Getting Lazy- How to Impress with Less.

I think I have mentioned before that my least favorite part of cooking is figuring out what to make. This is my default "not sure what to cook and we do not have anything out of a box that is suddenly a meal after a microwave it" dishes.

I am going to call it pasta fresco, because that seems to be the name anyone uses for a basic pasta.

It is pair will a salad, which you can also make up a fluffy name for if you are trying to sound fancy and impress your guest. I like to call my the Snap Apple Salad. (I made the name up because all of the veggies make a snap sound when you bite them).

This is starting to sound legit right?

If you have basil this looks ten times better. A touch of green makes you look extra fancy

Here is the gist of what you do.

Boil pasta (I like linguine)

In a separate pan fry a little bit of tofu and or chicken depending on what you have in your fridge.
After that is cooked. Slice up a tomato and toss that in the pan. Scoop in minced garlic and fresh basil if you have it. Once the pasta is done, add it to the mixture and top with EVOO (HA I AM RACHEL RAY!). Other veggies such as mushroom, peppers, and broccoli can be added depending on availability. Once plated, top with fancy parmesan.

Now the salad. I am too lazy to wash lettuce, so I buy a mixture. Super lazy, right?

I add carrots, celery, apple, croutons and feta to my premade fancy mixture. Serve without dressing.



Now you look fancy and healthy!

Cooking with Someone Else

Something I have tried multiple times in my life is cooking a meal with someone else. I have learned that 99% of the time this does not end well. I remember the first time I noticed this was with my Easy Bake Oven. About four of us would to communally make one of those stupid packets of cake or whatever. Two people would stir, one would put it in, and one would take it out. It was always a fight to see who would be Lucky enough to get to scald their hands on the hot tiny metal dish while the other's looked on miserably. Good times.



Fast forward to sharing a kitchen as an adult. One person becomes head chef and takes on the persona of Gordon Ramsay and the other one becomes the cutting/stirring bitch. 

I have been on both sides of this relationship, and neither one is very fun. If you are the Gordon, you just get mad because what ever you cutting/stirring bitch is doing, you could probably be doing both better and faster.

And if you are the bitch, you are mumbling threats under your breath and thinking about smacking that asshole Ramsay in the face with a hot pan....

However, I have found the exception to this situation. I can cook one thing with Scott. We make excellent fried rice.

Now I only help out with part of the dish, which may be why I am able to cook with him without going crazy. He cuts everything up, then I cook the chicken and veggies. I make sure they are properly seasoned and cooked through. Then I turn it back over to him to add everything together and make the final product. Every time we make this, it is super fun and I almost believe in cooking with someone else is an enjoyable activity...

This is what I get to do!

But then I remember that god damn Easy Bake Oven, and my shared kitchen ambitions end there.



When I Miss Living in the City

One of the things I miss most about living in the city as opposed to the suburbs is the food. True, we didn't move to the middle of nowhere, but we live far enough that I can not make a snap decision to go out. A few weeks ago I decided that I had to have a Philly cheese steak sandwich. All throughout college I lived a few blocks away from a small middle eastern deli/hookah bar called Sunny's. They made the best Philly and fries that I have ever had... and the best part was they were open until 3 am. I miss them...


So anyway. I deiced that I could recreate this sandwich... or at the very least make one as good as a Charlie's Sub.... That is not aiming high to say the least.

So I searched online for hours... and I learned two things... One this really isn't something you make at home, and two if you do you need a meat slicers.

I sat there for a moment trying to decide on a second option for my dinner. But then I though to hell with it. I will figure out how to make something close....


AND I DID.


I gathered the following:

1lb of flank steak (well actually 4 lbs because we were at Costco, thank you bulk items.)

1 onion

1 green bell pepper

1 red bell pepper (because I already had one)

fancy buns

Swiss cheese *side lesson.

and whatever seasoning I already had in my stock (I am going broke on seasoning, that shit gets expensive.)

