When You're Broke

So, since everyone else has posted something here, and I haven't been able to, I'm going to post two meals that Jen and I have made. Note that these meals aren't interesting or creative in any way, I just don't want to be left out.

The first meal Jen and I made was based on the odds and ends left to us by friends. Here is a list:

1.) 1/3 box of whole wheat pasta
2.) leftover tomato sauce made by Andrea
3.) a can of sweet peas with low sodium (this comes into play later)
4.) spaghetti
5.) grated parmesan cheese
6.) salt
7.) the willingness to believe that this meal would be good

So I go over to Tierney with my pasta, tomato sauce, sweet peas, and positive attitude. Jen takes one look at my pasta and decides we don't have enough. Which is funny, since I have tons of boxes of pasta in my room but decided that the leftover one would be more than enough for two people. I was wrong. So Jen gets her pasta and then we start the extremely complicated cooking procedure.

1.) Boil water. DON'T WATCH THE POT OR IT WON'T BOIL! Trust me.
2.) Add pasta to water. Stir sporadically.
3.) Drain the peas because Jen says there's too much water in them. Watch Jen add salt because she wants me to die from the heart attack I was avoiding by buying low sodium peas.
4.) Put tomato sauce in microwave. Turn microwave on (this is a really key part of the operation). Repeat process until sauce is hot.
5.) AFTER EVERYTHING IS COOKED mix them all together.
6.) Add the grated parmesan cheese.
7.) Eat. This is the part where the willingness to believe the meal is good comes into play. It actually was too.

Okay, so the second meal Jen and I made was breakfast this morning. Once again, not a complicated meal. Here is what you need:

1.) 1/3 pack of Bacon (courtesy of Courtney)
2.) 4 Eggs (bought at Tiger Mart at 10 pm after drinks at Howls)
3.) Salt (Once again Jen is trying to give me a heart attack)
4.) Pepper
5.) Whole wheat bread (aren't you proud of me Diana?)
6.) Peanut butter and jelly stolen from the RHO

So I am in charge of cooking the bacon. Which is awesome, cause I love cooking bacon. There are three reasons I love cooking bacon.

1.) I like my bacon well-done. And when I say well-done, I mean almost burned. So I like having control over how cooked the bacon is.
2.) There's an element of danger in cooking bacon, because of the spitting liquefied fat. As you all know, I like a little danger in my life.
3.) I get to sing the bacon song. This is the bacon song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBE_T-K8nhY (I promise you will enjoy it)

You have to cook the bacon until it's three sizes too small. Like the Grinch's heart.

Jen scrambled the eggs. She added salt and pepper, which was good cause we had no ketchup to add onto them. I was hoping to finally try eggs sunny side up, but we don't have a spatchula so I couldn't. That will be an adventure for another day.

After we cooked these, we set up some bread with jelly and peanut butter on it. Everything was really good, except the jelly was sugar free so it didn't taste nearly as good as normal.

I know you're all really jealous of me and Jen right now.

Grilled Pineapple and Chicken Skewers

Hey Ladies!

I figured that I should probably get my act together and post something to combat all of the wine drinking and tanning I’ve been indulging in since yesterday.

Last night’s dinner came right out of our pantry. Not wanting to run to the store, my Ma and I found 3 chicken breasts and a Tupperware container full of diced pineapple in the fridge. Inspired by a recent Pioneer Woman recipe we decided to marinate the chicken in teriyaki marinade and a ton of garlic. After letting the chicken marinate we chopped it into bit sized pieces and skewered it with the pineapple. Then we brushed the skewers with bbq sauce and grilled em up!

I know it was a good meal because the men in my family (who are immediately turned off by any kind of fruit and meat mixture) were sneaking extra pieces of chicken!

Yum, Yum, Yum. My apologies for the lack of pictures..or measurements of any kind. This recipe is pretty self explanatory and you can use whatever you have on hand.

If I hadn’t been finishing my 3^rd (Let’s be honest, 5^th) glass of wine as I was making dinner I probably would have marinated the chicken for at least an hour and I would have used a tangy/Asian style bbq sauce. But, such is life.

Hope you enjoyed the recipe.

