4-21-20 What's for supper?
11It’s been weeks now, so what is your plan for meals now that all the pot pies and pizza have been cleared out of your freezer?
Rate your cooking prowess:
a) I can boil water (I used to make ice, but lost the recipe card…)
b) I can prepare a pizza from the freezer section.
c) I can make pancakes from a box (no NOT using the box itself…)
d) I can make steak and mashed potatoes (from real potatoes)
e) I can fix a wicked (insert dish name here) from scratch
f) I will never starve to death as long as there is something/anything in the pantry.
g) I taught Guy Fieri everything he knows (but, the hair was all his idea!)
Do you like to cook/bake?
Do you eat in more often than you eat out?
Do plan to sign over your stimulus check to Doordash or UberEats?
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I can cook okay when the mood strikes me. Most of the time it is even edible!
For instance tonight was mozzarella chicken meatballs with cream cheese and mixed vegetables. It was simple and turned out fairly good.
I cook all the time, because I’m gluten intolerant. It’s become much easier to find premade mixes and frozen foods, but things like cioppino aren’t there. I sent my stimulus money to local foodbanks. I don’t think many people are eating out right now.
D/E I guess.
Love baking but I don’t do it too often because baked things aren’t very healthy.
I enjoyed cooking more when I cook with someone or for someone. It’s a little depressing to do it for only myself. I do it out of necessity.
The last year I’ve basically eaten out almost every day during work lunch. It’s really terrible but it was either eat out or don’t eat at all.
This pandemic has made it easier for me to cut back on eating out. However, I didn’t feel like cooking dinner tonight, so I just drank a glass of milk. Now it’s 1am and I’m hungry. Go figure.
Tonight was chili/lime chicken and new potatoes roasted with onion and bacon, all on the pellet smoker.
Sriracha on the side and a nice Zin to wash it down.
Accompanied by David Sanborn and Joni Mitchell.
It was… OK.
(for another night in)
(getting close to 50 in a row)
(I think the hash is #stayathome)
I love to cook! For me it’s breakfast on weekends and dinner every night but since I am still working and limiting trips to town (because quarantine) my cooking style has changed: bigger meats, longer-lasting veggies and only one grocery store run, no restaurants for ten days. (Me, partner, toddler.)
Saturday I smoked a “picnic shoulder” pork roast. Sunday was air fryer “carnitas” with rice and beans. Breakfast was (pork) machaca burritos w egg. Tonight I made “pulled pork sliders” with cole slaw and mustard greens. Tomorrow chili verde stew and the bone is slated for bean soup on Thursday.
For me, it just depends on how much time is available. I’ve no problem going to the pantry for some Mac n Cheese & Tomato soup, but also can destroy the kitchen and make a high level from scratch meal. Here’s last Saturday’s creation…Gnocchi are a great place to start!
@tohar1 that looks delish! I heard that gnocchi isn’t too hard to make, is it?
@moonhat Really not too hard. A little time consuming. But simple ingredients…Water, potato, flour & egg. If you want full recipe, I can certainly scan my recipe to you.
f) I will never starve to death as long as there is something/anything in the pantry.
There are three of us in the house and I routinely cook enough for 20. The level of my chest freezer is finally more than a few inches below the lid. That means it’s grilling season! Grilling chicken? Make seven pounds. Hot dogs? 2 packs. Hamburgers? 15.
I like to cook, and always have. I had a subscription to one of those meal-in-a-box places and that was fun for awhile, if not relentless. I quit the subscription when they started sending out old, beat-up fresh items. There’s no substitution for shopping for fresh ingredients than your local store.
But I lovelovelove Marie Callender’s pot pies. Someday I’m going to marry her.
@therealjrn
yep, there is just something about comfort foods, especially on a cold, wet, dreary winter’s day.
@therealjrn I have a co-worker that calls those “Marie Calories”. But sure are yummy!
@moonhat @therealjrn @chienfou
Costco has 'em.
@chienfou @moonhat
Yep, and so does Sam’s Club @mike808
Since the SAH order my Mom’s caregiver (who came by for 8 hours daily M-F to be sure her house got cleaned, she ate well and had some company around beside seeing us) has been staying at her place with her grandson who has asthma etc. We have started having Mom over for lunch each day, so we are cooking/eating more mid-day than we used to, much like the Europeans tend to do… Overall that is working out pretty well, since I can do it on both my work or off weeks.
