How To Not Cook Chicken

I love the day after I get groceries.  There's just so much to cook.  It had been several weeks since we had chicken in our freezer, and after a trip to the store, I was excited to cook up some of my favorite meat.  As I threw several meals together at one time, I put some chicken in the oven.  Before I knew it, the chicken was done, so I twisted the dial on the oven to the off position and headed to the living room.  Gilmore Girls was playing, and soon I began to smell something burning.  What was going on?  Not only had I turned all of my burners off, I had taken the pans off of them.  What could be burning?

I headed to the kitchen and through the oven door I saw the top of my chicken breasts turning a nice crispy color.   The dial had been turned off, even though I had left the chicken in the oven as it cooled down.  Glancing at the dial, I noticed that it was still on a little bit, not quite on the OFF setting.  I turned it so it would be off all of the way, but it wouldn't go.  In that moment I realized that it wouldn't turn because the dial wasn't set to the OFF setting, but rather to 500 F!

A yelp escaped my mouth as I grabbed the nearest pot holder and rushed to salvage my chicken.  Thankfully my sense of smell is wonderful, and the chicken was barely toasted.  Lesson learned, check and double check the dial on the stove.  The 500 is right next to the OFF setting.

Deer? Yes, Dear

A lot of the free meat in our freezer is deer meat.  Being from the country, meat like deer, quail, squirrel, and rabbit is a little more acceptable for my palate than it is for others.  I happen to love eating all of those things, and thankfully, my husband does as well. 

Deer steak is what was on the menu for supper one night.  If you don't like, or have this, you can easily use some round steak, or other type of beef.

Take the thawed meat and rub it with some salt, pepper,and other seasonings of choice.  I used a steak rub that was delicious!  After the meat has been rubbed, add a little bit of water, just to cover the bottom of the pan (so the meat doesn't dry out), and cover with a piece of foil.  Place it in the oven at 350.  Each meat will cook for a different amount of time depending on size, thickness, etc...  Cook all the way through. 

A quick and delicious dish to enjoy with the meat is a broccoli casserole.  Take some frozen broccoli and pour into a bowl (one that will go into the microwave and the oven).  Thaw out the broccoli in the microwave.  When this is done, into the bowl pour a box of Stove-top stuffing.  Add a can of cream of mushroom soup and half a cup of shredded cheddar cheese, and mix everything together. Stick the casserole into the oven and cook until it is hot all the way through.  The casserole will start to get a little crispy on top.  Enjoy!

To Market, To Market

Getting new kitchen utensils is always great fun.  Yesterday I ended up at one of my favorite stores (a benefit of living in the cityish area.)  The World Market has everything from kitchen supplies to furniture to clothing and food.  It has everything you could imagine from all over the world.  Well, yesterday I spent some of my Christmas money and got this.

It was all only $6.99!  I'm so excited to use my new utensils items.

Breakfast for Supper

I am a BIG proponent of having breakfast at breakfast time.  I don't want pancakes for supper, or waffles, or cereal.  Sausage gravy should never be eaten after noon, and scrambled eggs,  blech!  However, the other day, I broke my no breakfast for supper rule.

For Christmas I got a great cookbook from my in-laws.  I love it!   It's called Dinner on a Dime, and you should check it out.  With an abundance of leftover ham, I went searching for recipes.  What should I find but a delicious looking ham gravy.

You too can have this great meal for breakfast or any other time of the day.

First throw some chopped onions, cubed ham, and a little bit of butter into the skillet.  Saute the dish until the onions are tender.

Next stir in 1/2 tsp of chicken bouillon granules, 1/2 tsp of Worcestershire sauce and some pepper.  While this continues to cook, add some flour and milk to make a gravy.

 

While the gravy cooks on low, chop three hard-boiled eggs.

Add these eggs to the gravy mixture, and continue to stir as the gravy cooks on low.

Add the gravy to some biscuits, eat and enjoy!

