With the recent arrival of cheese singles in our town, we had to implement a grilled cheese and tomato soup night. Granted, the cheese are merely singles and the bread has a sweet, Chinese-y taste, but it's still more than a little comforting to dip a grilled cheese into some tomato soup and eat up.
I used the new blender to blend up some tomatoes, about 8 or 9 of them, along with two cups of water. After this was blended pretty well, but still a little chunky, I poured it into our soup pot and began to boil it. I added about 3 Tablespoons of chicken bouillon granules and stirred it until the granules dissolved.
After it had boiled/simmered for about 30 minutes (or until thick enough), I added some black pepper, Italian spices (lots of basil!) to taste, and some stalks of cilantro. (In the future, I'll be blending the cilantro with the tomatoes.) I allowed it to simmer about 5 minutes more and called it a meal. Simple, entirely un-extravagant, but satisfying.
Cooking in our little kitchen is often more trouble than it's worth. I've decided I want to learn to make more one-dish, hassle-free meals. I decided to try making Indian food in the rice cooker, with curried rice on the bottom and curry in the steamer basket. It worked, and it was fantastic!
In the metal rice-cooking pot:
-2 cups rice
-3 cups water
-2.5-3 Tablespoons chicken flavor granules
-1.5 Tablespoons curry powder
-a few green legumes
In the steamer basket:
-1 pound of mini chicken legs
-sprinkle of salt
-2 Tablespoons curry powder
-2 chopped tomatoes
-about 3/4 cup green legumes
Stir the ingredients of each part, turn the rice cooker to "cook", and when it says the rice is done, this little cultural meal is good to go!
After eating french toast for several consecutive breakfast-at-dinner Wednesdays, we decided to experiment a little with a savory treat- quiche! This was much easier that I'd expected, and delicious too! It's officially on our regular list!
For the crust, I mixed 1 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2 Tablespoons oil, and 1/4 cup ice water and put it into a lightly sprayed 10" round pan. I lined the crust with leafy greens, added some veggies (garlic, potatoes, mushrooms, and tomatoes), and added a little ground beef. Then I mixed 5 eggs with 3/4 milk, lightly salted, and poured it over the top. Of course, everything's better with cheese, but there's none to be found in our town, so we put this guy in the oven for 35 minutes or so at 375 degrees and baked it until it was golden brown on top and oh so delicious!
Ingredients:
3/4 pound beef slices
3/4 pound broccoli
2 tablespoons oil
2 cloves garlic, very finely minced
1 teaspoon cornstarch, dissolved in 1 tablespoon water
For the beef marinade:
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
For the sauce:
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/4 cup chicken broth
First, I marinated the beef for 10 minutes. While I was waiting, I stirred together the sauce ingredients in a small bowl. I cooked the broccoli for 2-3 minutes in boiling water and then drained it.
Heat the oil in a wok and add the beef. Let it fry for one minute, then add the garlic and allow to cook for one minute until the beef is no longer pink. Add the remaining ingredients and bring it to a boil. Stir everything until the sauce thickens, about 30 seconds.
Despite the fact that Chinese dishes are often cooked in a single wok and look somewhat easy, my attempts never match the tastes of those whose homes we go to... Still, this wasn't bad.
Isn't it pretty cool that there's this vegetable that's bright purple? I've certainly encountered more of it in the last year living here than I had my whole life before that, and I think I really like it!
I ran across this recipe called "
Lebanese Style Stuffed Eggplant" and decided that Austin would likely be 1/4 more likely to appreciate this one. Sure enough, he loved it! "Can we eat this like, everyday?"
Ingredients:
5-6 eggplants, 7-9 inches in length (I used only 4 eggplants because of the size of my wok, and had leftover filling)
oil
3 T. chopped cashews
1/2 c. white rice
3/4 lb. ground beef
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 c. chicken broth
5-6 small tomatoes, diced, with juice
1 t. five spice
salt
black pepper
1/2 lemon
To prepare:
Brown the beef, and set aside into a bowl. Wash the rice and add it to the bowl as well. Add five spice, 1 t. salt, 1/2 t. black pepper to the same bowl.
Wash the eggplants and hollow them with a spoon or melon-baller. Chop the tomatoes.
Brown the cashews. Remove and add to meat/rice mixture. Simmer the onion and garlic 6-8 minutes, until brown and soft. Add half of this to the meat/rice bowl and stir thoroughly.
Add tomatoes, chicken broth, 3/4 t. salt, 1/2 t. pepper to the wok and simmer, uncovered, while stuffing the eggplant.
Stuff eggplant with meat mixture, being careful not to stuff it too full. (The rice will expand while cooking, and the eggplant will probably combust and kill everyone in a 1 mile radius if you stuff it to capacity now.) Lay stuffed eggplants in the sauce mixture inside the wok/skillet and cover, simmering for about 50 minutes or until the rice is cooked. Flip the eggplants half way through. (The original recipe called for 50 minutes; I cooked mine only about 35 minutes... they were really soft.)
Remove from wok and squeeze lemon juice over the eggplant before serving.
First, I feel it is entirely necessary to give a shout out to a country that sells affordable tofu. Shop for tofu at your local Kroger, and you'll be paying at least a few dollars for a ridiculously small cube of it. Take a trip to our local market, however, and you'll cough up the equivalent of about 7 cents for a nice little chunk. And so, friends, our lunch today was brought to us for mere pocket change. And knowing that always makes it taste just a little better.
