Day Fifty-two--Corn Fritters

Last night while I was waiting for Tim and Connor to come home from Connor's karate class, I got this crazy craving. I don't know where it came from. Maybe it was because I know we are going to try and live off of our cupboards and I had done a quick inventory or maybe I was thinking about my childhood. Whatever it was, I had this strong desire for corn fritters. It's funny too because as a child I didn't really like corn fritters. My mom would make them from time to time and I didn't like them. I wanted pancakes, not cakes with corn in them. Ewwww.

I looked around on the internet for a recipe and found a couple just as Tim was coming home. I casually mentioned the idea of it to him and Tim was all for it. He even offered to mix them up and fry them up. Most of the recipes I saw called for 3 to 4 cups of oil for frying. That was not an option. Gross. Tim took what we had and combined a couple of different recipes to get a good looking batter and he ended up frying them in a tiny little bit of oil.


Look at those beauties!

We all plated them up differently. Aidan and I had ours with a tiny bit of maple syrup. I finally went out and got some more local maple syrup. Tim said it's not as good as the NY syrup, but I disagree. I like the PA syrup better. Connor ate his fritters naked. I use the term "ate" loosely. He sucked them up into his little face as fast as he could. Tim went he gross way with his. He put siracha sauce on his. That's not bad. What was disgusting was that he popped open a can of squid (packaged with it's own ink, mind you) and put them on top of his fritters. The smell...oh, it wasn't good. He did make me take a taste and they weren't that bad. Not something I would venture out and eat on my own.


Corn fritters with maple syrup

The dinner ended up being a huge success. Aidan has declared that he wants corn fritters to be in our weekly rotation. He wants them every Monday for dinner.

I think I am going to have to break down and go to the store today to get some basic things like onions and flour. We will have to walk down to Tim's office to pick up the car but it's gorgeous out today so I'm thankful for that.

Until later, happy cooking!

Day Fifty and Fifty-One--Weekend Wrap-up

I'm a bad blogger lately. I'm going to blame it on the fact that my laptop is on it's merry way to being fixed. I'll make this short but sweet.

Saturday (Day 50) was an odd dinner. I didn't even take a picture of it. Saturday we spent a good part of the day gardening. Around 3 pm we realized that we hadn't really eaten anything yet so Tim wanted to get creative in the kitchen. He got some minute steaks out of the freezer and quick defrosted them in some cold water. He then dragged out our wok and stir-fried up some onions, red peppers, shitake mushrooms and then the thin strips of steak. He used a bunch of different rice wine vinegars, tamari sauces and whatever else he could get his little hands on. He boiled up a package of bean threads. Bean threads, by the way, are awesome. They make tiny little noodles and the carb ratio is low on them so that's good for Connor. Plus, a package of them is only 89 cents. We had them in our cupboard so they were used.

This stir-fry ended up being our main meal of the day. I don't know why I didn't think to take a picture. Maybe it's because it was technically lunch, or maybe it was because we were also in the middle of a fierce Sorry game with the boys. This little meal held my hunger at bay until about 8 pm. I had a small bowl of home made granola for dinner. So, that is why there was no official Saturday post. Good food was had, and it was all real food, but it was a little out of order.

Sunday rolled around. I still hadn't been food shopping and barely had a menu made up. Tim wanted to do some grilling so that is what we did. It was another odd day on the eating front though. I guess I should just expect that on weekends. For some unknown reason our children let both Tim and I sleep in until 9 am. That NEVER happens. I woke up and was shocked that we had slept that late. I got up and made buttermilk pancakes. Tim cooked them up for me and added the rest of the strawberries we had left to half of the batter. They were delicious. We ended up eating breakfast around 10:30. Then Tim and I went out with Nancy and Ethan and did some serious weed control, garden bed cleanup before our storms were due to hit. Needless to say we were planting corn in the middle of a major downpour. We were throwing seeds and manure into the ground getting soaked. It was too much fun. The pancakes filled us up so much that we didn't really eat much in the afternoon. Connor and Tim finished off the leftovers from Tim's stir-fry on Saturday, but I wasn't hungry.

