I Need a Food Processor

I’ve never desired a food processor.  I’ve always thought of them as very optional.  I didn’t want another piece of kitchen equipment I just stored but rarely, if ever, used.  I didn’t even get a blender until after about 7 years of marriage.  And that was just because I desired to make my own homemade Orange Julius beverages.  (Hats off to Stacy Hatten for that recipe!  Not quite like the real thing but wonderful when we lived in Cincinnati and the nearest Orange Julius was HOURS away.)

Lately, though, I’ve been thinking it might be time to procure one.  A food processor, that is.  If you read my last posts, you know that I’ve been using my blender in place of a food processor for some recipes.  And it’s been a bit hard on my blender, which got more use recently from our live-in, soon-to-be missionary housemate for a few months.  (She was on some smoothie diet.)  We drug it up from downstairs for her, dusted it off and made a place for it on the counter.  So I finally had no excuses and set about making some of the recipes I’d stalled on. 

But using a blender in place of a food processor is tricky business.  And at times the blender has smelled pretty hot, like in an-about-to-catch-on-fire kind of way.  (Thank you, frozen banana ‘ice cream’!)  I don’t blame it. 

When I used it to make the fudgy snow balls, it was really difficult to get the batter out of the blender in order to roll it into balls.  Sticky stuff and all stuck around the blade.  And I still had to mix it up a bit afterward. 

So, I’m in the market for a small food processor.  I’m thinking something that’s about 3 cups, no larger.  I don’t want a huge contraption I have to store.  And the 1.5 cup mini seems a little on the small side for some projects.  I saw an Oster brand version at Walmart for about $20 for the 3 cup size that seems like a good option.  Might be a good addition to my gift wish list for birthday or Christmas, though I might not be able to wait that long.  Fresh salsa is calling my name.

Do you have a food processor?  If so, do you use it?  What size/brand is it?

Inspiration

Life has been more than a little crazy lately.  Maybe you've noticed, due to the lack of regular posting on this here blog, something that hasn't happened much for me.  So here is my heartfelt apology for that, dear readers!  I don't mean to be slacking on you.

But I've felt a lack of inspiration for cooking especially, but for many things in life lately.  So that makes it difficult to write posts for a food blog, huh?!  

I have had SOME inspiration, though.  From a variety of places.  I'll highlight a couple for you.

• MasterChef:  This little Fox TV reality show is full of amateur chefs competing for the adoration of 3 self-proclaimed food gurus.  It's intriguing, mouth-watering fun.  Gordon Ramsey seen here is much less the raving food nazi as seen on Hell's Kitchen, and much more a nurturing (though heavy-handed) mentor.  The challenges are difficult, the contestants are crazy, and the food is varied.  But every episode includes at least one dish that makes me want to break out the pots & pans.  This is the 2nd season of this show.  I previously wrote about stumbling upon the first season last summer.

• Cooking with friends.  I arrived home yesterday after a weekend visiting friends in Clear Lake, Iowa.  I always enjoy my visits there.  It's such a nice quaint town.  And the McGinnis's always inspire me to create new dishes and add more flavor to my life through cooking.  Top offerings this visit included amazing chicken enchiladas with a poblano pepper / tomatillo cream sauce and Amy's melt-in-my-mouth Magic Cookie bars, which I believe I ate my weight in.  They are also a gluten-free family, so it's nice to be able to bring home recipes for things I can actually make.  Though I'll have to modify some of it to be low fat / no cheese.  And Jake doesn't like coconut, so those bars are all for me!!  I'm already planning to take them to the 2012 Smith Family Vacation. See the recipes for these dishes below.

Magic Cookie Bars
2 C Crushed GF Rice Cereal (about 3.25 cups before crushing)
½ C Margarine
3 T sugar
1 C. Chopped Nuts
1 C. Chocolate chips
1 ½ C. flaked cocnuts
1 Can Eagle Brand Sweetened condensed milk

Combine crushed cereal, margarine and sugar. Press into 9x13 pan. Sprinkle nuts over crust, then scatter chips over nuts, coconut over chips, sweetened condensed milk over cocnut. Bake bars in 350 oven for 25 minutes or until edges turn light brown. Cool and cut into bars.

