Stephanie Brim

I'm fond of both ketchup and mustard on hotdogs, lots of sweet relish, and a few onions. Buttered and toasted bun, please. All-beef or beef and pork hot dog only. My favorite is Hebrew National. But I tend to buy Plumpers in a pinch.

I thought of one more thing. I love making my own BBQ sauce and have come up with some interesting recipes. Figuring out great combinations of spices, juices, and vegetables is a great hobby. So what do I do if I'm too lazy? I reach for the Cookie's. I think that was a childhood thing that I still can't get enough of. It was all my dad used to buy. I grew up with it, and so I get the craving for it now and again...especially on chicken nuggets.

For these, pizza sauce it is. They're going in the mini-processor, then onto the stove, sometime tonight. Then, as soon as I get the stock out and into its freezer bags, into the ice cube try they'll go. Two or three ice cubes, thawed, is enough for one pizza for me. Now to figure out what to do with all these potatoes...

I'm pondering a good time to defrost the turkey. Sunday would be a good time to eat it, but I don't really have time to defrost it properly before then. I'm pondering doing the pork shoulder roast in the crock pot with some spices, then making some homemade sauce (pineapple juice, tomato sauce, brown sugar, cider vinegar, paprika, salt, pepper) and serving it on homemade buns. Make some slaw (homemade dressing) and baked potatoes to have as sides. I wish I could smoke it, but it just isn't possible right now. As much as I wish that I had a Big Green Egg (or even a lowly Weber), one isn't appearing out on deck and moving all the snow to get to it if I did have it would tire me out too much to cook, anyway. Downstairs freezer contents: 2 bags of whole cranberries (found on sale) 4 bags mashed bananas (for bread) 2 cans orange juice concentrate 1 can grape juice concentrate (grape jelly, perhaps?) 1 large turkey (hubby's gift from the company) 2 whole chickens ($.69 per pound and couldn't resist) 4 1lb packages of freshly ground 85% beef (I watched) 1 large bone-in pork shoulder roast (7lb maybe) 1 1lb packages boneless skinless chicken breast 1 1.5lb package boneless skinless chicken breast (normal fajita amount) 1 package 80% ground beef (from 2008's Christmas bundle) 1 package London broils (from same bundle) 1 package pork ribs (from same bundle) 1 package Farmland sausage links (on sale, again) 1 package broccoli cuts 2 packages carrots 1 package corn 1 package peas It's only 1/3 full or so, but it seems like so much for the two of us and a toddler. Oh, and a question. The meat from the 2008 bundle is most likely still good, right? It was in the upstairs freezer for most of its stay here, though, so not in as cold an environment as it is now.

I fridged them and they're awaiting their fate. Probably going to have to wait until tonight, though, as both kids are awake and bed time is 3 hours away. Cheater's pizza is a really good idea. I used to do that with broccoli, leftover grilled chicken, thinly sliced onion, and leftover white sauce. Add some cheap shredded moz and a pinch or two of the good parmigiano and you have yourself a pretty good white pizza. Another one that just popped into my head for tomatoes is taco sauce. I don't know why I didn't think of it for these...probably because I have no chiles in the house at the moment.

I cannot throw things away. I should allow myself to, but when it comes to things that cost a good chunk of the week's grocery bill, I just can't do it. So, as I write this, I have 6 tomatoes and 4 assorted bell peppers in the oven roasting right now. They smell heavenly and I can't wait to do something with them. The problem is...what do I do? I think these are going into a sauce once I de-seed the tomatoes and de-peel everything. Not sure about spices yet, though. Maybe it would make a good pizza sauce with a few extra tomatoes? What have you done when you really can't bear to throw something out?

The kids are napping and I'm about to go down and make a formal list of everything in the freezer downstairs and then come back up and do the same up here. Some things that are upstairs are apt to go downstairs to the colder freezer. I also have to melt back down the stock I made from the 10 pounds of hindquarters I had, and then get the other 10 from the garage and figure out what to do with them. Probably roasting tomorrow for dinner on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I'm doing the chicken & dumplings cookoff. I'm debating whether or not I can justify picking up some more pork butt roast...it's $.99 per pound this weekend. Chickens are $.77, but I can do without those since I have 2 large chickens, the 10 pounds of hindquarters, and a turkey, plus chicken breast. So...yeah. I have no idea what to cook with all this stuff. But I'm getting there. At least I know that Coq au Vin is going on the menu at some point.

I poke. It isn't that I don't trust the toothpick test, but I can tell better if I just poke the things. That way I get an actual feel. Since I started doing so, my cupcakes are always perfectly cooked.

