Whole 30 Day 2: creamy lemon garlic dressing

I didn't watch the President's farewell address tonight because I can't bear the idea of the Obamas leaving the White House. Instead I went to a friend's happy hour birthday party (and drank nothing tyvm), battled the wind and rain, and watched this when I got home:

Sigh.

At least my food was delicious.

Lunch was another salad with surprise Brussels sprouts. I don't know why I called them surprise. I was surprised when I found them I guess? Whatever the case, they were super tasty.

om nom nom

For dinner, Colby cooked salmon and we ate it with an arugula salad with eggs and tomatoes. It was supposed to have avocado, but the ones that we got were still super crunchy.  No bueno, but the salad was AMAZING because of the dressing.

creamy lemon garlic dressing

1/2 c two minute mayonnaise 

juice from 1-2 lemons (to taste)

2-3 cloves garlic, crushed

salt

Combine everything and let it steep. 

It is so so so delicious. Colby used walnut oil to make the mayo since olive oil is too strongly flavored. The mayo itself is really good and definitely something we'll be using as a base for other dressings and salads. I definitely want to make this jalapeño slaw next week and now I'm envisioning pairing macadamia nut encrusted white fish to make tortilla-less fish tacos. Hmmm..

microwaved eggs

I love my microwave.  Yes, I know it's totally uncool to declare my love for a machine that makes atrocities like Easy Mac possible, but I'm going to hazard a guess that most people who declare war against microwaves don't have kids.  At least, they don't have infants and can usually eat breakfast before 5:30 PM.

I've read about microwaving eggs for awhile now, but I haven't tried it until tonight.  I really should have done it earlier.  Ever since Ramona's been born, I've basically let myself eat whatever it was that I wanted.  This has actually been a good thing because my milk supply is amazing and the ratio of fats and carbs and protein in my milk has been sufficient to grow a very happy baby who is in the 95th percentile in both height and weight.

Mushroom omelet from the hospital about 20 hours before Ramona was born. I GUARANTEE this egg was microwaved.

This has not, however, been so great for my waistline.  Well, I guess it hasn't been that bad either, I'm down 5 lbs, which sounds wonderful, but isn't when you consider that I'm about the same size as I was before so there's some not-so-great redistribution going on.  Suffice it to say, I should probably start monitoring what I'm eating again and my current plan is to get back to what I was doing for the gestational diabetes and monitor my carb-to-protein intake.  I used to eat a ton of eggs while I was pregnant, but now it's a big process to figure out how to get out a pan, cook an egg, and then eat it all while holding a baby.

Enter the microwave.

2 eggs
salt, pepper, whatever else you put in your eggs
oil

Grease a microwave-safe bowl with a little bit of oil.  Whisk together the two eggs plus whatever seasoning you're going to put in.  Microwave on high for ~45 seconds.  Remove the bowl and stir.  See if there are still wet bits.  If so, microwave for 30 second increments until everything is cooked.

So how do these microwaved eggs taste?  Like eggs.  Their texture leaves a bit to be desired, but they're protein and it's nothing that a little bit of sriracha can't fix.

Fast and nutritious dinners for busy people

I've been busy.  Like SUPER busy.  The kind of soul crushing busy that can only be tackled with copious amounts of caffeine and convenience foods.  Fortunately, my sorts of convenience foods are ones that I've either made myself previously or that can be quickly thrown together for a nutritious and tasty dinner.  Below are some of my go-to meals that I've eaten recently that are also relatively inexpensive.

Breakfast for dinner

Ottmer's Farm Eggs, Richardson Farms pan sausage

Nothing is faster than scrambled eggs.  Add in some toast and a handful of vegetables and you've got yourself a super quick and tasty meal.   Here is one of my favorites.
sauteed mushrooms and spinach: add some oil to a nonstick pan and heat.  Add in ~8 sliced button mushrooms with a pinch of salt and pepper and cook until the mushrooms are nice and brown.  Add in a handful of spinach (say half a bunch) and stir until wilted.  Remove from the pan to a plate.  Add in 4 beaten eggs with a pinch of salt and pepper and cook halfway.  Add in the spinach and mushrooms and cook the rest of the way.

