I haven't been blogging a lot recently.
I have been cooking a lot, and I am rather proud to feel that I can actually see some improvement in my cooking skills. But I just haven't had anything that I felt was just right to blog about.

So what have I made recently...?
A lot of beans. I'm recently in love with beans. It sounds odd, but there is really quite a lot one can do with a bean. No really, I'm serious! The key for me was learning that when properly soaked and rinsed you don't have to worry about the whole, "the more you eat the more you toot" factor of that old children's song. That's a relief!

I discovered how much I enjoy beans after I discovered a vegan version of red beans and rice about a year ago. (Here's the link in case you're curious.) I made this recipe a few times then worked up the courage to venture out into the wonderful world of beans. I've been going non-stop since then. I really enjoy red beans, and made a great turkey chilli with leftovers from Thanksgiving. Recently I had some red beans cooked in the refrigerator, and my boyfriend took them out and made re-fried beans with them. We've been cooking those a lot lately. We make them with pinto beans also, which is more traditional, but I was surprised to find that red beans work well too.

Once you have the cooked beans, re-frying them is super easy. We just head up some olive oil in a pan, add the beans, fry them around for 40 minutes or so until they are mashing up nicely with a fork, then we take a potato masher and smash them into a smooth paste. I'm not sure if that's the "right" way to make re-fried beans, but it's a tasty way. We eat them with heated tortillas rubbed in lime and salt, or sometimes just with cheese on them. They go great with any type of beef you've cooked up as well.

So I guess I've just dedicated my "Christmas Blog" to beans.... I'm not sure what that means, but we'll go with it! Happy Holidays!

Tea Remedy

I have a cold.... sniffly, neeezy, yuck yuck. Anyway, one of my coworkers told me to mix up a tea recipe that another coworker gave him. The recipe includes ginger which he said contains zinc. Zinc is said to do good in helping the body fight off the virus that causes the cold. I have to say, it is pretty tasty. It really reminds me of chai tea.

Steps:
Prepare a cup of green tea
Add 3/4 tsp ginger
Add a dash of cinnamon
Add a dash of clove
Stir all together and enjoy!

"Let your food be your medicine." Hippocrates
Hmm... good idea Hippocrates. I'll give it a go!

Canned Tomatoes

Fresh from the garden.

 I've been slowly making changes to my diet and
cooking habits over the past few years. This cooking blog is part of that effort. The basic idea - learning to cook - leads to eating out less - leads to more say in what's in my food - leads to eating fewer processed foods.

I never had an interest before in cooking and definitely no interest in canning, preserving, or avoiding the store bought goods. But I guess I'm getting older, or maybe interests just change in your lifetime. My grandmother has canned food for our family as long as I can remember. Cherries, peaches, tomatoes, all set up during summer and eaten over the winter.

Sure I always helped her when I was around for these canning sessions, but this year I decided I wanted to really learn how to do this. I decided that I want to know exactly what's in my food and not have to try to decipher the chemistry lingo in most of the foods you buy at the store. So earlier this year she helped me and a friend can cherries, which are absolutely delicious, and I'm excited to enjoy all winter long when the other fresh fruits are dwindling down.

This last weekend she helped me can tomatoes. And I mean A LOT of tomatoes, 56lbs to be exact. But you can't beat fresh from the garden tomatoes. And one thing about fresh tomatoes, when you have them, you better either use them or store them because they go fast. And thus the canning fest commenced.

Here's what we did:

• Washed and heated canning jars (the dishwasher dry cycle works great at heating up the jars so they're ready for canning)
• Filled the steam canner with water and set it on med-low on the stove
• Put 7 lids in a pot of water, and heated them to boiling
• Peeled the tomatoes (Some people say to blanch them first, but if you have fresh garden ripe tomatoes you can get the skins off fairly easily without doing this. I do like to cut a small x at the top of the tomato though to get the pealing started, then I peal down in quarters.)
• Fill the jars (which have been heating nice & warm in the dishwasher) almost to the top, leaving a little space below the lowest ring. 
• Push the air out of the jar (you can use a special made canning tool for this, or carefully use a butter knife)
• Put 1 tsp of lemon juice in each jar (This adds acidity into the tomatoes. My grandma said her mother in law told her that you have to do this because too much of the acidity has been cultivated out of the tomatoes over the years. I prefer to use fresh squeezed lemon juice, just on the idea that fresh is better for you and if you squeezed it, you know 100% what's in it and how it was derived.)
• Carefully pull a lid out of the boiling water and place on the top of the jars (There's a special canning tool for this that has a magnet on one end. It's a real finger saver!)
• Securely tighten a heated ring over the lid (you can heat the rings in the dishwasher with your jars, or you can sit them around your steamer while you're filling the jars. 
• Place the lid over the steam canner and turn the heat to approximately medium. 
• Once you see steam coming out of the holes in the steamer canner, you can set a timer for 35 minutes. (You want a steady, but fairly light flow of steam coming from the canner. If it's too much or too little, adjust the temperature slightly, but avoid big shifts)
• Once the jars have steamed for 35 minutes, carefully remove them from the steamer (There another handy dandy canning tool for this. I highly recommend buying a general canning kit. They're inexpensive, and well worth the investment since you can use them for years)
• Sit the jars on a towel in a safe area where they can be left for a day or so. 
• Cover the jars with another towel to wrap in the heat
• As the lids seal, you'll head a "pop". (This is such a happy sound to me. It's a little "ding" one more successful jar!)
• After you've let the jars sit for a day or so check them all to make sure they've sealed. (If they've sealed there won't be any movement when you push the center top of the lid.)
• If any of your jars didn't seal, use them immediately. (They won't stay fresh long.)
• Take all your successful jars, and store them up somewhere handy for a winter full of great tomatoes!

