Chicken Sautee with (Garlic and) Green Olive Topping

After the chicken enchiladas were rejected in 2005, I tried pulling a recipe from Epicurious. Now, if I hadn't had a leftover bottle of green olives from a recent attempt to shoot a proper martini, I probably never would have looked at this recipe. It was 2005. Ground Cumin was not in my cabinet. "I hate ground cumin" was the review of the dish, so I never made it again. Until now.

I'm not even sure how I made this dish back then. I never bough fresh parsley. I don't feel like there was fresh garlic on hand. And there was definitely no food processor. While last time might have just been old chopped green olives, this time I went slightly crazy with the garlic. I just kept tossing more and more into the food processor, forgetting that this wasn't a roast or something--it was all going to end up on top of the chicken.

Overall, though, it was better than the first attempt. Scrappy, meanwhile, had plain chicken with BBQ sauce.

Rejected Recipe Finally Gets Made

In 2005, I pulled a recipe for chicken enchiladas and corn salsa from Woman's Day when my roommate and I were going to stop ordering so much takeout. The recipe was rejected.

In 2006, I pulled the recipe again for LV when he was looking for something simple. It was rejected again.

This week, in an attempt to plan more, I pulled out the two copies of the recipe and decided to try it. Slicing up the avocado is the longest part of the recipe. Super easy... (Not that I'm calling LV a pansy. But it is really easy.)

"I don't know how well that's going to go over," LV said, looking at the enchiladas and referring to Scrappy's tendency to reject any meat that is not a solid shape. "The corn, though, she'll dig."

Twenty minutes later, looking at Scrappy's plate, LV had to retract his prediction. All the corn was still there. Scrappy was not swayed to eat avocados because they had been her grandfather's favorite things to eat. Meanwhile, the enchiladas were almost gone because, due to certain the resident Puerto Ricans' distaste for spicy sauces, they were covered in BBQ sauce.

"Would you eat Brussels sprout if I covered it in BBQ sauce?" LV asked.

"No," Scrappy said. "I would know [it was still Brussels sprout]."

More Scones

I wanted to make muffins or some sort of bread for breakfast, but I wasn't sure what. We didn't have a lot in the cabinets to add to any muffins. Then I saw the Better Homes & Gardens recipe for scones. It seemed easier that the previous recipe. Unfortunately, it was also super sticky, so I just dropped them into lumps on the baking sheets. I suppose that's not really unfortunate at all. I mean, they tasted just as good and look fine here. Yeah, nothing really unfortunate here...

Apples, Cinnamon, and Patience

I woke up and wanted pancakes. Our stove is kind of lame and doesn't allow for much control over the heat. So, I've always hated making pancakes on that stove. You have to be really patient and just them sit there for a very long time. Normal pancakes shouldn't take that long. These had to really be worth the wait.

First I added cinnamon to the batter. Then I remembered we had a bag of apples leftover from my last shoot. (Fancy catering...) Voila. Ici les cinnamon apples pancakes.

Why stop with the apples there? For dinner, we had pork with apples and tangerines. I actually let that simmer long enough, too, so it tasted better than on previous attempts.

Layers and Layers...

It's a good thing that this lasagna was so much better than last year's lasagna because we had a lot leftover. I ate lasagna for lunch every day, then we had some for dinner, then I ate some more for lunch. There is still one more serving in the fridge...

Lasagna No. 2

So, more than a year after my first attempt ("Bluebrry Buckle (and lasagna)"), I decided to finally give lasagna another try. This time, I used the recipe right off the box while keeping in mind the advice from the Addiverse (a place I don't visit often enough).

While this second attempt stacked up to be overflowing in the baking dish and weigh about 10 pounds, it just became a big puddle on the plate.

Scrappy looked at it like we were serving slime for dinner. She cut the tiniest piece of noodle ever and somehow managed to swallow it.

I had already met my quota for nonsense much earlier in the day, so I might have lacked a little patience when explaining that lasagna is like every other Italian food she's ever had--pasta with spaghetti sauce. Eat it.

Somewhat surprisingly, it was only the green beans she tried to throw out at the end of dinner.

Valentine's Day

In the spirit of less-meticulous planning, I went shopping at the last minute for Valentine's dinner. LV's favorite foods are the Hormel pork tenderloin, asparagus, crème brulée and some other things that didn't go with those first three. In my search for the pork tenderloin, I found some other goodies that seemed like they would be easier to prepare than last year's menu.

There as the mushroom/tomato/cheese plate...

Bread...

Wine...

Lobster bisque (a frozen pack that just needed to heat up during our cocktail hour)...

The pork tenderloin and steamed asparagus...

(Which deserves lots of space because it was really good.)

And, finally, the crème brulée (a Better Homes & Gardens recipe--who knew?)

Pork and Rotini

As opposed to a year ago, when I would meticulously plan dinner and shop for all sorts of specific ingredients, we now buy pork, chicken and beef every week and then just figure out what to do with it later. This is the week's pork with what was left of a box of pasta.

Steak with Green Sauce

The food processor comes in a blue box that features a picture of the food processor filled with neatly stacked slices of green, yellow and red peppers. I think this is just a suggestion for how to put food into the processor. But the instructions imply that I can feed vegetables through the opening and the blades will slice my vegetables to look like the picture. Above is a picture of my vegetables... I served them over the rice and steak we had for dinner.

I've had a lot of Domino's lately...

You should check out the other blog to see what's keeping me away from the stove. Click Here

(I'd say "keeping me out of the kitchen," but that's where Hair and Makeup tend to set up and where I put my feeble catering attempts.)

Scones!

This recipe for cinnamon scones from an old issue of Food & Wine has been stuck to my refrigerator for months. I finally decided to make it this morning. It also gave me an excuse to finally get out the food processor.

I didn't read the directions carefully enough, so mine don't look like the three pictured in the issue, but they were pretty tasty for a first. (If a little bland and undercooked.)

This is leftover spaghetti from the night before. I thought it looked like an absurd amount of food, but was told that it is a small dish and "Don't treat me like a freak." The motion blur was approved, though. ;0)