Author Topic: What's for dinner, DL? (Read 47187 times)

Clear Tranquil · « **Reply #25 on:** June 17, 2009, 12:06:01 PM »

LD and OK are full of win. Had to be said.

Been experimenting with making curries lately. In the last couple of weeks I've had Balti (chicken), Rojan Josh (mince) and Medium Curry (chicken) I prepare and cook the meat, onions, mushrooms and rice myself but add the jarred sauces. Next time though I'm gonna try making a curry sauce from scratch ^_^

Lady Door · « **Reply #26 on:** June 18, 2009, 03:57:05 AM »

Tonight: pepper-crusted steaks with Worcester-glazed mushrooms and cayenne-and-garlic gold fries.

Not nearly as tasty as it sounds, but it was okay. Bad steak is always aided by a giant helping of A-1. Man I love that sauce.

By the way, that's one of the dinosaur plates.

Ultradude · « **Reply #27 on:** June 18, 2009, 04:14:31 AM »

Were the mushrooms good at least?

Captain K. · « **Reply #28 on:** June 18, 2009, 05:15:25 AM »

Greatest brownie recipe in the world, courtesy of my mother:

2 c. sugar
1/2 c. cocoa
1 c. Crisco
pinch salt
4 eggs
1/2 c. can milk
1 c. flour
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 c. nuts

Cream first 4 ingredients. Add remaining ingredients. Mix well. Bake in greased and floured 9 x 13 pan at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Icing:
1/2 box powdered sugar
pinch salt
1 1/2 tbsp. cocoa
3 tbsp. oleo, melted
can milk

Sift salt, powdered sugar, and cocoa into melted oleo. Add enough can milk to bring to spreading consistency. Spread on hot brownies. Cut into bars when cool.

Ultradude · « **Reply #29 on:** June 19, 2009, 05:57:06 AM »

Anyone here know anything about braised celery?

My step-mom picked it up for me so I could use it in salmon and tuna salad, and I figured, hey, it's celery, it's versatile, we'll find something for it. Well, there's probably enough for a few months of fishy goodness since I don't use tons of it, and while it will likely be used, I want a solid contingency plan. Found a recipe from Alton Brown for braising it in beef stock, but if anyone here has done anything of note with celery I'd like some opinions.

DjinnAndTonic · « **Reply #30 on:** June 19, 2009, 06:29:32 AM »

Dinosaur plate hype goes here.

I've always been a fan of the triceratops.

I'm surprised to hear that the steak-onions-fries combination could turn out poorly...

Man... it's been so long since I have steak... Damnit Japan, learn how to slaughter a cow... >.>;;

Lady Door · « **Reply #31 on:** June 19, 2009, 07:16:53 AM »

The mushrooms were okay. Unfortunately the recipe included balsamic vinegar, and I am coming to understand that I am not so fond of that flavor. Will know this for the future!

And I blame the steak failure partially on having to pan-fry. I miss barbecue! My dad raised me right -- BURNED BY REAL FIRE is the only way to eat red meat. >_> The other part I blame on it being discount meat of a bad cut. So yeah, wasn't too optimistic in the first place. But A-1 solves all ills.

Shale · « **Reply #32 on:** June 21, 2009, 05:33:37 AM »

Chicken and vegetable stir-fry (red peppers, onions, carrots, broccoli, green beans), with a generous helping of cumin powder. Not as good as it could have been - I really need a wok - but tasty nonetheless.

Lady Door · « **Reply #33 on:** June 29, 2009, 04:53:20 AM »

FAIL

Utter fail.

Homemade vegan-esque ravioli is FAIL

Ugh. And it took two hours of chopping/cooking/stuffing/cooking more. And this is with using pre-made pasta sheets, too.

Goddamnit.

Crimini mushrooms + silken tofu + soy milk + white wine + garlic, stuffed inside Ayazuma square wrappers (LIES! they are neither square nor good for ravioli as advertised).

I blame Ayazuma for this one.

Going to give soy-milk baking a chance later this week to make some office-friendly vegan cookies for 4th of July. AND THEN THAT'S IT. If that fails, I am swearing off home preparation of foods involving soy milk or tofu until I learn how to cook. Yes, I routinely screw up recipes involving TOFU.

FAIL

NotMiki · « **Reply #34 on:** June 29, 2009, 05:48:41 AM »

Tofu IS supposedly one of the tougher things to cook properly. Just because it's used all over the place doesn't make it easy.

Shale · « **Reply #35 on:** June 29, 2009, 06:39:43 AM »

Tofu CAN be easy to make properly. The thing is that it has such wildly divergent uses that saying "I'm cooking tofu" tells you next to nothing about how hard it's going to be to get the results you want.

VySaika · « **Reply #36 on:** July 03, 2009, 02:46:09 AM »

Chicken and dumplings was for dinner. First time I've made it with just boneless thighs instead of a whole chicken, so teh flavor was different but, imo, actually better. And Bisquick makes perfectly acceptable dumplings.

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #37 on:** July 03, 2009, 03:05:02 AM »

Ooooh. Yes! We usually use biscuits though.

Lady Door · « **Reply #38 on:** July 05, 2009, 12:43:02 AM »

I've decided to stop being so fat and am returning to the land of Watching What I Eat. It is a sad and desolate land, but I pass my time by making it as complicated as possible. For the moment, this means delving back into my "bento box" fetish.

I'll start organizing some of this stuff tomorrow, I think, pre-cooking a lot of pieces so that all I have to do during the week is pick a few from the freezer, dump them in the box with my rice and go. I may or may not take pictures depending on how much time I have, but I'll probably drop a few recipes for bento box items here.