 

The finished product!

I am so excited to use my fresh made tomatoes this winter. I made some attempts at more mashed up tomatoes to use in sauces and spaghetti's this year. The ones that I left more whole I plan to use to make tomato soups and salsa sauce to eat with eggs.

End of Summer Tomato & Zucchini with Shrimp Bake

It's an end of summer tradition, all the tomatoes in the garden decide to become ripe at once. So I've been eating a lot of tomatoes and zucchini. I was looking for a new recipe and had some frozen shrimp in the refrigerator. A quick internet search brought up a few recipes so I combined them here and there, substituted for a cheese I prefer, added the garlic because I'm a garlic fiend, and gave it a shot. I have to say it turned out really tasty!

Here's what I did:

•  Diced one zucchini and 8 tomatoes into approx. 1 inch chunks and combined them in a large bowl.
• Sprinkled them with cayenne pepper, minced garlic and salt and stirred them all up. 
• Rubbed a baking pan with butter and poured the mixture into it. 
• Covered the pan with foil and baked at 350 for 30 minutes. 

• While the  mixture was cooking I thawed frozen shrimp under cool water and peeled it. 
• Took the pan out of the oven and heated the oven to 400 degrees while I mixed in the shrimp to the zucchini and tomato mix. 
• Covered the dish with monterey jack cheese and put it back in the oven for another 30 minutes. 
• After 30 minutes I turned off the oven and uncovered the pan letting it stay in for another few minutes until the cheese had a nice brown, but not burnt.

Thoughts for next time:
I might try to leave the pan uncovered after adding the shrimp next time because it came out with a lot of liquid. This might be partly because I had used very ripe, juicy tomatoes from the garden.
But overall results.... YUMM!

Tuna Noodle Casserole

This was a lunchtime quick cook for me. The recipe was super easy, but after skimming the reviews I made a few changes to it to ensure some more flavor since I tend to enjoy my food more seasoned.

I found the recipe at All Recipes.com which is one of the sites I come across a lot when I'm searching around for some dinner (or in this case lunchtime) ideas.

In the reviews, someone suggested doubling the sauce portion (the milk, butter, flour) as well as the tuna (two cans instead of one), which I did. I also combined a few ingredients from another recipe I'd come across while searching for a tuna casserole recipe (thyme and onion powder just to taste - I really should learn to measure if I want to blog). The recipe also called for cheddar cheese which I didn't have handy, so I put a bit of Parmesan cheese in instead.

After I'd mixed all the ingredients and poured it into the casserole dish, I topped the dish with a bit more Parmesan and some plain bread crumbs.

Quick Tip: I put bread crumbs in a seasoning shaker (a small plastic one like parsley, oregano and most herbs come in). This helps me spread the bread crumbs more easily over the entire dish.

I then cooked the casserole at 350F for 30 minutes as the recipe said, but then turned on the broiler for another 5 minutes to brown up the bread crumbs a bit more.

I have to say, it turned out delicious. This is definitely a recipe I would like to make again, and one I'll consider approved for company. The only change I would make next time would be to use less peas or substitute frozen peas for canned. I'm just not a huge fan of canned peas though, so I'm a bit biased.

