So I’ve been looking into non-stick appliances these days. Wow, they are very difficult to find. Stainless steel rice cookers are quite expensive, and some users complain that the rice sticks to the bottom. Well, yeah, lol. I can see the usefulness of non-stick coating, but I’m very concerned about the toxicity of it. There’s a growing movement to get away from all these chemicals and get back to nature. I am 100% in favor of getting back to nature, but there’s no way I’m going to cook my rice on a bamboo pot over a tepee of matchsticks. You betcha I’m a nature-lovin’ gal, and I’m happy to post political lawn signs and all…. but I still think we can make technology work for us. I mean, we can send a robot to MARS but we can’t make a pot that doesn’t make our rice still and give us cancer? Come on!

I have the same problem with my frying pans. Oooo I detest the non-stick coating on those! It peels off after a few weeks. I have looked into the “nano ceramic” stuff, but these get terrible reviews, saying the ceramic coating is so thin that it evaporates off!

Since I have a glass top stove, I cannot use glass pans. And cast iron, as much as I love it, will scratch the glass. So I’m stuck.

Do any of you have any ideas?? Have you heard of any new non-non-stick technology that works?! I have to get a new rice cooker and frying pan and I’m clueless right now…

I’m very excited to be trying a few new recipes this week. I found them online but I will be altering them somewhat (as is my custom) to make them just right for us.

Stuffed Red Peppers
Pepperoni Rolls (haven’t made these in years!)
Stir Fry Jasmine Rice and Vegetables
Tuna Casserole
Baked Chicken Thighs (not the greatest but I have to use up the chicken I got on sale) & Jasmine Rice
Potato Kielbasa Skillet Recipe (from TasteofHome.com)

By the way, in case you’re planning to buy graduation gifts or wedding gifts, I strongly recommend a rice cooker. I LOVE MY RICE COOKER. I used to hate rice and never attempted to make it. But a rice cooker creates terrific rice. Throw in a few gift-wrapped bags of Jasmine rice for a real treat. I’ve been making a lot of jasmine rice.. mmm.

So what’s on your menu this week? Got any suggestions?

I’m expecting to be traveling to New York City more frequently. I really need to have a small listing of good places to eat. I’m not terribly fussy, but I do have some requirements. If you go to NYC and know of any good restaurants or cafes, can you help me? Can you share some of your favorite places to eat? Tp give you an idea of what I am looking for, I created a list:

1. Inexpensive. That is, not more than $15 a meal for lunch.
2. Basic food. No gourmet stuff with weird ingredients. I’m looking at hamburgers, fish sandwiches, etc.
3. Not fancy. I would like to avoid large restaurants if I can avoid it. Of course, very few restaurants in NYC are large, anyway!
4. A place where we can sit down inside, or a place that is near a park where I can sit outside. I’m pretty flexible, though, having devoured sandwiches on the run while jogging up Harlem Heights….

I sure would appreciate ANY input. It’s been difficult searching online for good eateries. Any suggestions would ease my mind!

After doing a little research on where to eat for our trip to NYC, we decided to try out the Famous Fish Market “restaurant” on St. Nicholas Ave in Harlem. I say “restaurant” because the place is actually just a hole in the wall! UrbanSpoon has some great photos of the restaurant and food. Every website I came upon raved about the fish there. I had visions of thick cod or haddock filets….

What I envisioned and what I got were two different things.

Maybe it’s because I am an “upstater” and am used to certain things. Do Manhattanites usually get thick cod or haddock sandwiches? Our fish sandwiches up here are so big and fluffy, you’d think that we had an oceanic skid steer for sale or something. The filets are tender, flaky, and BIG.

The Famous Fish Market fish was…. ok. I walked into the small 10 foot x 3 foot doorway and ordered 3 fish sandwiches ($6.25 each, pay in cash). In about 4 minutes, the food was ready. The sandwich consisted of about 7 little perch filets crammed between two slices of store-bought, Friehofer’s bread.

The fish was chewy and salty and tough. I hate store-bought bread, so I basically picked the fish out of the bread slices.

Looking again at the photos online, everyone else seems to have gotten cod or haddock. Am I mistaken? Those filets seem a lot beefier than the wiry little shrimpos I got. Hmmm.

Anyway, I don’t think the Famous Fish Market food is so hot. Next time I’ll just get a filet-o-fish or an Angus burger from the nearby McDonalds.

….and *pop* it’s all gone.

The weather has been downright balmy here in Upstate New York. Who wants to cook now?! Not me!

My daughter has been a doll and has been cooking for several days (she has some free time while the rest of us have been working like crazy). Tonight I dragged myself into the kitchen to help her with our Chicken/Shrimp/Kale and Pasta meal. But the next few nights it’s no cooking, just eating leftovers and such. I’ve had this thing for lettuce for a while now. Mmmm. I stuff it into anything I can. Good stuff. Doesn’t exactly give me energy like a a href=”http://www.ledsupply.com/led-catalog.php”>high power led, but I feel so much better after eating greens.

I’m tired of eating meat. We don’t eat it every night, but probably 4 times a week at least. I just don’t know any good vegetable recipes. I’ll have to do some digging… got any to share?

