Merry Mania!

I've been in full on manic-hermit-mode the past two days and have been cooking up a storm.  I've also been incredibly productive in the rest of my house.  It's taking time for me to make a dent, and I'm currently in the "chaos before the calm" stage, but I'm hoping it will be settled by the time I go back to work on Monday.

I'm desperately trying to decrease the clutter in my home, (and life?) by cleaning out.  If I haven't used it or read it or worn it recently, then it's finding a new home, either with another person or in the trash bin.  This goes for food as well.  I'm determined to make room in my pantry/cabinets/shelves.  I hoard non-perishable food as if the Armageddon is imminent.  Especially pumpkin, and I'm honestly not sure why.  If the second coming does happen to occur sometime soon, you'll know where to find the pumpkin pie...

Today I made some turkey, pumpkin and kale soup.  It turned out wonderfully and it gave me an excuse to use up the ground turkey in my freezer.  I browned the turkey, added seasoned salt, paprika, coriander, a bit of sage, a sprinkle of cayenne and turmeric, and a touch of herbs de provence.  I added a couple quarts of chicken stock, a couple cans of organic pumpkin and then a can of evaporated milk (because I also have a ton of that).  I've never cooked kale before.  It was pretty interesting to work with.  Really crunchy and pretty difficult to wash, but it looked amazing going into the orange soup, and, come to find out, tasted great too.  The soup was very tasty.  I was pleasantly surprised, because it was a complete coin toss.

I followed that up with some fudge, to help use up the fat free sweetened condensed milk I had lying around.  I made three types of fudge; the first was just classic chocolate with pecans, the second had hazelnuts, coriander and cardamom, and the third had, (please suspend judgement), tamari, toasted black sesame seeds and candied ginger.  Mmmmmm.  I can't tell which was my favorite.

While I was sorting paperwork, I decided to put a couple cans of full-fat sweetened condensed milk on the stove in a pot of water and let them boil for about 3 hours, keeping the cans covered with water the whole time.  Thankfully Brandy stayed long enough to get sent home with some dulce de leche, along with a variety of ingredients for Thai food that have been neglected in my cabinets.  I have to thank my friend Laura Simcik for the fabulous  dulce de leche trick!  Great on toast, cookies, ice cream, a spoon... and so simple to make.  Unfortunately I was a bit impatient when opening the first can and I ended up with a geyser of hot caramel shooting across the kitchen.  Totally worth it...

Tomorrow I'll make my mother's recipe for crabmeat triangles as well as two batches of pumpkin bread and two batches of pumpkin pie filling, all of which is destined for my freezer.  Needless to say, my poor freezers required some rearranging.  This is good inspiration for me to either eat the stuff that's been hanging out in there for a while, or throw it out.  I'm currently thawing turkey chili and a batch of cabbage and proscuitto soup.  Those should hold me over for the next couple days.

I also made a huge batch of cucumber and tomato salad with balsamic in the hopes of getting a few more days out those items.  It's what's left from the Costco batch of salad-makings from the lasagna night.

I have another batch of fresh kale in my fridge, as well as broccoli and zucchini.  Apparently I'm craving green veggies.  Not sure how I'll prepare those over the next few days, but I'll have to take a break from all the pumpkin chaos to make something healthy.

I almost wish that I had more people around to eat all this food, however that would mean putting on respectable clothes and partaking in human interaction, neither of which I'm particularly up for at the moment, (Kat and Brandy being the exception since that's pretty much like hanging out with myself anyway) .  When I'm ready to re-enter normal society, I'll have a fridge and freezer stock full of fun goodies for friends.

Lasagna and the Sandra Lee Aftermath...

Two Posts in One!!!

Post One:  The Lasagna

I've been threatening for a few weeks now to make meat sauce, followed by lasagna from scratch.  The meat sauce I've done many times and, as usual, I planned on making a large batch and then freezing most of it.  The lasagna I haven't made from scratch before, but I've made each of the components and figured it couldn't be too much of a culinary stretch.

Unfortunately, I decided to do my meat-sauce-shopping at Costco.  This meant I walked out with 6 large (LARGE) cans of tomatoes and a case of tomato paste, 10lbs of ground beef and 6lbs of pork chops.  I bought my 10 large Italian sausages at Mr. Prime Beef and went home to dig out the 20qt sauce pot from the garage.  Thankfully I found tons of beautiful fresh basil at New Sagaya (a downright holiday miracle during an Alaskan winter), and I still had a wedge of romano left in my fridge, since Costco was, yet again, out of romano.

My recipe only called for 8lbs of ground meat, so I portioned off two pounds and used the rest to make my meatballs.  I rolled all 8lbs of the meatballs, with the parsley, garlic, bread, romano, salt, pepper, etc... only to realize at the last minute that I'd left out the eggs.  With 30 minutes left until I was being picked up for a snowboarding weekend, I managed to squish them all together again, incorporate the eggs, roll them into meatballs again, and then, miraculously, get them all browned and into the sauce before I ran out the door.  

