I dunno what the nutritional facts are, but my tongue's certainly not complainin'

Slice up a bunch of potatoes. A vegetable slicer comes in handy for this part.

Dunk each slice in a small bowl of vegetable oil then toss it in a large glass baking dish.

Make sure the baking dish is filled evenly.

Sprinkle some pepper and spices (curry powder, garlic powder, a dash of cinnamon) on all the potatoes. It can also be helpful to get, in order to all the slices, to mix the spices in with the oil for dunking.

Cook in the oven for one hour at 400 degrees.

A little before the hour is up, grate some cheese. Hard cheeses like parmesan or gruyere work best, though mixing in some soft cheeses can be a nice touch too. Today, I used mostly parmesan, some baby Swiss, and then I added a little of our cheese powder for popcorn (also recommended for potatoes, veggies, eggs and rice apparently).

Sprinkle in some herbs (parsley, thyme).

When the oven's hour's over, take the potatoes out, and sprinkle the cheese and herbs on top of them right away.

Drain the potatoes from the oil.

Eat and be merry.

Blackberry blunder

Last weekend, we had some ice cream. As we had some leftover yummy blackberry sauce that Sara had previously made to accompany a tasty chocolate cake she made, I suggested using it as a topping for the ice cream. So I popped the sauce's container in the microwave to warm it up, not actually aware of how long I should put it in for, but I figured if it was less than a minute, it couldn't do much harm.

A few seconds before the countdown finished, a "Pow!" was heard from within the appliance. And this was no small "poof!" like when the pressure inside a container rises high enough and lifts a corner of the lid to let the steam evacuate. This was a bigger "Pow," so I stopped the machine as quickly as I could and opened the door...

Oops!

Fortunately there was enough of the sauce still in the container to pour on the ice cream bowls. And it was luscious!!

Now we know to let food breathe when heating up in the microwave. Especially when using small, solid containers.

On the plus side, the inside of our microwave is quite clean now.

July 4th, Part I

We are just having the most wonderful relaxing day! To celebrate a morning of rest, I made the Egg's Nests that I had mention on a previous blog. Well, they succeeded! (With one slight hiccup) - there they are!

Aren't they beautiful? They were fairly easy to make, the only trick is separating the eggs, shredding the cheese, and making sure the egg whites get whipped up well. Also the oven is set to 450, which is fairly hot. They called for parchment paper, which we didn't have, and we used wax paper instead. It was harder to separate the wax paper from the eggs!

It was a very fun way to eat eggs in the morning, and I'm looking forward to making this treat in the future!

Cheese dough

In our latest implementation of create-your-own-pizza, I made a cheese dough pizza. Not cheese crust, where a lining of cheese is added around the perimeter when laying out the dough. Cheese dough. I had been thinking about this option for a while but never tried it. For those of you who know the recipe, into a doubled recipe (based on 4 cups of flour), instead of adding thyme & rosemary, I added thyme & about 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan into the dry mixture and mixed it all up before pouring in the liquid ingredients.
The result was subtle, but VERY tasty. I'd call it a success!

Cheesy chicken

Marinate 2 chicken breasts in honey dijon mustard dressing.
Combine bread crumbs, grated parmesan cheese and a selection of seasoning (rosemary/parsley/basil/mint/garlic powder/pepper/whatever suits your taste buds) for a total of 1/2 a cup. Mix well and dump into a holeless Ziploc® (or similar) bag. Take each piece of chicken and individually drop into the bag to toss it around until covered with the breading mixture, then move covered piece of chicken to an oven-safe pot to be cooked in (CorningWare® works well)
Lay a slice of Swiss cheese on top of each chicken breast.
Cook in the oven at 375 degrees for 40 minutes.
Eat with a loved one!
Please let me know quickly if this dish has a name before I go try to copyright it.

:-j