Wedding Pie

Happy Sunday.  Happy Thanksgiving week.  Happy birthday Scorpios.  But most importantly of all, HAPPY HAPPY WEDDING DAY TO MY DEAREST FRIENDS AIDIN AND J.C.

As you can probably guess, I made three wedding pies for Aidin and JC's nuptials this evening.  Trying to honor fall tradition and find pies that fit a wedding is very difficult, but of course, I prevailed.  The first was a chocolate cream pie (my mother's secret recipe that involves very intricate chocolate science), next came a pecan pie (I wanted to try dark chocolate pecan pie, it sounds amazing but you can't have chocolate cream AND chocolate pecan at one wedding), and finally, sour cream apple pie (in my opinion, the best incarnation of good ole apple pie). 

I absolutely loved being a part of Aidin and J.C.'s special day.  Their wedding was exactly what it should be: friends and family gathered to celebrate an amazing relationship.  I couldn't be happier or more excited for them.  They were meant for each other, and I have no doubt that they'll have a beautiful life together.

True love (and pie) conquers all.











P.S. Saw Twilight this weekend.  Horrifying.  Bought the soundtrack.  Not proud of myself.

Winning

So, I had A LOT of grading to do last night and couldn't cook.  So sorry, but progress reports take precedence over... pretty much everything, eating included.  But TODAY, I made one of my usual favorites, Balsamic Chicken.  It's a great staple and tastes good with pretty much everything I can make.  And who doesn't like balsamic vinegar?  Makes everything better.  It's like fancy delicious ketchup.  I'm shaking my head as I re-read that comparison, but I'm going to stand by it. 

The reason I chose my fancy delicious chicken was because it's a perfect compliment to my VERY HEAVENLY RISOTTO!  A friend once told me that I overuse capital letters, but I DON'T THINK THAT'S TRUE ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING SO BUTTERY, CHEESY, AMAZING.  I can honestly say that this was the first weekly meal that I felt confident making, and even strayed a little from the recipe.  I used chicken stock because I couldn't find bouillon at WalMart (quelle surprise), and in so doing successfully left the nest of bad cooking.  No burns, no cuts, no forgotten ingredients, nothing left cooking too long.  Absolute data-perfect success.

So I'm sorry if you opened the blog to hear about another sad misadventure, because today I am winning.

Pet Peeves

You know what my biggest pet peeve is?  The fact that Christmas starts the day after Halloween.  We skip right over Thanksgiving, my birthday, and Scorpi-season in favor of awful music and shopping advertisements that are more of the same year after year.  So I'm not going to say 'tis the season for chili, even though it is.

The Valley had wonderful fresh weather this weekend, and my classroom has been a little calmer, which tells me that it is finally November.  To celebrate the arrival of my favorite month, tonight I made turkey chili but did not make corn bread.  The chili was delicious, so spicy and turkey is apparently very good for you.  The corn bread burned itself and my hand in the oven so it had to be thrown out.  Thank goodness I predicted that a tragedy such as this would strike, and bought back-up tortillas at the store today. 

Lucky girl that I am, I also have ALL of the beef stroganoff I made last week.  I stayed at school so late on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday that I got a free meal out of it!  Go me.  This week, I have planned many evening activities to get myself out of the classroom early enough to enjoy a decent dinner.  Happy fall, everyone.

The Almost-Fire

Inspired by a trip to City Cafe, a wonderful little restaurant in McAllen, today I made beef stroganoff for dinner and corn casserole for a little dinner party.  As always, my cooking adventures were fraught with mishaps.  I forgot to drain the corn for the casserole, so it was too runny.  The stroganoff involved using flour as a thickening agent, which I am incapable of doing at all ever under any circumstances.  But, I cooked beef for the first time (raw meat is guh-ross) AND the casserole was a hit.

The dinner party also featured a very delicious pumpkin pie from my friend Janet, a pumpkin pie that almost burned the house down.  She and I went on a run with our other friend Lia and COMPLETELY forgot the pie in the oven.  We had to run back to the house to get the pie out and then went on our regularly-scheduled run after that brief "warm-up."  We ran four miles in all (almost died) but the pie was great and basically calorie-free.  Lia also burned her oatmeal this morning, so it seems I'm not the only one who struggles in the kitchen.  You see what I'm up against now? You see what I'm surrounded by?

