Howdy Butterballs!
Long time no eat! Turns out that teaching keeps you a little bit busy, but don't feel singled out! Not only have I not cooked for you in months, I haven't cooked for the husband or myself either. When you spend all your time at work or passed out in exhaustion on the couch, you cook things like spaghetti sauce, tacos, spaghetti sauce, or McDonald's. The beauty of all of these things is that they all pair beautifully with cheap red wine. This laziness also has a tendency to bleed over into weekend days. I find that if I can't put it in the Crockpot with wine, garlic and an onion and expect reasonably tasty results, I will make Papa John's (which would not be so bad, except I would rather pay the $3 delivery fee than walk the block and a half from my house to their storefront to pick it up).
With the holiday season upon us, music teachers find themselves faced with an additional seasonal task of preparing and executing the annual holiday program. As this is the very first program I will be preparing entirely on my own, I find myself flying into a logistical obstacle course. I am so lucky to have the amazing students that I do. They are enthusiastic, adorable and eager to show off their seasoned woodblock skills, and I am already exhausted and we are still 10 days out. The lack of cooking going on in my house has also resulted in a complete lack of left-overs for lunching purposes. Luckily my room has a closet that I keep filled to the brim with goldfish crackers, fruit and bags of popcorn, or I would probably be SOL, and no, not a needle pulling thread (Ha! 10 points for a superfluous Sound of Music joke... anyone?). I recently came to the conclusion that this will probably not improve anytime soon, so I made the addition of dried fruit, little baby hummus cups from Costco and these super fancy quinoa chips! Hopefully this will prevent me from developing rickets.
In the spirit of this busy holiday season, I bring you good tidings of all things spicy. As we go deeper into the wrapping paper, plastic tree and cookie abyss, I find that one more hearty stew or pot roast will likely push me over the edge. I love a good bourguignon as much as the next American, but I also find more and more everyday that cooking with wine is nice, but makes me wish there was more wine left for me when I am finished (greedy, greedy beef shank...). This fact coupled with the feeling of deep and utter dread I felt upon coming home faced with the prospect of yet another dinner made out of some nondescript animal's "burger" sparked within me a rebellious revolution. So naturally, I turned to burger's sassy porcine cousin, sausage! I also was fortunate enough to have in my possession, one bag of frozen jumbo shrimp. Pasta was out, so I settled on our Costco tub of quinoa. Even I was surprised with how good this turned out, considering that I had no vegetables to speak of and was feeling selfish about my cooking "liquid".
To make my faux jambalaya you will need:
1 lb fresh or frozen shrimp, jumbo works best (if you choose frozen, allow extra reducing time for the extra water the ice will add to your sauce)
1 lb pork sausage
1 small onion
1 12 oz can diced tomatoes (I prefer no salt added)
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1/4 cup dry red wine (yep, I thought the sausage looked thirsty too...)
2 12 oz cans of chicken stock
1 cup (dry) plain quinoa (DO NOT use the kind that is pre-seasoned, this is a mistake I have made and hope never to repeat...)
2 cups fresh spinach
Chili flakes to taste (about 1 teaspoon will give you a medium-spicy result)
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1 tablespoon dried parsley
cracked black pepper and salt to taste
For the quinoa:
Heat 2 tablespoons-ish of olive oil in the bottom of a medium sauce pan. Finely chop your smalll onion. On medium-high heat brown onion, and add quinoa to toast it. Once your quinoa is golden brown, add one can of chicken stock. Cover and let liquid absorb. Repeat process with more stock until quinoa is tender. Season lightly with salt, pepper, and cumin (to taste, not the 1/2 tsp. listed above). Add in a handful of spinach at a time, allow the previous handful to wilt before adding another. Cover and keep on warm until your shrimp and sausage mixture is done.
For the jambalaya:
In a separate pan, brown sausage, adding chili flake and powder to taste. Add in tomatoes, tomato paste, cumin, celery, coriander, and roughly a half a can of stock, and red wine. Add in shrimp (if raw, allow them to cook in sauce until pink and sauce is reduced, if frozen allow to cook in sauce until it is nicely reduced, and dare I say it, roughly the thickness of spaghetti sauce). Once reduced, salt and pepper to taste, and fold into quinoa.
