I’ll quickly rhyme off this week’s menu so we can get onto the burritos!

This Week! (Oct 15 – 21)

*I didn’t list desserts because I’m making Halloweeny treats I will be blogging about later

This week’s Menu Monday recipe is called Throwback Burritos because until I made them for these photographs I hadn’t had one in about 13 years. Yes really, and it’s not that I’m all that old really. These were the burritos I lived on with my now husband/then boyfriend and our hilarious roommate Ken. The background on that is that my husband and his roommate go waaaay back, and then I moved in as well years after the fact. No one but Ken ever made these either! I was always strictly on cheese grating duty while he worked his magic in the kitchen.

Now that we are living in Los Angeles, my husband and I have a horrible addiction to Chipotle and while eating a massive Chipotle burrito recently my husband reminisced about all the burritos we used to eat back in the day so I fired off a Facebook message to Ken and we were eating this throwback dinner a few days later.

Most of the instructions here I am pulling straight from the message I got from Ken because his descriptions are pretty bang on, especially when he opened with ‘those burritos were dirt simple’, and I’m all ‘is that why you kept us out of the kitchen?!’ hahaha.

Throwback Burritos via Ken Snider

-large tortillas
-taco seasoning
–Sirarcha/rooster sauce
-minced garlic (though back in the day we used garlic powder)
-some sort of salsa or pico de gallo
-ground beef at least lean/medium (high fat content is needed here to get the smooth texture, if you use extra lean it’ll taste grainy)
-Uncle Ben’s long grain & wild with roasted garlic flavor (you can make this yourself in a rice cooker with some chicken broth and garlic, but if you want the taste you remember you want Uncle Ben’s)
-*fucktons of cheese* (I believe that’s an accurate measurement of the specific amount of cheese needed)

Ok, so first brown ground beef, drain. Add taco seasoning and water (one cup water per packet per pound of ground beef) and simmer until thicken (it won’t thicken much, might want to add some cornstarch or flour, not much, maybe a teaspoon, to allow it to thicken). Now add Sirarcha and garlic to taste. Prep rice and prepare. If you use the uncle bens stuff, it takes two mins in the microwave, which is awesome. (Except I still don’t have a microwave haha).
Add rice to meat mixture and stir. Remove from heat, place in a heat-resistant bowl and refrigerate, for a minimum of one hour. THIS STEP IS CRUCIAL. It’s what allows the fats from the meat and cheese to commingle and congeal into burrito deliciousness. Be patient. Wait. It’s worth it. (Obvy, Ken is a wise, wise man). Then grate your fucktons of cheese and set aside. I put them side by side in the fridge in similar container and cover them.
I usually layered cheese (as a stabilizing agent), then some of the mixture, then cheese, some of the pico de gallo, some more mixture, fold and top with more cheese, and more hot sauce if needed. Nuke for 3-5 minutes and you’re done! (The first time I folded one of these – well the first time this time around – I did it perfectly and crazy fast and my husband goes ‘omg what was what?’ and I was all ‘it came from the back of my brain!’).
Mine were heated in the oven this time around, but I swear, they taste like 1999. <3

Today I’m linking up with Organizing Junkie and Life as a Lofthouse for Menu Monday!

I made this recipe for the first time with a friend who had just learned it from her aunt and it was so simple and so delicious, my kids and my husband were all about me making it at home. It’s hardly even a recipe (with only two ingredients), but I find some of the best meals come from ‘hardly recipes’.

The nice thing about this recipe (besides the fact that it requires little to no effort at all and still tastes amazing), is that you can either cheap out or go high end and either way, it’s pretty good. Of course high end is going to taste better and since there isn’t much to this, you can splurge a little and not really break the bank! We used some fancy organic canned pineapple but there is no reason not to chop up a fresh pineapple! The sausage we used was an apple smoked sausage and man it was perfect for this.

2 cans pineapple chunks (with juice)
2 packages sausages

Chop up the sausages and add them and both cans of pineapple to a large sautee pan (this is when you should start whatever rice you’re going to have with it. We made a basmati pilaf. Cook over medium-high heat until the sugars in the pineapple juice caramelize.
My husband had his side by side, but the rest of us piled ours over a bed of rice and mixed it all together. A side salad is also a smart idea. 😉

This Week’s Menu (Sept 24-30)

Sunday – Stew for the fam, Homemade Spinach Veggie Burgers for me, Rice Krispie Squares for dessert

I know it’s Wednesday, but my Work in Progress is a pile of puffs, strikingly similar to the pile of puffs you’ve seen repeatedly this summer (I’ve knitted about 130 or so since we moved to LA). Sockdown starts on Saturday and there will be some furious knitting happening for about a year after that. Don’t ask me where Christmas knitting fits with furious sock knitting (unless everyone gets socks for Christmas). 😉

So instead I will give you this, the easiest, dirtiest (in a ‘this is defo not health food’ kind of way), laziest recipe I’ve ever made. It’s so lazy, I felt guilty making it. No really, I totally did.

Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake via – I’m a Lazy Mom

1 box yellow or white cake mix (use Trader Joe’s mix or organic mix from Whole Foods to feel slightly less awful)
2 eggs beaten (Omega eggs, at least!)
5 tablespoons melted butter (I used vegan butter, which I know means NOTHING when applied to this recipe)
2 cups M&M’s or mini chocolate chips (I chopped up a big bar of dark chocolate for this).

You literally just mix it all up and pour it into a (greased) 9 x 13 inch pan and bake at 350 for 20 minutes. I feel like an asshole for even sharing this recipe. But it’s one of those awful, awful things that my kids love! There wasn’t any left for my husband when he got home!

They are addicting because they have the texture of a cookie with the moistness of a cake and of course chocolate chip make everything tastier!

I made these little gems for Canada Day this year and then again a few weeks ago for my husband to take to work with him. Butter Tarts are extremely common in Canada, and not just in an ‘everyone’s Grandmother made them’ kind of way (though everyone’s Grandmother did make them). They are in bakeries and grocery stores all over the country. Then once you take a step into the States, people are all ‘what the hell are Butter Tarts?!’

So I feel the need to make the best butter tarts there ever were in order to educate all our new American friends about Canadian pastry. 😉 The best way to describe Butter Tarts to the uninitiated would be that it is very similar to the base of the typical pecan pie minus the pecans. Sort of gooey, but it holds itself together and is very-to-extremely sweet.

Butter Tarts

*your favorite pie crust pastry
1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup half-and-half cream
1/2 cup raisins or chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts) I didn’t add any

Preheat oven to 375. Prep your pie crust and line a tray of muffin cups with it. Then cream together the butter and brown sugar.
Add eggs and half & half cream to the mixture and continue mixing for a 3-5 minutes. Then pout into your prepared tart shells.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, check on it after 15 minutes. The filling with cook quickly, you’re looking for the pie crust to brown.

As most of you are aware I have been cooking and baking my way through Sarah Matheny’s cookbook, Peas and Thank You this year. I have posted 19 recipe reviews so far (and made quite a few more than that) and I’m totally in love with this book. I mean, I’m such a fan girl it’s a little embarrassing. Here are the five most recent recipes I’ve made. So so so good!!

	I was late to the party with blondies, I’m sure because my granny was never big on them. She maaaaaaay have made them once or twice but I have no childhood memories of these ‘brownies void of chocolate’ and once I discovered what they were I couldn’t get past the why? Why leave the chocolate out of a brownie? (read)
	One of the biggest hurdles we all have with healthy eating is time, unless of couse you either have someone to make all your meals for you or you’re willing to spend your shoe / yarn / cute dress / kitchen gadget money on prepared meals and snacks. (read)
	One photo and no recipe? Surely this is a cop out. No, no. I just really, really don’t want to give away recipes for free from a book that is worth buying not just because it was written and pulled together by a talented food blogger that I adore, but because these recipes are crazy good – and also kinda crazy. (read)
	I? Am a little in love with these falafels. Some of the ingredients were totally unexpected to me and I wasn’t sure if this was going to be a good idea, but I went with it, and trusted Mama Pea and what do you know? They’re amaazing. (read)
	This recipe comes together very simply and has just the right texture. Perfect with a cup of coffee or a glass of almond milk. My kids are not big on carrot cake, but 2/3 of them love this and I’m a serious fan of it. It’s nice to bring along when visiting because it’s uber healthy but still sweet! (read)

I have mentioned, but try not to broadcast that I generally make separate dinners for my family and myself. Occasionally, I’ll cheat and eat what I made for them or some slightly different version of it. I’m not trying to force my relatively newfound dietary beliefs on them, but I’m also not going to eat meat every night just because they are. I don’t ever bug them about it, I generally make healthier versions of their favorites and add in as many veggies and seeds and other goodies like that as I can without causing them to hate it, but I try to keep them happy and at the same time, lead by example. If they never come around to eat the way I strive to, that’s cool, but I’m going to keep on with it because it honestly does make me feel better.

Having said all of that, here’s this week’s menu!