Tomatillo Enchiladas
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 pound tomatillos (papery skins removed) chopped
1 white onion, chopped
1 poblano pepper, seeded and chopped (can also use a green pepper or anahiem as well)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3/4 tsp cumin
Salt and pepper
1 cup heavy cream
2-2 1/2 pound rotisserie chicken, shredded (or the equivelent in frozen chicken)
14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes, drained
1 1/4 cup monterey jack
8 6 inch corn tortillas (more if needed)

Heat oven to 400 F. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the tomatillos, onion, poblano, garlic cum, and 1/2 tsp salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer to food processor, add cream and puree. In a large bowl, combine the chicken, tomatoes, 1 cup of cheese 1/2 cup of tomatillos sauce  and 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Warm the tortillas according to the package directions. Spread 1 cup of the reamining sauce in a 9x13 pan. Roll the chicken mixture in the tortillas and place them in the dish, seam side down. Top with remaining sauce and cheese. Bake until beginning to brown, 10 to 15 minutes. 

 What inspires you to cook?

Chicken McNuggets & Sweet ‘N Sour Sauce

I’m a big, lifelong fan of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets.  They are the first, the premiere, everything else is a less-than-adequate copycat. 

I’ve never liked bread.  So growing up, eating at fast food joints with my family was almost pure torture.  I didn’t want a burger with a bun!  Yuck.  So when McDonald’s came out with Chicken McNuggets, I’d found my fast food savior. 

Not only do you get to bypass the bun, but these nuggets are also coated in batter, not breading.  Hallelujah!  (Cue the choir.)  Everyone knows batter trumps breading. 

And Sweet ‘N Sour Sauce is a Chicken McNugget's perfect mate.  In fact, I’ve never once tried another dipping sauce at McDonald’s for their nuggets.  Why would I?!  Sweet ‘N Sour Sauce is sweet and tangy, delightful for both your nuggets and your fries.  (A 4-piece Chicken McNugget Happy Meal with fries and a Coke makes the perfect portion of fast food for this gal.  The fact that I’m about as tall as a 5^th grader makes that more so.  And the price – just over $3 – ain’t bad either!)

McDonald’s has come out with new dipping sauces.  And I was briefly tempted to try one.  Maybe the Sweet Chili.  But then I remembered that Sweet ‘N Sour is an original and why mess with perfection?!  Not even a new sauce promotion shall sway me from my devotion to this pairing.

Soon I may have to write a whole post on why it seems I have a McDonald’s problem.  I mean, this is not my first - and not even my second - post mentioning the fast food kingdom’s ruling potentate.  (And, yes, thank you to Google for “potentate”!  I knew there was a more noteworthy synonym for "ruler"!)

http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/home.html

Food & the Purpose of Life

Sometimes I live my life in a perpetual state of wondering what the next meal holds.  Most times when we have visitors at my house I spend almost the entire time prepping for a meal, making a meal, doing dishes from the meal, etc. 

Sometimes life feels like it revolves around the simple act of eating.  (I know my friend Becki can relate to this but in a much more real way as she helps her young daughter learn how to eat:  “Now that we are home, we are keeping up the schedule of 3 meals and 3 snacks a day (eating every 2-3 hours) with each feeding session lasting ideally 20-30 minutes, but right now sometimes up to an hour since Aubrey is a slow eater.  This is pretty intense, as you can imagine, and makes me feel some days like all we are doing is making meals, eating, cleaning up, and then starting all over again.  In addition to her meals, we are currently feeding her 6 ounces of blenderized diet daily to supplement what she is taking by mouth.  If you are wondering, blenderized diet is just what it sounds like – several different foods blended up in the blender and then syringed through her g-tube.  This 6 ounces of blenderized diet replaces the 32 ounces of formula that she was receiving daily before we left for Seattle, so you can see from this alone that she has come a long way in how much she is eating.”  Read more here: http://www.thelehmers.com/2011/06/seattle-recap/)

But when I read a book, watch a movie or television show, very little of the lives of the characters are spent eating.  (The exceptions to this rule are cooking shows, The Food Network, and the movie “Julie & Julia”, based on the life of a blogger as she cooks through Julia Child’s premiere cookbook.)

So I’ve pondered at various times why it is that so much of my life is taken up with the thought of food.  And that maybe I’m missing the real plot of life as I’m focused on the food. 

These queries sort of shake me.  I don’t want to miss what’s important.  And I don’t want to make food more important than it should be.  But I do enjoy food.  Do I enjoy it too much?  Should I enjoy it less?  Should I appreciate it for what it is?  But when I go fresher & healthier with my food, the more time it consumes in my life, proportionately.  Because it takes more time to select the right food.  (Not to mention GROW it, but I’m still not quite there.)  And to prepare it. 

This leaves me in a conundrum.  I like the idea of not worrying about where my next meal comes from (and let’s be honest – I don’t WORRY about it like some have to worry about it; I know there will BE a next meal - I just don’t know whether it will be at home or out somewhere).  I don’t want FOOD to consume my life.  I want it to be in its rightful place in my life.  But just what place that is I’m still figuring out. 

