A Surprise in my Freezer

I was getting really hungry. I hadn't eaten since between 7:30 and 9:00 this morning, so my blood sugar was dropping and I could feel it. I decided to see what I could quickly throw together without dirtying too many pans. I opened the freezer and began looking around and found a plastic container containing a nice-sized square of the lasagna that I had made I think in November. I don't even remember saving any of it!

Wow, did I enjoy that! It was good when I first made it and it was equally so now.

I can give you a quick rundown on how I made it if you'd like to try it. I had bought mild Italian sausages from one of our local groceries because I was in the mood for a good sausage sandwich. Unfortunately, these particular sausages had more fennel in them than I like, so I just kept them in the slow cooker until the next day when they literally fell apart if I tried to take one out. I then got my potato masher (the kind with the s-turn bars, not the kind with the square holes) and mashed all of the sausages into small pieces. The casings by this time were pretty much cooked away, so I ended up with a really nice bolognese.

Then I got some ricotta (you could use small curd and dry cottage cheese) and mixed it with an egg and shredded mozzarella. I got the lasagna noodles out and began the layering process. First some sauce on the bottom (not too much meat) topped with DRY lasagna noodles. I topped the noodles with the ricotta mixture followed by the meatsauce. I then repeated the pattern until I reached the top where I spread the remaining sauce adding shredded mozzarella on top of that. I covered it all with plastic wrap and then aluminum foil and baked at 350 for an hour. It probably could have used another 15 minutes because some of the noodles were al dente, but it was still edible and as I reheated it, the noodles finished cooking. The plastic wrap kept the tomato sauce from eating through the aluminum while it cooked, which was great because I hate it when it does that. I don't like the idea that I'm eating even a minuscule piece of aluminum.

But, I surely don't remember putting any in a container and freezing it. Nicely done, Wendy. Great little surprise to find on this cold day in January!

Have you ever forgotten you had something edible put away and been very happy when you found it?

Photo credit - this was taken when I took the lasagna out of the oven. It is my photo, my copyright.

Chicken Soup (Making Silk Out of the Proverbial Sow's Ear) - Dinner Disasters and Redemption

I had made breaded pork chops with gravy and fried potatoes. Unfortunately, the potatoes were a complete disaster because they were dehydrated and I had REhydrated them before frying. Now, in my defense, I have done this with shredded potatoes, but I'd never tried it with sliced potatoes. I learned my lesson.

Because of the potato disaster, I decided to throw together a quick mix of pasta and tomatoes, which we've had before and enjoyed for years. But, the only pasta I had on hand was whole wheat bowties and it just didn't turn out right. The texture of the pasta just didn't fit with the concept we'd grown accustomed to, so the next night I added a can of spaghetti sauce to the mix hoping that something tolerable would result. (The pantry was needing to be restocked, so I was struggling to save this from the garbage.)

While the pasta WAS a tad more acceptable, there were still only two of us who ate it. I was still left with over a quart of pasta with tomatoes and sauce. What to do?

Well, I decided that chicken soup was the way to go (I hoped). I had leftover corn from disaster dinner night and I had carrot coins in the freezer along with some lima beans. I had plenty of chicken, so I decided to make broth and then add the pasta, corn and carrots for a (hopefully) hearty (and tastier) soup than the original meal turned out. [To be fair, the pork chops were excellent. Far more tender and moist than pork chops usually are. I'll do them again for sure.]

After making something else for a couple of days, I decided enough was enough. MAKE THE SOUP ALREADY!!!! So, I did.

It turned out terrific!! Of course, I seemed to be the only one who thought so since my son and his girlfriend wouldn't even try it. My granddaughter had a small amount, but refused to eat the vegetables. I wasn't too worried about that since, other than fiber, all their goodness was contained in the broth.