If this sounds at all familiar, it's because I eat a lot of eggs.  They're filled with protein, inexpensive compared to fresh meat, and quick to cook.

Dinner Salads

Seafood Salad from Zed's

One of my favorite take out meals in Austin is the steak salad from Central Market.  It has steak (duh!), hard boiled eggs, bleu cheese, roasted tomatoes, and some lettuce.  It's filling and delicious and a good way to get a balance of protein, carbs, and fat.  The Caesar salad is also another classic dinner salad.  Add in some protein in the form of an omega-3 fatty acid-rich fish and you have a really healthy and satisfying meal.  Dinner salads are also good go-to meals because you can use leftovers from previous dinners to add to the salad.  My new favorite is a homemade taco salad.
Toss together some amount of leftover taco meat (I think I had like 1/3 lb the last time I made this) with a handful of shredded cheese, diced tomatoes, a dark green lettuce (not iceberg!), and anything else you have on hand (beans make a nice addition).  Serve with some crushed tortilla chips for added crunch and use salsa for the salad dressing because there is already fat there from the taco meat that you made... speaking of which...


Tacos

chili and garlic porkbelly

I make a lot of breakfast tacos, which consist of egg, cheese, some protein (so meat or beans), salsa, and a tortilla.  Wrap it up in a tortilla and cook it in a pan to seal it.  Austin in famous for breakfast tacos, but usually they're not sealed.  This was not, however, my idea.  This was stolen from my favorite late night food stop in college, Menna's Joint. Granted, most of their menu is terribly unhealthy, but if you make these yourself, you can control the ingredients and sneak in some vegetables to balance out the carbs.  Lately, I've been picking up 20 packs of tortillas to make tacos for dinner as well. 

I admit to using a pre-made taco seasoning blend.  It's cheaper than buying all of the spices individually and I happen to really like one particular brand.  In lieu of this, you can use this taco seasoning blend, which is really quite delicious.  Make up a large batch and keep it on hand. 
1 lb ground beef (ground turkey or pork also work well)
1T+ taco seasoning (or to taste)
1/2 medium onion, diced
1-2 jalapeños, de-seeded and diced.
2 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
1-2 chipotle peppers, diced (optional)
salt+pepper, to taste

Add in ground meat to a pan and cook until thoroughly browned.  Remove the meat from the pan, leaving the drippings and cook the onions and peppers with a pinch of salt until the onions are translucent and soft (~5 minutes or so).  Add in the garlic and stir until fragrant.  Add the meat back in, as well as the taco seasoning and chipotle peppers, if using.  Let the flavors mingle over low heat for at least 10-15 minutes (more if you can stand it).  Serve with tomatoes, lettuce, beans, salsa, etc. with the tortillas.

Last night I made this recipe from the Kitchen Wench.  I happened to have pork belly on hand, but the recipe is, in principle, super adaptable and should be able to be made with just about any meat or even (gasp) tofu.  I served these with some cabbage and rice inside a tortilla.  Super yummy and super easy.  While gochujang is not the easiest to find ingredient (I got mine from a Korean supermarket), you could likely sub in things like sriracha which can definitely be purchased at HEB, or any other hot, garlicky chile paste.

Pasta toss, frittata, and eggs

The first official philanthropic effort from the Austin Food Blogger Association is to help the Central Austin Food Bank SNAP program create nutritious and inexpensive meals that can be made on the cheap. If you would like to know more about the CAFB or would like to donate please visit these sites:

http://www.austinfoodbank.org/

http://hungerisunacceptable.com

I started to learn a lot more about nutrition after I found out I'm glucose intolerant.  Sure, I knew that we were supposed to eat mostly plants, but that's not always fun and it was easy for me to ignore.  One thing that I've mostly given up since then is pasta.  When I do have pasta, though, I make it count.  No more huge portions of watery tasteless pasta with jarred tomato sauce.  We've made the switch to whole wheat pasta and have never looked back (well, maybe once or twice).

