Corned beef and cabbage

Posted by Melissa in Food, Recipe, Reviews March 16, 2012

Until a couple of years ago, I had never tried corned beef, and sort of assumed I wouldn’t like it. But one St. Patrick’s Day, my husband requested it, so I gave it a try. Turns out, I do like it, and it’s not difficult to make. The kids aren’t really fans (they’ll eat three bites and then fill up on soda bread), so this year I bought a very small piece of corned beef. There should still be enough leftovers for a couple sandwiches or maybe some corned beef hash for Sunday brunch.

I didn’t reinvent anything here, but this is the recipe I’ve used and and enjoyed. I always use the slow cooker, though, for eight hours on low. And this year we’re going to roast the cabbage to go alongside. We like roasted anything better than the steamed version.

What to do with all that extra cabbage? If I cooked the whole head, we’d run out of corned beef long before we finish the cabbage. Melissa Clark gave three great recipe suggestions in her latest New York Times column. I may try all three (I bet the kids will even eat the pasta), and save a little cabbage to go with fish tacos next week. We love our fish tacos!

By the way, I thought I’d share my favorite cookbook of the moment: Melissa Clark’s Cook This Now:120 Easy and Delectable Dishes You Can’t Wait to Make. Almost every recipe is simple enough for a busy weeknight, but both comforting and full of interesting flavors at the same time. Between our collection of 20-some years’ worth of cooking magazines, several shelves groaning under the weight of cookbooks, and millions of recipes on the Internet, I’m now very selective before buying a new cookbook. I like to try before I buy, so I checked this one out of the library. After making half a dozen dishes (carefully avoiding splatters on the library book), and many more I wanted to try, I plunked down the Amazon gift card I’d been hoarding and bought my own copy. This book would also make a wonderful wedding or housewarming gift for any cook, novice or experienced.

Do you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? Green beer, anyone?

A little spring cleaning

Posted by Melissa in Cleaning, Kids, Organizing March 15, 2012

Feels like spring! With temperatures in the 70s this week, I was propelled to do a little work in the garage. Nothing major, but I finally gathered all the boxes we flung into the garage on Christmas Day, plus all the ones we tossed on top of the pile in the months since. I even got them all out to the curb in time for the recycling truck. Okay, there’s still one giant box from the new desk in our bedroom and a stack of styrofoam, but I plan to break that down and get it into next week’s garbage (unfortunately, it seems there is only one recycler of styrofoam in Illinois, and it’s not that close). Now the kids can find their scooters and there’s an actual path from the door to the van that isn’t strewn with crumpled wrapping paper and plastic grocery bags.

The next day I took the string of snowflake lights down from the porch and put away the basket of snow toys. I wiped down the tables and chairs and dragged the porch rug out of the basement. I even cleaned the light fixtures. A couple hours after I set the chairs at precise angles and swept all the pine needles from the concrete, half a dozen kids gathered, lounged on the porch swing, scattered pine cones, doodled with sidewalk chalk, and tossed each other’s shoes into the hedge.

I love having a front porch.

Pasta with pesto

Posted by Melissa in Food, Kids, Recipe March 13, 2012

No doubt the internet is awash with pesto recipes, but just in case you haven’t been inspired to make your own, I’m sharing ours. If you have small children who have not yet declared their undying hatred for green food, then I would advise putting “Green Noodles” into your meal rotation as soon as possible. My kids regularly snub green vegetables, but when a bowl of green noodles appears in front of them, they magically shut up and eat. Whew!

Once you’ve made it a few times, you’ll be able to get dinner on the table in about 20 minutes, or however long it takes to boil a pot of pasta. (I like to keep angel hair pasta or capellini on hand because it cooks in just 4-6 minutes.) Add a salad (sometimes just sliced tomatoes with a drizzle of vinegar and oil) and some crusty bread if you have it.

