Stone Cold Sober Mocktail

I like cranberry juice, so I wanted a Mocktail with mostly cranberry juice.

When I say cranberry juice, I mean the kind that comes out of a bottle or package, not homemade.

So, I took a cocktail recipe and made a mocktail variation but the differences between the two drinks are so dramatic, I would say the original merely pointed me in the direction of cranberry juice with a few ideas for flavorings.

I liked the end result. It was a bit tart without a sweet overtone. I am developing my own mocktail taste descriptions. As someone with a chicken and beer palate, the idea of a taste vocabulary is amusing.

Look at the Stone Cold Sober Mocktail.

Ignore the sandwich, it's fried SPAM with sliced vegetables and a cream cheese spread. It's ok but it still needs tweaking.

OMG It's Almost Chicken Soup

My refrigerator has been acting funny. The freezer wasn’t freezing but the inside shelves were -- so I had frozen cucumbers, tomatoes and onions and frozen juices etc.

After setting adjustments and a few salvage attempts, I decided to see if the frozen cucumber would work in soup along with some other leftovers.

I had no clue as to whether it would turn out.

I added enough water to a pan to cover the bag of pasta with about 2 more inches.

Then, I added leftover chicken broth and 1/2 a vegetable bouillon.

Then I sliced up the previous frozen cucumber, carrot, and onion.

Decide to try the spice Thyme. So, I crushed about a half a teaspoon of thyme between my palms and added it to the soup mix.

Added about 5 peppercorns.

I battled with the electric stove top for about 2o minutes looking for simmer but getting either a rapid boil or vaguely warm. Eventually, settled on a slow boil.

But, as time when on, the pasta sucked up most of the water, so I eventually added about 6 more cups of water because I really wanted a soup.

At 11:00 I got a simmer.

At 12:00 I tried soup.

While it tasted good, the noodles were getting soft and still very little soup. I could have added more Thyme and peppercorns. So now I have this huge batch of almost soup with soggy noodles. The frozen cucumbers worked well. Let’s see how this freezes and how it tastes when reheated and tweaked.

What I wanted was a soup that I could use for leftovers. This one will work, I just have to adjust two cooking times. First, one for the vegetables to soften them; two, for the pasta, add in the last 10 minutes of cooking time. Eons ago, in the distant past, when I made a soup, I thought I cooked it for over an hour. Hmm, sounds like I need to do more research.

Lessons Learned:

Add noodles 10 minutes before soup is done cooking.

Add more Thyme and peppercorns.

Don’t need to cook soup for an hour.

Fell in love with peppercorns and Thyme.

Chicken (flavored) with Leftovers Soup

Water

1 1/2 cups Chicken Broth

1/2 Bouillon cube, vegetable

1 cucumber sliced

1 carrot, sliced

1/2 red onion, sliced

1 small bag pasta

1 teaspoon thyme

10-15 black peppercorns

Add about 8 cups of water to a large pan.

Add broth and bouillon cube.

Stir.

Add sliced vegetables.

Add spices and stir.

Cook for about 10 minutes on medium-high on simmer to soften vegetables.

Add pasta.

Cook on high for another 10 minutes.

Check water level, add more water if necessary.

Note: add more vegetables if desired.

Will need to retest this recipe in a few months. I have enough soup to last quite a while.

Here Are Recipes I Will Never Make Part 1

Since I am not a real cook, I can not "invent" a recipe, so I research recipes to find ones I feel I can afford and attempt.

I do enjoy researching various recipes and love finding unusual recipes.

But, there are some recipes I will never attempt. These are just two of them.

I came across these recipes in an article by Maria Popova on Brainpickings.org.

George Orwell’s Dessert Recipes

(From: George Orwell’s Recipes by Maria Popova at http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/01/31/george-orwell-recipes/)

In George Orwell Diaries, he wrote down recipes by Mrs. Searle)

(Based on George Orwell’s Diaries (http://www.worldcat.org/title/diaries/oclc/755705035&referer=brief_results)

Mrs. Searle’s Fruit Loaf Recipe

1 lb flour

1 egg

4 oz. treacle

4 oz. mixed fruit (or currants)

8 oz. sugar

6 oz. margarine or lard

Cream the sugar and margarine.

Beat the egg and add it.

Add the treacle and then the flour.

Put in greased tins and bake about 1/2 to 3/4 hour in a moderate oven.