One of my favorite ways to eat whole wheat pasta is to stirfry it in a pan with vegetables.  It gives leftovers some life and allows the noodles to be infused with flavor while helping to get rid of any bitter whole wheat flavors.  It also makes for a more nutritious meal because I can sneak in some extra flora.

1 lb whole wheat pasta ($1.50)
4 T olive oil (~$.60)
1/2 medium onion, diced (~$0.50)
1 medium carrot, peeled and diced (~$0.20)
4-5 medium-sized cloves of garlic, minced (~$0.15)

1 lb vine tomatoes, cut up ($1.70)
1 bunch spinach, thoroughly rinsed and roughly chopped ($1.98/bunch)
4 oz shredded mozzarella ($0.93)
salt+pepper

1. Boil the pasta in salted water until al dente, which varies on the type of pasta used.  Angel hair pasta cooks rather quickly, where as things like penne pasta take longer.  I prefer angel hair in dishes like these.

2. In a pan, heat up the olive oil over medium heat.  Add in the carrots and onion and ~1 t salt and cook until translucent (~5-10 minutes).

3. Add in the garlic and stir until fragrant (~30s - 1 minute).

4. Add in the tomatoes and the pasta and stir until the tomatoes are heated through. (2-3 minutes or so).

5. Add in the spinach and stir until it's all wilted (~1 minute).

6. Stir in the mozzarella cheese until it's melted. (~1 minute).

7. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

This should make ~8 servings or so and costs $7.56 to make, which is $0.95 a serving.  These prices were based on prices I found at my local HEB.  Things like the olive oil and the garlic were prorated to what that portion would cost, though the price of salt and pepper were omitted.   A half pound of pasta is more than enough to feed a family of four with leftovers.  These leftovers can then be turned into a quick frittata for the next day's meal.

Remaining pasta+veggie leftovers
4 eggs, beaten  ($0.50)
4 oz shredded mozzarella ($0.93)
1 tsp olive oil  ($0.05)
~1 tsp salt+pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

2. Oil a small casserole or oven-safe vessel.  A pie plate would work really well.

3. Beat the eggs, salt, and pepper.

4. Pour over the pasta in the oiled dish and sprinkle with the mozzarella.

5. Bake for ~20 minutes, or until the eggs are set all the way through.  You'll be able to tell when this happens because the center won't jiggle if you shake the dish.  Either that or see if you can cleanly put a knife in it.

This dish can easily be expanded by adding more eggs and either one of these dishes work well because the ingredients are so interchangeable.  The additional cost of this dish is $1.48.  Since we used leftovers, this dish ends up costing $0.25 per serving.  I'm claiming that the addition of the eggs and mozzarella bulk up the leftovers to 6 servings.  Both meals end up totaling $9.04, which ends up being $0.90 per serving.

So how does the pasta dish stack up nutritionally?  The pasta has the following nutritional values:

321 calories

10.2 g fat

9.13 mg cholesterol

505 mg sodium

48.4 g carbohydrate

9.16 g fiber

13.9 g protein

This isn't the whole story, though. Here are a selected set of vitamins/nutrients:

17.5% RDA iron 

19.0% RDA calcium

117% RDA vitamin A

34.4% RDA vitamin C

The same can be calculated for the fritatta by multiplying each of the above items by 2/3 and adding in the following values from the eggs, olive oil, and mozzarella:

104 calories

7.07 g fat

153 mg cholesterol

164 mg sodium

0.78 g carbohydrate

8.78 g protein

3.83% RDA iron 

5.50% RDA calcium

0.50% RDA vitamin A

These two dishes could feasibly provide a healthy dinner for two nights and two lunches.  In addition, there will still be leftover items like eggs.  Eggs are nutritious and filled with protein.  They can also be cooked in the microwave, which makes them a good after school snack option for a hungry middle schooler.  Here's how to proceed:

1 egg ($0.13)

smear of olive oil ($0.01)

1. smear a tiny bit of olive oil in a microwave safe bowl

2. beat eggs in the bowl

3. microwave for ~30 s, stir.