If the recipe I'm using for cupcakes was meant to be made as a regular cake, I watch them instead of looking at the clock. Watching the clock instead of the cupcakes tends to have disastrous consequences. My favorite test for whether they're done is the finger poke: poke gently with a clean finger - when done, they'll be nice and springy, but still have a slightly moist squish to them.

Store bought bread. Even some bakery versions. In the commercial bread such as Wonder and Sara Lee, I'm thinking that it's the High Fructose Corn Syrup that I can't really stand. Why put that in bread of all things? In the bakery breads, I'm becoming adept at baking similar things, and therefore my home-baked is better because I can get it that much sooner after it's baked.

I'll try and post a photo of my success or failure to get it thin enough. One trick I've heard is to roll it out until you get it to a certain point, let the gluten relax, then roll again. You keep doing this until you get it as thin as you want. Anyway, it's something to try. If you don't try, you never know what you can accomplish.

Pardon me if there's already a thread, but I haven't seen one in all my searching and I'm really interested in this book. I happened to pick it up at the library on Saturday and I've been looking through it with various feelings since. I think most of it is wonder. I've never seen anything I'd rather eat more of than what's in this book. There are some particular selections which look especially incredible right now: The acorn squash sformato; the sweet pea flan; the goat cheese truffles; the asparagus vinaigrette; the duck liver ravioli; the pumpkin lune; the spaghetti with sweet 100 tomatoes; the penne with zucca; the gnocchi with venison and rosemary. My list goes on and on and about half the recipes in the book are on it. Not to mention the pasta recipe he gives, which I plan to try this evening. To give you an idea of how crazy I am, I don't have a pasta maker. I would love to know if any of you have made things from this book. Today is just the pasta, but I plan on making more than enough for at least 3 dishes for Adam and I. For a first dish, I may start with the beef cheek ravioli, though I plan to use brisket due to the fact that I highly doubt that here, in this tiny town in Iowa, I'll be able to find cheeks. I do plan to ask, though. Then we'll go to the tortelloni with dried orange and fennel pollen, though the pollen is going to be hard to source around here, though. And then the one that intrigues me the most because, as most of the people on my father's side of the family, we love the weed: asparagus and ricotta ravioli. I plan to make the ricotta from whole, lightly pasteurized milk. My grandmother grows asparagus, but I tend to go the more labor intensive route; here in Iowa, it grows in the ditches along the highways in massive quantities in the early spring. The wild really does have a better flavor than the store bought variety, but home grown tends to be about the same. I can just get the wild stuff about 2 weeks sooner. One other interesting thing about the book is that he mentions rhubarb being a 'nostalgic childhood memory', and I heartily agree. Both my grandmother and my great grandmother on my father's side grew it at home, and when my husband and I were looking for a house a few years ago I almost went with this one just for the four large plants that produced relatively large amounts of the stuff. As a child I used to eat the stalks raw, dipped in a little bowl of sugar, as a snack. If you don't like rhubarb in my family you're looked at a little funny. Hubby still doesn't get it. Anyway, this is getting much longer than it was supposed to be. Looking through this book made me yearn to live somewhere I could more easily get the ingredients used. Sourcing the things or coming up with suitable substitutions is going to be interesting and fun.

My stock is cooling under my watchful eyes on the back porch right now. It's just above 32 degrees outside so it should go pretty quickly sitting there in the snow. I got most of the impurities out the first run through with cheesecloth so I'm not worried about it. The stock is the most beautiful golden shade of yellow I've ever seen. It can't be a bad thing. It was sitting at 190 for most of the night, but I think that made it even better. I have about 8 quarts that I'll reduce down to 1 or so.

I'm immensely jealous of your ability to use fresh herbs. While I'm sure both my rosemary and thyme are still quite nice, they're buried under about 2 feet of snow beside my driveway. The local groceries in this small town don't carry fresh stuff, either. I'm going to have to either dig (which isn't very appealing, really) or use dry. Since the stock is going so well tonight, I'm going to leave it and get up at 6 or so to finish up the process. I want it to have as much flavor as possible. It's at a constant 204 degrees. My stove, though gas, is pretty reliable. Tomorrow I'll ladle it into another pot through a double layer of cheese cloth and my fine mesh strainer and cool to remove the fat, then I'll be simmering it on down and getting it ready for the dumplings.

I plan to give it a good couple of strainings with cheese cloth anyway, so I figure that anything that is really horrible will get caught in that. I'm using the lid to keep the chicken to the bottom of the pot, the pot is staying at around 205 (according to my handy, dandy candy/frying thermometer that I've clipped to the side), and it's going very well. We'll know how well when I wake up in the morning I guess. If I did want to save the schmaltz, would straining it through cheesecloth work? I mean, this is a lot. These quarters were fatty. I really don't want to waste it as I have this vision of smashed potatoes fried in schmaltz...

