Archive for the 'Cooking' Category

Thanksgiving Cheer

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Chalupa
on November 26, 2008
in Cheese, Cooking, Food and Story
. 0 Comments

Nothing warms my cockels like getting out of work early.  This morning I had hardly arrived before I was told I should head home.  That’s OK with me.  I was able to get groceries, clean up a bit, do laundry, and even try out a new grilled cheese idea - but before I get to that I have a warning.

BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR LOADED MINI-VANS FULL OF KIDS AND A “Warning unsociable homeschoolers aboard” YELLOW CAUTION STICKER ON THE BACK!!

Yeah, on my way to Market Basket this van full of kids cut me off, cut some other people off, and peeled into the little Dunkin Doughnuts.  You know, the one in the parking lot for Market Basket.  Apparently homeschooling your kids means you also endanger their lives while striving to feed your coffee addiction.

So back to the grilled cheese.  While at aforementioned store I picked up some tuna.  I’m a big fan of tuna and cheese baked on the ol torilla.  Why not inbetween bread?  I eat tuna sandwiches all the time.  So I buttered up my bread, applied cheese, tuna, and then some more cheese.  It was amazing.  I suggest you try it sometime.

Scottish Eggs

Published
by
Chalupa
on November 16, 2008
in Cheese, Cooking and Food
. 7 Comments

I’m not exactly sure when we started talking about these at work.  Either Marquis or Mike brought them up one day.  These consist of hard-boiled eggs wrapped in sausage and deep fried.  Doesn’t that just sound absolutely amazing?

So I tried making them today.  They turned out to be much larger than I expected.  This is partly due to the fact we only had the jumbo eggs and the fact the sausage wasn’t completely thawed in the middle so there were some larger chunks of meat.  The deep frying was a little tricky because we didn’t have enough oil for the eggs to be completely submerged.  We ended up putting some of them in the microwave for a tiny bit after we pulled them out of the oil.

It’s probably hard to tell exactly how big they ended up.  I’d say they were slightly smaller than my fist if that helps.  They were also quite filling.  The “traditional” recipe doesn’t call for cheese or ketchup to be added, but I couldn’t really resist.  With or without, these are really quite tasty.  in the last two pictures you’ll see I melted some New York Sharp Cheddar on top of half an egg along with a little sauce.

Caution!: Eating Scottish Eggs may force you to take a Thanksgiving style nap afterward.

Chicken Ranch Pizza

Published
by
Chalupa
on October 2, 2008
in Cooking and Food
. 1 Comment

All the pizza here in New Hampshire is pretty lame so I’ve had to resort to making my own.  Moving to Indiana I thought I was in the doldrums of pizza creativity, boy was I wrong.  You should check out the Northeast!  Instead of typing, typing, typing about this pizza, I decided to tell a story in pictures instead.

My first good lasagna

Published
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Chalupa
on September 1, 2008
in Cheese, Cooking and Food
. 1 Comment

With the Olympics over and done with, there’s not much to watch on TV anymore, with the exception of the election brouhaha.  Tonight I decided I was going to make a lasagna.  A good lasagna.

I’ve tried this in the past and it’s never been anything I’d really want to share with anybody.  One daring thing I decided to do was use pepperoni for the meat.  One reason being I had no sausage or hamburger and chicken seemed just a bit too daring.  Here’s my ingredients.

  • 2 jars of Newman’s vodka spaghetti sauce
  • 1 pepperoni stick (it was over a foot long)
  • 2 tubs of ricotta (16 oz each I believe)
  • 1 lb shredded mozzarella (man-up and shred your own)
  • mushrooms (don’t know how many/much I had)
  • 1 box of lasagna noodles

So the first thing you need to do with store-bought sauce is beef it up.  I’m not talking about tossing some meat in there, I’m talking about adding some herbs and spices.  I always add some garlic, oregano, and basil.  Sometimes I toss other things in there.  Prepared sauces are always too bland for me.  You should also do this in a pot on simmer.  I think the heat helps loosen everything up.

While my water was starting to boil I shredded my cheese, sliced my pepperoni as thin as possible, and then washed and cut my mushrooms.  If you have one of those egg slicer things, they work great for this.  You’ll get nice, uniformly cut mushrooms.

After the noodles were done I drained them and let em cool for a couple minutes.  Then I started putting everything together.  Some people will tell you a lasagna needs six layers, or seven layers.  I never really care how many there are.  I just try to use up all my noodles if possible.  I did noodles, sauce, mushrooms, pepperoni, ricotta, mozzarella, and then started over.  I kept doing that until I filled up my baking dish.  You should also put a hefty layer of cheese on top.

I then cooked it at 350 degrees for about an hour.  I also made some garlic cheese bread with a fresh Italian loaf, some butter, garlic, and freshly grated Romano.  That went into the oven for the last 10 minutes.

I thought it turned out pretty well and Liz was also a big fan.  Didn’t take any pictures, but we had a copious amount of leftovers, so maybe I’ll snap a picture later on.

Lunchtime woes

Published
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Chalupa
on December 4, 2007
in Cheese and Cooking
. 1 Comment

You know how sometimes you’re just having one of those days and you’re looking forward to something good to eat?  Well I didn’t get to take off for some lunch until about 2:15 today and I went home to make myself a nice sandwich.  I got out the bread.  I applied ample portions of mayo and mustard.  I went to get out that ham or turkey or whatever it was……to find there was no thinly sliced deli meats to choose from.  I had eaten all of it.  So what do my wandering eyes rest on?  None other than old reliable.  Oscar Meyer wieners.

