Miso Glazed Salmon Filet

 I got some news last week. My back is in shambles. I have a protruding disc and I have degenerative disc disease. I also am in need of both hips being replaced because of osteonecrosis. So, not only am I trying to bounce back from that toxic mattress, I have to deal with these other issues, as well.
It was suggested that I make an appointment with a health coach and talk to them about gastric bypass. I'm really not interested in that. I'm not saying that it won't happen, but I'd like to try to take the weight off myself, first.
I started by eating salads with a couple of boiled eggs on them for dinner for the past 2 or 3 nights. It got old rather quickly. I opted to go with a lean protein, salmon, for tonight.

First, though, I needed to make a side dish to go with the salmon. This is a recipe from Maangchi called Signumchi Namul. Click on the name to view the recipe. It's a super simple spinach recipe that takes, literally, just a few minutes to prepare.

It's a delicious addition to any Asian meal.

Now, onto the Miso Glazed Salmon.

Miso Glazed Salmon
makes 1 serving

1 4-oz. salmon filet
2 teaspoons white miso paste
1 teaspoon low-sodium soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon coconut palm sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
Chopped scallion and toasted sesame seeds for garnish

In a small bowl, combine miso paste, soy sauce, sugar, vinegar and sesame oil to make marinade. Whisk to combine. Reserve 1 teaspoon of marinade.
In a small bowl, add salmon filet. Pour over marinade. Cover and refrigerate 1-3 hours.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly oil a cast iron skillet with avocado oil. Put salmon in skillet, skin side down, discard marinade. Bake 12-14 minutes or until not quite done. Pour reserved marinade over the salmon, put under broiler and broil for 1-2 minutes.
Garnish with chopped green onions and toasted sesame seeds.

Enjoy!

Creamy Chicken Orzo

 It's been snowing off and on all day today. We wanted some serious carby comfort food. Bob took out a chicken breast for dinner. Normally, I'd cut it up and marinate it in yogurt and make some Indian inspired dish with a side of rice, but I didn't want that today. I wanted pure comfort food. I found this recipe online and used it for inspiration. Click here to view. I reworked the recipe.

This recipe starts out with me poaching the chicken breast in some chardonnay, water, salt, peppercorns and 4 cloves of garlic that I put through my garlic press. I let it cook and I diced it up.

Then I diced up celery, onion and carrots.

I minced up a few cloves of garlic. I didn't put these through the press because I didn't want that heavy of a garlic flavor.

Gather the rest of your ingredients.

Saute the vegetables in some olive oil in a pot with a heavy bottom. I use my enameled cast iron Dutch oven.

Cook for about 5-7 minutes and then add the garlic, broth and orzo pasta.

Stir to combine. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer for about 20 minutes or until the liquid is mostly absorbed by the pasta.

Just as it is finishing up, add in 1/4 cup of heavy cream and mix it in.


Creamy Chicken Orzo
4 servings
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 medium yellow onion, chopped
3 ribs celery, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 cups chicken stock
1-2 cups shredded cooked chicken
1/2 pound orzo
1 teaspoon dried parsley
Salt & pepper, to taste
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 cup heavy cream

Heat the olive oil in a large pot. Add the onion, celery, and carrots and cook until the onion is translucent, about 7 minutes. Add garlic and cook about 1 minute longer
Add the chicken stock, increase the heat to high, and bring to a boil.
Once the stock is boiling, stir in the chicken and orzo. Reduce the heat to medium and add the parsley, salt, thyme, and pepper.
Simmer until the veggies are tender, the orzo is creamy and amost of the liquid has been absorbed, about 20 minutes. Add heavy cream and mix to combine.

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Hawaiian Loco Moco

 I hadn't heard of Hawaiian Loco Moco until recently. I'm not sure why that is and I'm not sure why I waited over 50 years to taste it, but this recipe will be going into our regular rotation. There are 4 components: the base of steamed rice, the burger patty, the gravy and the sunny side egg that goes on the top. It's delicious! It's economical. It's very filling and, the best part is that you only need 1/2 pound of ground beef for 2 servings.

I did serve this with Hawaiian Mac Salad.

 Very quickly, the the ingredients for this salad are:
Salad macaroni
Grated carrot
Minced onion
Finely diced red bell pepper
Cubed cheddar cheese

The dressing is:
Mayonnaise
Milk
Apple Cider Vinegar
Sugar
Salt & pepper, to taste

It's very simple. I can't give you measurements because I don't measure.

