Tag Archives: Tasty Tuesday

The Breakfast Question

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I suffer from breakfast ADD. I read somewhere that a small key to happiness is to always eat the same thing for breakfast because that removes the stress of having to figure out what to fix. Andy is the perfect picture of this axiom. He microwaves a bowl of oatmeal every morning of the world and is perfectly satisfied. That would not work for me at all. I usually wake up hungry, but the whims of my stomach are a mystery to me. Some mornings I wake up and want something sweet; others salty. Some mornings I feel like I could barely stomach a cup of yogurt; others I could eat the whole cow. It’s convenient that I wake up several hours before I’m due at work and that I enjoy cooking, because I’m usually able to indulge my stomach’s fantasies. Oh, I rarely fix anything fancy. But it sets me off on a much better foot if I eat what sounds good in the moment (within reason). If I planned to only eat cereal every morning and woke up one morning mad for an egg, it would make me very sad indeed to have to eat that bowl of cereal. I’m not like this about any other meal–just breakfast. Who knows.

Some of the typical things in rotation on my morning plate are:

  • Hard-boiled egg (which I often cook en masse on the weekends and refrigerate), a serving of nuts, and some fruit
  • Toasted English muffin with melted cheese and turkey or almond butter
  • Greek yogurt with granola and fruit
  • Bowl of cereal with light vanilla soy milk; a banana
  • Oatmeal with brown sugar, walnuts, and a splash of cream (I never have liked oatmeal, but lately I’ve been trying hard to add it to my repertoire. The cream makes the biggest difference to me, along with cooking it with less water than called for so as to make it thicker.)

I also love a good breakfast sandwich. Nothing says Saturday morning to me like a fried egg sandwich with cheese and ketchup and a big mug of hot tea. (Lately I’ve been throwing a handful of baby spinach leaves on it as well.) I pass by several Starbucks and a Chick Fil A on my way to work, and on the occasional morning I cannot resist the call of the chicken sausage wrap or chicken biscuit and hashbrowns. But for both health and financial reasons I try to keep those mornings to a minimum! Another sometimes-favorite is leftover quiche if I happen to have made one for dinner recently. Tomorrow night I’m planning to make a chicken-apple sausage frittata, and I’m already looking forward to its second life on my breakfast plate.

The main requirement for my breakfast is that it have a fair amount of protein. Sure, I love donuts and pastries–but I’ve gotta have an egg or two with them if that’s my choice. Otherwise I’ll be hungry within the hour! Even with protein I am regularly hungry for my 10:30 or 11:00 mid-morning snack. I’ve decided not to fight my body’s natural hunger rhythms and instead satisfy them with healthy(ish) foods. I figure it’s hopefully a sign that my metabolism is doing well.

Shopping for breakfast foods is the toughest part of grocery shopping for me, because it’s hard to predict what I’ll feel like eating on any given weekday. I try to coupon and shop sales, of course, but I often buy whatever happens to catch my eye, even if it’s bagels and cream cheese. I just read a magazine article suggesting cottage cheese as a healthy snack and I thought, “Oh! I forgot about cottage cheese!” So that will likely make its way into my shopping cart this weekend. But when I might actually get a hankerin’ to eat it I couldn’t tell ya.

What’s your breakfast routine? What are some of your favorite quick and easy breakfasts?

what we ate

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When I travel, food is both the most interesting and the most troubling thing. I am very set in my eating routines as far as times and types of food I like to have. How I feel depends a lot on how and when I am eating. So when I travel, I tend to carry a lot of snacks, because I know I’ll get anxious if I’m trying to be on someone else’s eating schedule. That way I can just know that I’m able to stave off hunger of my own accord. That said, I also LOVE to try new and local things when I travel! I didn’t keep a record of all the things we ate in Ireland, but here are just a few thoughts.

