Not servings. Dinners.
Dinner a, lovingly prepared—elaborate cheeseburgers. The ground beef was slightly ‘off’—too long in the fridge. I gathered up both plates and tossed both.
Then the fast route: taco chicken packet with a side of riced cauliflower and sweetpotato, stove for one, microwave for the other. Only THIS packet with no warning changed its recipe and was half onions. Jane and I are both allergic. Out it goes, and the side, now done, with it. What’s the use of cauliflower, when I’ve nothing to serve with it. As a meal on its own, meh.
So…last resort. Toss some jalapenos in a bowl, canned chili atop that, sharp cheddar, then microwave til melt, add sour cream.
Food. At last, food. Every skillet I own is in the sink, plus a saucepan, and it took, besides, five bowls, two plates, and a great deal of determination.
I think I need to go to the grocery store.
Saturday night is Game Night, when we host 12-16 people for a night of tabletop gaming. This means I am usually responsible for dinner as well. Our preceding host didn’t work on Saturdays, so had plenty of time to prepare for the locust plague, but alas I work, so I have to either get food ready to stuff into the oven or stove as soon as I get home from work, or choose an entree that requires very little prep time, like build your own burritos. Our kitchen is only slightly bigger than yours, and with people popping in and out to get drinks gets crowded fast. Frequently I run one dishwasher load at the start of the evening to take care of pots and pans involved in cooking dinner, then another one after everyone goes home for dishes. It doesn’t help that, after a week figuring out what to feed everyone, attendance is not stable. A third of the people may or may not be able to attend any given weekend, and we may have the occasional unannounced guest too.
Cauliflower (also eggplant and zucchini) is excellent for bulking up other food without a lot of pronounced flavour. Although roasted on its own with plenty of garlic, olive oil and herbs it can be very nice. For low-carb diets it becomes “faux-tatoes” Anyhow you could have added it to your jalapeno creation without any problem. And cauliflower with sharp cheddar is a match made in heaven.
My deepest sympathy. I am so tired of cooking dinners or more precisely, of thinking about what to cook for dinner.
Whee! — Though, throw some cheese and herbs/spices in with the cauliflower, et voilà?
Cooking Fiasco #1, Today — I’m going along, adding a bit of olive oil, seasoned salt, and parsley flakes to some stew meat, in a small baking pan. This, with a little water, will get covered with aluminum foil and baked in the oven for 30 minutes (the beef’s already thawed). So, I’m feeling pretty good about this, it’s simple as can be, and will be very tasty in whatever I use it with.
And then, in shaking the parsley flakes, I dislodged the shaker lid and — FOOM! — Oh, a whole green carpet of parsley flakes appears on top of the beef, otherwise prepared except to add water.
I look down at this. “Hmm. You know, I could just cook it like that and call that an extra vegetable,” says my lazy bachelor self. I look at this again. “Say, that really is a thick layer of parsley. What is that, half the bottle?” (It was an almost new bottle.) “Yeah, just about. Looks like a miniature lawn.” I give this another studious look.
Aha! Inspiration! “I’ve got mashed potato flakes. Scrape off the extra parsley, use it in mashed potatoes, serve it with the beef. Just like you’d planned it that way all along!”
This sounded eminently reasonable. OK, so, very carefully brush off the excess parsley, collect it, put it in a medium pot, get the butter and water and milk and potato flakes ready. A few minutes, and hey, mashed potatoes! With enough freakin’ parsley for, oh, maybe the entire box of mashed potatoes. — Don’t worry, I controlled myself. There’s only one of me and two cats, and I don’t _think_ the cats would go for mashed potatoes. (Actually, I have no idea what amount they could or could not tolerate, but I’d guess the parsley would be OK as a grass-substitute. Never mind.)
So, over-parsley’ed mashed potatoes, plus rather more reasonably parsley’ed beef stew meat chunks. The beef finished before I started writing this. And — While I was scraping parsley from the stew meat, to transfer to the pot — I started laughing at how ridiculously funny it was. And then really chuckled. And then couldn’t quite stop. So for a few raucous minutes there, I had a really good belly laugh. Yeah, neighbors could be wondering about that guy! 😀 I guess I needed a good chuckle.
Verdict: The mashed potatoes are fine and I know the beef will be good. I think for tonight, I will put in a little sour cream and some shredded cheese, maybe some chopped onion if the onion’s good, and hey, I have almost a fully-loaded baked potato and some nice beef in a simple meal.
The Mexican rice (Knorr packet) will be fixed later. I may fix some corn or else broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots (frozen package) because, hey, I haven’t been diligent on veggies lately. I was too heavy on the carnivorous this week.