Here's what I did. I had a partial chicken breast leftover from some chicken and rice I had made. I put it in the pot with two cups of chicken broth and three cups of water plus chicken bouillon cubes and leftover corn from the pork chop fiasco. After that had all cooked for a while, I added frozen sliced carrots, frozen green beans and frozen baby lima beans. When that all cooked for a while longer, I added a pint of the disastrous bowtie pasta mix (with tomatoes and sauce). After tasting, I added two teaspoons of dehydrated minced onions, a teaspoon and a half of salt and another bouillon cube. I also took the chicken breast out and pulled all the meat off the bones, shredded it and reintroduced it to the pot.

I was amazed at how good it tasted! I should have waited longer to eat some since the vegetables were still a little on the crunchy side (not bad, but not how I like them), but the flavor was perfect and I was hungry !

So, it looks like my first effort at making chicken soup was successful. And, yes, it really DID take me this long to make chicken soup. I've made vegetable soup many times, but I have never ever tried to make chicken soup.

What was wrong with me???

Previously published on Yahoo! Contributor Network.
Photo credit - I, BrokenSphere [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Leftovers for dinner

We had tacurritos one night for supper. By that I mean that my daughter made what I usually make as a burrito filling but instead of adding cheese and salsa to it, she had the shredded cheese and salsa on the side and chopped tomatoes and spinach to put on top of it in our soft tacos made with whole wheat tortillas. She also had some tofutti sour cream, which I can assure you is actually quite good. She said we would have leftovers the next night, so I figured it was either going to be exactly the same thing again or she'd use the tortilla chips as a base and make nachos. I considered doing that myself, but I didn't.

Pasta Stuffed Peppers!

OK, here I am again, not all that long after my last post. Can you believe it? Well, I actually did something worthy of posting right away and I'm here to tell about it.

I had made the macaroni with the pasta sauce that I used the roasted tomatoes for. There was quite a bit of it and Deb wouldn't eat any of it. I didn't want to eat it all myself, so I thought maybe I could use it for stuffing the peppers she'd brought home that needed to be used. I went online and found that plenty of other people had used pasta to stuff peppers, so I found one that used elbow macaroni like I did in order to know what temperature to set the oven and how long to bake them.

Not my peppers. These are from  Tummy Temptations.

Before I stuffed the peppers, though, I diced up a couple snack sized summer sausages to add meaty flavor to the mix and opened a can of corn, drained it and added that as well. I cut the tops off of five peppers and removed the seeds and veins, got out my square baking dish and placed the peppers in it. Then I stuffed them with the macaroni mixture (that now had diced summer sausage and corn). We had a small block of cheese that I grated a portion of and topped each pepper with a blend of ketchup, dried mustard and chili powder followed by some grated Cheddar Jack cheese. I followed the baking instructions for the one recipe I'd found and in an hour, I had five lovely stuffed peppers waiting to be eaten.

My friend Tom really liked them - he had two. My daughter had one, which surprised me since she had just eaten a hoagie. I haven't had one yet because she had brought me some broccoli soup when she came home, so I was no longer hungry. But, there are still two peppers left and they're now in the freezer waiting to be reheated and eaten. I'm very happy with the results, although next time I'll plan ahead and put pasta sauce around all the peppers so they are more "saucy". I like peppers that way.

Although I'm not providing any specific instructions for this meal, it wouldn't be hard for you to do. Just make up your pasta and then prepare your peppers, stuff them and bake for 30 minutes covered with foil and 25-30 more minutes without foil, all at 350 degrees. I did put a little water in the dish around the peppers to keep them from drying out, but I'd like to put pasta sauce in the next time. If your family doesn't care much for rice like my daughter doesn't, this might just be the recipe for you.

I had one pepper I wasn't able to use for stuffing, so I cut it up along with the "lids" from the five I did use and froze it for future use. This seems to be a good way to use up leftover pasta if you also happen to have peppers.

Working on Keeping Up

Well, hello. As you can see, I'm almost late with this post. Today is "W", right? Considering I thought it was Friday this morning when it's actually Thursday, I could be totally wrong (another W word).


