Africa Bound

Anyone else get super-duper lazy when only cooking for one?  Me too, which is why I’ve been eating cereal and wraps since my husband left a month ago for Africa.  I’ll be joining him in two days but had to finish off the school year here first. (If you want to know more about why we’re going, visit my husband’s website.)

But, I thought I would update on my neglected food blog before I leave, leaving something about my life from the past food-less month.  Ok, there was food, I should say stove-less or pan-less.  I almost reverted back to my university days when my roommates would joke that I was just good at making water for tea or knowing half of a lemon loaf recipe.

So, food bloggers, have a great summer!  I will update from Africa if I get a chance to cook anything!

One of my non-cook meals that was delicious, easy, and enjoyed many nights!

• Whole grain and flax seed small wrap
• Light herb and garlic cream cheese
• Salmon lox
• Lettuce
• Tomato

Et voila!

The Summer BBQ Bring Along

“Come over for a BBQ.  Bring an appy or salad  . . . or something to share,” he says.  But what does he want you to bring?  Well, let me tell you.  He wants you to bring your famous potato salad — the classic BBQ dish!  (Don’t have a famous potato salad?  You can borrow mine!)When someone asks how to make your new famous potato salad, tell them to combine:

• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 5 medium potatoes, boiled until tender but still firm
• 4 eggs, boiled
• 1 cup chopped radish and/or celery
• 1/2 cup diced onion
• 1/2 cup sweet pickle relish
• 1/4 tsp minced garlic
• 1/4 tsp celery salt
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (if you want a little kick to it)
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• ground black pepper to taste
• Sprinkle paprika on top for that fancy shmancy look

Et voila!

BBQ Season — Grill Up Those Chops!

Can you just smell it?  I’m talking about your neighbour’s BBQ.  What is he BBQing anyway?  Is it making your mouth water?  Why not grill something up for yourself tonight?  Here’s a great recipe for perfect chops (and perfect sauce for your chops, which I LOVE as you can tell from the amount of it that I put on my chops in the picture)

Rub your four pork chops very lightly with oil and then with the following spices:

• 2 tsp each of paprika, brown sugar, salt,and  pepper
• 1/2 tsp each of garlic,  onion powder, cumin, and cayenne pepper

Set your chops aside for 20 mins and start your sauce in a sauce pan on high

• 1/3 c Hp sauce
• 1/3 c ketchup
• 1/4 c whiskey
• 2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
• 2 Tbsp brown sugar
• 2 Tbsp diced onion

Once sauce has boiled, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes while continuing to stir from time to time.

And then tell your husband to BBQ the meat (ok, maybe that doesn’t work in every household — or maybe you are the husband!)  My husband did the rest, telling me that he cooked the chops on high for 6 mins on one side and about 3 on the other side.

et voila!

All Chocolate, All The Time

Craving that chocolate taste?  How about a four ingredient chocolate sauce for your ice cream, cake, or fruit?

• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1 2/3 cups white sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract

Combine cocoa, sugar and milk over medium heat. Boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Serve and enjoy!  Store for later in the fridge.

My Husband’s Famous Eggs Benny

Some of you girls go wild over your husbands steaks, pancakes, or when he picks up pizza.  In our family (consisting of the two of us), it’s his eggs benny. Tart and delicious!

Here’s how he does it:

• Poach several eggs — spray a pan with cooking spray, fill it with water and a little vinegar, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, break an egg into a measuring cup and ease it into the water.

• Meanwhile, make the eggs benny sauce — bring a pot of water to a boil, in a smaller pot on top (hold it, do not let it hi the boiling water directly) add 3 egg yolks, 1/4 cup butter (cut into three pieces and added one at a time, stirring constantly with a spatula) 1 Tbsp water, and 2 Tbsp lemon juice. Also, add salt to taste if you are using unsalted butter.
• Cook whatever else you want on your eggs benny — ham, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms (try portobello!), bacon, etc.
• Toast an english muffin, layer everything on top, and sprinkle with peprika.

The picture above shows eggs benny with mushrooms on top of french toast.  YUM!

 

The Five Minute Soup — Literally!

Don’t tell my husband that this soup only takes five minutes because he LOVES this soup and treats it like a special occasion whenever I make it.  He usually exclaims “Holy cow, this soup is so good!  Best soup I’ve ever had” or something like that whenever he sees that I’ve made it for lunch.  Just a simple egg drop soup.  The recipe is usually changing and evolving (and just basically using up some leftovers.)  For those of you against salt, please click the back button now.

Here are some items that can go into the five minute soup:

• However much liquid you want your soup to be.  I usually put in about a liter and a half so the following ingredients will be for that amount
• Three eggs, whisked
• One tsp of sesame oil
• One tsp of minced ginger
• Enough chicken stock powder to taste good (I just keep adding it)
• Four green onions
• About three Tbsp of soy sauce
• Whatever else (I’ve tried cubed tofu and all sorts of vegetables — depending on the vegetable you’ll have to boil it for a little longer)
• I put in about a Tbsp of this Asian Sesame salad dressing.

Heat to boiling and serve.

Et voila!

Stuffed French Toastiness

Want a comfort food breakfast that’s different from the usual Saturday breakfast food?  Try stuffing your french toast with something!

We had a big family breakfast this weekend for Easter and my husband and I were in charge of making two dishes.  He made eggs benedict (which I should really blog one day as he describes his benedict sauce as “the best I’ve ever tasted”) and I made my first attempt of stuffing bread with sweet goodness.

