Pulled Pork

I made the most amazing pulled pork last night.
 Too bad for you that I failed to get pictures of it.

Crock pot.  Pork Butt.  Various Spices (heavy handed).  Beef broth.
8 hours later, total yummy goodness.
NO SAUCE REQUIRED (shocker right?)

Even my picky eater 7 year old went back for 3rds.  Mom win.

Soup is Easy

I recently signed up for a weight loss challenge at work.  What my actual weight is, is none of your business, but I have to lose 5% in the next 8 weeks.  I had to pony up $20 and all those in the pot who reach the 5% goal get to split the pot.  It's at $460 right now.  I'll take those odds.  Losing weight is not a first for me.  After the birth of my oldest child I joined Weight Watchers (WW) and lost 75lbs on the program in one year and kept it off for 2 years after that until the birth of my second daughter came along.  And I haven't been able to lose the baby fat since.  So I know my limits, I know my pain points and I know what I'm up against.  I can do this.

I dug deep into my memory bank to try and remember how I did it 7 years ago and remember starting in the first month and going WW recipe crazy.  I pulled out all the stops and measured and counted and followed all the rules.  In WW land, today those have all changed.  But one thing I remember that helped me jump start was by making soup.  WW has this soup recipe that's all broth and vegetables and it's REALLY GOOD.  But you think I could find that again?  I remember what was in it so I planned to just wing it.   Although, the grocery store had other plans for me, they didn't have 1/2 the ingredients I needed in the vegetable aisle.  So.  Ok.  I'll change it up and use intuition and play.  And here's what happened.

Ingredients
All amounts are relative to how much soup you want to make!

• Carrot
• Onion (I use vidalia, i like 'em sweet)
• Celery
• Rutabaga/Turnip
• Chicken/Vegetable Stock (low sodium)
• 1-2 cloves Garlic
• 1 Bay Leaf
• Caraway
• Coriander
• Basil
• Salt/Pepper
• Ditalini Pasta (optional)
• Olive Oil

Seriously?  Rutabaga (aka Turnip)?  Yep.  I didn't want to use potato, all that starch.  I recently made boiled dinner which got the flavor of Turnip/Rutabaga in my brain, and I really like that root vegetable.  (See it used with Beef Brisket boiled dinner)  And I started to research it after I bought it.  Granted, you can only trust half of what you read on the Internet, but most of what I found seemed to all corroborate these results.  They are low carb.  And calories in a Rutabega are much less than calories in a Potato.

"Mise en Place" aka Preparation

I heard Chef Anne Burrell use this a lot on Worst Chefs in America on the latest episode and I like it.  Basically, it's "get your stuff ready before you start cooking"

• Carrots - peel, slice down middle lengthwise and chop
• Onion - peel, slice off ends, slice in half, chop into 3rds
• Celery - trim dirty ends, chop
• Rutabaga - peel, slice dice into 1/2" cubes
• Garlic - smashed and finely chopped or pressed in a garlic press

Play

1.  In a large stock pot, drizzle the bottom with olive oil, turn heat to medium, add onions
   
2. Salt and Pepper heavily
3. Keep onions moving and saute until they start to soften and become translucent
4. Add carrots and celery
   
5. Add bay leaf, basil, carraway and coriander
6. Continue to saute until carrots become soft
7. Add garlic and saute long enough for the garlic to soften
8. Add stock, you're going to want at least 4cups, I used 6 as I had more veggies
   
9. Add Rutabaga
   

At this point, you need to decide if you want to add the pasta or not.
And if so, are you going to eat it now, or store it for later?
If you're not going to use pasta, you're done, serve and enjoy!

       10. If you're going to add pasta and eat tonight
             - let stock boil until Rutabaga is almost soft
             - add pasta and serve once pasta is at desire texture.
       11. If you're going to add pasta and eat the soup next day
             - let stock boil until Rutabaga is completely soft
             - add pasta and get soup into your containers.
             - As the pasta sits in the soup as it cools down, it will cook.

And of course, if you find yourself home the next night, alone, after the kids went to bed having had their own dinner, you can always have soup.  With grapes (NOT olives.  Ew)

Gettin' Saucy

Lasagna night!  But not for me yet to consume.  Cooking to help cater a party tomorrow.  Mmmm love me some red sauce!

Biggest lasagna, ever.

