Thursday 13: Cats, Chickens, Flowers, Freezers, and Work

 It has been insanely busy at work this week, so I wasn’t sure I’d have 13 things for Thursday 13, but I do. 

1.    Part of why work has been so busy is that there have been some changes.  I’m working with some people I haven’t worked with before.  I’m an assistant, so I’m always working with someone else on almost everything I do.  So, I was a little nervous about working with different people. 

When you’re an assistant, the people you assist can be the difference between loving your job or hating your job.

I had a meeting with my boss and one of the people I’ll be working with now, and I think we’ll work well together.  I had a one-on-one meeting with another person I’ll be working with now, and I’m pretty excited about some of the projects I’ll get to work on with them.  I think we’ll work well together. 

The rest of the year is likely to be super busy, but knowing that I’ll work well with at least some of the people is a huge relief. 

2.    Mortimer was not the least bit concerned about my job stress.  Doesn’t he look so relaxed?

3.    The free-range chickens have still been coming over for their snacks. 

4.    The chickens next door arrived in two batches.  The original chickens have been there almost a year and the new chickens have only been there a few months.  The original chickens are the ones who run up to meet me for food.   The new chickens are starting to do that, too.  All of the gray chickens, except the front right one, are the new chickens.  It looks like they’ve caught on that I’m the snack lady. 

5.    The smallest of the new chickens still hangs back some, but I’m determined to win her over. 

6.    Feeding time is always a little bit chaotic in our house.  Most of the cats are on different foods.  ALL of the cats are positive that the other cats get better food, so there’s a lot of trying to eat each other’s food.  Charlie and Howard took it to a new level this week.

I’m not sure if Howard went under Charlie, if Charlie went over Howard, or if it was a joint effort.  I feel like they deserve major points for their efforts to eat each other’s food here. 

7.    We’ve had some slightly cooler weather this week; 70s and 80s, which has been a welcome change, but not cold enough to hurt the plants.  I don’t know what these pink flowers are (GrandDaddy (Nick’s grandfather) gave them to me for Mother’s Day), but I think they’re pretty, and I’m happy they’re still doing well.   

8.    The hydrangea is still doing well. 

9.    The roses aren’t in full bloom anymore, but we still have some roses to enjoy. 

10. The marigold is still doing well.

11. I’ve realized that it’s time to work on getting the freezers at least a little bit cleaned out.  Thanksgiving isn’t that far away, and we’ll need the freezer space for when turkeys go on sale. 

12. Right now, both freezers are pretty jam-packed, and I’m not entirely sure what’s in them. 

13. I thought taking and sharing pictures of them might help hold me accountable and get me to focus on working through what’s in there. 

So, here they are in their horribly unorganized state.  (I promise we don’t actually live entirely on junk food/convenience food; it just seems like those things work their way to the top whenever we dig something else out). 

Hopefully, there will be a future Thursday 13 about the progress I’ve made in cleaning out the freezers.

How has your week been? 

Panini

One thing the A to Z Challenge is definitely good for is making me finally get around to writing posts and looking things up.

Nick’s mom gave me a panini pan for Christmas a few years ago.  No, it wasn’t a “you need to cook for my darling son more” type of gift.  I asked for one.  

Shortly after that Christmas, I began my adventures with the panini pan.  We love panini!  

There seems to be as much difference between a panini and a regular grilled cheese as there is between a cold cheese sandwich and a grilled cheese.  I’m not sure why squishing it makes such a difference,  but it really does.

Every time we have panini I always say I’m going to look up the history.  I’m very curious what made someone say, “I bet this grilled sandwich would be even better if I squished it while I grill it.”  I know sometimes I come up with food ideas, and I’m not sure how, but I was hoping that there’d be an interesting story to panini.  Squishing a sandwich while grilling it seems very deliberate and specific.