While not a fancy meal, this casserole was incredibly tasty and very easy to whip up in less than an hour.  If you'd like to try it, the link is below or can be found on allrecipes.com under "Tuna Noodle Casserole I".
Recipe Link

Here are a few pictures of the final dish:

Flashback to Peanut Stew

It's been a bit since I last posted. I toyed around with the idea of quitting my attempt at blogging. No one is reading it, so really I'm just writing to myself. But then again, I am sort of enjoying writing it. Maybe someday someone else will read it, and hopefully enjoy it or at least be amused. If not, well at least it's a way I can look back at some things I've cooked and found interesting. After all, remembering a good meal is always a pleasant experience.

Today I was trying to decide what to do with the "value-pack" of chicken that was left over after I took out two legs to cook for dinner the other night. Nothing had been inspiring me and I wanted something new. So as usual in these situations, I found myself on Google.

A quick search, a few uninspired ideas, and then there it was.... African Chicken Peanut Stew. This dish was basically college in a nutshell for me. Wow how a meal can bring back memories. I did a quick scan, and yep, all the ingredients were in my pantry. So chop, sizzle, stir, I'm on my way to some West African yum yum grub and some fun early 20's flashbacks.

The recipe I found online at simplyrecipes.com follows pretty true to how my college boyfriend always made this soup. His version had a few minor variations. Sometimes he would make it with chicken, but he preferred beef and sometimes added shrimp if we were feeling rich that week. He never used ginger, which this recipe calls for quite a bit of, but I think it will be a tasty addition.

The stew as I remember it is spicy and full of flavor. It's served over white rice, which is simmering on my stove as I type. Waiting for everything to finish simmering is pure agony at the moment. It all smells so good!

If you'd like to try the recipe here is the link  http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/african_chicken_peanut_stew/
If it's your first time, you might want to cut down the portion size a bit because it will make A LOT. But once you've tried it you'll probably want a lot more, so a few extra servings may not be a bad thing after all.

Chicken Adventures

A little while ago a friend of mine made a whole chicken for a dinner party she had at her house. It was absolutely delicious. Of course, said friend is also extremely talented in the kitchen, so I naturally assumed it was something too grand for me to take on. But I kept thinking about that delicious chicken, and well I've become a bit obsessed with the thought of trying it. I asked my friend about cooking chicken and she said it's super easy. She was even kind enough to tell me the recipe for how she made hers, but I have to admit that it went in one ear and out the other.

Nonetheless, I found myself in the meat aisle of my neighborhood grocery store staring down a 5lb chicken. I can do this.... right? Well I think I can. So here we go. I'm a bit too embarrassed to tell my friend I forgot all the chicken wisdom she passed on to me, so I looked up a few recipes online. I went with a recipe for herb roasted chicken based on nothing really more than the fact that I had all the necessary herbs in my house already and it was the lowest calories per serving. Hey, a cooking girl's gotta watch her figure!

Operation chicken commence in One, Two, Three GO!!!

Here is the finished product. I have to say, coming out of the oven it was lookin' mighty fine. Taste-wise it was pretty good too, but I think it could have been a bit more moist and maybe had some more flavor. 

The next time I decide to make a chicken I think I will try adding some garlic. I've made Cornish game hens before, and they were basted with a mix of chicken broth and a little bit of olive oil. That might work for a whole chicken to keep it more moist.

If you'd like to try the recipe for yourself, it's on spark recipes under "Whole Herb Roasted Chicken". Here is the link: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=177658

First Day

I've never really thought of keeping a blog before. I have friends who keep them, but for me... well I've never really felt as I had anything all that important to say. But recently it seems I've been asked by about a million and a half people (ok maybe not that many, but at least pretty much every guy I've gone on a date with as well as a few friends) whether or not I can cook.

Hmmm.... that's an interesting thought. Can I cook? Sure I can throw together the occasional meal. I've even had some fairly wowzer successes in the kitchen. But would I say, "Yes, I can cook!" I'm not so sure. Don't get me wrong, I'm not thinking of cooking to impress some guy. Psssshhhhh I can think of way better things to do than try to impress someone, but cooking is a skill that is so close to our daily lives. And that got me to thinking.

The ability to cook and cook well can have so many benefits. Of course, there are health benefits from learning how to make fresh meals from fresh products and avoid all the overly-processed non-sense that's put in front of us day after day by restaurants and the giant food corporations. Then there's the ol' pocketbook benefits. If I can whip up a filet mignot  at home I'm going to pay far less for it and, if I'm good, enjoy it just as much, as at an expensive restaurant.

Then there's bragging rights. Ah bragging rights. What can I say, I want to be able to say, "I'm an awesome cook." And I want to be able to back it up. Not that I'm necessarily going to cook a meal for any guy, maybe he should be cooking for me, but if I do happen to feel like impressing in the kitchen, I want to be able to do it.

So here we go, day one of Kitchen Kindergarten. Time to let go of the to-go box and pick up a spatula!