Quick and Easy--Queso con carne!

I've got another quick and easy for you this week, queso con carne! Now, this is not the healthiest of dinners, I admit. It's not something we often, but it is definitely yummy! Ingredients below include; Marvella or really, off-brand Velveeta, a can of white queso, a package of hot pork sausage, and then I chopped up half an onion and a whole green pepper. I had an extra pack of peppers out in case I thought I needed more, but I didn't end up using them.

Throw down that meat! Seasoned with salt&pepper, and garlic powder (hmm, I think we are addicted to that stuff!).

Once the meat is browned and drained, throw the veggies into another pan to saute. I didn't want them to not cook in the meat, or to get soggy, that's why I cook them a bit separately. After they are browned to my desire, I toss them into the meat.

Add about half of the velveeta log, and the whole can of white queso. Stir until melted, serve with tortilla chips. :) Yummy, and quick. This recipe takes around 20-30 minutes from prep to finish. 

Quick and Easy-- Taco Potato Casserole

I only thought to take photos near the end of the process, but what I left out was quite simple. I cut up around 6-8 medium potatoes, and then boiled until soft, but not mashing soft. Once they were drained, we added sour cream, salt&pepper, garlic powder and butter to get the consistency we wanted. Once that was done, we poured it into our baking pan, seen below. 

We have the standard pack of ground beef, seasoned with a pack of taco seasoning. 

Pour that down on top of the potato mixture. 

Yum!

Now spread on some cheese of choice, this time we used mozzarella cheese.

Spread until covered, or to your desired thickness. Pop this into the oven, we set it to random temperatures, just needs to melt the cheese! Once the cheese is melted, take out, and serve! It takes about 30-45 depending on how long your potatoes take to cook. :) Quick, easy, YUMMY!

Caturday #17

Good afternoon, fellow caturday lubbers! Only a few photos of the cats this week, all focused on a pair of birds taunting them outside of our kitchen window.

And here is the yummy food I made this morning! :D The first one is my boyfriends three egg omelette. I added in diced jalapeños directly into the scrambled eggs, so they were cooked throughout and their juices raised the heat level of the entire omelette a notch. Then I had cheddar cheese and ham slices in the center. Topped off with hot salsa, this was a delicious spicy wake-up!

For some reason, food I cook for myself always comes out uglier than the food I make for others. Haha, thankfully, it tastes just as delicious :). Mine below was a two egg omelette made in the same manner as described above.

Eggs in a nest...or

Eggs in a basket, or toads in a hole, or many other names people told me was the 'real' name! Haha, gotta love differing cultural and geographical terms. Anyways! if you are like me, you have never heard of any of these things, I was not lucky enough to have this made for me in the mornings. I am so glad I found this recipe though, because this is quick, easy, and super delicious. Next time I do this I'll go step by step with photos, this time I just have end products. I first saw a recipe for a eggs in a nest (eian hereon) sandwich, which I can't find now of course. Anyways, I obviously had to try just plain eian before going for the sandwich! First, I obtained the top of a spaghetti jar and thoroughly cleaned it out. Taking out whatever size bread you want to use, just use the top to 'screw' down into the bread and cut out a hole. Or you can rip a hole with your fingers, up to you! Just remember that the thickness of your bread is going to affect how your egg sits, if you're using large eggs have a thick piece of bread, or a large hole. Then you just toss a small pat of butter or whatever into your pan. Let it heat up a bit and then throw all of your soon-to-be-toast into the pan. Let the bread toast fairly well, then flip and immediately add an egg into each hole. Let the egg cook long enough so that you can slide your spatula up underneath. You can either eat as is when it has cooked through, or you could flip it over for an over-easy type of egg, which is what we prefer here. I also toasted the inner circles of bread, creating little disks to sop up the yolk.

Here are two pieces of eian! I also put down a slice of cheddar cheese on them, srsly perfect!

Cut open and you can see the gooey inside, yum.

For our sandwich here, of which my bf's was MUCH prettier, but I made it first and he had already eaten it by the time I was done making mine :(, I just took two eian and sandwiched the cheese parts together with bacon :D. Sadly, when making my sandwich, the egg escaped the toast, not forming a full seal with the toast, and caved in as you see here. O.O Despite not being the most gorgeous sandwich ever, it was extremely delicious and it should be in everyone's tummy at least once.

