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Tag-Archive for » adventures in cooking «

18
Dec

Holiday Food

Ginger

(This was written for Holidailies.)


Holiday Lament (The Fruitcake Song)

Re: the above video, I found that while looking for possibly silly songs about holiday foods. I searched for candy canes, and then for fruitcake, and found that. It’s the first time I’d ever heard that song, and laughed out loud when I watched it. Anyhoo…

I decided to make an entry about foods, dishes, and treats I associate with winter.

#1: Turkey & gravy. Every Thanksgiving, whether my family spent the holiday with family, or with other friends, or even the few years we spent it at home, there was always turkey. I like white meat, and I do like liquid gravy. Not so much the sausage gravy served some years, but the more fluid meat-based broth stuff. I’d put mashed potatoes with this blurb too.

#2: Ham & pineapple. My mom couldn’t cook a ham without putting pineapple on it. I adore pineapple. The ham was usually way under- or over-cooked.

#3: Candy canes. Sometimes my mom would buy a box of the things and put them on the tree along with ornaments, and I’d be allowed one per day. Sometimes I’d get a small one, as would my classmates, from the teacher. Sometimes the church would hand them out on some Advent Sunday.

#4: Yams. I have to tell you that yams are among my very favorite foods. I have a pronounced sweet tooth. With or without marshmallows, I like the baked goody either way. Canned, fresh, it’s all spiffy. Mashed, diced, whole, I’m cool with it.

#5: Pillow mints. This candy has many names, but they’re a vaguely square shape, like an overstuffed pillow, in varied pastel colors. I mentioned that my maternal grandmother stocked them each winter holiday, and that I was apt to swipe way too many of them to be healthy. I loved the way they melted in my mouth, or felt like candied snow as I bit down into them.

#6: Hot apple cider and hot chocolate. No, not together. I was even offered a Hot Toddy and a Tom & Jerry (virgin-no alcohol) once each winter as a treat. Interesting and different. I might as well include egg nog in there too.

#7: Fruitcake. I never liked this monstrosity, whether it was store-bought or homemade. I don’t know, the idea of fruit suspended in a bread-cake form was fine, but candied fruits? And fruit-flavored candy? Baked for over a half hour? No wonder the thing weighed like a brick, and had the consistency of one. Not that I’ve ever bit into a brick, but if my broken teeth are any indication… I’m being facetious about the broken teeth.

#8: Cookies. My mom would make all sorts of baked goods during the month of December, among them sugar cookies, snickerdoodles, and those chocolate ones with the dusting of powdered sugar on top. Less often she’d make peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies. Wow, I haven’t made cookies in a decade and I’m really wanting to do some. Hmm…

Dang, I couldn’t even come up with ten. Ah well.

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13
Nov

Dinner

Ginger

It makes me laugh that I used to be nervous about cooking. I didn’t really “learn” or put myself out there until I was about 33 and got tired of the already-prepared stuff. Now I much prefer buying the raw ingredients to anything packaged/frozen. Every night is a homecooked meal around here. :)

ANYHOO, tonight’s adventure regards NY steak, red potatoes, red onion, garlic, broccoli, and cheese. Sounds yummy, right?

I started the NY steak on the griddle/grill, straight out of the freezer, on very low heat. While that was defrosting and cooking, I diced up some garlic, browned that in a skillet with olive oil, then added thinly sliced red potatoes. After rooting around in the fridge, I found some red onion and peeled a couple of layers off and threw that in too. I’ll sometimes throw in some yellow bell pepper, but this would not be that night.

The NY steak was on this side of done and the potatoes were frying nicely when I realized I wanted something more-veggie with this meal, and grabbed some frozen broccoli out of the freezer, being out of fresh cans of beans or corn. I threw that into a little pot with some water and set that to boiling, and then commandeered a third pot to melt some cheese. Next time, I won’t bother with parmesan or milk when melting cheddar, the milk makes it runny and the parm doesn’t melt fast enough, or at all.