Pasta with pesto

1 lb. pasta (whole wheat, if you like)

a bunch of greens: basil, spinach or arugula, or a mixture; washed and dried

about 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 large cloves garlic, smashed

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts (or walnuts)–omit if you have nut allergies

salt and pepper to taste

juice of half a lemon, optional

freshly grated Parmesan

Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Add a couple teaspoons of salt to the water. Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Before draining, scoop out about a cup of the pasta water and set it aside.

While the water is boiling, put the olive oil and garlic into a small microwaveable bowl. Warm the oil and garlic in the microwave for about a minute on half power. (You can do this on the stove top, too, in a small saucepan or metal measuring cup. And if you don’t mind the bite of raw garlic, you can skip this step entirely.) Fill the bowl of the food processor with your greens of choice, add the warm oil and garlic, salt and pepper. Purée the mixture until it is smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl, and adding a little more olive oil when necessary. Taste the pesto, and add salt, pepper or lemon juice to taste.

Mix the drained pasta with the pesto, adding the reserved pasta water as needed by the 1/4 cup, until the pesto has coated all the pasta. Serve with grated parmesan.

Artichoke Heart Variation: Substitute the greens for one 14-ounce can of drained artichoke hearts. Add a small handful of parsley or spinach if you have it. Don’t leave out the lemon. We call this one “Yellow Noodles.”

Monday Menu

Posted by Melissa in Food, Monday Menu, Organizing March 12, 2012

Once again, I went grocery shopping without making a menu plan first. Now I just have to get creative–sometimes easier said than done. I hit a good sale on chicken and Italian sausage and there are enough leftovers from tonight’s dinner for another meal, so I have someplace to start. And just because I write down a plan, doesn’t always mean I follow it. Last Wednesday I planned to try that new spinach pesto lasagna recipe, but the day got away from me. Instead I made a simple pesto on spaghetti, which is one of our very favorite easy and fast comfort meals. (If you haven’t made your own pesto before, you’re missing out. I’ll share my version with you tomorrow.) Of course, that meant that Friday we had pasta again–this time tuna pesto on linguine. I usually try to plan more variety, but sometimes you just need to get dinner on the table. Nobody seemed to mind.

Monday: Carroty Mac and Cheese

Tuesday: Leftover Night

Wednesday: Pasta with cheese and Italian sausage (something along these lines)

Thursday: Pan-roasted chicken with Brussels sprouts and Bacon

Friday: Hummus, pita, Greek salad

Saturday: Corned beef and cabbage

Sesame chicken

Posted by Melissa in Uncategorized March 9, 2012

Hereafter known as Clean Your Plate Chicken, this sesame chicken recipe from Tyler Florence was a big hit at our house. I can’t comment on its authenticity, but it should satisfy all your Chinese takeout cravings. It’s not a 30-minute meal, but it’s not that difficult, either.

I made a few minor adjustments to the recipe. First, I reduced the sugar in the sauce to 1/3 cup (my kids don’t like super sweet sauces on their meat). I only added 1/2 teaspoon of chili sauce (I used Sriracha) to keep the heat down, and I skipped the extra salt at the end. Finally, instead of filling my Dutch oven half full of oil, I fried the chicken in a mere inch of oil, flipping the pieces over when they were brown and crispy on the first side. Fry in small batches, and keep an eye on it. My chicken did not take six minutes per batch, but closer to three or four. One last hint if you haven’t made sauces thickened with cornstarch before: you’ll need to bring the sauce to a boil before it loses its milky color and begins to thicken. The recipe as written doesn’t make this clear.

The recipe makes a generous amount of sauce, so you’ll have plenty for rice alongside. I chose to drizzle only about a third of the sauce on the chicken before serving, and put the rest in a pitcher for people to add at the table. We had jasmine rice and garlicky broccoli as sides. It was the most pleasant meal we’ve had all week, without complaining from one side of the table or coaxing from the other. Totally worth the extra effort!

