Potatoes and Kielbasa and Albers Corn Bread

I had some potatoes left over from the Scalloped Potatoes with Hot dogs, and I had some Kielbasa left over from the Egg Spaghetti, so I made Potatoes and Kielbasa for dinner last night. This is another easy one; literally just sliced potatoes and kielbasa sauteed in butter with some salt and pepper. Adam was working late, so I ate without him. He likes to tamper with recipes, so when he got home, he decided to dice everything up smaller and scramble it with some eggs and eat it with sour cream and salsa. I gave him a hard time about tampering with the recipe, but his version tasted really good too. We ate the rest of the leftovers for breakfast this morning.

I also made Albers Corn Bread to go with the Potatoes and Kielbasa. It turned out pretty good. I'm always a little confused by recipes that require you to make a well in the dry ingredients, pour the wet ingredients into the well, and then mix it up. I don't know what the well does, but mine was a little too small to hold all the wet ingredients. This didn't really seem to matter, because it turned out just fine.

Funnel Cakes

I made Funnel Cakes on Saturday morning, and that was the only thing I cooked all weekend. The recipe was actually very simple. The only problems I had were that they were a little difficult to flip, and they weren't as pretty as the Funnel Cakes you get at the fair. I imagine that just takes some practice, but they were very yummy!

Scalloped Potatoes with Hot Dogs

A really good friend of ours came back from Iraq a few days ago, so we invited him over for dinner tonight. I had intended to make a big meal; at least a main dish, side dish, and dessert. But I got home from work and the house was a mess and I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, so I ended up only making the scalloped potatoes with hot dogs. It turned out pretty good, except that I used a little more potatoes and hot dogs than the recipe required, but I didn't adjust the sauce at all, so it seemed a little dry to me. But there was plenty of food and Adam and Curtiss seemed to enjoy it, so everything was fine. We ate some of the leftover banana bread for dessert.

As an addition to my previous post, Adam told one of his co-workers today about the Egg Spaghetti that we ate last night. His co-worker thought it sounded so good that he called his wife and had Adam tell her how to make it. They were going to have it for dinner tonight.

Quiche, Tortino's Quesadilla, Egg Spaghetti, and Banana Bread

I've been trying to cook more lately because I realized several things: 1. Eating out is expensive and not very healthy. 2. Cooking really isn't that hard. 3. I'm behind on my project by about 30 recipes.

I made a Quiche for breakfast on Sunday. It turned out very well. Thanks to my handy-dandy Pampered Chef pie crust shield thingy, the crust was perfect. I did use a store bought crust instead of making my own, but I was very pleased with how it turned out. I really liked the recipe, but Adam and I decided that next time we make it, we'll add some sausage and bell peppers.

Monday night, I made Tortino's Quesadilla. It is just a chicken quesadilla, but instead of cheese, you use a sauce of nacho cheese and chicken broth. I put way too much sauce on the first quesadilla, resulting in a mess in the pan when I tried to flip it. Thank goodness for non-stick pans. I also used enormous tortillas, and even though I have an enormous spatula, they were still difficult to flip. I made 3 quesadillas and each one suffered at least one chicken casualty during the flipping process. Luckily, we have dogs specially trained in the disposal of such casualties. These quesadillas were a little messy to make and eat, but we really enjoyed them.

Last night, I made Egg Spaghetti and Banana Bread. I boiled the pasta before I sauteed the kielbasa, so I was a little worried that the spaghetti wouldn't be hot enough to cook the egg/parmesan/parsley mixture, but everything turned out great. The only problem was that I ended up with a lot more spaghetti than kielbasa, but the spaghetti tasted so good on it's own that we didn't mind the minimal amount of sausage.

I also made Banana Bread because I bought a lot of banana's last week, but we didn't eat them fast enough. I called my mom before I started making the bread because the recipe called for buttermilk, which I didn't have, so I wanted to know how bad it would be if I just used regular milk. I'm glad I called because she told me to just add a little lemon juice to the milk to sour it, and I learned that because the recipe calls for baking soda, it needs some kind of acid to counter-act it, otherwise the bread would taste like baking soda. I'm glad my mom used to be a Home Ec. teacher. She knows everything! (Everything about cooking, anyway). After I hung up with her, I started gathering the ingredients. I thought I had brown sugar somewhere, but I couldn't find it anywhere, so I just used white sugar instead. When Adam got home, he found the brown sugar hidden in a corner of the cabinet behind a bunch of cans. I think the banana bread I made has been the only thing so far that has turned out absolutely perfect! The outside crust was just a little crunchy, but in a good way. The inside was soft and fluffy, and the flavor was great. Adam told me that it would be ok with him if I never used brown sugar when making banana bread again!

Tortilla Eggs

Once again, I have been slacking on my project. I will probably find myself trying to cram 32 recipes into the last week of my project. Luckily, I started on Veteran's day, which I will always have off work. So if it comes down to it, I can have an all day cook-off. Anyway, two nights ago I made Tortilla Eggs. It litterally is just tortillas and eggs...and some cheese. I wasn't sure exactly how this was supposed to work, but I think I did it right because Adam loved it. I liked it too, but not as much as he did. It was another easy one, which is always nice, but so far I haven't made anything too complicated....except for the strawberry chocolate meringue on Thanksgiving. At the rate I'm going, my all day cook-off will probably be full of the 32 most complicated recipes in the book. Hopefully, it won't come down to that.

As an update to my last post, the rest of the cake was eaten and no eggshells were found :)

Mexican Lasagne and Buttermilk Pound Cake

I invited my family over for dinner last night because it was New Year's day and I was off work. I had intended to clean the house all day, make a quick trip to the grocery store, start cooking around 5:00, and have dinner at 7:00. Instead, I slept in until 10:00, bummed around the house until 2:00, made it home from the grocery store around 4:30, and finally started making the cake around 5:15. Adam and I then proceeded to alternate between cooking and frantically cleaning until 7:30. We still got everything done that needed to be done, but the house wasn't as clean as I had wanted it to be.

The Mexican Lasagne was pretty easy, but Adam actually did most of the cooking. All I did was assemble it in the pan. I think the recipe may have been intended for a pan smaller than the 9X13 that I put it in. It still worked out ok, it just seemed like I had to spread it out a little thin to cover the whole pan.

The cake tasted delicious, but making it was an adventure. It would have been easier if I had supervised Adam a little more. The recipe calls for 5 eggs, adding one at a time and mixing well between each one. Adam decided to leave the mixer on while he cracked the eggs into it. This would have been fine if he hadn't dropped half an egg shell into the mixer. Because the recipe called for 3 sticks of butter and 5 eggs, I didn't want to just throw it out and start over. So we searched through the mixture and retrieved all the egg shells...we think. As far as I know, no one got any egg shells in their cake, but there's still 3/4 of a cake left over. Everything else went smoothly until it was time to turn the cake out onto a plate. A fairly big section decided to stay in the bundt pan. Luckily, my mom was there to help me get it out and the cake still looked pretty good. Overall, the evening was somewhat stressful, but a success.