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.