Herb Baked Chicken

Cymone here! Ok so yesterday I tried a new recipe since I was hankering for some form of baked chicken with herbs, preferably rosemary. Plus, not to mention, I should eat something healthy once in a while. I’m on what you call the “grad student” diet: grab whatever crap they’re selling on campus, eat once maybe twice a day, and eat tons of fast and cheap (i.e. greasy and awful for you) food.

Pictured Above: Food not available in college

So here’s the list of ingredients: 

Chicken! I used two boneless, skinless breasts that came out to 2/3 lb

Sprig of fresh rosemary (about 1 ½ tablespoons)

About ½ tablespoon fresh thyme

Salt and pepper

3 cloves fresh garlic

½ of a small lemon

About ½ cup chicken broth

So first off, feel free to use dried herbs and pre-minced garlic, just remember it's a 3:1 ratio so use 1/2 tablespoon of dry rosemary and about 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme. I just love fresh stuff when I can get it. Also, if you prefer more variety in chicken parts feel free; chicken breast just happened to be BOGO! Keep in mind this was for 2 servings so adjust accordingly. Preheat the oven to 375. With the chicken, trim off all the fat, pat dry, then season with salt and pepper on both sides. Mince the garlic and give a good chop to the rosemary and thyme and spread evenly over the chicken. You could do this for both sides, but I thought it looked pretty with all the colors on the top ^_^.

So colorful and it smells good too!

Then with half a lemon drizzle lemon juice over the chicken. A little acidity always helps, it doesn’t taste sour afterwards but it adds depth! After everything is all seasoned  place your chicken in a glass dish (Pyrex, Anchor, etc.). I had to use a way too small casserole dish thanks to my former roommate stealing all but one of my Pyrex dishes. 

Oh Pyrex, I miss you. Krista, you whore!

Bake in the oven, covered, for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes add enough chicken broth to come halfway up the chicken (you don’t want to cover the chicken). By adding the broth you’ll have very moist chicken instead of dried out crap chicken.  Put the chicken back in the oven, uncovered, for another 10-15 minutes depending on the thickness. If you have a thermometer the internal temperature at the thickest point should be above 155 degrees. Viola! Eat it!

Eat it I say!

Since this was the first time making this dish I asked my best critic for suggestions (i.e. my boyfriend) and he had two suggestions: thinner meat and browning the meat prior to baking and I couldn’t agree more. They came out super juicy and yummy but these two tips would probably make it even more awesome. If you’re using thick chicken breasts like I did either split them widthwise or pound it down with a meat tenderizer. I typically prefer just cutting them in half, me and the meat tenderizer have been enemies ever since I made chicken kiev. And with the browning suggestion, this is just to give it a little more color and texture on the outside. Just set your stovetop to a medium-high temperature, put a little olive oil or veggie oil in the pan, and get a quick sear until there’s some color on the outside (do this after seasoning). Here’s the final product with some corn and leftover scalloped potatoes from a box. All together, it took about ½ hour. Quick and healthy (and yummy) meal!

It's so yummy!

I am fail, but this soup is not

Ok, so this the first time I’ve written not only on this blog, but on ANY blog in general. It's been a while since this blog was started and it's pretty sad this is the first time I'm posting, sorry to all the hungry people out there. I’m the other nerdy girl, Cymone, and I handle the yummy stuff to eat. Just don’t mix up your food with your make-up, it might not taste that good then. 

For the love of God, please don't mix make-up and dicing!

                So, I love tomato soup when it’s chilly outside and considering it’s in the 30s here in Florida I’d say it’s cold enough. For those of you living in colder areas…sucks to be you! While you’re inside trying to keep warm you might as well make some yummy soup! This recipe makes about 6 servings and takes about a half hour to make. So here’s the ingredients you’ll need:

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium onion, diced
1 celery rib, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons flour
4 cups chicken broth
2 cans (14.5 oz size) tomatoes
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon sugar
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1/4 cup cream
salt and pepper to taste
croutons and fresh parmesan (optional)

Throw this shit out

So, I’ll throw in some general cooking tips while I’m at it: ALWAYS buy unsalted butter, you can put however much salt you want afterwards. Plus if you need unsalted butter for baking or something you don’t need to buy more butter! YAY! For the garlic, I personally like using fresh garlic and mince it myself but feel free to use the prepackaged stuff to save time. For the tomatoes, I prefer getting canned whole tomatoes so that way I can scoop the seeds out before they go in the pot, I don’t think anybody likes tomato seeds floating around in their soup. For the bay leaves, go with the dried stuff but for the basil you definitely want to go with fresh basil. Dried basil will not do this soup justice since you need that oil that fresh basil lets off.  If you can’t get fresh basil it may be better to just skip it all together instead of paying $3 for dried basil. If you have some dried basil and want to use it, the conversion for fresh to dry herbs is 1 tablespoon fresh=1 teaspoon dry (so 2 teaspoons dry basil)

So first, you’ll want to mince the garlic and dice the celery and onion, I typically just go for as small as possible.  Once that’s done you’ll want to break out the saucepan and melt the butter over medium heat. 

