A Science Experiment (Or, Why I'm Never Eating Promise Again)

Every Friday this winter, I've hosted a Coffee Social at work.  Residents come down, pay a buck for coffee and a pastry, and get to do something besides stare at their own walls.  To change it up today, I offered bagels.

Bagels for a crowd is tough if you're using a toaster oven.  Or worse, a toaster.  So I got the idea of toasting them in the oven.  What do you suppose people did before there were toasters, besides eat the bagels soft??  I spread each one with butter and put it in the community room's oven and checked on it after about four minutes.  They all looked golden brown and delicious.  Only I ran out of butter.  And I didn't know if they would toast well with nothing on them.

A woman who lives on the first floor said that she had some, only it was Promise.  In the thick of it, I said sure.  I had several more bagels to toast and didn't want to disappoint anyone.

Here is where the science experiment comes in:  the bagels that were toasted with butter were crisper, and the butter "sank" into the bagel.  The bagels that were toasted with Promise....weren't.  They developed these oil slicks on top and the spread never soaked into the bagel.  I was unfortunate to get a bagel half dressed in Promise, and I can still taste the plastic-y aftertaste two hours later.

The weird thing for me is that I used to buy "buttery spreads" for years, and only in the last five or so have I switched to real butter.  When I was eating stuff like Promise on a regular basis, I didn't notice.  At the time I was also putting Splenda in my coffee and was no stranger to diet soda.  Actually, I am a former Diet Coke addict.  I drank it non-stop for about a year in college.  It was the first thing I bought every morning and I set a can down on my nightstand every night.  I probably drank a 12-pack of diet coke a day, the more that I had the more I wanted.  And I felt like crap.  Quitting was tough, too, the withdrawal headaches were insane!!

So, as far as I'm concerned, these fake butters are never coming in the house again.  I gave up on the Splenda some time ago.  It's best to go with the real things.  I'm not going to go crazy with the "this is real and I'm not eating this anymore" and cut all processed foods out of mine and my family's lives or anything.  I don't have time to make everything from scratch and neither does my husband.  But this is a change that I don't think we'll regret anytime soon.

Flashback to the Ruts

That last post?  We ate that meal over a week ago.  Lately we haven't eaten anything worth mentioning.  With Hubby finishing his master's this week and me working late and stuff, it's been all frozen chicken nuggets and a whole lot of spaghetti.  (In fact, the spaghetti is on the stove as I write this.)

Tonight was a flashback to five years ago.  Dinner was supposed to be chicken with grilled peaches and feta.  Neither one of us felt like cooking.  After running through the "Well what do YOU want" game, we settled on cooking the defrosted chicken another way, something like pan-fried.  Except HA HA, there's no defrosted chicken.  Spaghetti and frozen meatballs, to the rescue.  Tomorrow night while Hubby is at his second-to-last class, the kids and I are going to have leftover frozen pancakes and waffles.  I do so hope that they're labeled correctly in the freezer, or it's gonna be breakfast surprise!

I can't wait to feel settled again and having a better-tasting variety of meals.  Hopefully this whirlwind of activity will die down soon.

Days 22 and 23, Combined

Nothing really going on either one of these days, so I'm lumping them in a post together.

Day 22:  Friday night.  Hubby and Will are heading to PA in the morning to go to a Phillies game with Hubby's side of the family.  Both Brian and I are sick.  Neither of us feel like cooking, so we check the score from the Red Sox game the day before.   Once we see that they won, we head to the 99.  The 99 Restaurant is half a mile from our house, so it's our go-to when we don't feel like cooking.  And if the Sox won the day before, kids meals are free!  Win WIN for us!  Kids get meals they'll eat without much trouble, and Mom and Dad don't have to cook.  

Day 23:  Man, I'm feeling worse.  Sean and I headed out to a graduation party in the afternoon, and then I flop on the couch while he watches "Octonauts" for the hundreth time.  No energy to cook what I had been planning on, so it's frozen waffles for both of us.  Sean is of course thrilled!

Day 20: Surprise! Another Wedneday Night

Not much is worth mentioning about last night.

Very hot night.  The low last night around here was 80 degrees.   At knitting, I went with another chicken caesar salad, and for the first time in AGES I got a Panera reward!  You know it's hot when I bring home one of their brownies instead of devouring it right then and there.

Hubby and kids had our weeknight staple, spaghetti and meatballs.  This usually gets the kids to eat most of what's put in front of them, so we are happy to serve it.

Pasta and Muffins

Highlights of this past week:  Three Cheese Penne Bake.