I like Taste of Home recipes. They are simple. They use simple ingredients. I like that. I avoid recipes that call for esoteric ingredients such as “capons,” “mahlab,” or “Indian ocean shark knuckles.” OK, I made the last one up but I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like it on some of those other cooking sites.

Anyway, I’m pleased as punch. I think I found a new favorite site! Do you have a favorite site for recipes? Please share!

Christmas, however, is much different. Christmas is cozier, the holiday week is longer. For example, I only have ONE day to prepare for Thanksgiving Day: Thursday. (Wednesdays are very busy with school so I don’t cook that day). So Thursdays are generally not good days for me. But for Christmas, if the day falls on a day other than Thursday, I am set and have loads of time to prepare. I am in the beginnings of formulating a nice Christmas meal. Tell me what you think:

Turkey (we love turkey so I always have it)
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes

– I know it looks traditional already but the kids and husband demand those three basic foods, lol!

Pumpkin soup?
Stuffed eggs
Cranberry… ? something
Brussel sprouts (my favorite)
Something chocolatey for dessert
…not sure what else, maybe a nice but very different kind of veggie. Got any ideas?

I am already looking forward to it. Maybe that’s because I am hungry right now, lol. It’s going to be a quiet day, a day where we RELAX and cozy up in front of the gas fireplace on hickory furniture and just BE QUIET for a while. Already my heart beats softly in anticipation.

What are your special plans that day?

Is there ANY website out there that offers simple, basic, plain recipes?! For crying out loud! I can’t find one. Maybe every cook out there is trying to outdo every other cook out there. Not me. I just want to slap wholesome, tasty food on the table and get on with life, you know? So many cooking websites think that my life REVOLVES around food. Um, no, it doesn’t. I want to eat because I’m hungry not because I have this sensual, biological urge to indulge my senses in rapturous undulations of culinary ecstasy.

So.

Anyone have any suggestions?

If not, I’m going back to my watermarked, dog-eared, batter-stained Betty Crocker cookbook. I’m rather tired of the same old same old, but sorry, I just can’t muster the energy to whip up the latest, greatest tofu-tainted, kiwi-encapsulated, pine-nutty, asafetida-extracted delicacy for my ravenous teens.

1. Pasta with frozen meatballs.

Sometimes I skip the meatballs and throw leftover cubed chicken (when we have it) and pesto sauce. Pesto sauce is SOOO good and a little jar goes a long way.

2. Chicken with shrimp and pasta.

I wrote about this recipe here; I call it Easy Shrimp & Chicken Garlic Pasta. It does require some preparation, but not much!

3. Greek Salad with flat bread.

We love this one. It requires almost no cooking (if you serve shrimp, you have to cook it or thaw the pre-cooked stuff). It does require a lot of table setting (a zillion jars of stuff). I wrote a post about some of our favorite salad ingredients here.

4. Tuna Casserole Sans Peas

I hate peas! So my tuna casserole has nary a one. I love tuna casserole because it can be on the table in about 90 minutes. The hardest thing about it pre-cooking the pasta and trying to shake the gravity-sealed cream of celery soup out of the cans. Here’s our favorite recipe for Easy Non-Peas-y Tuna Casserole.

5. Crockpot Manhattan Clam Chowder

This is a great one if you have 15 minutes to spare in the morning. Pre-cook the sausage or crumble the breakfast bacon leftovers into the crockpot, and throw in a bunch of ingredients. Allow it to simmer all day. By dinnertime, the house will smell delicious. Clean up is SO easy, too. My personal favorite is my own recipe, Manhattan Clam and Fish Chowder.

6. Tortellini with Edamame and Kielbasa

I love this, but the kids have grown out of it. I don’t know WHAT it is about edamame, it makes me feel like superwoman after eating it. It’s just so good. The kielbasa is a little salty and too flabby for me, though. I think the edamame with the tortellini or just the edamame is good enough. I have the recipe here: Tortellini with Edamame and Kielbasa.

7. Leftover Turkey Pasta Primavera

This is an AMAZING dish, perfect for after the holidays when your fridge is stuffed with leftover turkey. I love it because it is so easy and so delicious. Check out my recipe here.

These are the few recipes in my repertoire that I use for those moments of OHMYGOSHIFORGOTTOSTARTDINNER. Which, incidentally, are occurring a LITTLE too often for my tastes. But I’ve been clobbered with writing assignments with such technical topics like Technical Recruiter Consultant Jobs and electric wiring!

Hey, if you have any Quicky Meals that you want to share, please do! I think the family is starting to tire of my repertoire, lol.

What’s really amazing is that the apples survived the crazy weather we’ve had this year. A soaking spring, super hot and super dry summer, tornadoes, TWO hurricanes, and now a blight. :-p Gotta love New York apples! They’re hardy little things!

By the way, if you are like me and can’t remember if Spys are for pies or for fries, or what’s a best eating apple versus the baking apples, see this website: Pick Your Own. They have a huge list of all the apple varieties, when they are in season, what you can use them for, and more. They also have some yummy recipes, places to find PYO apple farms, and loads more information on their site. The varieties list is long, though, beware. Better print it out or load it on your pc tablet for easy access…. I had no idea there were so many apple varieties!