So my lack of electronic slicer was my first issue. My elegant solution was to ask Scott to cut it as thin as he could. One because raw meat still freaks me out, and two because I stuck at even cutting. It turned out okay.

Then I sliced the onion and bell peppers into large pieces. I tossed in garlic, salt, pepper, paprika, and season-all and cooked it till the meat was well done.

Finally I toasted some buns then topped them with meat mixture and Swiss cheese.

It tasted nothing at all like I was aiming for, but it wasn't bad at all. I am not sure it would be fair to the city of Philly to call it a Philly Cheese Steak, but I am not quite egotistical to call it a Heather Cheese Steak, so my creation  is just stuck in food limbo.

Either way, it was pretty good.

And if anyone wants to get me a 9 month early birthday present, I would love a meat slicer.



**side lesson: If you are going to go to a deli and ask for 5 slices of Swiss cheese, Lunds it not the place to do it. Snobby meat lady will judge you and make you feel like a hobo who does not belong in the fancy grocery store with carpet. Then once she has completed that, she will questioning you about the way you want it cut, and no, thin is not a proper answer.

You Want Me to Make What?

So this post is a little delayed, that lack of internet is killing me (softly). Anyway, as the holiday season has just ended I am sure many people were asked to the same question I was asked...

Will you bring an appetizer?


To be fair, it was a get together with Scott's family and it was optional to bring something, but I am the new(ish) girlfriend and it would be a cold day on the sun before I showed up empty handed to one of his family parties.

However there was just one little problem.... I don't know how to make any appetizers. I mean I understand what they are and it seems like a simple enough concept... but whenever I go out to restaurant and order and app(which is rare) I get one of two things. Mozzarella sticks or a cheese plate. Now I couldn't make either of these things.... First if I had the ability to make homemade mozzarella sticks I would be roughly the size of Jabba the Hutt by now and I certainly do not need that. And I did not want to make a cheese plate for two reasons; one, what is more pretentious than a cheese plate? Might as well wear a name tag that says "Hi, I am a food snob". Two, I have no idea how to pair cheese to the proper accompaniment.

So my normal orders were out of the running...

Also, let me tell you a secret, when Scott and I want a little variety in what we eat, I just make two complete dinners and we have a small portion of one of them as an app. Now this works okay for us, but I doubt most people want beef stew or stir fry at an appetizer party. And I am not sure how I would even serve them?

So after racking my brain for a bit, I decided I would do twice baked potatoes. That is almost an actual appetizer right? And as a bonus, it is something I already know how to make and I had all of the ingredients at home already. Double win.

So if you want to make these, here is what you need:

Potatoes (I had regular russet potatoes)
Garlic
Cheddar
Green Onions
Butter
Salt&Pepper
Milk
**All should be added to taste

See super easy list. Now here is what you do... now it seems easy, but I promise you this is a dangerous recipe. I believe I am still suffering from 3rd degree potato burn.


Step one: Bake the potatoes.

Step two: Once baked take them out and cut them in half. Scoop all of the potato guts into a bowl.  Make sure that you leave the skins intact.

Side note: Step two is where I burn the ever living shit out of my hand every time. I realize that if I wait for them to cool, this would not be a problem. However, patience is a not a virtue that I possess. I do have an idea that involves buying an Ove Glove. That just might revolutionize things.

Step three: Once you have all of the guts in the bowl, add all of the ingredients except the cheese and mash!

Step four: Lay the skins out on a baking sheet... Please ignore that in my photo my sheets looks like it would belong in a house out of a horror movie... I know I need a new one....  The scoop all the guts back onto a the skin and top with cheese!

Step five: Bake for ten min and then enjoy. WARNING eating them straight out of the oven will cause you to burn the roof of your...

I think that people liked them and no one looked at me like I was crazy... but I should probably learn how to make a dip or something for next year.

Till next time.

