Happy Fourth!

I really hate cooking in the summer. Especially turning on the oven, but the stove heats you up just as bad (and then I have to pay for AC to cool back down again). We don't have a BBQ grill, so I took the Foreman grill outside and cooked up some chicken in the shade. I seasoned with a home made rib rub. When I remember what I put in it, I'll have to post the recipe.

Rather than turning the oven on for potato wedges, I thought I'd pressure cooker them and run them on the Foreman as well. They ran too long in the pressure cooker (dumb timer didn't start), so I seasoned with Italian dressing and pan fried them instead. At least the oven stayed cool...

Time Traveling Smothered Burritos

E!s mom is the queen of the garage freezer. From jams to produce, all sorts of food spends time in what Julia has dubbed "The Time Machine;" Food enters one month, and magically emerges months later. Since I cooked through all our produce before leaving the country, I left quite a bit of food in our little time machine.

Chicken Enchilada Soup the first time around before our trip

Upon our return, we didn't really have any groceries, so I threw a few jars in the fridge overnight to pull our time travelers out of the wormhole.

Time travelers 

There are dangers to time travel. One of the 2 jars of chicken enchilada soup I froze cracked, making the precious soup inside too dangerous to consume.

There was still plenty of chili, soup and cheese to thaw, wrap in shell and quickly toast for a delicious dinner. I made some brown rice in the background to round out the burrito fillings.

Ma K!s Buttermilk Bluberry Muffins

Now for one of my favorite foods growing up. My mom's famous blueberry muffins have recently been updated with our home ground oat flour treatment. Honestly I think it gives a nuttier, richer flavor to these already rich butter heavy muffins

Even better with more butter on the inside

I'm still experimenting on making these healthier. I ran out of butter the other day and made them with olive oil, which started smoking when cooked above it's smoke point at 400 degrees. Elizabeth likes substituting apple sauce for oil, so we'll give that a try too.

Buttermilk Blueberry Muffins
Buttered muffin pan, 2-1/2" diameter 12 medium, muffins*Preheated 400° oven.

• 1  cup sifted regular all-purpose flour
• 1  cup ground rolled oats
• 1/2  cup sugar   (I usually use less)
• 1  tablespoon baking powder
• 3/4  teaspoon salt
• 1/2  teaspoon baking soda
• 1  cup blueberries (frozen or fresh)
• 
  
• 1  egg, slightly beaten
• 1  cup buttermilk
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted

Into a mixing bowl sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Stir in oats.In a separate container Combine egg, buttermilk and butter.Stir blueberries into dry ingredients and make a well in the center.  
Add buttermilk mixture all at once to dry ingredients.  Stir until all dry particles aremoistened (20-25 strokes).  Spoon into muffin cups filling about 2/3full.  
Bake 20-25 minutes or until well browned.  Serve immediately.

Chicken Enchilada Soup: Substitution Tragedy Edition

Yes, we've seen this before. Chicken Enchilada Soup is a fairly regular meal around here. Especially because corn tortillas tend to come in large bags and they're not our favorite (compared to flour tortillas which are basically candy).

I got halfway through this recipe, when I found I didn't have as much enchilada sauce in the pantry as I'd thought. I had a variety of hot peppers around, so I figured I could just make some. Unfortunately, I didn't think one of those peppers was really a habanero --it was-- so even the red bell pepper I cut up after it was pretty spicy. I tried blending it in E!s smoothie blender, but it was so hot, it melted through the bottom, and started running out the bottom of the jar, through the motor (Or maybe the seal in the cheap blender had dried out over the winter, but I like saying it was too hot to handle, like E!).

RIP smoothie blender

The soup came out spicier than Elizabeth prefers, but was still delicious, and it was a good excuse to add extra cheese and sour cream analogue (plain yogurt has replaced sour cream and mayo in most of our cooking).

Summer Oatmeal

Elizabeth is not an oatmeal person. I wasn't a fan growing up either, but we've both grown to appreciate a warm bowl on a cold morning. Once the cold mornings go, E! can't stand oatmeal anymore. Now that the AC's running before we get out of bed, oatmeal is definitely out. As much as I don't like heating the house up, some jetlag got me up early to bake us some more acceptable summer oatmeal.

The Cranberry Apple Sauce muffins have been featured before . As previously noted, I swapped half the flour for ground oatmeal. I would have done the rest whole wheat, but we're running all our food stores out in move preparation.

Since the oven was hot, I threw in more breakfast goodness. While the recipe claims these are like cookies, I feel like it's more of a peanut butter cake. I can't seem to find the original source for the peanut butter bake on a quick Google, so here it is

Baked Peanut Butter Oatmeal

Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Yield: 12

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 cups quick cooking oats
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup  Peanut Butter

  

Texas for Breakfast... for Dinner

When Elizabeth graduated from University of Texas in Austin, her family gave her a Texas shaped waffle maker. One of the first things we registered for was a real waffle maker, so now we can make more evenly cooked waffles, twice as fast. Note the bacon and lamb chop garnish making this a dinner.
This is Alton Brown's oat waffle recipe. It gave us a hint that pulverizing rolled oats can cut wheat flour in recipes while lending a nuttier taste. More to come.

Chicken Ranch Tacos

Confession time. The first gift I ever gave Elizabeth was an onion. I guess we'd cooked together and discovered our mutual appreciation, and it felt like a really safe gift to give when you're not actually quite dating yet.

This is my little brother's favorite dish. Dice up chicken breasts, add taco seasoning and ranch dressing. We added a few onions cut into strips while cooking up the chicken, then made it extra creamy by dumping in plain yogurt while it was cooling down. I use yogurt as a healthier alternative to mayo and sour cream in many recipes, but it doesn't always cook well.

Happy Birthday to Me! Black Forest Cake

From our sister, Amanda the Cake Explorer, comes this beautiful idea. Elizabeth made this for my birthday; I still let her cook about once a week. Note the out of season cherries. They come in a can- found in the fruit and veggie section- not pie filling. The juice soaks the cake and the cream. I'm a sucker for cherries, and it's obvious I just couldn't restrain myself.

It's Cake Time! Omnomnomnom...

+Scott

Howdy! I'm Scott.

So this blog needs some love- and there's so much love around here, that I married Elizabeth.

As part of that process I retired as a Computer Engineer and have assumed roles like family accountant and Elizabeth's personal chef. That means there's a lot of cooking going on ;)

... that and the blog's now titled Food Elizabeth and Scott Makes.

Enjoy!

Pi Month - Triple Pie Dinner

While our Pi day (3-14) celebration was kind of last minute-buying a Brownie Mint pie from a chain restaurant-we made up for it with a Triple pie Dinner (I included their picture, since obviously it's better than I'd make it look).

One of Elizabeth's friends suggested the 3rd month of March in the year 2014 made the whole month pie month. Who can argue with that logic?

So we made pie. Lots of Pie.

First up, we didn't have crackers or cookies to make a cheesecake pie, so we used brownie mix to make a Cheesecake Brownie Sandwich Pie. Extra good topped with chocolate ice cream.

To follow that up, I made Triple pie dinner. Unfortunately we ate Turkey Shepherds Pie and the Mini Turkey Pot Pies without taking pictures. Both were made straight up from left overs. 

I was a little too busy rolling up my first Apple pie to take pictures of the rest.

Sure, I helped my mom a few Thanksgivings back in the day, but this one was all me. Well, and my hero's super-apple-pie recipe.