Enchilada

With all of the free food that we got lately, we had a can of enchilada sauce.  I had made enchiladas before, but not with the sauce (it's so expensive for such a little can.)  Well, with the free can, I decided to make some "real" enchiladas.  First I took some precooked, shredded pork and mixed it with half of the can of enchilada sauce and half a cup of shredded cheese.  I also added some frozen corn for more texture.

After everything was mixed together and warm I spread it on a tortilla shell and rolled it up, placing the rolled shell in a greased pan, seam side down.

When all of the tortilla shells are filled (I made six) I poured the rest of the enchilada sauce on top of the shells, and then sprinkled cheese on that.

I put my enchiladas in the freezer, but when it was time to cook, I just set the oven to 375 and cooked until the enchiladas were warmed through.  

There I had a quick and easy meal.

Bits a Pieces

While there is still cooking done in my home (Hey, we've got to eat) the interesting recipes and normal clamor of kitchen sounds is not as prevalent as it once was.  Until I am able to get back to those days (oh how I hope that comes soon), here are some bits and pieces from my Happily Ever After.

I may have mentioned my ham.  Yes, a beautiful spiral cut, bone in ham.  I can eat a good ham like candy.  Cook it up nice, and lay those delicious pieces of meat out, and I can just eat and eat on it.  Over Christmas, God provided us with our very own ham!  I was so excited.  I had never cooked a ham before.  Then I realized that it was pre-cooked, so no matter how I cooked it, it wouldn't make us sick to eat it.  Whew, that was a  relief. 

What we've eaten of it so far has been sooo delicious!  Growing up in a family of six, I never realized how big a ham was.  Sure it lasted through one meal, but it was usually gone after two or so.  For two people, a ham can feed you forever!  Well, maybe not that long, but rest assured, I have many plans for my mounds of ham.  Last night that included making a homemade pizza.

I was surprised the other day as I reached into my bottom cupboard for some shorting, when I saw this.

 

Obviously I'm going to become an onion farmer and grow them in my cupboards!  My poor onions were forgotten about when I switched to buying the frozen ones.  You may call it shameful, but my eyes appreciate the packages of chopped frozen onions a whole lot more than the fresh ones.  And really, I just chopped the real ones up and put them in the freezer for later use anyway.  Oh, in case you're wondering, I'm no longer growing onions in my cupboard.  

Steak? No. Almost Better

On our budget, steak is a novelty rarely seen, let alone tasted.  (I guess if we wanted to see it, then we could go to the grocery store and look at it, or go to a restaurant and hope that the businessman next to us ordered steak.  Of course, going out to a restaurant that serves steak, well, I guess that might take some money too.)  Anyway, when we were given a package of round steak, there was some discussion as to what round steak was.  No, it's not really steak, but it sure tastes good.

After a quick call to my mom, on the best ways to cook the meat, I soon started thawing things out and peeling the potatoes.  What good is some fried round steak, if you don't have some fried potatoes to go with them.  Fried potatoes are one of my favorite foods.  They were always a pain to make, growing up, because it took a lot of potatoes and peeling and slicing to feed six people.  Now, only feeding two people, it's not bad at all.

I started the potatoes first, because I knew that they would take the longest to cook.  I peeled them, while my husband sliced them thinly.   At the same time, we had some shorting melting in the skillet, getting hot.  When then potatoes were sliced and the skillet was hot, into the pan they went.

I sprinkled some salt and pepper on top, and stirred occasionally.  If you stir the potatoes too much as they cook they start to fall apart, but if you don't stir enough they may stick to the pan.

When the potatoes were on, and the meat was thawed I coated them in a flour mixture.  It included flour, salt, pepper, and season salt.  The second skillet (for the meat) was prepared in the same way as the one for the potatoes.  Making sure that the shorting was hot for the meat.

In both the potatoes and the meat make sure that there is enough shorting that when it is melted, fills the bottom of the pan about 1/2 inch.  Let the meat cook until it is a dark brown color.  Turning every once in awhile so it doesn't burn.

