Cook. Craft. Enjoy.

Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Anyone?

The last few weeks I've been having some insomnia issues.  I get up at 5:45am during the week to get Liam ready for school.  I'm okay when I first get up but the days seem to drag for me and I'm exhausted!  Exhausted that is until it hits about 7:30pm and then all of a sudden I'm awake.  So awake that I can't usually fall asleep until after 1am.  It's a vicious circle unfortunately.

That also means that things get put aside because I have no creative energy to spare - and unfortunately this blog has suffered the past couple weeks - I'm sorry!  I've made a few things that were delicious, but once cooked, I have no interest in plating and photographing them, let alone sitting down at the computer and blogging them.  Sigh.

Last night, though, I forced myself to go to bed at 8:30 and amazingly after reading for about 20 minutes fell asleep.  Granted I woke up at 1:30am feeling like I'd slept for days, but was even able to go back to sleep after that.  The tides hopefully are turning.

A couple weeks ago I was recipe hopping and came across this recipe from Rachael Ray for an In N Out burger and fries clone.  Since I now live in Northeastern PA and the closest In N Out is in Texas, you can guess I don't get there that often.  When we flew out to California last summer at 11pm on the way from the airport we met our friends at In N Out before going to their house.  Are they really that good?  Mhm.

Now their menu is simple enough - burgers and fries, drinks, shakes.  That's it.  But in the way you order can turn your whole world upside down.  "Animal style" means them putting their "special sauce" on your burger, fries, whatever - and one of the best things they've done is "fried mustard".  Yep, they spread the mustard on the patty before cooking.  Delicious.

Here's the homemade version via Rachael Ray's recipe - the biggest difference I made is that she uses 8 oz of ground beef for each person (2 4 ounce patties) and I used 4 oz for each person (2 2 oz patties) - they were awesome and I can't wait to have one again!

A Roast That's Actually A Roast

I'm one of those strange people that love winter.  I was never happy in Las Vegas with its brutal heat and wind - give me a nice Pennsylvania winter anytime.  So it was nice when we woke up yesterday morning to this:

It's our second snowfall of the year (the first was a few days before Halloween!), and I love the beauty of it.  I didn't even mind cleaning off the car when I had to run to the store - though I'm sure that will get old (last year I got to park in the garage - this year not sure that'll happen).   I also love that this time of year brings thoughts of comfort food - and food that you don't mind spending hours cooking.  This week the grocery store had a roast on sale and I decided to tackle it.

Now, my normal way of cooking a roast is in the crockpot.  I've tried several recipes for it but really, none of them I would consider a roast.  You know, that you could slice thin if you were talented enough - the kind that you can slice without it falling into many stringy pieces?  Well, I think I found what I was looking for.

PPN: Beef Stroganoff

First, a public service announcement.  I'm off this morning to get my mammogram done - have you had yours done recently?  I know it's not one of anyone's favorite activities, but for you and your family it's probably one of the most important things you can do.  Now go make that appointment!

This week's meals are pretty back to the basics -  I wanted things that were good tasting, but easy enough I didn't need a recipe and could just throw them together.  Sunday night we had tacos - tonight we're having a chicken stir-fry and last night was beef Stroganoff. 

Beef Stroganoff isn't one of those things I think about when I think "quick cooking" - but this came together nicely in about 25 minutes (and yes, that does include the cutting).  The supermarket I went to this week has packages of small diced meat - they market it for stew, but it's really lean and in smaller pieces than what I think of for stew.  I sliced them into either halves or thirds depending upon how thick the slices were and they were a good bite size piece once the Stroganoff was done.

I have to say this photo doesn't make it look appetizing ... I really need to figure out the lighting and camera situation.  Oh, I didn't mention I bought the Nikon L105 camera that Target had on sale on Black Friday - so far I'm happy with it but I'm still learning.  Anyway, I served it with buttered Amish egg noodles (not sure what makes Amish egg noodles better, but that's what the package said - they were on sale and they actually were good), an apple cheddar salad with an apple vinegarette (yes, that's a prepackaged salad, see... quick) and a slice of the bread I had made the other day toasted with a little butter and garlic salt.

