Easy Breakfast Sandwiches

I flip flop back and forth on eating weekend breakfasts at home or going out. Making it at home requires planning and effort. Going out requires me to wake up early enough that I don't have to wait for a table and putting on pants. I'm not always sure the trade off is worth it. 

Right now we're leaning in the direction of "not wearing pants" when it comes to weekend breakfasts. I've managed to streamline the process down to just one dirty pan and can get it done in the time it takes to brew a cup of loose leaf tea (my caffeine delivery vehicle of choice right now). I've even managed to sneak in a couple vegetables so I can pretend I'm a healthy adult. 

It starts off the day before with a quick trip to the store. I like to his Roswell Provisions in the Historic District to grab a couple fresh croissant and either ham or Canadian bacon from Patak's. The croissant will be a little stale by the next morning, but still delicious. But you can grab whatever bread and sandwich things you like. The point is that when you roll out of bed Saturday morning, starving, you can feed yourself without trying to remember where you left your shoes.

When it's time to fix breakfast, I start by heating up a glug of olive oil in a pan and sautéing either spinach or kale. Spinach cooks faster, but kale is less watery and I like it better with eggs.  You could do mushrooms, or peppers and onions instead. I'm not going to tell you how to live your life. While it cooks, slice open your croissants and scramble a couple eggs. For two people, I do three eggs. One egg per person isn't enough and two is too many. When your veggies are done, set them aside and put your pan back on the stove. Take a minute to heat up your breakfast meat now. It should only take a minute. When it's hot, layer it onto your sliced croissants. Pour your scrambled eggs into the hot pan and let them cook. Top your sandwiches with your cooked veggies, your eggs and close up your sandwich. 

I've timed myself doing this and it takes me about ten to fifteen minutes, which as long as you'd spend waiting for an egg mcmuffin at McDonalds and certainly less time than waiting for a table at Thumbs Up on Sunday morning. But it tastes way, way better and you can be in your jammies the whole time. I hear McDonalds frowns on that. 

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Chicken and Biscuits for a Wintery Day

Not my car, thankfully.

Tuesday afternoon, when Snowpocalypse 2014 struck Atlanta, I spent five hours on Roswell road between Sandy Springs and Roswell. And I was one of the lucky ones. I drive a Prius, which was designed for stop and go traffic and has a computerized system that prevents your tires from spinning out. I slid a few times on Glenridge and Riverside, but never for more than a few seconds and I never lost control of my vehicle. And I still had a full tank of gas when I was finally safe in my driveway. I feel incredibly lucky.

Five hours in the car gives you lots of time to think. When I wasn't contemplating which gas stations would be a good zombie apocalypse shelter, I made a recipe in my head, because that's what I do. I wasn't able to make it that night, because my nerves were shot after that long behind the wheel. (I am a nervous driver and prone to panic attacks. I am a super exciting person to be in a car with.) But I did make this the next day. Cold weather makes me crave soups, stews and hot breads pulled freshly from the oven. In my head, as I navigated the icy conditions, I planned out a meal that included the best of all these things: Chicken and biscuits.

As with many of my recipes, I try to lighten things up a bit. So instead of a heavy cream sauce, or cream of condensed soup, this uses a light chicken broth thicken with corn starch. I loaded it up on veggies, including the super trendy kale that I always seem to have around these days. Skinless chicken thighs provide the protein.

Why chicken thighs? First, they hold up to stewing better than breast meat. I've never made a chicken stew with breast meat that wasn't tough and stringy. But thighs? They become melt in your mouth delicious when braised slowly at low temperatures. Thighs get a bad rap for being fatty, but pull the skin off and ounce for ounce, they are nearly indistinguishable from breasts. Plus, they just taste more…chickeny than breast meat. Trust me on this one. Do this with thighs.

The biscuits are where I don't try to be healthy. I use Michael Ruhlman's Chicago biscuit recipe to top this stew. Someone less lazy would roll these biscuits out and cut them properly before laying them down, but I think drop biscuits taste just as good and don't make such a mess of my countertops. The combination of tender, puffy biscuits and savory chicken and vegetables is really quite magical. Take the extra time to make your own biscuits.

