I decided that today, I was in the mood to cook something really fancy. So I went to one of my fanciest cookbooks, and picked out a recipe. Oddly, the Mission Of Hope Cancer Fund cookbook? Really fancy. It's even got a recipe in it from one of the Iron Chefs. And we're not talking Cat Cora or Michael Symon here kids. We're talking Chen Kinichi. Oh, yeah. Apparently he cooks at (or cooked at at the time of the book being published) a restaurant in New Orleans. Of all the places in the world, right?
At any rate, I selected Chicken Noodle Soup. Except I did it the semi-homemade kind of way.
The recipe called for an onion, a full bunch of celery and 2 cups of carrots. And peas. And a full fryer chicken!
I had a couple of things working against me here, that lead to my embracing the "semi-homemade" version of this recipe:
1)I only had $20, and had to purchase EVERY ingredient on the list
2)I cook for a picky eater who was likely to pick out only the chicken and the noodles and waste all this celery
3)It was 4 pm, and I didn't want to have to mess with cooking a whole chicken.
So the good people at Kroger kind of saved me here. They have frozen mirepoix, which covered me for onions and celery (and carrots), and then I got a frozen bag of peas to cover me there. Throw in a $5 chicken, and a bag of egg noodles, and your pretty well out the door!
It doesn't call for any herbs or anything. Brown the vegetables, put in the chicken (of course, if your not doing it the semi-homemade way, you have to cook the chicken and all of that), stock, noodles. Set.
I did make a blunder at the end, and I dumped in the entire bag of noodles, which made it really chunky (it made it pretty much entirely noodles and chicken, I won't kid you), but if you are like my boyfriend and like the stuff out of soup but not the broth, then even the blunder isn't so bad. :)
I don't have permission to republish the recipe, although I wish I could. It's very simple soup, but very delicious. Although admittedly, it didn't satisfy my urge to cook fancy food. So that was a bummer.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Vile Swill!
So if I'm starting a review that way, it can't be positive, right? Well...yeah. That's pretty much the long and short of it right there.
Today I stopped at the gas station to get gas on my way to school, and I notice that they have a new drink called ALO Drink. Why not, I figure, and I pick two - ALO Exposed and ALO Enliven. Pick up a juice for my three year old, prepay for my gas, and I'm out the door.
I get back to the car, and pick out which one of the ALO drinks I want to try. I chose ALO Enliven, which promises all the health benefits of ALO, with the vitamins of 12 fruits and vegetables.
The website says ALO Enliven is 25% aloe vera and aloe vera pulp, which therein lies a bit of my problem. The ALO drinks were housed with the water and juice. If I have a grape juice, I know what I'm getting, every time across the board. If I open a Smart Water I know what I'm getting all the time, every time.
I open an ALO drink, I get a drink that I have to chew. Yes, CHEW. Good for my orange juice. Not good for my bottled water or juice.
The texture was slightly strange and the mouth feel was horrible. Kind of slimy. And the "pulp" was awful. I found that it actually got somewhat better if I didn't try to chew the pulp and just swallowed it whole, but by that point, the texture and mouth feel was just too much to make me interested in trying it again.
It says on the website that they sweeten the product with a natural sugar, but you could have fooled me - I didn't taste any sweetness at all.
I read on their website that they've done quite well in customer polls and been mentioned in several magazines and what not. I can't imagine - if they were the best, what on earth was the worst?!
This is horrible, horrible stuff. And now I have $5 worth of stuff that seriously, I have a little anxiety attack when I think about having to drink it again. It's that level of horrible. Skip this purchase, big time.
Just so you don't think I'm making it up and that there's no way a product this horrible could really exist:
ALODrink.
ALODrink: It's horrible. It's overpriced. We're not really sure how we're still legally allowed to sell it. Pass it by on a grocery store shelf near you!
Today I stopped at the gas station to get gas on my way to school, and I notice that they have a new drink called ALO Drink. Why not, I figure, and I pick two - ALO Exposed and ALO Enliven. Pick up a juice for my three year old, prepay for my gas, and I'm out the door.