PPN: Spaghetti Something

I knew this week for my Presto Pasta Nights post I wanted to do something with a tomato meat sauce.   In preparation, I scoured the web for a bolognese sauce recipe - found one that sounded good yet easy - bought the stuff for it - and then the night came to make it I couldn't find where I had bookmarked it.  You might find that amusing (I do now, but didn't then), but it actually ended up turning out okay.  (Ha!  Take that my failing memory!)

Takeout No More

One of Liam's favorite foods is orange chicken from Panda Express.  Alas, the closest Panda Express to us is 93 miles away in Plainsfield, NJ.  Not something I'm going to drive to just for their chicken.  Granted, I don't mind their food, but if I'm going to drive that far for something to eat, it'll at least be something fresh and not something sitting around in warming trays.

Closer to home is a local Chinese restaurant, Peach & Lily.  Everything we've ordered from there has been good - though they don't have orange chicken - they have General Tso's.  I did a quick web search this morning and there's really not much difference between orange chicken and General Tso's ... except that orange chicken should have a more pronounced "orange" flavor while General Tso's should be a little more "spice" flavor to it.  Either way, while it's not good for you, it is delicious.

Once in a while I make allowances to make something for dinner that's so far off the "healthy" range it almost makes me cringe to make it.  I try hard not to make something like that more than once every few weeks and that's a good thing because this recipe, while unhealthy, was probably the best orange chicken we've had.  It's been requested again "soon" and that will probably be a in a week or so (I made it about 2 weeks ago).

I did serve it with some stir fry veggies as well, does that count for something?  No?  I didn't think so ...

Simple yet Delicious

The weather here in NE Pennsylvania has been crazy.  A week and a half ago we got over a foot of snow and now it's in the 60s during the day.  I think Mother Nature is trying to trick us into thinking it's going to be a decent winter - I'm not buying it.  Truth be told, I love the cold weather and the snow - but I will take this opportunity we're given and do some grilling before the snow overtakes us all.

We all know that different parts of the country have different food items that are unique to it.  I grew up and spent the majority of my life on the west coast so I'm still getting used to some of the things I can't find here or are outrageously expensive.  Honestly, while most of those are Mexican ingredients (cilantro for $1.99 a bunch anyone?), there are also differences in cuts of meat.  While I'm no expert - I'm not a big fan of beef - I could happily live the rest of my life without it or any meat for that matter - one of the cuts I like to grill is flank steak.  I know that it's a tougher cut of meat and that it's best marinated.   But, seriously, $10 a pound?  And so hard to find most of the time none of the grocery stores carry it.  I happened to find it this week for $7 a pound (still, um, unhappy about that, but what food isn't expensive now?), and picked up a small steak to grill knowing that the one steak would feed us all.

It all started with mushrooms...

As I looked in the refrigerator this morning I noticed two boxes of mushrooms that needed to be used and wasn't really sure what to do with them.  I had originally bought them to make with steak but when I had hit the meat department of the store the steaks didn't look good at all.  So the mushrooms ended in the cart and the steak didn't.  Fast forward to this morning when I wrote a post on Facebook asking for suggestions what I should do with them ...  Steak happened to be the consensus so off to the store I went.  I decided on what looked the best -- some New York strip steaks.  (And Paula from The Cookbook Junkie suggested I blog what I made so here we are.)

A couple of things to note ... I no longer have a gas grill ~ and I have never used charcoal before in my life. 

Now isn't this grill cute?  I picked it up at Target for about $15 and figured it was the perfect size for me to figure out if I even LIKE charcoal - let alone can cook on it.  Yes, it is just as small as it looks ...

I was actually pretty surprised how well it went ... the steaks cooked pretty quickly and evenly and I think I'm now a convert to charcoal.  :)  Hopefully I'll get my blog mojo back and you'll be seeing some more grilled recipes before it turns too cold to grill (hmmm... is it ever too cold to grill?)

