Fresh Kale

I picked up some fresh kale tonight at Farm to Family. I fell in love with kale last winter and have been impatiently waiting for kale to make an appearance at my favorite farmer's market. I squealed with delight when I saw it come in last week!

On my way home from assisting on a photo shoot this afternoon, I stopped in and picked up some veggies for the week and almost forgot my beloved kale!! Fortunately, I came to my senses and grabbed a few handfuls. I thought about blanching it but that doesn't add any flavor so I threw a recipe together! Hope you try some kale and enjoy it as much as I did tonight!

Fresh Kale

2 handfuls of fresh kale, on the stalk
1 purple onion, sliced or diced
2 teaspoons minced garlic
olive oil

Heat the oil in a pan. Add onion and let it start to become translucent. Add minced garlic and stir. While this is cooking, cut your kale into bite size chunks. If you have long stalks, cut them down a bit. Once the onions are soft enough for your taste, add the kale. Stir the kale a few times to make sure it all cooks down. This should take about 4 minutes. You don't want the kale to be limp and soggy looking.

Remove from pan and serve. Top with some Parmesan cheese if desired.

And nothing exploded!

What a great domestic day! Soup, carnitas, baked chicken, friends, dancing in the kitchen, great grocery deals... I ROCK!!

Yesterday, I hit up the produce bus for some fresh kale. I was determined to make sausage, kale and white bean soup. I really wanted to get the kale and root veggies from them. I ended up coming home with organic sausage, a ton of kale and what I thought was a turnip. But maybe it's a rutabega? I'm perplexed and not really sure what I put in my soup, but it's good so I'm not too concerned about it!

Regardless... I was so excited to make this soup today! I had to hit up the grocery store for onions, carrots, celery and a few other items. I came home with pork loin (for carnitas), two packages of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, various veggies, butter, two gallons of milk and a few other things for under $30. Not too shabby! I came home knowing exactly how I'd use these groceries and I was determined to maximize my time in the kitchen and adopt a Once A Month Cooking mentality.

First, I tackled that amazing soup! DELISH! Okay wait.. let me start at the beginning. First I cooked the organic sausage and drained it. As I was chopping the root veggies, I kept... er... sampling the sausage. Yes, I was sampling it; making sure it was good enough for us to put in the soup. That sausage.... it was like a pork dream come true! Such a mellow, butter after taste. I wanted to sit down with a straw and suck it all up slowly. Thank you, thank you, thank you Farm to Family for selling the Polyface sausage! I'll be back for more!!

While my root veggies were cooking in the leftover pork fat (not the healthiest choice but so so scrumptuous!), I did another first: I cooked the white beans in a pressure cooker. Not any old pressure cooker, but my grandmother's pressure cooker! I'm sure she was having a good chuckle watching down on me as I danced in the kitchen to my Pandora station, cut root veggies and fretted about the cooker exploding everywhere.


This soup turned out to be so amazing! And it makes a huge batch so I shared half of it with a friend. I think from now on when I make a soup, I will always find a friend to pass some of it along to. Next time, I'm going to try to make it using only local ingredients. Gotta support those farmers!

Oh! The rest of the food! The pork tenderloin is in the crockpot with some lime juice, busy working on becoming carnitas. That should be done by bedtime tonight and I'll put a lot of it up in the freezer. The chicken breasts are in the oven with the remaining onion bits and carrots, roasting in a little bit of left over chicken broth. When that's done, I'll put the veggies in the fridge to snack on and will cut the chicken up into bite-size pieces. Then into baggies and into the freezer!

Out of the $30 I spent today on groceries, I have at least a dozen meals for my family of four! The carnitas last forever. They're such an easy, inexpensive meal that spreads out for quite a while. By cooking and cutting the chicken in advance, I find that I'm able to spread it out over more meals than if I just plopped a chicken breast on each person's plate.

Move over Claire Huxtable and Martha Stewart! I'm rockin' it today!

Meatloaf Muffins

Tonight's menu called for Meatloaf Muffins.

These were DELISH!!! SO so easy to make!

http://thematzats.blogspot.com/2008/02/meatloaf-muffins.html

Ingredients

1 lb extra lean ground beef
1 box Stove Top stuffing mix (I used a my homemade recipe)
1 cup water
2 egg whites
1 medium onion, diced
1 T A1 sauce

Directions

Mix all ingredients together and divide into 12 muffin cups that have been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

12 servings (2 ww points each)

======================

Here's how I modified it...

I used about a cup of frozen chopped onion.
I used about a tablespoon of A1.
We had some finely chopped, leftover carrots and cauliflower so I tossed that in too.
I added about 1/4c ground flax seed.
I added 1 c of shredded cheddar.
Didn't use the egg whites.

I plan on making this regularly! I think I'm going to start making this in advance, roll it into balls and freeze it so I can just pull it out in the morning, let it thaw and then cook it for dinner. I love that the we put veggies into it.

On the menu tonight...

Earlier this week, I decided to plan out my meals for the week. Tonight we were scheduled to have Bourbon Chicken.

Holy wow this is good!!!

I guesstimated the amount of sugar, added a lot more pepper flakes and ginger, didn't have enough ketchup and it still turned out FABULOUS!! The house smelled heavenly! Even the kids said that dinner smelled wonderful.

To sneak in some veggies, I cooked some cauliflower (gross) and cut it into small pieces. I mixed it in with the cooked rice, poured the sauce over it and it was pretty undetectable by the kids. I could tell when I got a bite, and didn't like it, but I ate it anyway.

