The Annual Chicken Strips

"This is my favorite chicken."

"Really?" I genuinely find it hard to believe that chicken I produced could be anyone's favorite. Especially when the person stating that this is his favorite chicken has entered debates with strangers on the subway about the best fried chicken and made trips to distant parts of the city for some grilled chicken. Whole Wheat Ritz Crackers and some other mystery ingredients are his favorite?

"Yeah. We only have these for New Year's."

I think has been almost a year since I made these chicken strips. "That's sad."

"Why's that sad?"

"If they're your favorite, we should have them more often..."

Grilled Pork

Still trying to avoid boring grilled meats, I marinated this with soy sauce, brown sugar, lemon juice, and lime juice.

This should be LV's post

Armed with a new skillet and leftover rolls, LV made bacon and egg sandwiches for breakfast. Mmm...

Cookies for Santa

By the time you reach third grade, navigating your beliefs about Santa can be tricky. I, personally, always wondered why Santa seems to spoil the rich kids. But that was only after I would ponder how on Earth he got into my house. I didn't have a fireplace growing up and I don't have one now. Here is Scrappy's theory: He smells the cookies and knows where to go.

"Can we just leave him some Oreos?"

Oh, no no no. He wants gingerbread cookies. Luckily I've worked out the kinks to cookies that we cut into shapes--Scrappy has her work station, I have mine. That way we can work at our own paces and if she decided she really only want to decorate (and eat the decorations) so be it. I can still finish the batches in a timely manner.

Unfortunately for me, I haven't worked out the kinks with my icing bags and decorating tips. After mixing up way too much powdered sugar with water, I learned that this is possibly the worst frosting to load into a bag. It's not a frosting and will not act like a frosting. It's a glaze. Period. (Sad.)

Meanwhile, Scrappy was having a ball loading up individual cookies with as much decorative sugar as possible. LV simply raised his eyebrows when he saw them. My favorite "linguisticist" couldn't think of a way to describe them.

Birthday!

I found a use for that giant block of ground beef in my freezer: sliders. Much like the cupcakes, there was no input concerning the menu for the Star Wars party. Whatever I felt like making... The first year I did this, I went crazy (exhibit A). The first year, everyone showed up early and ate very little. The next year, I was supposed to be photographing another party so the menu became pizza and chips (exhibit B). That year, guests showed up at least an hour early. This year was supposed to be different. This year I would cook, but I wouldn't spend all my time cooking. This year I would be ready for them when they showed up at noon instead of 1 'o-clock, like the invitation says. This year would be better.

Noon - The doorbell doesn't ring.

1:30 p.m. - The doorbell doesn't ring.

2:45 p.m. - I wonder if I should put my mango salsa back in the fridge. Oh, hark. The doorbell rings.

Top Ten 2008 Pictures

Everyone loves a good Top Ten list, especially at the end of the year. I'll date this for late-December and we can all pretend to have a nostalgic look back at Happiest Puppies 2008.

10. Blueberries and Cherry Tomatoes with Hamburgers. I like the simplicity. (8/10)

9. BBQ Enchiladas. They look so unsuspecting but actually garnered an angry comment. (5/21)

 

8. Yum Salad. Mmm... (4/12)

 

7. Mini Cupcakes. Maybe I just like my little candy "M." (12/15)

 

6. Blueberries and Grilled Chicken. Maybe I'm feeling nostalgic for summer and blueberries... (7/3)

 

5. Shake Shack Burger and Fries. I like this picture. I might like the taste more. (5/30)

 

4. Blackberries, Apricots and Grilled Pork. I haven't prepared anything that colorful lately. (6/30)

 

3. Birthday Pina Colada. I don't think the wooden counter has ever looked this good. (5/27)

 

2. Butterfly Cupcake. This would have been my favorite for this list if I hadn't left all the cat food cans piled up in the background. (12/16)

 

1. Cinnamon Scones. Mmm... How have I gone so long without making more of these? (2/10)

Chicken and Cupcakes

Today was Scrappy's birthday, but it was also the day of her Winter Concert for Chorus. We hurried through dinner so she could blow out a candle on her cupcake before we ran back to the school for what was actually an entertaining show.