Battle of the basement

Posted by Melissa in Kids, Organizing March 8, 2012

Our basement is nothing to get excited about. It’s unfinished, though someone slapped up some dark paneling at some point (in the ’80s, maybe). Not long after we moved in (in reality, not long after we unpacked the last box–probably a year after moving day), my husband painted all the paneling. We laid some rugs down, stashed the noisy toys down there, and let the kids play. Unfortunately, they didn’t play down there very often, preferring to be upstairs with Mom and Dad.

Now all the kids are old enough to play unsupervised in the basement (especially when they have friends over and are reenacting Pokémon battles or shooting Nerf guns), but it’s often too messy, and the many florescent lightbulbs are always burning out. Along with the garage, the basement is always the staging area/dumping ground for all the stuff we don’t want in the rest of the house. After Christmas and clearing out the kids’ rooms, the piles had toppled into one another and all but blocked the path from one side of the basement to the other. Empty boxes, suitcases, bins and bags of outgrown toys and clothes…

Halfway through the process…I found the floor before I remembered the camera.

For me, one of the easiest motivators to get clutter out of the house is to have a deadline. Wednesday the Amvets truck was scheduled to do a pick up, so I had to have everything boxed up and on the porch by 7 a.m. (Someone calls me about once a month to ask if I have anything to donate. If I do, they send me a reminder postcard and call the day before. No loading up the van, no carting things to Goodwill. I just leave it on the porch for the truck and they leave a receipt.) Over the weekend I listed several items on Freecycle–mostly items that were generously given to us: a toy box, a toddler bed rail, multiple bags of toddler board books–and all were picked up. I found a new home for the train table, which I will deliver tomorrow.

Again, only about half of what I donated.

I filled a bin with recycling (mostly empty boxes left from Christmas), put away the luggage, sorted and stored all the hand-me-down clothing for Little Four to grow into. While I was at it, I sorted the laundry and washed a couple loads. I reduced the clutter pile to a single box of stuff that still needs sorting.

There’s that final bin, waiting patiently to be emptied. It may take a while.

I’m proud to say that there’s a large swath of floor that is completely clear. It’s an ugly concrete floor, and perhaps one of these days we’ll get around to painting it. In the meantime, I need to reconsider what is on the basement shelving. I need to find a better container for the gift wrapping supplies. I have a big stack of empty plastic Ikea bins that might be useful in organizing the stuff on those shelves. My sewing area needs some work, and there are several boxes of old photos, sheet music, and kitchen supplies that need purging. Now that I can actually get to those things without climbing over a mountain of junk, I only have one excuse left.

We need new lightbulbs.

It’s not beautiful, but there’s nothing to trip over. And the laundry bin is empty!

Whole wheat cheese crackers

Posted by Melissa in Baking, Food, Kids, Recipe March 6, 2012

I think my children could eat their weight in Cheez-Its or goldfish crackers if given the opportunity. I don’t buy either one regularly (unless there’s a good sale and I have a coupon!), but that means I’m often scrambling to find something to pack in their lunches or dole out as an afternoon snack. I’ve been meaning to try this recipe for a long time, but I knew anything involving a cookie cutter–especially a teeny tiny fish-shaped one–was going to be filed under Too Fussy in my book. Finally it occurred to me that I could just cut the crackers into squares. I know! What a revelation! I happen to have a fluted pastry wheel, so that made the edges decorative, but a pizza cutter or a knife would work just as well. These took about 15 minutes of prep, with another 15 minutes for chilling and 15 minutes for baking. Not bad at all.

The trouble with these little crackers is simply that one batch is not enough. I am going to have to hide them from myself. The cheese flavor sings out and they are satisfyingly crispy. It makes me wonder what other flavor combinations might work…add some herbs? A little garlic? I do know that next time, I’m going to double the recipe.

