'Tater Chips

I have a confession to make.  I had never made real potato chips.  I usually made too-thick baked potato slices.  Blech.  I slice them too thick, oil them too much, and cook them at too low of a temperature.  So I stopped making them. 

The other day, I felt like making John some yummy snacks, and I know how much he loves good potato chips.  We had potatoes, so I figured, why not?

First, I sliced the potatoes in half so I had a manageable pieces of food to handle with the mandolin. 

Then, I sliced them.  Really thin.  In the past, I have had a problem with the mandolin.  I end up hurting my hand because it is not slicing easily.  This time, I checked the thickness thing and realized I had it backwards.  In other words, I was making it thicker when I wanted it to be thinner.  DUHHHH!  So this time, it was EASY.  The slices were really thin.  

The next decision to be made?  What to fry them in.  I settled on duck fat.  We had purchased it a few weeks ago and hadn't used it yet. 

When the fat was all liquidey and hot, I placed the potato slices in a few at a time, making sure not to overcrowd them.

When the edges started to buckle, I flipped them carefully.  I say carefully because I burned my finger on the first one.  Ouch. 

Eventually, they all browned up and were ready.  I salted them as they were removed from the pan. 

John ate them in five minutes flat.  I think that would make it a success, don't you?

This recipe was also posted on Two For Tuesday at A Moderate Life

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Amazing, Incredible Soup. And Cornbread.

As the title suggests, dinner wassssssss AMAZING.  INCREDIBLE soup.  AND cornbread.  WOW!

I started with this cornbread recipe.  I followed the recipe exactly, for maybe the first time ever.  

I melted down a stick of buttah. 

 

While it melted, I mixed some milk, white vinegar, and eggs together. 

 

In a separate bowl I mixed cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt, and OH MY GOODNESS I FORGOT  THE BAKING SODA!!  That's probably why the consistency was off.  Oh, silly me. 
 

 When the butter was done, it was mixed into the liquid mix (while stirring so the eggs didn't cook!)
 

and then everything was mixed together.
 

MMMmmmmmmm.....

Do you have any idea how hard it is too take a picture of yourself with a SLR while licking a whisk?  Try it sometime.  

Anyway, I spread it all out into the pan (Yes, I used the butter wrapper method to grease it) and John baked it @ 375 for a while.  

I didn't manage to snap a photo before it was eaten.  Oops.

 

The soup was based on this recipe, but I had to make some changes.  

First I chopped up onions and garlic

 and threw them in the pan I had melted the butter in. 

Then I chopped up a sweet potato,

and that went in too.

 

After 5 minutes I added about 10 frozen chicken broth cubes, a can of tomato sauce, 1/2 a can of water, lots of black beans, salt, oregano, aaaaand

Cumin.

Confession:  I had never before used cumin.  

It was so good!  What a great spice!  It really deepened the flavor of the dish.  I guess venturing away from garlic, oregano, parsley, and basil can be enlightening.  

 

I cooked it all partially uncovered until the liquid was reduced.  

 

Ta-da!!!

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New Toy #2 and Meatloaf/Potatoes

Have you been dying to hear about my other new toy?  I know, I know, you must have been on the edge of your seat waiting for this post!

I GOT A CAMERA!!!!!

My parent's gave us one for Christmas.  They knew we had been wanting one for wedding/honeymoon/future use and were saving up for it.  So..... THEY GAVE US ONE!

Of course, until then, I need to practice by photographing food.  Of course.

Right......

My mom's meatloaf was always a favorite of mine.  As an adult, I find that it's just the recipe on the back of the Lipton Soup Secrets Onion Soup Mix.  Since the box came with 2 packets of "spices," I made the potato recipe on the back, too!

POTATOES:

Clean 4 potatoes.

(How great is this picture!  Now, if you are a photographer, you will probably not be impressed.  HOWEVER, if you have seen ANY of the past pictures I have taken with older cameras, you will notice how much better all the photos in this post are.  Be impressed.  Please.  For me.)

Cut 4 potoates.  Try your hand at different photography settings on new camera.

Make sure you cut them into even sized chunks so they cook at the same time.

Mix the potatoes with a little oil (I used grapeseed oil) and the packet of onion mix.

Spread it out on the baking sheet and bake it at 425 for about 30-40 minutes.  Make sure to stir it occasionally.

ENJOY!

