me make food

We have been looking for new ways to do pork chops and a breaded version seemed cool. The skillet potatoes have scallions, bacon, red pepper, and were awesome. More pics below and some info.

Trying to eat our way through our freezer. Figured some grilled pork chops would be good. We had some bread and always have lots of Nebraska sweet corn. Theresa wanted some potatoes too. Easy meal.

Are you boiling those chops? Click below to find out.

So we trying to make some new meals. Have had some failures, but nailed it Friday night. Some folks suggested some good sites to find recipes. Epicurious seems like a favorite, but after scanning a bunch of recipes I was getting frustrated and decided to try an recreate dishes we would get if we went out. It has worked for us before and usually comes out pretty good. Theresa likes the voodoo chicken from Lazlo’s and I decided to try something like that.

Voodoo Chicken
Boneless breast blackened with Cajun spices, topped with a three-cheese sauce.

When it comes to blackening chicken I usually stick to just cayenne, salt, black pepper, and maybe some garlic salt. I checked out Alton Brown’s blackening for salmon and added some celery seed, onion powder, sage, paprika, and mistys seasoning. Spread lightly over the flattened breasts and sauted in olive oil and clarified butter.

I did not get good pics of this meal cuz I was a bit flustered.

So we went to best buy and decided we should pick up something for dinner while we were out. Got to the supermarket and still had no clue what to make. Theresa suggested potato soup and it sounded like a cool thing to make. We have made potato and bacon soup a couple times. Our attempts have been hit and miss. Could not find a smoked ham hock so I decided to pick up some smoked turkey legs. Figured I would try and tweak this one so I put some celery, garlic, onion, peppercorns, bay leaf, and a piece of bacon in the pressure cooker. The broth was intensely flavored.

Our wire whip on the kitchenaid mixer was destroyed in an attempt to repair it (pic below) so we turned to the trusty ricer for our mashed taters and although I have replaced the wire whip we will sticked to riced potatoes. The texture is nice and you can fold in the milk and butter easily. Best part is you avoid making glue by over whipping them.

My brother had us over for fathers day and he made some cheesy bake taters with our meal and they were really good. I inquired about the recipe and this is what I got.

Boiled the taters until just done, I think it is ok to have them just a bit raw since you will be baking them again.

Melt butter and olive oil in a small pan with a good amount of garlic (chopped). You should be on low heat to just cook the garlic not brown it. You are just releasing the essential oils out of the garlic.

Add some milk or half and half to taters and mash. Add butter/oil/garlic mixture and mix.

Salt, pepper, and what ever other seasoning to taste.

then added Parmesan from a can and some cheddar cheese and mix well. Taste and re-season if needed. Put into a baking dish and cover top with more parmesan cheese from the can and bake for 30-45 minutes at 350.

He makes some really good stuff and we picked up a pork loin to go along with the taters. The pork loin I got was actually two that were the same as a PSMO and I carved them up into 4 hunks, 3 for later meals.

When we started making meals from scratch we tried to recreate some hamburger helper type meals. Theresa always liked the HH’s with potatoes and I liked the pasta ones. I had not tested out the food grinder attachment yet and figured we could use it for something last night. Theresa said beef goop with potatoes. We discussed how we would do it. I was under the impression that the dehydrated potato slices that come in a HH box were pretty much cooked and since the sauce would be a bit thick it might be better to cook the potatoes first. After making this last night I think it might of been better to cook the potatoes in the sauce.

Theresa picked up some cheap chuck and sirloin steaks and I got to grinding. I had purchased a food grinder attachment off ebay before, but I did not read the description and failed to notice it did not come with the grinding plates. I still have in my possession a really old hand cranked grinder from Theresa’s parents, but that thing was really scary. The kitchenaid one rocked. I was surprised you are supposed to turn it up to speed 4, but it was not as fast as I thought it would be. What came out was perfect.

I am amazed by how many times and all the comments on my hashbrown video. I got an email yesterday that intrigued me a bit.

Hello, I watch your video on hash browns they were pretty good, but do you know how I can make those triangle hash browns that they serve at school? They taste like hash browns and look a little like them but I can’t find how to make them.

I consider it a dare. There has to be some sort of binding agent. A few folks mentioned eggs and flour in the comments of the vid. Not really sure how to go about this. First step is to keep the potato shreds from turning brown, then form some how and partially cook them to make them possibly toaster ready.

Any ideas?

We are trying to eat a lot healthier and it took a while to try some new things. We do salads as sides and figured some seasoned potatoes would be a bit better than a baked potato or mashed with gravy.

Pretty simple to make. I cut some wedges and coat them with a clarified butter and oil mixture, some basil and parsley from the garden, salt, pepper, shredded garlic, and Cavanders greek seasoning. Put on a glove and mix it all up. Bake at 400 for about 25 minutes. They are really good. We like them to get a good browning, but you could prob foil pack them and grill too.

My brother had us over for fathers day and he made some cheesy bake taters with our meal and they were really good. I inquired about the recipe and this is what I got.

Boiled the taters until just done, I think it is ok to have them just a bit raw since you will be baking them again.

Melt butter and olive oil in a small pan with a good amount of garlic (chopped). You should be on low heat to just cook the garlic not brown it. You are just releasing the essential oils out of the garlic.

Add some milk or half and half to taters and mash. Add butter/oil/garlic mixture and mix.

Salt, pepper, and what ever other seasoning to taste.

then added Parmesan from a can and some cheddar cheese and mix well. Taste and re-season if needed. Put into a baking dish and cover top with more parmesan cheese from the can and bake for 30-45 minutes at 350.

He makes some really good stuff and we picked up a pork loin to go along with the taters. The pork loin I got was actually two that were the same as a PSMO and I carved them up into 4 hunks, 3 for later meals.