Yeah, I don't have one of those either and the local K-Mart has closed for the evening. Too foggy to head to the town over. I'm using the lid. As much as I hate to waste the cups of chicken fat I'm going to have if I could get it skimmed, I may just let all the crap come to the surface and when I get to the defatting stage just run the fat through cheesecloth, too.

So I have 10 pounds of chicken hindquarters in my large pot. I stirred the pot because I kinda started with frozen pieces, which was probably my mistake as I had everything pretty well packed, and now my chicken pieces are floating half out of the water. No idea how to keep them in other than using a lid that's a couple inches smaller than the top of the stock pot...but it makes skimming difficult. Argh. Any suggestions? And the metal strainer won't work. All I have is a hand one.

So...after family research on the topic I've decided how I'm going to go. Today I'm making stock - lots of it. I have 20 pounds of hindquarters to get through this weekend. Half of those are going in the oven - salt, pepper, little garlic powder, little paprika - to be roasted for both the dumplings and my chicken tacos today. The other half are going in the new stock pot I've acquired to make stock - I think it'll end up being the largest amount I've ever done. That said, this stock will be used for the dumplings tomorrow. I plan to put some carrot, celery, and onion in the stock, and then some new into the base for the dumplings. I'm still deciding if I want to herb up the dumplings themselves or not. I really like the idea of that and I love to do it to sandwich bread, especially that which will be filled with chicken or turkey. I'm seriously considering it. About the whole dumpling thing: they really don't taste like cardboard. I do drop dumplings, which start out as something like a very, very thick batter, and they tend to absorb the flavors from the broth they're cooked in, at least in my experience. Use good stock and you'll have dumplings that taste good. However, spiking them with herbs wouldn't hurt. Rosemary especially comes to mind as something that would be good, at least with how my broth usually is.

Two meals for this weekend, both freezerable: Saturday: Chicken and black bean tacos Sunday: Chicken and dumplings (I have to make stock anyway) On Monday I'm thinking of getting a pound of hamburger out and doing the casserole that Kerry suggested...or perhaps making a little veggie stir fry and making wontons to go with it. Tuesday I'm pondering soup with carrots, peas, green beans, potatoes, and lentils. Not sure how to season it yet. Wednesday will be pork tenderloin day, this time lemon pepper marinade. Roasted potatoes and carrots will also be on the menu. Thursday is my normal pasta night and we will be having thin spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce and a salad with vinaigrette and croutons made from homemade light rye. Friday...Dunno. Probably homemade pizza with ham, peppers, onions, and cheap mozzerella. That will get rid of about 1/3 of what's in the freezer and part of what's in the pantry. Next weekend will probably end up being "Leftover Extravaganza", in which we finish all the leftovers from the previous week's cooking. One of the other things I have to remember is that I'm counting calories a bit right now, trying to lose the rest of the baby weight, so I have to keep the meals lean. It's amazing how well you can eat with a daily allotment of 1700 calories...as long as you aren't drinking regular soda all the time. That whole 'don't drink your calories' thing really does work.

In the version of this that we've made since I was a child, there is no roux. In fact, it's one of the simplest recipes I've ever done. I roast and pick chicken hindquarters, about 4, and add the meat to about a quart of chicken stock that has simmered with veggies or no veggies for about 30 minutes, salting and peppering as needed. I add the dumpling batter (because, for me, it is a thick batter), directly to the broth and it makes its own gravy. I serve with potatoes for those who don't like the dumplings and a garden salad. I'm open to trying new versions, though, and that is why I really want to participate. I'll start looking around for recipes and start thinking about what to do more next week. I'm making large amounts of stock this weekend, so this is perfect.

That sounds like a suitably yummy replacement for the filling of tater tot casserole. Thanks!

YES! I forgot about those. I will note that my parents started buying the low-fat turkey hotdogs. No. Just no. Ugh. Only the good all beef hot dogs with my Velveeta and crescent rolls, please! In the highbrow/lowbrow vein, I keep around a block of imported parmigiano reggiano (I have no idea if that's spelled right) from the Italian deli, and thus that gets used the way the green can would. So yes, only fancy schmancy cheese in my potato chip chicken! The saddest thing about my casserole post was that not only did I have the expensive stuff, I'd used it earlier that day on a salad. I just couldn't be arsed to grate enough cheese for the breadcrumb mixture. That's a dedication to laziness.

