Brussel sprouts are yummy, I promise.

I made this all the way back last week. It was "Yummerz!" to quote the roommate, and I agree, it was really good. The brussels were really sweet, and the pork, which had an almost BBQ tang to it, was really tender and a good contrast to my normal sandwich, one-pot-stop, or generally on-the-go meals.

Look, I measured stuff! And I wrote down the recipe! It was a big deal guys, a big deal. This is the marinade for the pork. I only let mine marinade for about half an hour because well, I got hungry. Then I roasted it on 350 for 35 minutes. I used a VERY small pork loin though, and baby-sat it the whole time, because I don't trust my oven. Also, as you can see I totally scorched the overflow sauce, but whatever. It had rendered pork fat in it, so I might have eaten the torched part on toast. Just maybe.

2 tbs apple cider vinegar

1 tbs fish sauce (If you don't own this yet, BUY SOME. Its good on everything)

1 tbs honey

1/2 tbs mustard

1/2 tbs fennel seed

1/2 tbs celery seed

salt and pepper to taste

The brussels were way simpler. I just sauteed them in butter (non-salted) then added a splash of balsamic vinegar towards the end to make them a little sweeter. Then, because I had some and I accurately predicted it would be delicious, I served them with a drizzle of honey on top. I literally ate them like candy straight out of the bowl. For the record, that was about 2 lbs of brussels. This dinner was super cheap, because I only used half of a pork loin that I had a coupon for, so all told, about $7 for the whole thing. $2 in pork, $4 in brussels, and $1 in used costs in spices and stuff.

Chile relleno and chicken casserole

Roommate really likes spicy food, and so I am frequently forced to up the spice content of my recipes right before I serve them, usually through liberal dustings of cayenne pepper. This one, not so much.

The inspiration for this dish came from yet another blog I love, called For the Love of Cooking. I fell in love with this blog when the first thing I looked at was toast/egg cups with bacon. What is not to love about eggs baked in bread with bacon?

She made a Mexican-style chile relleno casserole, which I thought looked ok, but maybe a little saucy for me. So I riffed it. Plus, she made hers because she thought it was HEALTHIER than true chile rellenos. Hah. Like I care about that.

So first, I blistered some Cubanel chiles (I hate my grocery store, Cubanels are all they had, and while good, I don't like them nearly as much as Anaheims or Poblanos.... I hate my grocery store.) Blistering chiles is something I had done before, so it didn't scare me, but in case you never have, word to the wise. When they say charred they mean CHARRED. Every millimeter needs to be totally black. Otherwise, the skin won't blister away from the flesh, and you will waste tons of chile. So burn those suckers. For example, this one here, NOT CHARRED ENOUGH. MORE FIRE NEEDED.

However, my three chiles were insufficient to cover my pan, so I added a layer of spinach on top of them, just to keep the egg-mixture from hitting the pan.

On top of the spinach/chiles came the egg, flour, cream cheese mixture (I had no low-fat sour cream, work with me here). Then the spiced chicken and black bean mixture. Here is where I brought the heat. I did two tbs of chili flakes, plus a cup of hot salsa verde in the chicken while I browned it. It was still dull, so on top of the blackbean/chicken, I added more slasa verde, then sliced pepperjack cheese.

Recipes always seem to call for grated cheese in casseroles. I don't get why. sliced is so much faster, and has the same effect. Plus, my cheese grater terrifies me. I think it wins the "most likely to cause lost fingers" award of anything in my kitchen, and I have a rusty can opener. So you should get how afraid I am of those.

Anywho, then I repeated the whole thing, spinach, egg-y-stuff, meat and beans, cheese, salsa, and cooked it in the oven at 350 till I decided it was done. This is it pre-baking.

May I say, delicious. Vying for favorite thing ever cooked with the turkish-spice chicken patties. I think maybe I just like cooking ground chicken, I dunno. Either way, delicious.

And it made TONS of leftovers, so I will estimate I got 8 meals out of this, for about $9 total? The most expensive part here was the chicken, the rest I got on super sale, like the cheese and beans. Also, full disclosure, all the spices I used here would have been expensive, but I have a killer spice box (in my bedroom, but I already complained about that). So yeah, cheap for me, but even if you have to re-buy chile flakes, paprkia, cayenne pepper and salsa verde, still pretty cheap.

Halloween is for pumpkins!

Happy Halloween internet!

So, after my rousing success with scones a few weeks ago, I decided I wanted to bake something else. Specifically, I wanted to try and bake a pie. And as it was almost Halloween, I wanted to bake a pumpkin pie. Conveniently, I wasn't able to make a pie until tonight, so this is an actual Halloween pie. Hooray being busy but it working out OK.