This past week we have done
Pizza ( a Sunday ‘tradition’ we usually do after church anyway. Sometimes from scratch, some times a pre-made bake-at-home deli pizza that we ‘enhance’ with extra toppings and fresh herbs.)
Butternut squash with fusilli pasta
Salmon (sous vide at 120° with aromatics, lemon and butter finsihed in a pan of smoked olive oil) and ratatouille. (Chefmate immersion stick from meh)
Baked sweet potatoes with pulled pork (smoked and put in the freezer using a meh sourced FoodSaver)
Yesterday was Mom Bday so we did sous vide T-bones (at 130° finished on the grill), baked potatoes, avocado with balsamic glaze and a sheet cake (chocolate with chocolate frosting and decorated with flowers and a happy birthday message) Topped it all off with a Zoom meeting with both my kids and the grands, my sister, and both her kids and theirs SO’s. She was pleased.
TL:DR personally we (wife and I) are a solid f.3
BTW several of the above posts sound awesome!
POPSOCKETS! SPA KITS! POLLY POCKETS! AWESOME!
@chienfou yum, how is ratatouille done w a stick blender?
@chienfou oh duh chef mate is the immersion circulator for sous vide.
@2palms
Ding, ding, ding…
I make great comfort food.
I’ve been cooking for well over 40 years. As a youngster my mother insisted it was a life skill any female needed to “catch a husband”. By 12 I could cook a meal from scratch if she left ingredients and basic directions. I prepare 3 meals a day and can turn almost nothing into something, as I raised teenagers at a time I had little money for food. Tonight is steak and bean tostadas with red rice. I’ll crisp up corn tortillas in the oven, top them with leftover beans that I mash and season with chili powder, garlic and cumin then layer on some steak slices left from Sunday’s dinner, top with the standard lettuce, tomato, cheese, and salsa I canned last summer. I’ll serve it with red rice which is basically white rice sauteed with onions and peppers and then steamed with a jar of tomatoes I canned last summer. My husband will think he is having a feast and never realize I am just stretching various odds and ends into a take on a Taco Tuesday meal. Ssshhh don’t tell him
@allergycheryl My mom also thought that cooking was a necessary woman’s skill due to role expectations, etc. She once said she was a failure as a mom because none of us particularly liked to cook. I told her no she was a success as a mom because we felt free to hate something and not feel like we had to like it/do it because of our sex. Not she sure she really agreed with us though.
@Kidsandliz that’s okay. it’s how you rebelled against her authority. She also insisted that we keep the house impeccably clean - later she told me teenage girls that were busy scrubbing grout and washing woodwork were too busy to get in trouble. LOL my sister rebelled and her house is always a mess and she rarely cooks. She has one messy adult daughter and one that is very neat. I was the “good one” and my house is always immaculate but I insisted that my son and my daughter learned to cook. I told them it was a necessary life skill.
@allergycheryl
Too busy to get into trouble? LOL. I am sure if a kid was really determined they’d find a way. I was a rule follower but two of my three siblings were not. On the surface they were goody two shoes, but behind my parents’ backs… not so much so. One would exit out of the attic window by the fire escape safety rope ladder, across the attached garage roof and hang and drop by the basketball hoop (getting back up using a trash can). The other would sneak out the back door when everyone was in bed. They never did “bad” stuff, just would sneak out and hang out with friends until all hours.
Yes cooking is a necessary life skill for sure. When mom had to go back to work because dad no longer could she’d leave him lunch to warm up in the microwave. He had to be taught how to do that, how to boil water… I don’t think, other than pouring cereal and dishing ice cream (which he fed us once for breakfast when I was around 3.5) or getting something to drink out of the fridge, he had ever, in his life, had to venture into the kitchen to do anything other than that or to get the back door. It was pretty funny actually (and none of us kids could believe dad didn’t know how) but it also drove home why knowing how to cook, clean, sew, etc. were useful life skills without her saying one word on the subject.
Mom was more laid back on clean. Common areas, bathrooms, yes but she didn’t have a cow if bedrooms were somewhat messy (but did if they were dirty or were too messy). She did insist that beds were to be made. Her way. End of story.
@allergycheryl sounds delicious!
f) I will never starve to death as long as there is something/anything in the pantry.
My favorite way to cook is kind of “stone soup” style - what have I got on hand, what can I improvise with and and use up anything that needs to be used, what unexpected thing might work to make it more interesting? So usually the results are pretty good but sometimes a little weird; in any case it’s a fun creative experience.
