Smoked Sausage and Spaghetti

Smoked sausage and spaghetti

For the last several days I have been making some modifications to the site. A few one them are obvious, like the random gallery and the little ad block on the right. A few changes have more to do with streamlining and formatting and are less obvious. Well, because I have spent more time on the site than cooking I don’t have any gallery or recipe today. Instead I have a simple meal suggestion.

Pasta is almost as easy as it gets when it comes to feeding yourself in college. It’s fairly filling and about as easy as boiling water. The problem is that it gets monotonous. Unless you happen to be Josh. It’s easy enough to add some variety to spaghetti and pasta sauce. Meat is probably the most obvious route. Whatever you happen to have in the freezer, 1lb of smoked sausage or a few chicken breasts, will go well with pasta.

Assuming that your meat of choice is not frozen, cut it into bite-size pieces and cook them however you see fit. I usually put either chicken or sausage with some spices in a skillet with some oil. In fact, this chicken will work just fine. Be sure that the meat is cooked through to your satisfaction before you go eating it though. While the meat is cooking get the water for the pasta boiling and the sauce warming in a saucepan. Once the meat is done just drain the oil and put the meat in the sauce with anything else you might want over spaghetti. Maybe some finely chopped onions or shredded cheese.

Different meats or vegetables added to pasta changes the flavor and provided some variety, which is apparently the spice of life. It’s also a good way to use up leftovers.

(Baked) Corn dogs

Honestly, just fry them.

I improvised by just baking the corn dogs on a baking sheet. What resulted was, as anticipated, cornbread coated hot dogs. They were not really corn dogs. Honestly I would rather have chopped the hot dogs up and tossed them into the cornbread, but for an experiment they weren’t too bad. Next time  I will make sure that I have enough oil.

In other news, my plans for the site are moving slowly but surely. Hopefully by the end of my spring break I will have redone the Food page as well as the way posts show up here on the front page. Ideally there will be description of what was made (like the one you just read) followed by a continued link. Clicking the post title or the continued link will take you off to the full post, displaying the recipe and possibly gallery as well. I’m not sure yet.

Finals week is fast approaching though. School takes priority.

Internships and web design

This site has only been up and running for a couple of months now, but I am thinking about doing some pretty hefty modifications. I want to change the way posts show up on the main page, I think. I want to shave the first few paragraphs or so show up with a picture. Clicking the headline would take the reader to the full news post.

My reasoning is actually pretty simple; I want to put recipes in the news posts. Problem is…they’re pretty long. It occured to me when talking to my dad a week or so ago that the recipes are not exactly visible. He actually had never clicked on the food tab, so he missed the galleries and recipes. I feel like I need to get the galleries and recipes in the news posts, but I certainly can’t do that with the whole story being displayed on the front page. Too busy.

I also need to do something with the Food page. The placeholder page that is there right now is simply not going to cut it. I need something cleaner. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know. There will be an update tomorrow. Probably corndogs.

On a mostly unrelated note, I’m in the process of applying for internships for Online Journalism. I’m going to be sending a few applications toward the East Coast around the D.C. area. If you have any suggestions I’m all ears eyes.

Pan-fried chicken and mashed potatoes

I don't recommend using a bowl with meals that must be cut.

I’m sorry that this update is a day late. Yesterday was particularly busy, studying for two midterms today. Anyway, this is the post that should have gone up yesterday.

I had some chicken breast sitting in the freezer slowly working their way toward a freezer burn last week, as well as half a dozen potatoes that were going to start sprouting soon. The logical thing to do was to make chicken and mashed potatoes. Oddly enough I had never made mashed potatoes before.

In the end this was a shockingly simple yet tasty meal. The key was the excessive amount of herbs I used on both the chicken and the potatoes. The chicken was just a little spicy with some chipotle and Caribbean jerk seasoning. The mashed potatoes had some of the skins left in as well as parsley, garlic and oregano added.

Boiling the potatoes was the most time consuming part of the meal, but it isn’t exactly difficult. You really just boil them until you can split them with a fork. It worked out pretty well, as it was both cheap and filling.

On a related note, the chicken was wonderful the next day. I sliced it thin and put it on a sandwich with some provolone and chipotle ranch dressing. It was be even better over a spinach salad though. make extra chicken and use the leftovers the next day. No reason to waste good chicken.

Time managment (analog style)

I like the Internet. A lot. Technology and I get along well most of the time. I built my current computer, I get all of my news through RSS feeds, and synchronization gets me excited. It seems obvious then that I would use some sort of digital planner. Not anymore.