  The recipe was in some magazine this week, I think it came with Brian's copy of Time Magazine.  It was cheese (well, duh) spinach, chicken, peppers and pasta.  We opted to swap ricotta for cottage cheese, I despise cottage cheese.  A perfect dinner, with lots of leftovers for lunch later in the week.  It even served as dinner another night for Brian and I, stopping us from succumbing to the Takeout Pizza Monster.

Later in the week, I made chili.  It was not good.  I've made chili many times, but usually use tomato salsa as a base.  This time, there was no salsa in the house, we'd eaten all of it with guests last Sunday and forgotten to buy more.  So in a pinch, I used spaghetti sauce as the base.  Also, we had no red kidney beans in the house, so I used the only thing I had for beans in the house:  white kidney beans.  I thought they'd be better than nothing....I was mistaken.  No leftovers from this epic fail.

However, corn muffins were part of the menu plan on Chili Night.  Whenever there's baking to be done, both boys come scrambling to the kitchen, begging to help.  Will got there first this time, and got to mix the muffins and help pour:

Brian has a few weeks off before his FINAL grad school semester this summer, so we'll be sure to eat better in the weeks to come.  :)

Cook with Me, Sesame!

This week's cookbook in the spotlight:  "C is for Cooking", a Sesame Street cookbook that Will got for his birthday.  We made two recipes, Cookie Monsters "Me Love Meatloaf" and Grover's Pork Meatballs.

Both recipes were received with mixed results.  The meatloaf one, Will right off the bat wasn't interested.  Meatloaf?  UGH I don't like meatloaf.  However, he has graduated to taking a bite, chewing and swallowing and then telling us no thank you.  Well, most of the time.  :)  I liked that the meatloaves were cooked in individual muffin cups, but they kind of "stew" in their own fat, there's nowhere for it to drain off.  However, this was also filled with some great ingredients, like oatmeal and shredded carrots.  Good way to "hide" these kinds of things.

The sesame pork meatball recipe was really good, but dry.  There needs to be a sauce of some kind for the meatballs, without it it's just dry pork with no ingredient to hold it together. (Like an egg)  The rice was basmati rice though, which we had never cooked at home.  It was just like white rice from a Chinese restaurant!

So there you have it, first two recipes from Will's cookbooks.  He is really enjoying the work in the kitchen.  Somebody's gonna be just like his dad.  :)

Dismal.

Yes.  Dismal is the word that I would use for the cooking that's gone on recently in our home.  That's because when you plan on going away for a weekend, plus the two adult household members are out of the house three nights per week (not together mind you.  Though that does sound nice!) you tend to slide into Rutville.  That's us all right....we have a new address in Rutville. 

This weekend food-wise was unfortuately all about junkfood.  I blame it on the traveling.  Plus we went to PA to visit family and the boys of course got spoiled, with the trick-or-treating at the campground, plus donuts, cookies and other sweet treats that they don't know how to say no to.  And since they don't get a lot of this at home, a little spoiling is good. 

Then an all-time low:  cereal for the writer for dinner on Sunday night, and then GASP!  I forgot to eat dinner last night. Well, I didn't forget to eat per se....I ended up having a few of the boys tater tots.  I was going to make myself a sandwich after the aforementioned tots, but got busy and simply forgot.  My stomach reminded me two hours later as I was unpacking and sorting clothes and doing all those things that fall by the wayside when you're traveling and doing too goddamn much.  Did I find something substantial to eat?  No.  I waited until Brian got home and we had a little ice cream.  He was adventurous and brought me home pumpkin ice cream.  Normally I like it, but this was a brand I'd never had before.  It was disappointing.  Not much pumpkin flavor, heavy on the spices.  And the aftertaste....ugh.  So to bed hungry it was.

But the light at the end of this dismal period is shining. There will be a "real" dinner of Chicken Quesadillas tonight. I started writing a menu today for next week and found myself looking at recipes for Beef and Pineapple Tacos, and stuffed peppers with sausage, onion and potato.  I really want to make some Butternut Squash and Apple soup, even if it's only me that eats it.

Good things....they'll be back soon.

A Weekend of Food

The Good

Brian's pork roast came out absolutely beautiful.  It had roasted for several hours, in a citrus-herb marinade.  Fork tender and delicious, everyone had extra servings.  Dinner was made complete with rolls, baked potatoes, carrots and green beans.  And dessert, oh dessert!  We served two desserts, because we were honoring TWO birthday guests.  Mom's birthday was last Monday, and Dad's was on Friday.  There was coconut cake with chocolate frosting and toasted coconut on top, and there was a fresh apple pie.  A little of each was left over, as well as some pork.  The pork made for a great sandwich yesterday, too.