My mom gave me some great advice this morning that you can't do things with happiness as your goal, you just do the best you can and happiness will find you.   Cooking trouble aside, I feel incredibly blessed to have such excellent friends to share a meal with on a lazy Sunday.

Did You Know They Sell Frozen PB&J?!

So there I was, standing in my kitchen and eating my 2nd plain tortilla of the day, when I thought to myself, "There has got to be a better vehicle for consuming all these tortillas."  Then it came to me.  Chicken enchiladas.  This recipe has been, honest to goodness, the EASIEST recipe I have made so far.  I used chicken that I cooked and froze last week, and bought pre-made flour tortillas from HEB so all I had to do was put it all together and it is ABSOLUTELY THE MOST DELICIOUS THING EVER.  Word to the wise, though, they have an entire bucket of sour cream and many other very unhealthy ingredients.

Which leads to me to my #2 big realization.  I am eating a huge portion of delicious, unhealthy food twice a day.  Moreover, the average amount of time I have for lunch is 12 minutes.  If I spend 3 minutes of that heating up my food and 2 minutes walking to and from the staff lounge (this attention to time is just one charming thing about the monster that TFA has made me), I barely have enough time to hoover my food before 4th period starts.  So I've decided to go a more healthy and less time-consuming route for lunch-fruit, carrots, almonds, yogurt, etc.  Although I would love to include those delicious frozen PB&Js, those are a heart attack waiting to happen.  Much like my chicken enchiladas.  Enjoy.

Finally, and most excitingly, my sister is having a baby on Wednesday!  She's incredible and I'm so happy for her!  Pretty much my biggest accomplishment is writing a cooking blog once a week, and she has created human life.  It's the most amazing thing ever.  Those chicken enchiladas are second place, though.

Success

Much like this picture of boil-in-bag rice (which I did not use this week because that would be cheating), I have experienced success.  And it's the best kind of success-the kind that means you will never have to leave your house again.

Because I have made thai food.  Yes!  Thai food!  And you know what, it fell victim to the same complaints I make at thai restaurants which is that there's not enough sauce but IT TASTES PRETTY GOOD AND IT LOOKS HEALTHY TOO.  And guess what?  Once you can make your own Thai food, there's no reason to ever leave your house again except to buy peanut butter and broccoli!  It's just me and my boyfriend Netflix forever and ever.  

I also whipped up some French Onoin Soup (I found this one after I ditched Alton Brown's recipe.  Sorry Alton).  Also, a ROUSING SUCCESS.  The broth for French onion soup (which uses beef consomme, which I found out about at a teaching leadership conference) is just so good-smelling.  You have to put toasted French bread on top and then bake the soup to finish it off, which is very surprising!  I got some really good bread off a recommendation from the Breadsmith lady.  I remember the day I discovered Breadsmith in the Valley.  When you go into Mexican bakeries, there is no bread.  There are only donuts and cookies and pastries.  I thought I was going to starve and die, but luckily I found Breadsmith four short months later.  It was the second-happiest day of my life.  Number 1 is this day, the day where I finally make food I want to eat.

In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the top of the pyramid is self-actualization.  When I used to talk about that stupid Maslow in debate, I used to think, "Wow, self-actualization, that sounds like funsies."  And now I'm there, friends.  I'm actually doing it.  Time to try something harder and slide back down to safety.

Shmitalian: Attack of the Ketchup Curse

Inspired by a recent dinner party I attended where the host served up some delicious stromboli that he made RIGHT IN FRONT OF US (like Benihana only Italian and without the awkward small talk), this week I made stromboli for dinner and barbecue chicken pizza for lunch.

Stromboli is actually awesomely easy to make.  SUPER IMPORTANT RULE #1: SECURE A ROLLING PIN.  If you forget or can't find the rolling pin, your life will be really hard.  Like mine.  You could also use a wine bottle to roll out dough, which my mom and I did once making pies.  I also forgot about that little trick.  Honestly, I don't know what's wrong with me.  Anyway, I used pizza dough, which I wouldn't recommend.  Just pick up some frozen bread dough and let it rise.  Put your favorite toppings in the middle, roll it up, and bake it in the oven.  Awesomely easy.  Unless you're me, in which case tragedy will strike anytime you are allowed to choose your own toppings or really anytime that you're in the kitchen.  This was true of BOTH the stromboli and the pizza.  My Ketchup Curse strikes again. 

