Jump to content

RobinCR

participating member
  • Posts

    8
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by RobinCR

  1. I haven't read every message on this thread, so forgive me if I repeat what others have said. I am white, was raised Southern and middle class, & am 46 years old. We had GBC at most holiday meals at my house. If we went to my grandparents house in rual Georgia, that was not the case, but in our house it was always there. I'm wondering if this might be a regional thing in addition to a race thing. Maybe us Southern and Mid-West white folks kept it to ourselves. For the past couple of years, I have developed my own recipe for GBC. This came about when I made the mistake of reading the ingredient label on the Durkee French Fried Onion Rings. First ingredient: Partially Hydrogenated Oil. So now I make my own - blanch fresh green beans, saute mushrooms, saute onions, put them in a baking dish and whip up a white sauce to pore over it all. Leaves the recipe on the can in the dust. I may not be waiting until Easter for this to show up on the dinner table.
  2. I generally rely on feeding my family from the freezer - hamburgers, corn dogs, chicken fingers, pizza. The thing is, it's fine for them - they could care less. But in a few days, I'm bored with being bored with food and get back to cooking. We are moving in 2 weeks, but were supposed to move 6 weeks ago. So most of the kitchen - and rest of the house - has been half packed for a couple of months. So I have not done any real cooking for quite a while. Needless to say, I am looking forward to having all my things back from the boxes and getting into that brand new kitchen and cooking away.
  3. Hands down favorite - Chili-Crusted Salmon with Sweet Pepper Salsa. Coat Salmon in mixture of chili powder, cumin, salt & pepper. Cook however you'd like - grill, steam, saute, bake. Top with Sweet Pepper Salsa - red & yellow bell pepper, red onion, cilantro, sugar, vinegar and a couple of other things I can't remember right now. My favorite way to serve this is over mixed greens, with the salsa as the salad dressing. Lots of flavors going on with few calories, almost no fat, and very little carbs - the best of everything.
  4. RobinCR

    Pizza: Cook-Off 8

    Until recently, I have not made homemade pizza's ever. I have started using - of all things - a Weight Watchers recipe. There is not much low calorie about the recipes that I can see - just portion control. Anyway, one crust recipe and one sauce recipe is enough for 2 pizza's. Both can be frozen and are just as good as when fresh. Just yesterday morning, I took dough and sauce for 2 pizza's from the freezer and left them on the counter all day to thaw. When I came home, I did not have time to punch down the dough and let it rise again before I made the crusts. Instead I took the disks of dough and held it up in the air and turned it in a circle, letting gravity pull it to the size and shape I wanted - rather than pressing it onto the pizza pans. Then I let the crusts rest for 20 minutes or so before I put on the sauce and toppings. The crust was just as good - maybe better - than when I thaw it in the fridge for 24 hours, let it rise on the counter for a couple of hours, punch it down and let it rise again. I did make the mistake one time of refreezing dough that had thawed in the fridge. That one was tough the second time around. Soooooo much better than Pizza Hut
  5. I have in the neighborhood of 300. 200 are cookbooks, 100 on baking. I weeded out about 75 or so this past year and I have gotten much more selective about the ones that I buy. We are moving in a few weeks and packing the books is on the schedule for this weekend. Another opportunity to weed out some more. Robin
  6. Have everyone old enough to state a preference pick a few favorite meals. Then put them on a rotation - 2 weeks or 3 weeks. Leave some flexibility where you need it - usually eat out on Friday night, cook fancy on Saturday night and want to leave that up to the chef's whim, leftovers on Thursday night. Kids are less likely to complain about Tandori Chicken on Monday night if they know they are having Mac'n'cheese on Tuesday. I've also found that just by giving my kids plain meat and saving the complicated sauces for the grown-ups solves alot of problems. Like others, I do require a few bites of everything at every meal. More than once, the fish they hated two weeks ago is great now. PB&J is a last resort and it rarely comes to that. Involving kids it the cooking process also gets them involved and willing to try anything. I save that for the nights when I have alot of time and patience. Robin
  7. FONT=Arial]I tend to be much more on the side of a mis-en-place cook. I plan my dinner menu's for the week based on the family calendar - will we eat at home or out? how much time will I have to cook? I do all the shopping at one time. Rarely ever don't have something that I need. As to the actual prep and cooking, it is very easy for me to look at the menu and recipes for the night and see how much prep I need to do before I start cooking. I can tell when I will have some pockets of time to do more chopping and measuring once something has started cooking. I do always pull out everything I will need for the meal onto the counter before I begin cooking. Of course, if I will need chopped onions for two dishes, I chop all that I need at one time. Then those little bowls come in handy. I have learned that the ability to prepare a meal in a logical order is a skill that must be learned and practiced, if not a gift that some have and others don't. I am the only cook in the house, although my partner is a fabulous baker. Last night she was pulling dinner together while I was busy with other things. This rarely happens for good reason, as you will see. The menu was simple - reheating taco meat for the kids, reheating tamales for us, chopping some lettuce, heating tortillas and putting out the salsa, tomatoes, cheese and sour cream. First she heated the taco meat & tortillas, chopped the lettuce and put all the other ingredients in bowls. This took about 15 minutes. Then she asked how long the tamales needed to heat. So we waited for the oven to heat and another 20 minutes for the tamales to warm up. I do appreciate the help from time to time, but really what gives???? Robin
×
×
  • Create New...