Cooking: Inspiration borne from desperation

It started out when B and I decided to have a two-person dinner party.

"Let's do Mexican!" one of us said, and the other agreed. B would make her famous cheese enchiladas, and I would make...something vaguely Mexican to go with it.

(If you haven't figured it out by now, my cooking style could best be described as "fly by the seat of my pants and hope something OK comes out of it." Or, more accurately, "This will probably work. Right? Eh.")

When the time came, I realized too late that I hadn't put much thought into my end of the menu. (Shocker!) So, as I readied for my departure for B's, I scanned my cupboards and started throwing things into a bag.

Box of Spanish rice -- that's Mexican, right? Ish? Black beans are always good. Green chiles. Frozen ground turkey. Onions. I can TOTALLY make something out of this.

Miraculously, this time? I was actually RIGHT.

Since then I've modified the enchiladas for my non-cheese-loving (GASP) husband, added optional refried beans for the very same, and the combination has become one of our go-to meals. In fact, I made it for our Christmas-on-New-Year's-Day celebration with my parents (more on this tomorrow), and it was a monster hit.

So now I give you:

Chicken Enchiladas Meal
by Written Permission

Serves at least 4 (with some leftovers, probably)

Ingredients (for the whole meal)

Six large tortillas
1 white onion
1 green pepper
2 large cans white meat chicken
2 large cans enchilada sauce (or 3-4 small cans)
1 large or 2 small bags of shredded cheese
1 box Zatarain's Spanish Rice
1 small can diced tomatoes
1/2 to 1 pound ground turkey
2 cans black beans
1 can green chiles (or one fresh green chile)
Minced garlic
Olive oil


Chicken Enchiladas

1. Slice and saute a white onion and a green pepper until they're just shy of crisp. (I usually do about half the onion and the whole green pepper, but it just depends how onion-y and pepper-y you want the enchiladas.)
2. Add chicken to the onions and green peppers. I just use two large cans of white-meat chicken, but I suppose if you're fancy you could cut up an already-cooked boneless chicken breast.) Saute all together for about five minutes.
3. In a large tortilla, layer the onion/pepper/chicken mixture, a shredded cheese of your choosing (I usually use some combo of the Mexican-flavored and cheddar varieties) and a few dollops of enchilada sauce. Wrap up like a papoose and place in a baking dish *that has been sprayed with cooking spray or otherwise greased.* (I cannot emphasize this point enough.) Repeat for six enchiladas.
4. Once all the enchiladas are in the pan, sprinkle more cheese and a generous swath of enchilada sauce over each one.
5. Place in oven at 350 for about 25-30 minutes, but check on it regularly after the 25-minute mark. Remove when it's nice and bubbly and melty.
   

Spanish Rice

1. Brown the ground turkey. (You can also use ground beef, of course, or just leave out the meat. I just think it makes the rice even better, and we only use ground turkey in our house.) Drain and set aside.
   
2. Prepare the Zatarain's according to the directions on the box, using olive oil instead of butter. (The diced tomatoes go in here.) When it's ready to simmer, add in the ground meat and cover until the directions say it's done.

Black Beans

1. Drain cans of black beans.
2. In a pan, saute a sprinkling (no more than a 1/4 teaspoon; probably less) of minced garlic in olive oil.
3. Add in green chiles and saute for a minute or two.
4. Add in black beans and saute until heated through.

And, voila!

Super tasty, warms up well, takes about 40 minutes from start to finish, but most of that is just waiting for the food to finish cooking, vs. actively doing something.

Easy. Bada-bing, bada-boom.

How to make Christmas dinner, Written Permission-style

1. Buy a ham, making sure it is both A) fully cooked and B) NOT sweetened with honey, brown sugar or any other manner of sweetener, so it is actually consumed and not ridiculed by Mr. WP.
2. Throw ham in the oven. If there are no directions on the label, guess. (It's fully cooked already; what could go wrong?)
3. Make versions of your favorite side dishes that require almost zero cooking prep or time. In fact, if you can throw it in the microwave and call it a day, you're on the right track.
4. Take ham out of the oven, pronounce it "done" with absolutely no justification for doing so and toss it onto the table with your quickie side dishes.
5. Stab ham with giant knife before serving, just because it looks cool.
   