Much Love,

Diana

Pantry Dinner

Friday night, my last night in the Bronx, Heather came over and we scoured the kitchen for any and all left over food to make dinner. (I took a few pictures, but none of the end product--because I was too hungry to think about it--so I'm omitting pics from this post)

In addition to the approximately 100 unopened containers of chicken broth that we found deep within my kitchen cabinets, we found more than enough to make an absolutely delicious meal--with no recipe, which is my favorite way to try to cook.

What we found:
1 frozen chicken breast
1 box rotini pasta (whole wheat, the only way to go)
About 1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar
4 red potatoes
1 onion
And Garlic. Lots of Garlic.
(Plus some home-made tomato sauce I had made out of more left over ingredients on Wednesday)

This and some spices was all we needed to make a delicious, delicious meal.

I let Heather take care of the potatoes--she sliced then really thin, sliced about half an onion (also really thin), and then drizzled them with oil. We added salt, black pepper, and at Heather's suggestion Chili Powder. Popped them in a 400 degree oven, and waited for goodness.

While the potatoes were cooking, I took care of the chicken. Since we only had one breast, we decided to cut it up into bite sized pieces (which also reduced the cooking time). I also chopped up the rest of the onion, and smashed up a few cloves of garlic. I threw the onion and garlic in with some oil and then added the chicken. I let the chicken brown a little, and then discovered a little bit of butter left in my fridge, so, of course, I added that. To season the chicken, I added some salt and pepper, and a bit of dried basil. When the chicken was cooked through, I added the remains of a bottle of balsamic vinegar (probably about 1/4 cup), and let that reduce into a sauce. And Voila! Ready to serve.

We didn't time our dinner perfectly, and although the chicken and pasta were finished quickly, we still had to wait a while on the potatoes--which was alright, because they were pretty freaking delicious.

So, in conclusion, pantry dinner = Total Success. Heather will back me up on this.

With love and bison from Oklahoma,

Andrea

Biscuit Indulgence

I think that my philosophy for my blog entries here will be that if I post appealing enough pictures of food, you will all drop all of your summer plans and flock to my kitchen.

Last week, I decided that I was going to make Pioneer Woman's Bacon Onion Cheddar Biscuits because I was bored and I've been lusting after them for some time.  They were fairly easy... they just took me a little longer because I was taking pictures at the same time.  I also got to use Jon's fancy camera, but I suppose that I'm not really making the best use of it because I have no idea how all of the fancy stuff works.  I just set it on "automatic" and "no flash" and go from there.  Maybe I'll figure out how to take awesome pictures... someday.

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Whatchu need, son:

• 2 cups Flour
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• ¾ teaspoons Salt
• ¼ cups Crisco
• 10 Tablespoons Milk (whole Milk Is Best)
• 4 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil
• 1 whole Egg
• 10 slices Thick Cut Bacon, Fried And Crumbled
• 1 cup Finely Diced Onion
• 1 cup Grated Sharp Cheddar Cheese

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Makin' it:

Cooking bacon is my least favorite part, and eating bacon is my most favorite.  So I decided to cook the bacon first.  The bacon shrunk up a lot, so I cooked the whole pound.

And I layered it to let the grease come off and let the bacon cool.  Oh, and I ate a piece.  Maybe two.

Flour next.  I'm not cool enough to have a strainer, so I measured the flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl and mixed it around with a fork.  Works the same, in my opinion.

Then I took my quarter cup of Crisco, shuddered a bit at the pure fat that I was holding, and put spoonfuls around the flour.  I'm sorry about the lighting, I'm still working on it.

Then, because I'm also not cool enough to have a pastry cutter, I used a beater and just cut the Crisco into the flour mix.  Again, I have no idea what I'm doing here.

But eventually, it all incorporated and it looked a little lumpy like this.  So that part is done.

Egg stuff time.  This is a cracked egg, and no, I didn't get any shells in it, thank you.

PS, when I worked at Panera my favorite job was making breakfast sandwiches because you got to crack and cook tons of eggs in this contraption thing.  It was super cool.