The Bad

Dinner last night was from one of my favorite cookbooks:  "9x13...The Pan that Can."    Meatball and Polenta Casserole.  The recipe was a total disaster.  Sometimes simplicity ISN'T a good thing.  Meatballs, polenta and cream of mushroom soup....not necessarily a delicious dinner.  Oh wait, I forgot the mozzarella cheese.  The cheese could not save this dinner.  We each ate a bit off our plates, then I said "I'm sorry, I just can't eat this," and Brian agreed.  The polenta was like a corn sponge.  So instead of making something else, we just had a slice of leftover apple pie for dessert. 

In a Rut

Lately our house has been in a rut.  Nothing sounds good for dinner, we've tried it all.  Ugh.  There's only so much inspiration and creativity that one can have with a pound of ground beef.  Three nights per week, one of the adult members of the household either isn't home or has twenty minutes to eat before rushing off to class.  And starting in January, that number is going to jump to FOUR nights per week.

So, dear reader(s), I am going to put it out there to you:  Any suggestions on quick dinners?

Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Last Night's Dinner:  Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Goat Cheese.

I love goat cheese, I really do.  It pairs well with nuts like pistachios, and I really enjoy it on crackers and accompanied with grapes.  It makes a roasted veggie roll-up special and it melts nicely into a sauce as well.  So when I had some goat cheese left over from another recipe, I was happy to find something to use it up.

I get a lot of magazines, and I found this recipe in this month's Family Circle. , in an article about quick weeknight dinners.  I'm always game for new weeknight dinner recipes!  They suggested serving it with angel hair pasta and steamed green beans, but I wasn't in the mood for pasta and opted for rice instead.   I really should learn to read ahead, because there was a sauce to sop the pasta in.  Oh well, it went well over the rice too!

  The end result was....eh.  It also called for sun-dried tomatoes, and I guess I'm just not too crazy about those.  They're very sweet and not at all what I think of when having tomatoes.  Brian had trouble with the goat cheese because of the texture.  (He is a texture guy....hating things like cheesecake and beans because they're "mishy."  Sometimes this makes our kitchen adventures challenging.)

Better luck next time, I think!

Agenda of a Cupcake

It's been a blah day.  It's been a crappy week.  With nowhere to go today, Brian and I had taken to lounging on the couch, watching World Cup and knitting.  (Guess who was doing what??)

So when Will said he was hungry and suggested cupcakes, I was very open to suggestion.  I too am hungry, and well, a cupcake sounds really good.  I tend to eat when I'm sad so it wasn't strange to desire baking.  Plus it gives us something to do instead of sitting and thinking.    I rifled through our cake mixes and had two choices:  spice cake or devils food.  Easy choice, no?  :)  The delectable goodies are baking in the oven, prepared as indicated on the back of the box.   However, to make them extra-special, I am going to make a chocolate-marshmallow frosting from scratch. 

Will's VERY excited about the cupcakes, although he doesn't realize that they're not for dinner.  I mean really, cupcakes for dinner?  I'll bet in his three-year-old mind, that would be wickedly awesome.  He's full of questions, starting with the ever-present "Are the cupcakes done yet?"  Repeated every five minues.  The really interesting one was asking what cupcakes do when they're not baking or being eaten.  Hmmm.  I don't think cupcakes really have an agenda.  No calendar to fill, no appointments to run to, maybe a birthday party to attend, but pretty much all they do is sit.  Bake, sit, get eaten.  The life cycle of a cupcake.

Rice: The New Crunchy

Guess what??  The baby's here!  Sean was born on Sunday, Jan 10th, and we came home from the hospital yesterday.  So far things are going great, he is a very laid-back baby who likes to eat and looooves to sleep.  Not that I expect every night will go so smoothly.

The food in the hospital was actually pretty good.  I am definitely going to miss just calling "room service" and having a tray delivered 45 minutes later.  I especially missed it last night when I cooked my first post-baby dinner.  The weekly menu is on hold, of course.  Last night was just a simple dinner of frozen chicken breasts (Barber makes these stuffed ham and cheese ones that rock.)  I cooked some rice and opened a can of corn.