Here's to variety most certainly being the spice of life! This time of year, allow yourself to reflect on what really matters most. Whether it's your fat cat, your loving family, a warm home, enthusiastic students, great co-workers, good friends or fine wine, find what makes you happiest and celebrate it! True thankfulness for what we have is the best gift we can give ourselves.
As always, happy cooking, happier eating, love and best fishes, Butterballs! May Santa find your bellies full, glasses empty, and pants delightfully too tight! Mwah!
Showing posts with label quinoa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quinoa. Show all posts
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Fall Explosion Squash Casserole!!!!
Hey y'all Butterballs! Long time no heartburn!
It's that time again!!! The time of year where yours truly buys 1 bag of Double Stuff'd orange, Halloween Oreos and eats the whole thing in under a week. Don't try and stop me, I already did it, and I have absolutely no regrets. My Paula Deen Mystery Pecan Pie candle has also been lit approximately 24 hours a day for the last 2 weeks (the "mystery" is where to find the pie, hardy har har...). My closet is stocked with corduroy, Matt has begun to wear pants again, and Butters is holed up under the entry way table waiting for the furnace to kick on (joke's on him, I moved the table 3 months ago and the heater is still where it used to be...). That's right dumplings, it's Fall! In honor of the first day of fall, I thought I would write a long over-due blog entry about this really Fall-tastic casserole I invented last week. I was also invited along on a "First Day of Fall" fishing trip by one of my first graders, who I suspect had the slightly impure motive of setting me up with his Dad. I politely declined.
Another thing that comes along with Fall is school. I've been teaching music in Stevensville, Montana for the last three weeks. It is beyond rewarding, but also beyond exhausting. My cooking has somewhat ebbed in the last month, what with my bedtime being 4:30 p.m. In fact, aside from my bag of Oreos and the occasional teachers' lounge slice of pie, I have been living off of spinach and a giant milk carton full of Goldfish crackers. I really didn't see anything wrong with this until a co-worker came to my office to invite me to lunch, and I had already eaten my Dixie cup of crackers by 10:30 in the morning. I wanted to say I had already eaten, but I knew in my heart it just wasn't true. I also did not want another Dixie cup of crackers, so I took a raincheck. The next day I made sure to bring an apple so it would outwardly appear that I had made a purposeful attempt to pack something. If you bring a carton of crackers to lunch, that looks half assed. If you put your crackers in a baggy, bring an apple and a cup of coffee, now that's a freakin' smorgasbord. Can you make a workers comp claim for elementary school related malnutrition? Then I went home and fell asleep in front of Billy the Exterminator. When did I have time to invent casserole you may ask? Oh, around 9:30 at night. I woke up from a nap with a powerful hankering for spaghetti squash (which could be somewhat related to my separation anxiety since Pecker left for Seattle and took her bountiful supply of spaghetti squash with her...), and before I could go back to sleep I had to roast something out of heartache.
Now, along with the powerful urge to sleep 16 hours a day comes the inability to effectively grocery shop. If I do go to the store I buy a bottle of wine and a magazine about Snooki's baby. I bought a box of plums once but that was almost a month ago and I didn't eat a single one. I would put three in a baggy to take to work, promptly leave it on the counter when I ran out of the house for carpool, and then Matt would take them to work. Good news: my husband assumed me much more thoughtful than I actually am for several weeks when he found the plums and thought I had packed them for him to take to the office. Bad news: My life has been decidedly plum free. After this experience I have decided fresh produce is more trouble than it's worth. My life has somewhat become an hommage to Chopped. On this particular casserole inventing evening, I had:
16 lbs of elk meat (not an exaggeration)
3 homegrown spaghetti squash
1 giant bag of cheese about to go bad (I've recently cut back on dairy for health reasons, but that is another long and over-informative tale)
1 bag of overpriced raw quinoa
1 can of breadcrumbs
5 lbs (not an exaggeration) of spinach
1 bag of onions
brown sugar
1/2 bag Halloween Oreos
3 bottles of cheap chardonnay
1 6 pack Summer Honey
1 stale bag of cheetos
olive oil
1 jar marshmallow fluff
1/2 of a week old pizza
I threw the pizza away and set to work. To make my fall explosion casserole you will need the following:
2 lbs of ground meat, well seasoned (I chose spicy elk breakfast sausage)
1 small spaghetti squash
1 cup of cheese, a shredded jack blend works well
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp of garlic, finely chopped
1.5 lbs (uncooked) spinach
1 cup uncooked quinoa (will yield 3 cups cooked)
3 tbsp bread crumbs (mine were Italian blend)
To prepare squash:
Preheat oven to 400-425 degrees. I do about 425, but as you may have learned, I am not super patient. Chop ends off of squash and slice it in half length wise. Place in baking dish skin side down, add about 1/2 inch of water to the dish, wrap with foil. Roast for about 30-45 minutes.