I get back to the car, and pick out which one of the ALO drinks I want to try. I chose ALO Enliven, which promises all the health benefits of ALO, with the vitamins of 12 fruits and vegetables.
The website says ALO Enliven is 25% aloe vera and aloe vera pulp, which therein lies a bit of my problem. The ALO drinks were housed with the water and juice. If I have a grape juice, I know what I'm getting, every time across the board. If I open a Smart Water I know what I'm getting all the time, every time.
I open an ALO drink, I get a drink that I have to chew. Yes, CHEW. Good for my orange juice. Not good for my bottled water or juice.
The texture was slightly strange and the mouth feel was horrible. Kind of slimy. And the "pulp" was awful. I found that it actually got somewhat better if I didn't try to chew the pulp and just swallowed it whole, but by that point, the texture and mouth feel was just too much to make me interested in trying it again.
It says on the website that they sweeten the product with a natural sugar, but you could have fooled me - I didn't taste any sweetness at all.
I read on their website that they've done quite well in customer polls and been mentioned in several magazines and what not. I can't imagine - if they were the best, what on earth was the worst?!
This is horrible, horrible stuff. And now I have $5 worth of stuff that seriously, I have a little anxiety attack when I think about having to drink it again. It's that level of horrible. Skip this purchase, big time.
Just so you don't think I'm making it up and that there's no way a product this horrible could really exist:
ALODrink.
ALODrink: It's horrible. It's overpriced. We're not really sure how we're still legally allowed to sell it. Pass it by on a grocery store shelf near you!
Sunday, November 8, 2009
I Live, And I'm Super Excited!
So poor Chef has kind of gotten lost over the last few weeks, and I do apologize for that.
Over the last couple of weeks, I've actually been doing alot of footwork for the blog though. According to my Comp 2 professor, I can't legally republish recipes without permission from their authors, so I've been digging out cookbooks of mine, and contacting the authors to seek out permission to republish in the blog.
I'm very close to getting permission to republish one!
When I start republishing recipes, I do intend to test the recipes as often as time and being reasonable will allow. One of the books I've almost got permission for, the first recipe in the book is holiday punch, that starts with a base of two bottles of wine. Yeah...I live alone with my fiance and a three year old. We don't have any chance of drinking two bottles of wine before they go bad. :O So that one will go untested at least. Unless I can find someone to drink wine. I told my fiancee that he was taking the punch into work, he didn't look that excited at the prospect. :D
Over the last couple of weeks, I've actually been doing alot of footwork for the blog though. According to my Comp 2 professor, I can't legally republish recipes without permission from their authors, so I've been digging out cookbooks of mine, and contacting the authors to seek out permission to republish in the blog.
I'm very close to getting permission to republish one!
When I start republishing recipes, I do intend to test the recipes as often as time and being reasonable will allow. One of the books I've almost got permission for, the first recipe in the book is holiday punch, that starts with a base of two bottles of wine. Yeah...I live alone with my fiance and a three year old. We don't have any chance of drinking two bottles of wine before they go bad. :O So that one will go untested at least. Unless I can find someone to drink wine. I told my fiancee that he was taking the punch into work, he didn't look that excited at the prospect. :D
Saturday, October 24, 2009
The Christmas Cookie Club And How You Can Really Eat The Cookies
Local author Ann Pearlman is gearing up for the release of her latest book, The Christmas Cookie Club. It's the story of a group of friends that gather together every year to do a Christmas cookie exchange, and their stories that they have to share from over the previous year. One is facing the end of her marriage, one is facing a high risk pregnancy, and their individual stories wind together throughout the book.
Learn More About It.
Proving that perhaps, it is who you know, Pearlmans youngest daughter works at Zingermans Roadhouse in Ann Arbor (who, incidentally is a regular James Beard nominee).
Enter the partnership with Zingermans to offer the cookies for sale!
Learn more about that!