August 20 – 26

Sunday – The Duggar’s Tater Tot Casserole (with homemade tater tots and broccoli) for the fam, Peas’ Crack Wrap for me and Caramel-Filled Brownies for dessert

So, as you may recall, I jumped into the Ravellenic Games (aka the Knitting Olympics) on day 6, which is a little crazy but I figured I’d be able to challenge myself to something and actually do it.

I am beyond happy to report that I did! This is my official project page on Ravlery, I knit 100 puffs for my Beekeeper’s Quilt with literally just 15 minutes to go!

Since I focused all my efforts on this one event (the Modular Relay) I will only get one medal, which is what I originally set out to do, but as I watch so many other knitters collect a zillion medals for painfully easy tasks (like knitting 5 puffs, or knitting a stack of unstuffed puffs) I’m all butthurt! Haha. Which is totally ridic, I know. I could have chosen to knit like 10 puffs for that event, and I could have made cross-event projects (like if I had made a pair of quick baby socks from the pink bamboo in my stash it would have counted for 3 events; Baby Dressage, Synchronized Stash Busting and the Sock Put – actually, if I made them as a Chrismtas gift then I would have also gotten the Holiday Hurdles event). Anyhoo, I’m setting the lofty goal right now that I will try to participate in ALL the events in 2014. So I think I need a loom lol.

As for Menu Monday this week, I’m not sure what I’m doing because it’s been so hot! Last night we had sandwiches. Yes, really. At first I was thinking I should just BBQ this week, but I’m not as great with charcoal as I am with gas and my gas BBQ is about eleventy billion miles away. Soooo, we’ll see. I’m thinking at the very least I should have brought my slow cooker or toaster oven down with me for temps like these!

I did however, order this and can hardly wait for it to get here so I can make frozen treats for the wee ones!

When I was a kid, scalloped potatoes was my hands down favorite side and maybe to keep the magic of it alive for me, my Daddy would only make it once in a while. I absolutely loved everything about it, like most kids I counted potatoes as my favorite vegetable and also like most kids, I had a real serious love of cheese. Now that I’m older though I understand that wasn’t just the marriage of cheese and potatoes that won my heart with this side, but the creamy, slightly gooey sauce that keeps it all from melting into a big unappetizing clump and the tiny hint of nutmeg. So many of my childhood favorites had a pinch of nutmeg in them. Thanks for setting the bar so high, Daddy! <3 This recipe is not his original. The only irritating thing about my father's kitchen habits is his refusal to use an actual recipe. He calls them a 'springboard' for his kitchen creativity. No controlling this guy with measurements or doing anything the same way twice! So his recipe for the scalloped potatoes I grew up with is a pinch of this and a dash of that and 'it's done when it smells done'. This recipe though, is pretty close!! One of these days, I will try to veganize it! Personally, I wouldn't attempt to make any kind of scalloped potatoes unless I had a serious mandolin, but if you're good with a knife - by all means slice them thin!

cooking spray
about 5 or 6 medium potaotes, I used red
3 pieces bacon, fried and patted dry
2 tablespoons melted butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
3/4 cup cheddar cheese
1/4 cup mozzarella cheese
1 cup fat free milk
1 teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons thyme

After you slice your potatoes as thin as possible (or slightly thicker, if you prefer), fry up and then dry your bacon. Now make a gooey mixture with the melted butter, salt, pepper and garlic powder. Toss the potato slices in it and make sure they’re all evenly coated. Most recipes will tell you to grate your cheese but I slice mine into smallish chunks for this. Spray whatever dish you’re using and arrange about 1/2 of the coated potatoes on the bottom, then cover with about half the sliced cheddar.
Now scald your milk, nutmeg and thyme. Just bring it to a boil and shut it off. Give it another mix to be sure the spices are incorporated. Now add the rest of the coated potatoes, pour the milk mixture over them and top with the rest of the cheddar and the mozzarella and bacon. Cook at 425 for about 45 minutes.

These little treats are almost a brownie, almost cakey in texture but are chocolate chip cookie all the way in flavor. Which of course means my kids love them – brownie, cake and chocolate chip cookie all at once? Oh! That actually gives me an idea for later! Ahem. These Congo Bars take maaaybe 5 minutes to get in the oven, 7 if you have a toddler pulling at your skirt and like 20 if your toddler insists on helping. I do my best to let the kids help when they ask to because some of my favorite times with my parents and my grandparents were in the kitchen with a mound of flour on the floor and dough in my hair. Thanks guys!!