Now, back to the scheduled program of Loco Moco.

This is absolutely delicious! You have to put a crispy edged sunny side up egg on the top. The yolk mixes with the gravy on the ground beef patty and makes this delectable, silky sauce.

Hawaiian Loco Moco
2 servings

Prepare 1 cup of rice. You can use jasmine, basmati or just regular white rice. It's up to you. Rice is cooked using a 2:1 ratio. That means for every 1 cup of rice, use 2 cups of water. You don't even need a measuring cup. You can use whatever vessel you have on hand. Just use 2 water to every 1 rice. Rice cooks, covered for 20 minutes.

1/2 pound 93% lean ground beef
2 or 3 dashes of Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon seasoned salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder


Mix together in a bowl and form into 2 patties. Cook in a heavy bottomed skillet (we used cast iron) until desired internal temperature is reached. I prefer my burgers to have no pink. Remove from the skillet, tent with foil to keep warm, and set aside.
In the meantime, make the gravy.

For the gravy:

1 tablespoon butter
1/2 medium onion, diced
1-2 mushrooms, sliced (I diced mine as my husband has difficulties eating some food unless it's finely diced)
3/4 cup beef broth
2 teaspoons shoyu soy sauce (use regular if you don't have shoyu, it's perfectly fine)
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon ketchup
2-1/2 teaspoons cornstarch mixed with a bit of water to make a slurry

Cook the onions and mushrooms, in the butter,  in the same skillet that you cooked the burgers in, making sure to scrape up the browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Once everything is cooked down, about 5 minutes or so over medium heat, add the rest of the ingredients except the cornstarch. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, simmer 3-5 minutes. Add the cornstarch slurry, bring back to a boil, whisking continually, until thickened. Remove from heat, cover and let set for a few minutes while you make 2 sunny side up eggs.

You will also want to slice up a green onion to use as garnish.

On a plate, add a mound of steamed rice, top with a burger patty, top that with gravy, top all with a sunny side up egg and garnish with green onions.

Enjoy!

Super Bowl Grub

 I roasted a chicken last night for dinner. Bob wanted it and I told him that I had no problem with it but we were going to use the leftovers to make his Super Bowl dinner. I'm not a football fan. I don't watch the game at all. I wouldn't know a quarterback from a linebacker, nor do I care to. I do like to make Bob a good dinner, though, and I'll use anything as an excuse to do so.

I got online and did a Google search and found a collection of like 125 recipes that use leftover chicken. I found one for Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese. It sounded good. I had everything on hand to make it. I did cut the recipe in half because, as written, it just made way too much for the two of us.
I also found a recipe for Mexican Street Corn Casserole. Again, I had all the ingredients on hand and it sounded good and I've been meaning to make some Mexican street corn and haven't quite gotten around to it yet. So, I figured tonight would be the night to do that.

Any good mac & cheese recipe starts out with a boatload of shredded cheese. This one is no different. Do yourself a favor and do not buy pre-shredded cheese. This is extra sharp cheddar and mozzarella. I froze the leftover cheese for another time.

It's amazing, to me, that I had some fresh cilantro on hand. I chopped this up for the corn recipe.

The mac and cheese starts out with the typical roux. The different thing about this recipe is that the macaroni noodles are cooked in the sauce rather than cooked separately in salted, boiling water.

The sauce for the mac and cheese has all the components as buffalo chicken: buffalo sauce and ranch dressing.

This Mexican Street Corn Casserole was delicious. There's no two ways about it. I did add a can of rinsed black beans to it because I thought they would taste good. It didn't disappoint. I'll make this recipe in the future.

What I like about the Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese is that it's a one -pot, stove top recipe. It worked out well because I had the corn casserole in the oven while I was making this recipe on the stove.

Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese. I'll make this recipe again, with some tweaks. First, I'll leave out the cream cheese. It wasn't needed, in my opinion. I'll cook the noodles separately, as well. I'll cut back the cheese to 1 cup total. I'll up the blue cheese (I used gorganzola) to 1 cup and I'll melt that into the sauce that coats the noodles. I'll also leave out the bacon. It wasn't needed. As written, the recipe is roughly 3.2 stars out of 5. I made this recipe exactly as written except I cut it in half.

Mexican Street Corn Casserole. This is going into my regular recipe rotation. I like my addition of black beans. I'll leave that in there. This recipe was 4.1 stars out of 5.

