Spam and French-fry Casserole: in case you had any delusions that I’m normal

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Serene

Important notice: If you’re opposed to really filthy swear words, bathroom humor, meanspirited teasing of people who make bafflingly bad crafts, or videos of aliens kind of having sex, please, for the sake of all that’s holy, don’t click any of the links below. I mean it; the least you can do is not click links that will upset you and spare us both the butthurt.

So you all already know I’m kinda wacky, right? Oh, good, you’ve been paying attention. I was a little worried there for a minute.

Anyway, one of the bizarre joys in my twisted existence is Regretsy [Regretsy website | Regretsy's Facebook page].

How to explain Regretsy? Well, see, there’s this site called Etsy whose premise sounds good: a marketplace for people to sell their wonderful handmade crafts. Sadly (or funnily, if you’re Regretsy’s April Winchell a.k.a. Helen Killer), the legit crafters are often crowded out by mass-market resellers of cheap baubles and by crafts that make everyone involved go “huh?”

Here’s an example, of the “gluing shit to other shit” variety. I found it on the front page of Etsy just now, but the things April finds range from this kind of asshattery to truly disturbing stuff that I’m not putting on my food blog—if you want to see it, go waste several hours a week on Regretsy the way I do.

octopus glued to a hip flask

by Etsy seller CosmicFirefly

All of which is the long way of getting to my point, which is that Regretsy is a bad influence. There’s a Super-Sekrit Regretsy Club attached to the Facebook page, “a club so mysterious and exclusive that only 103,755 people have the password!” (The password is cf4l, all lowercase, between you and me.) In the secret club, April shares exclusive content with those of us who aren’t content to merely stalk her regular blog, but want more more more. If you want to know why I made Spam and French-Fry Casserole, you have to read first this entry, and then this entry, and all will be made clear. If, on the other hand, you just want to see what a casserole made of spam, frozen french fries, sour cream, cheese, condensed cream of chicken soup, CORN FLAKES, and a couple token veggies looks like, wait no longer. Here it is, in all its glory:

spam casserole and an empty can of spam

See? I’m just not normal.

Not that this is news.

Posted in Miscellany | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Banchan: learning to cook Korean side dishes

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Serene

Yes, I’ve been on a Korean-food kick lately. I’ve got a batch of kimchi in the fridge; it’s a lot less salty than the last batch, but not as spicy. I’ll keep working on it.

soup and banchan dishes on the table

And I’ve bought some little dishes for banchan, because I’ve been in love with those little dishes of joy since the first time I had dinner at our favorite Korean restaurant, Sura. At Sura, they bring out a dozen or more of these little side dishes, and sometimes the little treasures last long enough to be part of the meal, as they’re intended. My idea of heaven is small amounts of lots of different kinds of food, so banchan is a natural for me. Same with Indian thali–I just LOVE little dishes of food!

We gave this concept two tries this week. First, I made a Korean cold noodle soup. Bought the broth pre-made at Koreana, along with the noodles and the banchan dishes.

Korean cold noodle soup in a white bowl, before adding things

I put out a bunch of little bowls of ingredients to add:

boiled eggs, pickled herring, more boiled eggs, pickled daikon, peas, nori, gochujang (red pepper paste), pickled garlic, pickled red cabbage, dried fried garlic

Then we each added our favorite things from the little dishes (click to embiggen).

Serene's soup with nori, pickles, peas, and gochujang The kid's bowl, with egg, nori, peas, and garlic James's bowl with egg, gochujang, pickles, and nori

Later in the week, though, I decided I wanted to learn to make some of the items I get at Sura, so I headed over to find Korean cooking videos on YouTube, and hit the motherlode. Oh, Maangchi, where have you been all my life?

Maangchi is the embodiment of Mom Food. Simply and cheerfully, she makes the recipes of her childhood while telling stories of Korea and her family. She clearly tastes home when she eats the results of her cooking, and her love of sharing her Mom Food is palpable. (“You could palp it if you wanted to.” — Tripod)

I made most of the banchan you see in the photo below. If you want to know more about each dish, I’ve given the names, and you can go to Maangchi’s site and find out how to make them.

