My House Smells Fabulous!

There's a big stockpot of chicken soup bubbling away on the stove. We don't fuss around with chicken soup here - this isn't some pop open a can of chicken broth and add a few veggies kind of a thing. Oh, no.

There are caramelized onions and garlic. Then we saute the carrots and celery to bring out the flavors. Add ten chicken legs (no skin, please) and fill up the stockpot with water 2" from the top. Add a bay leaf or two, and then cook the hell out of it all afternoon until the liquid is reduced by at least a third (yes, children, a third. you want to concentrate the flavors). Then fish the chicken bones out (since it all fell apart on you), add fresh or dried herbs (I like thyme, dill, and rosemary) and your choice of noodles or pasta and cook until the noodles are done.

Eat. Eat a lot. Then freeze the leftovers in gallon ziplock bags, enough to feed the family for one dinner in each.

Someone told me once that I was making chicken stock and furthermore, "doing it wrong" (ie, you don't let the water evaporate, bla bla bla). They've never tasted my soup, so I can see where they might be confused. I agree that the chicken and veggies strained out, this would be fantastic chicken stock. But why add the extra step of taking the veggies out and then putting different ones back in? The carrots are sliced thick and so is the celery, so nobody's ever complained about the texture of the veggies. You should try it my way. It's really good.

Just make sure you caramelize the onions first. If you skip that, it's not nearly as yummy.

Shortbread Love

The craving for shortbread blindsided me about half a hour ago.

It's easy to make, and I had everything, so I made some.

The plan is to eat a piece now and save the rest for later. Somehow I feel that just isn't going to happen. I loooooove shortbread. I did throw the guts of a vanilla bean in there, so it's not completely "authentic", but the dough was good.

Another reason to love shortbread - no eggs, so eating the dough off your fingers, the spoon, or the bowl is completely OK.

Shortbread
1 c. softened butter
1/2 c. fine sugar
2 c. flour (I use 1 c. regular flour and 1 c. corn starch - silky!)

Cream butter and sugar. Add flour a little at a time, until dough is shaggy and easily handled. Either roll out and cut with cookie cutters or pat into a 9x9 pan. Bake at 350 for about 15 min or until "set" and a very light golden. If you used a pan, cut into peices now. Let it cool.

I like to dip into melted chocolate, but whatever floats your boat.

Baked Pasta

After spending a half hour looking for recipes, I'm not finding what I want. I'm making pasta tonight and I wanted to do a baked pasta.

Do I have to put ricotta in it? Does anybody know? I'm broke this week, but we're having friends to the house for dinner tonight and I wanted to serve something cheap that can be assembled and the mess cleaned up before they arrive (the house is small, no dining room, and the least bit of clutter looks atrocious) - hence baked pasta.

If I have to go out and get ricotta I will, but I will grumble the entire way. It's stupid expensive.

Sticky Sweet

At the dinner table last night over Maui Wowie chicken sandwiches*, Kerwin and I got on the topic of healthy eating. He's concerned about his pot belly. I told him to stop drinking soda, and he agreed with me. This led to a discussion about high fructose corn syrup and how it's pervaded just about everything we eat, including almost the entire menu at the Evil Arches. Don't ask why the fat chick knows so much about nutrition. I have the theory, it's the practice that kicks my ass.

EVERYTHING has HFCS in it. He didn't believe me until I got up from the table and started pulling everything off the shelves. Breakfast cereal? Check. Mac n Cheese? Check. Instant Oatmeal? Check. Pasta Sauce? Check. Goldfish crackers? check! I don't know how many things I pulled off the shelf and he just stood there flabbergasted.

He wants to make a conscious effort to avoid HFCS. I'm not saying this is a bad idea. I think it's a great idea. I'm just wondering how he plans to bankroll it. This is the man who bitches endlessly if I go over the $190 that we get in food stamps every month (that's right, I feed 3 people on $190 and frankly I feed us pretty well). I told him that means no more cheap food. It means making our own bread or paying $3.50 a loaf. It means no more sweetened applesauce or pudding in his lunches, or salsa on his eggs. He still seems to want to go ahead with this. I'm fine with it. I eat Kashi crackers and cereal already, and I like them better than the mainstream brands.

Just wait until pop tarts go on sale and I tell him, "No, remember? They have HFCS!"

Then again, maybe I'm not giving him enough credit. Maybe he'll embrace the healthy lifestyle.

*Maui Wowie chicken sandwiches

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, marinated overnight in a teriyaki marinade.
6 strips of bacon or turkey bacon
2 slices swiss cheese
sliced red onion
pineapple rings
wheat kaiser rolls
honey mustard

Grill chicken. Fry bacon. Slice chicken thinly. Spread the bottoms of kaiser rolls with honey mustard. Pile chicken on top, then bacon, cheese, pineapple, onion. Broil 5 min. Serve with a nice big salad. Serves two. Enjoy!

Spaghetti Sauce

I can cook. I mean, I can really COOK. I make all sorts of weird-ass obscure Indian and Mediterranean dishes from scratch. I make things up, rarely use a recipe, and you should see my spice drawer. I make what DH calls "Quick and Dirty"* meals 5 nights a week. Rachael Ray has nothing on me (after all, I can bake. And my "Quick and Dirty" meals are way cheaper).

Why is it that I can't bring myself to make spaghetti sauce (bolognese, to be technical) from scratch? Every time I just open a jar or a can of "chunky garden vegetable" and dump it into a pan of browned, drained hamburger cooked with onion and garlic. Granted, I do doctor it up a bit, add a little pinch of this or that, a little brown sugar to take the acid edge off. I watch Giada make it from scratch, and I just want to throw things at her overlarge head, with her little carrots and celery and roma tomatoes. Who in hell has time for that(Ok, who in hell that works full time, shares a car with her husband who works full time and attends college full time, and runs around after a two year old)?!

I know it's not that hard. I keep all the requisite canned tomatoes on hand for chili (which I do make from scratch). I just don't know why I should bother, other than the sodium level, to go away from jarred pasta sauce. My mother sneers at me when I tell her we had spaghetti. "From a JAR?!" she gasps. My mother makes two things from scratch - spaghetti sauce, and sloppy joes. This gives her the right, apparently, to sneer and condescend.

I still don't know why my from a jar spaghetti bothers me. It just seems that I should do better, since I know how.

*"Quick and Dirty" came to pass when it was 6pm, I sent him outside to play with the spawn, and called him back in 15 minutes later with a piping hot from scratch "gourmet" meal on the table (Spice Blackened Chicken and reduction suace over lemon-mint couscous with sauteed asparagus spears). He then started raving about me going on "I Want To Be a Food Network Star". Pft.