Instead of thinking about things that might taste good together, I resorted to putting all the things I like inside a bread substance and eating it.  I could have just stopped the pizza after I'd added the four essential components: chicken, barbecue sauce, onions and mozzerella.  BUT NOOOOOOO.  I had to add goat cheese, one of my favorite things in the entire universe but NOT a cheese that tastes good with barbecue sauce.  It's not totally disgusting, but it smacks strongly of failure.  Each of my four stromboli has a different combination of ingredients, two of them include roasted red pepper which has a very distinctive taste that doesn't always play well with others.  We'll see, but I will probably go buy some Top Ramen tonight just in case. 

Finally, I want to wish my dad a very happy birthday.  Sorry that I'm so bad at cooking, even if I am great at picking out new cards.  You win some you lose some. 

The Library (Of All the Horrifying Miserable Things in the World)

Today, in an attempt to better myself, I braved... yes, the McAllen Memorial Public Library.  The McAllen library is, in itself, quite a sight to behold.  It's a masterpiece of 1970s architecture, which was not a good time for architecture.  They're building a new one, thank God, because there is just NOT ENOUGH SPACE in the cooking section.  No section of the library, including fiction or the children's section, commands so many shelves as the cooking section.  I wanted to find some new recipe ideas, but unfortunately there's no "I'm New to This" part of the cooking section.  Nor is there a Dewey Decimal number for "Throw Me A Bone, Rachael Ray" or a "I'm Too Tired for Your S**t, Jamie Oliver."  Player, I am not a gourmet.  Doesn't anyone write recipes for the common man?  No, guys.  Only me.  I'm the only person writing for the common man.  And you're welcome.


In the end, I did pick out a Rachael Ray recipe-she's gotta be kidding me with the 30 minutes, but her Pork Chops in Spiced Apple Pan Sauce turned out delicious.  Pork chops are a tough thing to come by in the Rio Grande Valley, but I got me some thin ones and it smelled just like Christmas in my house.  Later this week, I'm going to bake some butter nut squash with butter and brown sugar in the middle and have a regular holiday meal.  It is getting to be fall outside, after all, which means that I can lay by the pool comfortably.  With my pork chops and my squash.  FINALLY.

And for lunch this week, Jambalaya! I thought jambalaya would be more soupy, but it is HEARTY and SPICY and SO SO GOOD.  Can you put Sriracha on the top of jambalaya?  I think you can.  According to that recipe book at Urban Outfitters, you can put Sriracha on top of anything. 

I feel like I did what I promised you guys.  I stepped my game up.  And I'm feeling pretty successful.  If we were together right now, and I were singing you a song, the song would be this. 

Hold Your Horses

Sorry for the late post everyone.  I know it seems as though the narrative arc of my cooking adventure is in a stage of decline, but never fear.  I am as committed as ever. 

After getting home from the Texas School Leadership Summit (which was absolutely amazing), I had more desire to fire up my teaching than to fire up the stove.  So sue me.  But I've returned today with something TRULY magnificent and uber-easy.

It is... my mom's grilled cheese.  DON'T LAUGH.  It's gourmet grilled cheese and absolutely melty-delicious.  Recipe below.  One important note: Choose bread that you can toast like a panini, so bread with thick crusts on the outside are not ideal.  You can pair this amazing sandwich with any of your favorite tomato bisque recipes.  If you lived in a city, you could pick up delicious tomato soup from your favorite restaurant.  I might have done that if I lived in a city.  Or you could have cooked your own.  That would have been my chosen option if I had my mom's accompanying creamy tomato soup recipe, but alas it is missing from the adorable recipe book she made for me when I moved into my own place (a truly lovely Dalton tradition).  A lot of the tomato bisque recipes online look hard, and you have to make a roux which is another one of my epic weaknesses (see 2010 attempt to make Beer Cheese Soup, a total disaster that ended in a pile of 6 cups of hardened cheese on the bottom of some beer-broth).  So I bought Campbell's.  Yep.  I did it.  And you know what I made for lunch?  Just a salad.  I ADMIT I AM TAKING SHORTCUTS.  But I added some delicious balsamic grilled onions.  For those, just put some balsamic and sugar in a pan, and cook red onions in the mixture until the balsamic is reduced and onions are nice and dark. 

