Sweet Rice

About a year and a half ago, my daughter wasn't feeling well and a friend suggested arroz con leche for her. That led to this:

http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2010/04/arroz-con-leche.html?m=1

I recall she didn't care for it, but today, while about to make myself cream of wheat, I saw the five pound bag of rice and thought... Hmmmm...

So in a saucepan, heat until a nice melted, smooth sauce:
- 14 ounces sweetened condensed milk
- 1 cup water
- 1 cup Very Vanilla soy milk
- 1 teaspoon fresh ground cinnamon
- 5 fresh strawberries, diced
- 3-4 tablespoons raisins

Add to steamer with one cup rice. Steam 40 minutes to an hour.

Pork and rice leftovers

Today I took the leftovers of that 2 lb pork loin basted in apple "jus" and chopped it into bite sized pieces. I added it, all the leftover "jus," about two cups peas and two cups cauliflower to the Le Creuset skillet and simmered it over very low heat while some rice cooked in the steamer.

Served over rice and was super yummy.

Tonight we're having spaghetti and sausage. I'm cooking the sausage now and will divvy it into smaller portions to freeze for other meals in addition to tonight.

Also, last night we went to the warehouse club where we primarily stocked up on paper products and soap. And my husband's $36 pack of refill razor blades that last him about a year. We also got pet supplies. And some groceries: tuna, cheddar, 12 pack of hunt's sauce, six pounds of rotini. A 3-pack of silk Vanilla soy milk. Apple juice.

Vegan stirfry

I didn't get a photo of today's lunch, a simple and plain affair for which a friend joined us.

I heated the Le Creuset skillet with about a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, cold-pressed, and a teaspoon of sesame oil, swirled around the pan with my hand. I fried the last serving of homemade seitan. Added a bag of the steam-in-bag spring vegetables with citrus sauce from Aldi.

Had rice cooking (1 cup) in the steamer. Combined it in the skillet (only about half the rice). Heated and stirred. Added about a 1/2 teaspoon four color organic pepper and a teaspoon of garlic salt.

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.

Italian Style Veggie and Rice skillet

One more day and my husband gets paid. The cupboards are getting bare, but yet are older stocked with items like eggs, flour and butter.

I took a bag of steam in bag Italian vegetables, with some sort of mildly seasoned sauce, and the last Boca burger. I threw the veggies in the microwave and fried the veggie burger in olive oil and butter and a dash of soy sauce. I chopped it up, added the veggies, a pinch of four-color pepper, and the leftover two cups of cooked white rice. Added some garlic powder and a little over a tablespoon of butter to keep the rice from sticking to the skillet and...

Voilà.

Far from fabulous. But a fairly healthy lunch.

Leftovers in lemon-butter sauce

Today for breakfast we had raisin bran and I forgot to have my second breakfast. That made the morning challenging.

It's cold and rainy so my multigrain pizza crust didn't rise properly (still tasted fairly good and kind of like a soft pretzel). But the pan pizza came out nicely.

The perfumed pineapple, well, my daughter over perfumed it and I over-buttered the crumbs again so it was far from perfect but edible.

But I made up for all of this with dinner.

I started with some white rice in the steamer.
Assembled the following:

• Le Creuset skillet
• 1 clove garlic sliced
• extra virgin olive oil (cold pressed)
• butter
• lemon juice
• 1 crown broccoli, chopped into bite-sized pieces (2-3 cups?)
• 2 chicken sausages with apple (from Trader Joe's), sliced
• 1 chicken breast prepared "chicken frances" leftover from the diner last night, chopped
  
• leftover rice from the diner

• 1 slice garlic bread from the diner

Okay, so I started with two tablespoons of olive oil and a slice of butter in the skillet as I dropped the garlic in on low. I added the chicken, because it came out of the fridge and was cold. Then the sausage. Then the broccoli. Every time the liquid got absorbed, I pushed everything to one side of the skillet (now at medium heat) and added a couple tablespoons of butter and equal amounts of lemon juice and blended them vigorously. Then I let the sauce seep to the other side of the pan and mixed everything up again.

I probably made this little batch of sauce three times and then I added the leftover rice from the diner and two heaping serving spoons of white rice from my steamer. More vigorous stirring.

Then, when the liquid disappeared and the rice started to stick, I moved everything to the coolest side of the skillet, reduced the heat to low, and added another couple tablespoons olive oil and mixed it up one last time.

And served.

I put the garlic bread in the skillet (once I pushed everything to the side, again) and fried each side a minute to get it warm without getting it soggy. Who says you can't reheat garlic bread?

All in all, I used 3/4 stick of butter and equal amounts lemon juice for the sauce. I love lemon-butter sauce.

Arroz con leche

My daughter has a fever today, and a friend recommended Arroz con leche for her.
I found this recipe (and some more complicated) on Cooks.com:
http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1913,144182-233205,00.html

This was their list of ingredients:
1/2 c. white rice, uncooked
1/2 cinnamon stick
1 1/2 c. water
1 c. sweetened condensed milk
2 1/2 tbsp. raisins
Cinnamon for garnish

I didn't quite have that, so I mixed this is the steamer:

• 1 cup white rice
• 1 tablespoon cinnamin
• 3 cups soymilk (I wish I had almond milk)
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1/2 cup raisins
  

Sausage and rice with veggies

Tonight I prepared Trader Joe's chicken sausage with apples (3 sausages) in my Le Creuset skillet with about 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil and 2 cloves fresh garlic. When the sausage finished cooking, I sliced it and added the broccoli from one broccoli crown and a couple cups of fresh chopped cauliflower. I let that sizzle for a while until the vegetable soaked up all the "juice" and then I added another tablespoon olive oil, the last of my French butter (probably three tablespoons) and about three tablespoons champagne vinegar.

And then I added the long grain white rice I had cooked in the steamer with garlic powder and four color black peppercorn. (It was 1.5 cups unprepared rice) And stirred it all up and let it cook until the rice turned a soft yellow (and wanted to stick to the bottom as I stirred. I stirred constantly.)

I was nervous about it because of the champagne vinegar, but it was good. Really good. I had two plates and I'd really like another...

Sausage and rice

A very simple dinner tonight... We heated up some leftover white rice with spinach, mixed in some chicken sausage, the last of the stuff from the warehouse club with the asiago and spinach, cut into tiny pieces. And some imported French butter. C'est tout.