Out of the Box. Thin as paper. (Week 7: 2/13- 2/19)

Sometimes you just want a change. Since I started on this journey, I have made a habit of having certain food materials on hand. Some of which are flour, oil, butter, chicken, cream cheese, pasta and such. After a while, it seems that what you can do with these materials are limited  i.e the recipes become redundant. I definitely was feeling that way and I did not want to see another stir fry or another baked chicken with garlic and black pepper. But what to do?! I did not want to fry the chicken either. So I was browsing my fave recipe site  “allrecipes.com”, I was reading about some interesting things people do with cream crease, sour cream, butter and lime. All of which I had. I read a few different recipes and I pulled from each recipe a component I would like my chicken to “express”. To start off, I melted some butter and added some freshly squeezed lemon juice. I then added broccoli to the simmering melted butter and allowed the butter to cook the brocoli. I added sour cream and cream cheese to this mixture. The mixture was then placed in the fridge to chill. I tenderized some thawed chicken breast and seasoned it. The chilled mixture was rolled up in each slice of chicken breast. This rolled up chicken breast, which is held together with a toothpick, was dipped into beaten egg and was then browned on the stove. After browning, the chicken rolls were placed in the oven. There were some chicken pieces left over because they were not large enough to be rolled up. Since I had some of the broccoli mixture and beaten egg left over as well, I decided to bake the chicken pieces with the remaining mixture. This resulted in two different kind of chicken and I must say, both were very enjoyable. I made a side of tomato and pepper linguine to complement the lemony, veggie, cream cheesy, sour creamy-ness of the chicken. The yum-vidence is below.

So on Saturday night I had an intense craving for crepes. I blame this craving on the excessive amount of stress I have been under. Work, school, life can certainly make you want to eat. I wanted to reward myself for all my hard work ( forrealz!). I actually wanted to make crepes about 2 weeks ago but there was a flour situation at walmart that got in the way. Anyhoo, I went to my trust recipe site, allrecipes.com (<--- This site is the awesome!) and got a fairly simple crepe recipe that was accompanied by a cream cheese filling recipe for the crepe. Crepe are tough and easy to make. The easy part is throwing all the ingredients into the blender and pressing blend. Oh about that, I learned a very important lesson concerning blending dry stuff the blender. If u need to blend dry and wet materials, put the wet material in the blender first. Why do you think I say that? (answer below in the comment section if u so please). Anyway, after the blending process has taking place, you are left with this salt and extremely thin liquid mixture. Get yo pans out son! I used a small pan so that it wil be easier to control the shape of my crepe. Let the pan heat up under medium heat and once it is hot enough, spray some pam on that joint! ( or in my case, some great value cooking spray hehe). Pour about 1/8 cup of your mixture into the pan, from the side. Immediately move your pan in a semicircular motion in both directions to get a thing flat circular structure. Bam! There goes yo crepe girl! (boy!) But seriously, there you have it. As I mentioned, I used made some cream cheese filling to complement my crepe.It basically contained cream cheese, confectioners sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla extract. It was goood but I am not a fan of too sweet stuff so next time I make it, it will be with half the sugar but double the love! hehe!

This week I really stepped out of my comfort zone with these dishes and I am getting closer to being ready to entertain! Stay tuned folks!

Meat ‘o’ the sea? (Week 6: 2/6- 2/12)

I’m talking about fish of course! Fish? I LOVE IT! Yup. I actually went through a phase that I required my mom to make my own stew for me because I was not eating chicken. Of course she laughed at my request but she did indulge me occasionally by making fresh fish stew! HMMMMMMM! As much as I love fish stew I also love my fish being cooked in different ways and I enjoy different types of fish. This week I cooked my personal favorite….(wait for it!!!!!!)… SALMON! Now salmon should really be bought fresh, not frozen but I am not making bank, so the frozen one will have to do. For the frozen one, the ones that come in the air tight bags are muchhhhhh better! A note on thawing frozen meat or fish, you don’t want to thaw a frozen meat or fish in hot water. Use barely cold water and just let it sit. What does this teach us? Thaw your meat or fish, hours before to you need them! Another fool proof way to thaw is to move it from freezer to fridge at least 12hours before you need it (Of course this varies based on the weight of the meat) Ok enough  about thawing. I baked salmon and accompanied it with what I would like to call lemon tomato rice. I actually did not follow any recipe with this. I just decided what kind of taste my taste buds were going for. At the time this meal was made. I wanted something lemony.  I diced some tomatoes, onions, some red and green peppers and stirred them in some tomato paste, then added half a squeeze of lemon juice. I layered baking pan with some of this, placed the salmon on top, dotted the salmon with butter and placed slices lemon on top of the salmon. I popped this in the oven at 350 degrees and just let it ride! I semi fried the remaining mixture and added some precooked rice and just RTS (reduced to simmer). This is the final result! This meal MINISTERED to my spirit! I repeat MINISTERED!

Country Time? ( Week 5: 1/30- 2/5)

At the risk of perpetrating stereotypes, that is the mildest I can make that title. I was inspired by the constant talk of corn bread, so I decided to make some. Then I started to think about soul food, so I made some chicken wings to go along. This week I was really busy so I had almost no time to cook. I tried a cornbread recipe I found on *drumroll* allrecipes.com The recipe was pretty straight forward and it was quite successful if you ask me. The problem with baking is unless u have a group of people that will consume the food, it tends to go to waste. I did not even attempt to eat all that cornbread by myself!

As I said, I also made some wings. I have to say, I am not a fan of certain chicken meat. I baked the wings because with all the cooking I do, I also need to take little precautions to not make completely unhealthy food. I did not exactly enjoy the chicken. It had tooo much seasonings. I put too much in the black pepper/salt marinade I put it in the night b4. I t was edible but I definitely would not got for seconds.

This week was definitely not a personal favorite but I learned some lessons from it.

Let’s STIR it up! (Week 4 1/23- 1/29)

Back in school! This semester feels great, although it would have felt more awesome if it was my last here but I am finally taking classes I have interests in! With all the school madness, I have still managed to get in my cooking for the week. I actually cooked a lot this week because I am really not interested in the campus food options anymore. This week I really challenged myself ranging from breakfast food, to dinner. First I attempted my very first recipe attempt- the pancakes! It came out great! I did use eggs this time (see first blog) and I actually had vanilla extract. I think this helped me realize that sometimes you jus have to attempt something again to get it right.

Next up we have what I call stir rice (like stir fry except with rice). I cut together some veggies, a.k.a red and green bell peppers, and some bacon for taste. It was sautéed and a cooked extra long grain rice was added. With some seasoning, and this joint was hmmm hmm good. I LOVE RICE, so it was good to find another way to spice it up!

After seeing how adding the peppers to the rice worked, I decided to try it out with pasta! The choice of pasta was spaghetti. My problem with pasta is, it is really hard to get the seasoning INTO the pasta.  Using the same method I used for the rice, I made my bell pepper spaghetti. It was good. I am not a fan of pasta but it was tasty! As in I would serve it!

Speaking of serving it, I have been thinking a a lot about inviting others over for dinner type thing. It is a very scary concept because I don’t want to invite people and then make something that does not turn out well. So my good friend, Nemie, suggested that I make something that I have made enough times to be comfortable with making it. So look out for your invitation to dinner lunch and maybe brunch ( I can’t fade breakfast. Too early!). This will definitely be a leap of faith, so to say but I look forward to the challenge.

P.S Both the rice and spaghetti meal were accompanied with baked round eye beef seasoned with bacon and a hint of balsamic vinegar.