Recipes We Tried: (to do)

Here are some of the recipes I'll be covering, as soon as I get the chance!

Salmon Chowder
Carrot Soufflé
Hearty Fiesta Cassoulet
Baked Spinach & Cheese Noodles (CP)
Salmon & Green Beans (CP)
One-Pan Chicken & Zucchini

If you'd rather I prioritized one of these, leave a comment!

Recipes We Tried: Autumn Sausage Casserole (crockpot)

This is technically the first installment of Recipes We Tried (I know — catchy, right?)...however, I'm going to try to back-date the other recipes I'd intended to blog about but never got around to actually blogging.

So, my biggest fear about cooking is screwing up. That is a pretty broad category that spans the mini-fear spectrum from Choosing Bad Produce to Using the Wrong Spice to Picking a Horrible Recipe. As you can imagine, when I find a reliable source of recipes that taste good and include detailed steps (no "season to taste" here, thank you very much), I tend to use a lot of their dishes.

One such treasure trove is A Year of Slow Cooking. Stephanie O'Dea challenged herself to make something in a CrockPot once a day for an entire year, be it entree, dessert, or craft project. She reviewed every recipe and mentioned how her family liked it. The steps are written for real people, and she even answers questions posed in the comments of each post. Hallelujah! Bonus: the recipes are all gluten-free.

On Monday, we made Autumn Sausage Casserole. This is one of my favorite kinds of recipes: dump stuff in the CrockPot and leave it alone. This recipe is technically a small step up from that, as it required actually chopping some of the ingredients, but it made up for it by using up the leftover already-cooked rice that was sitting in my fridge. Her picture was a lot prettier than mine, but boy-howdy did it taste FABULOUS! Here's what the cold leftovers look like a few days later:




Here are the changes I made:

• used my 6qt CrockPot
  
• used 7oz of leftover Butterball turkey sausage, sliced thinly (next time, I'll do it chunkier)
• sliced onion thinly then cut each ring in fourths (again, next time I'll do it in chunks)
• used 1½c carrots, sliced into thin wheels (this worked; she diced in the original)
  
• used leftover brown rice (brown is super-great in this!)
• as per a comment suggestion, added a can of black beans, mostly drained
  
• used water as liquid, plus added an extra ½c to compensate for the size of my CrockPot

After just 3 hours on high, the carrot wheels were tender and the apples were still not mushy — perfect! The seasonings were spot-on and very autumnal. DH said the black beans distracted from the texture of the rest of the dish, but I liked the heartiness they added, particularly since I used so little sausage (and it was sliced so thinly). Caspian was reticent, but ended up eating his entire portion (he also said we should make it tomorrow). DH and I each had two helpings. The reheated leftovers tasted great to me, but DH said the distinct flavors were lost.


Charlie: 8 for fresh, 6-7 for leftovers
Hilary: 8
Effort: 8 (chopping and lots of measuring)

Final Rating: 8 Sporks

Menu Plan Monday

Ever since I started using our picture-frame-turned-dry-erase-calendar to plan our meals, life has been so much easier! Well...not really, but it is a lot easier to say "look at the board" when my husband asks what's for dinner. And it's definitely less stressful to plan ahead for crazy days by cooking extra a day or two before. Plus, with my post-partum memory (or lack thereof), I love getting it all figured out in a moment of clarity.

In addition to putting the contents of our meal, I also write the total prep-and-cooking time required, to avoid realizing at 4:30 that the meat had to be thawed the day before. We're still perfecting our system, but for now, red marker means actual cooking, purple means leftovers/easy/eat out, and black means activity/event.

I plan lunches too, simply because I don't want any leftovers to go to waste in the back of the fridge. If it's on the board, we eat it. My week really should start on Thursday, since we grocery shop every Wednesday, but oh well. One of these days I'm going to start planning two weeks at a time, just so I can fill in the entire darn thing (yes, I'm a C like that). Most of my recipes are saved on Delicious, which is the most awesome bookmarking site ever.

SUNDAY
L ~ leftover (LO) Tuna & White Bean Salad with Pita Chips (this time made with pinto & navy mix and double tuna; best with garbanzos and single tuna) WIC-friendly!
D ~ crockpot (CP) Chicken & Brown Rice Casserole with canned green veggies (needs extra seasoning, like garlic powder and more salt; I used a large onion FAIL and should've left the lid off a little at the end so the rice would be less mushy FAIL; this was, however, my first time using foil in my 6qt crock to make a 4qt recipe WIN)
MONDAY
L ~ Clean Out the Fridge (ended up being baby spinach and LO turkey grilled cheese with LO acorn squash)
D ~ LO Chicken & Brown Rice Casserole with LO sweet potatoes
TUESDAY
L ~ ???
D ~ wheat spaghetti with frozen veggies in the sauce and frozen meatballs (LO from my Open House) with baby spinach salad and LO wheat rolls
WEDNESDAY
L ~ $7 McDonald's Day!
D ~ Papa Murphy's Pizza Day!
THURSDAY
L ~ Asbury College Cafeteria with Aunt Amie
D ~ Spaghetti Frittata (made with LO spaghetti and meatballs) with baby spinach salad
FRIDAY (pancake day!)
L ~ LO pizza
D ~ earned dinner with Steamrollers Club
SATURDAY
L ~ ???
D ~ scrambled eggs with bacon, fruit, and mini bagels
SUNDAY (sausage with LO pancake day!)
L ~ eat at in-laws
D ~ super-easy CP barbecue chicken with canned green veggies and boxed mashed potatoes