Whole wheat cheese crackers

adapted from Smitten Kitchen

1 1/2 cups grated hard cheese (I used a combination of cheddar, colby jack, Jarlsberg and Pecorino Romano)

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp. kosher salt

1/8 tsp. onion powder

4 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks

Put all ingredients into the food processor. Pulse a couple of times, and then run the processor for about 2 minutes, or until the dough is well-mixed and easily pressed into a ball. Form the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes (or freeze for 15 minutes). Heat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out the dough to 1/8 inch between two sheets of wax paper. Cut the dough into 1-inch squares with a pastry wheel, pizza cutter, or sharp knife. Transfer squares to an ungreased baking sheet and prick each one with a fork. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Place the baking sheet on a rack and cool completely.

Makes approximately 100 crackers.

Monday Menu

Posted by Melissa in Food, Monday Menu March 5, 2012

After a perfect weekend at home–no schedule, no activities, no deadlines, and plenty of leftovers–I’m feeling refreshed. I clocked my fair share of lounging, but somehow with nothing required of me, I was motivated to get a good start on sorting through the inevitable piles of stuff in the basement. I love feeling rested and productive.

My personal chef spent Saturday at the grocery store and in the kitchen and came through with some fabulous chicken liver pâté (he says the secret is to strain it for perfect smoothness), orecchiette with pulled pork ragout, and a brown butter cake that was divine (especially for those of us who prefer our sweets less tooth-achingly sweet). Sunday dinner was roast chicken and a lemony potato salad (and more cake), accompanied by dinner conversation in which we learned that Mr. Nine wants to be an astronaut when he grows up (“because I’m fascinated with space,”), Miss Six wants to be a teacher, and Little Four wants to be a teacher, too (and was promptly and justly accused of being a copycat).

And where there is roast chicken, there are leftovers (and broth in the crockpot) for tonight’s dinner. Speaking of leftovers, I should mention that last week’s Italian Wedding Soup (I followed my own recipe for meatballs) and Salmon and Potato Cakes were enjoyed by the entire family and provided several more lunches. The salmon recipe will go into regular rotation, as it is the first time everyone has eaten salmon without complaint (they like them with the dill sauce on a bun, too).

This week I’ve planned some tried and true favorites, as well as a couple new recipes. I think the kids will forgive the spinach if it’s layered between creamy, cheesy pasta. And they’ve enjoyed take-out sesame chicken, so I’ve been meaning to attempt a version at home (where I can adjust the heat from the chili paste to an acceptable level). I’ll let you know how they turn out!

Monday: Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos, guacamole

Tuesday: Pork Milanese, pan roasted asparagus

Wednesday: Spinach Pesto Lasagna

Thursday: Sesame Chicken, rice, broccoli

Friday: Spaghetti with tuna pesto

Happily, we have nothing on the calendar for next weekend either, so I’m leaving it unplanned–a blank slate for whatever culinary whims might overtake us.

Is there a new recipe you’ve been meaning to try?

Best of the bake sale

Posted by Melissa in Baking, Food March 2, 2012

Is it just me, or has the demand for home baked goodies decreased? The bake sale used to be the classic fundraiser, but now most groups sell candy bars, wrapping paper, popcorn or magazine subscriptions. In school settings, there’s always the issue of allergies. Or is it just that people don’t bake anymore?

Still, there are a few occasions that call for a home baked donation. I belong to a community chorus that holds a couple of bake sales a year (usually during intermission or after a concert), so I try to do my part. But baking time also comes at the same time as extra rehearsals, so I’ve got a new strategy. I want my goodies to be as fresh as possible, but I don’t want to be piping elaborate decorations at 4 a.m. the day of the concert.

Delicious, easy to transport, not too time or labor intensive. Really, aren’t those requirements for everything in life?

My favorite bake sale recipes are small loaves of banana bread (Coconut Banana Bread with Lime Glaze, or Chocolate Swirl Banana Bread), scones, and olive oil granola. I’ve baked cupcakes before, which were a big hit, but they are labor intensive, the ingredients can get pricey, and you really need to buy special boxes. If I had the time, I’d make them again (fancy cupcakes fetch a good price!)–but I usually don’t have the time.