Here’s what I did it:

• Cut a loaf of French Bread into thick slices
• Cut a hole in the bread from on of the sides
• Fill with about a teaspoon of cream cheese (I used light strawberry) and about a Tbsp berries (I used strawberries.)  I would recommend previously frozen berries, drained and slightly mashed.
• Dip the bread into a mixture of 4 eggs and 1/2 cup milk
• Fry the bread for about four minutes on either side.  I fried mine on an oiled griddle with  the temp set to 350 or so
• Put the bread in a slightly heated oven until breakfast is ready
• Take bread out and sprinkle with icing sugar.

Et voila! 

In the mood for something even sweeter? Put a couple milk chocolate chips inside the bread before frying.  Or change it up by trying other fruit besides berries — bananas? Someone at breakfast even suggested stuffing the bread with other breakfasty food, like bacon an eggs (not sure if I’d do that)

The Mother-in-Law’s Rib Recipe

I read this story with my grade 12 French students about a woman who tries (and changes) a mother-in-laws recipe.  It’s a cute love story but in the story the changed recipe ends up breaking up the couple.  Even still, I attempted (and changed) my mother-in-law’s rib recipe, because hey, I’ve tried her cooking and it’s just that good!  Don’t worry — the husband and I are still happily married 🙂

Being the lazy and sometimes picky cook that I am, I changed her recipe to avoid buying things that I won’t use again.  To be honest, actually, I was also cooking these ribs for my parents and my dad is the kind of dad that washes off food if he detects any kind of spiciness (so I decided to omit the chili powder to save him a trip to the kitchen sink.)

The ribs still turned out fabulous, so here’s the recipe I ended up using:

4 pound slabs pork ribs

1 tbsp ground black pepper

1tsp salt

1tsp paprika

1tsp cumin

Cut the ribs in half, sprinkle with seasoning (above), and wrap each half in tinfoil.  Bake at 300 for 2.5 hours.

Meanwhile, combine 2 tablespoons vegetable oil and 1 cup  onion in a saucepan. Cook onion through.  Add

2 cups water

1 cup tomato paste

1 cup white vinegar

1 cup brown sugar

5  tablespoons honey

4 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

3 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

4 teaspoons whiskey

4 teaspoons garlic

1/2 teaspoon paprika

2 tablespoon dark molasses

Bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer and leave it there for one hour.  Sauce will thicken.  When it’s done, just put it aside until the ribs are done.

To crisp up the ribs, BBQ for three minutes on each side.  Then slather in some sauce  and grill for another minute on either side (the leftover sauce can just be put on the table for extra for those extra saucy people)

Et voila!

Sorry not a lot of pictures of the cooked meat, I realized as everyone was half done their ribs that I hadn’t taken any ‘after’ photos — so I quickly snapped one of the leftover as everyone was happily finishing their dinner.

Chicken: Operation Stuff That

I’ve been on a stuffing fix.  Not the “it’s Thanksgiving, pass the stuffing” kind of thing, more like, “what amazing food can I stuff into this meat?”  Tonight’s dinner was inspired by my five slices of uncooked bacon sitting in the fridge, which was a leftover from my breakfast-for-dinner fiasco of yesterday.  With just four ingredients, this meal is up there in my top ten it-tastes-like-I-spent-hours-but-I-just-spend-10-minutes meals.

Here’s how I did it:

Take four chicken breasts, slit the side for an opening and make a pouch inside the chicken.

Stuff with sliced fresh spinach and cream cheese (I used reduced calorie herb and garlic — yum!)

wrap with bacon

Cook at 350 until temp of breast is 165 F (I try to use a meat thermometer to tell me when meat is done — thanks to mom and her food safe fanaticism.)

I meant to serve this meal with baked potatoes and beats as I was using the oven anyway. However, beats take a heck of a long time to cook. So the beats went half cooked back into the fridge (when am I going to get to that?) and the spinach got another role in the dinner play as the vegetable accompaniment.

Have you stuffed something lately (other than your mouth 🙂 ?  Do tell!

Pork, Apple and Cranberry (Can You Think of a More Awesome Combination?!)

We do a potluck every Monday night, which is a great time to get rid of some ingredients not used the week(s) before.  I had an abundance of apples and onions to use up, so I made this:

How, you ask?  Well, sit back and let me tell you a little recipe story.

Preheat oven to 350.  Pound down four pork chops (no bone).  Meanwhile, saute an onion and slice two apples.  Add about 1/4 cup of craisins to the apples and the onion when it is cooked.  Put a couple Tbsp of the apple, onion and craisin mixture on the pork chop.

Roll up, starting from the longest end and meeting the other end.  Keep in place with toothpicks and string (we didn’t have string, so I had to go to town with the toothpicks).

Brown pork chops and put in a baking dish.

Add remainder of the apple mixture on top.  Add 1/2 cup water.  Bake for about an hour.

Take out of the oven and drain liquid into saucepan and heat on medium.  To make the gravy: Put 1Tbsp flour and 1Tbsp corn starch into a glass.  Add and really mix in 2 Tbsp of water.  Slowly add 1Tbsp of hot liquid apple mixture to cup and stir.  Add flour mixture to drippings and stir.  This should thicken the drippings in a couple of minutes.  I added some cinnamon, brown sugar, salt, pepper, and fennel to taste.  Just keep tasting and adding until your sauce is perfect.

Et voila!