I knew that Tim wanted burgers, so I made burger buns again. I gotta tell you, they are crazy easy to make and they are so much better than buying buns in the store. Every time that I make them, they get better. I mixed up the ground beef with some chopped onions, garlic, HP sauce and Worcestershire sauce and Tim grilled the burgers up. We had a little bit of cheddar cheese left so he melted cheese over the tops. Now, I should say that I sent Tim out to the store really fast for a few things. We needed sweet potatoes and swiss chard for the dinner, so he was lovely enough to run out and get them for me. While he was grilling the burgers, I got the swiss chard all ready and kept my eye on the sweet potato fries. Tim actually cut up the fries for me and swooshed them around in olive oil and seasoned them with garlic salt and bit of paprika. I just made sure they didn't burn.

It all came together at the same time and we enjoyed this:


Burgers, swiss chard, and baked sweet potato french fries

This was a delicious dinner that we enjoyed on the back patio. The wicked storms blew through and left behind much milder temps and a nice cool breeze. How can you not eat outside when it's like that?!

Now, as far as the rest of the week is going to go, we are going to try and live off what we have in our cupboards and freezer. It should prove interesting as we are out of onions and we use onions on a daily basis. It will be an interesting week to see what we can pull together and how creative we can get. Who knows, we might end up eating cereal all week. I do have a lot of beans in the cupboard and we still have more than enough beef in our freezer that I don't even know where to start. Maybe Mr. Crockpot will come out this week. You'll just have to wait and see.

Day Forty-nine--Pizza Night

Wow, I'm posting this really late today. Sorry. I got caught up in weeding and going in a search for heirloom tomatoes. That led me to the farm and I got into a conversation with this fascinating and amazing woman, Anne. She was such a wealth of knowledge about everything I'm trying to learn and do. I came home with my head buzzing and sadly, I forgot a few crucial things that I wanted to. One good thing though is that I can go back and help her at any time in the greenhouse and pick her brain. So, that is why my post for last night's dinner is late.



As we all know, last night was Friday, and Friday night means pizza night. Aidan helped me make the dough this time. He set the time for an hour and then came out and punched it down and put the cover over the top of it again. Then he set the timer for another hour. When it rang, I got busy. I rolled out three different crusts and got all everything chopped up and ready to go. I had the brilliant idea to use the leftover meat sauce from lasagna night as our pizza sauce. It was delicious...and it means that it didn't grow a layer of mold in my fridge. =) Tim and the boys played a card game while I made the pizzas. It was one of those nights where everything worked together perfectly. I was able to clean the kitchen up while the pizza was baking. When the pizzas were done, we all settled down and watched a movie. Another perfect Friday night in our home.

The only problem that I have right now is that it is almost 2:30 in the afternoon and I have no idea what we are having for dinner tonight and I don't have the menu done for next week yet. I better get on that now. Until later, happy cooking!

Day Forty-eight--Pork Chops

I think we should call tonight's dinner a cowboy dinner. It was a damn fine cowboy dinner. It was another one of these "almost didn't happen" nights again though. The plan was that Tim was going to work on the loaded potatoes mashed potatoes and I would do the green beans and the pork chops. I was going to start it all off with making home made chocolate syrup so it could cool off before dessert. My plans were shot when I was in the process of writing the recipe of the syrup down and my laptop just flipped off and had no power. I know the battery was full, and at first I thought maybe we had a power surge, but it was unplugged. Instead of putting Tim on the potato duty he was put to "fix my laptop" duty. Needless to say I'm glad it's still under warranty and it's being shipped out this weekend to get fixed.

Back to dinner:

Fried pork chops with mashed potatoes and garlic Parmesan green beans

Ok, so here is how it went down. I made the chocolate syrup first. Aidan actually was a huge help and did the stirring for me while I threw a few red potatoes in a bowl and chucked them in the microwave. While Aidan was stirring, I also chopped up some garlic and fried a few pieces of bacon. Aidan got bored and I had to finish up the chocolate syrup. No problem, it was almost done. When it was done, I pulled it to the side and let it cool. I checked on the potatoes. I hardly ever use my microwave. I've never cooked anything in it. For the most part it's used to heat up leftovers. I had no idea how long it would take the potatoes to cook. Come to find out it was just over 15 minutes. While the potatoes were still cooking, I cleaned up the green beans and snipped the ends off of them and got them to boiling. Then it was time for the pork chops. These babies were beautiful. Again, they were from a local farm and were good for you pork chops. I dredged them in a mixture of flour and seasoned salt, and black pepper and then put them in some hot canola oil to fry up. At this time, Tim came and said he didn't know what was wrong with my laptop. I know it's bad because Tim can fix anything. He took over the frying of the pork chops and I tended to the green beans. I drained the beans and cooked up some garlic and grated Parmesan cheese and then threw the beans back into the pot and stirred them together. While I was doing this, both Connor and Aidan came in and offered to help. I let them make the potatoes. I had already cut up everything and all they had to do mash and mix. They threw in the butter, chopped bacon, sliced green onions, sour cream and some of those french fried onions, you know, like the ones you put on top of a green bean casserole. Amazingly, everyone was done at the same time. I plated up and we all sat down and enjoyed. I invited Mr. Jack Daniels to meal with me with some coke. Thanks Deb for the coke. We don't ever have soda anymore but Aidan was begging Debbie for some soda this afternoon and she sent some over.

