Back In Action

Hi there! It's been a while. As you may have noticed, I've been on a bit of a hiatus since football season ended in February. It started because I got lazy, then continued because I was busy. Now that it's cold and my schedule is more empty, I'm out of excuses. Also, I decided to get back to blogging a) due to popular demand ('popular' meaning the request of two family members at Thanksgiving, or so I hear), and b) because I need a hobby.
So let's get back to it.

Before I get to the food, let me introduce you to my sous chef, Josie. She's super adorable and sweet and I'm kind of obsessed with her. When we adopted her, she was terrified to go in the kitchen. Although to be honest, she was pretty much terrified of everything. Fast forward about 6 weeks, and the kitchen is one of her favorite places.

I hope you like cute dog pictures.
There's a lot more where this came from.

As sous chef, she protects the ingredients and diligently cleans up anything I might drop on the floor. 

Where's Josie? Just look for the ears.

So I had intended to get back to blogging at the start of this football season, but ended up with something to do almost every weekend for September and October. Definitely not complaining, but menu planning and blogging fell to the wayside. While last season I only made crock-pot meals on Sundays, this season I'm planning to use Sundays as an opportunity to make slow cooked meals, regardless of whether they're actually made in a slow cooker. If you remember, I didn't want to spend much time in the kitchen on Sundays last year because it was blocked off from the rest of the house. Since we moved in the spring, my view from the kitchen now looks like this, which is pretty awesome in my opinion.

I definitely don't miss trying to clean these counters.

So, now I can spend more time in the kitchen (if I want) and can still catch all the plays of whatever game we're watching. It's pretty awesome. And was a large part of why we liked our new house so much. Another reason? Do you see those counters?? They're not 1950s black and white bathroom floor tile being used as a counter top. It's pretty amazing.




And now, to the food. This week we decided to make tandoori chicken in the crock pot. Wait, wait wait...before you say you're unsure about whether you might like Indian food (if you haven't had it before), just keep reading and give it a chance. I'm not typically a big fan of Indian food, but I've had and enjoyed tandoori chicken previously. We've made a Rachel Ray version of it a few times that has been pretty good. Trust me when I say this isn't a spicy dish at all. I am such a baby about spice that if black pepper isn't ground well I've been known to think that's spicy. I'd say tandoori chicken is a good 'intro to Indian food' dish. I had pinned this recipe awhile ago, and only made a few small changes. Here's what you'll need:

• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 lemon
• 1/4 of a red onion (I downsized this amount quite a bit because I am not an onion fan. Feel feel to use more if you want.)
• 1 c plain Greek yogurt
• 4 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 1/2 tbsp paprika
• 1 tsp ground ginger

 Optional:

• basmati rice
• naan bread

Directions:

1. Place the chicken in the bottom of the slow cooker and juice the lemon over the chicken.
2. Put onion in a food processor and pulse until chopped. Add about half of the chopped onion on top of the chicken. Leave the remaining onion in the food processor.
3. To the food processor, add the remaining ingredients and pulse until it forms a thick sauce.
4. Pour sauce over chicken breasts and spread until chicken is covered.
5. Cover and cook on low for about 5 1/2 hours.
6. When chicken is cooked, shred with two forks. Recover and cook for about another 30 minutes to an hour. If you're having rice with the meal, you can also start it around this point.
7. Serve over rice and enjoy!

One thing I learned last year is that chicken breasts often dry out in a crock-pot, thus a lot of slow-cooker recipes call for chicken thighs. I was glad this one used breasts, but was concerned they'd dry out. Luckily that wasn't the case at all! I think the lemon juice and sauce kept the moisture in. Being the carb lovers that we are, we opted to have rice and naan bread. I definitely didn't regret this decision. Naan bread, when warmed in the oven, is so soft and delicious. If you're making rice, I'd definitely recommend using basmati. I'm not sure what about it is different, but it has a distinctive taste that is perfect with this meal.

Once you're done, take a load off! Being a sous chef is hard work.

Yep, she's spoiled rotten.

