Butter Cream Cheese Biscuits

So as I mentioned previously, my butter needed to get used up, as did my cream cheese. I would have made something to bring into work but everyone at work has suddenly gone on a diet, so that wouldn't have worked out.

So anyway I googled for recipes that use up both, and found a recipe that basically called for one package of cream cheese, one cup of butter (2 sticks), and one cup of self-rising flour. I made a substitute for the self-rising flour by adding baking soda and salt to regular flour. Actually I didn't use regular flour but I used a combination of whole grain flours (Kamut, quinoa, and oat). The ratio of fat-related to other ingredients seemed so disproportionate though. As I was mixing the ingredients, I had the hardest time believing that the original recipe only called for one cup of flour, so I eventually upped it to three cups total.

Then I stuck these little flattened balls in my slow cooker and "baked" them, and lo and behold! There lay before me fragrant, buttery biscuits, some of which I laid out on this cute biscuit bowl from Ballydoughan pottery's poppy range (they are based in County Armagh, Northern Ireland). Anyway the biscuits themselves were too salty. I should have remembered not to add that extra salt since my butter was already salted. They were fairly soft but not flaky which is fine since I wasn't aiming for flakiness. I couldn't really make out the cream cheese taste, although the taste was obviously too rich in general. Oh well. At least I got a good excuse to use the cute biscuit bowl.

Sesame Almond Yogurt

Trying to use up this random portion of toasted sesame seeds and sliced almonds, so threw both into nonfat Greek Yogurt. It was okay... could have used some honey. At least it was filling.

Smoked Salmon Pasta

There are two types of linquine in here: spinach/chive, and garlic/basil. They were both very fragrant, but the flavor was not too strong, which is just as well since Kevin probably wouldn't have eaten this otherwise. I used a whole boxed package of smoked wild salmon from my mom's friend in Canada, and some broccoli. Oh also, this is pretty bad, but I threw in an entire stick of butter into this. I was planning to use olive oil but I had to use up the butter. I suppose I could have just tossed it but oh well. Then again I used up 16 ounces total of pasta, yielding four substantial meals, so that's 2 tablespoons of butter per meal which sounds less insane. Anyhow I thought this would be saltier than it turned out... I added absolutely zero salt, thinking the smoked salmon would be overkill, sodium-wise, but actually I think the dish as a whole is a bit lacking in salt but whatever. I didn't feel like rectifying that since Kevin had no complaints about the dish...

Mediterranean Vegetable Phyllo Cups

Saw these at Ralphs and made an impulse purchase. They were okay, not too satisfying. There were 12 in the box but I guess the net weight was only 5.52 oz. These had spinach, red peppers, zucchini, feta, cottage cheese, and spices. I'll have to go buy my own phyllo dough and make my own little baskets or packets of filling...

Oyakodon

This is one of my favorite Japanese dishes of all time -- oyakodon, which literally means "mother and child donburi" which is essentially a chicken and egg rice bowl.

The dish varies from restaurant to restaurant, and some of the super authentic Japanese restaurants will even refuse to serve this since it is supposedly an easy dish meant for the staff, not a menu item to be served to guests. Anyway I first tried and fell in love with the oyakodon from Chopstix in Clairemont Mesa (San Diego). I've tried oyakodon at many other places henceforth and have not found one that comes close. Sometimes the flavor of the sauce will be off, or the rice won't be as good, or they'll throw in random shiitake or other some other item that overpowers the dish. Not only that, but usually places charge more for and give you less than what you would be able to get and pay for at Chopstix.

The closest thing I found to replicating the Chopstix oyakodon is to make it by using this oyakodon sauce, which one may be able to find at a Japanese super market. I have tried it once by making the sauce from scratch but I don't make Japanese food often enough to justify having a whole bottle of mirin sitting around, or a whole bottle of dashi. This sauce I found runs at about $3 per bottle and is one of few (or possibly the only one) without MSG.

Anyway  I didn't do half as good of a job at making the dish look pretty though. I thnk technically you're supposed to put the raw egg on top as the dish finishes cooking, and because it's so hot, the egg will cook. I just threw in the eggs and stirred everything around, and plus I threw in spinach just for kicks. So it doesn't look as good but it sure was satisfying.

Chicken Noodle

Notice I left off the word "soup." That's because my proportions were not right and basically what soup there was got absorbed into the noodles. I threw in the thigh pieces with frozen sweet white corn (really helps with sweetening the broth), a handful of dried dates, and some penne pasta (threw them in dry). This all went into the rice cooker and turned out decently except for the lack of soup and except for the fact that the food spilled over, outside of the inner pot, so I had to spend extra time scrubbing the outer pot of the usually trusty Tatung old school rice cooker.

Barbeque Vegetable Chicken

Eh... I used the 4 hour setting since I figured chicken pieces (boneless skinless thighs) didn't need 8 or 10 hours, but of course the diced onions were still rather sharp rather than soft or caramelized as they were in my meat stews. The other random vegetables worked out along with the bottle of barbeque sauce, but I guess next time I'll have to brown the onions first to make that work out with chicken pieces (meaning I won't be doing this again since the whole point of my using the slow cooker is to throw everything in one pot, in one step... i.e. too lazy to brown then wash and not willing to venture into the world of cast iron or dutch irons just yet). Either that or just get actual bone-in thighs which might hold up better against the longer settings. As it is, the chicken pieces were already kind of hard. =/

Toasted Marzipan

Got this random desire to try out marzipan, so went to the local World Market (kinda oxymornic...) and bought a couple of the plain extra fine marzipan bars from Schluckwerder, and a couple of the chocolate covered ones from Niederegger. I really liked the Schluckwerder ones, both straight from the package as well as toasted. I felt like having the chocolate around just overwhelmed the almond taste. The plain ones felt really smooth also, unlike the Niederegger ones, where the marzipan felt more sugary and almost coconutty, almost like what I would imagine a cheapy Almond Joy to be like. Go pure and go Schluckwerder!

