me make food

Picked up some Le Quartier breads, one sourdough, and a crusty pain de campagne I like. Used the slicer for even cuts and dried them on my grill in a pan with the opposite side at medium with the bread not under flame. Looking to dry them with heat and not use inhouse stuff in warmer weather. Grill as an oven.

So we picked up a few dressings a shopping trip back. I wanted some ideas on how to make my own salad dressing since we are rocking them for sides more often now.

I headed to Alton Brown for suggestions of course.

- I went with 1/4 cup of mostly red wine vinegar. I mixed a slight pour of some really cool balsamic vinegar my in-laws got for me into that 1/4th cup. A few shakes of rice wine vinegar as well.
- 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil, some light olive oil and 10 drops of sesame oil to make up the last 1/4 cup of oil. Some garlic, salt, pepper, and sun dried tomato

Everything besides the oil was blended to mix. Blended the oil for a few secs in there and it was ready.

.

It is amazing and just like store bought stuff, but more flavorful. I only needed a very tiny amount.

I have been looking for a sauté pan after watching chef Todd and found this sucka at BB&B for $39. My saucepan is a Cuisinart and I love it, so I knew the 10 inch pan would be great. Made some fish and shrimp with it for its christening.

So on the suggestion of Chef Todd and his knife sharpening video I picked up a $13 eight inch dual sided sharpening stone from the hardware store. I headed home and checked out some other youtube vids on how to use a sharpening stone.

I used water to lube it up and it sucked up a bunch of water into the stone. Started with the dull steak knives in my Kitchenaid set which is pretty decent. I got those very sharp and kept working on my technique up to my precious chefs knife. I even used the brown side of my reversible belt to strop the sharpened and honed knives. The difference is amazing. I cut up some chicken today and it was spooky how sharp my knife was. I will keep working on getting the angle and technique down and can skip the places I have taken my knives to get sharpened which have had mixed results. Still pretty bummed that my santoku knife was hacked to loose its curve and render it pretty much useless. I doubt my stone can shape it enough since they are high carbon stainless.

Very pleased with my first attempts results.

We have 5 dinners planned. Tomato chicken cream pasta, blackened chicken salad, mac and cheese (not the kraft), hamburgers, And spaghetti in a meat sauce.
The rest is munchies, fruit, sweet makings, and stuff to make doggie and kitty soup (a month or more worth).

There are not too many manufactured foods. Carmel rolls (I might eat one, but she loves them), Bologna, Doritos, salad dressings we want to try to get ideas from to make our own, tortillas, hamburger buns, Kraft mac and cheese (her lunch), and a rice pilaf box to give us ideas for our own pilaf. All the rest is raw ingredients and we try to make every thing from scratch. I did not tell Theresa about our plan to photo it till the ride home. She thought it was a cool idea.

Total was $135

multiple good dressings, chocolate, coffee, fancy cheeses, beer, and there is a pile of meat there which goes to us and leavings to pet food. We usually use bulk meat from sams for pet food (have not been there for a while). Those items were the bulk of the price. We had not been shopping for a long time and lots of it will last for well beyong the upcoming week.a weeks worth of food

I call it a fat parfait

Two really thin burger patties with grated year old white cheddar, sauteed mushrooms, 1.5 pieces of Neuskes apple wood smoked bacon, and a fried bologna wheel between stone ground whole grain bun.

Nom

tried this video twice. Had to severely edit this sucka. Still works I think though.

Well I said I would keep you updated. first post

Seems the transition to hydroponic has caused quite the shock. It makes sense. Going from a cooler and pretty dry soil to soaked in nutrient rich water at a warmer temp is quite the change. Not to mention I had to hack the rhizome and roots to get them to fit in the little aerogarden things. A lot of the big leaves have wilted and needed to be cut off. Our guess was 1/2 would make it and it seems to be what it will be.

There are lots of baby strawberry buds forming from the flowers. Will see what happens. The aerogarden is a fun toy and we will make the best of it. Right now we have herbs rocking in outdoor planters so growing them indoors is not all that usefull. If the strawberries do not work out we will get some flowers kicking till fall when we need fresh herbs once again.

Here is the pic from the day they went in. Seems the difference in the pics is not that much, but from what we see they looked so much happier back then.

Got a post over on MMF and some emails from Chef Todd. I had submitted a chicken meal and he put it on his site. It is for the chicken and chilies dish.

If you can head on over there and comment and rate it. His e-zine is informative and worth signing up for.

Always looking for new ideas we decided to do make something based off of a Olive Garden commercial. They have Lasagna Rollatini, which is a tube of goop inside a lasagna noodle with more goop on it. Theresa had the day off and wanted to do this dinner by herself. She did not get pics of the beginning but she shredded parmesan, mozzarella, marscapone, asiago, and ricotta cheeses. Some garlic, fresh basil and parsley, pan seared chicken diced, and she even sliced up and sauteed mushrooms for me.

We figured rolling them like a jelly roll would be better than a goo filled tube. Theresa made a sauce from tomato sauce and herbs and topped the rolls with mozzerella and baked covered for 20 minutes @ 350