Mrs. Searle’s Sponge Cake

5 oz. flour

4 oz. sugar

3 oz. grease (butter best)

 2 eggs

1 teaspoonful baking powder.

Mix as above and bake.

Tomato, Basil, Bean and Pasta Salad

Yeah, another success!  Thanks to the USDA SNAP-Ed Connection Program Recipe Finder.

I was leery about using all the pasta because I had just ruined a whole batch of pasta by tweaking a recipe, so I did not want a repeat performance and waste all the pasta. But, I like pasta with olive oil and basil, so I ended up with two dishes.

Not sure why, but my vinaigrette was too vinegary, so I added more olive oil.

Tomato, Basil and Bean Pasta Salad

(Adapted from USDA SNAP-Ed Connection Recipe http://recipefinder.nal.usda.gov/recipes/tomato-basil-and-bean-pasta-salad)

Ingredients

Pasta

1 small pkg of pasta

Olive oil

Basil, season to taste

Vinaigrette

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup apple vinegar

2 teaspoons mustard, wet

pepper, season to taste

Added Ingredients

1-3 tomatoes, sliced and cut in half

1-3 tablespoons beans, kidney, or garbanzo or black beans (cooked dry beans, or canned, drained)

Toppings

Canned Parmesan cheese, season to taste.

Instructions

Pasta

Cook pasta according to package directions.

After straining pasta and placing in a large bowl, add about 2-3 tablespoons olive oil. Add more oil if necessary.

Stir.

Add crushed Basil, season to taste.

Stir thoroughly to mix.

Set aside.

Vinaigrette

In small jar, mix oil, vinegar, mustard and pepper to make a dressing.

Stir well.

Cover and shake.

Set aside.

Single Serving

In a single serving bowl, add enough pasta to make a layer on bottom of bowl.

Add tomatoes.

Add beans.

Pour a little of vinaigrette over mixture and toss together.

Cover and chill at least 1 hour.

When serving, add toppings.

Store leftover pasta, vinaigrette and added ingredients in separate covered containers and refrigerate for later use.

Alternatives:

Make a larger portion of recipe by combining all of pasta with additional added ingredients and all of vinaigrette. When serving, add toppings.

Other added ingredients can be: other fresh chopped vegetables such as cucumbers, peppers, small summer squash, carrots, broccoli or cauliflower.

Use your favorite salad dressing instead of making your own.

Use cooked rice or cooked, cut up potatoes in place of pasta.

Optional toppings: chopped walnuts and shredded mozzarella or provolone cheese.

Notes

While this recipe appears complicated, it is fairly easy. Just make the pasta. Make the vinaigrette. Gather the additional ingredients and make a single serving or multiple servings.

Yogurt, Fruit and Oatmeal Parfait

Update: 3/5/16, changed picture (while it looks similar, the ingredients used varies slightly, one difference, I used plain greek yogurt which is more solid.)

This is one of my favorite recipes so far.

It is a meal in a glass. I find it filling. It can be a breakfast dish or a dessert.

Another reason I like this recipe is that it’s hard to make a mistake with it.

Yogurt, Fruit and Oatmeal Parfait

(Adapted from: http://www.bestbonesforever.gov/recipes_main/Breakfast/breakfast.html)

Ingredients

1 tall glass

 3 oz yogurt, plain or fruit flavored

1/8 teaspoon vanilla flavoring (optional)

2 tablespoons oatmeal (or cereal)

1+ tablespoon pineapple chunks (canned)

1+ tablespoon peach halves, diced (canned)

1 banana, sliced

4 tspns mixed nuts and raisins, crushed

honey

Process

Stir vanilla into plain yogurt or use fruit flavored yogurt.

In the glass, layer yogurt, oatmeal, fruit, banana, nut mix, then start a new layer. Add layers to fill the glass.

Top off with nut mix, banana slices and a drizzle of honey.

Optional: Use any fruit you like.

Notes

Most of the yogurt in Mexico where I live is a drink, not an semi-solid from a container, so I do not really get a yogurt layer.

I make a peanuts, raisins, fried plantain chips, sunflower seed, and soy nut mix for snacks. I put 4 tablespoons of the mix in a plastic bag and crushed/smashed the mix with my solid wood cutting board. No damage to board or me.

I had tried this before with fruit flavored yogurt but I like the plain yogurt mixed with vanilla flavoring better.

Basic Potato Soup and a Shirley Temple Mocktail

Whew, a success. I needed a success.

