Oh what to do with leftover rotisserie chicken and the end of a loaf of French bread? Make a sandwich! Smear some Caesar dressing on a couple slices of bread, add some spring mix salad greens and some shredded, cooked chicken breast and voila! A break from good ol’ ham and cheese or PBJ!
Normally, I am not a fan of white chocolate, but when my friend Lela brought over this sweet, holiday Chex mix a couple of Christmases ago, I found snacking bliss. The recipe makes a ton, so I usually cut it in half. If you have a big enough bowl, make up the whole lot, and you’ll have enough for yourself and to share with friends and neighbors.
White Christmas Mix
3 c. corn chex
3 c. rice chex
3 c. honey nut cheerios
2 c. small pretzels
2 c. salted peanuts
1 (12 oz) bag red and green M&Ms
1 (12 oz) bag red and green peanut M&Ms
2 (12 oz) bags white chocolate chips
Toss all ingredients except white chocolate chips together in a large bowl. In another bowl, melt white chocolate chips, stirring until smooth and it pours freely. (I nuke the chips in the microwave, stirring every thirty seconds or so, until I get the right melty-consistency.) Pour melted white chocolate over the other ingredients and stir to coat. Spread mixture on a wax paper-lined cookie sheet and let cool. When it hardens, break mixture into pieces and enjoy.
My hubby has a nasty cold. Usually, when someone is under the weather around here, I make chicken soup with rice. It’s our standard “sickie food” designed to comfort and hydrate. But, I’m pregnant and the thought of making chicken tonight filled me with the kind of dread that really shouldn’t be described in detail in a food blog.
My solution? Vegetable beef soup. Heavy on the beef.
Since we have about two pounds of London Broil left over from the night before, I decided to use that. I made up the recipe as I went along—so the measurements listed are estimated. Turned out great (in my opinion)—and if you’re comfortable enough to experiment in the kitchen, you could have a lot of fun with this.
Veggie, Beef, and Barley Soup
1 small onion, chopped
1 T. oil
6 c. beef broth (or 6 c. water plus 6 beef bouillon cubes)
1 t. salt
8 oz. cooked beef, chopped or cut into bite sized pieces
8 oz. frozen California style veggies
1 potato cut into bite sized pieces
1/2 c. dry barley
1 bay leaf
Saute onion in oil until golden, in large saucepan or soup pot. Add broth, salt, beef, bay leaf, and barley. Bring to a boil. Turn down heat, cover, and simmer thirty minutes. Add frozen veggies and potato pieces. Cover again and simmer another 10 to 15 minutes. Remove bay leaf and serve. Makes six-ish one cup servings.
I have a love/hate relationship with brownies. I’m pretty picky about how I like them. I usually don’t eat other people’s brownies. I know. Brownie snob—it’s a texture thing, sorry. My mom has a recipe for brownies that she loves and has used for years. I wanted to like it but her brownies always give me heartburn. (I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I eat four or five at a time.)
Her recipe also calls for baker’s chocolate, you know, the kind that comes in those bricks—well, I never have that on hand, so I needed a recipe that used either chocolate chips or unsweetened cocoa powder (because I always have those on hand.)
Here’s my current favorite recipe—which makes a batch of brownie goodness that isn’t too fudgy or too cakey in texture. Also, it’s quick to put together (my eight year old just made these today) and it’s easily doubled or quadrupled or…well, we’ll stop there.
Brownies
1/2 c. butter, melted
1/2 c. unsweetened cocoa
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
2 t. vanilla (I only use 1 t. because I think 2 t. is overpowering.)
1/2 c. flour
1/4 t. salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 or 9 inch square pan. In a medium bowl, combine melted butter, cocoa, sugar, and eggs. Blend with electric mixer until sugar isn’t grainy and the mixture looks like thick frosting. Mix in vanilla and salt. Stir in flour.
Optional: add a handful of chocolate chips, flaked coconut, chopped nuts, or whatever else sounds tempting, and mix into the batter.
Pour and spread batter in greased pan. Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick (or tip of a butter knife) comes out clean. Cool completely, cut into squares, or hexagons, or whatever and serve. If you like fudgier brownies, under-bake by a couple of minutes. If doubling the recipe, you may need to add up to five minutes more to baking time.
Tonight I made my first London Broil. It was a monster hunk of meat—three and half pounds. Usually I go out to a restaurant for a big hunk of beef, because I have not been successful fixing my own steaks and pot roasts and the like. But, I couldn’t pass up the chunk of meaty goodness at the grocery store. It was “price reduced for quick sale”—I bought it on the “sell by” date, and it took up space in my fridge for a day or two before I was brave enough to cook it. I had a recipe, but it didn’t give me any specifics as far as how long to cook the meat. And the recipe said to grill it. Well, seeing as it’s December and there’s a foot of snow on the ground, a backyard barbecue didn’t sound that fun.