   
   
6. Mash on everything on the table, because while it might have only taken 15 minutes to make most of it, holy wow is it tasty.
7. Eat ham sandwiches until March.

Birthday traditions and delayed gratification (One of these things is vastly overrated)

Every family has birthday traditions.

When I was growing up, the birthday honoree got to choose the entire dinner menu; surprisingly, we ate very few green vegetables on birthdays. In my husband's family, his mother baked his favorite cake: white cake, chocolate frosting, whole walnuts.

(I know one family where every person, adult and child alike, gets breakfast in bed on their birthday. And while I would appreciate the gesture, the thought of eating scrambled eggs immediately upon waking makes me slightly queasy.)

In our little family of me, T and the dogs, we have this:

The top is just a regular old candle. The bottom piece, though, sings "Happy Birthday" in ridiculously-high-pitched tones that most human ears cannot process. Over and over and over and over. Until someone finally turns it off.

I don't remember anymore who purchased this treasure, but it's so obnoxiously loud and silly that we can't help but haul it out year after year.

Another birthday tradition? (And, actually, Christmas and Valentine's Day and any other holiday, real or Hallmark-driven, where gifts are traditionally exchanged?)

T cannot--CANNOT--wait until the actual day to give me a present.

He gets all antsy and little-kid-excited to the point where I can SEE how he must have been as a little boy, all anxious to give someone he loves something he thinks they'll love.

Typically (particularly with Christmas presents, which are often of the movie or video game variety) he lasts until about a week before the day. Then he starts asking. "Do you want to open your present?"

Since I tend to prefer delayed gratification, I always say "No" (if only because I know this drives him NUTS; mwah ha ha).

And so the games begin. At least once a day (and sometimes multiple times per minute): "Do you want to open your present? How about now? Now? Now now now?? OPEN IT!!!!!"

This year, he made it to two days before my birthday. Since I'm pretty sure that's a new record, and since the next two days were going to be pretty busy, I gave in.

And ohhhhhh, are my tastebuds glad I did.


Friends, let me tell you something about me and ice cream.

You've heard tell of the love that dare not speak its name?

This is a love that is told not in words but by the inches of my butt, the smear of chocolate across my cheek and the almond stuck to my eyebrow.

I loves me some frozen treats.

Since the ice cream recipe in the handy-dandy accompanying booklet called not only for whole milk (which our non-child house never sees) but heavy cream and refined white sugar, a Kroger sojourn was necessary. But a quick grocery-store-grab-and-a-few-pulses-of-ye-olde-food-processer-to-chop-up-fresh-strawberries later and we were...waiting. For it to freeze.

But friends? When it did? And I took it out to taste-test it and only the outside of the container was frozen and the inside was still sort of mushy and a little runny? And I didn't care and I just dove in and ate it anyway?

Oh. My. Goodness.

Strawberries mixed with fatty milk products and huge amounts of refined sugar and then frozen are SO UNBELIEVABLY GOOD.

So good, in fact, that we finished the batch before I thought to take a picture of it to share with all of you.

Thankfully, for both humanity and my butt, the booklet also includes recipes for fro-yo and sorbet, the latter of which seems to call for not much more than water and flavoring and the occasional fruit.

(And if you think I'm not making dark chocolate sorbet with raspberries this weekend, YOU DON'T KNOW ME AT ALL and we should probably just break up now.)

Two nights in my kitchen

Oh, readers.

As many of you know, the road to my kitchen is paved with good intentions, tears and the smell of burning.

(I promise I will share the pesto story soon, Metacognitive Musings.)

So when I announced last week that I intended to make something with artichokes over the weekend, I absolutely intended to do that. And you responded with encouragement and some truly amazing- and scary-looking recipes, most of which required me to work with actual, whole artichokes.

Friends, I'm a wuss.