Yep, we're doing it. If anyone has any good ideas for 20 pounds of hindquarters, frozen in 2 10-pound packages, I'd be happy to hear them. Otherwise, I have 4 pounds of hamburger, 4 pounds of chicken breast, 2 whole chickens, 2 pork tenderloins, 4 Iowa Chops (the nice, thick pork chops), assorted frozen veggies from a stock-up sale, and 3 pounds of turkey sausage plus 12 ounce package of links. Oh, and I can't forget the very large, very tasty-looking bone-in pork shoulder roast that will hopefully be destined for the Crock-Pot in a week or so. I get to buy staples such as cream, flour, sugar, and fresh veggies, but everything else is off my shelves. The chicken isn't really that hard to find recipes for...I have beans and lentils that will pair well, as well as fresh potatoes and some tomato sauce. It's the hamburger that's going to be a sticking point. I'm not good with hamburger recipes. I'm good at hamburgers (as in, between a halved bun with cheese, tomato, and lettuce), but when it comes to ground meat my brain tends to come to a screetching halt. A couple of ideas I had, though: beef wontons, sloppy joes, the dreaded Tater Tot Casserole (as mentioned on the Shameful Eats thread). There's also the staple of my childhood that consisted of a blue-boxed foodstuff we all know and sometimes pretend to hate, condensed cream of mushroom soup, and aforementioned ground cow. I think I'd rather stay away from that one. Meatballs would be good, but I have no recipes. Meatloaf is also appreciated here, but I'm never sure what to put in it. I'm pretty much calling the rest of this month and most of next "Pantry & Freezer Raid Month". I'll be exhausting my spice cupboard until the thaw.

Heh. My list reads more like a baking thing than a cooking thing, but... Puff Pastry: It intimidates the hell out of me. I've finally gotten pie crust down in such a way that I'm consistent. I can make a good buttermilk biscuit. Puff pastry, though, I've always bought. Time to make it. Going to find a copy of Advanced Bread and Pastry through the library and use the recipe in there. Gotta think of something suitably decadent to make with it...one savory and one sweet. 100% Rye bread: This is intimidating as well. I'm starting to get the hang of 100% whole wheat breads. I understand how wheat works. Now I want to move on to something more challenging. Sourdough isn't enough anymore. Ice cream: I have a really good base recipe based on Alton Brown's 9-8-3-2-1 method, but I want to start adding things to it. Maybe even do some weird and wacky things. Deb from <a href="http://smittenkitchen.com">Smitten Kitchen</a> has given me a really good idea for a flavor...so good, in fact, I have to find my bowl... Coq au Vin: I've never made it. I can't believe I haven't made it. I'm wanting to source copies of Mastering 1 and 2 so that I can do multiple recipes out of them, but I haven't quite gotten off my seat to do so yet. I prefer going to the book store to buy books, so it has to wait until we get somewhere with a decent one. Anis Bouabsa's baguettes: I've tried, but they're just not quite right. I'm thinking that I may be handling the dough a little too roughly. I tend to have this problem with most baguette formulas...except the ones using sourdough. Sourdough and I seem to get along so well...now why can't I and commercial yeast get on so swimmingly?

Now that I'm no longer pregnant, I think I'll join in on the PMS thread myself. Because... Today I ordered my guiltiest pleasure which has already been mentioned: two cheeseburgers from McDonald's. Hold the ketchup and mustard. Add Mac sauce and lettuce. Heaven. I used to get a Big Mac with extra cheese...but I found that I prefer the two cheeseburger route. Always best with a medium Coke (I haven't had regular soda in about 3 weeks now...I figure I can have just the one). Right now I feel like going out and getting some tater tots...but it's icy. And snowy. And icky. And I have the stuff to make yet another shameful dish: Take 1/2 a pound of pasta of your choice (today I'm using wheels since I'm sure my toddler will adore me for it) and boil it in water until done. Mix in 1 can of cream of chicken soup, 1 can of milk, 3/4 of a bag of sharp shredded cheddar, and half a bag of frozen carrots and peas. Salt and pepper to taste. Put in a casserole dish. Then melt a couple tablespoons of butter and with a combination of breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese from that convenient Kraft can. Sprinkle casserole with reserved cheese and then the bread crumbs. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for about a half hour. Uncover and bake until bread crumbs are brown, about another 15 minutes. I sometimes use cream of mushroom instead of chicken. I sometimes throw chicken into the dish. I sometimes mix up the cheese I throw in. I sometimes use a white sauce instead of the canned soup. The entire dish can revolve around how lazy you prefer to be. I've eaten it since I was a child and always loved it. But, yeah, this is the eGullet Society and I'm just slightly ashamed to admit it.