New dinner recipe

Last week I auditioned this Bayou Chicken Pasta for a "pantry" meal. I've been looking for recipes that can use either fresh or freeze-dried/dehydrated/canned ingredients so that I can make them no matter how long it's been since I last went to the store.

Below is the recipe as it's written (with my notes in italics).

Bayou Chicken Pasta - serves 6-8

16 oz. linguine (I used spaghetti. It would also be fine with penne.)
1/4 cup salt
2 tbs garlic oil (olive oil)
2 12.5 oz cans chicken (1 pint bottled chicken)
2 tbs Emeril's Essence seasoning
1 tsp salt
1 cup freeze dried onion flakes (I used a small fresh onion, chopped, and 3 green onions, sliced that needed to be used up)
4 tsp dried chives
1/2 cup water (I never used this. Maybe it's meant to rehydrate the onions?)
1 7 oz. can diced green chiles (I used a small green bell pepper because I had one that needed to be used up)
1/2 tsp. garlic powder (I used two cloves of minced fresh garlic)
2 cans evaporated milk (mine were the 12 oz size. I was happy to find another recipe that calls for canned milk!)
1 15 oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained (the fire-roasted kind are my favorite)
1/2 cup reserved pasta cooking water (I didn't need this)
1/4 cup parmesan cheese (shredded, but grated would work just as well)
1 tbs dried parsley

(I also added 4 stalks of chopped celery because it seemed like the right thing to do.)

Cook pasta in large pot of boiling, salted water until al dente. Before draining reserve 1/2 cup pasta water.
While the pasta is cooking prepare the sauce: season the chicken with 1 tbs Essence seasoning and 1/2 tsp. salt and brown it over medium heat in 1 tbs. garlic oil (I skipped this entire step and just added the chicken at the end, seasoning to taste.) Add a tbs. oil to a skillet and cook onions, chives, garlic, and chiles (and the celery and bell pepper). Add the milk, 1 tbs. Essence seasoning, and  remaining 1/2 tsp. salt and heat over medium heat until sauce is boiling and reduced by half, stirring constantly. Stir in the chicken, the drained pasta, and the tomatoes and heat through. If necessary, add the pasta water. (Mine was a little bit too thin already because I wasn't sure how long you should boil the sauce and I was in a hurry because I was hungry. After it cooled it thickened up quite a bit.) Add the parmesan cheese and dried parsley flakes. Serve immediately.

This was an easy and very tasty meal. Everyone who ate it enjoyed it. I think I will put it in our regular dinner rotation.

Last week's goals - report



This past week I wanted to:

• Sow some parsley and cilantro seeds outside. Didn't happen.
• Find and prepare two new recipes that rely on shelf-stable ingredients, or that can be altered to use them in place of fresh ingredients. Hot Ham Rolls and Bayou Chicken Pasta. One was a flop, the other a keeper. Stay tuned for additional details.
• Make a final decision and send in Hershey's order form/check. Done!
• Paint the closet in James's bedroom. Not even started.
• Sand the windowsill and closet shelves in James's room. Didn't get to it. Won't likely get to it in the near future.
• Work on yellow/gray/white quilt top. I worked on it a very little bit. But any progress is some progress, right?
• Organize small box of photos into scrapbook-able piles. Not yet. This must be accomplished sooner rather than later.
• Sort through scrapbook supplies. Completed!
• Study grocery sale ads and begin a "best price" book. Started it, and then started wondering if it is even worth it. It might be worth it if I can get a grip on how to make/use an Excel spreadsheet. At this point it just seems humongous and difficult. It may be more practical  (and certainly easier!) for me to use a notebook and a pencil.
• Buy a book to read at the used book store. Nope.
• Study Spanish vocab with Jake. Told him to study several times but didn't work on it with him.

There were a few things that came up this week that took precedence over the goals I had written down:

1. My Pretty Girl got a full-time job last Friday and started it four days later; one entire day of those four was spent shopping for a career-appropriate wardrobe for her. What this new job of hers means for me is that I have a two year old on my hands for about 12 hours/day three days this last week and every week in the foreseeable future. (Hopefully not more than a month or two.) Additionally this sweet little sister hasn't slept very well with all the changes going on in her life so I've spent a couple of hours every night this week caring for her instead of sleeping. Which negatively affected my energy levels during the days.
2. I also had an opportunity to buy some chicken for a good price so spent a whole day tied to the kitchen trimming, dicing, and pressure-canning the chicken.
3. I worked on the sacrament meeting program for our ward's primary.

I am okay with the things I didn't do. The painting and repair/improvements around the house aren't realistically going to happen until Buttercup is out from under my feet every day. I will add the other things to next week's goals.

Tangled

No, not that Tangled.

My sweet little Buttercup got out of the shower this morning with a snarly mess instead of her usual smooth, wavy long hair. I knew her mama would be in a hurry to get out of the house, and I also knew it would take time and effort and probably lots of tears to get all the tangles out of Buttercup's hair.

I remembered seeing a recipe somewhere for homemade detangler solution, and went on the hunt for it. Sure enough, it was right on my blog list: One Good Thing by Jillee.

