Recipes to Go: 507 364
Weeks to Go: 52 37
Recipes Made This Week
Carrot Oatmeal Cookies
Zucchini Patties with Dill Dip
Sirloin with Blue Cheese Butter
Creamed Peas and Carrots
Scalloped Potatoes 'n' Ham
Buttery Hot Wings
Southwestern Nachos
Berry Cheesecake Pie
Gnocchi with Thyme Butter
Goblin's Oragne Popcorn
Chees-enstein
Toasty Pumpkin Waffles
Chicken Cordon Blue
This was our butter week, not just because I love it and consider it another taste vitamin, but because we ended up using ridiculous amounts in all the recipes, or the recipes called for specially made butter.
Because we didn't have any desserts last week, I made cookies on Sunday. Unfortunately, I forgot to add the chocolate chips. I'm ashamed to admit this because I am the queen of adding chocolate chips. Be that as it may, they were still delicious and they made 7 dozen plus a few more.
The Captain loves them, they made great breakfast, and there was carrots in them, so if you ignore a cup of butter, a cup of shortening, and 3 cups of sugar, you could say they were healthy.
To go with the cookies and the wonderful weather we had on Sunday, we made the zucchini patties.
They also had carrots in them, which I will shred next time instead of chopping because the chopped carrots did not stay together in the patties. Fortunately, they were still delicious. The green tomatoes we fried, however, were not.
They were very sour.
On Tuesday, we made steak and potatoes, and veggies. And thus began our week of butter. I guess the cup of butter in the cookies counts, so nevermind, Sunday began the week of butter. But in this case, the butter was homemade. Not shaken from cream, but mixed with the cheese and spices. The blue cheese butter was delicious, but the steak was pretty bad. That's because it had been in the freezer for too long. Unfortunately, the recipe made lots of butter, so now I have a log of butter in the fridge with nothing to do.
The scalloped potatoes were everything they promised to be. Like funeral potatoes without the sadness. I was pretty proud of my chopping skills putting these together. Maybe there's hope for my knife skills after all.
The creamed peas and carrots were delicious. I know, you would think we were getting sick of carrots by this point, but surprisingly, no. They were still good. The Husband didn't fully appreciate them, of course, because they were peas, and neither did The Captain, but I loved em.
On Thursday, we had a manly-themed dinner with Buttery Hot Wings and Southwestern Nachos. Too bad The Husband doesn't have poker nights. These would have been perfect. The nachos were excellent due to the fact that the beef was slow cooked all day. And I'm normally not a fan of Velveeta.
The name makes it sound so wonderful like velvet, like it will make all my food smooth and creamy, but it tastes rather gross. I feel like I should be a fan, kind of like the Beatles and U2, which fall in the same category.
But in this instance, Velveeta was actually a good choice because these were nachos and nothing says nachos quite as well as processed cheese food. The stuff that real cheese eats for dinner.
The hot wings were good, I thought.
I'm not a huge fan of meat on the bone, and they were closer to undercooked than over so they were more difficult to rip off. (Or it could just be that my canines have been filed down . . . ) But I liked the spiciness that still had flavor. I didn't like having to melt 1 1/2 cups of butter into the sauce. The Husband agreed and said that they were too buttery and declared himself to be a hot wing purest. Luckily for him, I think this concludes our hot wing recipes for the year.
I started on the Berry Cheesecake Pie on Thursday, but didn't get to finish and enjoy it until Saturday. But because it was the fourth recipe on Thursday, disaster fell in its wake. The recipe called to put foil around the edges to avoid over-browning. This sounded like an excellent idea, but was easier read than done. After fiddling with the foil for ten minutes and worrying The Captain with my angry tone, I decided it would be easier to fix it if the pie was in the oven. I'm not sure why I decided that, because it's obviously stupid, and I hate hot things, but it was frustrating me. So, in the process of not getting burned, my hot pad (not the silicone kind) came in contact with the heating coil and started a small fire. Nothing was permanently damaged, and we ended up figuring out the pie/foil situation, but I have just come to expect disasters when three or more recipes is involved in one meal. But the pie was worth the wait to Saturday to eat.
The Husband, who I didn't think was a cheesecake fan, had two slices in succession and would have had a third if his stomach had permitted.
Thursday was about the time that I discovered I was so far behind in my recipes, so despite the over-abundance of leftovers, I was forced to make more food. Friday we made Gnocchi with Thyme Butter. But I didn't exactly want more butter floating around, my fridge was already full of the butter concoctions from earlier and empty of more pure stuff to use, I had already mooched a stick from my neighbor, so instead of messing around with that, we just used the blue cheese butter from earlier in the week.
It made things much more flavorful, which is good because gnocchi take entirely too much time to make. 70 minutes of prep was inaccurate because I had two other recipes to put together, so after starting at 5 pm, it was almost 7 when we got to eat. It was ridiculous all the steps that had to go into something that ends up looking like a mushy mess. Like I said, it was a good thing it ended up tasting yummy.
So, originally I was not going to worry about making the Goblin Popcorn for Halloween, but instead was going to change the color and use it some other time, but since I needed some extra recipes, I popped it in. (Pun intended.) I couldn't get a hold of a popcorn popper, and I have no intention of buying one, so we used microwave popcorn and crossed our fingers. It helped that I accidentally made kettle corn for the first batch. It did not help that I pushed the potato button instead of the popcorn button for the second batch. Smoke was the least of our worries, though there was plenty of that. I still smell horrid burnt popcorn every time I use the microwave. In my defense, the manufacturers put the popcorn butter right on top of the potato button. Really? They look incredibly similar. So I'm pleading the 5th--which is blindness, right?
The chees-enstein turned out pretty awesome. Cuter than I was going for, since I was going for scary.
But cute is good, and so was the cheese ball. I should know because we were alone for Game Night and we ate half the chees-enstein and half the popcorn. Both were addictive.
Saturday morning I made Pumpkin Waffles and guess what the recipe called for . . . homemade cranberry butter. I was not prepared for that again, so we made cranberry syrup instead.
The waffles were good, though not as crispy as I normally like my waffles. That's because of the pumpkin, I know. And cranberries, I will be freezing many, many of you while I can find you fresh this season because you are delicious and I have about 10 more recipes to make that involve cranberries.
I had to make dinner on Saturday, too to catch up as much as I could. So we went with something simple, chicken cordon bleu.
Not sure what is blue about the chicken, or what the heck "cordon" means. I'm sure it's some remote place in France that decided a chicken and a pig should mate and merge in some twisted way. Anyway, I only made two and they were delicious. They would have been better with some sauce and if I had used cornflakes instead of breadcrumbs, but I don't like cornflakes and I don't want to buy them to use them in two recipes a year, so we made due.
Hmm, Velveeta and cornflakes, not likes. But maybe I should. Maybe I should whistle "Yellow Submarine" too, but I don't see that happening in the near future. With or without you.
