My poor pudding

Everyone, save mr man is working with some version of the plague. Congestion, fever, nasty cough, gross sore throats, and a general ick feeling as evidenced by my kid's over it face above.

Sick children are the ultimate in parenting mixed feelings. On one hand, you feel awful that your babies are sick. The sad, pathetic coughs, the listlessness, and that glazed empty look that comes from being hopped up on cold medicine. On the other, if they'd only go to sleep, dammit, maybe they'd feel better or at least you wouldn't have to listen to them whine.

In honor of the gross that has descended upon our household, allow me to present my easy peasy, really shouldn't be a recipe at all recipe for veggie whatever meat you have on hand beef soup.

The ingredient list is incredibly short and the instructions are ridiculously easy making this the perfect soup to pick up when you hit up to grocery store for nyquil and the good kleenex after a run to the school nurse.

1/4 - 1/2 poundish of ground beef (I had some sausage in the fridge so I used that instead.)

3 bags of frozen veggie blend

1 large can of diced tomato

2 cans of chicken broth

1 tsp basil

1 tsp oregano

Brown the ground beef. Toss in the rest of the list, add some water until there is enough to fill the pot. Season to taste. Profit.

And here's a bonus pic of my babies.

Stellar photoquality, I know. I've got my fingers crossed I'll be able to get a fancy, if not new than new to me camera for my birthday.

An accidental border crossing

Dude, ma, I'm trying to watch Jimmy Neutron!

I owe peteybird as many kisses as I can fit on his grimacing little face. After the success of the Cuban bean stew, my oldest says to me in the same wistful tone he uses when he's trying to weasel his way into some Playstation 2 time, "I wish we had some over so we could have bean burritos. I love bean burritos."

Lucky for him, not only am I a nice mom, but the stars seemingly aligned for this kid in a big way. For starters, I had half of the ingredients sitting in my kitchen without a dinner plan to call their own. I can't recall exactly why I bought pinto beans three weeks ago. There are at least three varieties of dried beans I like better. I'm also not sure what I was planning to do with the can of tomato paste that was up there either. It didn't hurt that there was a pound of stew meat in the freezer as well as tomatoes, a lone tomatillo, a wandering jalepeno in the crisper drawer and a grocery run in the near future.

When I was threw, I layered up that burrito and wouldn't you know it, there was a Taco Bell grilled stuffed burrito IN MAH MOUTH!!!!

Run for the border, indeed. And yes, I realize that Taco Bell tastes nothing like real Mexican food but that's their slogan and I'm sticking to it.

I'm willing to consider that perhaps I'm simply high and deluded myself into this conclusion but I swear to you, it tasted straight up like a Taco Bell grilled stuffed burrito. Oh nom nom nom!

Wanna know how I did it?

Taco Bell-ish beef and bean burritos

First, you'll need a crock pot and about a lb or so of stew beef.  You could easily use pork instead of the beef. Because pork makes everything better, duh. Anyway, drop that hunk of whatever in there and add the following items:

2 tbsp of chili powder
1 tbsp of ground cumin
2 tbsp of lime juice
3 tbsp of tomato paste
1 tbsp paprika.
1/2 tbsp garlic powder
1/4 c water

Try to remember to turn it on before you leave for the farmer's market/grocery store so you don't feel like an epic dumbass when you return to a house that still smells like febreeze and irritation instead of yummy mock mexican goodness. This epic dumbass was forced to cook it at high for 4-5 hours but if you aren't a hot mess like me, you could probably go for 6-8 hours on low.

While that's cooking, you can move onto the pinto beans. I can't take full credit for the following as I incorporated some of the ingredients and techniques from petey's inspirational item, the black bean stew.

Vaguely Taco Bell Pinto Beans

half green pepper, finely chopped
half a yellow onion, chopped
four cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp minced fresh oregano
1 lb of pinto beans, soaked according to pkg directions and rinsed
1 1/2 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
2 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
2 bay leaves


Heat about 1 tbsp or so of oil or butter in a fat pot. Add green pepper, onion, and a sprinkling of salt. Stir on high until sweated down and yummy. Toss in the garlic and oregano. Cook for about 30 seconds, then add the spices. Pour in the beans, chicken broth, water, and bay leaves. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer on low for about an hour and a half or so or until beans are tender. Pull out about two cups of beans and either mash with a fork or pulse in the food processer/blender before stirring back into the beans. This will make them thicker. Otherwise, you're going to end up with burrito soup.

