour came upon me without any forethought on my part. I blame the kids. They wanted me to watch Beverly Hills Chihuahua with them and I decided to be a "nice" mom and agreed.

The husband was out. My first offering to the children: top ramen. I had three packages for five kids (we have a guest). They ate it all and were still hungry. Next, I tried cheddar slices (enough for two per kid), peanut butter and apples. I also threw pickles into the mix for good measure. They ate it all and were still hungry when the husband returned. We got Sonic (brown bag special for us adults and one jr. breakfast burrito each for the kidlings) and I think they could still have eaten more, but it was bed time.

Can you believe it? Ramen, cheese, pickles, apples, peanut butter and a Sonic sausage breakfast burrito.

Now you know. Do you still want to read this blog?!

golden split pea soup + brownies

I finally made the recipe I've been meaning to for the last three days: Golden Split Pea Soup from my Low-Fat Moosewood. We won't be trying that one again.

It sounded so enticing. Golden split peas, sweet potato, apples and curry-type spices. And when it's done cooking, you blend it smooth. I love blended soups! So much potential and yet fell so flat. When I gave it the final taste test it was so much worse than bland. The apples made it too sweet and I couldn't cut it. Not even by adding extra soy sauce and lime juice. It was still so mediocre I added half a brick of cream cheese. Adding cream cheese to anything is an improvement as was so in this case. But I'm sorry to say that it just made it palatable. Nothing more. The littlest dude loved it and it was good enough to have seconds, but I won't be making it again.

Luckily, I had made some brownies. Someone gave me a bag of brownie mix and even though it was a mix and even though it had hydro, I made them.

I guess everyday can't be a raving success or else we wouldn't appreciate the ones that are. (Forgive me, family, for serving you death oil!)

oatmeal pancakes

You know that recipe I was supposed to make last night? Well, it was supposed to be made tonight. Now I'm planning on using it tomorrow. That's the plan anyways. Instead we had pancakes.

Our friends had to take their son to the medical center in Houston for one of the last consultation/testing appointments for his cochlear implant. They had to leave at 6am. To accomplish this their other three children stayed the night. This meant I had to keep on six children to do their school today (we're both homeschoolers) plus fill their tummies and I have a seven-month old. It actually wasn't as bad as it sounds but I was pretty exhausted come start-dinner time.

So...we had pancakes. Five sixths of the family's favorite kind: Oatmeal Pancakes. A while ago I found the recipe here at The Family Homestead and usually make it far less healthier with all white flour and use sugar instead of sucanat. Otherwise I follow her instructions exactly. They are delicious. To feel that I put in at least a little bit of effort tonight, I made a quick little pineapple sauce for my youngest boy. He loves pineapple. (Personally, I usually eat them with plain yogurt and some maple syrup, but today I swapped chunky peanut butter for the yogurt. Tastalicious.)

Kudos for me for making dinner. No kudos for the huge pile of dishes I'm ignoring until tomorrow.

chili's

I'm so disappointed.

I had a dinner already planned out for tonight. But it was vegetarian and I was hankering for some beef. Far too easily I talked the hubbers to go out for dinner. We went to Chili's and although my cheesesteak sandwich with added avocado was good, it wasn't great. Especially considering how much it costs for our family of six to eat out. I wasn't the only one who noticed. Picky child informed me when I tried to get her to eat more of her food, "Mom, my pizza tastes like plastic, the fries are way too salty and I'm sick of drinking this too sweet chocolate milk." Although the miser in me was hoping less of her food would be wasted, secretly I was pretty proud. She's got a discriminating palate and I'm not going to complain too hard when she doesn't want to eat over-fatted, over-salted, over-processed food. It just pounded home to me what a complete waste of money it usually is for our family to eat out.

ps - We did try her pizza and she was right. Blech.

miso soup

I got the basics of this recipe from that Japanese Women book I read a while back. The author calls it "Japanese Country Power Breakfast." Tonight we called it dinner. It's really just a miso soup on steroids. Healthy, healthy steroids.

First, I made the dashi (broth) with shiitake mushrooms from a recipe out of my Low-Fat Moosewood. Very, very good, although I add a sheet of konbu seaweed for extra yumminess. (I've also used this recipe for good results.) Once the dashi is made I added all the extras that were suggested: rice, hard-boiled egg, fried tofu, scallions, assorted cooked veggies (I had corn, carrots, celery, napa cabbage and broccoli on hand), and of course, miso. The variations are endless. If I had thought ahead I would have sprouted some mung beans.

One kid loves this. Another two tolerate it. Picky child chooses to go hungry. Oh well. So be it.

I made everyone the same size portion and when the kids got full I ate theirs. There were no leftovers. Not with me around. It was far too delicious to eat in moderation. And did I mention how entirely good for you it is? Maybe not as good for you when you eat as much as I did, but it's better than overeating on caramel brownies, wouldn't you say?

breakfast burritos

At 5pm my friend called to see if we wanted to carpool to our 7pm homeschool support group. Oops! Forgot all about it. We had to leave at 630pm and I still had to make dinner, feed baby and change/clean up since I was still in my running clothes. No time for complicated.

