I just wanna be a sheep, baa baa baa baa

Okay, it is a totally corny lead in, but the only thing I could think of with Shepard's was either Christmas, or my favorite song the little kids sing in church each year. Just the little voices singing "I just wanna be a sheep, baa baa baa baa" makes me smile every time I hear it.

It was my first day off after my three day weekend, and it is usually a wash out as I'm so tired I just sleep and sleep....and then feel like I have accomplished nothing and then stress out about getting everything done the next day so I can go back to work. I am not trying to complain about working, it is just after a 12 hour overnight, your body just can't bounce back to a normal schedule. I woke up at 11 and decided it was waaaaay too early to get up (since I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to look at the clock) and slept another 2 hours. And then laid back down to take a quick nap. And then I needed a plan for dinner. Since Dude is on light duty, he is working in the office during the day while he recoups. I found a recipe on my desk for Shepard's Pie and saw I had most of the ingredients, so made it up as I went along.

Shepard's Pie (Based on Kraft's recipe)

1 pound ground beef

2 pounds potatoes, cut up to cook and mash

2 cloves garlic, peeled, but whole

3 ounces Philly cream cheese, room temp

1/4 cup heavy cream, warmed

1 cup shredded Cheddar Jack cheese, divided

1 cup beef gravy

1 small can corn

1 small shallot, chopped

1 small carrot, diced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Brown ground beef with shallot. Stir in carrot and simmer a few minutes. While ground beef is browning, put spuds in pan of cold water; add the garlic cloves. Boil for 15 to 20 minutes until fork tender. Add brown gravy and corn to beef and simmer over low heat while mashing the potatoes. I took the cloves of garlic out then mashed since DQ isn't a big fan of garlic. The potatoes had a nice, light garlic flavor. Mash the potatoes with the warmed cream, then beat in the cream cheese and a 1/4 cup of shredded cheese. The spuds will be a little stiff. Pour the hamburger mixture into a 9x9 glass pan. Spoon spuds onto the top of the beef mixture, and spread out to cover the beef, edge to edge. Sprinkle on remaining cheese and place in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. Turn broiler on low (if you have a broiler function in the oven rather than a separate drawer) and brown the cheese. If not, just leave in the oven a few extra minutes so it is browned and bubbly.

I think I could be a sheep if my Shepard made this for me......

Frying the bird, or There is Butter in my eye

We bought a turkey deep fryer 2 years ago when it was our turn to host Dude's family for Christmas. There are 4 kids in his family (and mine, but that is neither here nor there) and we rotate hosting Christmas in our homes. 2007 was the last time we agreed to host and last year we didn't get together with his family over the holidays. It isn't that we are anti-family; we just wanted to start creating our own memories and traditions with Hermit Crab and Drama Queen. We meet with my family after the new year begins so we can all be with our own families, and his family does a family fun night in January-good enough for us. Dude's parents are snow birds, so I have suggested time and time again that we do it in October before H and J leave for Florida, but that never flew with certain people in his family. So we just said "No" last year. This year his parents are home since his Dad is battling cancer and needs to go in for scans and checks and meds. We invited his parents here for the 23rd but we are going to get hammered with snow and we all felt it best that they did not make the 3 hour trip down. We bought a turkey with the thought that they would be here to share it with us, and even though they couldn't come, we still deep fried that sucker tonight. Not without some issues, as people on Facebook know. We have always bought an injecting marinade to use on the bird. We couldn't find one in any store so I tried to make one. When Dude came in and found me swearing about my injector missing again and he made a not so funny joke about me misplacing things, I almost stabbed him with the part I found. He was trying to make a needle work on the plunger it didn't belong to. He stabbed the bird, possibly hit a bone, and squeezed. Butter.Everywhere. On the fridge, on the stove, on the floor, on the cat, on my sweatshirt. And in my left eye. I love butter as much as the next person, but not particularly in my eye. We did get the bird in the fryer and I went to work on the spuds. I got the recipe off of Food Network and it is from Rachael Ray. I remember her doing these on 30 Minute Meals. They are similar to the Crash potatoes on Pioneer Woman.

Smashed Potatoes, Jacques Pepin style

3 pounds baby Gold Yukon potatoes (I used a tri-color baby spud pack)
3 cups chicken broth
3 TBSP butter
salt and pepper

Place potatoes in a deep skillet that has a lid. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pour the chicken broth in pan until halfway up the sides of the potatoes, about 3 cups. Cover and cook until almost tender, 5 to 8 minutes (my stove doesn't have jet power, so it took my normal stove about 12 minutes. Remove lid and continue to cook until the broth has evaporated, another 6 to 7 minutes. When the liquid is pretty much gone, smoosh the spud with the back of a spoon to flatten, but don't squish the dickens out of it-just flatten a bit. Cook for a couple minutes on each side until they have a golden crust. Check seasoning and re-salt and pepper if necessary.