@macromeh Haha -
- it looks like I’m going to have a bumper crop of rhubarb this year. Now if there’s flour on the store shelves I can bake up a bunch of pies …
@Kyeh @macromeh rhubarb is definitely one of those things I miss living in the south. I doesn’t grow here due to the heat/humidity.
@chienfou @macromeh Oh, really?
I put strawberries in with it, but what really makes it good in my opinion is adding some grated orange peel.
@chienfou @Kyeh My youngest daughter was home for Easter and she made some rhubarb curd (like lemon curd, but with rhubarb) tarts with individual graham cracker crusts. They were very good but alas, only used a tiny fraction of the rhubarb growing in the patch.
@Kyeh @macromeh I miss those days we lived in WI and had a patch the size of a pickup truck bed… SWMBO’s Rhubarb cake was to die for…
@chienfou @macromeh Would she be willing to share her recipe??
I happened to find a recipe today, just by chace, for a rhubarb cocktail. I don’t know if it’s any good, but I’ll post it.
@chienfou @macromeh
@Kyeh I’m sure she would be glad to give it to you… if we can locate it. 30 yrs living in the south has caused us to cull a lot of the recipes that were rhubarb based… or involved other stuff that was MN/WI sourced locally.
@chienfou Oh - understandable! If it turns up that would be nice, thanks.
@Kyeh
/giphy roger that
Nothing tonight but I can cook or bake pretty much anything.
Tomorrow I will be making homemade french baguettes (yummy) and I think some pizza dough to use this week.
I can cook and bake, give me a recipe for anything and I can handle it. But I hate all the clean up from it, and I hate lots of prep. With just 2 people in the house (most of the time) I cook less and less. My daughter is happy with pigs in a blanket, burgers or frozen pizza. If I bake I need someplace to take it so I don’t eat too many sweets.
Tonight we had McDonalds, mainly because we were cleaning and moving furniture. But last night I grilled some pork chops that I had marinated.
If I had a prep chef and someone to clean I’d do more cooking. Otherwise, meh.
@remo28 If someone would cook for me I’d do the dishes and pots and pans any day. A number of years ago my best friend and I went on a camping trip together (with our respective kids). She cooked because she wanted to, I cleaned up the mess. Worked out great for both of us. Rule in my house was whomever didn’t cook had to do the dishes. My kid chose to cook around once a week (usually the same thing - fried rice with cabbage and meat). Was fine with me.
Not pasta, that’s for sure. Someone deleted my post about it. It’s a fuckin cover-up!
@medz I buy all my pasta in bulk at www.pastadrip.com!
@medz @zdem Everybody be careful! That links to a sketchy website!
@therealjrn @zdem agreed. Avoid any site remotely similar to PastaDrip.
F. Growing up in New Orleans, it’s in my blood. I have also watched too many episodes of Chopped.
/image chopped!
Tonight my mother made me something she called Texas Hash. Maybe the Texans can weigh in and tell me if that’s a real thing or if it’s basically stone soup derived from whatever was on the lower pantry shelves she can reach without dragging out the ladder.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@ruouttaurmind
Can I borrow your mother? Tell her I’ll do the dishes.
@ruouttaurmind all I heard was your sweet mom made dinner. Lucky guy
@tinamarie1974 It was a bonus night for me. She called this afternoon and asked if I could stop by Walgreens after work to pick up her meds and them bring them by on my way home. When I got to her house she had a big tupperware bowl of this Texas hash and a huge hunk of vanilla cake with buttercream frosting ready to take with me.
@Kidsandliz I didn’t even have to do the dishes!
@Kidsandliz @ruouttaurmind @tinamarie1974
Mom didn’t ever need a ladder when I lived at home. If she ever needed something in an upper cabinet, she would invariably call me (she is 5’2" and I am 6’)
Of course, I could stand behind her and comb my hair (when I had enough to bother) while she was looking in a mirror too.
@chienfou
My mom is 5’1” and I’m just a hair north of 6’. Putting things up and getting things down from shelves is always on her to do list when I work on her house on the weekends.
@ruouttaurmind What? You plan to give her back that tupperware dirty? Tisk tisk. (grin)
@chienfou @ruouttaurmind she needs a grabber arm to reach things on high shelves. Being south of 5’2" I use mine on a daily basis.