I didn’t get a satisfactory answer.  It appears that there was mention of a panini in a 16^th century Italian cookbook, though nothing I read said anything about how or why.  They became popular in Italy in the 70s and made their way to the U.S. sometime after that.

There’s also mention of a sandwich grill from the 30s, though it sounds more like the appliance was popular and panini was a way to use your sandwich grill. 

I did learn that most of what we call panini isn’t technically panini since it seems that the real thing isn’t made with sliced bread.  Ours may not be authentic, but they are delicious.

I found nothing on why someone decided to squish a sandwich while grilling it.  My made up theory (since I can’t find a real answer) is that someone was grilling a very stuffed sandwich (because lots of toppings/fillings usually mean a very good sandwich) and was concerned about getting everything melted/warmed, so they squished it into the pan to help the process along.  It seems plausible, right?

Regardless of why, I’m glad someone came up with the idea.  Cooking a sandwich in the panini pan always makes it taste better and seem like a more exciting meal.

Do you enjoy panini?  Do you know how they got started?  Or care to make up your own theory?   

Not Exactly A Regular Menu Post

So much for my plan of posting our menu every week.  That went about as well as my goal of not getting any takeout or delivery.  There was a lot of that over the last two weeks!

Here’s what I have cooked, in no particular order:

Greek meatball inspired meatloaf and sauteed zucchini, squash, and onions.  This was an experiment that turned out extremely well.  In addition to the usual egg, breadcrumbs, and Worcestershire sauce, I added feta cheese, chopped bell pepper, chopped onion, and Greek seasoning to the meatloaf.  I poured a jar of pasta sauce over it for the last 25 minutes of cooking. 

The veggies were sauteed in olive oil with salt and Greek seasoning.

It was delicious!  Definitely one of those meals that have you excited for leftovers.

Grilled chicken, marinated using this recipe.  The chicken was delicious, and I think this may become my go-to marinade for chicken.  I did learn, however, that it is absolutely no fun to grill out on a windy day.

Huevos Rancheros.  My sister visited Costa Rica last year, and brought us some delicious sauce, which I used on mine.

Biscuits and gravy.

Veggie pizza, using dough made in the bread machine.

Muffins, from a box mix.  Not the most exciting thing, but they are good.

Rotini and meatballs.

Cauliflower fried “rice”.

Taco salad.

And that was pretty much it. 

So what have you cooked over the past two weeks?  Have you tried any new recipes?

This Was Our Menu For The Week 04/12/20 - 4/18/20

No pizza order last week!  We did get takeout twice, though.  My goal for this week is no takeout or delivery.  We’ll see how it goes.  We picked up a fairly large grocery order from Wal-Mart on Friday evening, so I  have no excuse not to cook, and I definitely want to make sure the produce doesn’t go bad.

Sunday: It was pretty chilly here, and very rainy and stormy, so soup seemed like a good choice.  I made my version of Olive Garden’s Pasta e Fagioli soup, and it was delicious.  I also made a loaf of Italian Herb bread in the bread machine.

I made a buttermilk pie for dessert on Sunday that we enjoyed through most of the week.  I know it’s not pretty, but it’s so good.

Monday: Cheese Enchiladas.  I used this recipe, but halved it.  We also had refried beans with our enchiladas.

Tuesday: This was when the takeout started.  I had Thai food, which I love, but Nick is less crazy about.  Nick had Arby’s, which I refuse to eat.

Wednesday: We had burgers and milkshakes from the McDonald’s drive-thru.

Thursday: Cheese Tetrazzini.  It’s not the prettiest dish, but it was so good.

Friday: Taco salad.  We were actually able to get lettuce on the grocery order, which was a nice change from the last few.

Saturday: Nick made pancakes for breakfast.  I love pancakes, but mine are absolutely terrible.  Nick’s are really good, and these were even better than usual.  There is no picture of the pancakes because I was too busy devouring them.  We had leftovers (taco salad and cheese tetrazzini) for lunch and dinner.