So my first confession is that I drifted RIGHT by the produce section and snagged a jar of marinated artichoke hearts. But even if it's cheating, I'm still trying something new, right?

And then I found this recipe on CookingLight.com:

And I thought, "Perfect! It sounds easy, it includes nothing but things I like, it's relatively healthy..."

So. Sunday was the day. We spent the morning and early afternoon lounging around, then at 6:30 (when it finally dropped below 90 degrees) I realized my flowerbeds were in desperate need of weeding... Two and a half hours later, dirty and exhausted, I realized I didn't have any feta cheese. So I collapsed on the floor and whined until T made me a Lean Cuisine.

Yesterday at work, I felt guilty all day. Here I promised all two of you who read this blog a triumphant recipe reveal! So I left work, hit Le Krog and snagged the requisite feta.

And it was ON.

Then I realized, as I do EVERY TIME I COOK ANYTHING, that I was still missing a few things because I hadn't read the recipe closely enough:

• Israeli couscous (substitute: regular old Near East couscous; this one wasn't as tragic, as the larger Israeli couscous looked like dried tapioca and/or fish eggs and kind of creeped me out)
• Vegetable broth (substitute: chicken broth; there's already chicken in it, no bigs, right?)
• Two jars of artichoke hearts (substitute: one jar of artichoke hearts; I briefly considered halving the entire recipe, but then I remembered who I was and that this would involve math)
• Not onions (substitute: onions; for some reason I thought there were onions in this recipe, and then I didn't want to waste the ones T had already lovingly chopped for me)

It all looked so innocent, just sitting there on my counter:


Something else I didn't anticipate -- sundried tomatoes need to be rehydrated. If you think this should be a no-brainer, you're probably right -- especially because it's STEP ONE OF THE RECIPE I had sitting RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. I somehow missed it and had to stop sauteing the onions.

Yes, I sauteed the onions that weren't supposed to be there. And then, in a fit of inspiration (otherwise known as "where things usually go awry"), I sauteed them and the chicken in the marinade from the jar of artichoke hearts, chopped up the hearts themselves and threw them in the pan for good measure. Sure! Why not?

So. Tomatoes: Rehydrated. Parsley: Harvested from my herb garden (yay!) and chopped. Onions, artichokes and chicken: Sauteed, apparently. Couscous: Couscoused. Feta: Feta-y.

Mix all, say a little prayer and serve:


T came to the table while I was eating (he would eat NOTHING in this recipe except maybe the chicken and onions):

T: "So? Good?" (He's a man of few words.)

WP: "The fact that I'm eating it with a serving spoon should tell you all you need to know."

It was, in fact, sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good.

For once, my kitchen "innovation" (and apparent lack of attention to detail) paid off!

Next up (well, sometime): WP tries to stuff...something. Probably chicken breasts. Stay tuned. I'm sure it'll be a disaster.

Artichoke recipes: You gots 'em? I wants 'em.

I'm tired of staring longingly at these beauts in the produce section, blushing and then running away quickly because I have NO idea what to do with them.

I mean...this thing is gorgeous, green and pointy, but...it doesn't look edible, people. I've had artichoke hearts, of course, and I hear tell you can do...something...with the leaves, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you what.

And I certainly, in all my kitchen-challenged glory, have never tried to do anything with them myself. Not even the old standby spinach-artichoke dip.

Now is the time. I'm facing my fears. This weekend? I'm trying to make something with artichokes. And I want to make one of your recipes.

The rules:

• It has to include artichokes (duh), either fresh whole ones or canned hearts (the latter is probably cheating, but...baby steps)
• It can't include celery (Why would an artichoke recipe include celery? I don't know. But if there are any, I shan't be making them. Celery tastes like crying)
• It can't be too complicated (due to aforementioned kitchen-challenged-ness; this includes any recipes that require me to strain anything through a cheesecloth and/or use a candy thermometer)

Got a recipe? Lay it on me. I'll post pictures of the results (and any limbs lost in the process) next week.

Have a great weekend, y'all!