Mrs. L's nightmare dinner

Well, most of it wouldn't be a nightmare. With temps hovering around 90 and the humidity high as well, I decided to forgo the leftover spaghetti/meatballs and make a cool, refreshing pasta salad. Into the mixing bowl went chopped garden cucumber, cherry tomatoes, bell pepper, and green onions. I then added a pound of tri-colored farfalle (which had surprisingly noticeable spinach and/or tomato flavor in the red and green bow ties respectively). Splash on some reduced cal balsamic vinaigrette and you're good to go. Then, to the horror of Mrs. Elle, I threw in a bit of canned tuna to add some protein to the mix. Mr. R opted against tuna, and the tuna tasted really weird, so I might forgo it in the future too. But regardless, it is an easy and tasty summer dinner option.

Fatty McFatterton cookies

We're having a bake sale at work today and feeling rather uninspired, opted to make the Barefoot Contessa pecan shortbread cookies. They are easy - a fairly traditional shortbread dough - flour, sugar, butter - with flavoring and a bit of salt.

I failed to take pics as I went along - I wasn't in that mode - but I remembered towards the end.

Here's the dough being rolled out and cut - I've no idea why it looks like strawberry ice cream, it was decided NOT pink.

And into the oven with the lovely cookies:

And finally, the platter ready for presentation to the bake sale poobas.

Hopefully they sell - I don't need them at home tempting me!

The Foods of Ladies Weekend

So, another Ladies Weekend has come and gone. And what did we eat??

Well, first off, a large batch (actually 2) of sangria was made

We also revisited the jalapeno-bacon wraps. Delicious.


Miss K made these delicious English muffin crab cheesy puff things. I want more.


An insane cheeseboard - thanks in part to Grandpa's Cheesebarn.

On Saturday, we hit up the Irish Harp pub in Niagara-on-the-Lake. We had burgers:


Shepherd's pie:


And a steak and Guinness pie:


Oh, and beer and cider:


Then we hit up some local wineries:

Sunday morning, Miss M fed us well - including an asparagus and potato tart:



with fruit and a grapefruit zabaglione


And corned beef, cheese, and rye scones, which were quite tasty


We ate lots of other stuff too....but I don't want us to come across as TOO piggy after all...

In-depth examination of the chicken braid/pocket

Last week, I returned to the now-favorite chicken braid concept once again. I've fully resorted to creating a chicken pocket rather than a braid for simple ease of preparation.

So, off we go. Saute onion and red bell pepper:

Meanwhile, I decided to make use of my garden bounty - zucchini - and added that along with grated carrot:

And garlic of course:

Once the onion and pepper are well on their way to softening, I added in the zucchini, carrot, and garlic and cooked until slightly softened:


I allowed the veggie mixture to cool a bit, then added in about 7 tbsp of reduced fat mayo, 1 1/2 c of shredded cheddar cheese, dill, salt, and pepper.

Fold into a lovely RF crescent roll pocket and bake until v. browned and bubbly.


And yet again, I forget to take a final picture. Oh well - you've seen the "braid" before.

Sunday roast

I had a taste for roast chicken or turkey yesterday, so I went ahead and made the chicken (leftovers will be used in a forthcoming BRAID). A nice meal for a 90+ degree day, right? I don't care, it was delicious.

And why was it so delicious? 1) Brining the chicken 2) Making a new side dish that forced tons of veggies into my anti-veggie husband and was super delicious and homey tasting.

Step one - the brine - a ton of salt, a smaller ton of brown sugar, and peppercorns....I added about 6 cups of water, boiled until the salt/sugar were dissolved, then cooled with ice.


The chicken goes to its watery bath - it was brined for about 3 1/2 hours. Overnight would have been better, but this was a somewhat last-minute dinner decision.


And into a very snug roasting pan stuffed with onion and garlic, brushed with butter, salt, and pepper. Followed by a 425 degree oven for about 90 minutes total.


Meanwhile, I got an onion sauteeing for the side dish.


I wanted to use the zucchini we have flying in from the garden. But I wanted something really tasty that would go with the chicken/mashed potato/gravy dinner. And I came across THIS recipe - best of both worlds - full of veggies AND tastes like stuffing. I chopped up 2 small and 1 large zucchini and grated up 3 carrots (I could have done more - you didn't taste them at all). These were sauteed for about 5 minutes after the onions had begun to soften.

Meanwhile, I mixed 2 c of Pepperidge Farm cubed herbed stuffing mix with 1 c of reduced fat soup cream and 1 can of reduced fat cream of chicken soup.


Mix the veggies in and pour into a 9x13 casserole dish and bake at 350 degrees for a half hour (or, if like me, you have a roast going at 425 degrees, bake it at 425 for 10 minutes until the chicken comes out to rest, then finish at 350).


