Homemade Mac 'n' Cheese

I am a lover of cheese. In almost any form. Cheese added to just about anything makes it even better.

I've noticed that when I make a box of pasta (for having with meat sauce), we always have way more pasta than meat sauce. Izzy loves the meat sauce, and so do we! A pound of ground beef or turkey and sauce (from a jar or homemade) is gone after the three of us eat the meal, but there is always pasta left. So, I guess I could start making only half the box, or double the sauce...this time I decided to try homemade macaroni and cheese.

I found this recipe on Food Network, and it's from Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman, if you haven't heard of her--she has a fun blog, and (apparently) a television show on Food Network (where have I been).

So I used the leftover elbow macaroni noodles and whipped this up (I had approximately half the noodles necessary so I halved the sauce recipe).

The recipe is very precise, and the instructions are great. It was easy to get this great cheesy consistency, and I love that the instructions tell you to taste your sauce and adjust the spices so it works for you. I need to taste more while I cook.

I added breadcrumbs to the top, and baked in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for about 40 minutes (until it was good and bubbly). Served as the less healthy side to fresh green beans and grilled chicken breasts.

Success!

Apricot-Glazed Pork Chops

Usually when I go to Costco, I end up finding a million more things I "need" than are on my shopping list, and then I spend way more than I intended. We're trying to be a little more budget conscious these days--if there's one thing I know about having two kids instead of one, it's going to be twice as expensive!

So I've been trying really hard to stick to my list when I'm there--so many of our household staples are cheaper there, if I can buy smartly and make sure the food doesn't spoil before we eat it all. 

But the free samples--they always get me! Last week I tried a sample of some apricot preserves--they were delicious! The jar, however, is gigantic. After I had my taste, which was really good, I decided to buy it, and hope that we can actually eat all those preserves before they go bad!

When I got home I found some boneless pork chops in the freezer that needed to be eaten, and one of the first recipes I found for pork chops was this one! I had all the ingredients except the wine (it had been a while since anyone had a glass of wine around this place) so I hopped over to the Missouri side of State Line to find a place that sold alcohol (I'm still not well-versed on the Kansas alcohol laws). Just so happened the recipe called for a sweet and fruity wine--my favorite--so I picked up a Junebug Riesling. Not the best riesling I've ever had, but it was good in the recipe. And what do I know, I haven't had a drink in a year!

You mix together the wine, preserves, and some ginger (I actually used Pampered Chef Cinnamon Plus blend, because I like all the flavors together and I'm not a huge fan of ginger alone).

The pork chops are browned in olive oil (I added some minced garlic to the pan, because what's not better with a little garlic), 

then the apricot preserves and wine are cooked down to make a glaze. I wish you could have smelled this cooking!

We had white rice and mixed vegetables on the side. The chops were very tender and the sauce was sweet but not too sweet. My husband liked it (but he likes everything) and the toddler enjoyed it as well! Success :) It seemed like a fancy meal, but it was ready in under 20 minutes. Perfect for a busy weeknight, and healthy. Put this one in the win column.

Grilling FAIL

Thanks to some great suggestions on ways to use the rest of our giant zucchini, I decided to make zucchini fries! They sounded like they would go well with our steaks, so I baked them up and they were delicious--even Izzy agreed!

However--I started up the grill and got my steaks ready to go (a little olive oil and Montreal Steak seasoning), but when I went out to put them on to cook, the flame was out--we ran out of propane! Grill rookie mistake. We improvised some leftovers to make chicken wraps, which were also good with the zucchini fries.

I'll be picking up a new propane tank today and we will be considering the purchase of an additional back-up tank.

Zucchini!

My parents had a sprinkler system installed at their house this year, and while they were at it, they decided to build a large raised garden bed with its own dedicated sprinkler heads.

As a result, they have a PLETHORA of vegetables--so many they can't eat them all. In fact, mom said they almost need to take their food to the farmer's market to sell it, there is so much! This means every time we see my parents, we get garden fresh veggies!