Rice in a covered bowl. Big bowls of figs and bulgogi. Little bowls of kimchi, pickled herring, seaweed, kongnamul muchim, pickled garlic, Korean barbecue sauce, musaengchae, plain myulchibokkeum, gamjachae bokkeum, spicy myulchibokkeum, and gochujang

I bought 5 of the things in this photo at the store: pickled garlic, seaweed salad, Korean barbecue sauce, gochujang, and pickled herring. I picked the figs off Guy’s tree. I made the rest.

The bulgogi is from Bonnie’s recipe; kimchi is from Closet Cooking’s recipe; the kongnamul muchim (soybean sprout side dish), musaengchae (radish salad), plain myulchibokkeum (pan-friend dried anchovies), gamjachae bokkeum (potato and oyster mushroom side dish), and spicy myulchibokkeum all came from Maangchi.

Thank you, Maangchi! As you can see, we really like this way of eating!

the remains of the banchan (mostly eaten)

Frugal Cooks Note: The recipes for banchan all make a fair amount, and most keep for a really long time, so beyond the fact that the recipes are cheap to begin with, they’re even cheaper because they’ll serve you for several meals. I plan to continue learning new banchan dishes and re-making faves so that we have a steady stream of things to fill our cute little bowls with.

Posted in New Mom Foods, OPMF | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

My week in Bento

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Serene

I’m saving money and having fun with my lunches by using my new bento thermos every weekday. I thought I’d share my lunchbox photos with you.

(Click through to enlarge and/or to see what was in each box; Flickr lets me tag each photo with little notes — I love that!)

Monday:

01bento-9-26-11

Tuesday:

02bento-9-27-11

Wednesday:

03bento-9-28-11

Thursday:

04bento-9-29-11

Friday:

05bento-09-30-2011

This post is linked up in this week’s Penny Worthy Project. Go check out the other thrifty-living posts there.

Posted in Shoestring Cooking | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The Big Cook, Take Two

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Serene

Well, today, I’m renting a car (we don’t own one) and going to Costco, Grocery Outlet, and the produce store. I’m buying a bunch of food, and then tomorrow, I’m cooking. I’ve gone back to school, and it really helped this month to have the frozen items for my partner and kid to just pop into the oven or microwave if I was not up to cooking (and some of the items were also great for lunches, like the bean burritos; they only lasted a couple weeks, and I made 27 of them; I’ll make more this time).

All that’s left from last month’s big cook is a couple twice-baked potatoes and 2 quarts of potato soup.

This month, the plan is:

Bean burritos (a favorite; I’m going to make more like 4 dozen this time)
Chicken enchiladas
4 dozen oatmeal cookies without raisins (the kid’s request)
Tuna casserole
Chicken pot pies
A couple quarts of kimchi
Pork potstickers

Today, I’ll do the shopping; tomorrow the cooking.

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Chicken and Rice and Flexibility

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Serene
Way back in the beginning of this project, I said:

As you’re doing this, don’t forget the tag line: Food is not love. Feeding people is love.

Food is not love. 

Feeding people is love.

The emotions this stuff invokes aren’t actually in the food itself. Those cinnamon rolls aren’t Grandpa Food because of the cinnamon—they make you feel the way they do because Grandpa saved you the end piece with less icing, because he knew that’s what you wanted. The chicken soup your mother made when you were sick still makes you feel better because she cared enough to make it, not because of the soup itself. The food is a talisman of sorts, a way to bring to mind the memories of lovingkindness inherent in the act of giving sustenance to a child. If you don’t eat chicken any more, you’re not excluded from the exercise of passing that love on to those around you. You just get to do it with different foods.

We can’t bring back the days of childhood, not really. But let’s bring them to mind and honor them, shall we?

Why do I bring this up now? Because I had the great joy today of helping my brother to find a way to feed his own Mom Food — my mother’s chicken and rice casserole — to his son, who has a severe gluten allergy.

After Rick saw my recent posts about him and his family, my mom took him a pan of chicken and rice. When we were kids, my mom found this on a Campbell’s soup can, and she made it a lot. We all loved it. My brothers were like Jack Sprat and his wife — one loved the chicken part and eschewed the rice, and the other ate the rice part and gave his chicken to his brother. I honestly never remember which was which. I was a rice girl, myself, and can still eat the stuff until I’m packed as full as a house on Hoarders. Anyway, Rick got to wondering if he could make it gluten-free so that his son could eat it, and when mom mentioned it to me, I just knew it would be an easy fix.