Needless to say, I ended up with plenty of sauce for a tray or two of lasagna.

On Sunday night, following the snowboarding trip, I had a few friends over to help eat the lasagna.  Little did they know that they'd be making it for me as well.  Alisa and Michael were absolute champs about rolling the pasta dough through the machine.  Matt did a fantastic job with spreading out the cheese mixture.  Joe was in charge of tending to and prepping the meatsauce.  Maggie offered quite a bit of moral support.  I hovered.  A lot.  In a very Type-A-ish kind of way...

While the lasagna was cooking, folks stood around the counter, tore off pieces of bread and dipped them in a big bowl of sauce that had been set out.  It felt like being back home.  

The lasagna seemed to be a hit, and I had twice as much as I needed, so we froze one tray of it.  I put the rest of the sauce in containers and now I have a relatively full freezer...

You'll have to excuse the iPhone photo.  I was too lazy to break out a real camera.

Part Two:  The Sandra Lee Aftermath

As for the extra beef, one pound of it was used to create some make-shift tacos on Friday night, and the other pound was still in my fridge on Monday, along with a random assortment of other leftovers which Joe kindly placed in my fridge prior to boarding his flight back east.  These included a small container of some sort of macaroni and cheese.

Understanding that I didn't want to waste food but unsure of how to make use of what was in the fridge, I decided to take some inspiration from the awe-inspiring Sandra Lee and just throw everything in a pot and call it, "beautiful" and "amazing."  It was honestly very liberating, especially since I knew that no one would have to eat it except for me.

I browned the beef and seasoned it with a random cross-ethnic assortment of spices in true "fusion" fashion.  I think there was some Ancho chili and cayenne, some curry powder, some turmeric, maybe some celery seed, a couple bay leaves and a touch of garam masala?  I don't really know.  I just had one of those, "I never use any of my 16,000 different spices!" panic moments, so I started tearing the plastic seals off a bunch and dumping them in.

After the meat was browned, I went searching through my cabinets and found two small cans of diced tomatoes and a can of kidney beans.  Those went in.  I found a can of chickpeas.  Also went in.  I looked in the freezer and found half a bag of frozen diced onions, sauteed and in.  Few leftover cloves of garlic: met the same fate. Chopped up some of the leftover parsley from the meatballs, that went in, and then I added a quart of organic chicken stock.  To my ground beef.  Yeah...

Lastly, I looked at the two tupperware containers in my fridge, one of which had some extra meatballs that didn't make it into the sauce, and the other had the mac and cheese from Joe.  After a moment of hesitation and guilt, I dumped them both into the pot.

What I ended up with with actually quite tasty.  In a "Thank goodness I'm the only one that will be eating this" type of way.  It's almost like an Indian-inspired pasta e fagioli.  

Here's an iPhone photo from the scene of the crime:

And that is what I will be eating over the holidays!  Quite a change from last year's menu but certainly more efficient...

I will leave you with an article that makes me both horrified and grateful (that I've never been subjected to such an abomination), since we're on a Sandra Lee kick:  Sandra vs. Mrs. Cuomo

And this follow-up:  Why, Sandra?  Why?!?

Words Cannot Describe the Carnage.

I've been hearing a lot lately about a certain "celebrity" (not even going to use the word "chef" here because I just cannot bring myself to do it) and her Kwanzaa cake.  I read an article about it on Huffington Post which has since been removed (alright Cuomo, stop throwing your weight around!  I found it here anyway because you can't censor those Europeans) and I saw an interview with Anthony Bourdain in which he challenged me to watch the YouTube video...

So I did.

And it was terrifying.

Anthony advised that my head would explode or my eyeballs would burst into flames.  The physical reactions were actually much less severe, but I honestly had alternating bouts of chills and gagging, followed by the arrival of tears to my eyes and finally, thankfully, the relief of some hysterical laughing.

But really, the chills were the dominant reaction.

Let me just say that the description, ON THE FOOD NETWORK PAGE says, "Semi-Homemade makes a most amazingly beautiful cake for Kwanza [sic]."

What?!?

It's hard for me to type with all the shaking going on right now.

I can't tell which part of my consciousness is most offended; the humanist, the foodie or the written-language-enthusiast.  There is nothing "most amazingly beautiful" about this cake.  Northern lights, amazingly beautiful.  The Caucasus mountains, amazingly beautiful.  Sistine Chapel, also amazingly beautiful.  This cake is, well... it's this:

Please, watch the video though.  But be warned, it is not for the faint of heart.  If you need to distract yourself from the carnage, perhaps you could just try to count the number of times she uses ridiculous descriptors like "amazing" or "nice" or "incredible" or "wonderful" or "delicious" or... "amazing."

And did anyone ever teach this woman how to stir items in a mixing bowl or use a teaspoon measure?!  I had to look away.

And the "acorns"...  Oy vey.  It's a train wreck.  I'm just hoping the images do not haunt me in my dreams tonight...