Breakfast was mostly cereal, with one day of egg sandwiches, and one day of this Dutch Apple Pancake, which I did an experiment on.  I read recently that oat milk works the best in baking if you’re not using regular dairy milk.  I wanted to test it out, but I wanted to do it on something fairly low stakes.   We were out of milk by Friday morning, so I gave the oat milk a try in the Dutch Apple Pancake.  We’d had it before, so knew how it was supposed to taste, and it wouldn’t waste a lot of ingredients if it was bad.  It was fine.  Neither one of us could tell any difference.  I feel fairly confident now in using oat milk in baked goods if we’re out of regular dairy milk.  That should help limit our grocery trips/orders a little more.

I think I may have finally figured out a system for getting produce right now.  I’m trying to only do grocery orders every two weeks, or even a little longer if we can manage it.  That makes it a little tricky with things like fresh produce and milk.  The oat milk experiment mostly solved the milk problem, so that just leaves the produce problem.

There doesn’t seem to be any particular pattern with what’s available as far as produce, so I’m learning to be a little more flexible.  I put a variety of produce on the grocery order, knowing we wouldn’t get all of it.  We were able to get lettuce, spinach, yellow squash, zucchini, onions, strawberries, asparagus, a couple of tomatoes, cilantro, cauliflower, carrots, celery, and a very tiny head of broccoli.  We weren’t able to get cucumbers, parsley,  butternut squash, raspberries, green beans, or any shredded broccoli or coleslaw mixes.

My plan is to use the things with the shortest shelf life first, then move on to the things that will last a little longer, and then to probably use some frozen veggies the last few days before our next grocery order.

So what about you?  Have you changed the way you shop for groceries?  What produce have you been able to get, or not been able to get?   Have you tried any successful substitutions?

A Late Menu Post Week of 4/5/20 - 4/11/20

So much for my plan of posting a menu on Saturday.  Last week wasn’t a stellar cooking week or blogging week. 

I don’t have a lot of food pictures, so I’m supplementing with some more pictures of blooms from the yard, because they’re gorgeous right now.

I did a little better with breakfasts than I did with dinners, so let’s start there. 

I made this apple pancake dish one day.  We had cheese grits and eggs another day.  Friday was a holiday for both of us, which meant Nick was home from work and I wasn’t working from home, so we had a nicer than usual breakfast of scrambled eggs with feta and dill, toast, and asparagus.  My sister gave us some pineapple papaya ginger marmalade from Costa Rica from Christmas, so that’s what I had on my toast.  It was delicious.

Sunday: We ordered pizza from Papa John’s.  It was supposed to be a no contact delivery.  It was not.  So, we won’t be ordering from them for the foreseeable future.

There were a few nights of not really making dinner, so we had leftovers, PB&Js, and cereal.

Wednesday: Creamy chicken tacos.

Thursday and Friday: Cubed steak with carrots and gravy over rice.  There was a fairly large package of cubed steak in the freezer, and we had a lot of carrots on hand, so this lasted us for a while.  Somehow I managed not to take a single picture of it. 

I didn’t make any dessert last week because Nick’s mom mailed us cookies.  They were so good!  Chocolate chip for Nick and Oatmeal Scotchies for me.  I don’t make good cookies, and Susan makes wonderful cookies, so it’s always a treat to get hers.

And now for some yard pictures since this post is a little short on pictures.

One of the many azaleas currently blooming.

The lilac bush.

Another view of the lilac bush.  Can you tell I really like the lilac bush?

What did you eat last week?  Have your cooking habits changed at all during COVID-19?

What We Ate Last Week: 3/29/20 - 4/3/20

It seems like quite a few of us are turning to food for comfort right now.  Bijoux made the comment on one of my recent posts that we’re living for food now.  That certainly seems to be the case for us. 

It also seems like it’s hard to find some items in the stores right now, leading to some creative substitutions, and a lot of people are cooking much more than they’re used to. 