Here is a photo of our Super Bowl dinner tonight.
Bob said he hopes the Eagles win. Me? I don't really care, but I'll say the Eagles, too, because we're going to see the band The Eagles in a week. The tickets were our Christmas present to ourselves. I'm super excited about that.

Cowboy Calico Beans

 Bob and I are trying something a bit different this month. I found a menu template and I sat down and figured out 31 main dishes for dinner. I filled it in with all sorts of different ideas. I put in everything from Cod Mappas to breakfast for dinner. I let Bob choose what he wants for dinner the following day.

He chose Cowboy Calico Beans.

I've made this recipe multiple times since we moved out here into the country. It's become a favorite.

All good recipes, in my opinion, start out with a chopped onion. This was no exception.

I used 1/2 of a green bell and 1/2 of a red bell. Color is a great thing in recipes as you eat with your eyes first.

This recipe contains four different types of beans. I ordered a case of butter beans from Amazon so that I could have them on hand. That's how much we like this recipe. Butter beans are hard to find here locally.

Everything cooks together, slowly, for 45 minutes to an hour.

This is a perfect ending to a cool and blustery day.


Cowboy Calico Beans

1 pound lean ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1/4 cup ketchup
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons yellow prepared mustard
1 15-oz. can butter beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-oz. can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-oz. can lima beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-oz. can pork and beans

Cook beef with onion and bell peppers until cooked through and no pink remains. Drain. Add to a large pot with all the other ingredients. Cook, covered, over low heat for 45-60 minutes until everything has melded together. Make sure to stir every now and then to stop from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

**You can also add all the ingredients to a slow cooker and cook on low temperature 8 or so hours.

The Start of Thanksgiving Cooking 2022

 I'll admit that I use broth in a box throughout the year. It's not that I can't make my own stock. I absolutely can. It's just that usually I have no room in my fridge or freezer to horde chicken or turkey carcasses.
That changed. Our old little chest freezer gave up the ghost on us. We didn't realize it, and we lost a full freezer full of food. We bought a new chest freezer, however. I stocked up on several turkeys and turkey breasts. We don't eat turkey nearly enough throughout the year. I made us a turkey dinner, using one of the frozen turkey breasts that I had squirreled away, just because, not long after we moved up here to Kelpie Kapers Farm. I found whole turkeys for 98 cents per pound at Walmart. I bought 3 of them. Likewise, I found turkey breasts at Safeway for $12 or less. I bought 2. I purposefully kept room in that chest freezer to store my bones so that I can start making my own stock. My goal is to become less dependent on the supermarket supply chain and slowly work over to using my own home produced items. I will start with growing amaranth and quinoa next year.
I'm getting ahead of myself. I tend to get a bit excited when I talk about my self-sufficiency goals.

Back to making stock. The key component to any successful and delicious Thanksgiving feast is a good homemade turkey stock. Safeway had turkey necks for sale. I bought a pack of 3 of them. They were a bit on the spendy side, at over $3, for a piece of turkey that nobody really ever thinks of...but I sure do! Not only do turkey necks make a delicious stock to use for dressing and/or gravy, the meat off of the necks is some of the most delectable meat on the whole bird! It's just a major pain in the keister to pick it off the bones. That's why I only do it when I want to make a dinner that I want to impress Bob with.

I decided a few weeks ago to start collecting vegetable scraps to make my turkey stock with. They hung out in the freezer for a bit.

I bought my vegetables for Thanksgiving with the idea of most of them being multipurpose. I'm adding chopped fennel to my dressing this year. I bought a fennel bulb with a lot of fronds and stalks on it so that I could use it in my stock. Not only that, but I saved my asparagus ends for the stock. A word to the wise and because my sister, Ginger, gave me a heads-up about putting asparagus ends into stock. Too many of them will cause your stock to have a bitter taste to it. Use them sparingly. I'll still save them because I like to use them to make cream of asparagus soup. That's a different blog post for another time, though. 

I added in a shallot that I simply cut in half. I didn't bother peeling it. There's no need. The solids are all strained out and discarded (except for the turkey necks). I added in 3 or 4 bay leaves, celery, carrots, a whole head of garlic that I cut in half. I left the skin on the head of garlic. It's like the shallot. There's no need to peel it. I also added in a couple of parsnips that had seen better days that I had in the crisper drawer.  I also added in some Penzey's Bavarian Herb blend. It has all the good stuff in it. Some kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper finished it all off.