So, long story short... there's some good stuff in here but I'm a little disappointed and it's okay if you are too.  Next week, I'm really going to outdo myself and impress the pants off of you.  Just you wait.  Maybe it'll be Beer Cheese Soup.

OMGC (Oh My Grilled Cheese)
1 package (3 oz.) cream cheese, softened
3/4 c. mayonnaise
1 c. shredded cheddar cheese
1 c. shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/8 tsp. seasoned salt (that's a real thing, you can buy it)
10 slices Italian bread, 1/2 inch think
2 tbsp. butter or margarine, softened

In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese and mayonnaise until smooth.  Stir in cheeses, garlic powder, and seasoned salt.  Spread 5 slices of bread with the cheese mixture, about 1/3 cup on each.  Top with remaining bread.  Butter the outside of sandwiches; cook in a large skillet over medium heat until golden brown on both sides.  Serves 5.

In Honor of Kieley & Lydie Running a Half Marathon...

I eat a lot of Greek food and run exactly one mile.

I am slightly better at working out than I am at cooking.  By that I mean, I have never cooked a decent meal in my life before now, but at least I ran the mile once in 4th grade.  So in honor of Kieley and Lydie (two of my closest Valley friends) completing the Philadelphia Half Marathon this weekend, I cooked myself up some UBER fattening spinokopita and ran exactly one mile extremely slowly.  Then almost threw it all up, which would have been a horrible waste.

On the plus side, the spinokopita turned out very delicious, my first true success since starting this blog.  I don't have a bad thing to say about it.  Thanks to my friend Hannah for suggesting Greek food, although cooking moussaka (Greek lasagna) probably would have put me in the ground.  I found this easy recipe from Emeril http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/spanakopita-recipe/index.html and BAM! There it was (did you like my joke?).  I also made this balsamic braised chicken http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/braised-balsamic-chicken/detail.aspx, which is one of my old favorites.  You can't beat balsamic vinegar for taste.  Or vinegar in general.  I'd put it on everything if I could, which is what I used to do before I started "cooking."

For dinners this week, I made some fideo (Mexican noodles) and stir fry.  I bought Kikkoman stir fry sauce at HEB, but honestly sauces are my weakness so we'll see how it goes.  I'm guessing it'll be pretty dicey so make sure you read next week to hear all about my stir fry adventures.  


BIG DECISION UPDATE:  Turns out, these recipes are written to feed families and not just Ashley Dalton.  Thus two full shelves in my fridge were full of leftover macaroni and cheese, lasagna, and various unrecognizable substances in Tupperware containers.  On Saturday night, I cleaned out the fridge and promised my roommate Emily that I would start halving the recipes.  Word to the wise, there's no shame in cooking smaller portions.  It doesn't make you less professional.   

Exhaustion Sets In

First, a word about the day because not to mention anything would seem negligent to me.  I told my homeroom full of 9th graders on Friday that on September 11th ten years ago, I was sitting in my own 9th grade World Geography class.  Strange how things have come full circle for me.  My thoughts go out to all those whose lives were changed more significantly that day, those who lost loved ones on 9/11 or in Iraq and Afghanistan since. 

Now on to the business of cooking.  I have to admit to all of you that I cheated this week.  YES I FALTERED IN MY QUEST FOR CULINARY EXCELLENCE.  All I cooked today was my mother's recipe for Curried Chicken and Potatoes.  For my second weekly meal, I got all the ingredients for tostadas (tortillas, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream) and will be eating those for dinner.  The tostadas were a recommendation from a fellow teacher because, honestly, I'm running out of ideas guys.  So if you have any great meals that you cook all at once (so no roasted chicken with asparagus on the side, that's just too much responsibility) and can last you a week, please let me know.