4. microwave again for ~10 s at a time and check for doneness.

You can also add in things like cheese, vegetables, herbs, spices.

Frittata alla putanesca

SO.  Colby listened to me.  He's pretty much the best gift giver ever when he listens.  The best part about getting multiple gifts that I already know about is that I get a "new" gift every day.  The other day, I got to crack open Bitchin' Kitchen and it's hilarious and filled with some pretty awesome looking recipes.  Nadia G's recipes sound incredibly straight  forward and reading through it made me crave frittata and pasta alla putanesca. The only logical thing was to combine the two.

Frittata alla putanesca (or, you know, fritatta the way a whore would make it)
1/2 lb angel hair pasta, boiled in salted water
1/4 c pesto
8 eggs
6 or so anchovy filets packed in oil, smushed into a paste
1 T+1 t anchovy oil
 1 c shredded mozzarella cheese
3 cloves garlic, finely minced or crushed
1 c cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1 T capers (if packed in salt, rinse them)12 kalamata olives, pitted and roughly chopped

Magic mushrooms optional

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease a vessel (like a pie plate or an oven safe pan) with 1 t anchovy oil.  Toss cooked pasta with 1 T anchovy oil and pesto.  Set aside.  In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until sort of foamy.  Whisk in the anchovy paste.  Fold in cheese, tomatoes, garlic, capers, and olives.  Toss in the pasta and fold to coat all the noodles and evenly-ish distribute the goodies.   Pour everything into the pie plate and bake for ~35ish minutes or until the frittata no longer wobbles in the middle.

Fresh from the oven noms

p.s. check out my recap of our first week of community supported home cooking and Randi's post about cooking really delicious, healthy and cost effective meals!

Mornay After Sauce

I think I made Colby sick with breakfast. That was definitely not the intention. :(

A couple nights ago we went to a wine and cheese party thrown on our behalf by our good friends Chris+Elizabeth in celebration of the fact that we got married. My officemates and most of my incoming class came and it was a really good time. This morning was a little rough and I didn't get up until 1 (oops!), but I checked the interwebs (because that's what you do when you have an internet addiction) and found that The Delicious Life is sort of posting again. The current featured post was of eggs florentine and I realized that I had all the materials on hand for a surprise breakfast for Colby.

Eggs Florentine ala the delicious by way of my kitschn
extra virgin olive oil
1/2 a small onion, diced because you're not that into onions
3 cloves of garlic, minced because you're actually really into garlic
3 eggs because you've lost patience with poaching
whatever amount of fresh spinach you have on hand
Mornay sauce
same thing with whatever what cheese you have
2 tbs butter
1 tsp salt
1 c milk

Fill a shallow, but deep enough saucepan with water + 2 tbs vinegar and bring to a simmer. Poach 3 eggs (which took about 5 min each). Saute onions and garlic in olive oil with a pinch of salt until translucent. Add in fresh spinach until sufficiently wilted. In a separate saucepan make the mornay sauce: melt 2 tbs butter and then add flour, stirring well to combine along with 1 tsp salt. Add in 1 c milk and stir for awhile over medium-ish heat until thickened. Once thickened, add in some amount of white cheese (I used mozzarella and swiss). Plate with spinach+onion+garlic on bottom, with poached egg (or two) atop covered in the sauce.

It turned out really well and I was tickled pink that I could make this a) as a "pantry" dish and b) as something to clean out my fridge. I was less tickled when Colby ran off to the bathroom in pain. I think that this might have stemmed from the continued use of the raw milk. I figured that since I was cooking the milk, that the bacteria would be less... invasive, but I guess I was wrong. I've learned my raw milk lesson and never again will I buy it.