@Kidsandliz Don’t be ridiculous! I let the dogs lick ‘em out real good first.
@tinamarie1974 I sent her the ones meh sold (twofer Tuesday deal a few years ago maybe?). She didn’t love them.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
5’1” ya say? I do dig the vertically challenged ladies.
@ruouttaurmind Don’t tell you mom.
@Kidsandliz @ruouttaurmind those are the same ones I have!!! I kept one and gave the other to my mom … she has shrunk a bit and is shorter than me. Poor lady!
They also work really well for chasing my niece and threatening to pinch her (no I don’t really pinch her).
And yes 5’1" - it is beneficial on an airplane as I always have plenty of leg room or can lie flat across three seats on a red eye flight when I need to catch a few zzzzzzzz’s.
/giphy vertically challenged
@tinamarie1974 That reminds me… whatever happened to Two-fer-Tuesdays at meh?
@ruouttaurmind likely the same place our new Irk videos went
/giphy under a rock
Can and do are not the same thing. Not even close
f) I will never starve to death as long as there is something/anything in the pantry.
My preferred way of dining, when we could do it, was out. Why? Not because I don’t want to go. Not because I can’t cook. But because cleaning up afterward is a fekking bitch. End of statement.
But I can cook. Just about anything. I don’t use a recipe card or cook book under normal circumstances. Just nose and the spice rack. However, if I want something that I’ve never done, I’ll look up recipes to get an idea. And sometimes I squirrel. Was looking at a pork tenderloin with apple butter recipe yesterday. Decided I didn’t like where they went with it, but keeping the idea in mind.
I’ve been a part of the volunteer catering staff for a large Renaissance Wedding and reception. I’ve made lard based meat pie shells from scratch (they were yummy, if probably really really bad for you). I’ve made real mincemeat (from a recipe yes, and with meat) to make pies.
Oh and to the question below- hell no… what’s a stimulus check…
Do plan to sign over your stimulus check to Doordash or UberEats?
Today’s accomplishment
@tinamarie1974 Those look nice. You going to have a dinner entirely of those with butter on them?
@Kidsandliz Thank you. I am pretty happy with the results for my first try!
Nah, I made homemade pizza dough and will use half/freeze half.
Took a loaf to my parents and I will use the rest over the next few days. I did slice the little loaf while it was still hot. Delicious with a little butter!
@tinamarie1974 Yes hot bread just out of the oven is SOOOOOO good.
@Kidsandliz and dinner is ready
@tinamarie1974 That looks way better than what I am having. I’ll just sneak in the back door so make sure you leave it unlocked.
@tinamarie1974
Bellissima!!
BTW did you steam the bread?
@chienfou @Kidsandliz Grazie Mille
@chienfou @Kidsandliz and yes I did steam it!! I wanted crispy crust
@tinamarie1974
Yep. That makes SO much difference!
Did you mix/kneed it by hand or use a mixer/bread machine?
@chienfou I mixed the starter by hand, then the main dough by mixer. The three subsequent kneads were by hand. Do you think it makes a difference one way or the other?
Only issue with steam was I didn’t use enough water so the dish went dry about five minutes before the bread finished. Already made a note for next time.
Loaves did not come out with a consistent width (one end fatter than the other). So I have a few things to work on next time.
@tinamarie1974 Mostly it depends on how much time I have and how energetic I feel. I will use the bread machine to mix and proof the dough then make the last knead and shaping into a set of french bread loaf pans I have (2 long “U” shaped troughs connected together and made of aluminum with holes in it) or sometimes use the dough hook on the Kitchenaid. And having to make (several) attempts to perfect the process is just the price you have to be willing to pay…!
/giphy grin
@chienfou no bread machine so it is really just experimenting between mixing by hand or by Kitchen Aid and perfecting my technique.
As a friend of mine says, the juice is worth the squeeze and it is true in this case.
@chienfou ok I stepped up my french bread game today making them into Pain d’Epi loaves.
@tinamarie1974
Very NICE. You may have a new career to fall back on if it all goes to shit.
@chienfou aww thanks! I really enjoy it and am looking for another design to try next week
@chienfou @tinamarie1974
Ooh. Ribbed for her pleasure, I see.
@chienfou @tinamarie1974 You folks all put me to shame.
Bored again, who wants a cinnamon roll?
@tinamarie1974
I’ll supply the insulin…
/giphy SWEET!
@chienfou they are a bit sweet. I had one. I am good for a while now!