Chicken and Biscuits

For the stew…

1 pack skinless, bone in chicken thighs
3 ribs celery, rinsed and chopped
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups carrots, chopped roughly
2-3 small, waxy potatoes, chopped
1/2 cup mushrooms, chopped
2 cups leafy kale
6 cups chicken stock (I use Better than Bullion)
2 tablespoons cornstarch

For the biscuits…

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 ounces butter, chilled
6 ounces milk


In dutch oven, brown chicken thighs. Remove and set aside. Add chopped carrots, celery, onion and garlic. Once those are soft, add potatoes, mushrooms and kale. Add chicken back to the pot and cover with chicken broth. Place in a low oven (mine goes down to 270 degrees) and cover with heavy lid. Cook for two hours, or until chicken shreds easily with a fork and vegetables are tender. Mix cornstarch with enough water to make a slurry and add it to the pot. This will thicken your sauce.

For the biscuits, sift together flour, salt and baking powder. Cut in chilled butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Slowly beat in milk until mixture is pliable. I do all this in a food processor, so it's really fast. If you are rolling and cutting, let your biscuit dough chill for at least twenty minutes before rolling out. I'll do another post just on biscuits some day, but the secret here is keeping everything cold.

Top with generous spoonfuls of biscuit dough and and bake at 350 until brown. Serve immediately.

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Best Thanksgiving Recipes

I don't have many Thanksgiving recipes. I usually spend this holiday in east Texas with my in laws and they do all the cooking. That suits me just fine. Thanksgiving cooking is less about meal prep and more performance art, so it's nice to not have the pressure. But here are some recipes you might consider adding to your own table this year.  Several of them were already featured in my Fall Recipe feature last month, so feel free to peruse that for even more seasonal inspiration.

Pie is usually how most of us enjoy our pumpkin during the fall. But for those who can't get enough pumpkin flavored baked goods, here's a recipe for pumpkin muffins featuring rye flour.  Pumpkin Curry Soup would make a delicious, yet slightly untraditional starter course for the big meal.
Sweet potatoes are an important part of Thanksgiving. Here's a casserole combining sweet potatoes and orange juice for a treat that's delicious, but not as a heavy and gooey as the traditional one with the marshmallows.

Apple crisp is an easy, but still seasonal alternative to pumpkin pie for dessert. And it tastes good with ice cream.
That doesn't seem like very many recipes, does it? Looks like I have some work to do this month.

UPDATE: True to my word, I've written up more of my Thanksgiving appropriate recipes for your eating enjoyment.  It's still not a huge amount, but I'm feeling more respectable now.

If you are looking for a non-traditional take on sweet potatoes, try these Chili Lime Roasted Sweet Potatoes. I guarantee you won't miss the butter and marshmallows.  For a bread course, check out these No Knead Dinner rolls. They are so easy, I make them for weeknight dinners. And if you need an easy to prepare, but super fancy looking appetizer, you definitely want to use my Holiday Baked Brie. It uses spicy pepper jelly for a surprising twist on a traditional appetizer.

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What Can I Do With Fifty Six Pounds of Rice?

A couple weeks ago, Publix had their annual sale on rice. It's an incredible deal, a three pound bag for a dollar. They will let you buy four bags at a time. So, being the crazy food horder that I am, me or my husband hit Publix several times that weekend. We ended up with roughly fifty pounds, which when added to the rice that was left from last year's sale, gave us nearly sixty pounds of long grain white rice. I have a plethora of rice.

The first problem with purchasing this much rice is storage. Where do you put it all? And how do you keep the bugs from getting into it? I do two things: First, I emptied two of the bags into a gallon sized plastic milk jug that I'd cleaned out. Those plastic bags rice comes in are messy and fragile. When it's in a milk jug, I can pour it easily and the countainer is a bit sturdier for keeping insects out. Second, I packed the rest into my freezer. The cold will keep the bugs out and it also helps fill up my freezer so it'll run more efficiently. Double win.

The second problem is: What to DO with it? I haven't even mentioned yet the twelve pounds of parboiled rice my husband bought before he realized there was a difference. It's an ungodly amount of rice. Sure, I could just make rice and gravy for every meal from now until Christmas. Or I could steam it up alongside stir fries. Chicken and rice soup will probably happen as the weather cools.  But there's more you can do with rice than just let it soak up gravy.  It's a very versatile grain that can be the centerpiece of many meals.