I turned off the grill so that the meat could rest for a moment, shut off the element under the potatoes-onion-garlic, waited for the cheese sauce to melt enough, and dumped it all onto two plates. A bit of salt & pepper, and hubby and I dined.

Life is terrible around here, I tell ya. ;)

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17
Oct

Autumn Squash

Ginger

Hubby and I came home from our funerary trip with a large basket of veggies from his sister’s garden, namely garlic, cucumbers, potatoes, and mostly, yellow squash.

Huh.

I’d never played with squash before, I think I’d purchased one or two in my distant past but limited myself to pan-frying them in butter and not cooking them long enough.

This time, I consulted the oracle internet and found a couple of different recipes featuring the vegetable, and winged it from there.

I melted half a stick of butter in the frying pan, then diced up the two squash I ended up using, slicing them right down the center, removing the seeds with a spoon so that only the rind and the meat were left, and making bite-sized pieces out of them. I threw them into the pan, stirred them occasionally, and let them simmer for about 20 minutes over low-medium heat. They weren’t cooking thoroughly enough for my taste, and so I drizzled a little olive oil on them. I also added sage, rosemary, dill, white pepper, black pepper, and salt onto the mess. A little later when I considered the smell, I thought that a small dash of ginger would be a good pairing as well.

They were deemed “done” when the meat became as translucent as yellow melon, the soft edible rind easily punctured by a fork. Hubby was hovering in the kitchen by this time, intrigued by the smell but dubious as to the final product. I like to experiment in the kitchen and this was no different, and warned him thusly. He reached out tentatively to try one cubed piece of yellow squash. And then reached for another. He wasn’t sure he wanted to admit he liked squash, but he liked the unusual flavor well enough.

I handed him a small plate of the stuff a few minutes later and he settled down to eat the savory dish. “I… like… squash,” he announced, confused and unsettled. He’s had the same reaction to fruit, and even tomatoes, both of which he’d been hesitant to enjoy previous to my company. He remains disturbed by this revelation, but accepted a repeat of the dish for lunch.

Success, I’d say. :)

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30
Sep

Vegan Mexican Dip Stuff

Ginger

I had to get creative with very limited ingredients–the bank account was very low and the fridge was more bare than usual. I whipped this up willy nilly with whatever I could find in the cupboard and the freezer, and hubby and I gorged ourselves on the resulting dish. It is SOOO very good that I wanted to make sure to write down the ingredients used so that I can make this again. Aside from the addition of hamburger meat, it is entirely vegan. It’s also surprisingly gluten-free.

1.5 lbs cooked ground beef, optional
1 can of beer (optional, for flavor, check label for gluten)
2 cans of black beans or kidney beans, drained (check label for gluten)
1 cup (or more) pico de gallo (uncooked salsa, no preservatives)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
salt & pepper to taste
tortilla/burrito/taco wraps (check label for wheat), cut into bite-sized wedges
olive oil (or oil of your choice, check label for gluten)

In my pot of doom, I dumped in the ground beef (cooked and frozen earlier), both cans of beans (drained of water), the pico de gallo, the beer, the garlic, salt & pepper, and let it simmer on medium heat for a half hour–I wanted to give the beans a chance to cook through a bit.

In a pan, I drizzled a little olive oil, put it over medium heat, and placed enough triangle wedges of tortilla shell in there to cover the bottom but not overlap each other. As soon as the edges were brown, I placed them onto a plate to drain, and put the next panload in. It took perhaps all of a minute for each triangle to be “done”. I did this to firm them up to allow some of the dip stuff to be scooped up. You can use these wraps “raw”, if that is your wish. Olive oil isn’t suitable for deep frying, I used it to keep the wedges from sticking to the pan, and to give a little subtle savory flavor there.

I served us up a bowlful of the stuff, with a pile of tortilla triangles on the plate. No other spices were needed. After our first bites, hubby and I looked at each other, smiled ferally, and nommed happily.

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