I love that we have well water up here and we don't have to use city water. I added in 2 quarts of cold water and a good glug of a nice oaky chardonnay.
I put this over high heat just until it came to a boil and then I turned the heat down to low and let it simmer. It reduced by over a third. I added another half quart of water to it and let it condense down again.
When all was said and done, it took around 2-1/2 hours to get a quart of some rich looking turkey stock to use in my stuffing and gravy recipes on Thursday.

Cheers!

Making Peach Jam #EveryBitCountsChallenge

 It's that time of year that I start preserving different things for wintertime use. This is the first thing I've canned this year. I tend to follow the insert that comes in the box of Sure Jell pectin when it comes to canning. Those recipes are tried, true and they never fail. They are tested for safety. They take the guesswork out of it.

I will tweak things slightly, like seasonings, herbs, etc., but I leave the main components alone.

I digress.

I'm getting in on the Every Bit Counts Challenge. I'm a bit late to the party, but better late than never. This challenge is that every day in August, you make something to put up for the winter. It doesn't matter if it is canned, dehydrated, freeze-dried, frozen or you are simply making seed starter pots out of toilet paper rolls. It all counts. The past few days, I was working my way through 20 pounds of fresh peaches. The majority went into the freezer except the one that I ate and the ones I used to make this batch of jam.

So, without further ado, here's how I make Peach Jam.

I love looking at these golden jars of peach perfection!

This recipe starts out with 4 cups of chopped/smashed peaches. Make sure to measure carefully. 

 
In a separate bowl, measure out 5-1/2 cups of granulated sugar. When I'm canning, I make sure that I buy pure cane sugar. I don't want to use sugar that is made from beets. I'm going to attempt to grow out sugar beets next year and make my own sugar, so stay tuned for that...but for this recipe, it's pure cane sugar all the way!

I had Bob get out my big pot. Unless I'm canning quart jars, I like to use this pot to can in. It's just easier to handle for me.

I mixed the chopped peaches with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and a box of Sure Jell pectin. This is a case where I deviate from the recipe. I don't use fresh lemons. I use bottled lemon juice. Every single time that I've ever bought fresh lemons to use, something has come up and they turn on me. I find that if I just buy bottles of lime and lemon juice, they can last in the fridge almost indefinitely. I may go through a bottle of each per year.

This gets combined in a large pan. I used my enameled cast iron Dutch oven. It is the perfect size to make a batch of jam in.

You cook the peaches, pectin and lemon juice with a scant 1/2 teaspoon of butter until it comes to a full, rolling boil. What that means is when you stir it hard, you can't stir the bubbles down.

After the mixture comes to a full, rolling boil, you add in all the sugar at once. Just dump it in. The sugar actually becomes a liquid. That's why you measure out the sugar before you start and put it in a bowl. That way, it's just ready to go.

You bring that mixture back up to a full, rolling boil and boil it for exactly one minute. I have a clock that has a second hand on it so I can be uber precise with the timing.

Before I got started cooking, I got out what I would need. I put some white vinegar into a dish. I got a couple of paper towels. I use the paper towels dipped into the vinegar to clean the rims of the jars.

I filled the jars leaving 1/4 inch of headspace. You can eyeball it. You don't have to measure. They do sell a gadget that will measure for you, if you're more comfortable doing it that way.

This is the homemade rack that Bob made for me. He used floral wire to connect the lids together. It works perfectly.
If you don't have this stuff, you can put a kitchen towel in the bottom. You just need something to keep the bottoms of the jars off of the bottom of the pan.

I put my lids into a pan of simmering water. Some people don't do this. I do this.
I don't see how it will hurt anything, to be honest.

I put the lids and rings on each jar and screwed them on until they are just finger-tight. You don't want to crank them down super tight. Just barely finger-tight is enough. I put these into the pot so that they weren't touching.

I put the lid on, turned the heat on and brought it up to a boil. Once it came to a full boil, I set a timer for 10 minutes. Once that was done, I turned off the flame and set another timer for 5 minutes. That's when I removed the jars to set on a towel lined baking tray. I put my jars on baking trays because it's easier for us to move them around that way. I covered them with another towel and within 30 minutes, I heard that sound that is music to a canner's ears...the ping of a lid sealing...6 times, one for each jar of peach jam.

I don't really use peach jam on toast or sandwiches. I use peach jam as a base for other things, like BBQ sauce, Asian sauces, etc. I'll make an odd piece of toast here and there, but I made this for other things.

Here you have these peachy jars of perfection!

If you want to view the full recipe, look at the insert that comes in a box of Sure Jell pectin.

#EveryBitCountsChallenge