NaBloPoMo Day Eight: A Recipe that Popeye Would Love

I love watching cooking shows, finding a recipe I love, and then realizing that I have almost all of the ingredients sitting in my pantry/refrigerator. This was most definitely the case a few nights ago when the spinach salad episode was on Good Eats. I made it last night it an attempt to a) not feel hungry and b) make peace with pork. It didn't work so well, but at least I tried (Part b, that is. The salad was really tasty if I ignored the porkiness.)

AB's Spinach Salad, explained:

8 strips of bacon
3 tbs bacon drippings
3 tbs red wine vinegar
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp sugar
2 eggs, hard boiled and quartered or eighthed
1 bag spinach (8-10 oz)
handful of mushrooms, sliced
s+p to taste

Set the oven to 400. Take a baking sheet and place a cooling rack over top. Make sure that the cooling rack fits into the baking sheet. Arrange the bacon atop the cooling rack and bake until crispy. This can take anywhere from 15-20 minutes depending on your oven and your patience with making sure that every last bit of porky bacteria is obliterated. After it's done crumble the bacon and take three tbs of the bacon drippings from the pan and put in a metal working bowl that you've suspended over a pot of boiling water in a pseudo double boiler fashion. Whisk in the red wine vinegar, mustard, and sugar and add s+p to taste. Fold in the spinach, allowing it to wilt, slightly and then add in the eggs, mushrooms and ta da! you have the world's least healthy salad.

I think next time I'm going to substitute the red wine vinegar with apple cider vinegar and drastically reduce the bacon content. In fact, next time I can see this being done with turkey bacon so I don't feel weird and icky after.

NaBloPoMo Day Two: SHC, Spontaneous Human Cookery

The majority of my spontaneous cooking happens on Sundays or late at night when my avoidance behaviors have taken over (miraculously, my homework always seems to get done). This Sunday was no different and began with Jiffy Mix Blueberry muffins, which was chosen more for nostalgia than convenience. Colby grew up one town away from Chelsea, MI which is where Jiffy Mix is located, so I think when we go home, we're going to stop at the factory. The second part of breakfast was my attempt to recreate Heidi Swanson's egg cups. My take was slightly different

For two egg cups

2 eggs
2 small (taco) tortillas
2 tbs black beans
1/2 tbs butter, divided into quarters
cheese
taco seasoning
s+p, red pepper flakes

Preheat oven to 350. Grease two cups of a muffin tin. Make an incision into each tortilla from the edge to the middle and fold it inwards to make a cone. Mix the beans with an appropriately small amount of taco seasoning and spoon in 1 tbs to each tortilla cone. Put one "quarter" of butter atop the beans and season with s+p (I used garlic salt). Carefully crack in one egg to each cup, so as to not break the yolk. Put another quarter of butter atop each and then season with s+p, red pepper flakes and put a small bit of cheese atop. Bake in an oven for 15-19 minutes, depending on your oven and what type of muffin tins you use.

The eggs were pretty good. The tops of the tortilla come out crispy and are wonderful for dipping into a slightly runny yolk.

Lego my dinner party!

Okay folks, here's the lego party post. Unfortunately, there weren't really any pictures, but I'll do my best to describe.

So the whole thing that started this party was this post that I found on Slashfood and then later on Tastespotting. It was apparently taken from the Betty Crocker website, but it seemed like a fun idea. Shortly thereafter, I was alerted to the existence of Lego gummy candy from Kellog's. Seeing that I'm not actually three, I procured a box. Also, at some random trip to the mall (the one where Colby and Kyle went on a mandate to see the batman movie) I found these hard tablet powder candy legos that you can actually build with! Super cute.


We (Colby, Kyle, and I) used box mixes to make the cake (chocolate, yellow, and marbled) and then used white frosting + food coloring from Hill Country Fare. The interesting thing about Hill Country Fare is that it's one of a few different house brands for HEB, a largely Texan grocery store; given that Texas is beef country, I shouldn't have been surprised when I found out that the main fat ingredient was lard. Oh well. I didn't have any vegetarians at the party. We made the cakes the night before and they came out okay. It doesn't help that I suck at frosting cakes.

