Tag: mozzie

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later. – Og Mandino

4 Comments

Back in action!

As I mentioned previously, the past few weeks have been incredibly hot and humid here, so I’ve had to stay away from the stove as much as possible. Otherwise I would have overheated the whole house, and I didn’t want to have to deal with that.

This meant I was very limited as to my choices, especially since take out isn’t an option. I decided to break out the slow cooker, which still kicks off a fair amount of heat but my system worked out quite well. The best way to beat the heat is to do all your prep, load the slow cooker, then find the coolest place in your house and plug it in. Since you don’t need to do much other than leave it be, and occasionally twisting a knob or two it doesn’t need to be on the kitchen. Keep it somewhere cool, and let the smell waft through your house.

We got a good rain storm, so I can use the stove again, but I wanted to pass on my personal favorite of the recipes I came up with.

Here’s What You Need

  • 1.5 lb ground poultry
  • 1 medium sized zucchini
  • 6-7 mushrooms
  • 1-2 scallions (depending on size)
  • 1 orange pepper
  • cayenne
  • sea salt & herbs
  • 1 pkg brown rice pasta (shape to preference)
  • 2-3 green onions
  • tomato sauce (2 cans)
  • Daiya Dairy Free Cheese

This can become a vegetarian dish very simply, just ditch the poultry & double up on the veg. =)

There is still some stove work required, but not much.

Put some olive oil in a pan big enough to cook all the poultry, and dice all the veggies. Set the green onion aside, and toss the rest in the pan once the meat starts to change colour. Season everything as you see fit (cayenne + sea salt & herbs, for me.) Keep it at a medium heat and let it all cook down, until the meat is browned slightly.

At the same time, bring a pot of water to a boil, put in a few drips of olive oil and the package of pasta.

When the ingredients in the pan finish cooking, put them in the slow cooker, and when the pasta is done, drain it and add that in too. At this point I added in a healthy amount of cheese and then mixed everything together with the tomato sauce. Topped it off with a layer of cheese, cranked the slow cooker to high and put it in the coolest place in your house for 4-5 hours. Then toss on the green onions, and leave it for another hour or two.

Now is about the time to carry this amazing culinary pot pourri back to the kitchen and serve it up!

Uploaded from the Photobucket iPhone App

I’m about as tired as my little one, so I’m calling this blog sufficiently entried!

Uploaded from the Photobucket iPhone App

“If I’m Not Back In Five Minutes, Just Wait Longer!” – Ace Ventura

Leave a comment

I apologize right off the top, I’ve got a massive head cold so this post may become a bit loopy.

keeping up with Canadian content, another apology, this time for a lag in updates. Two friends from Vancouver arrived on Tuesday and as such I haven’t had much spare time to fill everyone in.

Yesterday my cousin Tim decided to take a trip up to visit, so we all spent the day sitting around, shooting the breeze. I tend to post photos of the things I cook, as they tend to be somewhat out of the ordinary, and Tim was looking forward to finally being able to TRY some of it. So, when it came time for Supper, I decided to step it up a notch and make Cordon Bleu Roll-Ups, but with a bit of a twist.

This is the recipe as I found it:

Photobucket
As I said before there are were deviations from the recipe, but I wanted to make sure everyone had the same starting points to allow you all to make your own tweaks.

Being lactose intolerant, I switched the milk for almond milk, and no one knew any different, just make sure that it’s unsweetened. The cheese was also switched out for the Daiya Dairy Free cheese I mentioned in the previous post.

I also found, not having panko crumbs on hand, that the amounts on the dry ingredients were a bit excessive and you really only need the 1/2 cup flour and the 1/2 cup of bread crumbs, panko or otherwise to suit your fancy.

The main difference between mine and the recipe above is that I didn’t use ham. I know what you’re thinking “Chicken cordon bleu is ham and swiss!” “It makes no sense!” “you’re a crazy person!” I look at it this way, my girlfriend doesn’t like ham, so I changed the recipe. Keeping her happy seems like the opposite of crazy, to me.

As an alternative, I fried up roughly 4-5 mushrooms, 1/2 a yellow pepper, & 1 medium onion and used that mixture in place of ham.

Everything else went according to recipe, apart from the fact that we used the BBQ. It was an incredibly hot day yesterday and using the oven would have been very stupid. So we used the pizza pans we have set aside for grilling, put a little bit of olive oil on them and loaded them up with the Roll-Ups (we doubled the recipe).

When all was said and done, this is what we ended up with:

Uploaded from the Photobucket iPhone App

Everyone seemed to really enjoy it, and we were able to make them to suit everyone’s needs:

Sam doesn’t like ham? CHECK! we used veggies instead

Sara doesn’t like mushrooms? CHECK! we fried onions and peppers separately for her.

Mom can’t eat peppers? CHECK! she gets onions and mushrooms.

We found the best way to do it so that everyone got the most out of it was to do 4 with mushrooms and onion and 4 with pepper and onion. We also kept them together rather than slicing them up, but this is what they look like once they are opened.

Uploaded from the Photobucket iPhone App

obviously this is one of the mushroom ones.

Tonight we’re going to be making some lasagna cupcakes, which should be up sometime tomorrow.

Be sure to let me know how you like theses/any alterations you make to yours!

In closing, this is my kitten. She’s all tuckered out from being a moron all morning.

Uploaded from the Photobucket iPhone App

I’m gonna read a book with pictures.

Leave a comment

So, my parents left for Greenville, SC yesterday, which means I’m house sitting for the next 10 days. Last night was fairly uneventful, I’ve just been picking away at re-cataloguing my DVDs and Blu-Ray because my database didn’t carry over when I made the switch from PC to Mac. It’s one hell of a process, but I’ve found a very good program that is incredibly user friendly and suits all my needs and beyond.

 

It came time for supper and I wanted to treat myself, do something a bit fancier than usual. This is what I came up with:

One of the many joys of having IBS is that there are things you can’t eat and there is no rhyme or reason to it. I’m not gluten intolerant, I can eat bread just fine, but for one reason or another I can’t eat pasta. I can eat rice, but pasta is a no go. So I’ve come to love rice vermicelli and also this “pasta” which is made from peas and bean sprouts. When uncooked it is white but the noodles cook clear, which is odd when cooking the first time and are unaware.

The sauce is just Hunts mushroom and basil sauce that I put Daiya dairy free cheese in while cooking so it melted all throughout. The meat is extra lean ground chicken with onion, mushroom, and orange pepper and seasoned with cayenne and a chicken seasoning medley. I cooked the chicken on it’s own on low for about 15 minutes, then added the veggies and cooked it for another 15-20, all the juice mixed in the pan and infused the meat, it turned out excellent.

I had a lot leftover so I packed it all up, cleaned the kitchen and retired to the basement for the eve.

Today Sam wanted to know what was for lunch and I didn’t just want to plate the same thing over again, so I took some rice paper out of the cupboard, grabbed the leftovers and ended up with this

we put some of the cold noodles and chicken in the rice paper and then reheated the sauce. Rather than pour the sauce all over everything, we put it in a bowl and used it for dipping. The fact that everything in the rice paper was cold made all the flavours inside come out full force, and it contrasted nicely with the heat of the sauce.

all in all a fairly successful meal since it made two different dishes with enough left over to attempt a third this evening. =)

 

We’re going to make the best of this glorious summer day and go do a mini photo shoot with our newly acquired ShirtPunch shirts.

 

This is my cat in a bag