Ice Cream

I don't know if it can really count as something I made, but, considering this comes from the same day as frozen pizza, the caramel and chocolate sauces have to count as work. Too bad I didn't push all the cords out of the way on the countertop...

Pancakes and Pizza

I started making pancakes when I was in junior high. Then I started making crepes. I have no idea now I used to make my crepes, but I was really good at it. Pancakes have never been a problem for me. Then I met my new stove.

The stove at my last apartment was only turned on once. The stove at LV's place was magical by comparison. I found a photo of it today when I was cleaning off the old computer's hard drive, and it clearly says "precision simmer" next to the burner switches. There's nothing precise about the new stove.

Until today, pancakes at the new place have all been burned on one side, under-cooked on the other. My pancakes do not fair well against the inability to control the flame and an eager six-year-old. Today, when she told me she could spell pbskids.org, I sent her to go play on the computer; the pancakes needed more time on this range than she was going to allow them.

Today's batch was more picture-ready than they have been since we moved here, but I felt like the outside was a little tough. That's not adjective I want to use to describe my breakfast...

For dinner, I forgot to defrost anything, so frozen pizza it was. But I hate just sticking a pizza in the oven without adding anything to it--a seasoning--anything. Today, by request, I added bacon bits. My only complaint is "Did I have to pick the least pretty corner to shoot?" But it's okay. Bacon makes everything better.

Broiled Pork Chops

I'm not sure who was happier: Me upon seeing LV getting dinner started or LV upon seeing me with a big bag of comic books for him.

When I walked in the door, he had already started the rice and was getting ready to figure out how I usually make the pork. Rather than run off to organize his new comics, he and the Little One watched me prepare the rest of dinner. She was actually more opposed to me seasoning the pork than she was to me preparing broccoli.

LV hates broccoli. He asked in a hopeful tone, "Are you going to season it with whatever that was you used last time to make it tasty?"

"Salt?"

"No, it was different."

"Garlic salt?"

No broccoli actually made it onto the Little One's plate. I thought that would save us from a battle over vegetables. I thought wrong.

She cut all the carrots in half, which did not increase the amount of carrots on her plate, but it looked like there were too many. Too many carrots then meant she didn't finish her dinner in time to play a boardgame with us. One of these days she'll learn...

Chicken Parm (sort of)

We had a lot of breaded chicken leftover from earlier in the week, so it became Chicken Parmigiana. Sort of. Scrappy and LV aren't cheese fans, so they had spaghetti topped with chicken and tomato sauce. I had the same, but threw a bunch of shredded mozzarella cheese on top. It looks pretty gross melted in the picture. I think, not only did I not really feel like cooking, but I also didn't feel like getting a good shot of this dinner...

Steak Sandwiches

The recipe called for flat breads, and then everything was supposed to be cut like finger food. I was perfectly happy to eat this on a big roll (even if I did have to layer the pieces of sirloin in order to make it feel more like a sandwich). Vidalia onions sauteed with brown mustard, marinated red peppers... These were so much better than chicken rolled in Ritz crackers.

"Little Strips of Goodness" Pt 2

This time I knew what I was I getting into, so there was enough seasoned breading for all the chicken, unlike last time. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take the foil from the cooking trays and use it to stuff the bowl for the photo. As soon as I poured the dressing into the bowl to be a dip, I realized how empty that was going to look in the photo. So I stuck some Happy Juice in the background to distract you. Maybe I should make "empty bowl" an index search term...

Pasta with Leftovers

I was swamped this weekend, so I didn't leave the computer. LV took over making dinner for the night. I thought the fact that Scrappy was sitting down to a plate of carrots merited a photo alone. She had fresh pasta with leftover oven-fried pork while LV had fresh pasta with leftover meatloaf. And lots of carrots all around.

Meatloaf (Part 2)

This time the meatloaf tasted better to me. I forgot to throw in all the Italian seasonings (they got sprinkled on top) and I used only beef. It was still not as dry as what I think meatloaf should taste (which is really a good thing), but I enjoyed it. And everyone ate carrots. Success!

That blob on the side? Leftover mashed potatoes from Chicken Delicious. They looked really good before I microwaved them. Then they turned to soup.

