Mmmmmm Tacos
Hubby and I made tacos, or at least something that is a reasonable semblance thereof, the other night and they were so yummy. Usually for things like tacos and fajitas we buy the old el paso seasoning mix, add chicken or beef and veggies and we’re good to go. However this was a last minute decision to make tacos, as the original plan of pork chops and broccoli didn’t appeal to either of us, so no old el paso packets were on hand.
We had tortillas in the freezer, as well as ground beef, so soft tacos were the easiest option. The last time we bought a package of tortillas, I had the brilliant idea to take the whole package apart, and put a sheet of waxed paper between each one. This way we could freeze them, and just take out as many as we needed. I had hoped it would work obviously, but never expected the technique to be nearly as successful as it actually was. The wraps came out no problem. All except the one mysterious cut wrap that is. The frozen solid wrap was cut or broken in a perfectly straight line. I can’t figure out how it happened, other than I know that it was broken when I put them in the freezer.
We started with ground beef and onion in the frying pan, liberally salted and peppered. Once that was all browned up and yummy, i started inventing taco sauce by throwning flavours into the pan. I used a base of about three tablespoons of salsa. To this I added garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder and a bit of cumin. Once that was mixed in, I hit it with the Worcestershire sauce (makes everything taste better) and the Frank’s red hot sauce.
The result was a bit different from old el paso, and I’m not sure how much like most tacos it really was, as we don’t do them that often, but it’s definitely on the keeper list.
Crockpot Beef Soup
I’ve invented a new tasty soup very loosely based on the Hamburger soup that my mom makes. There are some major changes, including the fact that it’s made in the crockpot, and the fact that it does not contain barley (the grocery store near me sells four kinds of barley, none of which look like the stuff my mom uses in soup, I gave up in confusion).
The ingredients were all thrown together in the crockpot last night. I had originally intended to brown the beef and some of the vegetables, to be honest I’m glad I didn’t as the chunks of beef were super tender and fell apart in the mouth much better than they would have if pre-browned, based on my experience.
I used:
- One can of diced tomatoes
- Two cups of beef broth
- Two marinating steaks, cubed
- Three large peeled potatoes, cubed
- Two stalks of celery, sliced
- Two carrots, sliced
- One can of corn
- Two cloves of garlic
- A good dash of Worcestershire sauce
- Ground black pepper
I put the crockpot on this morning, on low and just let it cook all day. I came home to perfect beef soup. It’s almost half way between a soup and a stew. Yum.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Hubby, my sister and I celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday with a big turkey dinner. Because we’re halfway across the country from the rest of our family, it was just the three of us, but that didn’t stop me from making enough food to feed an army.
I’ve only made thanksgiving dinner once before, last year. That was the year I got to transition from person who makes the gravy while Mom does everything else to person who teaches sister to make the gravy while doing everything else. Among other things it involved about six phon ecalls to either my mother or mother-in-law with questions such as: which way up does the turkey go?
This year, I can proudly say that I did not have to phone home once. That’s right, I made turkey dinner all by my self. And I’m more than a little proud of it. We had an almost 20 pound turkey (yes, there were only 3 of us, we like leftovers) Grandma-style stuffing (bread with a bit of sausage), mashed potatoes, mashed yams, peas and carrots, dinner rolls, corn and the all important blue jello with fruit in it. For dessert, my sister brought a home made pumpkin pie.
I even did such a good job prepping stuff early in the day, that around four o’clock I had an hour to kill with nothing to do. The turkey was cooking. The yams were cooked once, mashed with sugar and waiting to go back in the oven. The potatoes were peeled and sitting on the stove waiting to be cooked. The table was set. And I was going crazy. I’m not good at waiting, at all. Hubby had to distract me with video ganes just to get me to stop going in circles.
It was a very successful meal, we are still very full people. We’ve already dug into the leftovers, with hot open face turkey sandwiches for lunch today. Hubby’s talking about trying to invent turkey curry for dinner, and I plan to make turkey broth either tonight or tomorrow. Yum.
Beef Curry Pot Pie
My parents are in town at the moment, and so Hubby and I have been making all of our “specialty dishes” to feed them. One in particular that we invented and particularly enjoy is our beef curry pot pie. Hubby thought this was a dish his mom made, but when he asked for a recipe she had never heard of it. Then he thought it was something he’d had at a pub, but we checked that pub’s menu and there was no sign of it, so we had to make it up.
We start with cubing up a bunch of beef, we prefer round steak for this. Then we cubed up potatoes, carrots and celery, as well as onion. Proportions are entirely up to taste. we just make sure there’s enough to fill the casserole dish.
The veggies are microwaved with a bit of water until they are just tender. If this step is skipped, the pie comes out a bit crunchy (as we unfortunately discovered when we served it the other day). Then we add frozen peas and mix all the veggies together.
At the same time, we brown the beef in a frying pan. Coating the beef in flour first helps it to brown up quickly and nicely. Next we use the beef browning to make a gravy. Generally I need to add butter, then mix in the flour to make the roux. To this we usually add beef broth, and milk if we have it to thin the sauce to the desired consistancy.