I learned how to stew tomatoes so I could freeze a big 5-gallon bucket of garden fresh tomatoes to be used later in the year (here's the process I followed) and we've eaten tons of tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and green beans.

Stewed tomatoes, ready to freeze!

A couple weekends ago, we took baby Annie on a road trip for the first time and went to visit my parents in Springfield, and my mom sent us home with a zucchini that was almost as big as the baby!

Big zucchini or tiny baby?

What to do with all this zucchini? We needed a side dish for dinner last night (we had BLTs with garden fresh tomatoes, always a favorite at our house), so I found this recipe for Zucchini Provencal at AllRecipes.com and just happened to have all the ingredients on hand.

It was VERY easy to make, and delicious! Baby Annie didn't get to eat any, but the rest of us enjoyed it, and we'll be trying this one again. There was so much natural flavor in this dish, and I didn't add any spices besides the garlic, salt, and pepper. It also looked kind of fancy, so that made me feel great.

Zucchini Provencal

Two successes in a row! Hooray for finding new delicious recipes. I only used half that giant zucchini, so I'm on the hunt for more great zucchini recipes. Please share if there's one you love or have been wanting to try!

Gluten-Free Pie Crust, Take 2

After the EXTREMELY disappointing time I had with my first try at a gluten-free pie crust, I felt like I HAD to redeem both myself and the recipe by trying again. This time, I didn't promise anyone a gluten-free delicious dessert before I started, in case disaster struck again.

After attempting the hand pies, I didn't know if I had enough dough to make a whole pie, and I was nervous about working the dough too much because I didn't know how it would hold up, so I decided to use a muffin tin to make little tarts. I had no idea how this was going to work out, but the dough worked up nicely to press into each spot in the tin, and I filled them each 3/4 full with the peach filling.

Since I wasn't working from a particular recipe for my improvised tarts, I didn't know how long it would take for the dough to turn that great slightly crisp, golden-brown color (and I didn't even really know if this gluten-free dough baked up that way). All in all, it was pretty much a crap shoot.

HOWEVER--after about 20 minutes of checking on my little tarts, they were done! They were a little hard to get out of the muffin tins without destroying them--I ended up putting a cooling rack over the top of the tarts and flipping the whole tin upside down at once to dump them out safely.

After all of that, I am glad to say that the gluten-free pie crust was just as delicious as a gluten-full pie crust, if a little more crumbly. I called my mother-in-law and she liked them, too! Mission accomplished (after only two tries)! I will definitely keep this pie crust in my arsenal for the future.

Gluten-Free Pie Crust, Take 1

The Cherry Hand Pies were so great, I wanted to try them again, this time with fresh peaches (really, not much beats a peach pie in my book). I also wanted to try and make them gluten-free, because my fabulous mother-in-law has a gluten intolerance, and it hardly seems fair that she can't eat things like cherry hand pies!

I got a recipe for a gluten-free pie crust from the blog of a friend of a friend--I've been tracking Johnna's  various blogs (about food!) for several years, since my friend Ginger introduced us at a reading by author Gretchen Rubin of one of my favorite books, The Happiness Project. (Yes, that was a long, drawn-out path to how I found the recipe for a gluten-free pie crust--but you really should check out Johnna's blogs AND The Happiness Project, whether you're gluten-free or gluten-full, or happy with your life in its current state or not.)

Johnna's recipe required me to head to Whole Foods in search of some things I hadn't ever bought before, like guar gum, potato starch, and tapioca starch. Thankfully, the folks at Whole Foods are lovely and helpful. Turns out, guar gum isn't gummy at all, but rather a powdered substance, and they didn't have guar gum, so I bought xantham gum (equally NOT gummy). Apparently it helps make the dough elastic, but I don't really know what it IS. I bought some. And used it.

I used regular butter (because I had it) after making sure that the brand I was using was in fact completely gluten-free (apparently some butter could have butter flavoring in it that one can't be assured is actually gluten-free, so you have to be careful).