I used Paula Deen's pumpkin pie recipe, because really, when I am making pie, I want to make it as fattening, butter-y, creamy and Southern as possible, and I figured her recipe would be the best.

The only things I changed up were:

1. I used fat-free half and half, rather than half and half.

2. I used a smidge less butter

3. I used 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin spice and 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, because I had them out.

4. I only used half my filling, because all the reviews said it either made too much, or that it took almost 2 hours to set. I froze the rest, and I think it will make a good cookie base later.

Plus, I liked that this recipe called for cream cheese instead of evaporated milk. Evaporated milk REALLY creeps me out. I mean, if its evaporated, why is it.. liquid?? Why evaporate it at all? Why can't I just use milk? And why does it come in a can that makes me think its baby food? I really don't like it.

Anywho, I digress.

Before I even touched the cheese-y filling, I had to deal with the crust, which I figured would be easy, since it literally came in a box, and all I had to do was pre-bake it for ten minutes with some weight in it. However, in the true spirit of Halloween, I first was tricked. As you can see, I cannot pre-bake very well. My first attempt utterly died, cracked in half and wound up in the sink/becoming my dinner. As a side note, cream cheese on pie crust is pretty good.

Also, unlike the kitchen of all the food bloggers I read, my kitchen was horrifying tonight. Food bloggers always manage to measure out their ingredients into little glass ramekins, and never make any messes. This is what My kitchen looked like. No where near as awesome. I would blame it on Halloween, and say I was trying to scare you, but I wasn't. This is the fear level in my kitchen every time I cook anything. I think I have convinced the roommate that she needs to hide in her room/the library every time I cook.

Oh well. At least I got pie!

Sweet potato and kale gratin

Gratins are delicious, they are everything good about cheese and french fries all mixed together. Plus, this one is even better because you get the lie to yourself and pretend that its healthy because it has kale in it. And so yeah, I count this as a vegetable. Didn't I mention my wide definition of vegetables earlier?

The real recipe calls for Swiss Chard (which the world's worst safeway, aka my local grocer, didn't have) and can be found here. When Deb made it, it came out thick, and gooey, and wet, and looking cheesy and delicious. I however, didn't have as much cheese, and my first ever attempt at bechamel sauce, while delish, got a little thick, and didn't pour easily, a major flaw in technique, but not really in flavor I don't think.

As a result of the lack of liquid-y agents (cheese and sauce), mine came out alot more like layered roasted potatoes with a kale-cheese sauce, than a true gratin. Still good though, and the recipe makes enough that we had leftovers for a solid four days. My one comment on the recipe would be that filling the pan up all the way is OK, even though the recipe seemed to indicate that there were moisture worries. Not covering mine let it dry out almost too much, and it shrank up a bit. So, especially if you are going light on sauce or cheese, cover it.

Also, I took half of it to a pot luck. And yeah, I got to be THAT person at a pot luck in school. I was the one who showed up with real fancy food, and got to think judgy thoughts about the other people's food. Most of it was good, but it was a lot of cheese dip, salsa, baked goods (and one round of delicious chocolate toffee crack stuff, SOO GOOD). And then I had hand made gratin. I won, in the ego-off that was happening inside my head.

Cauliflower and chickpea curry

Curry is one of my favorite things to make. For one thing, it can bear unbelievably high spice loads, so I can mess with it till I like it, without worrying about killing the flavor the dish is aiming for. Thanks to a little inspiration from the old roommate, this one is a new go-to, maybe even replacing my potato one with coconut sauce...

Curry is almost inherently vegetarian. My mom has one phenomenal recipe for a chicken curry with delicious breading in a tomato sauce with potatoes. Just thinking about it makes me drool. But other than than, I feel like most good curries use lentils, chickpeas, potatoes and cauliflower to hold the blend of aromatics and spices together. Which means curry=cheap, super easy, and I don't have to worry about raw food contamination. As raw meat to this day terrifies me, this is always a good thing.

The only caveat with this recipe is the cauliflower is essential, I think a substitute like potatoes or lentils would just make it too heavy. So if you don't like cooked cauliflower, back away from this recipe. I love it, but I know a lot of people don't (due to its resemblance of small cooked brains I assume... oh fun memories).

