Concentrate, Woman, CONCENTRATE!

Why oh why am I always juggling a dozen things AND trying to cook at the same time?! It happens again and again!! Gah!!

I’m trying to pull out the ingredients for the Bavarian-Filled Eclairs while talking on the phone, starting a load of laundry, and assisting my son with his English homework.

WHY did I do that?

As I’m cooking the mix in the first step (butter and flour, trying to get the dough to firm up), it’s not working. It looks like Cream of Wheat when it should be looking like beautiful bread dough. I went over and over and OVER the ingredients list, and had my daughter go over it, too. It looked correct. After 45 minutes of non-stop stirring, hoping it would thicken, my blistered hand could take no more. I added more flour to the pot, and the mix started to change into something that looked more accurate.

I doubled the amount of butter needed. I measured 1 stick of butter to be 1/4 cup when it is 1/2 cup.

I tried baking a few anyway, just to see if they would turn out. My vote would be, uh, NO.

GRRRRRROOOOOAAANNNN!! This recipe was for my church group, too, which was meeting tonight! :’(

Well, I added more flour, what I could, and a lot of eggs. This is what they are. Not exactly the glorious products from Amish fireplaces… but over all, not too shabby.

They look OK. A little too brown for me, but still nice. They have a cake-ish consistency, not like the puff-pastry texture it is supposed to have. I will fill it with the most luscious Bavarian Cream filling and see how they turn out. I think they will be OK, just… different.

Well, lesson learned. NEVER multi-task when preparing an important recipe! NEVER!!!

Search for a Recipe By Ingredient

Here is an absolute gem of a website I have found: Supercook. It’s so cute! All you do is type in your ingredient (I typed in “pork chops”), and the search engine will search a slew of recipes for your ingredient. I love this thing! I always seem to have a bunch of odds and ends in my freezer and pantry (everything from canned pineapple to wacky stuff like candles, sewing floss, and jars of eye cream :-p!)… some I am clueless about using, especially since I dislike pineapple and the eye creams are not very tasty, haha! … *ahem* Well, ANYWAY, this is a cute website and the recipes so far look very easy and very good.

There’s a video Supercook made that explains the site:

I will be placing the link to Supercook in my sidebar, so look there if you need it for future reference.

P.S. this is not a paid promotion, I just felt like mentioning the site.

Four Foods For Friday

Well, I’m going to give this meme a go. I am woefully bad with weekly memes, because my schedule is always so crammed and I lose track of the days! But I’ve admired this meme because it’s so brief and the questions are thoughtful. So I’m going to give it a whirl! I promise that I will try to do this faithfully every week!

Here are this week’s questions:

1. Name one bad habit you have in the kitchen.
…Just one?

Well… I don’t dry my dishes and put them away. (I have no dishwasher, cry with me, my friend!). The kids and I wash dishes BY HAND once or twice a day (for 9 people, five days a week). There are usually two mountains of washed dishes on my countertops, where they sit and air dry (so I can go catch my breath!). My kitchen is woefully inadequate– it needs replacing from the plaster walls to the tile flooring to the countertops. Someday I’ll get it renovated. And I’ll definitely get a dishwasher when I do!

2. Do you have a tv in the kitchen?
No. I don’t have TV. I do own two sets, but they are rigged up to VCR/DVD players. We don’t get television reception.

3. What’s one food you can’t stand cold?
Coffee. I’m a horribly fussy coffee drinker. It must be mild, fresh, and HOT. I also hate cold (and lukewarm) tea. I sip it poured right out of the boiling tea kettle.

4. What’s your favorite juice?
I’m not much of a juice drinker. I drink cranberry juice when I have to (for the bladder), but the only juice I will ever reach for if it’s in the fridge is orange juice. And I don’t drink it very often.

So this was fun! I look forward to next week.

Perfect Pot Roast

This was the EASIEST pot roast I have ever made. I’m impressed! It was such a surprise that I didn’t even think to take photos beforehand, because I thought this was just going to be another basic, boring pot roast. But WOW! It’s good. And EASY. Throw it in the oven, forget about it, go work on your quotes for better car insurance or go rake the yard. About the time everyone starts clamoring for dinner, it will be ready.

Perfect Pot Roast

1 4-5 pound slab of beef chuck, any grade, no thicker than 2 inches
1 envelope Onion Soup Mix
2 large sheets (or so) of aluminum foil

Take the sheets of aluminum foil and crimp the long side of each sheet– you basically want to create one large sheet to wrap up the roast completely. This is crucial to the success of the mission! Use more than one sheet if you need to.

Place your roast in the center of the large foil sheet you’ve made. Sprinkle half of the the Onion Soup mix on the slab, spread with your hands. Flip the roast over and sprinkle the rest of the mix; spread with your hands.

Seal the foil by carefully wrapping the roast. It doesn’t need to be perfectly airtight (as my roast cooked, a little of the juices did leak out), but you don’t want any open gaps or seams. Tighten your seams. Place the wrapped roast in a dish. Turn on your oven to 325 degrees, and let the roast bake under this slow heat for 6 to 8 hours. This meal is perfect with brussels sprouts and baked potatoes with cheese. Yum!

You could also throw in a few thick slices of Red Onion to drive everyone in the house mad while the roast bakes all day. Up to you. I stuck with the Onion Soup mix and it turned out perfectly. This is a recipe I’m to experiment with, however– next time I’ll try balsamic vinegar with Red Onions, and maybe another time I’ll try Greek seasoning and feta cheese or something. Yum!

Quick Fake Spanish Rice

I hate Spanish Rice! Yuuuuuuk! So I’ve never made it in my life. But we had a houseful of hungry boys one evening and I was very short on supplies. Here’s what I threw together, and they devoured the entire dish with great gusto. The recipe takes advantage of leftovers, or you can make everything fresh. (Still tastes yukky to me). Well, actually, I did give this a try and it wasn’t TOO bad. Not something I’d serve up for house guests at swanky Tampa apartments… but for a quick fix for the kids, it’s PERFECT.

Quick Fake Spanish Rice

5 cups leftover rice
4 cups ground beef, cooked and drained of fat
1 can (24 oz) spaghetti sauce (I used Hunt’s “Four Cheese” flavor)
1 1.25 envelope Taco Seasoning Powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Heat up the cooked ground beef and rice in a large pot on the stovetop. If the rice is dry, add a small amount of water to keep the rice from burning. Add the Taco Seasoning packet, the garlic powder, and the salt; mix well. Add the can of spaghetti sauce and mix again. Allow the sauce to heat up but don’t let it burn! When sufficiently heated, turn the mix into a large bowl and let the kids go at it. Even better, give them paper plates and disposable cups, too! Make yourself a peanut butter sandwich and surf the Net.

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