3lbs mozzarella 

2 batches sauce

64oz ricotta, seriously could eat this stuff with a spoon 

Parmesan cheese

2 boxes noodles

Choose a pattern and layer it all the way to the top.  Love.

Turkey Pot Pie for a Crowd

There's a pot luck for work tomorrow.  I always overdue it and cook too much.  Decided to make turkey pot pie and cornbread.  But the challenge here is getting it warm at work with no oven and staying away from the microwave.  Oh, and I've never made pot pie before.

So the plan became to make the pot pie insides, warm them in a crock pot for the day and serve up some flakey buttery pastry on the side to pour the insides over.  And that's exactly what I prepped. It smells SO FREAKING AWESOME in here tonight.  I've had a taste and it's oh so good!

But I didn't play with my own recipe, perhaps another time.  But wanted to share it.  A quick google search tonight landed me at the Food Network.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/turkey-pot-pie-recipe.html

My 3yo helped me peel and slice tonight too.  Here's our hard work.

I'll update tomorrow with the final product.  Can't wait!

Stir Fry Fun

It was mentioned to me the other day that I hadn't updated my blog in a while, so of course I ran home and decided to do something interesting for dinner to blog.  And wouldn't you know, about half way through I realized I wasn't taking any pictures.  So, I have a picture of this final product, but no step by step instructions.  But really, you don't need visuals for this, it's super simple and very quick.  I made this meal in under 30 minutes and 1 out of 2 kids enjoyed it, and even the husband took a second helping.

Inspiration for this dish actually came from my three year old.  Walking through the grocery store she finds Chinese Bean Thread, or what some may call Cellophane Noodles.  Any time the kids pick up something in the store that is "out of the ordinary" I jump at the chance to bring it home and try something new, or introduce them to something they normally would not have considered.  So of course I grabbed the bag and tossed it in the cart and banked it for a future dish.  And that dish just happened to be the other night.

Bean thread cooks quickly in a pot of boiling water.  Not 5 minutes and they're done.  So plan the associated dish carefully enough and you have a dinner that can be cooked in 20 minutes.  And I didn't exactly know where I was going with this meal until I started tossing items in the pan and started to play.  It made itself along the way.

Ingredients

• Chicken, diced into small pieces (or Shrimp!)
• Carrots, I used diced frozen
• Peas, I used frozen
• Broccoli, I used frozen
• Mushrooms, fresh if you have them, canned if not
• Bean Thread noodles
• Sesame Oil
• Sesame seeds
• Soy sauce
• Sugar, brown if you have it preferred, White if you're out (like I was)
• Ginger, fresh is best grated 1/4t., I used powdered as I was out of fresh
• Garlic, fresh is best, minced 1t, I used garlic salt as I was out of fresh
• Scallions, 2 or 3 smalls one chopped, I used onion powder as I didn't want to go out in the rain and dark to find mine in the garden

Time to Play

1. Fill pot with water, bring to boil, toss in bean thread.  
2. Let boil for 5 minutes and drain.  
3. Let sit until ready to use.  

Meanwhile, waiting for the pot to boil...

1. Heat your frying pan (12" minimum, needs to be big), or wok to high.  
2. Generously drizzle sesame oil.  
3. Toss in your frozen veggies and saute until no longer frozen, but not yet cooked.  
4. Then toss in the diced chicken.  
5. Keep the food moving so it doesn't burn and all sides get cooked.

Meanwhile, waiting for the veggies to cook, and water to boil...

1. In a small bowl, pour in about 1.5c of soy sauce
2. Add to that 3T (roughly, I don't measure, ever, when making sauces, always TASTE) sesame oil
3. Add the ginger, the garlic, the scallions, the sesame seeds, the sugar
4. whisk together
5. TASTE it.  needs something more, add it

Going back to your frying pan...

1. When the veggies are cooked through and the chicken is done, grab the bean thread and dump into the pan
2. Pour your sauce over the bean thread and start tossing everything together for 2-3 minutes allowing the sauce to permeate the noodles and soak into the chicken.
3. Remove from heat
4. Serve.

Time to Tumble

Well, I put myself on Tumblr today.  Different blog, pulling visitors from a new location.
There's nothing there. This will remain the home base for all content.  Just expanding horizons.

http://csg1rl.tumblr.com/

It's Rare, but occasionally the kitchen gets clean!

Say what you want about a good meal, but there's nothing more comforting than a clean kitchen.