Holy cow these were awesome! Our kids wouldn't touch the purple potatoes. Okay, more for me!

After Dude went and cleaned the fryer and watched a movie with Drama Queen, he comes upstairs and says "Oh no, we forgot photos!" I told him I took shots of the left overs!

If I don't post again before Christmas, please have a happy holiday. I know I said it the other day, but had time to post more, so I'm just telling ya again-Merry Christmas!

Air "Fried" Chicken and Roasted potatoes

At 3 I still had no idea what we were doing for dinner. I had gone to the grocery store to get stuff for dinner for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday-but forgot about Tuesday. Poor Tuesday-got no respect. I went downstairs to the freezer to pull out the ham for Friday and ground beef for lasagna on Christmas Eve, when I saw a package of chicken. Poultry Tuesday!

I thawed it part way through and pulled out my Easy bake oven, to which Hermit Crab exclaimed "What is that???"

I pulled out the booklet that came with the oven and found Air Fried Chicken. It was for boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but I had a family pack which had the pieces with skin and bones still attached. I just added cooking time to the recipe and changed out the breading from corn flakes to panko bread crumbs and changed regular mustard to Dijon, and added poultry seasoning.

Air "Fried" Chicken

1 cut up chicken
1 cup mayo
3 TBSP Dijon mustard
1 TBSP poultry seasoning
2 cups panko bread crumbs
2 tsp paprika

Stir mayo, mustard and poultry seasoning into a bowl until combined. In a pie plate, combine bread crumbs and paprika. Brush chicken with creamy mixture. Roll in the crumbs. Place in NuWave oven on rack. Set for 20 minutes. At end of 20 minutes, flip chicken and set for 20 more minutes. Insert thermometer to check temp. If not up to temp, turn back on for 5 minutes.


I had a value pack chicken, so I had too many pieces to fit in the Easy bake, so I baked the rest in the oven. It turned out the same as the NuWave chicken did, only took a little longer since it wasn't totally thawed. I ended up baking it at 400 degrees for about an hour along with the roasted potatoes.

Roasted Potatoes

5 medium russet potatoes, peeled and quartered, then cut into 1 inch pieces
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 envelope of onion soup mix

Place all ingredients into a plastic zip top baggie. Shake and squeeze to completely cover potatoes with oil and soup mix. Spread in an even layer in a shallow roasting pan. Bake at 425 degrees for 45 minutes, stirring and flipping potatoes over every 15 minutes, until fork tender.


I lowered the oven temp for the chicken, and just cooked the spuds longer.

Hermit Crab-hates to get her picture taken

Drama Queen-always ready for a close up, goofy face or not

Dude and Tofu

Off to go wake up Hermit Crab so we can bake cookies.

Grill Night

It was such a beautiful day here today. We did a lot of work in the house, drank some wine, grilled dinner........I was asleep on the couch by 6:30! I woke up to a dark house, nobody was around and I thought it had to be at least midnight-nope, 9 PM. Hubby was in bed, Hermit Crab was at a movie and Drama Queen is spending the night at a friend's house. I thought that maybe I should start painting the bathroom, but quickly decided that given I had a headache (I'm sure it wasn't the wine) I would just stop by the computer instead. The painting can wait until tomorrow. Of course, I need to make dessert for tomorrow as we are doing appy's and dessert at my friend's house while watching "The Bucket List". The Dude and I saw it in the theater, but I enjoyed it more than I thought it would, so we thought a good tear jerker was on tap. Speaking of tear jerkers, I was up until 3 AM this morning catching up on Grey's and ER. Man, I just cried and cried. Poor Blow Hole guy, and it finally came out to all the group that Izzie is sick and only Derrick has the chance to save her so he has to come back to the hospital. Then Neela leaves County General to a place that wasn't really reveled until the end-even then I didn't put two and two together until she opened the door to the physical therapy room that she went to be with Ray. Oh yea!! I knew they would end up together.



Okay, like you came here for a play by play of my obsession. My daughter on the other hand, went to the Twilight release party last night. She is WAY more obsessed with Twilight than I am of my Must See TV!


I'm actually showing two different dinners tonight as I was helping the hubs work on the satellite dish and our burgers got a little 'blackened' and didn't look very appetizing, so I will show the steaks from the other night. The potatoes are the same, but I got better 'finished product' pictures tonight.


I believe I posted these potatoes before, but had made them in the oven. The flavor doesn't compare to doing them on the grill. I can't even explain the kind of heaven I'm in when sitting next to the grill, drinking my wine and smelling the onion and bacon cooking. It is that good. The onions kind of melt into the potatoes and the bacon doesn't get crispy but oh so chewy and good.