The chicken was delicious -the brining really helps. My potatoes were only so-so because I was trying to cut down on the butter/cream and used just a bit of skim milk. But the zucchini casserole MORE than made up for any potato deficiencies. It tasted like really moist stuffing. The end. NO weird veggie taste, certainly no carrot taste. If I thought there wouldn't be a family revolt, it MIGHT become my stuffing side dish with a tiny bit of tweaking.

The gravy really wasn't that blah looking. It had nice flavor from the onions and garlic (and the splash of wine I threw it while thickening didn't hurt either!)

The Bounty of the Garden

The crops are starting to come in this summer....behold the first of MANY zucchini....

And a v. perverse looking cucumber...

Chocolate chip cookie experiments continue...

I'm still on a quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Everyone has their opinions, but what I want is a soft, but not too soft, cakey, but not too cakey, crisply-edge cookie with a not-too-sweet chocolate chip inside. I also personally want nuts, but I know a lot of people are anti-nut. So, I am still experimenting. This recipe was pretty good, especially the chocolate, but it still isn't quite what I'm looking for. The hunt continues. In the meantime...

I creamed 2 sticks of butter with a 3/4 c each of brown and white sugar. And some vanilla. Here it is at first:


Then a few minutes later - see the color change:


Now, all the dry ingredients and the lovely chocolate chips and nuts were added:

I used a mini ice cream scooper and baked about half the batch - these took a little less than 9 minutes per batch in my oven:


Now, you may notice, some of the cookies look different. I made about 2/3 of them on insulated baking sheets. Those spread out and became flat and normal looking. However, 1/3 were baked on a regular aluminum non-fancy sheets - and those did not spread and puffed up instead. V. interesting. Here they are in profile - on the left, insulated sheet, on the right, non-insulated sheet:


Even from above, they look different. The non-insulated sheet cookie looks normal, and its brother looks, well, just poofy and weird.

They still tasted good - but I did like the insulated sheet results better. Very interesting.

The power of pork

We had pork for dinner last night. It wasn't mind blowing, but I think my method was flawed. Also, my photography skills are woefully lacking - apparently there was a gross smudge on the lens all evening, therefore, everything has a somewhat ethereal quality to it. Magic pork.

Tonight's pork featured an apricot coating that was gently sprinkled with bread crumbs. First off, make the apricot coating - Jam, coarse grained mustard, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

The mixture was brushed onto flattened boneless pork chops, then sprinkled with plain bread crumbs

Then, time for some frying. I had intended to pan fry them to crisp them up, then bake them off to finish.

After a quick turn in the skillet, then were put onto a cooling rack on a baking sheet and put in the oven for about 20 min at 350 degrees.

They tasted fine - pretty good actually - and the pork was very moist. Final photos were discarded due to the mysterious smudge. But the bottom sides of the chops got all mushy, despite being on the rack. Next time, I shall just have to fry them all the way, or else bake them all the way. Something to stop the mushiness.

Pizza partay

We had a pizza party last night. Well, not so much a party as just having delicious homemade pizza for dinner. But using a new dough made it seem more festive somehow. Something had been missing from previous homemade dough attempts - the crust didn't just lend itself to making pizza as well as I'd have liked - not too much flavor, not v. stretchy. So, I broadened my horizons and sought out a new recipe. Tonight's efforts were well worth the moderate additional effort to make this dough. I decided to trust Mr. Batali and give his dough a whirl.

First, you bloom the yeast in a mixture of warm water and wine. Yes, wine. Last night, I used a pinot grigio, but in the future, I may try a red. Then you add honey, salt, and 1 c of flour (oh, this is all by hand - NO MIXER)

Next, you blend in the remaining 2 c of flour until you can no longer stir
Then roll out onto a floured board and hand knead for about 7 minutes - the dough came together amazingly well given the ragged, floury state of it out of the mixing bowl.Then, after a 45 minute rise*, you are ready to make the pizza.

This dough was beautiful to work with - v. stretchy, yet pliable. Not stiff. It easily rolled into whatever abstract form I desired. Then I put a bit of sauce and a bit of pesto on top.

Then some pepperoni and tomatoes, and cheese, of course

10 minutes in a 475 degree oven and we were ready to slam it. This was Mr. R's personal pizza.


And here is mine. I was constrained by the fact that I couldn't find any of my flat normal cookie sheets, so I had to use a short narrow one. Hence, the long rectangle of 'za.

This dough was really good. Easy to make and work and it had more flavor than your standard homemade dough. The thin parts were crackery** yet tender and the thicker parts of the crust had a nice chewy texture. Will DEF be making this again.


*I decided the cold oven wasn't exactly warm enough for the dough to rise, so I turned the oven on, intending to let it run for about 30 seconds, then turn it back off. 10 minutes later the oven beeped to let me know it had reached 350 degrees. I FLEW to the stove to turn it off and rescue my potentially dead dough. It DID get a bit dry on top, but it kept rising in the fridge, so the little yeasties were still alive apparently. Do not do this yourselves.

** The thinner crust was decidedly similar to a certain Barnaby's pizza in South Bend, IN. So a certain father of mine should make it soon.