The curried chicken and potatoes turned out amazing despite a few setbacks, mostly caused by HEB and not by my own blundering incompetence at all.  The lines at HEB are INCREDIBLY LONG, like 30 minutes long.  While I was waiting in line, eating corn-in-a-cup, sipping on an aguas frescas and reading Glamour, I must have lost my mind and thrown the ranch dressing and curry out of my cart onto the floor where they were picked up by a band of thieves.  That or the teller forgot to bag those two critical items.  One of those two versions actually happened; I will leave it up to your imagination.   Anyway, I got home and was 75% done cooking when I realized that the KEY INGREDIENTS WERE MISSING.  Disaster, but have no fear.  I rustled up some "Texas Twist" ranch dressing from the fridge and found some red curry powder on a back shelf (thank goodness for roommates, right? and for themed ranch dressing), and everything turned out just fine, if a little runny.  I've posted the recipe below.  Love and miss you all.

Curried Chicken & Potatoes
2 tbs. butter or margarine
1lb. boneless skinless chicken breast halves, cut into 1/2 inch strips
1 lb. new potatoes (about 7) cut into 6 wedges each
1/2 c. sliced green onions
1/4 tsp. pepper
Dash of salt
1/2 c. ranch dressing
2 tbs. milk
1 tsp. curry powder

Melt margarine in 10-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat.  Add chicken, potatoes, and half of onions; cover and cook about 20 minutes, stirring frequently, until chicken is no longer pink in center and potatoes are brown on both sides.  Sprinkle with pepper and salt.  Mix dressing, milk and curry powder.  Stir into chicken mixture.  Add remaining onions.  Cook and stir until heated through.  Serves 4.

The One Where I Finally Cook with Janet

My blog has become a big hit, you guys!  And by that I mean that my friends ask me about it all the time but don't actually read it.  Which is fine!  Because it leads to golden opportunities like being able to cook with my friend Janet.

Last night, Janet invited me to cook and eat with her (in an obvious attempt to become peripherally famous by being mentioned on this blog).  Lasagna was the chosen meal, which I have made exactly one time so I'm an old pro.  Janet invited me over at 6:15 and I arrived... to a freshly-awoken Kieley but sadly no Janet.  Janet was still at the store with her other roommate Caitlin.  They were delayed because Janet had forgotten the ricotta and had to go back while Caitlin held down the self checkout line for 25 minutes.  After she found the cheese and was on her way back to Caitlin, Janet had bumped into another woman, spilled ricotta all over the floor, found two older men to help her clean it up, and gotten a replacement; all the while, Caitlin bought and bagged $200 worth of groceries and made BFFs with the HEB guy who oversees self checkout. 

When they finally arrived home, Janet set Kieley and I to chopping and dicing.  The lasagna Janet made last night had squash in it, which apparently you can't chop without it being warmed up first.  While Kieley was microwaving the squash, Janet's spice grinder accidentally broke and the ENTIRE jar of spices was dumped into the ricotta cheese blend.  Janet tried to brush some out, but gave up in the end because, as she says, "Who needs to measure?"  Kieley brought the squash back, tried to cube it by scooping it out with a melon baller, and Caitlin and I ended up burning our fingers cubing and peeling squash.  Janet layered the lasagna and it was on its way to the oven when ALAS, we had no tin foil to put on the top of the pan.  Janet decided to seek assistance from her neighbors, one of whom had been drywalling in their house earlier that day due to an enormous hole put in their wall during a party last weekend (he arrived later to because the gray paint he bought did not actually match their white wall, he had missed a spot in his patchwork, and he'd forgotten his $30 payment).  Janet arrived back at the house just as Caitlin and I were about to report her abducted WITHOUT TINFOIL.  She had got to chatting with a different neighbor and just couldn't ask him for tinfoil after telling him she just wanted to say hello.  We ended up putting a cookie sheet on top of the lasagna which turned out absolutely delicious.  There's nothing better than cooking adventures with your closest friends.

In other news, I made my mother's award-winning sausage bean soup this week (no joke, she has an engraved silver ladle), along with some southern-style macaroni and cheese.  Sometimes, you just need comfort food and comfort people. 