Basic Potato Soup

2 medium white potatoes, quartered

1 medium red onion, diced

1.5 tbspn olive oil

3 tbspn flour

4 cups milk

salt and pepper to taste

In a pan, add potatoes and onions. Cover with water.

Bring to a boil, then lower heat to simmer.

Cook 10-20 minutes until potatoes and onions are soft.

Drain potato and onion mixture.

In a separate pot, add oil and flour. Stir until smooth.

Add 1 cup of milk.

Stir. Heat to thicken while stirring.

Add remaining milk and stir.

Add potato and onion mixture.

Season to taste.

Heat until hot.

This was my first potato soup. I even used the flour thickening trick.

The end result was a pleasant surprise.

Note:

Now, one thing I do consistently is I do NOT cut up my potatoes or onions into tiny pieces. Often they are not even bite-sized. Cutting up things is not my forte.

I celebrated with a Shirley Temple with my modifications.

Leftover Chicken & Dumplings and Cuchulainn Sheehan Mocktail

Bad Start Ends with a Good Recipe, Mocktail and More

My internet is so SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW, I have to have three projects in the works, so I can use the downtime for another project while I wait for internet access or a webpage to load. And that is just one of my technology problems.

So, I get frustrated.

I am working on two cookbooks. One is an enlarged version of Recipes from the Kitchen of a Frugal Non-Cook and the other is about mock cocktails.

One thing I have learned about cocktails is you can add a shot of liquor to just about anything and call it a cocktail.

I wanted to try a recipe called “Easy Chicken and Dumplings” because I love recipes that have “easy” in the title.

But, it calls for “cooked chicken”, so now I have to cook two dishes.

I need to cook chicken, so I can dice it for the recipe. So, how do you cook chicken?

Simple question, try an internet search and you end up with things like “Margarita Chicken”, not what I wanted to see.

So, I guessed. I added about 1 inch of water to a pan. I put my chicken legs in the pan on the electric stovetop and cooked them on medium high (low boil) for 20+ minutes. It worked, I got cooked chicken. Plus, some chicken stock.

Try pouring hot chicken stock into a jar; it can get messy if you aren’t careful. I firmly believe the kitchen is a dangerous place.

I put the chicken in the frig to cool, to dice later for the recipe. Now, I have lots of dirty dishes and I haven’t even started on the recipe.

This is perfect example of why I hate to cook and why I admire good cooks like my mom, who made it all look so easy. After doing five sinkfuls of dishes over the last three days, I could not help but appreciate my mom more. Plus, I am daydreaming about going out to eat. No dirty dishes in my daydreams.

Anyway, the dishes are washed and chicken has cooled.

After pulling the meat off the bones, I diced up a small bowl of chicken, more than the recipe called for.

While I made a few adjustments to the recipe, I wondered, “How do you know when dumplings are done?”

I don’t know. I was too tired to research it. All I could remember about dumplings was I liked them. I think they came out ok. They were hmmm, how to describe dumplings? Cooked dough in a chicken sauce. Not doughy, but dough-like, a bit like a biscuit.

The dish survived and so did I.

Also, I made a Mocktail I created and named “Cuchulainn Sheehan.” It turned out nicely -- refreshing, light and a bit tart.

At the end of the day, the computer technician came to provide me with an ethernet cable, so I could access the internet directly with the hope it would speed things up a bit.

So, a day that started badly ended successfully.

Now, I will call this recipe “Leftover Chicken and Dumplings”, so I will only use it when I have leftover cooked chicken.

Leftover Chicken and Dumplings (In Two Steps)

Step One

Chicken Mixture

2 cups cooked chicken, diced

2 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons water

1 cup chicken broth (or 1/2 chicken bullion and 1 cup water)

salt

pepper

Add flour to pan. Add water.

Stir to make smooth. Add more water if necessary.

Add broth. Stir.

Cook at medium heat until mixture thickens.

Add chicken.

Season to taste.

Step Two

Dumplings

1/3 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon Baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder (optional)

2 tablespoons milk

In a bowl, add flour, baking powder, salt and garlic powder.

Stir to mix.

Add milk.

Stir to form dough. Add more milk if necessary.

Form small mounds of dough with a tablespoon and drop into chicken mixture.

Cover pan. Reduce heat.

Cook on simmer 15 minutes.

Note: this post was done while using the ethernet cable and there were no drops in service!!!