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Dinner challenge

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The ingredients from the pantry inventory:  farfalle pasta (bowtie), alfredo sauce, a can of quartered artichoke hearts and crumbly sausage.

The idea:  brown the sausage and then mix all the stuff together after cooking and bake (to take the jarred alfredo sauce taste out of the alfredo).  Unfortunately the alfredo sauce surprised me with a use by date of January 2012.  I wasn’t willing to tempt fate.

The solution:  cook other ingredients as planned and assemble with goat cheese and parmesan (found in the fridge).  It worked out pretty well and I’m only slightly irked that the alfredo sauce expired under my watch.

Recipes – stuffed peppers

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Not original by any means, I know.  Basically mine is just another vehicle for other things you might want to get rid of, that is, left-overs:  some rice, tomato puree, chick peas, ground beef, cheese, etc.  I picked up a tip to coat the peppers in olive oil to help them cook.

Then bake at 350-400 until the peppers change color and get all flimsy.

Like I said, not original.  I have to post them because my husband likes them so much.

Recipes – Asparagus egg and cheese pie

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I don’t make anything that can be called a quiche because I don’t like to add milk or cream to eggs, not even to scramble ’em.  But I do make a couple varieties of egg and cheese pie.

Ingredients:  eggs, cheese, some kind of vegetable (asparagus for us), and pie crust (optional).

Directions:  if you are going to put it in a pie crust, make your pie crust first and stick it in the oven while you mix up the other stuff.  These don’t need pie crusts at all and usually I am too lazy to make one in advance.

Next, in a mixing bowl, break and empty about six large eggs.  Discard shells.  Put a whole heap of shredded cheese of various kinds in there.  Add seasoning.  Stir like crazy and make sure that all the egg yokes are broken.

Chop asparagus into little pieces.  Get out your pie pan with or without crust inside and add asparagus.  Finally, pour egg and cheese mixture over and schmoosh around until everything’s about even.  Bake at 350-375 until you’ve smelled all the ingredients cooking and the top is browned (about 30 minutes I think).  Eat.

Note:  if you’re using a leafy floppy vegetable like spinach you could probably mix it in the bowl with the egg and cheese and then pour it all together.  I put the asparagus in the pan first to minimize splashing when pouring.

A while ago, when I spent more time in the stacks, I found this book called White Trash Cooking.  In it I found a recipe called Leetta’s Fancy Eggs & Cheese Pie.  That Leetta used cream in her pie and she didn’t capitalize the second ‘e’ in her name, but I felt an affinity just the same.  Nearby in the same book I found Margie’s Fried Chicken and Alma’s Almond Omelet.  That’s me, mom and grandma all in one book.  So of course I love White Trash Cooking.  I might talk more on it later, even.

Recipes – cous-egg-gus

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I was inspired to this by an honest to goodness recipe, or something, that I saw online during the days when I had enough time to look at food photo blogs.  Ah!  those were the days!  Anyway, I modified it a little and it is a solid ‘everyone loves it’ dinner for any time of year.

Ingredients:  Cous cous (I like the parmesan one though the original makes more), asparagus, eggs, parmesan cheese

Do:  get the cous cous started in a pot with the directions on the box and put the asparagus in a pan with some oil.  Saute saute saute the asparagus.  When the cous cous is done, add some parmesan cheese (even if you got the parmesan cheese one).  Dish on to plates.  Layer the sauteed asparagus on top of cous cous.  Now comes the tricky part.  I like to fry my eggs in the same pan I sauteed the asparagus with because I hate extra dishes.  This can require some finesse and has resulted in some smokey kitchens in my time.  You don’t have to use the same pan if you don’t want to – it might be less tricky to get the temperatures right.  Finally, layer fried egg on asparagus that already on cous cous and shake a liberal helping of parmesan on top.  There you have it.