Husband Hacker 2: Crockpot Day

Who doesn't like a good sequel?  In fact, sometimes they can even be better than the original.  I find Terminator 2, which I alluded to in the title, to be way better than the first movie.  Some others you can agree or disagree with me on: The Dark Knight, Back to the Future Part II, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and pretty much all of the Harry Potter movies after the first one.  I think all of those continue to get better as the series progresses, and I'm going to try to do the same as a guest on my wife's blog.  With not much to write about right now in the realm of fantasy football, I'll shoot to be the J.K. Rowling of crockpot blogging...or at least Steve Guttenberg.

I don't know how often she'll let me post on here, but I'll try to keep us up-to-date if she needs any help.  Since we're a little behind, I got the green light to do a quick write-up on this recipe we used (and modified slightly) on Monday.  The honey garlic chicken was really simple and ended up very flavorful, but it also didn't have any veggies in it.  I think if I were to do this one again, I'd throw in some broccoli, carrots, snow peas, or something along those lines at the end.  But if you're in the mood for a delicious chicken and rice dish, I'd definitely recommend this...

Ingredients:

2.5-3lb chicken breasts (the recipe called for bone-in, but we used boneless and it was just fine)
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup low sodium soy sauce
1/4 cup blackberry jam
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup diced onion (we used about 1/4 of a small, yellow onion...so however much that is)
a few dashes of red pepper flakes (as much or as little as you like)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
sliced scallions, for garnish (we didn't have these, and thus didn't use these)
sesame seeds, for garnish (we did have these, but forgot about them because we were hungry)

Directions:

1. Place the chicken in the bottom of your crockpot.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together the following:
    honey, soy sauce, jam, hoisin, olive oil, garlic, onion, and red pepper flakes.
3. Pour the sauce over the chicken and cook on low for 4-5 hours (we cooked for 5 hours).

4. Remove the chicken from the crockpot, and place in a large bowl.  Use two forks to shred it.
5. Meanwhile, you might want to get started on cooking some rice around now.
6. In a small bowl, whisk together the tablespoon of cornstarch with 3 tablespoons of water.
7. Transfer the remaining liquids from the crockpot into a small saucepan set over medium-high heat.
8. Whisk the cornstarch/water slurry into the saucepan and bring to a boil.  The original recipe suggested reducing for about 3 minutes, but we let it thicken for about 10 minutes (stirring often).
9. Pour the sauce over the chicken and stir/toss to combine.
10. Serve chicken over rice (we used jasmine), and top with scallions and/or sesame seeds if you can remember things like that better than we can!

Spicin' It Up

The other week, we went out on a whim and decided to make an Ethiopian spiced chicken stew. I'd never had anything like it before, but something about the recipe just seemed appealing. I figured that since I liked all of the ingredients individually I would like the meal itself, so why not try it.

It's a recipe I had pinned on Pinterest quite some time ago and finally got the nerve to try. You can find the recipe here (I just made a few small changes).

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups lentils
• 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 cup chopped red onions
• 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 5 tablespoons berbere spice blend 
• 1/2 cup dry red wine
• 1 can(14-ounce) diced tomatoes
• 2 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth

Directions:

This one took a little bit of prep work, which I usually oppose, but it wasn't too bad. 

First, put the lentils in the crock-pot, and place the chicken on top of the lentils.

Heat the butter and oil on the stove. When the butter melts, add in the onions. Add the garlic and ginger once the onions have cooked for a few minutes and become pretty translucent. Mmmm I love the smell of onions and garlic cooking in butter. Cook for a few more minutes and then add the berbere spice. At this point, you may want to turn on your range hood or vent to combat the strong fragrance. We don't have a vent over our stove, so I decided to open the window.