I think reading other people’s blogs involves a certain amount of voyeurism, in a totally non-creepy way.  It’s nice to get a peak at how other people live, and it’s especially interesting right now, when everyone’s world seems to have shrunk down, to get a little peak into someone else’s.  To that end, I thought I’d share a weekly menu post.  The Frugal Girl does a weekly menu post every Friday, and I enjoy reading those.  It’s also a great way to get ideas when you’re drawing a blank on what to make for dinner. 

So here’s what we had:

Sunday: I haven’t been handling social distancing and some other things very well.  I’m following the rules, but I’ve also spent more time than I care to admit wallowing in fear and sadness.  That means I kind of let a lot of household chores go, so we spent all day on Sunday getting the house back in good shape.  We were pretty wiped out after that, so we ordered pizza from Papa John’s, and had a no-contact delivery.  We’re both still working our normal hours, so we also tipped a little more than usual.

Monday: Potato Soup and Beer Bread.    We’re running a little low on all-purpose flour, so I made it using the self-rising flour version.  I did still add some salt.  It was just as good as usual, so whichever method you choose will be delicious.

Tuesday: We still had lots of potato soup left, but wanted a little break from it, so Nick made calzones for dinner.  He makes really good calzones! 

Wednesday: Broccoli cheddar soup and leftover beer bread.  I made a few modifications to the recipe.  I always add more garlic, and a few sprinkles of cayenne pepper to this recipe.  I’ve made quite a few recipes from this site, and overall we like them, but they do lean a little more toward the bland side, so I recommend adding a little more seasoning than the recipe calls for.  We also don’t have much shredded cheddar cheese on hand, so I substituted Velveeta cheese instead.  I didn’t think to measure, and just added cubes of Velveeta until it looked good.  I think it can work with varying amounts, it just depends on how indulgent you want it to be.  The recipe calls for fresh broccoli, which is what I’ve always used.  Our neighbor has used frozen broccoli, and says it works well.  She’s a great cook, so I’m inclined to trust her on that.

Thursday: The chili I posted about here.

Friday: Leftovers. 

Saturday/Today: I think we’ll probably be having chicken tacos. 

I also made this apple crisp, and we’ve been enjoying it all week.  In case you can’t tell, I definitely use food as a coping mechanism.  This has plenty of butter and sugar, so it’s great comfort food. 

Breakfasts have been egg and cheese tortillas or cereal.  Lunches are pretty much always leftovers from the day or two before.

So what about you?  Are you eating more comfort food lately?  What did you eat last week?

Thanksgiving Menu Ideas

You may have noticed by now that I love Thanksgiving, and get really excited about it.  It’s a holiday all about cooking for and spending time with the people you love.  What’s not to love about it?

Sometimes, though, searching for good recipes can be a little overwhelming, so I thought I’d share links for some of my favorites.  Some of them are my recipes, and some are from other places. 

Obviously, the turkey is the main part of the traditional meal, so here’s my turkey recipe: 

Practically Fool-Proof Turkey

And you can read about my various misadventures with turkey here, in case you’d like a guide for what not to do. 

Some might argue that the side dishes are the most important part of the meal.  Here are a few of our favorites:

Green Bean Casserole.  I can’t stand this one, but Nick loves it, and I think it’s one that most people have come to expect at Thanksgiving.

Creamy Slow Cooker Macaroni & Cheese.  It’s creamy, delicious, and incredibly easy to make.  It’s also very helpful that it’s made in the Crock Pot since that frees up more oven space. 

Heavenly Mashed Potatoes.  This link is actually to The New Southern Garden Cookbook by Sheri Castle.  I don’t feel right posting a recipe if the author hasn’t made it available online.  I highly recommend this cookbook.  It has lots of great recipes, but it’s worth having for the mashed potatoes alone.  I didn’t think I liked mashed potatoes very much until I tried this recipe.  They are out of this world good, which I suppose is why she named the recipe Heavenly Mashed Potatoes.

