Monday's Menu was not meatless, but it was Labor Day and we all had the day off so I took the extra time to make fried chicken. I don't usually make it because it can be so time and labor intensive and basically I have never had fried chicken as good as my great grandmothers so it always seems pointless to me. But then I am thinking Gramma probably wasn't ALWAYS great at making chicken, it takes practice.
I soaked the chicken pieces (chicken thighs) in my own version of buttermilk, basically regular milk with some vinegar added to it, then I added a spoonful of dried Ranch dressing mix to it and thoroughly covered all the chicken pieces. I let them soak while I made a flour mixture in a plastic bag, basically 1 1/2 C of regular flour, salt, pepper and paprika about a teaspoon of each. I shook up each piece of chicken and laid them out while I got the oil heated. I usually shallow fry the chicken , but I had some leftover oil from making donuts last week so I decided to use my deep fryer. I have trouble making sure the chicken was cooked all the way to the bone on the first try so I thought maybe the deep fryer would help. I followed the cooking directions from Paula Deen's fried chicken recipe and cooked them for 13 minutes, but I guess my pieces were bigger or something because my first pieces were not completely cooked through. Maybe the oil needed longer to heat or something because the rest of the pieces came out fine.
We served the chicken with baked beans and coleslaw, it was a really nice way to end the day.
Tuesday my kid wanted some tacos, in fact my older daughter was singing in the car "It is ta-co Tues-day!" and my younger daughter started crying and said, "I don't want tacos on Tuesday, I want them TODAY!" So tacos for sure!
Brown your ground beef with some chopped onions and drain off any fat, season the beef with some cumin, salt, pepper and chili powder. We warmed up some crunchy corn shells in the oven and served the tacos with yellow rice, grated cheese, shredded romaine lettuce and some lovely salsa.
Wednesday was gymnastics, so I needed an easy dinner. I read some recipes online for slow cooker ribs so I decided to make my own recipe with what I had on hand. I rinsed the ribs and cut them into 2 and 3 rib chunks and placed them in the slow cooker, I sprinkled them all over with BBQ rub. Over the top I poured a can of tomatoes that had onions and garlic, I sprinkled 1/4 C of brown sugar over the top, and poured on about 1/3 of the tomato can filled with apple cider vinegar. I hit the whole thing with a few dashes of hot sauce, turned on the slow cooker on high and let it go till dinner time, took 1 rack of ribs about 3 1/2 hours to cook. We served it with applesauce, steamed mixed vegetables, and the leftover yellow rice from Taco Tuesday.
Tonight is Thirsty Thursday, because it is still hot here and I am alllll about the cold drinks right now, this is a simple one. We used to make these things called "Italian Sodas" when I worked at a coffee shop, we;d take flavored syrups, mix them with seltzer water and serve them over ice. My favorite UNSWEETENED version of that is simply adding your favorite juice to a glass with ice (I like a cranberry juice) and then topping it off with seltzer and a slice of lime. Super refreshing and lovely. You can do this with any juice, flavored syrup or even make fizzy lemonade. I have no idea what I am going to make for dinner but I think it will be pasta based.
Have you ever seen those microwave pasta cookers advertised on television? I have seen them but always eyed them with suspicion because WHY would you make pasta in the microwave? Then as I was standing over a pot of boiling water the other night to make penne for my family in my un-airconditioned kitchen I thought, I wish I had one of those dang pasta cookers! I picked one up at Beall's Outlet over the weekend and it had a pink dot on it, which apparently made it 95% off. So I get to try the pasta cooker and it only cost me .22¢!
Showing posts with label thirsty Thursday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thirsty Thursday. Show all posts
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Weird Wednesday and Thirsty Thursday
Last night's (Weird Wednesday) chicken did not go as planned. What was weird was that I got all riled up over a truly regrettable t-shirt I saw on JC Penney's website. Okay, me getting riled is not weird, me deciding to take time out of my day and throw a RIGHTEOUS AND UNHOLY FIT ABOUT IT is pretty weird. I mean, I usually am good to just write a sternly worded e-mail and then let it go, but something got to me about that shirt and unlocked a part of me I thought I tossed out with my last pair of Doc Martens, basically the part that doesn't worry about speaking up and speaking loudly even if it was over an idiotic t-shirt. I plan on exercising that part of me a little but more from now on. It felt good.