Ingredients:
3 large squares of tofu (The guy measuring my tofu today was shady; I asked for the equivalent of 3/4 lb. and am not sure how much I got... likely more so I'd pay a little more.)
1/2 c. chicken broth
1 t. tumeric
1/2 t. onion powder
1/2 t. garlic powder
salt to taste
2 bunches of green onions, chopped
Chop the tofu into large chunks. Add it to the chicken broth in the wok. Boil, covered, for 2-3 minutes to allow the flavor to infuse. Drain excess liquid.
Then add the remaining ingredients and stir/scramble for 3-5 minutes. Salt to taste. Add more seasonings to taste. This is great, fast, easy, and healthy too!
An original recipe.
The sandwich. Ingenious.
In a world devoid of cold cuts, thank goodness for the good old crock pot. Pulled pork BBQ sandwiches coming right up!
Ingredients:
5 small tomatoes, chopped
1/2 T. oil
1/2 large chopped onion
1/2 c. tomato paste
3/4 c. water
1/3 c. apple cider vinegar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1T. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. black pepper
3 1/2 t. barbecue sauce (You could use a little less of a stronger barbecue sauce or a dot of Liquid Smoke. We use a really watered down product here labeled as BBQ sauce.)
2 lb. shredded pork, cooked (We've done this with chicken too and it's amazing!)
3T. cornstarch to thicken
Combine all ingredients in crock pot. Cook 6-8 hours on low. Remove top last half hour to thicken as needed.
The man wanted soup… well, he actually just commented that he loves a good thick soup, and I, not knowing what else in the local supermarket would thicken a soup, whipped out the cornstarch and a whole bunch of veggies and got cooking. This was easy and actually turned out quite well… Compliments to the chef, I suppose.
½ c. cornstarch combined with some water
3 c. chicken broth
2 T. Italian seasoning
1 t. salt
½ t. black pepper
vegetables:
7 small tomatoes, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 medium potatoes, diced (Now’s a good time to mention I don’t know the difference between chopped and diced…)
2 carrots, diced
1 ear of corn, de-kerneled
several long green bean strands, chopped
Combine all ingredients in the crock pot. I cooked it on low for 3 hours, covered, then on high for one, uncovered to allow it to thicken a bit more. The man was happy.
We ate this with some cornbread for a great little lunch.
An original recipe.
This little wife went to market. I thought I was being ripped off by the pork lady, so I bought just a little and decided to supplement my recipe with a chicken. It turns out I didn't need the chicken after all because the pork was enough, so I decided to stuff it. (they stuff turkeys at Thanksgiving; how hard could it be to stuff a chicken?)
I didn't have many ingredients on hand, so I decided to make something up as I went.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups cooked wild rice
10 garlic cloves, chopped
1 centimeter ginger pieces
1/4 teaspoon salt
half of one large onion, diced
1/2 cup water
1T chicken powder
2T broth (beef or chicken)
1T oil
2T Italian seasoning, plus more for rubbing on the chicken
1 whole chicken (mine was about 2 pounds)
First, I threw some wild rice into the rice cooker (It looks purple in the pictures because the black rice component bleeds purple when cooked.) Meanwhile, I chopped 10 garlic cloves and a 1 square centimeter piece of ginger. I cooked these in about 2 tablespoons of broth (beef or chicken is fine... I actually used some remaining pork juice from a recipe I'd just finished.) A dash of salt, a tablespoon of oil, a half cup of water, tablespoon of chicken powder, 2 tablespoons of Italian seasoning, and half a diced onion later, there was a great smelling sauce ready.
I set half the sauce aside to be rubbed on the outside of the chicken later on, and then added the rice to the remaining sauce and cooked them together for just a minute or two to mix the flavors.
Then I set the rice aside and toasted a handful of almonds on the wok to be mixed with the rice mixture.
Now, it was time to stuff the bird. There was a hole near its back end (where I suppose there should be). But really, I stuffed the rice mixture into the hollowed out bird and then poured the remaining liquid onto the outside of the bird, also rubbing a few extra Italian spices on the bird.
It looked like it was just basking in all of its glory there on the baking sheet, and I couldn't help laughing out loud.
The bird, inside and out, was already cooked, so I downed the cooking time and temperature from many stuffed bird recipes I'd seen and just cooked it for 50 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
I didn't know how to cut it (and my bird looked so stinking cool I didn't want to disrupt it), so I just served it as is and me and Aus ripped it to pieces and scooped up the rice too. It was a much greater success than I expected on maybe my greatest experiment thus far, and we'll certainly be trying this again. We're not chicken.
An Original Recipe
Perhaps the unintentional theme of this blog is "my amazing husband." I feel like it just oozes from me, every day, a comment here, a story of his amazing servant heart there. So, dear friends, this post is about the time, way back two days ago, when he said, "Hey, precious Bethany, you just rest; I'll make dinner."
"Really?"
Really Chili.
Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef, cooked and drained
6 small tomatoes, diced
1 medium onion, diced
2 green bell peppers, diced
1 cup red beans
1 cup pumpkin, diced
1/4 cup chili powder
salt to taste (1-1.5 teaspoons)
black pepper to taste
Mix together in a slow cooker. Cook for several hours on low. Yum!
An Original Recipe
