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Tag Archives: Dinner

Old Bay Seasoned Halibut

Posted on July 28, 2011 by chronicinthekitchen

Fish is pretty quick for a chronic chick.

2 medium sized halibut fillets (I used the individually wrapped, flash frozen, wild Alaskan halibut fillets from Costco), thawed

2 T. Old Bay Seasoning

Rub the Old Bay Seasoning into the halibut fillets with your hand, coating both sides. Drizzle about 1 – 2 T. oil in a cast iron (or other) skillet and heat on medium.  Add fillets and cook approximately 8 minutes per side.  Serves 2.  I served this with rice cooked in the rice cooker and some sauteed fresh peppers.

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Hodge Podge Stew

Posted on March 18, 2011 by chronicinthekitchen

I needed to clean out my freezer of frozen bits of this and that.  Voila, “Hodge Podge” was born!  This was fast to prepare but took a while to fully cook.

1 onion, chopped

2 celery stalks, chopped

1 large carrot, peeled and chopped

1/2 uncooked orzo pasta

4 cups beef broth

1/2 c. pizza sauce

1 small can green chilies

1 tsp each rosemary, basil, Italian Herb blend, powdered garlic

1 Bay leaf

salt and pepper

1/2 c. each frozen peas and corn

1 c. each cooked and chopped ham and roast beef

Brown celery and onion in a bit of oil in a large pot.  Add the next 8 ingredients (carrot through to salt and pepper) and bring to a boil.  Lower heat to medium and cook until vegetables and pasta are tender. Stir in frozen peas, corn, and meat.  Cook until everything is heated through.  Oops I forgot to time the cooking! My bad  – and why I’ll never get a cook book deal – I’m too fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants when I cook.  I’d say about 30 minutes cooking time, all together.

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Lentil Sausage Soup

Posted on March 4, 2011 by chronicinthekitchen

2 Italian sausages or one “Mennonite” sausage (Spolombo’s sausages are gluten free)

2 – 3 tsps. minced garlic

2 onions, chopped

4 celery stalks, chopped

1 19 oz. can lentils, rinsed and drained

2 19 oz. cans diced tomatoes

2 cups chicken broth

8 T. uncooked rice

Remove casing from sausages if necessary and cook in skillet over medium heat.  Drain fat.  Add the rest of ingredients to the skillet (if it’s big enough, otherwise transfer sausages to a soup pot and add rest of ingredients to that container.)  Simmer 10 – 15 minutes until vegetables are tender and the rice is cooked.   Serves 8.

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Rosemary Chicken

Posted on March 1, 2011 by chronicinthekitchen

This has little preparation but needs extra time to marinate and cook.

8 chicken thighs, boneless and skinless

1 large onion, chopped into quarters

2 lemons, quartered

4 cloves garlic (or more)

2 – 3 T. olive oil

1 T. rosemary

1 tsp. salt

¼ tsp pepper

 

Place all ingredients in large Ziploc bag.  Squeeze lemon quarters to release juice and include them in the bag.  Seal bag and mix well, ensuring that the chicken has been well coated.  Leave chicken to marinate for at least 4 hours or overnight in fridge.  Preheat oven to 350.  Pour all contents of the Ziploc onto a baking sheet or casserole dish and put in oven.  Cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until chicken is cooked through.  Delicious with mashed potatoes or brown rice and a salad.

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A Word About Chicken and Salmon

Posted on January 24, 2011 by chronicinthekitchen

Chicken breasts and salmon filets or salmon burgers are my go-to items when I am not up to cooking. Each of these items take about 20-25 minutes to cook.

Frozen boneless skinless breasts take approximately 25 minutes to fry from frozen. Add a bit of oil to a frying pan, place breasts in a single layer, cover and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes. Then turn over and cook an additional 10 minutes or until juices run clear. Serve with buns and frozen vegetables that have been cooked in the microwave, or raw baby carrots.

Alternatively, purchase a box of frozen pre-cooked, breaded chicken breasts. These re-heat in about 20 minutes in the oven at 425 F. Turn over after 10 minutes.

A favorite easy meal for us is salmon burgers and fries. Use low-fat fries. Preheat oven to 400. Place salmon burgers and fries on a cookie sheet. Cook in oven 10 minutes, then turn fries and burgers over, return to oven and cook another 10 minutes. Remove salmon burgers and keep warm. Return fries to oven and cook another 10 minutes or until crisp. Serve with buns, raw vegetables and dip or cooked frozen vegetables. *Salmon Burgers are good with plum sauce!

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Hamburger Soup

Posted on January 13, 2011 by chronicinthekitchen

Outside our front door

The weather outside is truly frightful.  -30C with the windchill. Goody.  Cold can make my chronic pain flare, in part from the “shoulder hunch” – you know the look, shoulders hanging off the ears to ward off the chill. A drafty house doesn’t help.   I’ve moved my laptop in front of the fireplace.

Here’s a go-to soup we make often.  We’ve taken it on winter car picnics like the time we went to visit the ice sculptures at Lake Louise, Alberta.  A thermos of soup, a thermos of hot chocolate  and some buns were our repast that day.  We also take it in our RV in the summer (made ahead) for our first night when we’re busy getting set up at our campsite.  It makes a fast, filling supper or lunch, requiring only buns to complete the meal.  Great for potlucks too.

1 lb. lean or extra lean ground beef, browned

2 large cans Habitat vegetable or minestrone soup

Combine in a large pot and heat until steamy.  Serves about 4.