As for the mushrooms, they started out looking like this:

 

and ended up looking like this:

And all put together, you get this:

See that bread?  OMG ... that has to be the BEST bread I've made in a long time (yep, I made it!)  I was on All Recipes this morning and came across a post linking this recipe for pretzel bread.  I made the dough in the bread machine and it came out PERFECT.  As a tease, here's a picture of the loaf (the recipe made 4 decent size circles):

Make it, you won't be sorry!

Mmmmm Brisket

Paula (from The Cookbook Junkie) asked me in the comments section yesterday if my health "issues" were due to a bun in the oven ... well, I'd rather be able to say "yes" then the truth which is at this point I still don't know what the problem is.  Since the end of June I've had varying symptoms -- the worst of which has been debilitating chest pains -- but now is mostly just stomach upset when I eat certain things (but I never know just what will set it off or how badly it will be set off).  I've been to a cardiologist so my heart is fine (thankfully!) and he put me on some acid reflux meds which have really helped.  I go back to him next month and we'll see where we go from there.  So, that's one of the reasons I've been negligent on the blog -- though since feeling better slightly it's easier for me to cook (and post!).  BTW, thanks to everyone who stuck around in my absence ... I appreciate it!

Now on to some food ...

This last week on my Costco trip I picked up a brisket thinking I might use my standard Ina Garten recipe but opted instead to try a new one.   The new one comes from Emeril and is beer braised instead of the tomato braised and I think just about as good as the Ina recipe.  My brother was over for dinner last night too and he said that while they were both different from each other, they were each very good.  One of the things I liked about Emeril's recipe is that you put the vegetables in about an hour before it's done so they have a little more texture to them -- but as my brother said last night also, mushy veggies are good too.

My only changes to the recipe were that I didn't brown the brisket before I put it into the oven, I omitted the tomato paste and doubled the amount of beer and beef broth.  Next time I might even triple the amount of liquid because there wasn't anything left in the pan after I took it out.  (Oh, and I cooked it for about 4 hours.)

Luckily I have leftovers today for lunch (as long as they'll agree with me!)

Let's Not Repeat These Meatballs

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time you know I love to try new recipes.  Sometimes they're weird, sometimes they're normal, but I enjoy having something different for dinner all the time.  This past weekend I opted for a recipe on the Food Network that was showcased on Emeril Live - Sausage Meatballs with Red Gravy.  Apparently this recipe is one a New Orleans firefighter feeds to the crew of his firehouse.  The recipe states it serves 4 (plus enough) but it really serves more like 12.  We had 6 people eat and more than half was left.

The one good thing I have to say about it is that Travis made it (mostly) by himself -- and did a great job keeping things in order while he did it.  The not so good thing?  They tasted weird and not in a good way.  The recipe (link above -- I'm not going to post it) uses ground beef, mild Italian sausage and hot Italian sausage mixed together.  While I can see the novelty of doing such a thing, the execution just didn't work for me.  (Though in all fairness we froze the leftovers so Don can have them this coming week as leftovers.)

Guess we'll stick to either meatballs or sausage and not a hybrid of the two.

Baked Beans

If the past week is any indication how our summer vacation is going to go it will be over before we know it.  The weather has been crazy too -- our highs haven't much reached 90 yet and that's very unusual.  Oh well, I'm not complaining about it -- makes it pleasant to actually go outside and barbecue.

I have the hardest time when I barbecue sometimes coming up with side dishes.  I'm not a big fan of the mayo based salads often popular with burgers and grilled meat (and neither are the kids) so I think this summer my goal will be to focus a couple days a week on the lowly side dish.

The one I'm going to share with you today we had about a week ago when my brother was here for dinner -- it's a baked bean recipe out of the cookbook Barbecue Nation by Fred Thompson.  I cut the recipe in half because I didn't want a gazillion beans but otherwise left it the same (I'm posting the original recipe so you might want to cut it in half too).  They were fabulous served with guacamole bacon burgers and some fruit.  I'm not thrilled they have corn syrup in them so next time I'll substitute maple syrup (real) or honey for it but it will be making an appearance again this summer.

If anyone has any side dish suggestions that would go along with grilled meats, please let me know -- seems like I'm using my grill nightly now!