I fell behind while I was beginning the healing process of the abscessed tooth that sent me to the ER in severe pain. Now I'm catching up. So, please bear with me while I stumble forward seemingly aimlessly.


My daughter and I just got home from going out to eat. I was supposed to go out to eat with Tom's brother, but when he learned I was bringing my daughter, he left us and went home. *sigh* He is such a puss. (I'm being kind.) So, we went took ourselves out to eat.


We first went to La Esperanza Mexican restaurant in Gibbsboro, but they had already closed, so we headed north to Mount Laurel to go to On The Border, a chain restaurant owned by the same people who own Macaroni Grill. 

On The Border Grill & Cantina in Novi, Michigan

Deb hadn't been there before and it had been several years since I was there, but I do like them. She got a beef chimichanga with beans and rice and I got a combo meal with a chile relleno and a carnitas (pulled pork) enchilada, also with beans and rice. She barely ate half of her chimichanga and I only ate the enchilada. We brought the rest home. But, neither of us could eat the salsa they served with the chips. OMG, it was so hot that our tongues were on fire!!! The kind of hot that hits long before any flavor does. Not pleasant. So, I guess I won't be enjoying their salsa in the future unless they have a milder version one can request. Even with sour cream added, that salsa was powerful enough to strip paint off your bureau!! Since I wanted the chance to enjoy my food, I stopped trying to eat it and finished off an entire glass of iced tea in order to get my tongue back to normal. 


Anyway, we both enjoyed our meals and plan to enjoy our leftovers tomorrow. Both meals were under $10, so it's not bad when you have enough food to get two meals.


That's about it for today. I'll try to post tomorrow's "X" earlier than I did this. I also owe several reads of others' posts. I'll get there, I promise.

Back in the Kitchen Again

As you probably already know, if you know me or have read my blog, cooking is not my favorite activity. It's just not a gene I inherited from my mother who epitomized homemaking. Yet, I've done more cooking or food prep in the last couple of weeks than I have in a long time. I jokingly said on a Facebook post, "What the heck's wrong with me?!?" after a particularly productive day.


I froze just over 10 lbs of chicken leg quarters after buying them at a super bargain price, froze chicken broth created by my friend who was making chicken curry for us one night, froze ham broth from cooking my ham bone with a bag of frozen green beans, froze the beans for later use, then cooked pinto beans using some of the ham for seasoning and froze them, and so on. I made a great bean soup using a container of beans and a container of beef broth, baked a couple of leg quarters for my daughter and, finally last night, boiled another leg quarter with the intention of making creamed chicken today. 


Well, the creamed chicken didn't come to fruition. I just didn't feel like waiting for the crescent roll cups I'd planned to bake, so I decided to make some drop dumplings. I didn't have any baking mix, but I did have some "complete" pancake mix, so I used that. I added some parsley and some poultry seasoning to the dry mix and added water to make the dumplings. I had already pulled the meat off the leg quarter and added peas and corn that were leftover from our baked chicken dinner (normally, I'd use peas and carrots) to the broth I'd made last night to which I also added poultry seasoning, Adobo seasoning, salt, pepper, minced onions and celery. Since the broth was already at a rolling boil, I just dropped forkfuls of the batter (the same fork I mixed it with) into the broth. I meant to thicken the broth as well, but didn't think about it until after the dumplings were nearly cooked. So, I made a quick flour and water slurry and poured that in past the dumplings that I pushed to one side. Stirring to prevent lumps, I then added a lid to make sure the dumplings cooked completely through (I hate dumplings that are dry in the middle).


Although I think the combination of corn and peas made the broth a bit too sweet, it turned out pretty good. More like a thick soup than anything else, but good. The one leg quarter wasn't enough to make the creamed chicken I'd planned, but it was plenty to provide flavor and some meat for this dish. I had two helpings, so I obviously wasn't too disappointed.

R McRayne's Recipes