I made Christmas dinner!

I'm quite pleased with myself. I made Christmas dinner for myself and a friend.

I roasted a turkey breast - a first for me. Because I wanted to be able to focus my attention on the turkey, I used boxes/cans for pretty much everything else. I saw it as a "pick your battles" kind of thing. My sides were: stuffing (Stove Top Savory Herb), mac & cheese (Kraft), mashed potatoes (Idaho, from a box), mashed sweet potatoes (Betty Crocker), sour cream & chive scalloped potatoes (Betty Crocker), green bean casserole, and spinach (from a can). I also had cranberry sauce and gravy from cans.

Now, you may be thinking, "But Joy, I thought you said there were only two of you!" Yes, I went overboard.

I found this package of "soup greens" at the grocery store. It had a small amount of several vegetables (carrots, celery, leeks, parsnips, turnips, onion) plus some parsely & dill. So I put all that in the pan with the turkey with a little bit of chicken broth. I also rubbed the whole turkey with butter & then used a little salt, pepper & poultry seasoning.

After handling the turkey, it was mostly an exercise in project management. I subsituted chicken broth for water in the stuffing and vegetable broth for water in the mashed potatoes. I also pressed a couple cloves of garlic into the mashed potatoes.

I only made the spinach because I felt guilty about all the carbs, but it was totally unnecessary. Neither of us ate very much of it, but we'd had quite a lot of vegetables with dinner the night before and in the omelets that morning.

It came out very well overall. I managed to get everything finished at almost the exact same time.

I learned that I could make dinner for 6 if I wanted, because that's how much food there was. I think I gained enough confidence to actually attempt roasting a whole bird.

However, I don't think I'll make that much food for 2 people ever again. My dinner companion doesn't have a microwave, so I ended up with all the leftovers. After a feat of spacial engineering to get all the food into my refrigerator, I'll be eating Christmas dinner into the new year.

Follow up on the Root Vegetables

Well, I definitely didn't cut them up small enough. Also, they originally came out a little bland. I toasted some pine nuts & threw those in; that seemed to help. Next time, I'm going to include sweet potatoes & some onion.

Root Vegetables!

Inspired by this post from the Crockpot Lady, I bought a heap of root vegetables at the Farmer's Market this weekend: Turnips, Parsnip, potatoes & carrots. I didn't see any rutabaga.

I peeled them & cut them up & tossed them in the crockpot last night with some olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, sage & thyme. I taste tested a carrot this morning, and I think it came out ok. But I think I may have left some of the chunks too big. We'll see.

Organizing, pt. 2

I completed the organization of the cabinet (boxes of potatoes, rice, stuffing, pasta). That also gave way to my meal planning for the next few days.

I decided it would be easier to simply eat everything in my freezer than organize it.

In other news, I've decided I simply *must* try out this Chicken & Dumplings recipe from the Crockpot Lady.

I organized my kitchen! Sort of...

I realized that one major problem in my kitchen was the lack of organization. I'd stopped rotating my food when I wasn't so "stocked up" but then I started stocking up on things again. So I just purged my kitchen of some expired canned goods, as well as donating some "I don't remember why I bought this" items to a local food bank.

In order to accomplish this, I had to take every can out of my cupboard and off my shelves to turn my kitchen floor in to a sea of canned goods. Sorting, purging and then re-shelving actually took almost a whole weekend (not uninterrupted). But now almost all of my food is stored in an orderly fashion. I ignored one shelf which houses my boxed items: Stove Top, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Betty Crocker Potatoes, Minute Rice, etc. That's for this weekend.

I also cleaned out my freezer, but not my refrigerator. That's also for this weekend.

Success: Chili

I made a huge pot of chili this weekend.

I used 2.5 lbs. of ground turkey, one can each of light red kidney beans, dark red kidney beans & white kidney beans, onion, 4 kinds of peppers and 2 of those chili seasoning packets (one hot, one mild).  I also added chili powder & garlic when I browned the meat.  It was (and still is) really good chili.  Hooray.

The one downside, I did spend too much at the grocery store when I went to get the turkey, peppers & onions.  Despite the fact that I just made good progress in bringing my pantry down to the appropriate size, I couldn't resist all the Thanksgiving sales and I just added a bunch of stuff back.  Ah well, more cooking to do.

