Weekly Menu: January 23rd - 28th

Sunday: Grilled chicken, side salad, and rice.

Monday:  Lasagna

Tuesday:  Soup and Sandwiches

Wednesday: Beef Stir-fry

Thursday:  Hot dogs with chili, raw veggies on the side

Friday:  Roasted beef with sauteed mushrooms.  Baked potato for my husband and a side of zucchini for me.

Saturday:  Take out - probably Pizza - and hanging out at a friend's house.

Pecan Pie

The Mission: 
To use some of the pecans that husband's friend gave us after Christmas.  I'd heard that The Pioneer Woman makes a fabulous pecan pie, so I went to her website and decided to use this recipe.  I was pretty pleased to see that I had all of the ingredients on hand.... though I chickened out and used a store bought refrigerated pie crust instead of making my own.  (Though I do  plan on trying my hand at pie crust some other time..... eventually..... when I find my courage the time.)

The Ingredients:

• pie crust - unbaked 
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 Tbsp brown sugar 
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• 1 cup corn syrup (I used light) 
• 3/4 tsp vanilla extract 
• 1/3 cup melted butter (salted) 
• 3 eggs 
• 1 heaping cup of broken pecans   

The Instructions:

1. Prepare the pie crust in a 9" pie plate.  
2. Pour the pecans into the unbaked crust.  
3. Mix the remaining ingredients in a medium mixing bowl and pour mixture over the pecans.  
4. Cover the top and crust of pie gently with aluminum foil.  
5. Bake in a 350*F oven for 30 minutes.  
6. Remove foil and bake an additional 20 minutes.  
7. If the pie is too jiggly, re-cover with foil and bake until set.  (My pie took an extra 15 minutes in the oven until I felt it was solid enough.)   

The Results & Reviews: 
 Okay.  Let's start off with things that were good... 
1 - For the most part it tasted fine.... well at least the filling did.  The crust edges were a bit too done for my taste.
2 - It was easy enough to make, though apparently I'm missing something since it wasn't perfect (or even close to perfect).

Now let's talk about what is not so good.
1 - Even though I recovered with aluminum foil in order to bake the jiggly pie an extra 15 minutes, the crust came out too done and the top tasted a tad burnt.  (and the filling somehow managed to stick to the foil and peeled off - you can see in the pictures.)
2 - it was UGLY.  Really ugly.  Again - see pictures.
3 - The crust cracked during baking and syrupy filling got underneath and stuck everywhere.  Not quite sure how that happened.
4 - As the husband pointed out, the gel part of the filling wasn't smooth but instead had turned lumpy and weird.

Overall score:  No one else ate or saw the pie except for the two of us, so I don't have many reviews to go by.  If I do make pecan pie again - which I will soon - I will try a different recipe.  Obviously I missed some key step in this one in order to have it turn out lovely and rave-worthy.  But since we ate it and didn't throw it out, I guess it wasn't all that bad.  I'm just glad I didn't attempt this for company!

Asian Chicken with Broccoli

The Mission:

Make something a little different using the chicken that I thawed.  We haven't had any Chinese in a while, so I figured that a chicken/broccoli stir-fry would be tasty and easy enough to make.  So I added broccoli to the grocery list and hit up Food.com for a simple recipe.  Hopefully I have sesame oil.... I can't remember if I ran out or am almost out.  Oh well.  I added in some cornstarch to thicken the sauce a bit as well. 

The Ingedients: 

• 4 cups cubed chicken 
• 1 bag ( 16 oz) frozen broccoli florets 
• 4 cloved minced garlic 
• 5 Tbsp brown sugar
• 1/3 cup sesame oil - I was out so used peanut oil
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1 1/2 tsp grated ginger root 
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 2 Tbsp oil (I used peanut oil)
• rice to serve with 

The Instructions: 

1. Heat 2 Tbsp oil in a large skillet. 
2. Add the chicken and the garlic and stir-fry until chicken is no longer pink. 
3. In a small bowl or measuring cup, combine the sauce ingredients (brown sugar, sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger, and cornstarch) until smooth. 
4. Pour over chicken and stir. 
5. Add broccoli and stir-fry until broccoli is tender (but not mushy) 
6. Serve over hot rice. 