I had bought a lot of vegetables the week before and forgotten to use them through the week. I tried to sautee them all for tonight. It was okay.

Dozens of Cupcakes

We don't usually handle Scrappy's class room birthday celebrations, but this year the request was filtered down to me that she wanted me to make cupcakes for her class. When I asked about it, she said, "Um..." and changed the subject. That was a week before her birthday. As per usual with requests such as this, I was left hanging until the night before her birthday. This gave me plenty of time, though, to ponder what I should do with these cupcakes. The response of "Um..." had left the door wide open to interpretation.

The birthday party at Scrappy's mom's house was going to be a Tinkerbell theme. The party at our house was going to be a Star Wars theme. After looking all over the internet for Yoda and other Star Wars-themed cupcakes, I decided maybe I should just buy some High School Musical 3 papers or decorations and call it a truce. But then I went to Party City and found frosting bags and tips and--most importantly--Wilton's candy melts. Way back, when I used to read Woman's Day recipes because I was flowing the text, I had no idea what this specific ingredient was. But there they were--bags of pink, orange, and blue candies. Perfect.

Now, with the daunting task of creating at lest 25 pairs of butterfly wings from melted candy, I wasn't about to make cupcakes and frosting from scratch. Boxes of cake mix were on sale for 99 cents and frosting was like $2. Butter cake and vanilla frosting. Done. Well, except for the fact that a box of cake mix yeilds 24 cupcakes and I needed 26. Yeah, I was about to bake and decorate 48 cupcakes...

When LV asked me to bake some cupcakes for Scrappy's class, I'm sure he didn't picture me decorating until 11 p.m. And the whole while I was thinking how quickly a third grader could eat one--how little time there would be to appreciate the work. How the only person I should be trying to amuse with any of this is me. I said I didn't want to deliver them to the class. The last thing I needed to see what was became of them. The cupcakes were perfect just as they were all spread around the kitchen.

I made mini-cupcakes, too. In the end, we had 36 regular-sized cupcakes and 24 mini-cupcakes. A lot of cupcakes... I packed up 30 to go to Scrappy's class. I figured at least one would hit the floor and there are always extra people who deserve a cupcake.

Yellow Rice and Chicken

This wasn't the brand of semi-instant yellow rice that I like, so I tried to add more flavor to it. Poultry seasoning does not get me any closer to saffron...

Birthday!

A long time ago, LV bought cake mix and frosting loaded with "fun-fetti." He was supposed to make it on one of his Cake Sundays with Scrappy, but instead it sat in the cabinet until his birthday. At that point, I was supposed to make the cake with Scrappy. But her room was a disaster, so I made the cake and she eventually was able to help me frost it.

There was plenty of fun-fetti in every bite...

Pork tenderloin with asparagus is an LV favorite. This particular tenderloin was loaded with cracked pepper. Perhaps too much. To help mellow it out (and because it's another LV favorite) we had egg noodles.

Burger Party

The grocery store wasn't selling ground beef in anything less than 4 lb. packages. Seriously. What am I gonna do with four pounds of ground beef? I made four little hamburgers for LV and me, and then froze the rest. Unfortunately, I didn't think until after it was over to separate all the leftover meat into smaller sections. I froze it as one big block. The burgers, however, we delicious.

Buffalo Wings

Sundays with wings are so much better than Sundays with no wings. Mmm... Wings.

Parsley

Here we are again... more steak. I thought it would be boring to name this "steak" again. Curly parley is so much more exciting, right?

Buffalo Wings

Our grocery store had wings, so I made them for the 1 'o-clock game. They were good. Routines are good. :0)

Crab Cakes

Continuing to feel up to the challenge of more difficult dishes, I made crab cakes. When I called my mom that night and she asked what I had for dinner, I told her crab cakes. She didn't really picture me rolling them out by hand. After I explained, she said, "I'm so proud of you."