  • I am one of the few people on the world who actually enjoys airplane food. It’s not necessarily the food itself (which is usually mediocre), but it’s the excitement of all the little packages you get. I have a lot of respect for the creativity of the person who has to come up with meal ideas to make en masse and feed a wide variety of appetites. I love that you get a little individual loaf of bread with butter, and there always seems to be cheese and crackers as well. I scarf down every bite of every meal they bring by on the plane. On the way home yesterday we had a pizza panini and a little tub of ice cream as a snack. How fun!
  • Breakfast can be the trickiest meal of the day for me because, more often than not, I wake up hungry. I also have learned the hard way that I need protein in my breakfast if I’m going to avoid having a food crisis within a short period of time. Our hotel had a breakfast option, but it was 9.99…EUROS. So, pretty expensive. Rather than try and meet up with family every morning for breakfast, I found myself venturing out to bring back goodies for Andy and me. Two mornings I went to a store that is kind of like 7-11, which I would not normally consider as an option in the States! But I was able to bring back fruits, yogurts, scones, and coffees for around 8 euros for both of us. Much better! I enjoyed trying unique flavors of yogurt like rhubarb and gooesberry. I also checked out a local bakery one morning as well. The last morning was Sunday, so the bakery was closed! But I found “portable porridge” in the grocery store–basically instant oatmeal, but it sounds so much more fun when it’s called portable porridge.
  • After the removal service on Thursday evening and the funeral mass and burial on Friday, family and friends all had an opportunity to gather for tea and sandwiches. Both places that catered to us provided trays upon trays of sandwiches, most of which were on plain white bread and all of which had ingredients that seemed unique to me! My favorite was the ham…with butter. I would have never thought to put butter on a sandwich!
  • On the topic of lunches, it was great and inexpensive to go almost anywhere and grab a bowl of delicious creamy vegetable soup, which came with a good healthy chunk of Irish brown bread and, of course, good butter.
  • Since we’ve established that I like food, and I have gotten a chance since knowing Andy to sample some fun Irish goodies, the vast majority of the souvenirs we brought back were food. Here’s our haul:
    All kinds of chocolates and candies, as well as some mixes to make Irish brown bread and scones! My mother-in-law likes these mixes, so I feel like that gives them an Irish stamp of approval. A pack of Irish breakfast tea from Bewley’s (a Dublin institution) and a silly Wacky Woolies cup round out the lot. We’ll probably need help getting all this eaten!!
  • I had fun trying different types of beverages while over there. It seemed like just about every night we were getting together with family for drinks, so I had ample opportunity. I know I like hard ciders, so I was excited to find this Irish brand:
     And here I am trying my first Guinness while on a tour of the Guinness Storehouse:
    (I was not a big fan, but when in Dublin you’ve gotta try “the black stuff.) I also had a really odd drink per the suggestion of one of Andy’s cousins called WKD (pronounced “wicked”) Blue. It was like a sugary blue soda with vodka in it. I don’t know what flavor blue is, but it was definitely blue. I rounded out the trip with a good ole Bailey’s Coffee, in its homeland. (I sound like I drank a lot, but these were all on separate nights! Exploratory tastings, we’ll call them.)

Ultimately what I found is that the food is not so different from here! There are, of course, specialties, and I unfortunately didn’t get to indulge in a true Irish breakfast (which I bet I would love), but I had several traditional items like scones and fish and chips. The main difference I noticed was that there were a lot fewer fruits and vegetables included, at least at the restaurants. But when I asked Andy’s cousins what kinds of things they cook, it sounded pretty similar to what I eat here!

“Chick fil a” Chicken Nuggets

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I’m always amazed at the proliferation of imitation recipes you can find online: Outback Steakhouse bloomin’ onion. Olive Garden salad dressing. Etc. I’m impressed at people’s ability to go home and recreate flavors they’ve tasted! I don’t think I have that skill. BUT, I do enjoy following other people’s instructions! Last week I tried this recipe for imitation Chick Fil A chicken nuggets I had pinned on Pinterest. It was my first time frying anything, so I was a little nervous, but my Dutch oven stood up to the task well. It was deep enough that hot oil wasn’t spattering everywhere, and the heat-holding properties of the cast iron helped it seemingly stay at a consistent temperature. The oil wasn’t hot enough for my first batch, but as it stayed on the burner and got hotter, the nuggets came out looking better and better. Each batch was a little browner and crisper than the one before. So that was one lesson learned. I also realized right before I mixed up the recipe that I didn’t have any eggs, so I tried it with just the milk. Lesson learned number 2 is that I think the egg would have really helped the breading stick to the chicken. As I dropped each one into the oil, I could see clouds of flour floating off, and my oil was left looking pretty brown from the stuff that cooked up in it. But all in all this was a great experiment, and I would DEFINITELY make them again, especially with my increased knowledge about frying.

Here’s the recipe, courtesy of Amy at My Name is Snickerdoodle. (P.S. Pinterest has become a big freaking deal! This blogger said she has literally gotten hundreds of thousands of hits to her blog since her recipe basically went viral on the boards.)

2 skinless and boneless chicken breasts
1 cup milk
1 egg
1 1/4 cups flour
2 TBSP powdered sugar
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
peanut oil (is best) or canola oil

(I used canola oil and, like I said, no egg. I’ve always claimed that Chick Fil A nuggets tasted sweet to me, and the inclusion of powdered sugar here proves me right! One bit of breading that I fished out of the canola oil that had fried up on its own really did taste JUST LIKE a CFA nugget.)