So the dough seemed very similar to regular pie-crust dough, but slightly softer. This may mean I should have used less flour or more flour or less water or more water, or let it chill longer, or something...but I rolled with it. When I put my hand pies together, they were VERY delicate, and the dough wanted to fall apart quickly, but I still thought things were going okay.

Then. I dropped the first pie into the heated frying oil. Bad news. The dough pretty much disintegrated in the pan and wouldn't get brown at all, and turned to mush. I fished out all the dough and the peaches and took a bite anyway--it tasted pretty good, but it looked awful. I was so upset! No pictures were taken to include with this post.

Lesson learned: gluten-free pie crust is not good for frying, at least in this configuration. I have a lot to learn about gluten-free cooking...fortunately, I only made a few disastrous pies and saved much of the filling and the crust. Stay tuned for the second take with this recipe!

Cherry "Hand Pies"

The last pie, taken with Instagram (my SECOND helping)

Well.

Over the past few weeks I've had the occasion to cook a couple different times for our extended family, as well as some dinners for our little nuclear family, which has brought me to the idea for this blog.

For my mother-in-law's birthday, I grilled filet mignon, made a twice-baked potato casserole, and even made a gluten-free dessert especially for "LaLa" as we call her around here. The steak could have been a little more done, the potatoes were supposed to be served in the skins but I mangled them, so it turned into a casserole, and the dessert was pretty good.

For my parents and sister, I grilled one of my tried-and-true recipes, a Jamaican-inspired barbecued pork tenderloin (my mom made the side dishes).

My sister-in-law and I enjoyed another recipe I appear to have mastered, a baked salmon (I fixed an Uncle Ben's boxed rice side dish with this one), and for dessert--cherry "hand pies." More on these in a moment.

I need a new grill, some better grilling utensils, and some more practice with how to tell my meat is really done. I need some practice on creating pretty twice-baked potatoes. I need to branch out a bit.

But the "hand pies"--oh MY.

I got a pound of cherries on sale at Whole Foods for $1.99--that's cheap ANYWHERE for cherries, let alone at Whole Foods! The toddler loves fruit of any kind, and probably ate about half the pound herself (what a mess!) but I wanted to make sure we used them all up before they went bad. I found this recipe at FoodNetwork.com and discovered I had all the ingredients on hand, so I decided to go for it.

I only had about half the required amount of cherries, so I halved the rest of the ingredients--except I accidentally put in the original amount of cinnamon, so they were pretty cinnamon-y (but not in a bad way). I also burned a finger during the frying, but it was SO worth it.

I don't typically like cherry pie...but I think that's because I'm usually eating generic pie filling. I used Rainier cherries, so they were a deep, dark red, and I don't think I've ever tasted anything as glorious as those pies.

Other tips: put a brown paper bag under the cooling rack for easier clean-up of the grease. Try rolling the dough out between two pieces of plastic wrap for less mess and prettier pie shapes.

Put one in the win column, folks--this dish was great!

This is NOT a Foodie Blog

Not yet anyway.

If you're looking for elegantly crafted recipes, perfectly created in a gorgeous kitchen, with professional photos of beautiful food and results that never fail, this is NOT the blog for you.

My kitchen needs a remodel, my cooking utensils, pots, and pans are outdated and cheap, and my previous attempts at creating fabulous food are at best, spotty. I have several dishes I can put together for dinners for my family and friends, but my repertoire is limited.

I read a LOT of food blogs--I love to eat, and I love the idea of being able to create delicious meals that everyone enjoys, kids included. I don't need to be a gourmet chef, but I want my food to be unique and (somewhat) healthy and most importantly, tasty.

So I'm embarking on this adventure to chronicle my studies. Cooking great food on a reasonable budget, and maybe someday, I will have a gorgeous kitchen, the proper tools, and an outstanding track record of always creating a great dish that everybody loves! Please feel free to offer your advice, recipes, reading material, food photography tips, critiques, and encouragement. Maybe I'll let you taste something if it's not horrible.