Swedish Meatballs

We had made a few trips to IKEA, so it wasn't that LV needed a Swedish meatball fix. I hadn't made them in what felt like forever and was up to the challenge. It was probably easier this time than the last time I made them.

Steak

You can see I had a lot of tomato and onion to pile on top of the broil. There wasn't time for it to bake in the oven for several hours. I think I gave it maybe two hours at a higher temperature. But then then I popped it in the broiler to give it the crispier exterior that LV likes. It was good.

Leftovers

LV didn't believe me every time I make chicken, there is one obligatory leftover piece. It's the leftover leftover--after I've eaten some of what's left and don't feel like eating it for the third time. This is leftover breaded chicken with baby spinach.

Breaded Chicken

I was tired of grilled chicken. Adding any kind of breading gets to be a pain because there are two--sometimes three--bowls involved, but I was tired of grilled chicken. So this is my chicken dipped in a flour mixture.

Buffalo Wings

I really don't like the guys on Fox who announce the Bears games. I think they're really annoying because they seem to hate the Bears. My wings kind of helped ease the pain of having to listen to them. ("Having" because WGN can't broadcast over the internet and I don't have my stereo hooked up to be able to listen to Sirius while I watch the game. One day I will figure that out...)

Pork and Carrots

After spending the day at a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party, I was, again, feeling like we should eat more vegetables. I had bought frozen carrots the week before because we hadn't had them in a while. No one was all that excited to see their return.

Trying to Offset All the Candy

LV and I had hit Target the night before and bought a bag of candy bars. In general, nothing we'd been eating all week was very healthy, so, when I went to the grocery store to look for something to make for dinner, I decided to buy a bunch of vegetables for salad. While we heard one trick-or-treater complain several times that he needed real food, we were okay and out for much longer than our first year in this neighborhood.

Baked and Broiled

This week the grocery store had wings, so I made my fake teriyaki flavor. They were saucy.

For dinner, we had steak. You can't tell from the picture how much hemming and hawing went into this meal. I didn't feel like ordering out again, but I also didn't feel like making dinner. There were too many dishes already stacked up, but we couldn't eat just steak. We ended up just creating a lot of dirty dishes and having a nice dinner.

Mangoes

Scrappy wanted to help with cubing mangoes. Her way of helping is to eat every other slice and tell me how our cooking show is going. It was far more entertaining than cooking by myself and much more tame than the witches and uncontrollable dancing spells that were involved in baking cookies.

Although she helped make the rice, Scrappy was not involved in grilling the pork. I think she was also surprised by the addition of ginger and cinnamon to the mangoes she'd cut.

Halloween Cookies

Scrappy had been asking about cookies for weeks. Cookies hadn't been high on my list of "fun things to do" for a quite a while, but I decided to go ahead and bake Halloween cookies. This time I prepared the Pillsbury sugar cookie recipe and let it sit in the refrigerator for three hours. That worked out much better than the mix we'd used before.

Scrappy decorated the cookies with powdered sugar frosting topped with more powdered sugar frosting covered in fistfuls of colored sugar crystals. Sweet and crunchy would be good ways to describe the results. I left a tray undecorated. Mmm...

Green Squash and Spaghetti

I felt we needed some vegetables (a lot, really), but didn't feel like eating frozen green beans. All we had in the fridge was green squash. So, I cut it all up and threw it in with the sauce. It was... okay.

That's Hamburger Helper

I didn't grow up on Hamburger Helper, so whenever I hear the name I picture burgers like ketchup and mustard and french fries kind of "hamburger." I had a sirloin burger leftover in one container and pasta leftover in another. I decided to combine them for lunch. With some ketchup and relish. Why not...

Cookies!

I really wanted to make chocolate chip cookies. The night before a shoot probably isn't the time be making cookies, but it's what I really wanted to do. Plus we didn't have any Oreos left.