In a medium bowl whisk the egg and stir in the milk. Trim any fat away from chicken. Cube chicken into bite size pieces. Place chicken in milk mixture,and cover. Let it ‘marinate’ for 2-4 hours in the fridge. This will make the chicken very nice and tender. In a gallon size resealable baggie combine flour, powdered sugar, salt and pepper. Seal and shake to combine. (I forgot to shake the dry ingredients before adding the chicken and it definitely would have helped–some nuggets ended up with more pepper, others none, etc. Whoops!) Place about 2 inches of oil (we used way less….more like an inch) in a medium deep pot. Over medium high heat (more towards the high side) heat oil until hot. Using a fork or tongs remove cut chicken from milk mixture and place in the flour mixture. Seal and shake until nuggets are completely coated. Place about a 6-8 nuggets into hot oil and let them cook until golden brown, turning half way through once the edge of your chicken starts to turn white. About 1 minute each side. (Mine took longer, probably because my oil wasn’t hot enough. Or maybe I was just overly cautious about letting it cook enough.) Always double check to see if any chicken you make is cooked through. I always just make a tiny cut to see if it’s pink. Remove and drain on a paper towel. (Lemme tell ya, that paper towel was nasty! I figure these must be healthier than actual fast food nuggets, because those surely aren’t drained.) Repeat until all nuggets are cooked.

This was a really fun, pretty quick meal to throw together with some frozen, baked french fries and green beans! A. helped me out a bit throughout the frying process, and we had a good time figuring it out together.

Here was my final product:

 You can see the progression of color from left to right. Ha! We had a bunch left over, and they were okay reheated for lunch, though obviously not crispy anymore. This will be a fun recipe to add to my repertoire.

I’m linked up to the Tasty Tuesday Parade of Foods at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam!

“The Pleasures of Cooking for One”

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This title is already taken by a book by Judith Jones, renowned editor of Julia Child and James Beard, but since it’s so perfectly and delightfully phrased (and since I’m talking about her book), I decided to adopt it for my own post.

A. is out of town this week. I know for many people, their spouse being out of town elicits the question, “To cook or not to cook?” Personally, I’ve always done it, because I enjoy both cooking and eating, but it’s definitely not as much fun eating alone. I watch a lot more crappy TV when I eat alone, which is okay and enjoyable every once in awhile. But Judith Jones, who obviously loves food, was brought up short by her husband’s death when she realized she had to face this question every night. She fittingly decided….to cook!

I love some of the language she uses in the introduction to her cookbook. She writes, “This book is for those of you who want to roll up your sleeves and enjoy, from day to day, one of the great satisfactions of life. I do, however, hear the naysayers protesting. Yes, I like to cook, they say, but I like to cook for others, to give my friends pleasure. Why would I want to go to all that trouble just for me? My answer is: if you like good food, why not honor yourself enough to make a pleasing meal and relish every mouthful?”

Amen, I said, and proceeded to flip through the rest of the book. Jones includes a lot of great basic advice for any cook, not just one cooking alone, such as utensils you’ll need, spices you should have, and essentials for your pantry, fridge, and freezer. Each recipe in the book is, obviously, designed to be roughly a single portion, but each also includes instructions or suggestions for how to use elements of it again, what she calls variations and second round. For example, about the baked bass with fingerlings and zucchini Jones says, “You’re bound to have some leftover fish, so make some Fish Cakes,” and then lists the recipe for Fish Cakes on a subsequent page.

Some of the recipes in The Pleasures of Cooking for One are too fancy/weird for my taste. This is, after all, the woman who cooked alongside Julia Child and undoubtedly influenced and was influenced by the same. I would never cook Veal Kidneys in Mustard Sauce or Calf’s Liver with Shallot and Wine Pan Sauce and honestly hope never to encounter either of them on anyone else’s table. But most of the recipes and, importantly, ingredients seem pretty accessible. She has several varieties of chicken salad, for example, using the meat from a whole chicken that you broiled for a different meal. I’m perusing the book to use while I am cooking for one this week, but I think most of the recipes would also be good inspiration for a meal for 2 or 20! It’s been a fun read.

But beyond fun, I hope it’s also delicious! Last night I cooked Baked Eggs.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup grated zucchini
  • salt
  • 2 teaspoons butter
  • about 3 small mushrooms, finely chopped
  • 1 scallion, finely chopped
  • 3 or 4 tablespoons heavy cream
  • 1 or 2 large eggs (I’m using 2)
  • freshly ground pepper
  • gratings of Parmesan

Put the zucchini in a strainer, work 1/2 tsp of salt into it, then set it over a bowl to drain. Melt the butter in a small skillet and saute the chopped mushrooms and scallion for a minute. Squeeze the zucchini to eliminate as much juice as you can, then stir the grated strands into the pan. Pour in half the cream and let cook gently for 3-4 minutes, until almost tender. Transfer the vegetables to a gratin dish and with the back of a spoon make an indentation in the middle, then crack the egg into it. Season with a little more salt and some freshly ground pepper, and drizzle the rest of the cream on top. If you wish, sprinkle on some Parmesan. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 15-18 minutes, until the egg is set.