Ok....I have cooked a lot of rice in my life.  I know how to do it by heart, and it doesn't take a lot of thought.  I know that the water doubles the amount of rice, so for every cup of rice you measure out, you need two cups of water.  So that's what I measured.  I poured the water into the pot, added a pat of butter.  So far so good.  Brought it to a boil, added the rice, turned it to low, gave it a stir.  Then added the lid and set the timer.  Twenty minutes later and it's gruel.  Crunchy-looking, totally wet and absolutely not edible yet.  Brian puts it back on the stove and I'm grumpin' because I'm hungry!  Since the chicken's done, we start on that and the corn.  Geee......delicious.  Ten minutes later we have paste instead of rice, it's turning gooshy and sticking to the pan.  So corn and chicken for dinner, and the garbage disposal again eats well.

Sometimes "the laws of physics cease to exist on my stove!"  (If you can name the movie where that quote comes from....1000 Cool Kid points to you!)

Why You Shouldn't Multitask....

Last night's dinner:  Honey-Cumin Pork Roast.  Pork roasts are a good weeknight dinner because they don't take much time in the oven and are a snap to prepare. I put the pork in a pan, and followed the directions, cutting a diamond pattern in the top of the roast.  I mixed the ingredients for the glaze as directed, using honey, cumin, lemon juice and red pepper.  I cut onion wedges and dredged them in the glaze, then put the entire pan in the oven with a thermometer probe so that I would know when it reached 155 degrees.  I then got preoccupied with making dinner for my three year old, folding laundry and generally doing house stuff.   Brian finished what he was doing at the computer, realized that I was busy and put the potatoes on to fry on the stovetop.  The pork finished cooking just as the potatoes went on....so we wrapped it in foil.

After eating, Brian said that the recipe wasn't great because all it tasted like was pork with a little honey and cumin.  I agreed, it was a tad disappointing, given how delicious it had smelled while cooking.  As I was putting the cookbook away, I had the famous CLUEPHONE moment.....there were instructions after the roasting for adding chicken broth to the pan drippings and onions to make a sauce.  Gah!!  So now we know why it was a culinary disappointment...and to read the recipe through.  Makes for a good case of no multitasking, just cook!!!  That's a hard habit to break, though. 

That's a Wrap

I'm a bit of a sandwich snob. I had a lot of ham and cheeses on plain wheat bread growing up, and I only started to appreciate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the last few years. (I'll take mine on toast, with strawberry preserves and crunchy peanut butter, please.) So it's little wonder that I don't take a sandwich to work everyday. I usually rely on leftovers from the night before, or in a pinch, a Lean Cuisine.

I guess I'm sick of the leftovers route, and I KNOW I'm dreadfully tired of the Lean Cuisine. (Which isn't so much cuisine as it is frozen food that often tastes like the box its packaged in) I did find a pack of wraps at the deli last week, and decided to play around with them. I stir-fried some cabbage, carrot, garlic and ginger marinade and chicken together and made an awesome sandwich. And today I served it up with chicken salad with pecans and dried cranberries, topped with a few goat cheese crumbles. Mmmm....not your average lunch! Hooray for innovation!

A Good Idea in Theory...

With all of the cookie madness this weekend, there wasn't a whole lot of time for other cooking. We also haven't been really great in the past few weeks about sticking to the menu that I write out every week. I allowed myself to be sweet-talked into ordering a pizza one tiring night (not that it took a lot of arm-twisting!) So the pork chops that we were supposed to have got pushed back. And well, they needed to be eaten.


Here's a good idea: When you have an insanely busy day ahead of you in the kitchen, drag out your crockpot. By the time you realize that you are simply too exhausted to cook dinner, dinner will already be ready!


Here's a good idea gone wrong.....attempting any kind of slow cooker recipe and having to make several substitutions and expecting it to go well. We settled on quasi-German cuisine tonight. The recipe was called Alsatian Pork with Sauerkraut. I like sauerkraut on hot dogs, so this sounded intriguing. Except---I subbed smoked pork with pork chops and russet potatoes for red bliss. And it called for one cup of "fruity white wine, like Reisling." Nope--finished the wine last night! It went on to say that you could substitute apple juice for a non-alcoholic version. No apple juice to be had, in a house with a toddler! I did have some white cranberry-peach cocktail, so I threw that in. It smelled pretty good while it was cooking. It was not. Dry pork, hard potatoes and the juice? Well, sauerkraut is SOUR, and peachy juice doesn't bring anything other than sin to the party. And no, not the good kind. Blech! It all went out in the trash, I wouldn't even let the dog have any!

Know what makes a good, quick back-up dinner? Brian's cheesesteaks!

You don't Listen to the CD on the way home from the Concert!

