didsblog

1- This was a week ago: It’s steak, with sauteed red onions, little mini biscuits (made by quartering instant biscuits) and grilled romaine hearts.

2- This is tonight: Pea Soup with Grilled Polenta. The soup was simple, and fantastic. I rendered down some bacon, poured off most of the fat, and cooked down garlic and onion in the remaining hints of bacon grease. Then I added some seasoning, 3 cups of chicken stock, brought that to a boil, and then 2 bags of frozen peas and about half the bacon. Let that cook, hit it with the stick blender, and a little bit of half and half.

The polenta was one of those pre cooked loafs you can buy, with some olive oil and cooked on the less than awesome grill on our range. Turned out pretty good. Mostly ’cause of the olive oil.

I totally fixed my site.

Thanks to people named gorie and flux who got me to back up the right shit at the right time.  Everything is back to normal.

Based on what I understand, the likely problem with the site before as the spam blogger plugin, and since I don’t get that many comments anyway, I nuked them.   Send me a pm/email/text/whatever.

It’s the day before payday. Hence we take what we have remaining in the fridge and hope a wizard shows up.

So I had turnips, lemon, half an onion and chicken. I chopped up the turnips and boiled them till they were soft, and then tried to turn them into some kind of a mash, but I think they had absorbed too much water, so it ended up a little too runny, so I used Mr. Stick Blender to make it into a puree, which is way higher class and cooler anyway.

The chicken was seasoned with lemon and dill, and I intended to cook them in a foil pouch. Once again I didn’t cook them long enough/used too much foil, so they weren’t done. However, I am a smart boy, and have discovered the perfect usage for the grill on the range in the new place. It doesn’t do a great job of cooking something to completion, but it’s fantastic for finishing/adding flavor/grill marks. So I finished the chicken on the grill.

I also tossed some onions with some flour and fried them in oil. They were really good, although visually I’m not really sure they work on the plate.

I haven’t knowingly had a turnip before, and I assumed the flavor wouldn’t really go with the lemon/dill chicken, but it actually complimented it well.

In all, a winner.

Sausage was cooked in beer and then finished on the grill. Potatoes and onions were cooked with some cajun seasoning in a skillet.

The pork was just one of those pre packaged marinated hormel things. Best one I’ve had so far though. Oddly I believe the flavor was “roast”. Which apparently tastes like delicious.

The cabbage was just cooked down in vinegar, chicken stock and some sugar. I added fresh baby spinach at the last minute. A really nice contrast in colors and texture (that I then hid under the pork…).

Our hero has been to the gym for 7 consecutive weekdays now. This means he’s dead tired and didn’t update last night, so here’s two dinners.

Last night: This was an attempt at some kinda pasta in meat sauce. I got my ratios of meat/sauce/veggies/pasta all off and there were more onions and pasta than sauce. I guess maybe it’s more of a salad. The meat is pork sausage. This actually tasted really good, and looks nice. It’s just not what I set out to make.

Tonight was baked tofu with a jarred peanut sauce, sauteed zucchini and carrots, and spinach. This was a home run. I cut the tofu a little differently than I’m used to, and the thinner, longer strips baked up better. The sauce, for being some of the cheaper stuff in the market, was really good.

This is a variation on a dish I usually make with short ribs. At first I thought it was just trashy, but it’s grown on me a lot. I browned off the roast (and even used butcher’s string to tie it up!), then sauteed onions and garlic, added a large can of tomato sauce, some oregano, and a can of lemonaid concentrate. That simmered for about 3 hours, and then I tossed in some baby carrots for the last 45 minutes or so.

The result was fantastic. The beef is just falling apart, and the sauce develops a really nice flavor that isn’t too aggressive. The carrots made a really nice addition. Really delicious and really easy to make.

(from Panda Express even, yum)

The fans might recall “Slosh Together Chicken” (aka chicken braised in tomato sauce).

This was chicken, red potato, onion, diced tomato, basil, tomato sauce, chicken stock and love. (wherein love is garlic)

Super good fantastic tasting yum.

Back to the grill pan after the lessons of Monday. Works much better. Old favorite, but so good. Loved the way the squash turned out.