One of the first things I did was make vegetarian Korean bibimbap, using this recipe from the New York Times as a guide. I left out the salmon, and I used blanched carrots, green beans and broccoli for the vegetable. Not traditional Korean cooking, I know. But tasty and different. Continuing with the Asian theme, I've also made Thai style fried rice a couple times. Just stir fry already cooked rice with egg, diced vegetables, soy sauce and some Thai basil from my garden. Add a little srirancha sauce for the heat and you've got a fast, tasty meal.  I've also got a ton of great curry recipes I've ganked from Smitten Kitchen and other places.

I've been working on a recipe for Arroz Con Pollo, which I'm almost ready to post. This combines chicken thighs, rice, beans and veggies with savory spices for an easy one dish meal. I've started looking at recipes for jambalaya and etouffee as well. I've got a great Chicken Tortilla Soup recipe that has a little rice in it as well.  And I haven't even looked into the possibility of finding a rice pudding recipe my husband will actually eat.

Am I worried about the carbs? Not really. I exercise, though not as much as I should. And you've probably noticed a theme to my cooking suggestions here: vegetarian. I find that leaving out meat for a couple of meals helps keep the calorie content down. I'm not worried about the lack of vitamins in white rice, because I eat a wide variety of fruits and veggies in my daily diet.  As long as I'm not eating JUST rice, which would be gross, I'm not worried about my nutrition. Sure, there are plenty of more nutritionally dense grains out there, but I doubt I can but them for a dollar for three pounds. 

So over the next year, expect more rice recipes from me as I try to whittle down my stockpile before it overwhelms us. 

This is not a reasonable amount of greens...

We hit both the Roswell and Alpharetta farmers markets this weekend. I must say, this is the most impressed I've ever been with the Roswell market on a first day. Last year, it was three guys selling cutsey birdhouses and some strawberries that were too ripe. This year, we bought so much food! We bought farm fresh eggs, dinosaur kale, rutabagas, romaine lettuce, strawberries and scallions. We managed to buy a bit from all of our usual farmers and talk to a few new ones as well. Oh and there's now a guy that'll sharpen your knives for you while you shop. I think the Roswell farmers market is finally starting to come together.

We went to the Alpharetta market next to round out our purchases. We got Chinese broccoli, zucchini, cucumbers, broccoli and mustard greens.

Funny story about the mustard greens. The seller said to us. "Two dollars for a sack full" and held up a recycled, plastic grocery sack. We said "Sure!" We like mustard greens, right? And so he filled up the sack all the way to the handles. Woah! So many greens! And then he pushed down, compressing them to the bottom, and filled the sack again! So yeah, definitely got our money's worth on that. We actually have three different kindss of braising greens in our fridge right now. The mustard greens, the dinosaur kale (rawr!) and some collards we bought last week from a grower in Alpharetta.

The plan is to make caldo verde at least once this week. And I have a great recipe for braising greens that I usually do with collards, but I think will go great with any kind of greens. I have a thought of adding greens to a home made tomato sauce and then poaching eggs in it. That's a trick I discovered a couple weeks ago and it's amazing. But other than that, i am wide open as far as meal ideas go. We have so much fresh produce crammed in the fridge right now, the challenge is to eat it all before it rots.

A Week of Soup

Yesterday, my husband and I were chatting about dinner plans, and whether we needed to go grocery shopping for the week. We somehow have ended up with an ungodly amount of food in our house, even without hosting any holidays this year. We're also feeling a little bloated after all the holiday cookies and pies. So soup! We will eat soup this week. Lovely, low fat, vegetable laden soup.

And as we are talking, I'm envisioning a great blogging experience for me. I shall make a week of soup! And there will be no repeats! And it will be awesome! Five nights of soup, since we go out on Saturday. Well, four really, because I seldom cook on Friday too. Oh, Thursday is New Years Eve? Well, I don't need to make dinner that night either. Three. Three nights of soup.

Sigh.

Soup #1: Turkey Veggie

We have an enormous smoked turkey taking up half our fridge right now. It needs to be eaten. So, soup! I made an easy soup of chopped carrots, onions, smoked turkey, yellow squash and potatoes in packaged chicken broth. Light, filling, and it used up a good portion of what I had on hand. I served it with fresh baked dinner rolls from my Joy of Cooking.