To continue on with the lego theme, I made lasagna (which is sort of brick-shaped!) which was topped with homemade croutons that were cylindrical. The lasagna is actually super simple and mostly stolen from the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (of which I have mixed feelings):

15 oz ricotta
1.25 c grated parm
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 cup fresh basil, minced
1 egg, lightly beaten
12 no boil lasagna noodles (I used HEB brand)
16 oz shredded mozzarella cheese
3ish c sauce

I made the sauce first which consisted of:
1 lb ground beef
s+p
1/4 c minced onions
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbs olive oil
1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes (I used Contandina crushed tomatoes with herbs by accident)
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp dried oregano, parsley, basil

Brown/season meat w/s+p, break up into little bits. In a sauce pan add in olive oil and onions and let them soften for like five minutes (or more if you realize that you've forgotten to mince the garlic), add in the garlic and let cook for 30 seconds and then add in both cans of processed tomatoes and whatever herbs you decide. Let that simmer for 15ish minutes or so and that could be a sauce in and of itself. Add the meat (try to drain off the fat) and then let that sit with the sauce for as long as possible.

To construct the lasagna:
preheat the oven to 375. combine ricotta+s+p+egg+1 c parm+basil mix thoroughly until combined. add in like 1/4-1/2 a cup of sauce to the bottom of whatever you're using to cook in. It should be rectangular and deepish. layer on three lasagna noodles side-by-side and spread some amount of the ricotta mixture on it. Add about 1/2 c of sauce over top. cover in mozzarella and do this layering bit twice more. take the remaining three noodles and layer over top the rest of the pasta, cover with the remaining sauce and then cover in the rest of the mozzarella and 1/4 c of parm. cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes. Take it out and then uncover it and bake for an addition 25ish minutes until everything is soft and the cheese is all melty.

I found that the easiest way to spread on the ricotta mixture to the noodles was to take the dry noodle in hand and then spread the cheese on it before putting it in the pan. It caused way too much grief to try to do it the other way.

As a side, I made garlic bread the Heidi Swanson way and at the very end, put 2 little half slices of fresh mozzarella on each piece so that they would look like lego things.

Everyone loved the lasagna and people that that the cakes were clever. I'm not so sure that they tasted all that good, but that wasn't really the point with these cakes. I made a flourless chocolate cake the other night which turned out "better", but that's for a later post.

tacos + jurassic park

The scores of people milling around campus should make me feel incredibly jealous. Should being the key operative word because who could be jealous of people outside where it's warm and sunny when I'm in the physics building on a Saturday working on a group project about lithium abundances in stars. Oh wait... I suppose the *amazing* slurpee I'm currently consuming can ease the blatant jealousy. Maybe. Fun fact: apparently, the state of Michigan consumes more slurpees in the month of January than California does all year. I'm not sure if I believe that, but some hipster kid told me that on a date once in high school.

We made tacos last night. I say "we" because the only thing that freaks me out more than raw, ground meat is fire. And grease+heat == fire returns true. Colby was draining the pan of the grease and he sort of spilled some on one of the burners. Scary! Oh well. At least it wasn't like that one time I tried making elephant ears in my apartment. How many ways can you say mistake?

I tried making "Mexican rice" (good lord, that sounds vaguely racist), but it didn't turn out so well. Mostly I added salsa and corn to the water and it kind of sort of flavored it. I added half a squeeze of lime as a last ditch effort, so whatever. I'm not too heartbroken over it, though. I guess I'll try again next time, though it probably won't be in this apartment. *sniffles* Actually, no, not sniffles, this kitchen sucks, I have half a refrigerator, and it gets to be like 5777 K in my apartment when I use the oven... so screw you DTN, I'm moving to Texas!

Okay. Yeah, so tonight is curry soup because I need to clean out my pantry and use that potato before it rots. Also the chicken. Also, what does one do with leftover taco meat besides make more tacos? We already made "omelets".