Two Things

1) A few nights ago, in an effort to start cleaning my kitchen, I decided to clear out my pantry a little bit.  I decided I wouldn't buy any food, except missing ingredients (like ground turkey for the chili) until my pantry was reduced to a normal level for a single person with a small kitchen. (Currently, my pantry items are stacked too high on shelves, and in a corner of my kitchen floor.)

So on Wednesday, I made a boxed-item carb-fest: Kraft Mac & Cheese, Stove Top stuffing & Betty Crocker Au Gratin Potatoes.  I also opened a can of spinach and have been eating a lot of fruit at lunch this week.  Not the healthiest set of meals, but this is temporary.  Anyway, I noticed all these "meal ideas" on the backs of the boxes, so next week I'm going to start trying those.

2) This makes my arteries clog & harden just looking at the pictures.  Don't get me wrong: I love bacon.  I love bacon a lot.  But I have a hard time with the concept of the Turducken as is, wrapping each of the three birds in bacon...  How does the inside of the turkey not just turn into one big pile of bacon grease?  Happy Thanksgiving.

New Mission: Mini Beef Wellingtons

Last night I was at a reception for work.  The food was pretty good - very good, actually.  There was a shrimp dish that I couldn't eat (allergic), a fairly generic sesame chicken skewer, a mini pastry shell with prosciutto, fig, carmelized onion and blue cheese (the blue cheese overwhelmed pretty much everything, but it was still very good), hummus, stuffed grape leaves (which were a little too soft for my tastes)  and an assortment of cheeses.  And there were Mini Beef Wellingtons. They were fantastic - the stuff of food-gasms.  And so I have spent far too much time this morning looking up recipies.  So far, the front runners are this and this.  Also, I can't tell if this recipe makes minis or regular sizes. I'll report back when I get a chance to try them.

Follow Up

I didn't have everything to make the Turnip Gratin, so that's on hold until later in the week.  I decided to simply bake the chicken so that I could find out if I could actually tell the difference from Purdue or whomever.  I could.  I mean, it's just two legs - so who knows it could be a fluke.  But I loved my chicken legs from Ecofriendly Foods.

I roasted the white potatoes.  They took longer than I expected, but they came out well.

Hooray.

The big picture

One thing I've been pondering over the last few weeks is the structure of my grocery shopping.  I have many, many options for acquiring groceries: 5 major grocery stores convenient to me, 2 online shopping services, Costco, Target, small boutique shops, the Farmer's Market(s) and several options for farm shares (which are sure to be a post of their own soon).  

Yesterday I went to the Farmer's Market in Dupont, and I for the first time bought something other than fruit.  I bought food that needs cooking, which means I have to cook tonight.  

For the record, I bought 

• 2 whole chicken legs
  
• a pint of fingerling sweet potatoes
  
• a pint of fingerling potatoes (yellow potatoes of some kind)
• 2 turnips
• a small bulb of garlic
• a small piece of ginger
• 4 apples
• 2 pears

I didn't know precisely what I was planning to cook, but I had a friend with me who helped me evaluate the practicality of each potential purpose.  She also had some valuable input on the "grocery plan."  She makes the Farmer's Market the "lynchpin" of her grocery shopping, since it's not entirely predictable.  She then uses local supermarkets etc. to turn those purchases into actual meals.  This would be even more critical with a farm share, since not only can you not predict what will be available, but you *have* to take it.  But since both Farmer's Market and farm share pickup occur on days when I would need to cook before being able to go out to buy additional groceries, I also need to keep a stocked pantry.  

To that end, I'm working on developing a repertoire of recipes that I can make and/or adapt with a variety ingredients.

This week, I'm trying out this recipe for Turnip Gratin and next week, I'm trying this one for Lotsa Veggies Stew

PSA

OpenTable Appetite Stimulus Plan
$35 Dinners, $24 Lunches (prices are per person and do not include beverage, tax or gratuity)
November 17-21, 2008

Welcome

Welcome to my food blog.  I like food a lot and decided to write about it.  Essentially, the two main themes of this blog will be my attempts at cooking and my reflections on my dining experiences.  There will be a lot of talk of crock-pots and other small cooking appliances.