All the recipes from the book, and a Zingermans original, sold in a hollowed out book, with original artwork on the front. I've not tried them, but they do look delicious!
A suitable gift for the reader or cookie addict in your family!
Learn More About It.
Proving that perhaps, it is who you know, Pearlmans youngest daughter works at Zingermans Roadhouse in Ann Arbor (who, incidentally is a regular James Beard nominee).
Enter the partnership with Zingermans to offer the cookies for sale!
Learn more about that!
All the recipes from the book, and a Zingermans original, sold in a hollowed out book, with original artwork on the front. I've not tried them, but they do look delicious!
A suitable gift for the reader or cookie addict in your family!
Theresa And The Story Of The Most Convoluted Dinner I've Ever Made..
Often times, when I ask what's for dinner, my fiancee will challenge me to make Chicken Fricassee.
Today, I went "I see you your Chicken Fricassee, sir!", and googled that stuff right up.
Let me say, the finished product was so good. Soul food in the finest sense of the word - hearty, creamy, and with enough substance that it really settles into your ribs. It does, however, have a great ability to grow, so when your plating it, plate about half of what you think your going to want! We both learned that the hard way!
Thomas Jefferson's Chicken Fricassee.
That is the link to the recipe I made. Why it's cited as being Thomas Jefferson's, I don't know, but there you go.
The recipe could not have been simpler, both in terms of ingredients and in terms of the actual process. The only thing that made it so convoluted was that it took so bloody many steps!
Brown the chicken. Take the chicken out, make the gravy. Put the chicken back, let it simmer. Take the chicken AND the gravy back out (but store them seperatly, naturally), and saute the onions and mushrooms. Then put the gravy back in, then put the chicken back.
Doesn't it seem like that could have been streamlined at least a little? It wasn't at all hard, and the ingredient list is fairly short, there was just so many steps to it. Although oddly, I looked in another cookbook that had a chicken fricassee recipe, and it had a shorter list of steps, but a longer list of ingredients. So evidentally, it's an either or type of situation.
My next step was a pumpkin cake. Came from my Bisquick cookbook. Basically, it was bisquick, pumpkin pie pumpkin (which either my Kroger doesn't have pumpkin pie pumpkin yet, or alot of people were baking pie today, because I had to go with canned pumpkin, rather then pumpkin pie pumpkin), egg and sugar. Bake. If I'd gotten the pumpkin pie pumkin, I can imagine that it would have tasted like a really great piece of pumpkin pie. Don't get me wrong, it was still delicious, it just wasn't what I imagine the good people that wrote that book in the 1970's were really going for.
But I bought the big can of pumpkin, so I get to try pumpkin pancakes too!
And thus, we bring to a close an entry that included more mention of pumkin then I'd ever thought possible. Good night and good eats!
Today, I went "I see you your Chicken Fricassee, sir!", and googled that stuff right up.
Let me say, the finished product was so good. Soul food in the finest sense of the word - hearty, creamy, and with enough substance that it really settles into your ribs. It does, however, have a great ability to grow, so when your plating it, plate about half of what you think your going to want! We both learned that the hard way!
Thomas Jefferson's Chicken Fricassee.
That is the link to the recipe I made. Why it's cited as being Thomas Jefferson's, I don't know, but there you go.
The recipe could not have been simpler, both in terms of ingredients and in terms of the actual process. The only thing that made it so convoluted was that it took so bloody many steps!
Brown the chicken. Take the chicken out, make the gravy. Put the chicken back, let it simmer. Take the chicken AND the gravy back out (but store them seperatly, naturally), and saute the onions and mushrooms. Then put the gravy back in, then put the chicken back.
Doesn't it seem like that could have been streamlined at least a little? It wasn't at all hard, and the ingredient list is fairly short, there was just so many steps to it. Although oddly, I looked in another cookbook that had a chicken fricassee recipe, and it had a shorter list of steps, but a longer list of ingredients. So evidentally, it's an either or type of situation.