The Results & Reviews:  
This recipe is a definite keeper.  Not only was it super easy to make, my husband just raved about it.  I'm glad I decided to make extra.  As mentioned above I was out of sesame oil, so I just used peanut oil.  Though the sesame oil would've given it a slight bitterness to offset the sweetness of the brown sugar, I think the full third cup would add too much bitter, so when I make it again I will start with adding just a tablespoon of the sesame oil to see how it turns out.   Adding the cornstarch to the thicken the sauce gave it a great texture - so that was a definite plus.  I have a feeling that my husband is going to be requesting this meal often.  Actually - he thinks the sauce would be good with beef, so I'm sure I'll be blogging about that in the next few weeks!

Weekly Menu: Jan 9th - 15th

Sunday: I'll making a new recipe! Asian Chicken w/ Broccoli to serve over white rice.

Monday: Roasted Pork Loin with mac'n'cheese and mixed veggies.

Tuesday: London Broil with baked potatoes and green beans.

Wednesday: Sandwiches and possibly soup.

Thursday: Venison Steaks - sides to be determined

Friday: Fried Pork Chops with pinto beans (yuck) and some veggie.

Saturday:  Up in the air!

"Food Orgy Finale 2010!!!"

This is what my bestest friend in the whole wide world dubbed our New Year's Eve Celebration.  He picked me up early on the 31st to hit the store after we got our menu together.  Our spread was to include:

Cheese Sticks & Marinara Sauce
Honey BBQ Chicken Bites
Sliced Sausage with Cheese and Crackers
White Trash Puff Balls
Cocktail Weenies in BBQ sauce
Sausage Balls
Tiny Piggies in Blankies (made with some of the cocktail weenies)
Lemon Meringue Pie

Basically we ate our way into the new year.... which was tasty and fantastic!  When the ball dropped at midnight we attempted to wake up my husband so we could toast the new year.  Unfortunately it was a futile attempt, so instead we went out side with our glasses to see if we could spy any fireworks that the neighbors were setting off. 

Ironically enough we both resolved to lose more weight in 2011.  So our days of gorging ourselves on fantastically delicious and horribly unhealthy food will be limited.  Oh well - we did decide that we can splurge every now and then and are looking forward to making some wonderfully tasty dishes in the near future.

Weekly Menu: December 26 - 31st

The week following Christmas is always a little crazy, but I'm hoping I can manage to get things together to have an easy time figuring out what to do for dinner!

Sunday: Frozen Pizza - lame, I know

Monday: Dinner at my parents house to finish off Christmas leftovers

Tuesday: Venison BBQ (or as my brother-in-law calls it: Bambi-que)

Wednesday: To be determined - suggestions welcome!

Thursday: Possibly hamburgers - I need to make up my mind!

Friday: New Years Eve!!! We will be heading to a friend's house for pickups. Due to popular demand, I'll be bringing Crack Dip for sharing - and most likely some Christmas cookies.

Southern Style Grits

The Mission:

I was given this bag of Charleston Favorites Yellow Grits as a gift from my third cousin and his wife. They were visiting over the Thanksgiving holiday after recently moving back to the Charleston area. I've only had instant grits before and never cared for them, so I figured I'd wait and make these for someone who really enjoys grits.

My husband's dad came to visit us for Christmas, and I know he likes yummy grits, so I made these for breakfast the day after Christmas. I was pretty excited to have someone really look forward to this treat! He said that yellow grits were one of his favorite things to eat growing up. Serving them with bacon and scrambled eggs seemed to go over quite well.



The Ingredients:

• 1 and 1/3 cup Charleston Favorite Grits


• 4 cups water


• 1 and 1/4 tsp. salt

The Instructions:

1. Put the measured amount of grits into a heavy saucepan. Cover them with water to help bran rise to the top. Drain as much of the bran and water off as possible.
2. Pour the 4 cups of measured water over the rinsed grits and stir in the salt.
3. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer for 28 minutes - stirring occasionally.
4. Serve hot with butter, salt, and pepper

The Results & Reviews:

I was a bit worried about how they would turn out since I've never made them before, but I was assured that they tasted wonderful. Rinsing the bran part off seemed to go alright, though I was sure I'd screw that up. At first I didn't realize that grits are more of a side dish and not the main event like oatmeal or cream of wheat. Thankfully I had some bacon in the fridge and plenty of eggs so I could whip up a proper breakfast.

Now for those of you who know me know that I'm not a Southern girl. You also know that I hate, hate, hate bacon. So obviously I skipped the meat part.... but maybe you'd be surprised to know that I didn't only try the grits, I actually liked the grits! I added some butter, salt, and pepper to my portion and they tasted pretty good. I'm beginning to wonder if it's just the instant stuff that tastes icky, or if the Charleston Favorites brand is just spectacular. Either way everyone loved breakfast and I felt pretty good about it!