Super Healthy Fruit and Vegetable Compote

I decided to experiment more with ratatouille variations, after the last one turned out semi-decent. Of course I ran out of roux so this one was super watery. I threw in acorn squash, tomatoes, taro, apples, pears, and bell peppers. I made so much of it I had to bring some in to work for breakfast, and got grossed out, so I tossed the portion I had brought for lunch and ate Hot Pockets instead. Haha. But later when I got hungry for dinner, I guess it didn't taste that bad. Oh well. I probably will never make this again. The flavors just really didn't match, although if I had some roux, it might have made the fusion of flavors and textures a bit more forgiving.

Heritage Heirloom Whole Grains

This "Heritage" cereal is one of my favorite cereals. It is from Nature's Path and includes several "ancient grains," namely Kamut wheat, spelt, and quinoa along with oats, barley, and millet. I would love to see them throw in amaranth but oh well. This cereal is not sweet at all and goes well with lowfat milk. Here I have it topping the nonfat yogurt which you can't really see.

I bought several boxes of Heritage because at one point in time, I was going through them pretty fast by eating it for both breakfast and lunch at work (breakfast with milk, lunch with mashed avocado) but then I got an upset stomach once from an avocado and that pretty much ended that trend.

Some of my other favorite cereals include Kashi's Heart to Heart Honey Toasted Oat, Kashi Island Vanilla Whole Wheat Biscuits, Nature's Path Optimum Slim...

Ratatouille

Two large eggplants, two red bell peppers, one green bell pepper, one package of heirloom tomatoes, one yellow summer squash, one zucchini, two barlett pears, one Gala apple. That is what I stuffed into the slow cooker. The lid wouldn't close! But I let it cook overnight for eight hours or so, and of course the ingredients shrank and gave me the liquid that I luckily did not add (or else it probably would have overflowed). I was so not impressed initially, so I then decided to add some roux. I had a mishap with defrosting my second to last container of roux, so I ended up using the last container of my roux. But after adding that and a bunch of seasoning (basil, garlic, salt, pepper, paprika...), the stew thickened and took on a nice flavor. I actually really liked this one even though it's missing some nice crusty bread. I have some more servings which ended up going in the freezer for now to be enjoyed later...

Lamb Braised in Fruit Wine

What exactly is fruit wine, you ask? It is a lazy catchall term I am using at this moment to refer to the last (finally) bottle of Spanish sangria along with two small bottles of Japanese umeshu plum wine, complete with the actual umeshu unpitted plums. I was going to get lamb shoulder but I saw this lamb stew meat for the same price so got that instead. Thrown in are mushrooms, onions, and potatoes. Yay that Kevin is okay with diced potatoes. I'll have to dice them from here on out so he'll help me eat those taters. He really liked this dish. The alcohol probably aided in tenderizing the meat.

Baked Cod

I tried to follow this recipe for baked cod by Darina Allen's traditional Irish recipe. I'm not sure what makes this dish Irish. I used the killer 14" pan for this. I threw in some butter, sauteed the chopped onions, added the wild-caught cod fillets, and let them cook on both sides. All looked well, and then I added light roux which I had made earlier, and also some vegetables and bay leaves, and I let this simmer for 10-15 minutes as instructed. Of course when I went to stir it, the bottom had caked over, probably because of the thickness of the roux. So I spent a good deal of time trying to dislodge the sauce on the bottom and remix it. In the process, I basically mashed the fillets into little chunks. Oh well. I liked it but probably wouldn't make it again.

Irish Rib Eye

What makes this Irish? The addition of a can of Murphy's stout and also a splash of Bushmills and Kilbeggan Irish whiskey (I ran out of my Jameson). The rib eye was on sale, or else I would have made this with lamb. The rib eye came out ridiculously tender, more so than all the previous meats I've slow cooked! It must also be due to the high marbled fat content of the rib eye in conjunction with slow cooking. I was so impressed by it until the dish cooled down and then I had to deal with the reality of all that solidified fat =(. I forgot what was sprinkled on top... probably some celery salt and parsley or oregano?

Yogurt Topped With Peach and Walnuts

This plain nonfat European yogurt is really good-- thick and creamy. It is TJ's own brand. I actually get slightly grossed out by Yoplait yogurt these days, unless it is an unfamiliar flavor like the Bramley Apple flavor I saw in Ireland. Actually I tried some of their other flavors and I think the Yoplait over there tasted better than the Yoplait in the US for some reason. Maybe more fat? Anyway I tend to prefer Greek yogurts, especially Fage 2%. I like that one all by itself. The plain, non-Greek ones are still good (Horizon, Stonyfield Farms, etc.) except I find that I need to mix some nuts or fruit in to be satisfied.

Sorrento Peach Almond Salad

This was not that great. The sliced almonds didn't really add much flavor. A drizzle of raw honey would have worked nicely but didn't want to add calories. The "Sorrento" is just because I used TJ's Sorrento salad blend (baby arugula, baby spinach, baby lettuces).