And…I now need to buy another shaker of parsley flakes. Dude. Just…you could’ve played golf on that. Super-mini Snoopy and Woodstock. Put a tiny tree on it and Charlie Brown could’ve chased his kite…. 😀 It was epic! So green! — Oh, hey, that’s right, St. Paddy’s Day is tomorrow! Huh, imagine that, I wasn’t even trying and I’m suddenly Irish seasonal kabiu! (I am sadly without either corned beef or cabbage, but I shall claim the parsley does it!) Of note: I do really like corned beef brisket with spices and cabbage, though usually separate.
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Cooking Fiasco #2, Week before last — I really should have known better, and thought (very silly) I was making a good shortcut. Well, not quite. 😉
Chicken breast tenderloin strips. A 9 inch baking pan. Cooking oil, not too much, season salt, a dash of poultry seasoning. Good to go. For some reason, I thought, “Hmm, if I throw a little flour over that, the drippings as it cooks will produce a nice gravy with no work!” It was a perfectly good theory, but I’m experienced enough, I should have seen the flaw in the lazy bachelor thinking there.
Yup, so I sprinkled on a handful or so of flour, over the seasoned, coated chicken strips lining the pan. No other liquid, because the chicken wasn’t quite thawed, and sealed in with aluminum foil, it should steam nicely and produce the gravy I was thinking of, right?
Er, well, no. That flour probably needed a little water and egg for a binder to the chicken pieces, and/or, I should’ve been smart and sprinkled the flour on the bottom of the pan, not on top.
So, aluminum foil goes on, pop it in the oven, bake it, and — I also should have turned the chicken midway through, but it was definitely fully cooked, an hour’s cooking time at 375.
I took it out to see, once it was done. Ooh, hmm, the flour sprinkled on top did not melt down into the pan as the chicken thawed and moisture precipitated from the foil. Well, OK, let it cool just.a minute, then I transferred it into ziplock containers to store in the fridge, with the idea that the flour and drippings would combine well enough and finish making a sort of gravy as they cooled.
That was almost right, but not close enough.
The results were good enough, though, that I did not bother removing the floury coating to create a gravy in a pan on the stove, which, hey, really should not have been any big deal.
(Making pork chops and then making pork chop gravy with white flour, country-style, was one of the first things I learned as a young teen when my dad and mom and grandmother started teaching me how to cook. So making a simple, thick, white flour pork chop gravy is a “cooking-by-feel-and-eyeball-it” instead of “cooking-by-recipe-measurements” process for me.)
(That, by the way, shows how ingrained my Southern farm family grandparents’ generation is, that this would be a thing on both sides of the family, and that my dad would show me this as one of the first things I learned.)
Well, although yes, there was just enough too much extra flour that it was, well, very thoroughly baked but still basically raw flour, along with other portions that made a very nice coating or gravy, and the seasoned chicken pieces…I at least learned that was not the quick and easy shortcut I was aiming for, and I really don’t know why my brain thought that would work. I should’ve known it wouldn’t. — On the other hand, it almost worked right, so it was tasty and not a complete flop or worse.
Next time, though, I’ll do it right. 😀
(My cast iron skillet, the same one my mom and dad used, had better be in my storage space packed away. If not, I will have to buy one. I have been using a pretty good non-stick skillet and a really handy small wok, and those do fine. (That wok was one of the best purchases I’ve made since living on my own. Very, very useful, quick and simple.)
(I am still attempting to master using chopsticks. I except the average Asian Kindergartner is probably more skilled with their chopsticks than I am. But these days, I am at least better at it. My manners and technique are a little bit better, maybe halfway civilized. Maybe. I keep trying. I mean, sure, eating with two sticks paired together is not entirely intuitive, but neither is it rocket science. So this mostly European-ancestry American ought to be able to get this.)
Anyway, whenever I eat ramen, I get to practice my chopsticks skills. It’s improving very, very slowly. Wax on, wax off.
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Rain showers and sunshine alternating backend forth today — The Weather Channel app has become that nervous over-protective aunt who always tells the kids to dress warmly and put on their galoshes and raincoats. It keeps popping off every few minutes, telling me I’m in peril any minute now of getting rained on. In Houston in springtime. :rofl: This is like telling a duck he will get wet in the pond. Hey, tornado warnings, fine. Flash flood or hurricane / tropical storm warnings, good, thank you. But for something as inconsequential as these brief little sun showers? Oh, come on. — I think the Weather Channel app has been studying Aunt Bea instead of Auntie Mama. I think I’d prefer a mix of both. (I’m not sure what that would be, but OK….)
Aunt Bea and Auntie Mama combined into the same person? Opie and that kid from Mama in one kid? Hahaha! Oh, now that’d be something!
Hmm, I could see Bill Mumy or Ron Howard playing the adult version of that kid, too. Or whoever the child actor was who played the rich boy in the movie version of Game.
Time to sample that beef.
I’m not sure where I read this recently, but one of the tricks of the “TV dinner” makers is putting antioxidants in their dishes. One very popular and effective choice is rosemary. You can, of course, get spice-bottle rosemary and even rosemary oil (which I haven’t tried), but it also grows easily. Perhaps putting a sprig of rosemary with your ground beef would keep it from going off.
