Kevin's 2011 Cooking Adventures

The 2011 Cooking Challenge

After reviewing last year's spending, it seems we spent a lot of $ eating out. Usually because we are tired in the evening and don't want to spend any extra time cooking. The regular restaurants we visit are inexpensive, but numerous cheap meals add up $ over time.

So this year, I'm stepping up my cooking duties to a new level.

My rules:

• The meal cannot take over 1 hours of elapsed time to prepare.
• Exception to that rule will be made for slow cooker meals that cook unattended for hours.
• No more than 6 ingredients per dish. Subject to change :-)
  
• Spices, herbs, garlic, onion  = 1 ingredient no matter how many were used.
  
• A meal = at least 1 home-made main dish. A salad, side vegetable, or dessert does not count, but we usually try to have a salad or side vegetable (rarely dessert).

My goal:

• Cook 6 real dinner meals per week. The 7th dinner meal we can eat out.
• The breakfast or lunch meal if a "sit-down" meal does not count towards the Challenge.
• If possible, each dish will be documented with a high-quality food photograph.
• Recipe and key ingredient sources will be noted.
• Sally (who is a good cook) will occasionally cook the main dish. But since she earns the vast majority of the household $ and commutes 2 hours a day, she's more than earned her right to sit back, relax, and eat what I've cooked.

March 13 - First Flower Spotted

Crocuses in the front flowerbed first noticed today.

Feb. 28 - Two Month Review and Update

After two months of my cooking adventures, here are some pertinent statistics:

1. We have spent 64% less eating out from Jan 1-Feb 28, 2011 compared to that same period in 2010.

2. We have eaten out only 8 times in the first 2 months, doing home cooking on 51 nights.

I have been doing much less food photography because I needed to take down my food studio area. We needed the space as temporary storage for the contents of 3 bedrooms - those rooms are being painted and recarpetted (while being lived in).

I plan to do some closeup food photos on the kitchen table. Closeup shots don't need much space for lighting.

Feb. 14 - Heart Shaped foods

For Valentine's Day breakfast for Sally, I made heart-shaped eggs and pancakes using a cookie cutter.

Feb. 11 - Apple Pie

I've been making apple pies often lately (this is my 4th pie of 2011). I'm trying to get the recipe refined to my satisfaction. I combined aspects of what I liked from various online recipes.

It's a very simple recipe that makes a somewhat tart apple pie - just the way Sally and I like it. This doesn't taste like a sweet pastry, but a tangy blast o' apple!

Apple Pie

Ingredients:
2 prepared pie crusts (Pillsbury is good)
7 cups of Granny Smith apple slices (about 8 apples, peel the skin, make the slices BIG)
1-1/2 Teaspoon of Penzeys Apple Pie Spice
1 Tablespoon of lemon juice
1/3 cup of white sugar

Steps:
Combine the raw apple slices, spices, sugar, and lemon juice in a bowl.
Line a glass pie pan with a crust to be the bottom crust.
Put the mixture into the pie crust.
Cover with top crust. It should bulge way up like a huge mountain.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 425 degrees F for 50 minutes on the top rack.

Comments:
The goal is to have the filling to wind up with some nice texture, not mushy. Do not cook the apple slices beforehand in any way. The apple slices should be as big as possible, maybe 8 per apple.

If the pie is too tart for you, add more sugar next time.

The Penzeys Apple Pie Spice mixture is a nice blend made from cinnamon, cloves, mace, and nutmeg.

 

 

Feb. 10 - Pakistani Beef Curry

My first ever meat dish in the slow cooker. It was delicious. Tender and flavorful - the ground fennel gave it a rich tangy taste. I bought a little black salt for this recipe. Never heard of it before. On page 121 of The Indian Slow Cooker.

Feb. 9 - Corn with Mustard Seeds

From a recipe in 5 spices, 50 dishes.

Feb. 6 - Goan Black-eyed Peas

I made this dish in the crockpot from a recipe in The Indian Slow Cooker. Made with tomatoes, onion, ginger, garlic, serrano peppers, coriander, salt, tumeric, cumin, brown sugar, coconut milk, and fresh cilantro. Fantastic, I will make this again.

Feb. 4 - Indian Salad

I made Crunchy Cucumber Salad with Crushed Peanuts from 5 spices, 50 dishes.

It is made from diced cukes, a minced serrano chili pepper, lemon juice, a dash of sugar, salt and cayenne pepper, with an added tadka of canola oil and black mustard seeds. I tried it with both roasted peanuts and raw peanuts. It was more flavorful with the roasted peanuts.