This is a saucepan, smiley face optional

Add in your celery, onions, and garlic and let it cook for 4 minutes. Turn the heat to low and stir in the flour. This is the roux for your soup if you want to sound super smart to people nearby and it’s what thickens the soup. After stirring and getting a nice, smooth roux add in the broth, tomatoes, tomato paste, bay leaves, and sugar (the sugar helps cut some of the acidity of the tomatoes) and bring it to a boil. Once it starts boiling, turn the heat to medium and let it simmer for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes, take out the 2 bay leaves, toss in the basil, and give it a stir. Then, carefully put all of your soup in the blender and hit puree, you want it to have a smooth texture. If it doesn't all fit then just do it in two batches.

This, however, does not go in the blender

If you don’t have a blender or some kind of food choppy device then you probably should go with diced tomatoes and enjoy a more “rustic” tomato soup (a.k.a. chunky). After the soup is all blended, stir in the cream and season with salt and pepper. For a super delicious finish, once you’ve dished up a bowl of delicious tomato soup, top it with some fresh grated parmesan and croutons (personally I like the garlic & cheese kind). Dig in!

Pathetic humans, prepare to write down the recipe!!

If you get the reference, you're awesome!
Sorry about how late this is related to the posts about the actual food, haha. I've had this post as a draft since the 6th! Now, today I will attempt to transfer my limited cooking knowledge unto you! I will tell you about our Macho Nacho recipe.

So Macho Nachos!
Ingredients: (our recipe fed three people all night long, so I figure this is about 6-8 huge servings)
2 bags of the most flat, intact chips we could find
1/2 of a bell pepper
1 tomato, diced into cubes
1 can/jar white queso cheese ( I know that is redundant but that is name of our cheese, lol, it's cheese cheese)
1 green onion
1 bag of shredded cheese
1 lb lean ground beef
Salsa
2-3 Jalapenos
1 package Taco Seasoning, or seasoning to your taste

(Some ingredients,sorry about that apple slice...I was eating it before I started cutting things up, lol.)

Now, all of these are according to preference, if you like red onions and not green, feel free to do a whole red or vice versa. I suggest adding at least a full bell pepper, we used it because we had it, but really liked the flavor it added and wished there had been more. :) So yeah, most everything on this list is optional other than the chips+ground beef+cheese. We began by browning the beef, then adding the taco seasoning to that. We also had the liquid cheese (white)on the stove, hot and ready to pour. Then, we took a standard baking sheet, like you bake cookies on, and put down one layer of chips, trying to lay them evenly and not have too much overlap. We put down the rest of the ingredients in this order; ground beef, melted cheese, tomatoes, green onion, and jalapenos on one half (his little sister doesn't like spicy), and then the shredded cheese on top of all of that. 

(ground beef and white cheese) (first layer of the nachos completed)

(beginning the second layer) (into the oven to be fully melted)

Then we added yet ANOTHER layer of chips, and added the same ingredients, on top of all of that we spread out our half a bell pepper. After all of that food was layered, we put it in the oven at 375 ( any temp will do, you just want to melt the cheese). Viola, a meal for friends that I'm sure is absolutely horrible for you! :D But so, so delicious.

If you did not get the title reference, you can watch Futurama, specifically ep. 22 season 3 - 30% Iron Chef. :)

Caturday #1

Happy New Year! Hope everyone had awesome celebrations with their loved ones. We had fun here at my house by drinking all night with a huge platter of what my boyfriend called macho nachos!

This platter lasted for over 4 hours between three people, two of which were drinking ^_~.

So here are a few of my favorite shots of my cats in the last few weeks to celebrate the first Caturday of the new year!

Black furry butt-heart. Hehe

So Oscar decided to sit on TOP of Jesus one morning, what a little butthole! :)

A view from the top..

Reece stretching out towards me.

Charcoal in our broken down laundry basket

and finally Cupid and Charcoal taking up the most comfy seat in the living room, of course. :)

Hope everyone has a great new year!