Ingredients

2 lbs boneless chicken breasts or thighs, cut into bite size pieces
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 teaspoon ginger
3/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 cup apple juice
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup soy sauce

Directions

Heat oil in a large skillet. Add chicken pieces and cook until lightly browned. Remove Chicken from skillet and set aside. Add remaining ingredients, heating over medium heat until well mixed and sugar has dissolved. Add chicken back to the skillet and bring to a hard boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.


Serve over rice or noodles.

http://thematzats.blogspot.com/2008/01/bourbon-chicken.html

My version turned out much darker than the photo on the blog where I found this recipe but it was still scrumptuous.

I think that if I make a triple batch of the sauce in advance, then portion it into freezer bags and freeze it, this would be an easy OAMC recipe. Especially if the chicken is precooked. Even if the chicken isn't cooked, dump the frozen chicken and the frozen sauce into the crock pot on low all day... YUM!!!

On being June Cleaver...

Here's a few things you should know before reading any further:

1. Each week, a parent is responsible for supplying afternoon snacks for the children in my son's preschool class. This is my week.
2. I asked for and received The Sneaky Chef for Christmas but have barely cracked it open.
3. I really, really, really, really, REALLY stink when it comes to baking cookies. Just ask any one in my graduating class. They weren't called hockey pucks because they were round.
4. I planned to make Cinnamon Rattlers, Breakfast Cookies, PB&J Muffins, Grilled Cheese Muffins and something else I can't remember at the moment.
   
5. I love my son dearly and you're about to hear about the depths of that love.

Two days ago, I attempted to make Cinnamon Rattlers, a recipe from The Sneaky Chef. It was a pretty simple recipe - chick peas, sugar, cinnamon and a pinch of salt; cook until they are dry and crispy. How hard can it be? Considering that I have ruined my second batch, you can deduce that I do not have the requisite level of skill to successfully bake the heck out of some measly little chick peas!

I feel like Goldilocks -- the first batch wasn't done enough and the second was over done (translation: burnt). Even the non-burnt chick peas of the 2nd batch weren't completely dried out so it might as well have been a third failure.

Well, while the Cinnamon Rattlers II were on their way to being destroyed tonight, I was also trying to make the Breakfast Cookies. Little M helped me mash up the Total cereal. He poured in the flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, etc. He was so proud of himself and we talked about telling all his friends at school about the cookies tomorrow.

Yes, we had high hopes. And I was so very clever! I was able to fit more than half of the cookie dough onto the first cookie sheet! Speedy baking at its best except for one small detail: I followed the instructions and cooked them for 18 minutes without checking on them.

Yep, that first batch was black. Big M said they were edible and good. Little M proudly ate one and didn't even choke on the char.

I made slightly smaller serving sizes and stuck the next batch into the oven. They came out perfect! Then I counted. I needed at least two cookies per child (quick! do the math! 2 cookies being crammed into 7 little pie holes!) and I always try to give the teachers a little something so I needed at least 16 cookies. Remember, most of the dough was burnt on that overzealously overstuffed first cookie sheet.

I had 11 good, edible, non-caustic cookies. I needed 5 more. I further reduced the serving sizes and was able to eek out five more cookies. As they cooled on the cookie sheet on top of the oven, I put the 11 good cookies into a container.

Fast forward about 15 minutes. Big M comes downstairs and goes into the kitchen. He comes out of the kitchen and starts to go up the stairs. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a cookie in his hand! "NO!!!!!", I shouted, "I NEED THOSE COOKIES! I have just enough."

-- insert deer-in-the-headlights-look --

"You already ate one, didn't you?"

-- deer-in-the-headlights-look remains unphased --

"I had just enough! I had JUST enough! I had just enough....."

Okay. Um. Plan C? PB&J muffins or Grilled Cheese Muffins, right? Yes, well, here's the thing.

Sneaky Chef relies on you making "make ahead" purees that you use as the base for many of your recipes. These two recipes required the Orange Puree which is made from cooked-until-they-give-up-and-limply-beg-for-pity yams and carrots. I had not yet made this Orange Puree because I wasn't planning on making these recipes until Monday night.

Are you starting to feel my panic?

Well, I'll spare you the additional painful details for the most part. While my Orange Puree ingredients boiled away on the stove top, I grabbed a box of cake mix, added a stick of melted butter and an egg, mixed and formed it into little balls, plopped them on the cookie sheets and made some cake mix cookies.

So much for healthy. So much for my June Cleaver Mom Of The Year award. So much for feeling so superior for providing such healthy alternatives to the junk the kids normally get. And so much for my complaining to the teachers about the unhealthy snacks.

Angel Food Meal 1

From the January Angel Food regular box: Pork roast, garlic green beans and refried beans

Refried Beans

Soak and cook the beans according to directions.
Pulverize one small onion in the food processor.
Sautee onion in 2T of butter and salt a bit. Remove once the onion is soft.
Put 1/2 of the beans and the onion in the food processor.
Add salt to taste.
Pulverize!
I added a bit of liquid to help thin out the puree'd beans.

Garlic Green Beans

1/2 bag green beans
1 T minced garlic
2 T butter
1/4 c water
salt

Sautee garlic in the butter on med-high heat until the garlic is cooked. Add green beans and water. Cook until done. Add salt to taste.

Pork Roast

1 pork roast
olive oil
salt
pepper
Roasted garlic mix from Costco
3-4 med onions, cut into quarters

The pork roast was in the string webbing and I took it out so it would cook faster.

Heat oven to 425. Rub roast with olive oil, then salt, then liberally season with the roasted garlic mix. Use a lot of salt - usually more than you think you need.

Place it in an oven safe baking dish and toss the onions around and on the roast.

I cooked mine for 30 mins but it wasn't completely done in the center. I'd try it for 45 mins. If you're afraid of it drying out, add some beef, vegetable or chicken stock to the baking dish - just enough to cover the bottom.