So I did what any self respecting cook with a big slab of raw animal flesh would do. I googled. I found a great marinade recipe AND a website that tells you how to actually broil a London Broil. We like our meat on the bloody side, but I was a little leery of cooking at home—what if I didn’t get the right internal temperature? What if we contracted mad cow disease? What if I overcooked it and it came out like shoe leather?
I worried for nothing. It turned out great. And we have enough leftovers for Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches tomorrow! Hooray!
London Broil Marinade:
1/2 c. sesame oil
1/2 c. canola oil
1 c. soy sauce
2 T. molasses
1 head garlic, peeled and chopped (I used half a head)
1 (3 lb.) london broil beef (about 1 1/2 inches thick)
Place first five ingredients in a gallon size freezer bag. Diagonally score the meat (I did a diamond pattern because I was feeling fancy.) Place meat in bag of marinade and refrigerate 2 to 8 hours, turning the bag occasionally.
Remove marinated meat from bag and place on broiler pan. Broil in oven 3 to 4 inches away from heat source for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove pan from the oven and turn meat over. Return to broiler for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove pan again, turn meat over again so the scored side faces up. Broil again for another couple of minutes. (This procedure gave us medium rare doneness—so add a little more time on both sides if you like your meat less pink.) Remove from oven and let meat rest for 10 minutes before slicing. Cut into 1/4 inch thick slices and serve.
This post is more a reminder/organizational memo for myself than anything else. I was standing in my pantry the other day, frustrated that I didn’t have “anything” to fix for dinner. The feeling was idiotic and ironic, because my pantry is stuffed—overloaded—with food. Canned goods galore, syrups, condiments, spices, oils, grains, and beans. There’s chips and cookies, and baking supplies. And yet, I couldn’t think of a way to use any of it to make a meal. When a good chunk of the world goes hungry every night, my home is full of food and I don’t know what to do with it. Pathetic. Embarrassing.
I need to take stock. And then I need to get a bit creative, broaden my definition of what makes a good meal, and thank God for giving me so much.
Fortunately, later in that same day, as I was idling away some time, I found a recipe in a magazine that inspired me. (After I’d ordered pizza.) It required two cans of garbanzo beans. I don’t have canned garbanzo beans, but I had about a pound of dried ones. I think they’ve been in the pantry for well over a year. I don’t remember buying them, but I must have, because they were stored in a quart jar with my handwriting on the lid, saying “dried chickpeas.”
So, as I write this morning, I am quick-soaking the beans, so I can cook them up and make up this recipe. I’ll post about the recipe itself, later. Right now, I’m going to inventory the things in my pantry. I have:
15 lb. brown rice
4 lb. brown sugar
1 #10 can each: dried celery, powdered egg, dehydrated onion, freeze dried strawberries, dried carrots, quick oats, regular oats, white flour, sugar, high gluten flour, baking soda, salt (oh, wait, I have two cans of salt), dried apple slices, raisins, dehydrated potato slice, potato pearls, Marshmallow Mateys, refried beans, black beans, pinto beans, kidney beans
2 qt. dried black eyed peas
2 lbs. dried split peas
4 cans tuna
7 qts. canned salmon (canned for me by the amazing Merrill Dougal)
2 cans clams
10 pints beef chunks
3 pints beef broth
three rubbermaid containers the size of mailboxes full of various herbs and spices
1 little jar baking powder
2 bottles vanilla
1 five gallon bucket whole white wheat
1 five gallon bucket (almost gone) white rice
25 lb. bag rolled oats
5 lb. bag flour
1 five gallon bucket (nearly empty) sugar
4 lb. powdered sugar
odds and ends bags of corn chips
2 jars peanut butter (one creamy, one chunky)
1 jar strawberry jam
12 qt. canned peaches
12 qt. canned beets
half pint of tomato relish
A big “thing” of chicken bouillon cubes
half a box of chocolate cheerios
2/3 box of some high fiber cereal my husband eats
6 oz. bag of white chocolate chips
1 jar molasses (3/4 full)
1 bottle (unopened) ketchup
2 or 3 cans each: golden corn, green beans, beets
1 large bottle olive oil
1 large bottle canola oil
1 gallon white vinegar
1 bottle balsamic vinegar
That’s just what I remember off the top of my head—I’m sure some of the amounts are off, but still—I look at that list and think—how can I not find a way to make a decent meal out of some of that?