But in typical suburban Mom fashion I also had to take the kids to two different gymnastics classes, supervise homework and try and get dinner started and I had basically made a complete and utter mess of things because there I was at 3 o'clock in the afternoon with a wrecked kitchen and a frozen solid whole chicken. I needed to leave in half an hour. So, I threw the chicken in the microwave to defrost, and started unloading and loading the dishwasher. Seriously, if you are ever faced with a kitchen where things are so chaotic you don't know where to start, just do the dishes, everything else will fall into place. Once the dishwasher was running again I looked at the chicken and it wasn't completely defrosted. I was basically out of time by this point, so I placed it on top of thick slices of onion layered in the bottom of my crockpot, seasoned it all over with adobo, splashed on quite a bit of mojo criollo sauce and set it on high and left. When my husband got home he called me and I told him where the rice, yellow squash, and artichokes were. We decided to split the artichoke down the middle, baste it with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast it under the broiler, when I got home we also roasted the now cooked chicken under the broiler to crisp the skin and give it another layer of flavor, otherwise that would have been a pretty bland looking bird. We ate only the chicken quarters last night, drumsticks for the girls and the rest for us, steamed yellow squash circles, roasted artichoke and rice. Tonight I will take the rest of the chicken meat off the bone for reheating and serve it with a zucchini casserole recipe I just got from my grandmother.
Zucchini Casserole:
zucchini
tomatoes (fresh or canned)
onion
butter
salt
pepper
mozzarella
cracker crumbs
Simply take zucchini, cut it into rounds and layer it into the bottom of a lightly greased loaf pan, add diced tomato, chopped onion, dots of butter, salt and pepper and then repeat layers, on the top add mozzarella shreds and cracker crumbs dotted with more butter, bake covered for 30 minutes at 375, remove foil and bake until mozzarella is browned and melted, another 10-15 minutes.
Today I traded 6 pounds of starfruit off of our tree for a bunch of red bell peppers, red onion, gorgeous beefsteak tomatoes, an acorn squash and I promised to come back tomorrow with some key limes for the guy so I can get more goodies. Here's where I live, we can barter for fruits and vegetables, by the side of a major highway where the tiny miniature Key deer are nibbling delicately at a cantaloupe rind. Its like Little House on the Prairie mixed with a Carl Hiassen novel over here just about all the time so in honor of the amazing place where I live I offer this Key Limeade recipe for Thirsty Thursday!
Key Limeade:
Key limes
simple syrup
water
ice
Squeeze your key limes into a small strainer set over a small bowl to catch the seeds. Add somewhere between an 1/8 of a cup to 1/4 C of key lime juice to an 8 ounce glass filled with ice. Add 2 oz. of simple syrup and then top off with water till glass is about 2/3 full. Mix and taste and adjust lime juice and syrup till you reach tart/sweetness you desire.
But in typical suburban Mom fashion I also had to take the kids to two different gymnastics classes, supervise homework and try and get dinner started and I had basically made a complete and utter mess of things because there I was at 3 o'clock in the afternoon with a wrecked kitchen and a frozen solid whole chicken. I needed to leave in half an hour. So, I threw the chicken in the microwave to defrost, and started unloading and loading the dishwasher. Seriously, if you are ever faced with a kitchen where things are so chaotic you don't know where to start, just do the dishes, everything else will fall into place. Once the dishwasher was running again I looked at the chicken and it wasn't completely defrosted. I was basically out of time by this point, so I placed it on top of thick slices of onion layered in the bottom of my crockpot, seasoned it all over with adobo, splashed on quite a bit of mojo criollo sauce and set it on high and left. When my husband got home he called me and I told him where the rice, yellow squash, and artichokes were. We decided to split the artichoke down the middle, baste it with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast it under the broiler, when I got home we also roasted the now cooked chicken under the broiler to crisp the skin and give it another layer of flavor, otherwise that would have been a pretty bland looking bird. We ate only the chicken quarters last night, drumsticks for the girls and the rest for us, steamed yellow squash circles, roasted artichoke and rice. Tonight I will take the rest of the chicken meat off the bone for reheating and serve it with a zucchini casserole recipe I just got from my grandmother.
Zucchini Casserole:
zucchini
tomatoes (fresh or canned)
onion
butter
salt
pepper
mozzarella
cracker crumbs
Simply take zucchini, cut it into rounds and layer it into the bottom of a lightly greased loaf pan, add diced tomato, chopped onion, dots of butter, salt and pepper and then repeat layers, on the top add mozzarella shreds and cracker crumbs dotted with more butter, bake covered for 30 minutes at 375, remove foil and bake until mozzarella is browned and melted, another 10-15 minutes.
Today I traded 6 pounds of starfruit off of our tree for a bunch of red bell peppers, red onion, gorgeous beefsteak tomatoes, an acorn squash and I promised to come back tomorrow with some key limes for the guy so I can get more goodies. Here's where I live, we can barter for fruits and vegetables, by the side of a major highway where the tiny miniature Key deer are nibbling delicately at a cantaloupe rind. Its like Little House on the Prairie mixed with a Carl Hiassen novel over here just about all the time so in honor of the amazing place where I live I offer this Key Limeade recipe for Thirsty Thursday!
Key Limeade:
Key limes
simple syrup
water
ice
Squeeze your key limes into a small strainer set over a small bowl to catch the seeds. Add somewhere between an 1/8 of a cup to 1/4 C of key lime juice to an 8 ounce glass filled with ice. Add 2 oz. of simple syrup and then top off with water till glass is about 2/3 full. Mix and taste and adjust lime juice and syrup till you reach tart/sweetness you desire.
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