Mashed Honeyed Carrots - Creative Mistake

I set out to make honey carrots in my crock pot, but in my focus to make Pumpkin Soup, I dropped the ball with the carrots.  I meant to cook in the slow cooker for a couple of hours and then pick up where I left off for a few more when I got to work, but I accidentally left it on all night on low - over 6 hours!  Needless to say, they were soft in the morning...but still tasted good.

I brought my little crock pot to work and was pretty embarrassed by the results, but what can I do...I promised to bring carrots.  As I sat at my desk, lamenting at my terrible mistake, I made a decision...I'm making Mashed Honeyed Carrots and telling everyone that was what I intended to do!  Well, except for I told everyone about my mistake, but that's me...I'm not good at lying.

Okay, Ingredients:

2 lbs Baby Carrots
5 tbsp Honey
5 pads of Butter

Directions for crock pot:

Put carrots, honey and butter in and turn on.   The end.

LOL!  Okay, I set it on low and accidentally left on overnight (over 6 hours).  I would have shut it off after a couple of hours and plugged it in the lunch room after my first break, set it to low and it would have been perfect for lunch.  But, I'm me...so this is what I ended up with...mushy carrots.

And then, as I sat at my desk, I remembered that there was a potato masher in the break room and I ran down there with my brilliant idea of Mashed Honeyed Carrots...yeah, sounds like I meant to do that...except that I had already ratted myself out!  Oh, well...I committed to this new idea wholeheartedly and mashed the heck out of those carrots!  

And my Mashed Honeyed Carrots was born...

I removed some excess liquid out so it wasn't soupy and I did take the lid off and turned it up on high to reduce some of the liquids down.

Pumpkin Soup - perfect for a cold Thanksgiving

It's potluck time for work and I signed up to do one of my favorite dishes to make, Green Bean Casserole, but another coworker signed up for it too. Well, no point in having the same dish twice, so I thought really hard about what else I could make. PUMPKIN SOUP!!! It's gonna be a cold day (relatively speaking, here in Los Angeles) and that seems like a very comforting type of food...so, I was excited thinking about it all day.  Thinking about spending time in my kitchen cooking this up and then I got this notion in my head - I don't want to make from a can of puréed pumpkins...I want the real deal!

So, after work, I went to Fresh and Easy down the street from my work and saw they sold some Sugar Pie Pumpkin, perfect for my soup! They are much smaller than the average jack-o-lantern pumpkins, but I may have gone overboard when I got 5! Yes, portion control has always been my problem...I always cook for the size of an army and it's usually actually for a handful...oh, well! I love to cook!

Anyway, here's the full list of Ingredients I used (forgive me, these are guesstimates - I am bad at keeping track of ingredients, but I'm trying):

5 Sugar Pie Pumpkins

18 cups chicken broth

1 tablespoon of olive oil (I ran out)

8 tablespoons of butter (would have only used 6, but I ran out of olive oil)

2 bay leaves

1 large onion, finely chopped

1/2 a celery (about 6-8 ribs), finely chopped

6 tablespoons of flour

5 teaspoons of ground thyme

Hot sauce, to taste

4 cups heavy cream

3 teaspoons of ground nutmeg 

Making Pumpkin Purée:

Bring a big stock pot little more than halfway filled with water to a boil. A little salt goes a long way.

Wash the outside of the pumpkin thoroughly with warm water, NO soap!

Slice in half and take out the seeds and stringy middle crap! (You can save the seeds to grow or roast - I threw them out, ain't nobody got time for that! Well, I don't this week. I tried saving spaghetti squash seeds last week and they got moldy on me because I got busy and forgot about them. Anyway, I digress...) place in stock pot of hot water. Repeat until all pumpkins are done. Each time, I try to push the newest pumpkin to the bottom with my wooden spoon. Add more water of needed.

I let boil for about 25-30 minutes and I turned off and draine the water and let cool. I'm impatient, so I threw some ice in there and added more water. That turned into hot water pretty quickly, so I pulled them out and let then sit.

Scoop out the inside into a blender. It came out pretty easy, but the skin would fall apart too and rip into pieces. I added some of the chicken broth to help purée it and let it rip.  Took me about 3 batches and maybe yielded about 12-15 cups? I'm so sorry I can't remember, but it was around there!