I deftly slid two out of the plastic, cut them in half, applied cheese and pickles to my sandwich, microwaved my concoction, topped everything off with a hefty serving of ketchup* and it was delicious.  A delicious, tangy hotdog sandwich.  What more could I have asked for?

*If you don’t know how much ketchup constitutes a hefty serving, I’m sure Tara could help you out.

Mexican Cornicopia

Published
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Chalupa
on July 25, 2007
in Cheese, Cooking and Liz
. 0 Comments

That’s what Sara’s been referring to it as for the past couple months.  Well, it finally happened.  Last night I made some refried beans, rice, cheese sauce, flautas and sopapillas.  Had a few friends over too.  It’s something we’ve been going to do for a while, but since Becky was here and she wanted me to make some stuff, it all kinda worked out.  It was a lot of fun.  We even rounded off the night with some more guitar action.  Becky’s pretty good at it for never playing before.

Hospital visits

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 10, 2007
in Asthma, Cheese, Cooking, Life and Liz
. 2 Comments

….are not fun.  I think I’ve said that many times before.  Several times during the past couple weeks Liz has hinted that I need to go to the hospital.  Today she got ahold of my doctor and he said I needed to go.  So I went.  At least this time they didn’t stick me with needles many times over.  I had a good person this time.  I also got stuck in the wrist again just like last time.  That’s to do blood gas tests.  They have to get blood out of an artery instead of a vein.  It hurts.  A lot.

So after being there six and a half hours and getting pumped full of new and fun drugs, I’m out.  I can breathe a lot better but I still feel like crap.  We never even say a doctor, just a bunch of nurses.  All I could think of is, “Yeah I’m feeling better now, but I currently don’t feel any better than I have the past couple weeks.  So how long til I get bad again?”  Liz asked what we were supposed to do if I didn’t get better and they just said we should come back.

As I got up to leave I walked about 10-15 feet and started having another one of my signature coughing bouts.  The nurse that had just checked me out started staring at me from across the room with a concerned look on her face while another one got me a wheel chair*.  Then they pushed me out and got me in Liz’s car.

Right now I’m watching a Stargate SG-1 marathon and wondering if I’ll be able to sleep.  Being sick really sucks.  I have to remember I don’t have it so bad though.  We at least have a place to live and I have decent health insurance.  I also have a competent doctor this time that believes me and I totally trust.  I also have a Liz that makes me grilled cheese with hotdogs inside, cooks frozen pizza and then spreads cottage cheese on top, gets me drugs and drives me to the hospital and back.  What more could I really ask for**?

Well, here’s to another weekend of chilling on a couch and watching TV.  I hope yours is just as fun if not more.

* Wheel chair rides are lots of fun.
** I already asked her to donate a lung, but she doesn’t want to.

Sweet Sweet Cheese

Published
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Chalupa
on February 8, 2007
in Cheese and Cooking
. 2 Comments

Last night after getting home from work, I was starving.  Two hot dogs later, I was jonesing for some nachos.  So I got a saucepan, some velveeta, the rest of some grated pepperjack and the shredded lemon-pepper chicken left-overs from when I made flautas.  I put the chicken and the velveeta in the pan, heated it up a bit and then added what Iron Chef would call THE SECRET INGREDIENT OF THE DAY.  Well today ingredient was heavy whipping cream.  Heavy cream makes a lot of things taste good.  It’s basically fat and who doesn’t like fat?  So I put in the cream, let it melt a bit, added the pepperjack and then more cream.  When you do this sort of thing you can’t have the heat too high and you need to be stirring a lot.  The end result is a party in your mouth.

Latest Creation

Published
by
Chalupa
on October 13, 2006
in Cheese and Cooking
. 0 Comments

1 box of Kraft macaroni and cheese
1 cube of parmesan
1 cube of romano
1 can of tuna fish (packed in water of course)
1 can of Rotel

So I made the macaroni and cheese and put in my butter. While the noodles were cooking I grated up my parmesan and romano. It was the last bits of some cheese I had bought about a year ago. It had just been chillin in my fridge for a while. These are hard, grating cheeses so it’s not like they go bad any time soon. So I put in my tuna and rotel and cheese and got everything mixed up pretty well. Once the cheese was melting I then added in the powder cheese that comes included.

By the time that was mixed up, my peas were done boiling so I got those drained and then put a layer of them in the bottom of a bowl. I then heaped some of my macaroni and top, applied a hearty layer of crushed red pepper and then lots of ketchup on top. It was awesome.

Enchilada adventures

Published
by
Chalupa
on September 6, 2006
in Cooking
. 1 Comment

I usually know everything in my kitchen, but with Chris recently moving out I feel like some things have disappeared. So I’ll be cooking and expect something to be there that isn’t. But that’s ok, cause then I just improvise. However, in the middle of making enchiladas last night I discovered I had no Handy wrap, no Seran wrap, and no cheap plastic clingy stuff that doesn’t clean. So I had to make a late night trip to Lance’s to pick some up.

I think this batch has lots of potential cause my fingers were burning when I was making them. I guess Sam and I will find out at lunch today.