Soup #2: Turkey Tortilla Soup

I usually make chicken tortilla soup using chicken thighs. I sear the thighs in bacon grease or oil and then poach in water with onions, garlic and celery. After they are cooked, I set them aside to cool, then add chicken broth, canned tomatoes, rice, and carrots and chili powder. Let that cook, then add chopped jalapeno and the shredded chicken. I serve this with tortilla chips.

Soup #3: Spanish Chickpea Soup

I think by Wednesday, I will have had enough of smoked turkey. So something different. This is a new recipe and we're dying to try it. I shall post it later if we like it.

Shopping the Farmers Markets

I have a friend, who is interested in shopping the farmer's markets this year. So we took him with us on our weekly prowl, and I thought I'd post some of my strategies here as well. There was also great article in the Chicago Tribune that I found recently, that has some great ideas too.

From blog

First, get there early. Remember in "Ratatouille" when Collette is yelling about the first pick of the day? This is how you get it. It's not like Publix where they've got another hundred cases in the back, once they run out, they run out. At the Riverside market in Roswell, I've only managed to buy fresh eggs once, because he's always out by the time I make it there. Last year, I missed out on Georgia blueberries several times because I couldn't get there fast enough. I like to walk through the market once, before buying anything, looking for the best deals and at what's in today.

From blog

Next, bring bags. Most of the vendors will have thin plastic bags. Some of them are reused bags, some are new. However, it lowers their costs if you provide your own packaging. So I bring my own cloth bags. Also, you want to bring cash. none of the vendors in Roswell or Alpharetta are set up to take debit cards. We usually bring $40 and we spend it all. And you'll make them very happy if you can bring some fives or some singles.

From blog

Don't be afraid to ask what something is, or how to prepare it. I've learned alot of new ways to prepare vegetables since e started going to the markets. I as an infrequent consumer of collards, for example, and beets never made it into my bag. I only knew to simmer collards with onion and ham. And god knows what you did with a beet. Now I know a couple different ways to prepare both of these, because I asked.

Also, you'll want to spend some time prepping your veggies when you get home. We're all used to the convenience of pre-washed and chopped bag o' salad at the grocery store. You have to make this yourself. So right now I have a colander of sorrel rinsed and draining in my sink. Later on, I'll put it in a container, or bag and store it in the fridge, ready to throw in a salad or stir fry. It also helps them fit in the fridge a bit better. I always have trouble with that. Everything will last longer than you'd think. Its fresh from the ground, instead of being hauled across the country on a truck for a week, or flown in from South America. But if you don't get it into a form you'll use, then it doesn't matter how fresh it is.

From blog

You really have to embrace vegetables if you're going to shop at the Farmers Market. They become the star of the show, rather than the accompaniment. We're eating alot of salads and veggie stir fries right now, and grilling squash and peppers outdoors.

If you want an idea of when certain things will be available, you can always ask the vendors, or you can check out this very handy interactive map by Epicurious that will give you an idea of what's available this month. It also includes links to recipes, which can be very helpful when dealing with a glut of unfamilar veggies.

From blog

The Riverside Farmers Market in Roswell will be closed next weekend for the holiday. However, the Alpharetta Farmers Market will be open for business.

Doing more with less

We're trying to cut our budget right now to increase our savings. We don't have what I'd consider an extravagant lifestyle. Our only car is a paid for, beat to hell pick up truck, for example. So we've been looking for creative ways to live more frugally, without making us feel deprived of something we enjoy.

One of the blogs I've become a fan of recently, is Cheap Healthy Good, which is, as it says, about cooking that combines all three elements. A few month's ago, they had a great post about roasting one chicken and using the leftover meat for the rest of the week. I'm a fan of that approach. I've done this before with chickens and turkeys, and even hams. This week, I used a pork roast. Here's the menu for the week:

Sunday:
Dinner- Roasted pork with fingerling potatoes and a salad.

Monday:
Lunch- Left over pork, potatoes and salad
Dinner- Veggie lo mein, with chopped, leftover pork added

Tuesday:
Lunch- Left over lo mein (my husband), salad of romaine lettuce, carrots, broccoli, cucumbers and chopped roast pork (me)
Dinner- I had a banquet to attend for work, so the husband was on his own. He had more left over noodles.

Wednesday:
Lunch- Salads for both of us, witch chopped roast pork.
Dinner- Loaded baked potatoes, using roast pork as the protein.

So, not nearly as inventive or nutritional as CHG, but not a bad way to use up eight dollars worth of meat. I shall continue playing with this concept.