I love her blog. She makes all kinds of cool things that cost practically nothing with stuff I might actually already have on hand. Her post today is about making popcorn in the microwave with regular popcorn and a bowl. No more "microwave popcorn" with unpronounceable ingredients wrapped in toxic packaging that will likely kill you one day.

You should definitely check Jillee's cool site.

Anyway, this morning we had everything we needed to make some homemade detangling spray for Buttercup. It works great! All you'll need is a little bit of regular ol' hair conditioner, some tap water, and a spray bottle.

Walmart charges more than $2 for a bottle of detangler and I'll tell you a secret - it's mostly water!

In which there is a little bump in the road

I tried a new recipe last night that I was so excited about. It is one that I found on the Internet, has shelf-stable ingredients, and is different in a way that I'd never thought of before. It is something that some other family eats all the time.

Hot Ham Rolls. I figured they'd be delicious. They consist of a ham filling rolled up inside a biscuit. Think of a cinnamon roll but with biscuit dough, and ham and mushrooms inside.

I had this all worked out in my mind. I've sourced canned ham. I've looked into how to pressure can ham myself. I tried to find out when hams might go on sale so that I might make this as frugally as possible. I've researched powdered shortening and determined for health reasons that I would use powdered butter instead. Which I just happen to have a #10 can full of, and have been looking for a reason to use it.

My family would love it, and I'd be a superstar.

Except we didn't love it. It's not that it was awful, it just wasn't great. Not something where anyone would say "YAY!" when I said it's ham rolls for dinner. It was pretty bland, and the biscuit part wasn't wonderful. Maybe because of the butter powder instead of the shortening powder? I don't know for sure but I'm not quite ready yet to blame the butter.

I've decided to try it with a raised yeast dough instead. I have a dinner roll recipe that is never-fail for me, and while I was standing there thinking about it last night I realized that not only do I have butter powder, I have egg powder and milk powder too, so it is possible that I could blend everything in the recipe together into a kind of hot roll mix, have it pre-measured and ready to just-add-water, and the whole thing would be super fast and easy when it came time to make dinner. I would have to give them time to raise, it is true, but if we actually like them it might be worth the time. Would it need to be refrigerated? I don't know. I do keep my yeast in the fridge. I need to think about this and experiment a bit.

I'm also going to work on the filling. It needs some kind of vegetable and more flavor.

In the end, I still like the idea of hot ham rolls but the recipe needs to be reworked to suit our tastes. I'm very glad I tested the recipe first before making it something we will always have in our 3 month food storage rotation.

Cheese!

This sweet little sister asked me to please take her picture when she saw me with my camera, but then couldn't quite tear her eyes away from the television...

What a love.

Today she started saying "Take me to your leader".

She's a love and a nut.

Retreat?

I've been getting ready to go on a crazy adventure that people are calling a "retreat". This "retreat" is a weekend away from home to work on scrapbook pages.

Preparing for the "retreat" is making a lot of mess and taking a lot of time and mental energy. I will need a real vacation when it is over. What I've done so far:

1. Sorted scrapbook paper.
2. Purged paper I no longer want and
3. organized what I am keeping.
4. Sorted photos.
5. Purged photos of any that were blurry, dark, or contained unidentifiable or forgotten subject matter. Also any that were superfluous, ie. multiple shots of the exact same thing. Also any photos capturing an event that I've already scrapbooked.
6. Got about halfway through sorting/purging/organizing embellishments.
7. Organized my scrapbooking tools and gear, including testing all my scrapbooking pens to see which ones had dried out. Made a mental note to be more selective about what I want/buy in the future.
8. Straightened and neatened up the scrapbook supply organization system I have.

I may be sick and tired of the whole thing by the time I'm done and this "retreat" will not be any fun at all, but simply something to endure.

To top it off, I can't remember the last time anyone looked at one of my scrapbook albums.

How it's going so far

Remember this post?

I'm here to report that it's going just swimmingly. We still have the same mostly-full package of paper napkins that we had last December (I've used a few to grease an occasional baking dish).
The cloth napkins I made from unused flat sheets I had on hand are not perfect but they are usable. I wish they were softer and more absorbent - 100% cotton or something like that - but they'll do for now. I will hopefully remember to be on the lookout for a large piece of cotton cloth at the thrift store to make napkins with when these wear out.

The large white washcloths that we are using in place of paper towels work great. I started with 40 and have never once ran out before it was time to wash a load of whites. I have put a couple of them into the rag pile because they got stained. For some reason it is more acceptable to me to scrub a bathtub with a stained white rag than it is to dry a dish or wash a sweet little face with a stained white rag. So the stained ones have moved to the rag pile, and we still have plenty of clean ones to use in the kitchen. Barring some disaster I think I will not have to buy more for at last another year.  I've used one to two rolls of paper towels so far this year - of the 10 rolls I started with last December I have six that are still unopened, and three that are partially used. I'm still using paper towels to take care of super messy or greasy or icky jobs like:

• covering bacon while it cooks in the microwave or
• lining the plate while I'm frying taco shells or
• patting dry raw chicken or
• wiping off paint brushes.

It's been so long since I purchased paper napkins and paper towels that I don't remember the prices, but next time I go to the store I will check and try to estimate how much money I haven't spent on these items in the year 2012.