In real estate they say, “Location, location, location!” In sales, it has to be, “Packaging, packaging, packaging!” Seriously, if you’re asking people to shell out $3 for six cookies, they’d better look pretty and not be sliding around on a paper plate under some wrinkled plastic wrap. I always buy these clear treat bags with silver twist ties at my local craft store (and always with a 40% off coupon!). I get a pack of 50 for under $3. They are the perfect size for a stack of half a dozen cookies or brownies, two cups of granola, or a little loaf of bread. Label your items in your nicest handwriting (I usually use white mailing labels and a colorful pen, or sometimes pretty labels that I bought with yet another coupon).

If I have to bake bread even a couple days ahead, I package everything up and then seal it again in a ziplock freezer bag. Store it in the freezer until the morning of the bake sale. Be sure it has sufficient time to thaw. Nobody wants to buy half-frozen baked goods.

I don’t like to freeze baked cookies (for home, sure–to sell, no), but I will often mix the dough up to a week ahead and flash freeze the scooped cookies. Then I only have to bake the cookies the night before the sale.

Now that I’ve gotten my bake sale baking routine down to a science, the hardest part is fending off the disappointed family members who want to eat my wares! (It’s always a good idea to bake a little extra to keep your family happy.)

Spice cabinet

Posted by Melissa in Organizing March 1, 2012

(This one’s for you, honey.)

The best thing about the William Morris Project is the motivation. I had planned to work on a project yesterday, but when I went to the basement to throw in a load of laundry, I discovered water on the laundry room floor, puddling under the furnace. After some investigation with a flashlight to determine where the water might be coming from, I called the HVAC repair service and they found a leak in the humidifier as well as a leak in the furnace flue. Needless to say, there went my morning and $200.

So I had no post ready for this morning, and I wasn’t exactly raring to go after I sent everyone off to school. But then I read Jules’ post about orga nizing her recipe files (I so need to do that), and Tiffany’s post about organizing her spice cabinet, and I decided I wasn’t going to be left behind. I raced through the shower, got a second cup of coffee, and got to work.

When we remodeled our kitchen a couple of years ago, we had this 12-inch space for a cabinet next to the stove, and decided it was too narrow to store anything useful in a standard cabinet. A pull-out spice cabinet just fit in that space, and we certainly needed storage for spices.

It seemed a perfect solution, until it was actually installed and I tried to put the spices in it. There were too many shelves, and there wasn’t enough space for the taller containers. You can’t pull the cabinet out more than halfway (this may be adjustable, but so far I can’t figure out how), so it’s hard to see and reach anything in the back. I tried several times to remove one of the shelves, but couldn’t maneuver it out of the tight space. So we’ve just tossed things in and rummaged around, and while I could usually find what I wanted, it drove my husband crazy. Crazy. I found him grating a cinnamon stick into his cappuccino the other day because he couldn’t find the ground cinnamon. For Christmas he gave me a pack of spice labels (to be fair, I love practical gifts). Subtle, no?

Step 1: Empty the cabinet. Yikes. Look at that, I needed an aerial shot.

Step 2: Remove that annoying extra shelf. No photos here, but it involved some pliers, a hammer, and divine intervention.

Step 3: Sort spices. Weed out the empty jars and stale spices; combine multiples. Label everything.

Step 4: Wipe off the shelves and put spices back in some kind of order. I put the most-used on the top shelf (garlic cellar, salts and peppers, and spices I tend to reach for several times a week). The second and third shelves have spices we don’t use as often. I grouped the baking spices together so they’re easier to reach for. In the past, I’ve attempted to alphabetize the spices, but I’ve learned that it’s silly to have cream of tartar front and center when I only use it a few times a year.

It would be nice to have all the same kind of containers, but it wouldn’t be as practical as it sounds. We use some spices in larger quantities and go through them quickly, so the large containers make sense for those. Some things just go stale if we have them in bulk, and some are too expensive to buy more than an ounce at a time. As long as everything is clearly labeled, I’m happy. I’m hoping the other cook in the house will express his joy in the form of a fabulous meal this weekend.