Seasoned Rice

Next, it's onto the rice. You'll need two packages of Goya Sazon seasoning. Add to a heavy sauce pan along with two cups of rice and four cups of water. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer on low until  cooked through.

Salsa

In a food processor, pulse two tomatoes, half an onion, one tomatillo, jalepeno, a couple splashes of lime juice, and salt and pepper to taste. You could also add cilantro but I didn't have any and it wasn't on sale this week so there you go. For mild salsa, you'll want to use half a seeded and deveined jalepeno. If you like more of a kick, go with a whole jalepeno, seeds and all. If you're a brave soul with a teflon tongue, skip the jalepeno and toss in a habenero.

To top is all off, you'll need sour cream, shredded lettuce, and crumbled queso fresca from the "ethnic" section of the cold stuff. The only think I wish I added was a healthy smearing of avocado.

"Because this is what you do
when something is really awesome," she says.

Pinky was thrilled with dinner as evidenced by her exuberant use of devil's horns. Do not ask me where she got that. As far as I know, she's not been watching VH1 Classic behind my back. I could blame it on her father. He was in a heavy metal band in his younger, follicular awesome days. Or perhaps she was temporarily inhabited by the ghost of Ronnie James Dio. You think he had a thing for Taco Bell?

Tasty, tasty food

Crappy, crappy picture

The important word here is tasty. OH SO TASTY, PUT IT IN MAH MOUF!!!!

I first made this dish years ago. All of the sudden, while standing in the middle of Kroger resisting the urge to shank the screaming toddler who seemed to be stalking me in the aisles, I could taste this stuff.

Am I the only dork this happens to? I'm just hanging out minding my business when all the sudden some little voice conspires with my taste buds and I will not rest until I have sampled such awesomeness again. Not something like it, not something close, not a near approximation but just exactly that combination of perfect flavors. Nothing else will satisfy me.

And this is how my poor family ended up eating sausage and zucchini 87 ways for the last two weeks until finally, I hit upon magic mix. So now I'm sharing it with you, not because I'm a giving, kind hearted person who just wants to share with the world something that has made me smile but because, by God when this urge hits me again, I wanna know exactly how to turn it out and shut my brain up with some sausage and rice.

So here we go.

1 package of Polish Kielbasa, diced into coins

1 medium sweet onion, diced

3 gloves of minced garlic

1 large zucchini cut into cubes

2 medium crookneck squash cut into cubes

1 3/4 c basmati rice

1 14.5 oz can of chicken broth

3 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

1. Heat 2 tbsp of butter in a deep sided frying pan. (Petey calls this the "hamburger helper pan" because we are high brow, yo.)

2. Add kielbasa, onion, and garlic. Cook on high until kielbasa is browned and onion is golden.

3. Add zucchini and squash, season with salt and pepper, and cook until somewhat tender but no where near done.

4. Dump in the rice. Stir until shiny.

5. Pour in the chicken broth. Bring to a boil. Then cover with a lid and drop the heat to medium low.

6. Cook for about 15-20 minutes or until rice doesn't crunch in your teeth.

7. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.

Now you can never leave me sausage and rice, never, no never, no never.

Butter is a beautiful thing

Don't ask me why there is deodorant on my countertop.
Actually, don't ask me why any of that crap is on my counter.
Ask pinky, aka miss yes, I cleaned the counters, mommy, aka
not really, I'm just hoping you'll let me watch tv anyway.

It was Paula Deen day up in the Snarktastical household. I felt like I slathered the whole world with copious amounts of butter for Sunday dinner but thinking about it now, I really didn't use that much.

It's quite possible, however, that I really am a fat ass and that's a crapton of butter. But whatever, haters. My potatoes were the bombdiggty. Want to know how I made them?

1) Cut up a bunch of potatoes. Any kind will do but I'm quite partial to reds. Since they were pretty small, I quartered most of them. You'll want to cut them into 1-2 inch pieces, depending on how big your mouth is. If I were making them for pinky, I would have left them whole. That's one way to keep a child's mouth from running at the table.

2) Boil up a bunch of potatoes. Drop them in a pot of salted water, bring to a rolling bowl and keep cooking until they poke easily with a fork. This usually takes about 20 minutes.

3) Drain up a bunch of potatoes. I think that part's pretty self explainatory, yes? Then onward we go.

4) Butter up a bunch of potatoes. I flopped them all into a nice bowl and then dropped at many pats of butter on there as made my heart happy. I used skinny pats lest I get too excited and end up with a ham in my face.