The dinner was a huge success. All four of us loved every bit of it. Aidan even ate the green beans. He was funny too about the onions in the potatoes. He said, "the onions add a nice texture to the potatoes." Pretty funny coming from a boy who generally hates anything crunchy in his food. He's growing up. I have to say that I think my favorite part was the mashed potatoes. They tasted exactly like loaded potato skins that you would get from a restaurant as an appetizer. Dinner was ended with a small bowl of vanilla ice cream from our favorite dairy with some pretty tasty chocolate syrup. Yee-haw! This meal is a keeper!

Until tomorrow, happy cooking!

Day Forty-seven--Chicken Enchiladas

Hello everyone. What a fine day it is today! School is done. Bread is baking. All is right in our little world. Last night's dinner was a success. What else could I ask for? Well, I'm sure I can come up with a couple of things.

Last night dinner was fun to make. It took me the entire hour that Connor was at karate. Part of that was the chicken needing to be cooked. I bought a beautiful chicken from the farm. I have been buying organic roasting chickens or breasts at Wegmans. I got to thinking though that I can't really know how these chickens were raised. When I was at the dairy last week, I ventured over to the section in their little freezer that had chicken in it. I picked up a near 4 pound chicken. I'm not going to lie. It was expensive. It was $17. BUT, it's from a local farm, it was a pastured chicken and it was organic. I swooped it up and took him home.

The bird was a whole roasting bird so I had to chop him up and boil him. I had Tim help me chop the chicken up a bit. Big knives tend to scare me sometimes because I'm not the most graceful person. Sadly, Aidan seems to have inherited this trait from me too. We are both accident prone. Tim did most of the chopping but then he had to leave to take Connor to karate, or else Connor would be late. I was kind of grossed out hearing the bones crack and feeling the raw chicken flesh in my hands. Tim then, ever so kindly, reminded me that when we get to the point of having some land and raising animals that I better get used to it. I think I'll let him do it. =)

Once the chicken was all chopped up it went into a big stock pot and boiled for about 30 minutes. While it was cooking, I prepped everything else for the dinner. I chopped onions, opened cans of diced chillies, grated cheese and got tortillas ready (as in nuked them because I didn't want to fry them again). After the chicken was done, I shredded the meat off of the bones. I started frying the onions and then added the shredded chicken to the pan. Then I threw in half of the chillies. After than cooked for a bit, I added a half cup of the chicken broth and a half cup of cream. A dash of paprika was added to the mix and this pan was done and set aside while I started on the next part.

The next part of the meal was the cheesy part. Yum. I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter and then whisked in a couple of tablespoons of flour. I then added a cup and a half of chicken stock, a half cup of sour cream, and about a cup and a half freshly shredded Monterrey Jack cheese. Oh, and I threw in the rest of the green chillies. This all melted together into a glorious cheesy gravy.

Then came the fun part. Putting it all together. I took the corn tortillas out of the microwave, slapped a bit of the chicken/onion mixture into it, topped it with a sprinkle of cheese, wrapped it up and plopped into a baking dish. I ended up with a 13x9 pan full and a 9 inch cake pan filled. Over the top of the rolled up little enchiladas, I poured the cheesy sauce. It went in the oven for 30 minutes. That's it.

White Chicken Enchiladas

I topped the enchiladas with my favorite salsa. I usually make my own salsa, but when I can't get to it, I always get Frontera salsa. I love the chipolte one, the tomatillo one and the jalapeno cilantro one. Yum! All natural goodness.

Three out of four of us liked this dinner. Aidan said he didn't really like it, but he ate a few bites. I think I like the other enchiladas I made a couple of weeks ago because they were more flavorful to me. Although, these were really good too. I guess it is a milder flavor on this one. Tim and Connor loved them. Thankfully we had a ton of leftovers, so I know what lunch is going to be today!