At the beginning of Fall quarter I tried a number of different daily planning methods. I used the recently-shutdown iwantsandy.com for a while as well as Remember the Milk. They were both services that I enjoyed, but in the end they just fell short.

It took me a few weeks, but the problem finally dawned on me. I don’t consider my phone an organization device. Shocking, I know. When I had to remember something I was more likely to jot it down in the corner of a notebook than send off a text message. Once I got the revelations out of the way the next logical step was to find something pen and paper based that would work as my external short term memory.

Daily planners at the bookstores were not so much expensive as they were clunky. The benefit of using my phone was that it is small. If fits in my pocket and leaves room for whatever else I’m carrying. Don’t get me wrong; a nice moleskin notebook would be wonderful, but smaller is better.

I eventually stumbled upon PocketMod. The idea is fairly simple. A single piece of paper is cut and folded in such as way that is creates an eight page booklet, front and back included. The entire folded PocketMod is about the size of my wallet and thinner than a credit card. I can slip it into my back pocket and not notice it.

I print out a new one every two weeks and use almost no ink and only one page of paper.

The best feature of the PocketMod — the feature that led me to actually try it out — is the Web site. It presents a wonderful, flash based page that allows you to drap and drop pages to be printed. The whole thing, front page included, is customizable. I flirted with a few layouts, but settled on a two week planner face to face, a month calender, a finance and shopping list, two lined sheets and the cover.

Since I started using my PocketMod on a regular basis I have been extremely pleased. I am a big fan of technology, don’t get my wrong, but sometimes a pen and paper just does it better.

Sometimes Ease trumps Creativity

Sometimes a full meal takes too long

Four days a week, Monday through Thursday, Jake and I go to the gym at 9 a.m. to lift weights. We have been doing it long enough now that it has become habit. The day doesn’t quite feel right if I miss a day. When I get back at 10 a.m. I generally check the news and some other RSS feeds while eating breakfast and then take a shower.

The past few weeks I have been eating instant oatmeal almost every morning. It’s fairly quick and tasty, but no matter what you add to something like oatmeal it’s going to get boring after a while. Today instead of a bowl of cereal or some oatmeal I had a single large orange. Citrus fruits are some of my personal favorites. I have a bag of maybe 8 oranges in my refrigerator right now, and I am certain that I will eat all of them before they go bad. The bananas, however, will be going to some banana bread later tonight.

Anyway, there is a benefit to keeping breakfast simple. When I make oatmeal I have to keep an eye on how much of anything I’m using and how long it goes in the microwave. Considering I bake bread and make dishes that have to stew for hours, you would think that a few minutes of work every day would not bother me. I think it’s the repetition. I just wanted something different. Something easier. Fruit is perfect.

Now, I am certain that there are plenty of people out there who do not believe that oranges are easy. They are probably the same people who scape off all of the pith. (The white stuff.) The pith is good for you, stop doing that. It has fiber. Anyway, a good sized fruit such as an apple or an orange is plenty filling. I can go until lunch easy with an orange.

Granted, there are easier fruits to deal with. Bananas and apples are about as easy as it gets when it comes to fruit. Incidentally, I am also opposed to peeling the skin off of apples, pesticides be damned. Wash them. If I had remembered to buy any, this post would probably be about grapefruit. Another of my personal favorite breakfast fruits.

I will still be eating oatmeal and cereal most days, but sometimes a good piece of fruit is plenty.

Gallery Update: Oreo Truffles

For Valentine’s Day I made Oreo Truffles. I have made chocolates with my mom in the past over Christmas, but before this I had never attempted to make chocolates myself.

Unfortunately I did not have some of the nicer kitchen supplies that my mom has back home, such as a double boiler or a dipping spoon. I also had to sneak around a bit, as I didn’t actually want anyone to know that I was making any chocolates before I was done, Devin. It would be annoying if they were found half done and I had to explain what exactly I was making and why no, you can’t have any yet. Really ruins the surprise. Luckily the truffles are actually fairly quick. They’re really no more complex than Oreos and cream cheese frozen and dunked in liquid chocolate.

They came out tasting as expected; chocolate covered Oreos. I think they went over pretty well. Had I not hid them I’m sure they would be long gone by now.