Some that I know I'll be making:

soup cubes (frozen soup concentrate to which I can add hot water to have soup at lunch); miso, vegetable, minestrone
yaki onigiri
mini black bean burger
gyoza (which will hopefully turn out better than my first "OH GOD THIS TASTES LIKE LYSOL" ginger disaster)
teriyaki something-or-other (depending on if I can get my hands on some mirin, as I'm almost out)

Any other suggestions? I'm particularly interested in easy ways to get fruit and vegetables in pre-prepared fashions, but I haven't experimented much with grocery store bags of pre-frozen fruit and I am iffy on gels.

metroid composite · « **Reply #39 on:** July 05, 2009, 09:39:37 PM »

Quote from: Lady Door on July 05, 2009, 12:43:02 AM

soup cubes (frozen soup concentrate to which I can add hot water to have soup at lunch); miso, vegetable, minestrone

I dunno if things like soup cubes are necessarily better for watching weight. I guess I'm just flashing back to tests where people lost 30 pounds by not drinking Coca-Cola and changing nothing else. There's also stuff like your body can't process trans-fats, but can process cis-fats, so stuff with hydrogenated vegetable oil is a lot worse (basically processed foods; would not surprise me if soup cubes fell strongly in that category).

*shrug* my strategy has typically been to eat fresh less-processed stuff, going for lower fat options when available (skim milk, lean ground beef, buying organic peanut butter and just disposing of the oil layer instead of mixing it in).

Lady Door · « **Reply #40 on:** July 05, 2009, 10:32:17 PM »

Sorry -- all of that is stuff I'm going to make.

Soup cubes are easy. Just make the soup concentrate, portion it, freeze it! Then you bring it with you, it thaws during the day, add hot water, voila. Making it at home makes it easier to leave out all the crap that makes pre-made kinds so bad like the extra salt, preservatives, too much oil, etc.

metroid composite · « **Reply #41 on:** July 05, 2009, 11:05:07 PM »

Ah, cool, never heard of home-made soup cubes before. That's nifty.

Cmdr_King · « **Reply #42 on:** July 13, 2009, 04:37:32 AM »

Shrimp Tortellini Alfredo.

First time I've actually tried an alfredo. It's edible, but lacks... something. I dunno if it's more that I should try something different with the shrimp (I don't really use it ever either) or just needed to add more pepper/garlic/other to the alfredo mix to offset the cheesiness a little.

Cotigo · « **Reply #43 on:** July 13, 2009, 06:04:38 AM »

Chicken Soup:

Boil whole fryer chicken for 1 and a half hours. Amount of water should be enough to submerge the chicken, and you'll have to add more at least once during the boiling.

While boiling, cut up some celery, an onion, and some carrots.

Once the chicken tears away from the meat when you jab it with a fork and twist, remove the chicken from the water. Add veggies, a cup or two of rice, and begin removing the meat. Easiest way to do this that I've found is to remove it with your hands, though be careful as the meat cools unevenly so you'll probably burn your hands once or twice. Throw bones away, put meat back in broth. Boil for another 30 minutes or until the veggies are done. Add 1-2 Tbs of salt.

This will provide dinner and keep me and a roommate fed for at least a week. Total cost ends up being around 15 bucks, though that'll probably be more for everyone else since New Mexico's cost of living is cheap. Adding a lot of veggies or a lot of rice will make it less soupy.

Lady Door · « **Reply #44 on:** July 13, 2009, 03:49:50 PM »

Quote from: Makkotah on July 13, 2009, 06:04:38 AM

Throw bones away, put meat back in broth.

HEATHEN.

Save the bones and boil them down for making your own stock later.

Shale · « **Reply #45 on:** July 13, 2009, 03:53:47 PM »

Yesterday's dinner: Heavily modified chicken Parmesan with dirty rice that was also modified to include eggplant and tomatoes. Yum.

Cotigo · « **Reply #46 on:** July 13, 2009, 06:10:37 PM »

Quote from: Lady Door on July 13, 2009, 03:49:50 PM

Quote from: Makkotah on July 13, 2009, 06:04:38 AM
Throw bones away, put meat back in broth.

HEATHEN.

Save the bones and boil them down for making your own stock later.

That's a good idea if you make anything requiring chicken stock frequently. I don't, really, except for soup... which one of the ingredients comes with a set of bones already for the stock. Also, given the low quality of the chicken I use to keep it cheap I'm probably better off not wasting my time getting anything worthwhile out of those bones.

NotMiki · « **Reply #47 on:** July 13, 2009, 10:17:17 PM »

Busy day yesterday. Made corn muffins, bacon, eggs for breakfast, followed by oatmeal bread and banana bread. Banana bread in particular came out well, though not exactly as I had wanted. My grandmother used to make banana bread that, unlike the light brown and perfectly nice bread I came up with, was dark brown and thick as hell and thoroughly satisfying. Think next time I'll double the banana content (I used 5 small ones for one big loaf).

Lady Door · « **Reply #48 on:** July 15, 2009, 04:43:08 AM »

Eh, stock freezes.

Made myself a semi-bento for lunch today. I basically saved some of the lemon-pepper salmon I made on Sunday (that recipe was boring: wild salmon + pepper + lemon juice!), flaked it, made yaki onigiri, and cut up some strawberries.

Being tired makes cooking during the week a bitch, so I'll work on getting the week's meals ready over the weekend sometime soon. August maybe. >_>

Grefter · « **Reply #49 on:** July 15, 2009, 09:11:32 AM »

Quote from: Lady Door on July 15, 2009, 04:43:08 AM

Eh, stock freezes.

Clearly you have never had to clean out someone's freezer after they have died or when they are moving.

People, do not just keep food because if freezes if you are not going to eat it in future you can tell. Sure you can freeze that piece of steak for 4 years and it probably won't rot, but don't do it.

News:

Author Topic: What's for dinner, DL? (Read 47187 times)