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Meatless Monday: Macaroni and Cheese

Posted on January 10, 2011 by chronicinthekitchen

I absolutely love my Vitamix blender; it is the bomb! I am able to make, and heat, cheese sauces in it. No more burning the milk on the stove. I highly recommend buying one, but they are expensive. Here is a simple cheese sauce recipe (adapted from the Vitamix recipe book) that can be blended, thickened and heated in the Vitamix. Add to 2 cups cooked macaroni and mix thoroughly.

1/4 c. flour
1/4 c. margarine
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/3 c. milk

Dash of garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, oregano and cayenne pepper.
Place all ingredients in the Vitamix and blend on high for 3 – 4 minutes or until heavy steam comes out of the vents (mixture will thicken as it heats.)  Remove lid plug and add 1 cup cubed Cheddar or other cheese through this opening. Blend another minute.

The result is Comfort Food Yum!

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No Peek Beef Stew

Posted on January 4, 2011 by chronicinthekitchen

2 pounds beef stew meat, cut into 1” pieces

1 package onion soup mix

½ c. red wine

1 can low sodium, low-fat cream of mushroom soup

1 can whole mushrooms, rinsed to remove excess sodium

Combine all ingredients in a slow cooker.  Cook covered on low for 8 – 12 hours.  Serves 4.

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Black Coffee!

Posted on December 21, 2010 by chronicinthekitchen

Now that's a coffee - taken at a Canmore, AB coffeehouse last summer

This is cross-posted from my other blog, FibroDAZE, http://www.bignoise-enterprises.com/blog/2010/03/07/abomination/and originally written March, 2010 and entitled “Black Coffee and Other Abominations.”

The Fat Nutritionist http://www.fatnutritionist.com/ is a blog I read. Her tag line is “eating normally is the new black.” I am so down with that. Death to Diets I say! Anyways, her post “Get Out of Jail Free Cards” http://www.fatnutritionist.com/index.php/get-out-of-jail-free-cards/ talks about “largely irrelevant” food labeling. It began with a treatise on coffee and “Canadian style wussy coffee”; that is coffee with cream and sugar. There was a brief introduction which contained a very funny line:

black coffee is an abomination unto the Lord and shall not defile this house

After I finished laughing, made an appropriate comment on her blog about how much we in this house agree with that statement, I started thinking. What other food and/or beverage items are, in our household, “an abomination unto the Lord and shall not defile this house?” I came up with the following list. Note: there’s a bit of a legend:

* = husband’s abominations

***  = my abominations
(no *’s at all means we both agree that these items shall never, ever defile our house.)

List of Foods – Not Exhaustive, although I’m a bit tired after typing now.

  • Offal
  • Head cheese
  • Coffee whitener
  • ***Processed cheese in a jar — my husband says it “adds personality.” I say it’s one step from being plastic.
  • Anything with the word “bean” attached to it [i.e. green beans, lima beans, kidney beans, et al.], with the exception of “coffee bean”
  • Brussel Sprouts
  • Octopus
  • Squid
  • Pork Sausage (possible exception: Mennonite Sausage. Good Mennonite Sausage that is)
  • *Chickpeas
  • *Sweet Potatoes
  • *Squash of any type
  • Fruitcake
  • Traditional Christmas Pudding – We do however enjoy this Christmas pudding:  http://www.cranberrycreek.com/ and stock up every year when they come out to our craft fair.
  • ***Raw tomatoes
  • *Porridge
  • *Cottage Cheese (exception: Lasagna)
  • Caviar/Tapioca – eerily similar, visually, don’t you think?
  • *Asparagus
  • Anything with the word “blood” in it i.e. blood pudding, blood sausage.
  • *Pumpkin Pie — Last year my sister in law generously made had the nerve to serve apple and cherry pies at her Christmas dinner.  It’s one of the very few times of the year I can eat pumpkin pie so I was a tad miffed.  (I know, I know, there are people starving in Africa, this is hardly a blip on the radar.)

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It’s Like Being at a Buffet

Posted on December 7, 2010 by chronicinthekitchen

My girlfriend and I have gotten together twice now to “Once a Month Cook” taking recipes out of the namesake book “Once a Month Cooking.” This method has you prep, cook and freeze recipes to eat later. My girlfriend and I divide the shopping, prepping and cooking and, for my part, I spread the shopping, prepping and cooking out over the week. Then, her and I meet to assemble the meals and do any other cooking. Last Saturday was such a time. In the space of just over three hours, we assembled eight recipes that served four or more. What I learned from Saturday’s session was:

  • Have all the prepping done before the assembling begins as I can’t do anything else that day.
  • Do not book anything else for the week before assembly day so I can take the entire week to shop and prep.

It’s a fun time but I do pay for it with increased pain and stiffness. Still, I think it is worth it for days when I am either not feeling up to preparing much, have medical appointments later in the day, or need to contribute something to our weekly potluck.

As I survey my freezer’s contents, it really is like being at a buffet. What shall we have – will it be the Chicken Tetrazzini, the Mexican Stroganoff, the Chicken Ala King or the Southwestern Chicken Soup? There’s a vegetarian option (Crustless Spinach Quiche) and even Shish Kabobs!
This definitely falls outside my 30 minute limit but hey, if you don’t count the prep and shopping, each recipe only took 22.4 minutes to make (3 hours = 180 minutes / 8 = 22.4)!

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