I only gave it a name here because ‘egg on asparagus on cous cous with parmesan’ was too long for the title.  Oh, and I hear there are places in the states that cannot get asparagus year round, so my comment about any time of year could be incorrect.  I’m sorry for you if you cannot; that is a terrible state of affairs.

Dinner challenge turned recipe

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Ok, the challenge was:  a variety of chicken things from various dinner stops at the Fresh Market.  That is, LEFTOVERS.  And I hate it when food goes to waste, I mean really.  People make fun of me for how upset I get when food is wasted in my house.

So there was chicken from inside a chicken Ceasar wrap, market chicken salad (really nice big pieces of chicken without much goop), and chopped chicken liver.  There were also some eggs to be used and a half bag of frozen homemade stuffing in the freezer from previous left overs. (the stuffing was crazy heavy on carrots and celery which is the reason for the picture)

The solution:  mix it all up into a big chicken parts stuffing cake and EAT IT.  And serve it to others to eat.  Mix it is what I did, in a big old bowl and used the eggs for binder before spooning it into a greased casserole dish. Then I topped with some seasoned bread crumbs and baked at 350 until I smelled all the ingredients and the bread crumbs were browned.

Verdict:  success!  it was well received and loved – enough to get its own name and maybe be repeated again.  But honestly, how often am I going to have frozen leftover stuffing, chicken salad, chicken bits, and chicken liver on hand to make it?

Dinner Challenge

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Ok, so I had too much yogurt – at least I thought I did, though the other inhabitants of my house assured me it’d get eaten before it went bad.  Yeah, ok.  The challenge was something savory for dinner that used the yogurt along with some of the other things in the house.  The solution (hypothesized) was a recipe-less palak paneer.  That’s cheesy spinach curry for those of you who have never had the awesomeness.

So, I put a little less than half a big tub of greek yogurt into a pot with two cans of spinach some curry, some extra cumin and garlic salt, and then, later in the cooking, some cubes of feta cheese (most definitely not the usual palak paneer cheese).

The result…DUN DUN DUN… was that it was ‘not overly spiced’ which resulted in a very ‘strong spinach flavor.’  But then he hadn’t gotten to the cheese yet.  And it looked just like the real thing.  Yay, yogurt used and a bit of left-overs that I am more than happy to eat ’cause I liked it.

Eaten along side brown rice and fried eggs.

Recipes – Dinner bucket

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Yo.  As the resident cook of my household and a big old fan of not following directions I end up making a lot of things that have no recipe.  Well, they have to have a recipe to be made right, ’cause all a recipe is is ingredients you include within the thing that you are making.  They just never came from anywhere other than my brain putting together the things I saw in my fridge.

In an attempt to record the best liked things my brain came up with while perusing my fridge I will talk about them here.  First up – the Dinner Bucket.

Dinner Bucket

Description:  a muffin shaped pastry shell stuffed with stuff

You will need to fill a half dozen large muffin pan:  two tubes of pre-made crescent roll dough, six eggs, shredded cheese (or other cheesy stuff), veggies or meat to suit (best if meat pre cooked)

You will do:

  1. Unroll the crescent roll dough and smoosh the diagonal seems together (illustrated above), so that you end up with three rectangles per roll.
  2. Fit the rectangles into the hollows of the muffin tin so the longs ends flop out – you will fold these over later.
  3. I suppose you could turn on the oven now so it heats up to 350 – or you can do it later when you remember.
  4. Crack an egg into each dough lined muffin tin hollow.
  5. Put some cheese in.
  6. Put some other stuff in.
  7. Put some cheese in.
  8. Fold over the long ends of the dough and stick entire thing in oven.
  9. Bake about 30 minutes or until you’ve smelled each ingredient cooking or until top looks way too dark for crescent rolls but still not quite burnt yet (if you pull them out when they are a pretty golden brown the egg will not have cooked).

I have made these with corned beef hash, spinach and feta cheese, ground beef and collard greens, pork and broccoli (also best if pre cooked), and stuffing and spinach.  Dinner buckets are a great way to use up all your left overs.

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