Kale Salad With Red Grapes.  Don’t let the fact that this sounds fairly healthy turn you off.  It’s delicious! 

Watergate Salad.  I think is technically a dessert, but it does have salad in the name, so classify it however you want.  No judgment here.

Speaking of desserts, it just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without them.

Pumpkin Pie.  It’s probably the most traditional Thanksgiving dessert.  It’s also one of my favorites.

Cherry Crunch.  This was a surprisingly big hit last year at Thanksgiving, so I’ll be making it again. 

Apple Crisp.  This is delicious and easy.  Perfect for a day when there’s already a lot of cooking and baking going on.

Fresh Apple Cake.  This cake is amazingly delicious, and just seems like the ultimate dessert for Fall.  The link mentions cream cheese frosting, but don’t do that.  You’ll want to use the Browned Butter Frosting.  Trust me!

Browned Butter Frosting.  This is the end all, be all of frosting.  If you’ve never had browned butter frosting, do yourself a favor, and make it.  Right now!  It’s amazingly good!  It’s rich, creamy, decadent, has a slightly nutty flavor, and pairs perfectly with the apple cake.  

Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Cake & Frosting.  I can’t personally vouch for this one, since I don’t like chocolate.  I can tell you, however, that everyone seems to love it.  I make this cake (or the cupcakes) several times a year, and it’s always very popular.  

Apple Cake & Browned Butter Frosting on Back Left

Banana Pound Cake.  It may not be a very traditional Thanksgiving dessert, but it’s still delicious, and always a crowd pleaser.

So what about you?  What are your favorite Thanksgiving recipes?  Is there a certain dish that’s always on your Thanksgiving menu? 

Cheap Steak Fajitas

I tried to be clever with the name and play on the word cheapskate, but I’m not entirely sure it works.  These fajitas, however, definitely work.  They’re delicious!  They’re also ridiculously easy to make.

I’ll just go ahead and be honest with you.  The idea for these came from failure.  Lots and lots of failure.  I cannot make beef stew.  I’m not sure what my issue is, but it just doesn’t work for me.  I’ve tried various recipes, and various combinations of recipes.  The best result I’ve had is mostly edible, which is not the description you really want for your meal. 

I have finally decided to give up on making beef stew.  We’ve suffered enough.  Nick was elated when I informed him that I was officially giving up on making beef stew.  He was kind enough to say that I make plenty of other things extremely well, and we’d be fine without beef stew, but his initial reaction was definitely relief.  I can’t blame him. 

Unfortunately, I had purchased a gigantic package of stew beef at Sam’s Club before I decided that making delicious (or even good) beef stew is not something I am capable of.  I froze it in one pound packages, and decided I’d come up with other ways to use it.  This is one of my alternatives, and I’m happy to say that it’s as good as my beef stew is bad. 

Here’s what you need:

1 pound stew beef, cut into bite sized pieces
1 -2 bell peppers, chopped
1 -2 onions, chopped
1 package (1.2 oz) fajita seasoning mix
1.5 tsp lime juice
1/4 cup water
2 Tbsp tequila

The tequila isn’t in the picture because I didn’t think about adding it until I started thinking about having a margarita with my fajitas, and had already taken the picture.  I think you can probably leave it out if you don’t happen to have tequila on hand, but I do think it probably does help to tenderize the meat a little bit.  It’s so good with the tequila, too, so I highly recommend using it.

Combine all of the ingredients in a small slow cooker, and cook on Low for 5 -7 hours, until meat is cooked through, and the vegetables are tender.

It’s going to look a little dry when you mix everything, but resist the temptation to add more liquid. 

There’s a fair amount of sauce with these, so they’re really good served with rice to soak up some of the sauce. 

Serve with any combination of rice, beans, tortillas, lettuce, sour cream, guacamole, etc.

Enjoy!