The First Sunday and Soyrizo

"Dang, this actually tastes like real food,"  is my first reaction to the Garden Lasagna I made tonight as my dinner-of-the-week.  I used this delicious recipe from The Interweb (http://lowcaloriecooking.about.com/od/vegetarian/r/veglasagna.htm) and it turned out pretty well!  For the sauce, I bought a bottle Emeril's Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaarlic something or other.  This recipe, along with the Chicken Stew I made for lunch-of-the-week (http://recipes.kaboose.com/irish-chicken-stew-with-dumplings.html), required me to buy more vegetables than I've ever bought in my life.  The lasagna was a little runny, but very hearty all-in-all.  The stew is still cooking away.  If I had read the recipe all the way through, instead of being distracted by the delicious memory of dumplings, I would have realized it takes about a million hours to cook.  And I still have to make the dumplings with the "Baking Mix" I bought at HEB.  "Baking Mix," which sounds made up to me, is actually sold under that name, and can be found in a secret back corner of the flour/sugar aisle behind the Bisquik.

A couple notes of advice from today's cooking adventure:

1.  Make sure you have the hardware.  I ended up making the lasagna in two smaller dishes because I didn't have a bigger casserole dish to put it in.  There were also several times where I had to switch from a small saucepan to a bigger one because of #2 below. 
2.  Don't believe the number of servings on the recipe.  Unless they're measuring in elephant servings, both of these recipes make enough food to feed two people for a week (good thing I have a roommate) and require ENORMOUS pans to make. 

Finally, I want to weigh in on the ongoing Soyrizo debate.  Before I started this whole Sunday cooking experiment, I made myself a pretty passable breakfast-for-dinner taco on Friday night using Soyrizo.  I know, who would have thought I'd ever cook with that vegetarian slop or that it actually tastes really good.  Since I moved to the Valley, I've been trying more meat substitutes.  These items were previously banned from my kitchen and the kitchen of everyone else I know because let's face it, Soyrizo and Boca's Spicy Chik'n are beans pretending to be meat and I was just not cool with the trickery of it all.  However, I've discovered that if I manage my expectations, I actually really like some of the veggie options out there.  You can't go into it thinking Chik'n is going to taste like chicken or that it will have the same consistency.  But if you can accept your beans-masquerading-as-meat for what it is, you can live a long, happy, carnivore-but-sometimes-trying-veggie-for-funsies life. 

No More Ketchup

So there I was.  Standing in the staff break room today, a week into my third year of teaching.  Warming up instant oatmeal.  Instant.  Oatmeal.  Behind me, two other teachers sat in front of full Mexican meals they had packed for lunch.  As my stomach was growling how pissed off it was that summer is over, I realized that teaching is just too hard to do on a stomach full of a half a cup of oatmeal.  I'm going to have to become an adult if I want to teach the children.

In my first attempt to force myself into cooking, I decided a week ago not to buy any microwaveable meals (my old lunch/dinner staple).  Instead, I rolled my cart up and down the aisles picking up everything that looked good to me.  You know what I had for dinner last night?  I had Thai peanut sauce marinade on boiled Orzo with some tofu in it.  I have adopted a seven-year-old's approach to cooking: this tastes good, and so does this, I'll put it in a bowl and watch some TV.  What I ate last night for dinner tasted about as good as the ketchup sandwiches I used to make myself every day after school. 

And it's not for lack of good influences that I've ended up like this.  My mom and grandma are INCREDIBLE cooks.  My grandma cooked the best school lunch in the state of South Dakota for decades.  And my mom is even better than her, and thankfully less obsessed with leftovers.  My roommate makes truly delicious vegetarian food, which I previously considered impossible.  My friends Chelsea and Edwin made gnocchi (I don't even really know what that is) from scratch while writing their own cooking blog.  The only reason I even tried out tofu is because my friend Kieley made vegetarian stir fry last week. 

Today marks my admission into the club of Adults Who Know How to Fend for Themselves.  Every Sunday, I'm going to make myself meals for the week and post the results on this blog.  I'll write about my successes, and also admit to my ketchup sandwich failures... should there be any.  So there it is.  Good luck to me.