What I Had for Dinner

I don't cook often anymore, just because I live by myself, and there's really no need to cook a full meal every night for one person. That, and most things you buy at the grocery store (boxed meals, etc.) are family size, and frankly, I have no desire to eat Hamburger Helper five nights in a row to keep it from going bad. I know I could freeze it, but I don't have a lot of time right now, so it's mostly Healthy Choice.
However, about three nights a week I am graced by the presence of my Mimi, who makes me cook for her (she lives alone, too, and is in the same boat).
For about a week I've been absolutely CRAVING soup beans. Call it the Harold Nichols in me, I have wanted them so darn bad! So my beautiful Chattanooga Grandmother heard my cry and answered; I found a surprise quart of soup beans in my refrigerator after she left following a short visit this weekend. :) Yay!
Of course, cornbread was in order (Mimi swears mine is the best she's ever eaten). This photo is pre-baking.



And after baking/cutting. It was pretty much perfect. (Don't worry, the recipe will be at the end of the blog!)



Yay, dinner!! It was insanely good.



Dessert consisted of the following:



Very pretty South Carolina peaches that Mimi got on the side of the road. And then we added some cooked blueberries and whipped cream. I ate until my mouth started breaking out, and then some. I like to live dangerously.



So darn good.

Okay, now for the recipe I promised.

Corn Bread
(This is from my summer at LHF in Des Moines, and is the one we used at the 1850 site)

2c. Indian Meal (Corn Meal) 1c. flour
1 egg 1tsp. + baking powder
1 tsp. salt 1c. hot water
butter the size of an egg enough milk to make batter
sugar to taste

Mix meal, butter, and hot water first, then add the rest. Bake at 400 for about 30 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. This won't get very brown on top, but you can remedy that by letting it bake almost done, taking it out and buttering the top, and finishing the bake on broil.

I warned you.

I did. Honestly. A long time ago, I made that statement that I am the worst blogger EVER. And the fact that I have been absent for 3 weeks proves this. My sincerest apologies and a big post to make up for it!!
I didn't manage to upload these pictures in a cohesive order, so you're going to have to deal. :) But we still love each other, right? These are a little bit of what's been going on in my life in the last three weeks.

So, the summer of MAKING has gone almost halfway by and I haven't made very much. :( However, I now have a solution!!



I've been printing off new recipes, patterns, etc. and putting them here for easy access. Yay!

Then, there is this beautiful thing:



Which may, or may not be, a carseat/carrier blanket for a beautiful kid named Izzy.



I super love this yarn!!

I finally made the Italian burgers left over from my meatball foray.



These gorgeous puppies are dressed with sauteed onions, cream cheese, a fresh tomato, and spinach. Yum! They were so good.



I found a turtle in the yard! I named him Turtle.



I was in a wedding! This is a picture of her gorgeous cake.



I celebrated the 7 year mark for this beautiful kid here.



Most of the time, she looks like this:



I completed two summer courses, and read 12 books in two months with > 150 pages.



I made my first meringue! So beautiful. And so yummy.



That is all for the update. I promise, more book reviews coming!! And (hopefully) a finished shot of the baby blanket.

Alas and alack, what to do with leftover cake??

Remember all that cake leftover from my last post?
Well, the time came to do something with it. So, I got creative.

Ingredients
Carrot Cake
Bananas
1 box French Vanilla Pudding (Wal-Mart brand is great!)
Whipped Cream

Layer them together and you get this:



It definitely has a banana pudding thing going on, but it's not very banana-y (for lack of a better word). And the whole carrot thing is interesting. Overall, I give it a 10.
Now, will someone please come take it out of my fridge? I've eaten half of it by myself. :(

Everyone loves candy-coated balls of cake.

I found this recipe/idea at C and C Dish, and immediately just knew I had to try it. Luckily, my Faith and Imagination class is doing light supper meetings, and I volunteered desserts! Yay!

Ingredients
1 Cake Mix (and everything that goes with them, like, an egg? Maybe oil?)
1 regular tub of cream cheese icing
Vanilla candy coating (I've always called it Almond Bark, but that's not the real name)

Process
Make the cake and let it cool. Mush the cake up with the icing (I didn't use the whole tub, just enough to make it a kind of paste-y consistency). Make balls o' cake! Freeze (I did overnight). Follow candy coating directions (you should probably do this) and coat the frozen balls o' cake in candy coating and let them set up.

<--- Dipping. <--- Skewering.

So. The original was for carrot cake, which I thought was fabulous, but I'm currently obsessed with red velvet cake. I made two cakes! I only mushed half of each, though, since this gathering is relatively small. Now I have this sitting in my kitchen.



Oh, the humanity.

<--- Carrot Cake Balls

<--- Red Velvet Cake Balls

So, I had to stop coating after about half of the carrot cake. Where I was dipping, the cake was shedding (for lack of a better word) into the coating, and then it wouldn't melt right. So. Resting (and writing a paper), and later (once the Red Velvet Balls are a little firmer, since they only got refrigerated), I'm going to finish the rest. But - the ones that have been coated are firming up nicely.



And, uh, my kitchen just might be candy coated as well. :) Oops?
My camera died, so hopefully I'll have a finished product picture soon. As in, as soon as I find my charger. Which could be anywhere.

Oops.

Eventually, I am going to get the hang of regular blogging, I promise.
I've decided that this is the summer of making for Miss Amanda. Making what, I have no idea. But I've gotten way into subscribing to blogs (instead of writing in mine) and I have tons of starting points. I'm also just going to read a lot. And (hopefully) blog about it. :) We'll see.
Last Saturday I was privileged to host a dinner party for a close friend of mine, and I was so excited to try out a couple of new recipes that I found here and there.