5) Stir up a bunch of potatoes. Just chop up a bit of thyme, sprinkle it in there and stir it up along with the rapidly melting butter. Salt and pepper to taste.

At this point, you could be done. However, I had leftover stuffed mushroom filling that was too good for the garbage can so I toasted that in a small skillet on the stove and sprinkled it on top for extra yummy goodness. If that sounds tasty to you, here's what's in it: about 2tbsp of both breadcrumbs and shredded parm, one clove of minced garlic, and a 1/2tsp each of sage and thyme plus salt and pepper to taste.

The stuffed mushrooms and Chicken red-wine-posing-as-Marsala recipes came from the Giada De Laurentiis' Everyday Italian cookbook I've had in my trunk for more than a year and have only just now got around to trying. So far, I like it. But I'll need to try a few more recipes before I can give the old Starktastical only Italian via marriage and numerous viewings of Goodfellas seal of approval.

The next time I complain about my fat belly

Please remind me that it took me three days to blow through these.

And that instead of disgust, I am giving serious consideration to making these for Sunday Dinner.

Whomever said "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels," doesn't have taste buds. Actually, it was Kate Moss who said it which makes total sense since she's more interested in the kind of stuff you shoot or snort and not the stuff you put in your mouth.

Sunday Dinner

Oh what a beautiful morning!

My children made me breakfast on Sunday. Okay, so I made them make breakfast. This makes me responsible for the girlchild leaving the house this morning looking like she caught a case of the measles. I'd almost rather she had. Then, I wouldn't have to explain that I let my kid get popped in the face by a roving band of melted butter that hopped right from the frying pan and onto her skin. Dude, totally her fault for dropping a piece of ham on to the skillet from a high point, right? Or, yanno, my fault for not paying attention while she was cooking.

Then there was the moment when we got to church I asked pete where the diaper bag was.

"Oh, you must have forgotten it at home, mommy."

Wut, who?? I, who said, pete, get my purse and the diaper bag and go get in the car?

Yeah, sure, I forgot it. ::eyeroll:: Thank God pudding didn't have a massive blow out at church because what better way is there to spend your Mother's day than getting shat on by your own kid.

Le sigh.

Let's talk about dinner, shall we?

Before you yell at my husband for making me cook on Mother's Day, please understand that I adore our Sunday dinner tradition. I plan the menu well in advance, researching recipes, wondering if I should buy a new serving platter or baking pan, what new food to offer up, etc. I planned this Sunday's dinner before I even realized what today was and once it was planned, the hounds of hell couldn't stop me from looking forward to making my very first poundcake and attempting homemade beef pot pie.

Since my greatgrandmother taught me to eat my veggies before dessert, let's start with dinner. For my Sunday Dinners, I've been working with the Cover and Bake cookbook from America's Test Kitchen. I cannot rave enough about the awesomeness contained in these marvelous pages. In addition to some kick ass recipes perfectly suited for my tastes, as a bonus, this book spends a huge amount of time explaining why they've chosen to make the recipe the way they did, how to select ingredients, and what type of equipment to use. Even if you know how to cook well and can easily tie up the perfect pork roast, I guarantee you this book will teach you things you didn't know.

Today, it taught me to make a perfect pot pie. First, the ingredients.

You'll also need your favorite biscuit dough or pie crust recipe.

So now that you've got all that gathered, let's proceed. Heat up the butter in a large pot and cook the beef, seasoning with salt and pepper until browned. Remove from pan and set aside. While resisting the urge to shove all the tasty beef down your gullet, brown the onion and carrots. Stir in the garlic then sprinkle in the flour. Keep stirring and cook flour until golden brown. Then slowly add the wine, scraping up any browned bits. Next, pour in the chicken broth, tomato paste, and thyme. Stir until smooth. Dump the beef you haven't managed to eat back into the pot and stick a lid on it. Then let that bad boy simmer on low until the beef is nice and tender.

Slap the whole shebang in cassarole dish. I used buttermilk biscuit dough for my topping. I rolled it out, stamped out about 12 biscuits and laid them on top all nice like. Then I baked it at 400 for about 20 minutes or until the biscuits were nice and brown.

Profit.

So for mother's day, mr man gave me exactly what I wanted, another opportunity to turn out an amazing dinner, not because I'm the type of sap who lovingly declares how much they just love taking care of their family but because I like being a grade A attention whore in my cute apron.