Tangy and delicious! A big success.

Jan. 29 - Soup by Sally

 

Sally made some truly delicious vegetable soup tonight. I made my best soup photo yet too.

All around satisfaction...

Jan. 24 - First attempt - Crock Pot for Indian Food

 

Recipe from The Indian Slow Cooker, this is "Simplest of Simple Yellow Lentils".

Seemed to work OK, still have to work with adjusting the proportions a bit. The book has recipes for a 5 quart cooker, and this is a 2-1/2 quart cooker (I measured it). Simply halving the recipe fills the cooker vessel too high.  I had to dip some liquid out before cooking.

Served with fish and some steamed veggies.

Jan. 22 - Food Shopping at an Indian Grocery

I brought these groceries home today. I'm looking forward to trying them next week in recipes designed for a slow cooker, as described in this book.

Jan. 21 - Homemade Pasta with simple sauce

Used a different photo setup here. Experimenting with the Panasonic LX3 with off camera flash.

Jan. 20 - Curry Sauce with Meatballs & Macaroni

Jan. 20 - Banana Muffins

Some over-ripe bananas were catching Sally's eye (in a negative way) so I made some muffins to solve the problem!

Jan. 19 - Pasta with Tomatoes, Garlic, & Hot Pepper by Kevin

Using a recipe from this book (p. 83), the sauce was made with garlic, crushed red pepper, and chicken stock added to a can of crushed tomatoes. I made my homemade pasta again.

Best friends

Not a cooking photo, but a nice recent photo of Maddie and Sally. Panasonic LX3.

Jan. 18 - Cabbage Stirfry by Kevin

Made "a simple cabbage stir-fry" from my new Indian cookbook.

Mustard seeds, garlic, turmeric, cayenne pepper give it a nice flavor. I watched it carefully and stopped cooking when the cabbage was still slightly crunchy. Took only about 10 minutes and was very good.

Jan. 15 - Butternut Squash Soup by Sally

Jan. 14 - Side Dishes

 

A simple romaine salad with dressing - mainly I liked my photo. 

 I made a potato side dish too. Just cooked parboiled leftover potatos with cumin, coriander, and sliced Serrano chilis.

Jan. 11 - Sally's Beef Stew

Sally made this nice beef stew tonight. Look at the big chunks of carrots.

Jan. 5 - Sally's Pork Chops

Sally made pork chops with a side dish of chickpeas with assorted vegetables stirred in. The pork chops were coated with Arizona Dreaming seasoning (see Jan. 3) . It was accompanied by chickpeas, tomatos, and brussels sprouts combined with cumin, cardamon, garlic, and sweet curry powder. Hot and spicy! Photo by Kevin with Sally's assist.

Jan. 4 - Standard Asian Stir Fry

Using my standard Asian stir fry formula, I added a few veggies to some quinoa. Leftover brussels sprouts from last night, some pea pods purchased today, and a few onions and sweet peppers made a colorful dish. Some pre-cooked jalapeno turkey meatballs (from Costco) were added as protein.

I erred in putting in too much Lan Chi Chili Paste with Garlic which made it too spicy. I tasted it as I was making it, but obviously wasn't recognizing the heat.

The 3 ingredients of my stir fry sauce are below. Do 3 tablespoons soy sauce to 2 tablespoons of oyster sauce. Add no more than 1/2 teaspoon of the chili garlic paste. It's easy to overdo it if you are only preparing a few veggies in the stir fry pot.

 

Jan. 3 - Pasta

 

Tonight I improvised a pasta dish. Chicken was grilled in a frying pan with onions, garlic and some of a Penzeys spice mixture, called Arizona Dreaming, which contains ancho peppers, chipotle, paprika, onion, garlic, cocoa, lemon peel, jalapeno, essentially a mild chili flavoring mixture.

In a big pot, I cooked onions and garlic in olive oil. I added plain Prego sauce to the pot, then the chicken. Some brussels sprouts were steamed separately and added. Threw in a few cut-up green olives and fresh ground pepper and the sauce was ready. I cooked some pasta twists which were ready just as Sally arrived home from work. It was a long drive on a winter's night and she was glad to have some nice warm food.

Photo: Nikon D300 with 55mm manual focus micro lens, bounce flash off the ceiling. Simple and adequate, just like the meal. More style will have to wait for another day!