1870 pearl

Saturday Night Supper

Coarse cut carrots compliments of RB.

Roasted Turkey with root vegetables.

Fresh homemade crusty French Bread and a crispy Romain salad.

Divine.

A is for...

.....Apple Cobbler, which I find is one of my favorite comfort foods. The aroma and taste remind me of home. Usually in the winter I get a craving for it. While a standard size is too much for me I adapted a recipe to make a single serving treat. The bonus is that it only takes a few minutes to prepare. On cold winter weekends my son likes to whip up a few for us to enjoy together.

Forgive me - I'm no food stylist but this sure is good:D

The topping:

6 tablespoons butter

3/4 cups sugar (white or brown)

3/4 cup oats

1/2 cup flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice. Optional

Cut the butter into the mixture until it is the size of peas. Set aside. This makes a large amount of topping that can be stored in the freezer for later use.

Coat a glass ramekin with butter and set aside.

Fruit mixture:

1  medium peeled apple, diced small

1 teaspoon white sugar or to taste

1 teaspoon flour

1 dash pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon. Your choice. (I prefer pumpkin pie spice.)

4 tablespoons water. (You might have to adjust according to the humidity levels in your area. )

Mix the apple, sugar, flour and pumpkin pie spice until the fruit is evenly coated. Place in the ramekin. Add the 4 tablespoons of water.

Top with 3 tablespoons of topping, more or less.

Place in the toaster oven for 350 degrees and bake until the cobbler is bubbly and the fruit is tender. About 20 minutes. Cool and top with a nice dollop of vanilla ice cream if you desire.

You may also add nuts or raisins if you like. Try substituting the apples for the fruit of your choice or mix them in combinations. For example strawberries and peaches. Yum!

Cheers,

Abigail

P.S. I have knit yet another pair of socks, but alas they are a gift for my Sockret Pal. If I flash them she might find me and we would not want to spoil the surprise!

What's for Dinner?

I enjoy cooking with a passion but working full time leaves me drained at the end of the day and not very enthusiastic about cooking dinner. So I've learned to prep cook on the weekends. With my faithful side-kick (also called my son) by my side we cooked the base ingredients for 10 days worth of meals. Having pre-cooked items in the fridge saves a lot of time and affords me the ability to put a good meals on the table with very little effort. Today we charged into the kitchen and in 2 hours this is what we did.

We baked 4 pounds of chicken lightly sprinkled with season salt and pepper and cut it into cubes.

RB whipped up some Teriyaki marinade for 4 pounds of chicken, which after a few hours he grilled it and cut it into cubes. Yes, my 13 year old boy is becoming a grill master!

I cooked 3 pounds of ground turkey and made a chicken pie with peas & carrots.

RB fried a pound of bacon, 1/2 pound of hash browns, scrambled 8 eggs and mixed it altogether with supervision of course!

He also made 6 cups of Marinara Sauce. I'm teaching him the secret family recipe....I'm Italian -what more can I say about that!

So what will this bounty yield.

One yummy chicken pie and a few leftovers. I can't wait.

The cubed chicken will be transformed in to Asian Chicken Stir-Fry and Quick Chicken Stew.

The Chicken Teriyaki will yield 3 meals served with Asian veggies and sushi rice, sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds. I divide this into portions and pop most of the chicken into the freezer for later use.

The ground turkey will find its way into Minestrone soup, home made pizzas, bean stew, and sloppy joes. (Ick!) My hubby never outgrew his love for them. Strange....but true.

The marinara sauce will compliment homemade Tortellinis from a previous cooking spree and will grace the tops of pizzas and provide the necessary sauce for a meatball sandwich or two.

My son likes breakfast burritos in the morning, so all he has to do is scoop up a bit of the egg mixture and wrap it into a flour tortilla and microwave it for 30 seconds. Breakfast in seconds. Got to love that.

Behold the fruit of our labors...

11 dinners, 6 breakfasts and leftovers for lunch. Of course we have other yummy things in the fridge and pantry to add variety to the table! But this will save my sanity during the week and let's not forget about the bonus of cooking with my son. That in itself is more valuable than gold!

TTFN, Abigail

See...knitting is not the only thing I do:D

Good Eats!

Today TBC and RB had a fun filled father son day! They went to Water Wheel which is one of our favorite hiking spots in Arizona. It also has a nice creek that RB likes to play in. This time RB brought his crawdad trap and look at the bounty he brought home for dinner. Will it be good eats? Would Alton Brown eat this? I think so.

 

We did a simple shrimp boil and dipped them in cocktail sauce. Yum! It truly was good eats and Alton would have been jealous. It did not yield very much, but each bit was good. And look how patriotic it is!

I gave a new job to RB. Next time we go there he has to find a whole lot of crawdads for me:D

P.S. While they were gone I had some prime knitting time and turned the heels of my China Blue socks. You will have to wait until the next post to see them.