Big pan of chicken and rice

If you’ve been around a while, you’ve seen me experiment with gluten-free cooking — heck, I even made a whole gluten-free Thanksgiving last year, as part of a Gluten-free Girl project, but none of that gave me quite the joy of making mom’s chicken and rice gluten-free today and having James tell me he wouldn’t have known the difference if I hadn’t told him.

Plate of chicken and rice, green beans on the side

The old way

See, Rick can’t pass on his Mom Foods to his ever-adorable son if they’ve got gluten in them. And nowadays, you can make just about everything gluten-free, so hey, why not give it a shot, I figure?

I’m going to give you both recipes: mom’s original, trashy, delicious version; and the homemade, gluten-free version, which is equally delicious.  The only gluten-containing ingredient in mom’s version is the Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, so really, all I had to do was make a homemade mushroom soup with cornstarch as a thickener instead of flour. You can do this, too. Easy peasy. Sure, it takes more time, but it’s really easy and worth it, especially if you have someone in your life who misses eating that particular condensed soup trashiness comfort food.

[Note: I usually make the big batch you see above, not the amount in the recipe below, but this makes a LOT, so I'll leave it at this in the printable recipe and tell you that for the bigger batch, I use 2 cups of rice, a total of about 10 cups of liquid (3 cans of soup, 3 cans milk, 3 cans water), and two large onions. The rest is the same, including the cooking time, because it goes into a larger pan than the 13x9 in the recipe.]

Plate of gluten-free chicken and rice, side of green beans

The gluten-free version

I’m testing a new recipe software on the blog, and this is a good test recipe to use, because it’s fairly involved. Don’t let that worry you, though — it’s an easy recipe, and you can have it on the table in an hour and a half, tops.

Chicken and Rice, with or without gluten
5.0 from 1 reviews
Print
Recipe type: Casserole, Entree, Soup
Author: Serene and her mom
Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 45 mins
Total time: 55 mins
Serves: 6-8
If you’re fine with canned soup, feel free to use it. The homemade soup is better, though, and has no garbage in it.
Ingredients
  • GLUTEN-FREE MUSHROOM SOUP:
  • 1 pound mushrooms, finely chopped (I use whatever’s cheapest, usually button mushrooms, but use any kind you like)
  • 6 tablespoons butter
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
  • 6 cups milk
  • 1 teaspoon tomato paste, optional
  • THE ORIGINAL, GLUTEN-CONTAINING MUSHROOM SOUP:
  • 3 cans Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom condensed soup, or any combination of cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, and cream of celery
  • 3 cans (approximately 3 1/4 cups) milk
  • 1 can (approximately 1 cup) water
  • CASSEROLE:
  • 1 cup long-grain white rice
  • 6-8 chicken thighs, or a cut-up chicken
  • granulated garlic
  • 1 large onion, sliced into rings
  • paprika
Instructions
GLUTEN-FREE MUSHROOM SOUP:
  1. Place the mushrooms, butter, salt, and pepper into a 3-quart or larger soup pot and cook on medium-high heat 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid has evaporated.
  2. Add milk and tomato paste, if using.
  3. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently.
  4. Stir the cornstarch slurry and add to the soup.
  5. Return the soup to a boil, then take off the heat and set aside. At this point, the soup can be refrigerated for up to 2 days before using in the recipe.
GLUTEN-CONTAINING SOUP:
  1. Whisk the stuff up. It’s not brain surgery, folks. :-)
CASSEROLE:
  1. Preheat the oven to 350F. If the soup is cold, you can either heat it, or use it cold and cook the casserole an extra 30 minutes.
  2. Take a 13x9x2 casserole dish and butter it if you want, or skip it. I remember about half the time.
  3. Pour a cup of rice into the dish and spread it around roughly evenly.
  4. If you want, skin the chicken thighs. My mom keeps the skin on, but I don’t like the wet texture it gets, so I skin it and save the skin for schmaltz. Place the chicken atop the rice and sprinkle with garlic to taste.
  5. Arrange the onion rings over the chicken.
  6. Carefully pour the soup on top to cover everything.
  7. Sprinkle the top of the casserole liberally with paprika.
  8. Bake 30-45 minutes, until most of the liquid is absorbed, the top is browned and bubbly, and the chicken is cooked through (doesn’t bleed when you pierce it). Add 30 minutes to this cooking time if you’re using cold soup.
WordPress Recipe Plugin and Microformatting by EasyRecipe

 

Posted in DIY Mom Food | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments