"Iron Chef" Orange Glazed Pork

A month or two ago, I bought a jar if Iron Chef Orange Sauce with ginger on clearance for half price. I decided to cook some pork chops with minced garlic, grated crystallized ginger and this sauce, adding water chestnuts, steamed vegetables in a light butter sauce and a can of green beans since the vegetable content looked low.

Dilly Beans

Haven't tried this one yet, I made my own version.

The first one is from the Ball Blue Book, 1974

DILLY BEANS

2 pounds green beans, trimmed
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
4 cloves garlic
4 heads dill
2.5 cups water
2.5 cups vinegar
1/4 c salt

Pack beans into hot jars leaving 1/4 inch head space. To each pint add 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper, 1 clove garlic and 1 head dill. (Mom put this on the bottom!) Combine remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Pour, boiling hot over beans, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Adjust caps. Process pints and quarts 10 minutes in boiling water bath.

Yields 4 pints

Note: let beans stand for two weeks before tasting to allow the flavor to develop.


Gayle is sure that this is the recipe her mom used (the page is awful stained in the book). Her sister disagrees and thinks it's this one from the Better Homes and Garden Home Canning Cookbook. (1973) The ingredients are similar. Again, a stained page.

2 pounds green beans, trimmed
1 cup white vinegar
2 tablespoons pickling salt
2 teaspoons dillweed
1/4 teaspon cayenne
2 cloves garlic, crushed.

Yields 4 pints. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Pickled Green Beans

During the weekend, I picked the ripe green beans in the garden. I never got around to cooking them. I was going to toss them in the compost when Gayle suggested using the 100 degree heat to pickle them. Why not?

So into the pint jar went salt, pepper and lots of garlic. Two handfuls of dill from the garden. Child shoved in green beans. I filled jar with equal parts white vinegar, balsamic vinegar and water.

In the sun it goes.

Crazy vegan Thai medley

There are nights where I make things for dinner that I would never share with company. They are too unpredictable and weird.

Like tonight.

I put two cups rice in the steamer with 2.5 cups Thai stock from Wegmans and 1.5 cups water. (to keep it from getting too spicy for my daughter)

In my skillet I combined:
- about 14 ounces(?) black beans
- about two to three cups stock
- two cups water
- one can water chestnuts
- two cups frozen French cut green beans
- chunks of 2/3 of a large golden delicious apple

It's simmering now. I'm hoping a slow simmer will allow the apples to cut the 'heat' of the broth and sweeten it some.

Lunch and dinner

Breakfast today was cream of wheat with strawberries.

Lunch today was Dole's Asian Crunch Salad with added raisins, peanuts and cashews. Little Miss was with her grandparents and I really wanted a salad.

Dinner will be leftover mac and cheese with leftover meat in it, leftover asparagus, and farm fresh corn the daughter brought home from the roadside stand.

And tomorrow will be the green beans I picked from the garden today.

My in-laws brought fruit too! Bananas, apples, dates. Veggies: Broccoli.

Houseguests and harvests

I had a houseguest for the holiday weekend, and this wasn't the kind of houseguest you sit around and cook for. This was the kind of houseguest with whom you go out gallivanting.

Because it was my best friend Shannon who now lives in Virginia, where quality Italian is scarce and Northern treats like bagels not made with any sort of authenticity, the first item on the agenda was one dozen bagels from New York Bagel and Deli.

Ah, bagels. Feast of carbohydrates. Flexible superfood.

When I had gestational diabetes, I couldn't even look at a bagel without my blood sugar spiking.

But half a bagel with melted cheddar cheese is a fabulous snack reminiscent of a soft pretzel. Tuna melts on a bagel could stop my heart. My crock pot spinach dip or hummus on half a toasted bagel... Egg sandwich on a jalapeno bagel... Cinnamon raisin bagel with some sort of nut butter for breakfast.

My husband made me an egg sandwich on a jalapeno bagel with tomato and basil feta. That was amazing.

But now the holiday picnics are over. The houseguest gone.

The entire family contributed to a dinner fit for this 95+ degree Pennsylvania day...
My husband made Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. We heated some leftover sausages from his mother's 4th of July Picnic. And my daughter and I went into the garden and harvested the first vegetables from the garden: green beans! We washed them and cooked them, leaving them still al dente and I thought they were fantastic.

My daughter, who never likes fresh green beans, didn't like these "very much" either, so I let her dip them in Wegmans Ginger Sesame vinaigrette dressing.

They disappeared.

Beans, Rice and Green Beans

I'm fairly certain I mentioned this is one of my leftover posts last week, but I'm not sure where it is so I'm uploading the picture here.

This is the quick meal I made when I thought I was making sausage and rice with greenbeans and I discovered that I didn't have sausage so, at my husband's suggestion, we made greenbeans, rice and black beans. I tried to whip up a seasoned white wine sauce, but it failed. The meal was bland so I topped with some garlic salt to salvage it, though the rest of the family liked it bland.

Update and Tator Tot Casserole.

I don't even know how I could have not updated this since Tuesday... Last night we had a 50% off coupon for our favorite Mexican restaurant, so today we had leftovers for lunch and fruity fred for breakfast. Somewhere on my camera, I have photos of Wednesday night's dinner which was Light Life Vegetarian stir-fry beef, sautéed in olive oil and soy sauce, sprinkled with oriental five spice and rolled into a warm wrap. With a side of fresh vegetables with dippings...

Now, I'm cooking some tator tots and I'm going to place them in a greased bread pan. I'm going to layer some thawed French cut green beans on top, with a hint of four-color pepper, and pour some Aldi brand Italian blend steam-in-bag vegetables with herb sauce.

Debating whether to add corn for sweetness...

I will probably add some crumbled boca burger for protein and cook it like a casserole. My family will love it.

Hot Dill Slop

Today's house special is far from gourmet. But it's snowing and we didn't have the stuff for the soup I originally planned.

This is a variation of Eileen Bresslin's vegan herbed potatoes recipe, beefed up as a skillet meal for a snowy winter day. (We had tea and Fred the Amish Friendship bread for breakfast. I've got him in the freezer.)

Ingredients:

• About three tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• Equal amounts low sodium soy sauce
• About two tablespoons fresh dill
• About 2/3 cup frozen French cut green beans
• 1 vegan original Boca burger, broken into crumbles
• 1 can sliced potatoes
• 1 can whole kernel corn, no salt added

In a skillet (I used my Le Creuset), put the oil, the soy sauce, and the dill. Heat over medium. When the skillet is hot, add other ingredients and cook until hot.

This turned out fabulous!

By the way, if you notice strange specks on my stove in this photo, it's dill that didn't make it into the skillet.

Cornbread and sausages

Tonight I'm planning cornbread and spinach-asiago chicken sausages. I had planned to make Eileen Bresslin's vegan cornbread recipe but I ran out of soy milk.

Eileen's recipe:

Preheat oven to 350. These muffins, or cornbread, need to go in a hot oven as soon as they're mixed.

• 1.5 cups yellow cornmeal
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1.5 cups soy milk
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix dry ingredients. In separate bowl, mix wet ingredients. Pour liquid into dry, mix until just combined. Bake 30-40 minutes. Note: You may not need quite that much oil.

I added parsley and flax seed to mine tonight.

Now for the sausage... I decided to try and make a sauce. In the bottom of the pan I started with:

• About 1/4 cup apple juice
• About 1/4 cup chicken broth
• About one teaspoon cornstarch

Whisk as bring to a boil to reduce and thicken. It smelled sweet, so I added:

• About 1/2 teaspoon four color peppercorns
• About 3/4 teaspoon garlic pepper
• About 3/4 teaspoon garlic
• About 1/8 teaspoon curry

After it seriously thickened, I added:

• three spinach asiago chicken sausages, sliced
• about 1 cup French cut green beans, frozen and thawed in the microwave

Then I served with the cornbread, using some of the excess sauce as gravy.

(Note: These are the same sausages I got at the warehouse club a few weeks ago and had in the freezer. We've eaten them in pasta sauce, and as sausage sandwiches, and now this funky recipe.)

Greenbean Caesar

I harvested about a pound of greenbeans from my garden. I started making greenbean caesar, but then we also had nachos. (Odd combo, I know, but we just got home from the park and we need to get food in someone's belly so we can get her in the tub.)

We used a special hot bean dip, mango salsa and cheddar cheese for the nachos. They were so good no one wanted any greenbeans so I think I'll wrap them up and serve with dinner tomorrow. I have jury duty so who knows if I'll be home in time to cook.

The original recipe came from the recipe software Darrell bought me for my old Mac Performa... ten years ago.

Greenbean Ceasar:
1.5 pounds fresh greenbeans or two 9-ounce packages frozen
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (I used EV olive)
1 tablespoon wine vinegar (red works, so does balsamic, so does apple cider in a pinch, and today I tried champagne. Fabulous, especially since my family detests a strong vinegar flavor)
1 tablespoon minced onion (I skip, though I may try fresh chives instead)
1/4 teaspoon salt (I skip)
1/8 teaspoon pepper (I use my grinder with my four-color peppercorns and I don't measure)
1 clove garlic, pressed

Topping
2 tablespoons breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons grated parmesan*
1 tablespoon butter or margarine*

Paprika

* To make this recipe vegan, I skip the cheese and the butter.

Cook beans to desired crispness. Then toss with all the other ingredients, except the topping. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put beans in oven safe dish. Combine topping ingredients and mix with fingers to form "crumbs." (I often skip this and just sprinkle whatever I want on top, including other seasonings.) Sprinkle over beans. Add paprika to top if desired. Bake, uncovered, for 15 minutes.

Chicken à la diable

The last few days have been a blur of unexciting food. Hamburger-helper style pasta, broccoli-cheese omelet wraps, breakfast of Bob's Red Mill hot cereal. Snack of canned pineapple and graham crackers with peanut butter.

I was surfing the 'net this morning thinking I would make something with that nice organic chicken breast my husband bought last week. So I did some random searches and ended up on about.com's French cooking area. Chicken Veronique sounded interesting, but I don't have grapes... I technically don't have the ingredients for this either, but I'm going to wing it.

Big surprise, eh?
(As a side note: Last night my husband went to the store and spent $20. The tortoise needed greens. I may stop later today because I'm dying for Crôque Monsieur... though I don't think Giant carries Grûyere...)

From about.com:
Chicken à la diable
"Spicy deviled chicken is breaded and then fried in butter for an amazing taste explosion. The secret to its mildly fiery flavor: mustard and cayenne."
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 40 minutes
Ingredients:

* 3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
* ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
* 2 eggs, beaten
* 6 boneless chicken breast halves, cut in half lengthwise
* ¾ cup dry breadcrumbs
* 3 tablespoons butter

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Melt the butter in a roasting pan. In a small bowl, mix together the mustard and cayenne pepper. Brush the mustard onto the chicken, and then dip the chicken in eggs and dredge in the breadcrumbs. Arrange the chicken breasts in the roasting pan and bake for 30-40 minutes, turning once. Serve immediately.

Makes 6 servings.

Okay, where's the frying?
Hmmm....
Let's see what I can do with this...

Angel's ethnically-confused chicken
So... I cut the chicken breasts in three slices each because they seemed thick.
I made a sauce of 1 tablespoon soy mayonnaise, 2 tablespoons spicy brown mustard and 1 tablespoon saffron-ginger-mango Indian dipping sauce.
I slathered the chicken with this strange concoction.
I mixed my homemade breadcrumbs (which some are breadcrumbs and others are more like tiny croutons) with parsley about 3:1. (Three being breadcrumbs.)
I rolled the chicken in the crumbs and arranged in my biggest pyrex dish.
And now I'm baking at 400 degrees for 2o minutes and then flipping and baking some more.

I plan to serve with greenbeans. I think I have a new favorite way to serve greenbeens. I cooked them in the microwave, poured a drizzle of olive oil on them and fried them on high until kind of crisp.

Note: I would cut the mustard for the sauce on this chicken in half next time. The family devoured a pound of chicken in about ten minutes so I suppose it was yummy...