The mixture on the stove should look something like this:

Stir in the wine and tomatoes, and then it should look like this:

Add the mixture to the crock-pot, then pour in the chicken broth. Cover and cook on low for about 7 hours.
After that, the chicken should shred and mix together with the rest of the stew:

Just a couple of notes:

• I thought 4 cups of onions was a bit excessive, especially considering I really don't like onions (I like the flavor, but not the texture) so we decided to use 1 cup instead
• I'd never heard of berbere spice blend until I saw this recipe. It was a little bit hard to track down, but we finally found it at Whole Foods.
• And man is it SPICY.
• This dish made the house smell amazingly good while it was cooking and even for the following two days.
• I have to warn you though, it is really, really spicy. With the 5 tablespoons of berbere spice, it was actually a little bit hard for me to eat. Bart loved it and gobbled it right up with our favorite bakery bread, but I only managed a few bites. I was bummed because I really enjoyed the flavors, but couldn't handle the spice. I think I'll be up for trying this again, but may make two separate, smaller dishes so I can put less of the spice mix in mine and Bart can keep his dinner hot, hot, hot.

Now that the dust has settled...

Happy 2014 everyone!

We had quite a busy end to 2013, as I'm sure many of you did as well. In fact, I started this post way back on December 17th, but am just now actually posting it. You see, we decided to do some "minor" house renovations the week before Christmas. I was initially pretty reluctant about this, just given the timing and the fact that I didn't want my Christmas tree or decorations to get messed up. But alas, we went ahead with the work, and I held on to hope that it wouldn't be too disruptive.

I'll try to make a long story sort of short here. Since we have an older house (circa 1930something), we have plaster ceilings, a few of which had some sizable cracks (which just happens with plaster over time), a number of which had been poorly patched in the past. In an effort to sell our house in the spring, we decided to put in new ceilings. We had this done in our living room a few years ago after water from a hurricane caused damage to the ceiling, and the guys who fixed it were able to put sheet rock right over the plaster. So we wanted to do the same thing in our dining room, kitchen and guest bedroom. Simple, right?

Oh, hello attic.

Sure it was, until the renovations got started. We had the same guys in who did the great work in our living room previously. After testing to see where the studs were in the guest room ceiling, the entire ceiling in that room fell down. IT FELL DOWN. Plaster ceiling, loose attic insulation and all. Thank goodness no one was in the room at the time, it just created a giant mess and took a chunk out of the top of our solid wood dresser. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that it came down if it was that unstable, but gees, how crazy. After that, our home owner's insurance agent recommended we take down the kitchen ceiling also as a precaution.

Thanks for the replacement top, IKEA!

For an entire week we were living with layers upon layers of dust and furniture in all the wrong places. I thought the house would never get clean or back to normal. While a little stressful, the timing before Christmas actually worked out well because Bart and I were off that whole week. With all of the holiday festivities, we were still able to paint each of the three rooms and clean, clean and clean some more. And in the end, after watching a lot of HGTV on New Year's Day, I realized that a week of disheveled living conditions wasn't really all that bad.



But anyway, back to that meal we had 3 weeks ago. Now, I'm not usually a fan of pot roasts, and not for any reason that I can really pinpoint. I guess I just think of them as being really heavy meals. I'm not usually a meat-and-potatoes kind of gal. But let me tell you, this one is really good. It's heavy on the veggies, so feel free to use less if you don't want to have a ton of leftover. It looks like a lot of ingredients, but check it out - only 3 steps!

Ingredients:

• 3lb pot roast
• 5 small carrots, peeled
• 1 large parsnip, peeled
• 24oz bag of fingerling potatoes
• 1/4 of a yellow onion
• 3 tbsp flour
• Salt & pepper
• 1 15oz can tomato sauce
• 2/3c light brown sugar
• 2 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground mustard
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder

Directions:

Chop the carrots, parsnip, potatoes and onion; place in the crock-pot.

Coat the roast in the flour and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place on top of veggies in the crock-pot.

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients.

Pour the sauce over the roast and veggies. Cover and cook on high for 8 hours.

Enjoy! We served it with warm, crusty bread (my fave!).

After dinner, we had a lot of leftovers and decided to store the meat and veggies separately as much as we could. The next night we actually used the meat to make soft tacos with spanish rice, avocado and cotija cheese.