And then I ponder the idea that perhaps if my life is a book and I’m writing the plot (thanks, Donald Miller, for inspiring me to desire to “write a better story with my life”!), then maybe MY book is not a mystery, action-adventure, comedy or romance.  Perhaps MY book is more of a family cookbook collection, filled with recipes and stories about how food has been a tool that’s brought me closer to loved ones.  And maybe that’s exactly what MY book should be. 

I’m still wrestling with all this.  I probably will for a very long time, if not forever.  Because I desire to be what God created me to be and live a balanced life in his name, giving him the glory.  But if God created me to be a cookbook, I don’t want to be striving to be a suspenseful thriller.  (That sounds too stressful anyway!)

Ideas?  Helpful input that’s put you on the right path?

Eye Drooling

Have you ever ordered something at a restaurant just because the picture of it on the menu convinced you it would be the most fabulous thing you’d ever closed your lips around?  Have you ever made a dinner that just looked amazing on your plate, regardless of what it tasted like?  (Though hopefully it tasted good as well.)

The other day I made lunch and I commented to my husband that the plate full of food looked nice, regardless of what it tasted like.  I said it looked “appetizing”.  He argued with me that it looked “appealing”.  I countered that the two were synonyms.  He clarified that regardless of how tasty it seemed, the colors themselves were actually attractive and appealing. 

I think most of us just dump our food on our plates and chow down, rarely considering the “art” of plating a dish.  We tend to not even consider the flavors in our mouth when we chew either.  We just insert, swallow, repeat. 

How sad to miss all that God has given us in this area!  He created so many foods and flavors to entice us.  And we are too distracted to pay attention to this.

But when a simple meal of varied colors and textures comes together on my plate, I sometimes have the rare presence of mind to take the moment and appreciate these small pleasures. 

All it took was a piece of flounder topped with mandarin oranges (see recipe here: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2010/07/orange-honey-tilapia-slow-cooker-recipe.html but I had flounder that day so I substituted that for the tilapia), a side of gluten-free garlic primavera risotto (Jake LOVES: http://www.glutensolutions.com/gluten-free-products-and-manufacturer/lundberg/lundberg-gluten-free---risotto-rstd-garlic-primavera.html) as well as frozen peas (with a little light butter). 

Visually pleasing and tasty as well.  (I should note that the first time Jake & I tried this fish recipe, we were a bit “iffy” about it.  Cooked mandarin oranges have a bit of a mushy texture.  But I quickly came to really like the mix of flavors and overcame the texture of the oranges.)  As usual, I should have taken a picture!

I would say that some of the food on our Mexico vacation fit this idea of visually appealing, especially the dishes at the French restaurant.  They took care with plating, like a 5 star eatery should. 

I definitely think visual appeal makes the meal better.  I think more about the foods I pair together when I prepare meals now.  There have been times that I’ve made all “gold” meals (chicken coated in cornmeal, side of chicken rice mix and corn!) and awhile back I had a very “green” meal (fish topped with avocado, green beans and broccoli).  Even if the food tastes good, I don’t enjoy those meals as much.  (Carrots would have been much better than the broccoli on that plate!)

What’s your favorite “visually appealing” meal?  Or least?!  Is there something that never really looks appealing but always tastes good?  Vice versa?  (I always used to think oyster soup looked appealing – like potato soup – but have tried it enough to know that it’s simply NOT.)

Family Vacation

My extended immediate family (dad, siblings, in-laws, niece & nephews) meet up every year for a family vacation.  This started 5 years ago when Jake & I moved back to the Omaha area, though that was just a coincidence.  My mom had finally decided to make her dream of a family vacation happen, reserving some cabins at Nebraska’s Mahoney State Park and hoping people would show up.  We did.  (Most of us anyway – my niece was born just days after, so her parents were stuck at home on doctor’s orders since it was 2 ½ hours away.)  My parents paid the cabin rental so the rest of us took care of the food costs.  We planned the meals, shopped, prepared & cooked.  (And by “we” I mean my sister-in-law & I.)  Of course, my mom couldn’t resist bringing treats.  Her homemade “hostess” cupcakes were always yummy and the rice krispie treats were devoured within hours.

Growing up, we almost always took a family vacation during the summer.  Usually to Colorado.  My dad has a lifelong love affair with the mountains.  Which he has gladly passed down to all of us.  One of my mom’s favorite things was to have all of us back together.  Holidays, birthdays, whatever.  So planning a family vacation was pretty high on her to-do list.  When we all got older and busier, that was much harder to make happen.  But she did it. 