Porkchops with Applesauce

I hadn't planned to make oven-fried porkchops, but the idea of breading the pork and eating it with applesauce hit LV hard on the train ride home, so we went to the store, bought some applesauce, and then threw newly-breaded porkchops in the oven. For the breading, I got to use some more of the fresh thyme and rosemary that's still in the fridge.

I didn't feel like making any side other than broccoli. A healthy dash of garlic salt before boiling might have elevated the broccoli might have to "as good as the pork."

Stir-Fry (no wok required)

My mom once told me, rather out of the blue, that one of the most bland things she'd ever eaten was the stir-fry I made her when she had come to visit me in New York. That particular stir-fry had been the specialty of someone who thought no seasoning should ever interfere with the smell or taste of meat. I didn't know any better. My mom would have been much happier with this stir-fry--it required not only the three tablespoons of soy sauce she didn't get to have with her bland stir-fry, but also fresh ginger, garlic, white wine, and some spicy elements.

Things That Didn't Merit Separate Entries

I couldn't believe it had been a week since my last post, so I decided to take a picture of my fridge to sort of show that I haven't been eating McDonald's and ordering pizza for a week.

1. CHICKEN QUESADILLAS The night before I made the Veal with Lemon-Capers sauce, I made chicken the way we used to at the old place: salt, pepper, olive oil. If we'd had some Project Runway to yell at and more Heineken, I would have thought it was 100 degrees outside. Three days later, the leftover chicken was marinated with chipotle sauce, chopped and thrown into the tortillas that are labeled in the photo. I assumed we had cheese when I decided to start making quesadillas. We had a lot of Kraft American singles...

2. SPAGHETTI & MEATBALLS It was pretty, but I didn't make the sauce or the meatballs. There's a recipe for homemade pasta in my cookbook, but I certainly didn't feel like doing anything but pouring from boxes, jars and containers that night.

3. CHICKEN DELICIOUS We ordered a roasted chicken (the tinfoil) from what LV thought would be the new Chirpin' Chicken. The chicken was really dry and nothing at all like Chirpin'. But the coleslaw and mashed potatoes were good. Compared to the really dry chicken.

4. PIZZA Tuesday we had Scrappy as per usual, so I suggested making one of the DiGiorno thin crust pizzas. Unlike LV's last oven, the new one has no clock, no timer, and doesn't beep when it's done preheating. Making a post out of his success with frozen pizza might have been rather condescending, though.

Veal with Lemon-Capers Sauce

I cheated on Valentine's Day... I've been faithfully pulling recipes from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook since January, but I thought Valentine's Day called for something more dramatic. So, I went to Epicurious, where they were promoting Jamie Oliver's Valentine's Day recipe for anchovy-something-or-other or a less scary-sounding recipe for two. I skipped the soccer mom cookbook and the anchovy delight, and went for veal with potatoes.

LV hung out in the kitchen and helped me make dinner, which normally doesn't happen because I feel I can't have a blog if I don't do all the work. But this was better. We were listening to the Billy Joel box set, and probably should have changed it before we sat down to eat. His poppy synthesizer hits don't mesh well with candlelight.

Oh, yeah, and there's a total lack of a centerpiece. It looks like a cat food dish in the middle of the table... LV sent me flowers, I sent him flowers, we didn't need more flowers for the table. Doh. The bowls are from the bread and dipping sauce we were munching on while making dinner.

Leftover Salad

We've had a lot of leftovers in our fridge for the past couple weeks. Leftover casseroles, lasagna, wings, cheesecake, coffeecake,... So I decided to take what I could and use up as much as possible in one dinner. LV had leftover steak (I guess didn't document that from earlier this week) with wings and mashed potatoes. Then I took the spinach I bought for beef sandwiches that we never made and threw the pork with melon-tomato relish and blueberries on top. My salad was prettier, so it gets the photo.

Pork with Melon-Tomato Relish

In the middle of a cold snap, I decided it was time to make a summertime grill recipe... If I make this again when cantalope and honeydew melon are actually in season, it will probably taste much better. It was mainly the watermelon that sketched me out. I got one of those plastic containers from the store that has chunks of random melon in it. Like funny-smelly watermelon. But I'd just read an article about rinsing meat, so I figured rinsing fruit to get rid of sketchy-watermelon-smell couldn't be nearly as riksy as rinsing rancid meat.

Oh. That's the left-over insides of the potato skins making a comeback as mashed potatoes behind the porkchop. They weren't very mashed. I'm used to the mashed potatoes out of a box.