Call Me Garfield: It's Lasagna Night

Okay, so I have made this before but it is one of my favorites. I think about one third of my total diet in college was Simeks Lasagna. I have eaten them in various stages of cooking; from so hot I took a layer of skin from my mouth to have frozen out of sheer impatience. Yep, lasagna is one of my "if you could only eat five things for the rest of your life" foods.


So before I talk about what I did, let me give you a list of ingredients.


No bake lasagna noodles
Two large fresh tomatoes
One large can crushed tomatoes
One can diced tomatoes
One lbs. hot Italian sausage
Three garlic cloves
Dried basil
Fresh basil
Ricotta cheese
Mozzarella cheese
Salt and pepper

 Side note: I got all of my ingredients at Target and it was less than a week before Christmas, so the place was an absolute madhouse. Seriously I am talking one step above the thunderdome here. Anyway I couldn't get any fresh basil, so I substituted for Litehouse dried basil. It is almost as good.



So you start with  the sauce. First thing you do is brown the sausage, which quite frankly is a step I have never understood. If I am going to boil the sauce and THEN bake this sucker for 40 min, why the hell should I have to brown anything. But anyway, you have to brown it. I sprinkle a tiny amount of salt and pepper here. I cook it until I get tired of doing it. Normally it ends up looking like this:

So after that ordeal it is time to make the sauce. I break up the fresh tomatoes into the meat pan, dump the canned tomatoes and cover the top with dried basil. I generally add about 3 tps of garlic, unless it does not look like enough in which case I add more until it passes my visual inspection. It should look something like this. The you boil it for 10 min.

Just screams "health food" right?

Anyway, now it is time for the guts of the lasagna. This is probably the easiest part. I am not a huge believer in measuring things, so I do two giant spoon fulls of ricotta cheese. The add mozzarella till I get tired of doing it. Now, had Target been adequately supplied in their Pre-Christmas madness, I would have used fresh basil here. But alas, it was not meant to be, so instead I used 1/4 cup dried basil. Mix it together and you have cheese guts.

The last two photos are out of order, but I am too lazy to switch them.

Now it is time to put it all together. (If you are me, you do this step while picturing yourself as a mad scientist, or at the very least Gordon Ramsey.)

I learned that if you do not want a permanent burned on layer of noodles it is best to coat the bottom with the meat sauce.

Then it is time for noodles. By the way if it were up to me I would give who ever invented these "no bake" noodles a Nobel Prize in the category of their choosing.

Now I have heard rumors that other people can spread in the guts with a spoon, but apparently I am inept. So I push it on with my fingers. It is neither graceful nor evenly spread.

Patchy, yum.

Then... MORE MEAT SAUCE!

Then you wash rinse repeat... Wait no that is for washing your hair. What I mean is you repeat those steps two more time for a total of three noodle layers. Finally you top with cheese and bake for 40 min.

And now you get to eat it!

Fin.

It Begins

Up until last May, I could probably count the number of times I actually cooked a meal on both hands...Well, maybe on one hand. I am not talking about nuking a can of Chef Boyardee or making some Ramen, because trust me I did plenty of that. I am talking about full on from scratch cooking.

Suddenly at the end of May I was done with school and realized that I had been pampered in my campus life. In the suburbs you are not a few blocks from anything. I was no longer able to get my 2 a.m. burritos or decide on a whim I was going to walk to get the best Korean food in town. Instead I had to cook...

Luckily it turns out I like cooking, and heck I might even get good at it. In the last six months, I have mastered, or at least I like to think I have, the basics. I learned how to chop veggies, how to use the oven, and to time making a whole meal. I learned how to make spaghetti (with nothing from a jar included!), tacos, and meatloaf among other basics. It went well, I only had one or two flops, but I found we were eating the same thing pretty much every week. As good as it was, a girl can only take so much stir fry and sloppy joes before she goes mad.

So here I am six months later. I have the blue prints, but it is time to go from comfort food to actually being able to cook. Hopefully I will use this blog to document my attempts, successes and failures. Wish me luck.