We had breakfast burritos: refried beans, scrambled eggs, taco sauce, sour cream and cheese. Even threw on a little of that chili-lemon sauce from the feijoada last night. They were tasty. No one complained. Definitely was lacking in the fresh fruits/veggies department but we were eating quickly enough that I didn't leave on an empty stomach. And that always makes me happy.

vegetarian feijoada

It's Brazilian and it's pronounced fay-shwah-duh. I knew you would want to know that right off the bat. Typically it's not vegetarian, but it's from Moosewood, so...

Feijoada is Brazil's national dish via the Portuguese. Traditionally it is a pork, beef and black bean stew. Ours was just the black beans. We also had steamed collards, something called Brazilian rice (just a spanish-type rice), orange segments and this tasty chili-lemon salsa stuff. The whole thing came from my cookbook.

The bean-hater child hated it. Everyone else ate their required amounts without complaint. I had seconds. (or was that thirds?) What was extra-tasty was the soup we made out of it the next day. Blended it all together (even the oranges) with a can of V8 and topped with the salsa, some cheddar and sour cream. Mmmmm...

Next time I think I'll try it with the meat. But I think I'm adding this to my repetoire. It was good and soooo good for you.

i'm thinking...arby's?

My little baby had a fever tonight. 102 degrees. She was clingy and unhappy. Cooking wasn't an option. Husband was building me a dining room table so he wasn't going to be cooking either. (He's a good cook, by the way) So...we had Arby's. To their credit, their Market Fresh sandwiches are not bad. I had a roast turkey and swiss. If I have to have fast food and I can't have Burgerville, I'll have an Arby's Market Fresh sandwich which comes with only the minimum of fast food guilt.

ps If you happen to be at Burgerville when either their chocolate hazelnut shakes or their sweet potato fries are in season...ORDER THEM!! You will thank me. You will come back here and on your knees thank me.

wienie roast

We had a bonfire at friends and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Night off. Every once in a while I need one of those.

vegetarian shepherd's pie + salad

My first meh recipe from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites. It's called "Another Shepherd's Pie" and we just weren't impressed. I had such high hopes with it's mashed potato layer, the veggie and kasha layer and the whole thing topped with mushroom gravy. But it just didn't deliver. I mean it was okay and all, but it just wasn't good enough to have again. I'm sad to have to say that about anything I spend a little extra time cooking, but there it is. Can't be helped.

I tacked on a green leaf salad with baby greens and carrot and was a good girl, only dressing it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I was full, but far from satisfied.

Almost forgot. For dessert we had banana chunks dipped in white chocolate and rolled in peanuts. Yeah, they were good. Almost made up for dinner. Almost.

pizza

Pizza night. Tonight's varieties were

1. cheese
2. cheese and pineapple
3. barbecue seitan, pineapple and olive (barbecue sauce instead of pizza sauce, not seitan cooked on the barbecue)
   

I made the seitan in order to have some sort of meat-y topping. It was good enough that I'll do it again. It's super easy to make (and way cheaper than buying) and you can find recipes anywhere. I've had good luck with the one from The Vegetarian Family Cookbook. Oh! and it's pronounced say-tan. It's Japanese, you'll just have to get over the similarities to that dark lord dude.

I sliced it up and sauteed it with some salt and pepper. Now I'll be honest, it won't fool anybody. But if you think of it as its own thing instead of a meat substitute, it's tasty. Suffice it to say, nobody complained about the seitan. Now the olives on the other hand...

mushroom-polenta pie + salad

I'm loving my Mooseweood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites. It is right up my alley cooking-wise. Tonight we tried out the mushroom-polenta pie. A darn tasty dish. Although I think it should have kale in the name because there's just as much kale as there are mushrooms. Kids ate it, one loved it. I had seconds.

You make a pot of polenta, put it in a baking dish then put the sauteed onion, mushroom, kale mixture on top, sprinkled with parmesan and bake. I served it topped with a quickly-made tomato sauce and a tossed green salad. With the sauteeing and polenta-ing and baking and chopping and salad-spinning and sauce-simmering (and not even counting the serving that I pureed in the food processor for the baby) there were waaaay too many dishes to clean, but it was good enough that I'd wade through that dish pile again to get another serving.

fried soba noodles

Fried noodles is one of my standbys. Tonight I made it with soba. The veggie stars were baby bok choy (love this stuff!) and Indian eggplant. They are tiny, little tangerine-sized eggplants that tend to be much more tender than the giants you find in the supermarket. I also threw in an onion, a couple carrots and some Napa cabbage. I made up a sauce with fresh ginger, garlic, kecap manis (or sweet shoy sauce or sweet soy sauce), oyster sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil and a few drops of fish sauce. Throw it all together and you get a dish that can fill two big and four little tummies, plus some for lunch tomorrow. The kids usually put sweet chili sauce on theirs but I love mine with sambal. (Indonesian chili sauce with a kick! Move over Tabasco, you ain't got nothin' on sambal.)

