Actually Using all Those Pinned Recipes

I’m addicted to Pinterest.  What an amazing invention.  All those ideas, recipes, funny pictures and weird internet links all in one glorious spot.  I can finally do away with all the bits of paper and sticky notes that have websites listed on them but I don’t remember why they were interesting.  My various piles of papers are not really smaller, they just don’t include these random notes.

I have found Pinterest really helpful with my Montessori training too.  I have Montessori board and a board for the Quilting Unit I did (read about it here).  I’ve gotten loads of ideas for the classroom from other Montessori pinners.  But the most helpful (well, I suppose it’s yet to be proved helpful) part of Pinterest is all those delicious recipes.  I scroll down the daily pins of friends and acquaintances and drool over the pictures, repinning nearly all of them.  I have 38 pins on my ‘Savory Recipes’ board and about as many in ‘Breakfast’ and ‘Sweets and Treats’ combined.

So a while back, while in the throws of end-of-school papers, I looked up a crock-pot recipe I had pinned on Pinterest and finally put it to use.  It’s a bit daring really.  You don’t know if the “It’s delicious” comment is from the person you know or someone 10 pins ago who didn’t actually try it either.  The recipe was for crock-pot fajitas. We love Mexican in this house and fajitas are always a hit.  I’ve been moving away from the seasoning packet and more towards making my own spice blend.  (This is as much from forgetting to buy the packet and wanting fajitas as an aversion to what’s put in the packet.)

Ready for Culinary Greatness

Here’s the recipe:

(original found Stacy Makes Cents here)

Crock Pot Chicken Fajitas 

1 yellow onion, sliced
3 sweet peppers, sliced
1 ½ pounds boneless chicken breast or thighs
½ cup chicken broth
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons cumin
1 ½ tablespoons chili powder
Squirt of lime juice
Tortillas
Fajita fixings

Combine sliced onion and peppers in the bottom of a greased crock-pot. Lay chicken on top of veggies. Pour chicken broth over top. Sprinkle everything with cumin, salt, and chili powder. Give a nice squirt of lime juice over the top. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours (or on High for 4-6 hours). When meat is done, shred with two forks and stir back into juices. Serve meat mixture with slotted spoon on tortillas with your choice of fixings.

Looks promising

Finished product before shredding

It wasn’t bad.  But it wasn’t amazing either.  One thing I did take away from this: I now shred my chicken for all mexican meals, fajitas, gorditas, it’s all shredded.  It is so much easier to keep the tortilla wrapped without chunks of meat.  Shredding it also means I can use bone-in chicken which is cheaper and cook the chicken ahead of time and freeze if necessary.

But I didn’t stop pinning.  Every recipe with a drool-worthy picture was/is repinned.  So I knew I had to have another go and today I did.

It was 4:45, The Ellen Show was ending and I was on Pinterest wondering what in the world I would cook for dinner.  Then I saw it.  Creamy Garlic Pasta.  Wow.  That is drool-worthy.  I had all the ingredients (well, sort of) and it looked like it would be quick.

It was quick.  It was fabulous.  Creamy, Dreamy Garlic Pasta with Fresh Basil?  Yes, please.

Here is the recipe: 

Originally from The Cheese Pusher here (no pushing needed for me :)

This photo is from The Cheese Pusher.
I forgot to take a picture before we dug in.
But it looks this amazing in real life too.

Creamy Garlic Pasta
2 tsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp butter
¼  tsp salt
½ tsp pepper3 cups chicken stock
½ lb spaghetti or angel hair pasta
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
¾ cup heavy cream
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

In a pot, bring the olive oil to medium-low heat. Add the garlic (I included 1/2 large onion) and stir, allowing it to cook for 1-2 minutes. Mix in the butter until melted. Add the salt, pepper and chicken stock. Raise the heat to high and let it come to a boil.
Once it is at a rolling boil, add the pasta and cook for as long as the box’s directions indicate. Reduce the stove to medium heat and mix in the parmesan until completely melted. Turn off the heat and stir in the cream (I only had half and half.  It worked fine.) and parsley (I used fresh basil instead). Serve immediately

I think it took me about 20 minutes from start to finish.  If I had some chicken it would have been good too.  Or with bacon it would have been a pseudo Carbonara.  Whatever you do with it, make it.  It is delicious.  My husband had four helpings.

Ciao!

Cooking with Cast-Offs

First a few of my friends went Paleo.  Then my sister.  Then my mom.  In a nutshell (a Paleo approved nutshell that is), Paleo = eat meat, and fruit, veg, some nuts are okay but not all, no grains, no processed foods, and no foods a caveman wouldn’t eat.  Basically going back to a hunter-gatherer diet.  Both my sister and my mom are chronicling their Paleo recipes on their blogs (check them out!).  The food looks good but I agreed with my dad when he said a caveman wouldn’t use leftover pizza as a doorstop and that he hunts in the fridge and gathers what he finds.

I love carbs.  I’m a mac and cheese girl.  I love fresh baked bread so warm the butter melts.  (Why yes I did just make some today.  From my mother’s Molasses Oatmeal recipe no less.  After I got rid of the dead mouse in my kitchen.  Story for another time.  It was as gruesome as it sounds.)  So no, I can’t go Paleo.  Here’s another reason.  My mom would have no one to foist all her non-Paleo food on if I did.  