Unfortunately, that was the only year my mom was around for family vacation, as that winter she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away in early spring.  Family vacation was just months after that, so it was pretty hard when we all got together, knowing she would have loved to have been there.  And I think we maybe did it mostly for her that year – knowing she’d have liked it.  And then we did it the next year because it was good to get together.  And then we kept doing it because it became important to each of us.  One of my brothers even mentioned recently that it was a priority for him and his wife because family vacation is one of the few times a year they get to see everyone.  Hurrah for family time! 

But then comes the planning.   And when you have as many people to accommodate as we do (schedules, sleeping arrangements, locales, budgets) it can be tricky.  After the first few years, Dad quit paying for the cabin rentals himself (pricey!) so now we all chip in for rentals and for food.  (We find that renting cabins is still much cheaper than hotels, though.  And you can prepare your own food, which also cuts down on the cost.)  Finding a location that has cabins large enough for our crowd is tricky.  Finding one that’s cost effective and a midpoint between all of us is a nightmare.

Planning meals is still mostly up to my sister-in-law and me.  I think because we’re the “planners” in the family, for the most part.  Not that we don’t want everyone to have a say, because we surely do.  Anywho, coming up with easy, inexpensive and fun meals that delight all palates young & old and in between can be a challenge.  Normally we have pretty good cooking facilities, though last year’s left a little something to be desired: crockpot, microwave, dorm fridge & outdoor grill only.  Thankfully, this year we have more of our standard: full range, fridge, utensils & pans are all supplied.

And now we have a gluten-free and low cholesterol issue on our hands, in addition to diabetes.  Thankfully, camping normally means grilling and there’s lots to grill on our diet list.  But that doesn’t always fit “inexpensive” and sometimes isn’t always “easy” (grilling a tenderloin can take awhile & charcoal is finicky). 

I definitely have specific ideas of what kinds of food are “camping” foods. (Definitely “hobo burgers”: aluminum foil packets with burger patties, potato, carrot & onion chunks with seasoning.  Hot dogs.  Steaks & baked potatoes.)  And so does everyone else.  Sometimes those ideas don’t match up.  Also, when you have so many people, how do you plan for the food?  Does one person shop and you split the cost?  Or does every family plan a meal & cook for everyone else?

As in the past, we are having one person shop & then splitting the cost.  This year our list of meals includes gluten free pasta with turkey Italian sausage, chicken or beef tacos (with corn shells), breakfast casseroles (one with bread, one with hashbrowns and eggbeaters), salads & sandwiches and a cheat night: my sister-in-law’s crockpot meatballs over rice.  (The meatballs are not gluten free, though we can get turkey ones to cut down on cholesterol/fat issues.)  My husband is pretty happy to cheat for those, though.

Does your family do yearly vacations?  Do you have trouble accommodating different tastes & budgets?  Who’s in charge of the planning?

Ladies Who Lunch

At the time of this writing, I just got back from lunch with my gal pals.  The three of us try to schedule lunches regularly, though how often we are actually able to make a lunch date happen definitely varies.  But inevitably, at the end of lunch, at least one of us says something to the effect of “we need to do this more often” which is always echoed by the rest of us and heartily agreed upon.  However, life gets in the way.  Last winter we had to reschedule / postpone our lunch dates several times in a row due to illness, weather, etc. 

I still remember the time we got together and laughed so hard we all cried.  (One of us is a fantastic story teller with fantastic stories to tell.  And it’s not me.)  And I remember the time we had a really heartfelt conversation about our spousal relationships.  And the times they let me talk about losing my mom.  And we almost always discuss the joys and trials of parenting, since they’re both moms of young ones.  I soak in their wisdom, experience, laughter and love.  I revel in their ability to take care of their offspring better than I am able to care for just myself! 

We’ve gone out, we’ve stayed in, we’ve potlucked.  But mostly we converse.  We don’t get together for the food, though we generally enjoy that as well.  One has not tried a lot of ethnic and diverse foods and we enjoy sharing those with her.  (Or maybe it’s testing / pushing her!)  Sometimes it’s successful.  Ha! 

Today we held each other up, encouraged one another, laughed, cried and paused to admit that sometimes life experiences are the best teachers of compassion and humility, though we also grieved that those lessons are most often taught through difficulties.

I always look forward to our girls day out lunches.  I can’t wait until the next one, even though it might be awhile. 

Do you have some favorite meal companions? (Other than the obvious immediate family members, so for some those individuals are not favorites!)