The (Original) Menu
Florentine Mac and Cheese with Chicken Sausage Meatballs
Fresh Zucchini and Squash Salad
Tossed Caesar Salad
Crusty Italian Bread
Lemon Bundt Cake with glaze

Oh, if only things were so easy!! So, after planning the menu, three trips to various grocery stores in three different days (because I kept forgetting stuff, etc.), and working 16 hours the day before and the day of the party, the menu turned out like this:

Florentine Penne
1lb. box of pasta (original calls for cavatappi corkscrew, and alas, I couldn't find it. Penne it is!)
2 boxes chopped frozen spinach (10oz each)
3 tbls butter
2 tbls all purpose flour
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup milk (the original called for whole, I used 2%, and it was still yummy)
1 cup grated Parmesan
Salt & Pepper (to taste)
1/8 tsp nutmeg (eyeball it)
Boil a large pot of water. Cook pasta. Strain, and reserve one cup cooking liquid. Defrost spinach according to the package directions. Make sure your boxes are in a shallow bowl, there will be some run off. In a medium sauce pot over medium heat, melt butter, whisk in flour, cook 1 minute. Then, whisk in stock and milk, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Let sauce thicken for 5-6 minutes. Stir in the Parmesan cheese, and reduce heat to the lowest setting. Wring spinach completely dry in a kitchen towel, and separate as you add to the sauce. Also add the 1 cup reserved pasta cooking liquid. When pasta is done, toss in the sauce, making sure things are evenly coated.

Yummy Italian Meatballs
1 1/2 lbs. ground chicken (which, they conveniently do not sell at Wal-Mart; I ended up with 1 lb. beef and 1lb. Italian seasoned ground turkey)
Salt & Pepper (to taste)
Palmful of rosemary (original calls for fresh sprigs; the dried worked very well)
Palmful powdered garlic (original calls for fresh cloves, which I didn't have time for; this improv still works just as good)
1 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup Parmesan
1 egg
3/4 cup breadcrumbs (Sargento Italian style were fabulous)
*The original also calls for fennel seeds and crushed red pepper, but I'm not a fan of either. Just keep in mind that you can hike up the spice if your particular tastes call for it.
Preheat oven to 450.
In a large mixing bowl combine ground meat, salt, pepper, rosemary, garlic, ricotta cheese, and Parmesan cheese. Add the egg and breadcrumbs. (If it's too wet, add more breadcrumbs.) Form whichever size balls work for your particular meal (ours were 1 1/2 inches in diameter, but the original says 3-4). Drizzle meatballs with a couple of teaspoons of EVOO and roast 17-18 minutes until the juices run clear.
*This made 30 meatballs, plus about a half pound of mixed meat leftover that I put in the freezer. (Which I plan to make Italian burgers with. Yum!)

Zucchini and Squash Salad
1 zucchini, diced
1 yellow squash, diced
1 whole, ripe tomato, diced (original calls for red and yellow cherry tomatoes, which I don't like :/)
2 tbls Dijon mustard
3 tbls balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup EVOO
Salt & Pepper to taste
*this also calls for a red onion for the dressing, but alas! Allergies defy me. So no red onion.
In a medium bowl, toss together zucchini, squash, and tomatoes.
In a separate bowl, combine the Dijon and balsamic. Whisk in EVOO until the whole is completely combined. Salt and pepper to taste. Toss veggies in dressing!
*This was good, but not jaw dropping. And there was a lot left over. I'm going to oven roast the rest (since they have *ahem* marinated) and we'll see how that goes.)

Lemon Bundt Cake
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice
5 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup milk
Cream butter and sugar together in a bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in the lemon juice until well-blended. Beat in eggs, one at a time. In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the first, a little at a time and alternate with milk. Pour batter into a greased bundt pan. Bake 50-60 minutes, or until cake springs back in the touch test. Cool for 5 minutes in the pan, and then flip onto rack to cool the rest of the way.
*** This did not go as planned!! First, I didn't have sugar. Argh. Then, I followed the directions completely, and when I "flipped", my cake ended up in about six different pieces. So, we had trifles with strawberries, blueberries, and whipped cream. Heh. They were very good, though. But, I can't vouch for the way the glaze tastes because I didn't make it ('cause of the breakage, you see). The cake wasn't very lemony, so I might up the juice next time.

So, for credit: The pasta, meatballs, and salad were Rachel Ray, but I feel like I altered them enough to take a little credit. The cake came from About.com.

All in all, the night was a success. :) The boys were awestruck with my skills, and that made me feel nice. The meal was colorful, too, so it felt healthy.

Now, back to the real world. I have successfully avoided my presentation for class for an hour to type this, and alas, I must make an A.
Enjoy!

I really love chicken salad. Seriously.

And it's not lie. I have an insanely unhealthy fondness for the stuff. So much so that I've been attempting to rework my recipe so that it's a little less fattening. Originally I just omitted the mayo in favor of a light salad dressing, but last night I made what was quite possibly the best batch of the stuff EVER. So, I'm here to share the secret with you. (It's really no secret; I just threw whatever looked good into the bowl and it was AMAZING.)
4 chicken breast tenderloins, minced until in small-ish chunks (baked already, lightly sprinkled with salt, pepper, and garlic)
1.5 tablespoons of Green Goddess dressing
2 tablespoons of honey mustard (dressing or actual honey mustard)
2 tablespoons of honey
salt and pepper to taste
a handful of dried cranberries, blueberries, and cherries (available at the Wal-Mart)
a handful of glazed walnuts
1 tablespoon of sweet pickle relish
Seriously. Best stuff I've eaten in a long time. I had it on top of a bagel with cream cheese.
Mmmm. Now I'm hungry.