Refrigerator Pie: Part Doo

I'm pretty sure that quiche is a very amazing breakfast food, even if it is 2:40 PM. I set out last night to do laundry and make a spinach-artichoke quiche, but it turns out that artichokes are a) hard to deal with and b) fucking spiny, screw that. It became a spinach+mushroom+garlic quiche. It should be noted that Julie + wilted spinach == bff returns true.

two large handfuls of flat leaf spinach destemmed and washed
2 tsp? of olive oil
2 tbs butter
1/2 thing of roughly chopped mushrooms
mozzarella
colby jack
3 big CLOVES of garlic
s/p/garlic salt

put a little bit of olive oil (like 1 tsp?) into a pan and make sure that you coat the entire bottom. put in spinach... turn turn wilt wilt. season with salt. Try not to eat all of that spinach whilst you're cooking because seriously... you <3 spinach. Add in the 2 tbs butter (this may be excessive and it was kind of like I was boiling the mushrooms in butter) and when it melts, add in the mushrooms and season with garlic salt + a bit of kosher s/p at the end. More on that later. Anywho, take out the mushrooms when they're done. Add in a bit more olive oil, put in the minced garlic and fry until they start to look light brown. add the spin+mush+garlic to a pie crust making sure it's well-mixed and there is space for cheese+royale mixture. Add in handfuls of cheese at your own discretion. Pour in the royale (2 eggs + 1 c heavy cream beaten together) making sure the mixture sinks to the bottom. Sprinkle some kosher salt over top of the pie. Into the oven at 350 for ~45 minutes.

So the quiche came out pretty okay. The garlic didn't come out exactly as I had hoped because apparently Chris' stove runs at 5778 K. Still... if you heat up the garlic slower, it should be better, not bitter. Also, this is the thing about garlic salt. I like using it with mushrooms because I feel like mushrooms pick up the flavor better with garlic salt because it's super concentrated granular garlic. Also salty. Anywho, tonight looks like a good night to try to make the poor man's alfredo sauce, since i have lots of leftover cream and Colby's back in town. Yay heart disease!

Also, the next time, I'm going to look for either a better pie crust or a crust recipe because the crust, I feel, is too sweet. Puff pastry would make this kind of excellent, but again with the heart disease.

Refrigerator Pie

So I went to DC over New Years to visit Kate, and during one of my hangover recovery periods, I watched a whole bunch of Good Eats on my computer. One of the episodes was Egg Files II - Man with a Flan and Alton made quiche, which he dubbed refrigerator pie. It was super easy. I took a store-bought pie crust (yes, I know, I'm lazy) and then put a royale mixture in it and then stuff.

1 pie crust

royale mixture:

2 eggs
1 c heavy cream
2 pinches salt

fillings

Preheat oven to 350. Beat eggs and cream and then beat in the salt. Put your fillings in, but leave open spaces for the royale mixture to go. I used mushrooms sauteed in butter and garlic salt (I ran out of garlic. :( ), broccoli that I had pre-cooked a bit, and some white cheddar cheese with herbs. It has a name. I don't really remember it, though.

Don't fill everything up to the top. Bake for ~45 minutes, or until the filling is set to the consistency of jello.

It turned out really well. I was surprised by that. I had enough stuff left over to make flan, which actually seemed rather easy to make, but I don't own ramekins and upon further reflection hate flan, so I decided against it.

Dad's Famous Eggs

Dad's Famous Eggs should probably be called Dad's Famous Egg, given that it consists of toast topped with cheese (preferably American, hey I need to pay respect to my white trash roots) and one poached egg. So I wanted to see how to poach an egg. Attempt number one didn't work.

I used the toaster as an egg timer, but when I cracked the egg in the pan, it didn't really stay together well. The white started to cook, but the top didn't, so I put a lid over it to try to "steam" the top cooked, but that didn't so much work well because the water managed to boil and the egg stuck to the bottom of the pan ever-so-slightly such that a lot of the yolk ran into the pan. I did salvage it enough to put it on my toast'n'cheese. Oh well. Maybe next time.

At least I have cheese'n'crackers...