MEATLOAF:

 

I like to use a mix of ground beef, pork, and veal.  Toss it into a bowl and follow the directions on the back of the box of soup mix.

Shape it into a loaf.

Or a brain.  Doesn't it look like a brain?!

 

Bake it for an hour at 350.

Slice and enjoy with potatoes! Or whatever. 

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Just one of those days....

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things.  On Monday and Tuesday life just overwhelmed me.  Correction.  Since last week life had been overwhelming me.  Unfortunately, this has been one of the things that has fallen by the wayside.  LUCKILY, today I didn't go to work until 3 and was able to catch up on life, leaving me free to do things I enjoy, like this!

Tuesday breakfast was a tropical smoothie featuring coconut, banana, pineapple, flax seeds, soy milk, and beet greens (not pictured)

I was so busy preparing for dinner during lunch that I only managed to grab a snack to eat!

 The bread is leftover from John's Awesome Monday Dinner (I'm still on him to post... it'll be here soon!).  The top one is almond butter and apple butter.  The bottom one is almond butter and pineapple preserves.  It was small and rushed, but delish!

At lunch, THIS is what I was busy doing!

 

  

Purple Cauliflower!

 

Remember when I made that Beet, Potato, and Onion roasted thing??  And then I roasted Broccoli?  Welllll instead of broccoli I roasted the purple cauliflower and added it into the other recipe.  WOW!!! So delish and filling. 

Of course, after dinner I was hungry for a snack, so I whipped out THESE little guys!

They were being sampled at the grocery store, and after examining the ingredients, I had to get them.  This company seems awesome.  Check it out.  Yogi Products.  I love the crisps!  I haven't tried my cherry almond cereal yet, but it seems like it's going to be great.  It was a wonderful way to end the day!

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Busy, Busy Busy!

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while!  I have been so busy with work, other work, family stuff, and wedding stuff that I haven't had a spare moment to breathe!  I went cooking craaaaazy on Friday, but other than that, I haven't been cooking much.  In fact, John was sweet enough to surprise me with a wonderful dinner last night, AND he agreed to write a guest post about it!  Stay Tuned!

Friday.

On Friday I didn't have to be at work until 5, so I dedicated the day to cooking.  I started it off with an apple cinnamon smoothie.

I added in oats to give it more depth, and let me tell YOU, that was an awesome addition.  I didn't cook the oats or anything, just threw them in with the soy milk, flax seeds, apple butter, apple and cinnamon. 

Yeah, it is that good.  

After breakfast I got working on almond milk.  Normally when I make it, it is waaaay too grainy for me.  Some google-ing led to me believe that I needed to skin the almonds first, blanching them.  I had already been soaking the almonds and the skin was kind of wrinkly, so I figured, why bother putting them in boiling water when they are already wrinkly?  I just peeled them like that. 

THREE HOURS LATER:

Yeah, it took three hours.  AND I had red, sore thumbs for two days.  I should have just blanched them.  In any event, I blended them,

added water to the blender,

and strained it into creamy (slightly less gritty) almond milk.

 Was it worth it? No.  Not at all.  Was it delish?  YES!

While the almonds were soaking and I was peeling, I was also prepping dinner.  We had purchased a chicken on sale the other day, and I was ready to make it.  Normally I roast it in a roasting pan, and it is good, BUT Gayle at the Grocery Cart Challenge opened my eyes to using my much-loved slow cooker. 

I took out the gizzards, and added LOTS of lemon, some whole garlic pieces, and kosher salt, and parsley.

No water or anything!  I just cooks itself over the day and ends up like this:

Swimming in it's own juices!  It was so moist, and easier to cut since I wasn't concerned about scratching my non-stick roasting pan.  We just ate the legs and theighs, and I saved the breasts for another meal and the rest for chicken broth.  Added bonus?  I don't have to dirty a pan AND a slow cooker to make broth or mess with switching stuff from one to the other.  Once you make the chicken, the broth ingredients are already in there!

We also had roasted potatoes as a side. 

On Saturday we went to this restaurant called Oceanos to celebrate a birthday.  I had the MOST AMAZING salmon dish ever.  I tried to take a picture, but the lighting was so bad this is all I could get.

Just believe me when I say it was devine.

They also had lemon wraped in these cute little things that I had to take home and photograph.

AWWWwwwwWwww!

The last thing I need to share was a farmers market purchase... COLORFUL CAULIS!

How cool!

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