Add ten tablespoons of milk, which I didn't convert to cups.  And I used skim milk cuz it was all we had.  It worked fine.  Also pretend like I took a picture of adding oil and mixing it all up.

Now its time to bring the egg mixture and flour mixture together.  So pour it right in...

...and use your beater to incorporate that just until everything's together.  I'm guilty of using hands too.

Filling time.  Get yo' onion all ready...

...so that you can peel and chop it.  I didn't take a picture of all that.  PS: I love onionnnn.  I made an onion and cheese omelette this morning.  WHATTT?!?!?!

Because I wanted to stay true to the Pioneer Woman, I did what she said and cooked it in the bacon pan.  However, I poured off all of the bacon grease first.  It filled up a whole mug!

Boy oh boy.  That looks brown.  Shall we take a closer look?

Oh yeah.  Definitely done.  Set this aside for a sec.

Take the bacon that you didn't eat and chop it roughly.  Or use your hands, like me.

We don't really need all of this, do we?  So I can sneak a couple of pieces?  Oh, okay, good.

Here comes the cheddar part of our bacon onion CHEDDAR biscuits.  One cup... and a little more.  Oh heck, I added in a handful more than this, too.

Because I aspire to be the Pioneer Woman, I copied her picture.  But it looks SO NICE, right??  Throw all of that in there pronto.

And, of course, mix it all together.  I used my hands... again.  They were clean.  Promise.

I used two greased muffin pans and spooned some of the mixture into each tin.  I ended up using 18, I think.  Pop them into the oven at 375 for about 20 minutes and...

...heaven will emerge.  Oh, joyous day.  (This is a good pic too, right???)

I might die.  Seriously.  Send help.

 Just to cement it in one last time... this is what you get if you come to Connecticut.  This.  And guess what??

There's still some left.

Just tell me when to pick you all up from the train station/airport.

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And then I went to the gym four days straight.  And then my body wanted to kill me.  No, really, I''m serious.  I think I limped to work Friday morning after Bodypump Wednesday and PiYo (pilates-yoga) Thursday (plus cardio each day, of course).

We bought three cartons of fresh strawberries today... so you'd better bet that that'll be next.

SENDING SOMERS LOVIN,
Courtney

Chicken Cutlets Done Right

Hi girls!

So the other day, I wanted to do chicken cutlets for dinner. This is a family favorite and a regular on the dinner table at the Lavalle house. But, I didn't want to do the same old thing. I wanted to lighten the meal, since I always feel like I'm indulging myself when I eat pan-fried chicken (pan-fried anything really). I have learned, through my adventures in the kitchen, that the best thing you can do to chicken in a frying pan is cook it with butter and olive oil. I used to just do olive oil - makes a huge difference.

Anyway, I found an Ina Garten recipe that I thought would be a good way to mix it up. It turned out great! The chicken tasted lighter and less fried than it normally does and the coating was flakey and delicious. I served the dish without the greens, but used the lemon vinagarette as a sauce for the chicken. YUM! A good family-friendly and kid-friendly meal! That's important, since I have so many children ages 20-22 to cook for! :-)

Here's the recipe. Thanks Ina Garten!

Ingredients for Chicken:

• 4 - 6 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt (I used sea salt)
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon water
• 1 1/4 cup dried bread crumbs (plain or seasoned, whatever you prefer)
• 1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Ingredients for Lemon Viniagrette:

• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (I cheat and use bottled lemon juice)
• 1/4 cup good olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (or sea salt)
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Directions

• Pound chicken until it is as thin as you would like it. 1/4 inch thick is good.
• Combine the flour, salt, and pepper on a dinner plate.
• Combine the eggs and teaspoon of water in a shallow bowl.
• Combine the bread crumbs and parmesan cheese on a dinner plate.
• Dip the chicken in each dish - flour then eggs then bread crumbs.
• Heat one tablespoon of butter and one tablespoon of olive oil.
• Cook chicken on medium heat until browned on both sides and cooked through.
• Whisk lemon vinaigrette together in small bowl. Use as a topping for plated chicken as well as extra parmesan cheese.

ENJOY!

After some trials and tribulations, we finally have out very own blog.  Start Blogging, girls!

-A