When the meat is done, place it on a plate covered in paper towels.  This will help collect the extra grease as it runs out.  To check and see if the meat is cooked, cut into the middle and make sure it is all brown.

As the potatoes continued to cook, they began to turn a lovely golden color.  I like my potatoes crispy, so I left them in until they were just how I liked them.

Fried round steak and potatoes are just not the same without some white gravy.  I don't know for sure where the expression "good gravy" came from, but it would make sense to me if they were talking about making gravy.  It's something that I haven't mastered (although I'm getting better and better at it).  Drain the extra grease out of the meat pan (making sure to leave any crunchies in it from the meat).  Add some flour and milk into the pan, and stir continuously while the stove is on low to medium heat.  This is where the hard part is for me.  Too much flour and it's too thick.  Too much milk and it's to runny. Getting the exact proportions in just takes practice.  The first couple of times that I made gravy, I ended up with a large amount as I kept adding milk and flour trying to get the correct consistency.  Remember that if the gravy is too runny, cooking it some more will also help to thicken it up.  Gravy is the last thing that you want to cook right before the meal, because it soon becomes thick and harder as it sits.  Add some salt and pepper for flavor. 

There we had a great meal.  Was it steak?  No, but with the potatoes and gravy, it was almost better.

The Weather Outside Is Frightful...

My version of the song would go something like...

The weather outside is frightful, but that makes cooking even more delightful.  Ok, corny, I know, but there's not much more that I want to do on cold, winter days than get in the kitchen and make some yummy, warm food. 

Today, is just the perfect day for some good cooking.  I wrote before about making snow ice cream. Can you imagine my shock when I found out, today, that my husband has never had it before?  So, out went the bowl onto our porch.  It's now collecting some fresh snow as it falls from the sky.  We're having ice cream tonight!

Today is a perfect day for soup as well, so I'm getting ready to start a pot of chili.  What are your favorite snow day foods?

Improvisation

When it comes to cooking, I'm all about improv.  I rarely follow a recipe exactly.  Sometimes there's something in it that I don't like or I don't have.  At other times, I just don't remember what was supposed to go in the dish.  I was reminded of this as I prepared to make one of my favorite meals the other night, chicken and rice.

Unfortunately, I was out of chicken, but with an abundance of pork in the freezer (well it is the "other" white meat) I got to work on supper.  To my surprise, I found out that I was almost out of the chicken flavored rice that I had planned on using.  I had one package but I needed two.  This was a conundrum.  I rustled through my cabinets to see what I could find, knowing that one package of rice was not enough.  I found that I had a box of Spanish rice, where the flavoring was separate from the rice.  I used that (while saving the flavor, which I will add to some delicious chicken tacos sometime).

I added some chicken bouillon cubes for some more flavor, and the meal turned out pretty well.  Especially considering that I was missing several key ingredients.

To fix the same meal, cook the meat (I did it in my dutch oven).  My pork was already cooked and just had to thaw out.  I put it in the dutch oven with water until it was hot.  I then added the rise and corn, letting both cook until they were soft.  I added salt, pepper, and lots of parsley.  Keep stirring as the dish cooks so the rice doesn't stick.  In about twenty to thirty minutes you'll have a delicious rice meal.  Enjoy!

Blessed

With the conclusion of the holiday season, my husband and I finally arrived back home.  Beyond the many gifts received, and much time spent with family and friends, one of the great blessings of the trip was all of the food that we came back with.  On our limited income, any free food is a blessing.  God blessed us this trip with so much food that it won't even fit in out cabinets.   (We have a box stored in our office with even more food.)  With all of that food, you can expect plenty of new recipes and experiences to be shared here.  I've been wanting to make some risotto for some time, and now I have some ingredients and more information on how to try it.

One of the most exciting foods that we got was a ham!  Yes, we got a whole ham!  I love ham, but it's too expensive to buy one, but now there's a wonderful one waiting for us in the freezer.  So, watch for some recipes with that too!  I hope that everyone had a blessed and safe holiday time.  As we get back into the routine of "normalcy"  keep watching for new meals.