The steaks don't really have a recipe; rather, I sprinkled them with our favorite seasonings. I like the Chicago steak seasoning and Famous Dave's Steak and Burger seasoning.



The after looks a little blurry-sorry

The spuds are super easy:
Potatoes-peeled and cubed
5 slices bacon, cut into 1 inch pieces
2 small onion, cut into narrow rings (although I think I chopped this one)
oil and butter (oil not shown)
shredded cheddar cheese


I made this small batch for Drama Queen and myself. Tonight I made a larger amount for the Dude and me since I wasn't sure if any kids would be here or not.


Toss the spuds, onions and bacon in a bowl with a couple tablespoons of oil (I used a canola blend) and top with a couple tablespoons of butter. I use 2 sheets of foil that I fold in half and lay one on top of the other, so there are 4 layers of foil. Fold the top down and then scrunch up the sides. The key to these is shaking them every 10 minutes so they don't burn. Shake and flip. I cooked mine about 40 minutes. I always take a fork with me as I swear they never cook in the same amount of time twice in a row! When potatoes are fork tender, open foil and sprinkle with desired amount of shredded cheese. I use about a cup for 8 spuds. Take foil pouch off heat and let sit to melt the cheese. When we camp, we just leave the spuds in the foil and serve from that. In the house, I normally put in a bowl as the foil can get greasy.










This is a bottle from our local winery in Cannon Falls, Minnesota (the only Cannon Falls in the USA). It is called Go-Go Red and is a light, slightly sweet red. Great with all grilled food. It doesn't compete with the good flavors, but is easy to drink. Hence, the headache. Or it could be the lack of sleep the last two days-about 7 hours total.

I took the most beautiful picture this morning while driving to pick up Drama Queen-the sun looked like it laying on the road-kind of like the sunset pictures on water-it looks so HUGE. I can't get it off my phone to post it though. Take my word-it was incredible.

Guess it is time to peruse some other blogs and hit the hay. The bathroom won't paint itself-unfortunately.

Tomorrow I am making a dessert from Donna at My Tasty Treasures-the chocolate and pudding cake. I can't wait-I hope it turns out as delicious as her pictures look!

Do you ever get tool envy?

Okay, get your mind out of the gutter. I know yesterday's post about my poor hubby's predicament might have that in the forefront of your mind, but I'm talking about chef tools or if you have absolutely no training, cook's tools. Every time I watch Food Network I drool over the pretty measuring cups, measuring spoons, bowl and platters I have never seen in Minnesota. But two of the simplest things in the kitchen get my goat every time I watch Ina or Giada: have you seen their fresh off the shelf Pyrex liquid measuring cups and the spanking clean stainless steel oven racks? I mean, come on. They cook with these instruments EVERYDAY. Here is my Pyrex:

You can barely make out the word Pyrex, plus after 8 thousand washings, the glass is all filmy and scratched. And don't even start me on the oven racks. I wouldn't even dare to take a photo of mine. Granted, mine were never stainless steel, but it is best that they are tucked away in the dark oven. I looked at those nice new, all-the-writing-is-legible-and no scratches measures today, but could in no way justify buying new ones just because my old ones are ugly. Sigh. Envy continues.

On the bright side, I did find some fun potatoes to go with dinner while at Target Greatland today. I have seen several posts lately about chicken and about roast vegetables, so I put some together tonight for dinner. We scarfed down dinner in no time flat, it was that good.

Roast Chicken with Potatoes and Onions

1 package cut up chicken

1 package small new potatoes (the package was about a pound and a half) or any small spuds

1 onion

Oil (not shown, used vegetable)

poultry seasoning

paprika

Tuscan Sunset seasoning from Penzey's (it has sweet basil, Turkish oregano, Aleppo pepper

garlic, thyme, fennel, black pepper and anise seed)

Rinse off spuds and put in a plastic bowl with lid. Pour over a couple tablespoons of oil; cover and shake so potatoes are coated in oil. Chop onion in slices and lay in roasting pan. Rinse and pat dry chicken. Place on top of onions. Drizzle the chicken with a little oil and then sprinkle on dry seasonings. I used about 1-1/2 tsp of poultry seasoning, about 2 tsp of the Tuscan Sunset and about a tsp of paprika. Tuck the potatoes down into roasting pan so some are covered partially by chicken. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast in a 375 degree F oven for about 1 hour 20 minutes. Check chicken temp with instant read thermometer. When it reads 175 degrees, take out of oven and tent with foil for 10 minutes before serving.

Plate up and enjoy. I have seen the purple potatoes on shows and in print, but had never found them in stores around here. The Dude was surprised when he cut one open and it was purple all the way through. They were so good. Potatoes-God's greatest starch ever!