I let my squash roast for about 20 minutes before I started the rest of the casserole.
For the Quinoa:
You can prepare this per package directions, but my way is better (no one ever accused me of sugarcoating...). In a medium sauce pan, heat about 2 tbsp of olive oil. Add onion and garlic and saute until translucent. Add a little more oil and quinoa. Over medium-high heat, toast until quinoa is a mottled brown. Add in 3 cups of water (or stock if you have it), let the liquid cook out, add more and repeat process until quinoa is tender. Season with garlic salt, Italian seasoning, cumin and pepper.
While quinoa is boiling, begin browning meat. Once cooked through, reserve in a large bowl. Using whatever grease is left from the meat, turn heat to medium and add in spinach. Add in by handfuls until it's fully wilted. Add to bowl with meat, and quinoa. When squash is fork tender. VERY CAREFULLY (READ: HOT), spoon squash strands into bowl with other ingredients. Add in a handful of cheese, mix thoroughly. Move mixture to size adequate baking dish, sprinkle with cheese and breadcrumb, put under broiler until cheese is melted and crumbs are browned. VOILA! Fall in a gooey, meaty, delicious package.
This also makes excellent leftovers. In addition, it is not the least healthy thing I have ever blogged for you, jam packed full of protein! Yessir!
In parting Butterballs, roll yourself up in a sweater, make a nice sugar based coffee drink, and hook up your pants expanders, Fall is here, and I wouldn't want to be spending it with any cooler cats!
It's that time again!!! The time of year where yours truly buys 1 bag of Double Stuff'd orange, Halloween Oreos and eats the whole thing in under a week. Don't try and stop me, I already did it, and I have absolutely no regrets. My Paula Deen Mystery Pecan Pie candle has also been lit approximately 24 hours a day for the last 2 weeks (the "mystery" is where to find the pie, hardy har har...). My closet is stocked with corduroy, Matt has begun to wear pants again, and Butters is holed up under the entry way table waiting for the furnace to kick on (joke's on him, I moved the table 3 months ago and the heater is still where it used to be...). That's right dumplings, it's Fall! In honor of the first day of fall, I thought I would write a long over-due blog entry about this really Fall-tastic casserole I invented last week. I was also invited along on a "First Day of Fall" fishing trip by one of my first graders, who I suspect had the slightly impure motive of setting me up with his Dad. I politely declined.
Another thing that comes along with Fall is school. I've been teaching music in Stevensville, Montana for the last three weeks. It is beyond rewarding, but also beyond exhausting. My cooking has somewhat ebbed in the last month, what with my bedtime being 4:30 p.m. In fact, aside from my bag of Oreos and the occasional teachers' lounge slice of pie, I have been living off of spinach and a giant milk carton full of Goldfish crackers. I really didn't see anything wrong with this until a co-worker came to my office to invite me to lunch, and I had already eaten my Dixie cup of crackers by 10:30 in the morning. I wanted to say I had already eaten, but I knew in my heart it just wasn't true. I also did not want another Dixie cup of crackers, so I took a raincheck. The next day I made sure to bring an apple so it would outwardly appear that I had made a purposeful attempt to pack something. If you bring a carton of crackers to lunch, that looks half assed. If you put your crackers in a baggy, bring an apple and a cup of coffee, now that's a freakin' smorgasbord. Can you make a workers comp claim for elementary school related malnutrition? Then I went home and fell asleep in front of Billy the Exterminator. When did I have time to invent casserole you may ask? Oh, around 9:30 at night. I woke up from a nap with a powerful hankering for spaghetti squash (which could be somewhat related to my separation anxiety since Pecker left for Seattle and took her bountiful supply of spaghetti squash with her...), and before I could go back to sleep I had to roast something out of heartache.