My next step was a pumpkin cake. Came from my Bisquick cookbook. Basically, it was bisquick, pumpkin pie pumpkin (which either my Kroger doesn't have pumpkin pie pumpkin yet, or alot of people were baking pie today, because I had to go with canned pumpkin, rather then pumpkin pie pumpkin), egg and sugar. Bake. If I'd gotten the pumpkin pie pumkin, I can imagine that it would have tasted like a really great piece of pumpkin pie. Don't get me wrong, it was still delicious, it just wasn't what I imagine the good people that wrote that book in the 1970's were really going for.
But I bought the big can of pumpkin, so I get to try pumpkin pancakes too!
And thus, we bring to a close an entry that included more mention of pumkin then I'd ever thought possible. Good night and good eats!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Marlboro: The Cookbook. Kid You Not.
So I can't resist the call of a good kitschy cookbook. I just can't. If it's something goofy and offbeat, I am SO there.
Some recent finds include:
Cooking With Friends. Like, Friends the TV show.
Soupcon I: Seasonal Samplings From The Junior Leauge of Chicago
Sugar Plum Fare from the Scholarship Committee from the National Ballet School
The Hagen Family Cookbook. Evidentally, this family went together, collected all their recipes, and had them published into one book. It's really heavy into Norweigan foods, which is interesting.
And the Marlboro "Cook Like A Man" cookbook, which leans heavily on the talents of one Bobby Flay, because every recipe contains enough pepper that I got uncomfortable just reading about them. Looking over the cookbook prompted my fiancee, who is a smoker himself, to go "Yes, because you've killed so many of your taste buds smoking Marlboros, that you have to use that many peppers, just to taste the food!"
Good eats! I plan to work my way through at least one of them soon!
Some recent finds include:
Cooking With Friends. Like, Friends the TV show.
Soupcon I: Seasonal Samplings From The Junior Leauge of Chicago
Sugar Plum Fare from the Scholarship Committee from the National Ballet School
The Hagen Family Cookbook. Evidentally, this family went together, collected all their recipes, and had them published into one book. It's really heavy into Norweigan foods, which is interesting.
And the Marlboro "Cook Like A Man" cookbook, which leans heavily on the talents of one Bobby Flay, because every recipe contains enough pepper that I got uncomfortable just reading about them. Looking over the cookbook prompted my fiancee, who is a smoker himself, to go "Yes, because you've killed so many of your taste buds smoking Marlboros, that you have to use that many peppers, just to taste the food!"
Good eats! I plan to work my way through at least one of them soon!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
New Recipe Day – The Party Continues!
Can you tell what I'm doing right now? If you guessed sorting out my recipe box, you win…well, the satisfaction of knowing you were right, I guess. J It's not much, but it's something.
Grilled Bruschetta Chicken With Orzo Pasta
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
½ cup Kraft Sun Dried Tomato Dressing, divided
2 tomatoes, seeded and diced
1 clove garlic, minced
½ cup Kraft Shredded Low Moisture Part Skim Mozzarella Cheese
¼ cup chopped fresh basil
1 pound dried orzo pasta
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Minced fresh parsley (optional)
Place a large sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil over half of your grill grate. Preheat grill to a medium heat.
Place the chicken in a non-reactive container or zip top plastic bag. Add ¼ cup of the dressing and turn the chicken to coat. Place the chicken in the refrigerator and marinate for 15 minutes.
Combine the remaining dressing with the tomatoes, garlic, cheese and basil.
Remove the chicken from the marinade and discard the marinade. Place chicken on grill grate and grill for about 6 minutes. Turn the chicken over and place, cooked side up, on the aluminum foil.
Top the chicken with equal amounts of the tomato and cheese mixture. Close the grill lid and finish cooking for 6 to 8 minutes or until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees.
While the chicken is cooking, prepare the orzo according to the package directions. Toss the cooked orzo with the olive oil and parsley if desired. Serve the chicken with the tomato topping over the cooked orzo.
Source: Busch's.
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