This was also the first week that I used slow cooker liners. A genius invention and I'm not really sure how I overlooked their existence for so long. Thanks to a certain family member for the suggestion to use them - cleaning up is so much easier when you don't have to scrub that giant crock-pot!

The Fanciest Ramen I've Ever Had

If you don't like ramen, please don't let this title scare you off. You don't even have to use ramen. Personally, I love ramen soup. Not all the time, but it's one of the staples I like to keep in the kitchen for when it's cold out, or if I don't feel like eating (or making) much for dinner. Since (news flash!) it's been pretty cold outside recently, I had a few packets of soup on standby in the house and decided to use them as a short-cut in Sunday's recipe, an easy and oh-so-good alternative to take-out.

Back to that in a minute.
As I mentioned, it's been pretty chilly lately, with it being December and all. This

I'm so glad we won't have to live like this in the summer!

weekend turned out to be a busy one because the weather called for an ice storm to hit town on Sunday, forcing us to push most of our weekend plans to Saturday. This turned out not to be a problem though because we needed to be out of the house - we finally got central air installed!! I know, it's December, we won't be able to use it for months. Growing up, my dad had a rule that the AC wasn't turned on until it was over 90 degrees outside, but I'm aiming to use it the first random, unseasonably warm day that appears, likely to be around the first weekend of March Madness. I can't wait until the day we* don't have to lug out the window units from the garage and can just press a button to turn it on!

      *And by "we", I mean Bart.

Bring it on, Richmond, I'm ready for spring, summer and fall.

So the intimidating ice storm turned out to be not much more than icy rain, but the dreary, cold, wet weather was enough to make me want to stay inside almost all day on Sunday, especially after having a busy Saturday. I did venture out in the morning to go to the Bizarre Bazaar Christmas show, a Richmond tradition, with my mom to get some Christmas gifts, house decorations, and of course, cookies. Thank goodness it was only rain and we were still able to go!

The view from my kitchen window on
a rainy December Sunday

When I got back to the house, I started the quick and easy preparation for dinner, which I adapted from this recipe. It's one I had pinned awhile back and have been wanting to try ever since.

A number of the comments I read on this recipe suggested doubling the sauce, which is what I ended up doing, with the exception of the garlic, and I was glad I did. The ingredient list below reflects that:

Ingredients:

• 2 1-lb pork tenderloins (the two tenderloins we bought were each just a little over a pound)
• 1/4c low sodium soy sauce, divided
• 2 tbsp tomato sauce
• 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 4 small (or 2 large) garlic cloves, minced
• 4 3oz packages of ramen noodle soup
• 5 small carrots, cut into matchsticks
• 1/3c unsalted peanuts, chopped
• 3 tbsp seasoned rice vinegar
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1/4c fresh cilantro leaves
• Sriracha (optional)

Directions:

Place the pork in the crock-pot. In a small bowl, mix together 2 tbsp of soy sauce, the tomato sauce, hoisin sauce, sugar, ginger and minced garlic. Pour the mixture over the pork. I used a basting brush to make sure everything was covered. Cover and cook on low for 3 1/2 hours. You can cook it longer if you'd like, it will only make it easier to shred.

Once cooked, pull the pork out of the crock-pot and place on a cutting board to rest (for about 10 minutes). In the meantime, strain the sauce from the crock-pot into a small bowl. 

Cook the ramen noodles according to the package directions (excluding the seasoning packets), then drain. This is also a good time to chop up the carrots and peanuts if you haven't already done so.

Put the sauce from the bowl back in the crock-pot and combine with remaining 3 tbsp soy sauce, seasoned rice vinegar and sesame oil. Cover and cook on high for 10 minutes. While the sauce is heating up, shred the pork with two forks.

Once the sauce is done, turn the crock-pot off and stir in the shredded pork and noodles. Add in the carrots, peanuts and cilantro and serve. Of course you can add Sriracha if you desire, as Bart did.

I couldn't get enough of this meal and am already looking forward to making it again; it's definitely going to be high up on my list of quick and yummy meals as a take-out alternative.