Super Bowl Sunday

We decided to have a Super Bowl party. That amounted to four people coming over. But that's more of a party than any other Sunday, so I started looking around for what to make. Wings, of course, and Potato Skins. This is a picture of the skins before they went into the refridgerator. I didn't take any pictures when the came out of the oven (cheese was added, sour cream on the side) or of the wings at all because I was more caught up in getting food out on the table. And people might think I'm really bizarre for taking pictures of the food they're about to eat.

At the last minute I realized we had no sort of desert. Everything was salty bar food. To try to get Scrappy more involved, I pitched a couple different chocolate cookie recipes to her. As we were rolling all the dough into little balls, she asked where the chocolate chips were. The "like Oreos" concept apparently hadn't been a clear enough description.

These cookies have gotten so much better over the course of a week. They came out of the oven a little dry, but with all the frosting sandwiched in between (half were vanilla-filled, half were chocolate) they've become more moist. Mmm...

Eww... Breakfast for Dinner

Hash browns always sound good to me. When I saw the recipe for hash browns (not home fries or the green pepper-potato-onion-mush some diners serve), I ran out and bought a bag of potatoes.

I've never peeled potatoes before. I patiently peeled all the potatoes after scrubbing them. Then patiently shredded far too many potatoes because I was being diligent to the recipe. Then I got tired; Breakfast for Dinner is supposed to be quick and happy. I decided the potato shreds did not need to be rinsed.

First the potatoes turned a rust color. Then they turned gray.

It looks like a photo of a giant sausage patty or something encrusted with pecans. There is sausage in the picture, but mainly you're looking at the hasbrowns. They were so gross. Much as LV told me they would be fine--there are dirty potato chips that aren't washed at all--he wasn't about to finish the leftovers. If I hadn't started drinking Heineken while peeling potatoes, I probably wouldn't have been able to eat more than a few forkfulls.

Fewer potatoes, more rinsing next time.

Chicken Kiev: Attempt 3

So this time I didn't pick up chicken breasts still attached to chest cavities, but the thin slices were far too thin to actually work with. Only one stip actually held the bundle of onion, garlic and parsley. The rest were open on one end or the other, causing all the butter to spill out before they were done baking.

I started preparing these the day before (at the same time as the lasagna), so being able to come home and not really have to do any work offset the frustration of it not turning out as well as the first attempt.

Blueberry Buckle (and Lasagna)

I had been eyeing the Raspberry Buckle recipe in the cookbook for a few weeks before I made this. There were two weeks of trips to the supermarket where I couldn't find frozen berries at all or fresh berries I wanted to use. Then I gave up and decided to make Blueberry Buckle with fresh blueberries. After they had been baked, the blueberries tasted so much better. Unlike the nun's puffs, I'd make the Blueberry Buckle again.

My mom makes a really good lasagna. It's one of the few things she makes that I really like. I don't have her recipe, though. I feel like it's something like (with resentment), "Pour the jar of spaghetti sauce in the bottom of the pan, don't cook the noodles, layer on some ground beef, some cottage cheese, some more spaghetti sauce, repeat." I decided to try the Better Homes & Gardens recipe. There was a Contadina recipe on the back of the crushed tomatoes label, but I stuck with the BHG route.

The first difference I noticed was that my lasagna was not very tall. It just doesn't looked like lasagna when it's kind of slumping over that way. The sauce BHG calls for has an entire onion in it. And lots of tomatoes. And a little meat. But mainly you end up eating an onion layered with noodles and lots of Italian spices. I thought it was okay. Not lasagna, but good enough for dinner. We'll have to find a new recipe next time.

Heineken

I gave Heineken its own search label a long time ago because it plays such a key role in the menu at our house, but this would be Heineken's first solo entry: LV's going away party. It's kind of sad that Heineken is being overshadowed by Stella, the real LV choice of drink, in Heineken's first solo appearance.

(There are some takeout nachos in the background courtesy Wackjob, but food is never a key ingredient in getting people to participate in karaoke.)

Oven-Fried Pork Chops

I bought pork with no idea of how it was going to be cooked. Flipping through the cookbook, I found a recipe that called for breading and not much else. Perfect.

LV got very excited when he saw the breading come out. If only we could get the Little One that excited about vegetables. Even just carrots.