The above is advice from my friend Rochelle many years ago when we went to see Aerosmith in concert and I wanted to listen to the CD on the ride home. It just cheapens the experience.

I experienced a bit of that tonight. I went out to dinner at a funky Mexican place on "Restaurant Row" last night for the monthly Mamas Dinner Club. It was fantastic, with a huge selection of margaritas (I got a Sangria Margarita, my two favorite drinks blended together) a made-to-order guacamole bar (did you know there's more than just one kind of guacamole???) and a menu stocked with assortments. After sharing a guacamole flight (three kinds of guacamole) and chips with the Mamas, I ordered two tacos from the appetizer menu. One was tropical chicken with pineapple and mango, and the other was fried fish. Both were out of this world! I left very happy, and am already prepping to boast about it at work on Monday.

So what do I make for dinner tonight? Tacos. The ground beef variety, with a shortage of cheese in the house. And to make matters worse, the generic, grocery store-brand taco kit has shells that are chipped, folded weird and basically tasteless. Don't get me started on the taco sauce, which looked as dark as chocolate syrup. It did the task of filling the belly and stopped me from taking Will to McDonald's for dinner. Maybe the McD's would've been better. (that's a sentence I never thought I'd say!!)

I have no one to blame but myself for this one. :(

It's Crunch Time

Now we're going to have something new in our household. For the first time in four years, Hubby and I are both going to be working M-F, regular business hours-kind of jobs. There have already been some questions....like who is going to be home for the telephone company when they have to come out to do some work at the end of the month? How are we going to do any housework? And most importantly--how and when are we going to eat dinner????

I'm trying to take the proactive approach. I actually took the time to write out the menus for two weeks in advance. We've been really, really good about making up a menu every week since February. Now is the real challenge. Both of us are going to be tired, cranky and not feeling like cooking a lot of the time! Plus having a picky toddler.....those two things together make me want to put the pizza place on speed dial. (Wait it already is....it's a nice thing to have in a pinch!)

Quick Dinners??

The dynamic of our household is changing again. Because of my new job responsibilities, I am back to work full-time. Despite my best efforts and writing a menu every week, I am in a bit of a rut for quick family dinners that make some leftovers for lunches. So I would like to put it out there to anyone that reads this blog: What are your go-to recipes when like is crazy?

Just leave me a comment and tell me what your family eats in a pinch when everyone's busy and there's not a lot of time to experiment in the kitchen! Thanks for your help. :)

Food from Friends

I volunteered to bring a meal to a new mama so she wouldn't have to cook every night while she bonds with her baby. It's kind of a neat idea that the playgroup I belong to came up with. Anyway, today was my turn so I made rigatoni with meat sauce for dinner. Yep, from a jar. I haven't been feeling well today so I was impressed that I even pulled that off, considering my own family is getting pizza from Domino's for dinner!

This is a recipe for a Fruit Pizza that I received from my friend, Jen. She moved to the Midwest last year and whenever I make it, I think of her. Well, to be fair, LOTS of things make me think of her, but she introduced this delicious dessert to me, and I made it for the mama and her family for tonight! Of course, while I was slicing it, I just HAD to keep a piece for myself! It comes together really quickly, too.

Fruit Pizza

1 pkg (18 oz) refrigerated sugar cookie dough

1 pkg (8 oz) cream cheese, softened

1/3 c sugar

1 c. marshmallow fluff

Assorted sliced fresh fruit (I decorated mine with blueberries, strawberries and mandarin oranges)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Roll dough out to a circle (or as best as you can) Place dough on round baking stone (I used a thin crust pizza pan) and cook 10-20 minutes or until golden. Make sure to keep an eye on it though, because there's not much time between "golden" and "burned!" Remove from oven and cool thoroughly.

Combine cream cheese, sugar and fluff and mix well. Spread over cooled cookie. Decorate with fruit.

*TIP* Use a pizza wheel to cut the cookie into wedges, it works really well

Blah.

There hasn't been any exciting things going on in Casa de Blue Plate the last few days. Though last night Brian made chicken and steak fajitas that rocked. Combo fajitas are sooooo good! Lasagne is on the menu tomorrow night, though I'm starting to wonder if I've gone a little soft for making a menu that requires turning on the oven at the end of July.

I've been trying to behave, since I joined Sparkpeople about a week ago and have to track calories and fitness and stuff. Yes, I'm finally getting serious, less talk more action! So meals have been a little blah lately, nothing really special stands out. But I won't go on like that for long.... something new always awaits!