In the kitchen this week.

I went out to dinner (which equals bad for my budget) with a friend and I picked chicken enchilada for Little Man and I got Carne Asada which yielded a lot of leftovers between the two of us. More on that later in the week. I had an orange and a handful of strawberries that I needed to use up too so I made some more cubes, fruit cubes. Brilliant idea I tell you, brilliant!

Chicken Stir Fry

I grabbed my roast chicken (4.6 lbs) that I pulled apart last week, dumped some Mr. Yoshidas sauce in the tupperware container and let it marinate for about 30 minutes. In the mean time I sliced up 1/2 green pepper, 1/2 red pepper, 1 C (already sliced) mushrooms, and 1 small onion. When the chicken was done marinating I grabbed about half the chicken I had then threw it all in the wok with a little oil over medium heat. My roommate is on the South Beach Diet so I figured she would like this for dinner when she got home from work. And she did, yay!

I talked about juice cubes last week and figured I’d expand on the idea with some leftover fruit. And orange and some strawberries made some very tasty fruit infused water to drink this week.

Yes I actually used my high quality camera on this shot.

I was in school from 12pm-9pm so I brought half PB&J and some fresh sliced pear. I forgot I had a Luna Bar in my  backpack too, so I snacked on the after my first class. I did however make time in the morning to bake something up for my roomie for her sales meeting since they did so well last month.

Cupcake Doughnuts

They’re cupcakes, but doughnuts… but cupcakes and man they’re good! I heard about this on the Food Network recently, they were doing a show on The Best ______ I ever ate. I believe this episode was obviously about cupcakes. So this woman tells us how she loves cupcakes but this was better than a cupcake and better than a doughnut. They made this recipe up in a bakery somewhere in the US and I was immediately in love with the idea of a cupcake doughnut. Who wouldn’t? The recipe is simple: Whatever kind of cake mix you like (I cheated and used a Dunkin Hines yellow cake mix, since I may have, going on 100 in my cupboards), (1/2 C) melted butter, and sugar. Yep, that’s it. Bake your cake mix in a muffin pan, let them cool, brush butter all the way around the cupcake then toss it around in a dish of sugar. BAM! Cupcake Doughnuts. Alternatively you could brush the only the top with butter and dip it in the sugar bowl, but why would anyone do that?

You. are. welcome.

For whatever reason the fridge seems to be on the fritz so I had to cook up everything possible and throw a lot of stuff out.  I had a 14# Butterball that I got for $7 back around Thanksgiving that had been thawing so I threw that in the oven. I also had 6-pack of pork chops completely thawed so I threw those in the CrockPot. I put together a stir fry for Ms. Roomie to go with the pork chops since we needed to use up some veggies too. Oh and salsa!

Sour Cream Pork Chops

I bought some pork chops on sale a few weeks back (for the first time in my life) and looked up some recipes on good ol’ allrecipes.com. I found a good looking crock pot recipe called Sour Cream Pork Chops and thought the tenderness of the meat and tang of the sour cream would be divine. And guess what? It totally was. No really, if you have a crock pot you need to try this recipe. If you don’t have a crockpot you need to go out and buy one just to try this recipe! The gist of it is to brown the chops, throw in the crockpot, remove them from the crockpot, and make the sauce in the drippings.

Remember those veggies from Monday? Well, I wanted to finish them up so here I literally threw 1/2 red pepper, 1/2 green pepper, the onions from the crockpot, 1 C (already sliced) mushrooms, 1 carrot and a head of broccoli in the wok with some oil over medium heat.

I unwrapped the turkey, rinsed it, seasoned it and buttered it. I used what veggies and fresh herbs, or herb for that matter, I had on hand and threw it all in my roaster (that I picked up at the Goodwill for $6.99!). I will not show you the picture of the turkey all done because it was an awful picture, I flipped it 2/3 through to brown the breast and it… blah! Let’s break it down. 14# turkey in roaster with 1 carrot, 3 small onions (sliced), 1 whole garlic and fresh thyme. I pulled the meat off as soon as it was cool and got a lot of meat – duh! I filled a quart size freezer bag 2/3 full of dark meat and a large bowl near full of white meat. I saved about 3/4 of the bones and drippings in a couple gallon size freezer bags for some turkey stock at a later date.

Turkey sammichs here I come!

Salsa

I grabbed two roma tomatoes, one jalapeno (which I used sandwich baggies to cover my hands since I wear contacts and learned that the hard way!), a garlic clove, and the juice from half a lime.

I was in school and brought a big jug of coffee in my handy thermos and a whole peeled sliced cucumber to tide me over in between classes. It’s finals week so I’m not taking much of a break in between classes. I know its not much food, but I was pretty lazy in the morning – what can I say!

Tacos

I had corn tortillas in the fridge so I figured I’d use up my Monday night leftovers and make another meal out of it. I used the Carne Asade in the pan just to warm it up, the rice and beans in the microwave, sour cream and some of my homemade salsa on top. I got two tacos out of it but since it was 9 o’clock at night by the time I got home that was more than enough for me!

Today was picnic day and boy was it gorgeous out! I brought some cut up fresh strawberries and pineapple, all the fixings for turkey sandwiches, and chocolate rice krispie treats! I also brought a couple halfs of PB&J’s just in case one or more of the kids didn’t like turkey.

For the turkey sandwiches I brought leftover turkey, bread, iceburg lettuce, tomato, mayo and cheese. The turkey was already pulled after cooking it Wednesday. I pulled leaves off the lettuce head and just tore them into bread size pieces and slices up a roma tomato. The cheese was already sliced and in a quart bag so I just grabbed as much as we needed and put some mayo in a small Tupperware. I don’t have any pictures of the sandwiches but I bet you can guess what a turkey sandwich looks like!

Before Little Man came back from his dads in December I picked a few boxes of Rice Krispies and two bags of marshmallows figuring we could make them together. I was right! We made a batch in January and another for the picnic. I ended up buying two boxes of regular Rice Krispies and a box of chocolate Rice Krispies just to mix it up a bit. Today we used half regular, half chocolate with my handy dandy Perfect Brownie pan and ta-da!

Chocolate Rice Krispie Treats

I had some bread ends leftover that I usually keep for crutons but I used them up for the half of PB&J’s instead. Here’s a picture of my friends daughter and her PB&J face. Do you think she liked it?

Well evidently I didn’t cook anything up Saturday because I have no pictures. Hmm. Weird. I know for sure we had leftover “corndogs” from the freezer (30-60 seconds in microwave to re-heat) that I posted about last week.

We woke up and got ready for the Home & Garden show today, but before we left I made up egg in the hole, except I used a cute little star cookie cutter instead. By the way this is the first time in my life I’ve made these.

Egg in the hole

I buttered a piece of bread on both sides, I cut the bread with star cookie cutter, placed the buttered bread into a pan over medium heat and dropped the egg right into the star. I ended up flipping mine, but you could put the lid on the make it pretty with the yolk showing.

Clearly I cooked more for me and Little Man over the course of the week, but here are the highlights!

Advertisement