We then flavour the sauce with salt, pepper, pureed thai chili peppers (i don’t know exactly what kind, the market we go to simply calls them “hot peppers” but they are very hot) and lots and lots of curry powder and some cumin. The sauce should be yellow. We also add a dash of worcestershire sauce, and sometimes a bit of hot sauce depending on the flavour.
The final step is to buy some Tenderflake brand puff pastry, roll it out, and put it over the top of the pot pie. Cold from the fridge we find a large one of these bakes in about an hour. We usually cover the pie with something for the first half-hour to keep the pastry from getting too browned.
How to make Cherry Jam
One of the most common searches that leads people to my blog is “how to make cherry jam.” I assume that this must happen because of my earlier post about the annoyance of trying to find a cherry pitter. Since I hate disappointing people, I thought that I’d write a post answering that question.
The short answer is: buy a box of Certo (fruit pectin) and follow the instructions included inside. At least that’s what I did. Other points to know include: pitting cherries without a cherry pitter is a pain, cherry pitters are hard to find. jam is basically equal parts fruit and sugar.
you’ll need about 7 cups of fruit and 7 cups of sugar for 1 pouch of liquid certo. I also use the liquid as that’s what my mom taught me to do. Also, one box of 12 125mL jars is not enough. You need more/bigger jars for one batch of Certo jam.
So there you are searchers, how to make cherry jam
Slow Cooker Spare Ribs
I learned two very important things the other day: you can cook spare ribs in a crock pot and you can cook chicken in spare rib sauce. These things are so important because other than my brief trip home in June, I haven’t eaten spare ribs in a year.
The reasons for this are threefold:
1)Ribs are really expensive in restaurants, so I can’t justify ordering them
2) I don’t have a barbeque or a good pan to make ribs in the oven and
3) Hubby doesn’t like spare ribs.
Point number three is the reason why I was so thrilled to discover that apparently most rib sauce is very good on chicken. Point number two was overcome when my mom mentioned in passing that Grandpa had broken a tooth on some spare ribs he made in his crockpot. “You can make ribs in the crock pot?” says I “Why wasn’t I ever told this?”
So right now, happily stewing away in my crock pot is a half rack of pork side ribs, and a chicken breast. Yummy. The whole apartment smells awesome. I used my mom’s recipe for rib sauce, which I’ve been eating since I was little. Basically ketchup flavoured with some brown sugar, mustard, vinegar, garlic, tabasco, salt and pepper.
I plan to serve the meat with rice and a salad. We just got a yummy new salad dressing from the little non-perishables only grocery store that opened on the corner of our street. I have no words to express how happy I am to have a food store in easy access. Overall, I expect it to be a very delicious meal. Yay ribs.
Tuna Sandwiches
I was making sandwiches for Hubby and myself for lunch today, and I started thinking about all the different additions you can use to give tuna salad a bit of crunch.
Mostly, I make tuna the way my mom used to do it. Tuna, mayonnaise, celery, and some pepper, on white wonder bread. The only problem is that I often don’t have celery in the house. So I’ve had to come up with some alternatives. A few years ago, one friend showed me her technique, which is to add diced up dill pickles to the mix in place of celery. I’ve also attempted onion, which is good but you need to be very sparing in the amounts; green onion which is quite good; green or red bell peppers which are ok, but peppers aren’t my favourite vegetable; and cucumber which is not bad.
Today, I had to use onion, as it was the only one of those options that I had. It was pretty good, but it sure wasn’t the comfort food of my childhood. I think we need to start keeping celery in the house. At least we had wonder bread.
Cherry Jam
For years, I’ve helped my mom make strawberry jam in the summer. It was the only kind of jam we ever had in the house, and I know how to make it. So it just seemed natural that this summer now that Hubby and I are truly moved out and independent that I would make strawberry jam for us. I did that last weekend and it went great.
However, while I had the Certo package out I noticed a recipe for cherry jam. Since where I live now cherries cost about half what they did at home, and taste better this seemed like a great idea. So this friday I went out and got cherries and jars. Saturday afternoon I headed to the kitchen to make the jam. Step one was to remove the pits. After about five minutes of struggling with a paring knife I gave up and called my mom.
Mom got a bit quiet when I asked how to pit cherries, and then said “you need a cherry pitter.” So after a couple minutes we determine that I should be able to find a cherry pitter in any kitchen store for a reasonable price, and I set out on another hour long round trip to the mall.
Well, nine stores later (thank goodness our mall is huge so I at least had that many options) I finally found a twenty dollar cherry pitter in Home Outfitters. It’s kinda crazy looking, like a one hole paper punch. By the time I found it and got it home, I must admit, I really truly hated that cherry pitter.
Then I used it. Enough cherries for an entire batch of jam pitted in 30 minutes. I love this thing. I’m looking for reasons to pit cherries now so that I can 1)use it again and 2)justify the cost to myself.
So finally, at 8:00 yesterday evening the cherry jam adventure that started around 2:00 was over. And I have some yummy, yummy jam. Oh, and if anyone has cherries that need pitting, I’m so on it.