I imagine after how well this chocolate making went I will probably try something similar again. Thanks to Amanda for finding the recipe I based mine off of. This is a fairly short update, but I have a few backed up updates from last week that didn’t go up. Last week was midterms, so I couldn’t find the time to post. I have some corn dogs and corned beef hash as well as some non-food related updates coming. One on organization and another on exercise. Hope your Valentine’s days went well. Mine was pretty satisfying, giant party that happened to find my apartment aside.

Gallery Update: Seven Fruit Smoothie

After the Goetta Hobo sandwich and a solid week of midterms I really just wanted to make something simple. My brother was down here for the weekend, Devin and Jake were hanging around, and all of my meats were frozen. I had picked up some fat-free, vanilla yogurt and frozen mixed berries for this specific purpose, so smoothies seemed like a pretty good idea.

The smoothie made enough for four people to have a decent 3/4 a glass. Smoothies are, thankfully, extremely simple. So simple in fact that I did not bother to take down measurements, so the recipe over at the gallery has estimations for measurements. It is possible to just add more frozen things, juice or yogurt to the mix as well, so it’s really just a matter of trial and error.

I know that my mom will add protein powder and things to her smoothies, and they seem to still be pretty darn good. Just something to keep in mind.

Expect a Valentine’s Day update and maybe one more during the week here.

Edit: Thank you, Devin. There is orange juice in the smoothie. In fact, it’s the base.

Edit: Outlaw is an internet hate machine.

Super Bowl Stew

Last night I decided to make a double batch of the spicy chicken stew that I made about two weeks ago. The stew came out wonderful and was once again more or less completely gone by the time the night was over. I had about enough leftover for two good sized bowls.

One very important change to the recipe: chicken breasts instead of thighs. The meat was softer and considerably better tasting. Absolutely worth the extra cost.

As I expected, the stew is, in fact, better the next day. The flavors had more time to mingle and the stew thickened up considerably. The same is true of the Red Beans and Rice and Gumbo (which is not up yet). The problem is of course that no one really wants to wait an entire day to eat something that smells so good.

In addition to the stew I made what amounts to one of the easiest warm party dishes I have ever made. I bought two packs of cocktail wienies and two bottles of BBQ sauce when picking up the chicken for the stew.

All I had to do was warm the BBQ sauce and toss it in a crock pot on high with the hot dogs, a shot of Jack Daniels and some ground chipotle.  The alcohol will cook out as the heat rises leaving the flavor behind, so don’t worry about that. Once it was warm enough I turned it back down to low, but it really just takes care of itself. Unfortunately there aren’t any pictures because I was a little rushed to get everything done as quickly as possible, so the picture is of the last pot.

Gallery Update: Goetta Hobo sandwich

Great name, right? Anyway, if you are like me and from Cincinnati, OH, which I bet many of you are not, then you probably know what goetta is. If not you are seriously missing out. Goetta is a German peasant  dish that apparently doesn’t really exist outside of Cincinnati anywhere. I asked people about it in Munich, Germany and they looked at me like I was crazy.

Well, as it turns out, goetta is about the best breakfast meat out there. Imagine sausage with oats. It has a very distinctive flavor and is fairly filling. Egg in the (a) basket, more entertainingly known as Hobo Toast, is a little more widely known than goetta. It is also shockingly easy to make, so long as you understand how you like your eggs and how to get them that way. Trial and error is probably the best way to go about this, but a knife to stab with and low heat will work just as well. It’s hard to cook a yolk once it’s running all over your plate (or chin).

The hobo toast is probably nothing new to most of you. I imagine in fact that the goetta though is a wholly new concept. Maybe a scary one. I personally think that ground, seasoned meat and oats sounds wonderful. I have also had the benefit of actually eating it. If it hasn’t been made abundantly clear yet, I am not a picky eater.

I also feel obligated to mention that this is not exactly a light sandwich in terms of grease or how filling it is. Goetta and eggs are very filling. To be honest, making a sandwich out of this dish is really just an attempt to make it more portable. As you can see by the yolk all over my plate, I more or less failed. Ah well. The point of cooking for yourself is to make something that is tasty.

When you’re cooking for guests or for customers, then maybe it is time to learn how to make things look good. Cooking for your friends in college does not count as a situation that would require extremely pretty food, by the way. Just a reminder for the people I regularly cook for.

I digress. If you are going to venture into the world of hobo sandwiches, please remember to cook your goetta all the way through and not to burn the egg. A burnt egg is a terrible waste of breakfast.

P.s.: I justified all of the updates, because I think I like them better that way. Thoughts? concerns?