Time to make the soup:

I heated my stock pot over medium heat and added oil and butter to melt. 

Add bay leaves, celery, and onions. Season with salt and pepper. Cook until soft, about 8-10 minutes. Add flour and thyme, stir up and cook flour for about a minute or so.

Start stirring in the chicken broth and bring to a boil.

Stir in the pumpkin and mix into soup. Simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing is burning at the bottom. (I have partial videos of this on Instagram, but I forgot to take pictures because I got so into cooking - boyfriend had to take the video)

Add in the cream, nutmeg and hot sauce to taste. Reduce heat to low and and keep warm until you serve, or in my case. I cooked for another 10 minutes and transferred into my crockpot to take to work.

Soups are rarely photogenic, huh? I'll try to take a better picture and post later!

Better, but not really pictures...

Throwback Thanksgiving Meal - Thanksgiving 2011

Well, it's Thanksgiving week and I'm sure most people are as excited as me about all the yummy food and company of loved ones.  This is going to be a special Thanksgiving for me since I will be meeting my boyfriend's family for the first time!  Unfortunately, I will not be doing any cooking, but I sure will be doing a lot of eating!  Not cooking is making me reminisce about 2011…when I made a giant Thanksgiving feast for me and my roommate at the time…just because I wanted to cook.  I even printed out my menu.  So here it is…my Thanksgiving Throwback to 2011, complete with the menu!

Appetizer – Tuna Tartare

5 oz sushi quality tuna
1 avocado
Wonton wrappers
2 tbsp Soy Ginger Sesame Sauce
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Coat mini-muffin pans with cooking spray.  Place 1 wonton wrapper in each cup and shape to muffin pan to make a cup.  Bake until they are golden brown, about 5-6 minutes.  Remove from oven and let cool.

Chop tuna into very small cubes or pieces, put in medium size bowl.  Slice up the avocado to small size, similar to tuna, and add to bowl with tuna.  Add Soy ginger Sesame Sauce and stir well.  Chill until ready to serve.  Since this doesn’t take long, I suggest preparing it no earlier than an hour before serving, since you are dealing with raw fish.  When ready to serve, spoon into wonton cups and enjoy!

Turkey Roasted with Butter and Champagne

Turkey – average cooking time is about 13 minutes per pound.
Salt & Pepper
Garlic Powder
Minced garlic
Butter
Bottle of Champagne
2-3 celery stalks – cut in 2 inch lengths
5 pearl onions
1 apple – if needed, cut to fit in turkey cavity
Rosemary

You can brine your turkey overnight before you cook it…I did, but I can’t remember what I used.  I will update if I do remember.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees and put rack at the lowest level to make room for your bird.

Place roasting bag in roasting pan and carefully place turkey inside.  Be careful not to puncture the bag to keep all the juices and champagne inside while cooking. 

Separate the breast and skin and insert pads of butter in between – do as much as you can or want to, makes for moist breast!

Stuff the inside of the empty cavity (make sure you remove the giblets) with the rosemary, apple, celery, pearl onions…put as much as you can.

Pour champagne all over your turkey, inside the bag.  Soften some butter and massage butter all over the outside of the turkey.

In a small bowl, mix together salt and pepper, garlic powder and any other spices you want to use.  Massage all over buttered turkey along with minced garlic.

Loosely twist the bag opening and loosely knot or fold over.  You want it to close off, but you need to be able to get in and out of it as you cook to baste the turkey.

Roast at 500 degrees for about 30 minutes.  Remove from heat and reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees.  Open the bag and baste with the juices at the bottom.  Take your time and get everything.  Close up the bag again and return to the oven.  Baste every 45 minutes.  Your last baste, baste with melted butter or oil to crisp  up the skin and you can leave the bag open, if it looks like it needs to get some color, but you will want to do this when it’s almost done so you don’t dry out your turkey.  You want to make sure your bird is a least 165 degrees, and you check in the breast, outer thigh and inner thigh areas.  If they’re not all at 165 degrees, continue cooking.

 

While it wasn't a part of this meal, it is relevant to the subject of Thanksgiving.  Click for my Turducken/Cornturduck blog post as an alternative to your regular turkey.

Coming Soon:

Cheesy Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Potatoes Au Gratin

Green Bean Casserole

Click for Pumpkin Soup recipe

Mushroom Gravy from Giblets

Honey Carrots - this link is for my Mashed Honeyed Carrots...