I think it is Antarctica

It is sooooo cold here in Minnesota. When we got home from work yesterday it was -18 degrees with a -38 windchill. School was delayed two hours and we have a 3 foot snowdrift in front of the garage so I can't get my car out and we are not sure if the Bobcat will start so we can dig out from all the blown in snow. Good thing the truck was out by the barn so we were able to take that to work. Hermit Crab was ticked off as she had to shovel out the front tires so she could get herself and Drama Queen to school. She thought that we should have plowed out for her. I told her she could take the bus. She promptly quit talking. On a cold day like this, I would prefer to stay in bed with a movie in and eat comfort food. For me, there is nothing that comforts me more than mashed potatoes. I have spoken of my love for my beloved mashed spuds. It is heaven on a fork. My mashed potatoes are simple and only have few ingredients, but I think what makes them so good (I'm boasting I know, but really, they are quite good) is the method used.

Mashed Potatoes

4 large baking potatoes

1/3 cup whipping cream, warmed

4 TBSP butter

salt

Peel and cut potatoes in half, then each half in half again. Cut in pieces that are of even size so they cook evenly. Place potatoes in a pan of COLD water. Place on stove and turn on flame. Salt the water with a good pinch or two of salt. Bring to a boil and cook until fork tender, about 15 to 17 minutes.

Drain water from pan and place back over low heat. Shake pan over the low heat for about 30 seconds to dry all the water off of the potatoes. Turn off heat. Heat whipping cream in microwave for about 25 seconds. Mash potatoes first with a hand masher, so all the lumps are mashed, about 1 minute. Bring out hand mixer with beater bars. Mine have a couple sets of beater bars, so I use the set that doesn't have the center bar-makes for easier cleanup. Beat the potatoes on medium-low for about 45 seconds. Stop beaters and pour in whipping cream. Beat again on medium-low for another 45 seconds. Depending on how much moisture is in the potatoes, you may need to add a little more cream. Dot the top of the mashed spuds with the butter, then dig in.

The important steps are, cook in cold water. If you start them in warm, it starts to soften the outside and they will feel done before they actually are. Heat the spuds after cooking to get the water out so you have nice fluffy potatoes when you mash them. Heat the cream; adding cold ingredients to hot potatoes just isn't a nice thing to do to the tubers.

Gimme some spuds

I must confess. My biggest love-next to my hubby and children-is potatoes. Top of the list is mashed, but my family gets a little grumpy if the only potato they ever find is mashed, so I need to mix up the rotation a little bit. Last year when my grandma died, I wrote a page of memories that I had her pastor read (I choke up when I see puppies on TV-didn't want to try making it through a reading). I wrote about many memories I had, but the one that stands out the most is how she made my favorite meal every time I came to visit. Pot roast, mashed potatoes, corn, and lettuce salad with Western dressing. I told everyone how I sat there in my kitchen when I got the call that she had passed and thought about that meal, how I would never taste pot roast as good as hers every again (I'm tearing up as I write this-I'm such a wuss). And I wondered why I never asked her for her recipe. I have tried and tried, and I make a pretty good pot roast, and a few that were barely edible, but none that compare to Grandma Owney's. I think it was her legacy, if you will. I think I never asked because I feared that if I knew how she did it, the meal would never taste as good as I anticipated on every visit. So Grandma Isabelle made the most righteous Swedish Meatballs and Grandma G. made the bomb of a pot roast. Owney is just how we pronounced her first name. I do have to say thought, my mashed potatoes are better than hers. I can say that now that she is looking down upon me-but she is probably wiggling a finger at me! After all that ramble, I'm not even making mashed potatoes, but oven roasted. My love of the mashed just overtook me and the love oozed out onto the keyboard.

Oven Roasted Potatoes

3 pounds potatoes-any good roasting type, I used Idaho russets

1/4 cup olive oil or vegetable oil

1 packet onion soup mix (I used Lipton)

salt

Paprika

Scrub up potatoes. Cut in half, and then those halves in half again. Cut to make chunks (sorry, that sounds gross, but best word I came up with) that are about the same size so they all cook evenly. Preheat oven to 400 degrees while cutting up the spuds. Place potatoes in roasting dish-whichever type you choose. I used a stoneware one as I love them. Drizzle the oil over the potatoes then sprinkle with the soup mix. My kids don't like the big pieces of onion so I usually roll a soup can or something similar over the envelope before sprinkling on, but you don't have to. Use hands and toss potatoes so they are all covered with oil and onion mix. Sprinkle with Paprika. Place the pan in the oven. Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes so they don't stick to bottom of pan. Start testing for doneness after 45 minutes in case your oven may cook faster than mine. To quote Rachael Ray, Yum-O!