Almost forgot! Fresh pineapple for dessert.

take out

I was sick. I had enough gumption to make soup for lunch, but dinner rolled around and the answer was to have hubberoni take the reins. This always means pizza. Everyone was happy. They were all happy for obvious reasons and I was happy because I could stay in bed playing the PSP. (Takes my mind off the ache-y body.)

leftovers

Sometimes it's just nice to eat what's already there.

chicken noodle soup + pumpkin custard

(This post has been inserted after-the-fact.)
Somehow Friday's dinner was lost. Spouse-man checked out the blog and noticed that I hadn't posted Friday, yet Saturday and Sunday were very obviously there. Leftovers and sickness drained my memory and neither of us could remember what we had eaten. I checked the camera and sure enough there it was. I had used the leftover chicken bones from the yummy roasted chicken dinner the night before and made some really, really good soup. Sure it looks a lot like this meal, but it was so much better. The difference using roasted chicken makes is phenomenal. I just took the bones and any leftover scraps, covered them with water and boiled for an hour or so. Added carrots, a sauteed onion, garlic and macaroni noodles. (Oh! and thyme, as well.) It was perfect.

For dessert I made these low-fat pumpkin custards. (Really just skinny pumpkin pie without the crust.) I snatched the recipe from my new cookbook. For being low-fat it was good. Yes, it needs the qualifier "for being low-fat."

Scorecard:
soup, 10
custard, 5

roast chicken + roasted veggies + salad

I had a couple chickens and decided to roast them. I found a recipe in my binder that I had apparently used before (it had notes in my hand, mostly about starting at 450 then after 30 minutes flipping it and cooking it the rest of the time at 375) but have no recollection of it. It sounded good so I went for it. It's a rub with salt, sugar and a bunch of pumpkin pie-type spices. (cinnamon, allspice, etc) Since we're trying to lower fat, I pulled all the skin off the little chicks before rubbing them down with their spice mix. In the end this turned out great since the meat itself was flavored and quite tasty. At the same time I roasted some onions, carrots and potatoes that had been tossed in oregano, olive oil and salt. (recipe from the latest addition to my library) We finished the meal off with a tossed green salad.

I highly recommend the chicken. It was tastiness.

ps - Sorry for the crappy pictures as of late. I really need a better lighting system and since the sun goes down so freaking early nowadays...you're stuck with sucky pictures taken by flash. But hey! let's just be thankful we get pictures at all, right?

rice balls + tokyo salad

I still have a few recipes I want to try from that Japanese book I read. Tonight I tried the author's rice balls. It was actually a simple recipe. Take hot-from-the-pot, burn-your-palms-off rice and shape it into a ball. Poke a hole in it and put in some filling, then reshape it. Take 1/4 of a sheet of nori and wrap it around one half. Use another 1/4 sheet to wrap around the other half. The end. That's it.

We used salmon (from a can, bleh) for half of them and bonito fish flakes soaked in soy sauce for the others. Next time we're gonna nix the salmon, and fill 1/3 with the fish flakes, 1/3 with some krab and 1/3 with some dried Japanese apricots. Hubby, who spent three months in Japan in high school, also wants me to try some sweet red bean, too. Despite our dislike of the salmon, the rice balls were a success and loved by everyone.

I took leftover salad from last night and tossed it with the dressing from the author's recipe for Tokyo Salad. (rice vinegar, brown sugar, sesame oil) Meal complete. Oh! And for decoration, we got to eat with various stormtroopers and droids aimed at us. Nothing like a peaceful meal at gunpoint...

onion soup + salad + bread

I'm trying to cook lower fat. In doing so, I headed to the library for some reference materials. I found the Good Morning America Cut the Calories Cookbook. Now I'm usually not someone to go for gimmicky stuff like this but our local library is rather small and I wanted to go home with something rather than have to wait for an interlibrary loan hold to find itself to my hands. Tonight I tried the Carmelized Onion Soup sent in by a chick from Bakersfield, California. Part of the recipe was a lemon-corn chutney which I would have tried had I all the ingredients. It also called for some French bread. I made one batch of my pizza dough with 1/2 whole wheat flour and formed it into a french bread shape, complete with slashes cut into the top.

The recipe calls for the soup to be brought to a boil and simmer. This proved visually disastrous since my milk separated. Fortunately it still tasted good. I threw a tossed salad together and topping my soup with a butter and parmesan-topped broiled slice of bread, called it a meal. Pretty good even if it was an ugly sight to behold.

pizza

Another pizza night. Tonight we had one cheese, one pineapple and one bbq bison and olive (bbq sauce instead of pizza sauce, browned ground bison and sliced olives). Oh! and the dough was 1/2 white, 1/2 wheat.