No small talk for you today, it’s Day 7 (of 17) of the 2012 Ravellenic Games and I’m only 0.13% through my first event, the Modular Relay (puffs for my blanket) and I’d really like to do more than one event. So whip up a batch of these, and get knitting! 🙂

Congo Bars – via Six Sisters Stuff (adapted from Bakerella

2 3/4 cup flour
2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup butter, softened
2 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips
1 c. chopped pecans (I made these for the kids & they weren’t feeling the nuts)

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt and then set aside. Cream the butter and the sugars, then add one egg at a time, then the vanilla. Once that’s all incorporated, mix in the flour and then fold in the chocolate chips (and nuts if you’re using).
Pour the batter into a greased brownie pan (I spaced and left mine at a friend’s house so I made mine in a pie plate). Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes and voila!

This is going to be a quick post because I really need to attack my chore list early today so I can get going on my Ravelympics project. It’s day 5, which is a little late for a 17 day event, but I’m all over it. I don’t know which site to link to to talk about this so I will make tomorrow’s Work In Progress Wednesday post all about it. Very quick history though is that in 2006 a popular knitting blogger who also really liked to watch the winter Olympics had this idea that for the time period of the official Olympics, we should all knit something extremely challenging. ‘We’ being all of us who read her blog. It was fun, I made Wee One #2 (who was just a few months old at the time) a sweater. Then the next time the Olympics rolled around we did it again, but this time her blog was bigger so there were more knitters joining in. Eventually, Ravelry was born (sort of like Facebook for knitters) and every Olympic year since the tradition has kept going.

I promise to write a detailed post tomorrow because I’d love to have all the links in one place for myself and other knitters, but a lot of non-knitters are curious. There are so many different ‘teams’ on Ravelry, ranging from type of finished project to geographic location to just fun and silly things. The official ‘group’ on Ravelry also has knitting ‘events’ much like the actual Olympics. There is little organization to it, so there are often multiple groups for the same things. I am joining a local one to the South Bay of Los Angeles and probably whichever modular group (for my puff blanket) my sister is in. Eeeee! So fun!!

Extremely simple caramel recipe!! I initially made this to use in the Snickers Bars I recently made, but since then I’ve used it as an ice cream topping, dip for apple slices and berry skewers. The only thing that can throw you off here is allowing the caramel to stop boiling when you add the cream – so don’t!

2 cups sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 3/4 cups corn syrup
1 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Start off with the sugar, corn syrup, butter and a small amount of the heavy cream. Bring to a boil and add the rest of the cream s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w-l-y. Don’t let it stop boiling (and it will if you add too much cold cream too fast). Continue boiling until it reaches 240 degrees. Then pour it into a greased pan or a jar. If you plan to make candies with this, you can roll it into logs and wrap them in wax paper. Or you can use it in recipes! I used this caramel in the Snickers Bars I made a few months ago!

Today, I’m linking up with The How To Mommy and Organizing Junkie for Menu Monday

After a whole lot of serious discussion, (involving a whole lot of meticulous pie charts made from a whole lot of painfully detailed spreadsheets), we have come to the decision that we’re going to be calling Los Angeles home for the foreseeable future. Of course this decision would have been a whole lot easier to arrive at if all we had to weigh was palm trees and beaches against pine trees and snow. I mention this to both explain my absence and to light a fire under me to post more shots of all we’ve been up to in California. More photos later this week, today is Menu Monday, so let’s get to it.

This Week’s Menu (Monday July 30 – Sunday August 5)

This spiced up version of the buttermilk fried chicken I made a couple of months ago was the perfect partner to these hybrid french fry/onion ring creations, which are really just a potato-ed up version of my favorite Leek Ring recipe. I was originally inspired by this post over at Spoon Fork Bacon but I ended up going in a totally different direction because we decided we wanted more of an onion ring base. I will eventually try the original recipe!

Just as with the original version of this recipe, fill a shallow(ish) bowl with the buttermilk and add the spices. Mix it up and plunk in your chicken. Let it sit in the fridge for about six hours. Once you’re ready to get frying heat your oil in a tall pot and get your coating ready, which is just the standard herbed flour mixture listed in the original recipe.
Shake off the excess buttermilk mixture and toss each piece of chicken in the flour mixture until it’s completely coated and then pop into the oil for about 6 minutes. I put about 10-15 pieces in at a time.
These go over really, really well at our house.
The potato rings are so simple it’s a little ridiculous. Literally mix all of the ingredients in a large bowl and coat your onions before putting them in the oil the same way as the chicken. The big difference here is watch them, do not make the mistake of turning your back for a second. They’re browned and ready in about a minute. That’s it! Then they can join their fried friends on some paper towel while one of your kitchen helpers makes a salad to redeem this meal a little. Unless they make a ceaser!
I had to make french fries too because the concept of these ‘potatoy onion rings’ was just too weird for the wee ones.