This curry is from Allrecipes.com, which I love in terms of content, even though its not one of my beloved recipe blogs. I love it anyways. Allrecipes is great because it manages to avoid the few things I do hate about recipe blogs, namely food terrorism and pretentiousness. For example, the dear Pioneer Woman has a big thing against pre-shredded cheese, because well, its apparently not the same and we must all put our finger at risk to grate artisanal cheddars. And lots of other food bloggers have nit-picky things about baking your own bread, because its SO MUCH HEALTHIER AND BETTERER AND YOU ARE A HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING IF YOU DONT. (they aren't usually that aggressive, but I tend to project my failings upon them). Allrecipes though, it never judges me. It tells me, you know what is good Em, pesto out of the tub, and curry blends out of the jar that come pre-mixed, and pre-shredded cheese. And I appreciate that Allrecipes doesn't judge me. Plus, I always find their recipes very idiot-proof and cheap. So go them.

I did mix this one up a little bit. Rather than use canned diced tomatoes, which I can't stand, I used my new best friend, tomato sauce. I also only used half a can, because I don't like to push myself too hard to embrace new things. Then, because I had no fresh ginger on hand, I used 1/2 the amount (1 tsp) of the powdered stuff. I also, as you can see, cheated and used the baby carrots out of the bag. I like that I have to chop them less, what can I say.

I still wasn't happy with the flavor though, so I also doubled the amount of curry. I specifically used madras hot curry (thank you mom, for bringing me awesome spices), which I generally find intense as far as spice blends go, but the cauliflower post boil really soaked up the measly 1.5 tsp without taking on any color or heat, so I added more. I also left out the cloves and the peas, 100% because I forgot to put them in. The peas I am sure would have made it even better, as peas make all curries delish. Also, I didn't feel like boiling rice, so I served it on its own. Still good.

Ultimately, I loved this. It was super filling, and helped me soar through my all-veggie weekend when I made it on Saturday and then.. gasp... ate it for breakfast on Sunday. Don't be judgy.

Scones, volume two

Hey internet!

Remember how I titled a post Scones volume one? Wasn't that confusing and intriguing? I know you spent tons of time wondering when I would reveal what I meant by that. Well, this is what I meant.

Once I made the extra squash for the salad, I started debating all sorts of delicious things I could do with it. I quickly determined I did not have enough to make soup, which was sad, nor did I really want to re-make the same salad again. But then the internet showed me butternut squash scones, that looked fairly similar to the scones I made last week with apples and cheddar.

But was I content to just make a NEW scone recipe? NO! I liked the ones with cheese. So I combined the recipes. However, in fear of making a big soupy mess when I literally doubled the amount of chopped apples/squash from what the recipe called for, I reigned in the cheese back to the original 1/2 cup, and added 1/2 cup flour to increase the dry ingredients. See how flakey and delicious they turned out? And sweet! I didn't even HAVE to put jelly on them. (I totally did though, for two of the three I ate).

Also, I ran out of eggs. So I didn't make an egg wash. So... I dusted them with sugar instead. Sugar=good. Not as good as cheese, but still pretty good.

These turned out huge, and I, because I am a GREAT roommate, and LOVE encouraging healthy diet choices, made the roommate help me eat them. They lasted about 2 days, due to lack of boyfriend to help in their destruction. Sads.

Butternut squash salad

This is yet another delicious riff on a SmittenKitchen meal. Its a pretty big riff.

To begin, lets talk about butternut squash. Butternut squash is the anti-obesity food. Not because it is particularly healthy, I actually have no idea how many calories or other nutritional things are in squash. It fights obesity, because it is a workout from hell to skin and chop it. I seriously got in an arm workout, and it took me abouthalf an hour to peel and chop the whole thing. I would have taken photos, but I was too busy screaming and cussing and working blisters onto my right thumb to remember to go take photos.

People, if you ever want to make roast butternut squash, be prepared to work. Or, do what the internet told me to do and half it, roast it for 15 minutes before hand and then go at it with knives. So many knives.

Once I finished roasting, that is when I started mixing it up. As I mourned before, I don't have tahini, so I couldn't make a tahini dressing. Also, I never buy anything other than the chapest onions at the store, so I had white onions, not red. White onions are no where near as good raw, so I soaked them in balsamic vinegar dressing while I roasted, to cut the flavor a little bit. I also pulled two spicy turkey sausages out of their casings, and cooked those up.

Mix in the chickpeas with the turkey sausage, add in some paprika, and then pull the squash out of the oven. I let it cool for a few minutes before mixing it in with the turkey and chickpeas. Final step was mixing some olive oil and water in with the balsamic and onions, and dressing the whole thing. Super good.

This made a solid five servings, and I had at least two servings of un-used squash left over (my squash was three lbs, the recipe called for a 2-pounder).