I think that is all I have for now. I am going to run out to the dairy today. I have to get into the habit of Thursday shopping. Our farmers market starts in three weeks and it's on Thursday. I am going to make Thursday my market day. That means I better get into the habit of doing my menus and shopping lists on Tuesday and Wednesday. Until later, happy cooking!

Day Forty-six--Lasagna

Oh man, tonight's dinner was awesome. It was loved by all. What was it?

Lasagna!

This meal almost didn't happen. Well, it would have happened but it almost ended up being a really late dinner. No worries. It all worked out. My problem was that I forgot to take a pound of ground beef out of the freezer. I momentarily freaked out when I was down in the freezer too. I had to call Tim at work to find out if we had run out of ground beef. It turns out he had stacked it behind a bunch of other steaks. Whew. My problem then turned into the fact that the sauce was supposed to simmer for an hour and a half. It was 2:30 by the time I realized this and I had not started the pasta or anything yet.

I threw the package of ground beef in a cold bowl of water. I then made the pasta dough. While it was resting, I got the other things for the sauce ready. I chopped onions and garlic. I opened all the cans of tomatoes and got all of my spices ready. I got impatient and decided to start the sauce anyway. I cooked the onions and garlic in a bit of olive oil and then added a pound of Italian sausage. Once that was all browned up, I threw in the beef. It was mostly thawed and the heat in the pan quickly thawed the rest. Then I added crushed tomatoes, tomato paste and tomato sauce. That's a lot of tomato! You want to know the cool thing? Wegman's sells store brand organic tomatoes. I love buying store brand and not name brand. This is a total change from a younger me. A good change I think. Anywhooo, I got all of the meat sauce ingredients stewing and let it set for an hour and a half. While the sauce was stewing, I rolled out the pasta dough and cut it into lasagna sized pieces. I've decided that lasagna noodles are the easiest pasta to make. I let them hang out and hangers to dry (I learned my lesson from last time). Then I got to grating my Parmesan cheese, mixing my ricotta with an egg and unrolling my roll of fresh mozzarella.

Now comes the assembly line. I dropped a couple of noodles at a time into the boiling water. I ladle a bunch of the meat sauce into the bottom of my pan and then lay some cooked noodles down. Fresh noodles only boil for like 2 minutes. I had a layer of four noodles and then put a layer of the ricotta cheese mixture down. Then I put a small layer of mozzarella cheese down. I top that with a scoop of meat sauce and then a sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan cheese. Rinse, repeat. I had 12 noodles, so I had three layers of four noodles. It made for one very heavy pan of lasagna. It baked in the oven for 25 minutes.

This meal was devoured by all. It was delicious. It also made a ton. Everyone will get to have some for lunch today as well. Yay, one less meal I need to figure out. Works for me. I think that is all I have for now. We have one science lab left to do and then we have the summer off. Well, there will be creative writing projects and I'm going to attempt a quilt, and some gardening...I guess it won't be a summer off, but a summer without sit down school. Until later, happy cooking!

Day Forty-five--Mediterranean Salad

Hello all. I hope everyone survived the holiday weekend. I think I'm still trying to recover from Hershey Park on Friday. I've had a headache since Friday night. Of course, I didn't help my cause with the several bottles of beer on Sunday night. Magic Hat's summer brew is the best!

Yesterday was Monday and we did a meatless Monday. I keep getting updates from Food, Inc on my facebook page about Meatless Monday and I thought, "What the hell?" We do a lot of meatless dinners. Sometime I'll go back and figure the percentage of vegetarian. We were vegan for a year, so we have a pretty good arsenal of vegetarian meals to use. This salad was from the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution book. It was super duper easy!

Mediterranean Salad with fresh bread

I like how Jamie just chops everything on a big board and dresses it on the board. It makes the salad into little bite size pieces. Laurie (hi mom) does this too. It makes the salad easier to eat. I made a fresh loaf of bread to have with the salad. I don't think you really need a recipe for this salad, but I followed it mostly. It's romaine lettuce, an onion, a tomato, and some kalamata olives. The recipe called for basil too, but our basil plant needs to renew itself a bit so I didn't pull any leaves off of it. It's then dressed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. The bread was super delicious and we ended up making salad sandwiches. Connor came up with this one. It was a nice light dinner after a long weekend of indulging.

That is all I have for now. We are going to try to bust through the last of our school projects today and then I have to make pasta for tonight. It's going to be a busy day. Until later, happy cooking!