Stuffing from Croutons

Pumpkin Cheesecake 

Beef Stew

Beef Stew 

3 lbs boneless chuck roast cut into 2-inch pieces 
3 tbsp vegetable oil 
2 tsp salt 
1 tbsp freshly ground pepper 
2 yellow onions, cut into 1-inch chunks 
1/4 cup flour 
3 cloves garlic, minced 
1 cup red wine 
3 cups beef broth 
1/2 tsp dried rosemary 
1 bay leaf 
1/2 tsp dried thyme 
4 carrots, peeled, cut into 1-inch slices 
2 stalks celery, cut into 1-inch slices 
3 large russet potatoes, peeled and cut in eighths 

Directions: 

On medium-high heat, add the vegetable oil to a large heavy pot (one that has a tight fitting lid). When it begins to smoke slightly, add the beef and brown very well. Do in batches if necessary. 

Add the salt and pepper as the beef browns. Once
browned, remove the beef with a slotted spoon set aside. Add the onions and sauté for about 5 minutes, until softened. Reduce heat to medium-low, and add the flour and cook for 2 minutes stirring often. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. 

Add wine and deglaze the pan, scraping any brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. The flour will start to thicken the wine as it comes to a simmer. Simmer wine for 5 minutes, and then add the broth, bay leaves, thyme, rosemary, and the beef. Bring back to a gentle simmer, cover and cook on very low for about 1 hour. 

Add potatoes, carrots, and celery, and simmer covered for another 30 minutes or until the meat and vegetables are tender. Taste and adjust seasoning. Turn off heat and let sit for 15 minutes before serving. 


This tastes best if it's made the day before and all the flavors have a chance to really meld together.

Malibu Chicken Nuggets

It's football Sunday and my six month  anniversary with my love!  In honor of our 49ers kicking ass and his favorite, Malibu Chicken, I made the favorite food snack size...perfect for football Sunday!

Malibu Chicken Nuggets

1 chicken breast - cut into nugget size 
5 slices of ham - sliced into squares size of nuggets
4 slices of Swiss cheese - sliced into squares size of nuggets 
1/2 cup bread crumbs seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder, chili powder
1 egg
Olive oil

Preheat oven to 350 and oil bottom of baking dish.

Dip chicken nugget into egg and cover with bread crumbs and put onto piled baking dish. Repeat until all nuggets are done. Bake for about 10-15 minutes. 

Remove from oven and turn over. Cover each with a square or two of ham and top with Swiss cheese. Return to the oven until cheese is melted.

Mustard Sauce

2 tablespoons Grey Poupon
1 teaspoon yellow mustard 
3 tablespoons mayo

Mix together and serve with chicken.

Sausage & Spinach Stuffed Shells

I love to cook and I was looking for something to make for my boyfriend for our regular Thursday night dinner dates! I came across a recipe for stuffed shells and I was instantly inspired, but, as usual, I had to revise to my taste...so here is my version.

Sausage & Spinach Stuffed Shells

Ingredients:

1 box of jumbo shells

2 lbs Italian sausage (out of casing)

1 package baby bellas

12 oz spinach

20 oz ricotta cheese

10 oz fresh grated Parmesan

2 eggs

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 can diced tomatoes

2 jar marinara sauce

Onion

Garlic

Olive oil

Red pepper flakes

Salt & pepper

Pastry filling bag

Directions:

Cook jumbo shells as directed, drain in cold water and set aside.

Heat up some olive oil and soften as much onion and garlic. Brown your sausage with salt, pepper and red pepper flakes.

Add sliced mushrooms - break up a bit as you mix and soften.

Add spinach and cook together.

Drain sausage mixture and set aside to cool down a bit.

Pour half of your jar of pasta sauce in your baking dish - enough to cover the bottom.

In a large mixing bowl, lightly whip up the eggs add the ricotta cheese,most of the parmesan (same some for topping), and the bread crumbs.  Mix in the sausage, mushroom & spinach mixture - thoroughly mix together.  Put the filling in the pastry bag, fill the shells and place filled shells in the baking dish.

Top your tray full of shells with the diced tomatoes and the rest of the pasta sauce and bake at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes.  

Remove and sprinkle remaining parmesan cheese and return to oven until cheese is melted.