*I can take no credit for this recipe except for trying my own hand at it. All credit to Judith Jones and her book The Pleasures of Cooking for One.
This is something I wouldn’t necessarily make with A. around, so I was excited to give it a shot! They were delicious. The consistency of the yolk was unlike any egg I’ve ever had: not runny, just super creamy and thick, without being chalky or hard. I scooped piles of the zucchini mixture and egg onto a toasted English muffin….mmmm! I think you should give Judith Jones’ book a shot. If you like to cook, it will validate the feelings you get in the kitchen and inspire you to create them more often, even if only for your own benefit.
Now if only I could discover the pleasures of washing dishes for one…but I don’t see that happening any time soon.

Mushroom-Quinoa Burgers…Not

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I subscribed awhile ago to a magazine called All You and just recently got my first issue. I subscribed for the coupons (it often has upwards of $50 worth in each issue) and because I found a good enough deal to make me willing to try it out, but I think I will actually enjoy reading the magazine as well! It’s geared toward normal people, with normal budgets for clothes and a normal amount of time to cook dinner. I haven’t finished reading the issue yet, but I’ve already clipped a couple of recipes, including last night’s attempt: mushroom-quinoa burgers.

The first stumbling block on the road to this recipe was finding quinoa. I thought I had seen it at Kroger, but it wasn’t near the rice and other grains. Instead, it was in the health-food/organic section, and it was rather expensive. But given how little of it one needs to cook, I figured the bag was a worthwhile investment because it would stretch a long way.

The recipe called for 3/4 cup of quinoa, so I blithely cooked up 3/4 cup, using roughly 0.93 cup water, per the proportions recommended on the bag. I got to chopping the onion, mushrooms, and bell peppers, and had them sauteing in some olive oil while the grain simmered away. I mixed my ingredients together and began to form 4 patties…only I had a LOT more of my mixture than 4 patties’ worth. Furthermore, it was NOT forming nicely into patties. That’s when I had my first suspicion that something was wrong. However, I continued along, managing to get my patty-esque lumps into a skillet of hot oil. As per my usual, the oil got too hot and the patties were developing a slightly charred crust, so I decided to flip them early. Well. Flipping did not really happen. I managed to get a couple of them over, but it was clear that they weren’t coalescing into any sort of burger. Given that the recipe is called MUSHROOM-quinoa burgers, I would have expected there to be proportionally more mushroom, but instead I had mostly quinoa. At this point, I decided that the recipe MUST have meant 3/4 cup ALREADY COOKED quinoa. By cooking 3/4 cup, I created far to much quinoa for the sole egg in the recipe to bind together. It must have been an oversight on the magazine’s part.

I was disappointed, to say the least, but I heated the rest of the mixture through in my skillet and ate it for lunch today. A. and I did the best we could with our falling apart “burgers”–or as he politely called them, “sloppy joes.” :-) If we had had pita pockets instead of burger buns it would have been fine! The flavor was delicious, and I would definitely try this again…just with a lot less quinoa! Also, I think I’m going to write to the magazine and inquire as to whether they made an error. I’d hate for someone else to have the same disappointment as I did!

Here’s the recipe, for those who might want to brave it:

  • 3/4 cup quinoa
  • 3 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, finely chopped
  • 1/2 red or yellow bell pepper (I used green), seeded, finely chopped
  • 1/2 cup old fashioned oats
  • 1 large egg
  • 1/4 cup grated Parmesan
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/8 tsp pepper
  • 1/2 tsp dried basil
  • 1/2 tsp dried oregano
  • 1/8 tsp garlic powder

Prepare quinoa as package label directs. Transfer to a large bowl. Warm 1 tbsp oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute onion for 3 minutes. Stir in mushrooms and bell pepper; cook, stirring, until tender, about 2 minutes. Add vegetables to quinoa. Let cool. (I didn’t do very well at this step because I was in a bit of a hurry…not sure if that contributed to the problem.) Mix in oats, egg, Parmesan, salt, pepper, basil, oregano, and garlic powder. Shape into 4 patties. Wipe skillet. Warm remaining 2 tbsp oil in skillet over medium-high heat. Carefully place burgers into skillet and cook for 6 to 8 minutes. Flip and cook until golden, about 5 minutes longer.

Recipe courtesy of All You Magazine reader Veronica Yan

Enjoy! And let me know if you have better luck than I did…if I try them again, I’ll report back, hopefully with pictures of beautifully grilled burgers!