I dropped my daughter off at Grandma’s last week for my first day back to work.  As a New Year’s resolution mom was eating Paleo and had bags of non-Paleo food (canned beans, cereal, cake mix, canned soup, crackers, etc) to get rid of.  Pushing aside the thought that my mom’s purging her ‘unhealthy’ food by giving it to her daughter, I gladly took the free food.

Not to be outdone, I decided to chronicle my own recipe.  I made dinner that night with some of the ingredients.

So here is my very un-Paleo dinner.  It was yummy.

(Recipe basics from the back of the Campbell’s Cheddar Cheese soup can.)

Cheesy Chicken Chili 

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 lb chicken cut into cubes

1 large onion, chopped

1 large green pepper, diced

1 large red pepper, diced

1 can Campbell’s Condensed Cheddar Cheese soup, plus 1/2 can of water

(I usually just measure in my hand so I’m not sure the amounts of spices)

1/2 tsp. cumin

1/2 tsp. chili powder

1 can kidney beans

Farro (or other rice/grain) prepared according to package

Heat oil in skillet and cook chicken until browned.  Set aside.  Saute onion, peppers.  Stir in soup, water, spices.  Heat to a boil.  Add cooked chicken and beans.  Heat thoroughly and until chicken is cooked.  Serve over rice/grain.

The finished product.  My husband and I both really liked the Farro.  We thought it was much better than brown rice.

Using a whole bottle of Tobasco or, Spice Packet People

Part 2

We are not just spice packet people.  There are a few family recipes that have been handed down.  The ‘Nuts and Bolts’ I made the other day is one of them.  The photo-copied card I have in my recipe book reads “from the kitchen of Grandma Palmer”, that would my my mom’s grandma, my great-grandma.  To call it party mix would be disrespectful.  The smell of it baking means Christmas, especially since my mom would make two or three batches between Thanksgiving and New Years Eve.

The first Christmas my husband and I were married (the same year I learned about my mom’s chili), I eagerly bought all the ingredients for Nuts and Bolts.  I carefully followed the recipe, making sure my measurements were exact.  I remember there was no temperature for the oven written on the card.  I probably called my mom to ask, but she must have been away from home and just guessed.  The wonderful Nuts and Bolts Christmas smell did not fill our apartment.  It burned.  

Perhaps the oven was too hot.  Perhaps I hadn’t made enough sauce for the amount of pretzels, rice chex and nuts.  Whatever the reason the only person who ate it was my older sister who favors the burned pieces of popcorn.  Even the small amount of non-burned Nuts and Bolts was bland. I tried to like it.  I tried to get my husband to like it.  We ended up throwing most of it away.  

I related to my mom my failed attempt at the family tradition.  When I mentioned how bland it was and how hers always tasted better she replied with: ‘Oh, I don’t follow the recipe.  I add way more Tobasco and Worcestershire sauce than it calls for.’

Last years attempt was passable, though still not as good as mom’s.  So this year I was excited.  No measuring.  Dashes of this, handfuls of that and a whole bottle of Tobasco.  That’s what she said right?  I did pause half way through the bottle.  But I remember, she said ‘a lot’ of Tobasco.  So in it went.  Two and a half hours later I tasted my latest attempt.  Yum.  Spicy, but delicious.

Well.  Yesterday my sisters and our daughters baked cookies with my mom (thoughts of generational cookbooks return).  I mentioned that I had finally made good Nuts and Bolts and that they were spicy from the whole bottle of Tobasco.

Whole bottle?? My mom looked at me in disbelief.

Yes, I thought you said you use the whole bottle?

Oh, I only use about two tablespoons.

Sigh...

Using a whole bottle of Tobasco or, Spice Packet People

Part 1

A few months after I got married I felt intrepid enough to try my hand at making chili.  Cooking is not my specialty.  I can bake a delicious (some even say famous) chocolate chip cookie, but cooking always frazzled me, too many variables.  I lived at home during college and on the nights my mom didn’t cook my staple was Annie’s Mac and Cheese.  Some times I would saute onions and peppers, maybe heat up some leftover meat, to make the mac and cheese into more of a meal but that was the extent of my cooking abilities.  My dad was so worried about the comfort of my future husband he took it upon himself to teach me to cook.  Let’s just say it only happened once and it didn’t end well.  I was given boxes of Annie’s Mac at my bridal shower.  By more than one person.  Faith in my cooking abilities was low.

But I wanted to try chili.  Not just any chili, my mom’s chili.  The only chili I liked (or so I thought).  So I asked her for her recipe.  My first clue should have been the fact that I didn’t already have it.  I had photo-copied cards from her recipe box, at least all the ones I liked, before I moved out.  

My mom looked puzzled, my recipe?  

Yea, your chili is the only kind I really like.  

Oh, I just use the spice packet.

Crash. 

I timidly picked it up the next time I was at the grocery store.  McCormick.  Chili.  Hot.  There it was, what I thought was a ‘family recipe’, on the back of a spice packet.  Ready in 30 minutes.  Dreams of cookbooks filled with recipes passed down mother to daughter that would rival Martha Stewart and Paula Deen evaporated.  We were spice packet people.