Now, along with the powerful urge to sleep 16 hours a day comes the inability to effectively grocery shop. If I do go to the store I buy a bottle of wine and a magazine about Snooki's baby. I bought a box of plums once but that was almost a month ago and I didn't eat a single one. I would put three in a baggy to take to work, promptly leave it on the counter when I ran out of the house for carpool, and then Matt would take them to work. Good news: my husband assumed me much more thoughtful than I actually am for several weeks when he found the plums and thought I had packed them for him to take to the office. Bad news: My life has been decidedly plum free. After this experience I have decided fresh produce is more trouble than it's worth. My life has somewhat become an hommage to Chopped. On this particular casserole inventing evening, I had:
16 lbs of elk meat (not an exaggeration)
3 homegrown spaghetti squash
1 giant bag of cheese about to go bad (I've recently cut back on dairy for health reasons, but that is another long and over-informative tale)
1 bag of overpriced raw quinoa
1 can of breadcrumbs
5 lbs (not an exaggeration) of spinach
1 bag of onions
brown sugar
1/2 bag Halloween Oreos
3 bottles of cheap chardonnay
1 6 pack Summer Honey
1 stale bag of cheetos
olive oil
1 jar marshmallow fluff
1/2 of a week old pizza
I threw the pizza away and set to work. To make my fall explosion casserole you will need the following:
2 lbs of ground meat, well seasoned (I chose spicy elk breakfast sausage)
1 small spaghetti squash
1 cup of cheese, a shredded jack blend works well
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp of garlic, finely chopped
1.5 lbs (uncooked) spinach
1 cup uncooked quinoa (will yield 3 cups cooked)
3 tbsp bread crumbs (mine were Italian blend)
To prepare squash:
Preheat oven to 400-425 degrees. I do about 425, but as you may have learned, I am not super patient. Chop ends off of squash and slice it in half length wise. Place in baking dish skin side down, add about 1/2 inch of water to the dish, wrap with foil. Roast for about 30-45 minutes.
I let my squash roast for about 20 minutes before I started the rest of the casserole.
For the Quinoa:
You can prepare this per package directions, but my way is better (no one ever accused me of sugarcoating...). In a medium sauce pan, heat about 2 tbsp of olive oil. Add onion and garlic and saute until translucent. Add a little more oil and quinoa. Over medium-high heat, toast until quinoa is a mottled brown. Add in 3 cups of water (or stock if you have it), let the liquid cook out, add more and repeat process until quinoa is tender. Season with garlic salt, Italian seasoning, cumin and pepper.
While quinoa is boiling, begin browning meat. Once cooked through, reserve in a large bowl. Using whatever grease is left from the meat, turn heat to medium and add in spinach. Add in by handfuls until it's fully wilted. Add to bowl with meat, and quinoa. When squash is fork tender. VERY CAREFULLY (READ: HOT), spoon squash strands into bowl with other ingredients. Add in a handful of cheese, mix thoroughly. Move mixture to size adequate baking dish, sprinkle with cheese and breadcrumb, put under broiler until cheese is melted and crumbs are browned. VOILA! Fall in a gooey, meaty, delicious package.
This also makes excellent leftovers. In addition, it is not the least healthy thing I have ever blogged for you, jam packed full of protein! Yessir!
In parting Butterballs, roll yourself up in a sweater, make a nice sugar based coffee drink, and hook up your pants expanders, Fall is here, and I wouldn't want to be spending it with any cooler cats!
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