Interesting notion. 😉
Chat sur le clavier: “Qui? Quoi? MOI? Pourquoi? Ne pas! Je passe par les pas!”
My cats absolutely refuse to pay attention to all attempts, polite or not, quiet or loud, to get them NOT to walk across the frelling keyboard.
Thing2 tried to rename the external hard drive this morning. I finally got smart and hid the desktop icon. On the Mac, it seems I can choose to hide the icon of the ext. HD on the desktop, but still have it show on the sidebar for the Open and Save As dialogs, and presumably in the Finder view too.
So possibly, the little so-and-so won’t be able to keep doing that, which messes with things.
Just now, Thing1 marched across the keyboard while I was writing down an idea, before it slips away. Aarrgh, cat, how many times have I told you both, don’t do that?! He’s non-plussed. (Which, unhappily, does not mean to him, “no more,” which is the secondary French meaning, besides not bothered.)
And as I’m typing this, Thing2 hops up on the desk and walks across and messes up the reply post. … And gives my shoulder a friendly, “Hiya, love ya, how’s it goin’?” lick. Sigh. Kitty, I love you fine. It’s the keyboard-stomping I take issue with. If you two would not do that, we’d have one major disagreement resolved.
I am going to look again on Amazon for a solid keyboard cover, a tray with a lid or something.
And I really need to put together the prefab desk I bought. I’m still using the triple dresser as a makeshift desk, and this is not a good height nor a good fit for my legs. Later today or else tomorrow.
I’d try a water bottle spritzer, but that’s too likely to get water on the keyboard or other computer equipment, which is a Very Bad Thing in electronics land.
So…off in search of a keyboard tray with cover. Won’t help when I’m using the keyboard, but it should cut down on “away from keyboard / desk” kitty-typewriting adventures.
So far, they have not (as far as I know) ordered crates of kitty treats or the cat playmate of the month or such-like. So far, I don’t think they’ve ordered umpteen zillion widgets delivered to my door. And no other odd things with felines sending unlikely emails or password tomcat-foolery.
So far. But hey, 11+ and 8+ years, they’re either playing it very cool or I just don’t know it yet. Or else it’s just taking them a while, in between naps.
Yeah, the lattermost, probably.
@BCS, if you want to use a water spritzer around a keyboard, you could protect the keyboard with a cheap soft silicone cover from aliexpress or alibaba (i.e. China). I’ve got one for my laptop keyboard and for my separate keyboard, to protect them against spilled drinks.
Each cost only a few euro’s and arrived quite quickly, but they are type and model-specific, so you need to take care when ordering.
My separate keyboard is a small Cherry 😉 , and they have two kinds of covers for most of their models: a clear plastic one, and this Wettex type which I got for mine.
I find them quite easy to type on, and stuck mine onto the separate keyboard with good sticky tape around the edge so it’s permanently protected whether I’m working or not.
I’m using a Kensington “Keyboard for Life” – my second; the first wore out after three or four years – and it seems to tolerate some spillage.
Tried growling at them? A fan next to the keyboard blowing across it, with a remote control (Clapper?) switch you turn on remotely, when you see them on it? Putting a layer of aluminum foil on the desktop under the keyboard for a ground, then a fence charger (lots of volts, nano amps, I’ve used/touched them) attached to window screen lying on top of the keyboard? Training is possible if you really want to. They do get notions where of they never wanted to go in the first place.
Compressed air.
Gave me a scare – thought you ate 3 dinners in 45 minutes. Bulking up.
Jonathan up here in quite cold NH.
CJ, today’s SFGate has recipes for corned-beef-and-cabbage that include one baked and one done in an Instant-Pot. They report, though, that it’s not a lot faster than the oven-cooked version.
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Corned-beef-3-ways-for-St-Patrick-s-Day-Tech-10990094.php?t=5841eeca68
Happy Corned-Beef-and-Cabbage Day to all the salads! We have a vat of corned beef and potatoes and cabbage going for tonight’s gaming festivities.
This one looks interesting: lamb-filled rolls – but it does include onion and garlic in the filling:
https://www.sfgate.com/recipes/article/A-Brown-Kitchen-Savory-Lamb-Swirl-Buns-12759324.php?t=07c1e91cb9
Like cinnamon rolls, but with meat! (I’m wondering about using cinnamon and nutmeg in the filling, like 1 tsp to 1 1/2 cinnamon and 1/2 to 3/4 tsp nutmeg (2 to 1 proportion); maybe the lack of onion would be less noticeable. It’s middle-eastern.)
Those lamb rolls look terrific. I’d use cumin, coriander, and ginger to season the lamb, maybe with either cinnamon or nutmeg, but not both, I think. With the ginger, one would hardly notice a lack of onion…