Mmm, sandwiches!

Well, now that I have a little more time on my hands, hopefully I can cook and write a little more!

My sister works at Panera and gets an amazing discount. Great news for carb fiends like me, so whenever I'm near her store and she's at work, I try to stop by and grab a little something.

Tuesday, I picked up a loaf of tomato basil bread. It's got cinnamon on the top crust, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's just so trendy lately to put cinnamon in everything, and... truth is, I'm not crazy about the cinnamon love. I think it works, but the grilled sandwich I made last night tasted a little too much like French toast at the top.

Still, they were delicious. I'm at work right now, absolutely starving and craving about six more sandwiches.

Ingredients

• 4 slices of tomato basil bread
• 1 small tomato, sliced
• mozzarella cheese, sliced
• 3-4 basil leaves, chopped
• black pepper
• 1/2 small onion, sliced

Directions

1. Oh, for [stuff]'s sake, you know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

Quick, easy, healthy snack

I had a bad case of the Mondays last night that only a bottle of wine would cure.

But what about a snack to go with it? It was 9:30 P.M.! It had to be healthy! And quick!

Done and done. Seriously, you don't even have to measure this stuff. It's so ridiculously simple.

Ingredients

• Roma tomatoes
• Grated Parmesan (or shredded Parmesan, or mozzarella)
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Salt
• Crushed red pepper flakes

Directions

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. If you have a toaster oven, that's even better (and I am very jealous).
2. Slice the tomatoes. Lay them on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with pepper, salt, cheese, and red pepper flakes.
3. Bake at the bottom of the oven for 10 minutes.
4. Serve. Drink wine. Feel better.
   

(The wine, by the way, was too dry. But then, I like super-sweet drinks.)

It's like mac & cheese, only better

Well, I survived the trip, barely -- how his parents restrained themselves from
assassinating me with a rolled-up dollar bill I will never know. (Hey, I like to listen to death metal while I drive! Nothing wrong with that... right? Right? Guys?)

It took me a day or so to have enough energy to do something for dinner besides take-out. And when I did want to cook, I wanted comfort food.

So, I made some baked macaroni and cheese Tuesday night, except it wasn't quite mac and cheese.

I used spinach fettuccine.

I thought it might come out too runny or soggy, but you know what? It was great. I'd do it again. Probably when I have more people over, because the leftovers don't microwave well, but I will definitely make this again.

Oh, also -- if you like things all brown and crispy, use more bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. The amount the recipe calls for isn't enough to make the top all brown and crispy and yummy.

Tomorrow night: pasta salad! I'm going to throw some stuff into a bowl and see what happens!

Hot damn! Now THAT'S a sandwich!

Ah, the grilled cheese sandwich. It's a staple of American childhood.

If you grew up in the U.S., you probably ate a lot of grilled cheese sangwiches as a kid -- except it was a slice of Kraft American Cheese between two slices of white bread, and possibly with a can of Campbell's tomato soup.

BO-RING!

C'mon, now, class it up a little!

Ingredients

• 1/2 small white onion, sliced into rings
  
• 1 cup shredded extra-sharp cheddar cheese
• 1 Roma tomato, sliced lengthwise
• 4 slices of bacon, cooked
• 4 slices of sourdough bread
• butter for the bread

Directions

1. Butter the sides of the bread that you'll grill. You know how you keep the PB&J on the inside when you're making a PBJ sandwich? Yeah. Not like that at all. Do the exact opposite of that.
   
2. Sprinkle half the cheese on one slice of bread. Add half the tomato slices, bacon, and onions. Put the other slice of bread on top. Make another sandwich!
   
3. Put the sandwiches in a hot skillet and cook until the bottom browns and the cheese is melty, then cook the other side.
4. Slice 'em in half and eat. Hot damn, now that's a sandwich!
   

Cheese enchiladas?

Making enchiladas takes a long time and leaves a ginormous mess.

Unless you make them in the microwave.

But I've found that you always sacrifice quality for convenience.

These cheese enchiladas from Trader Joe's were entirely too bland. In fact, I'm not even sure they qualify as cheese enchiladas at all.

• There wasn't nearly enough cheese on top. I had to sprinkle a couple cups of Mexican blend cheese over them myself.
• Did they use two tortillas to wrap? That's what it tasted like!
• Where's the filling? Seriously! A good enchilada should ooze cheese when you cut into it. These just... didn't.
• I know a lot of people don't like heat as much as I do, but these enchiladas didn't have any heat at all.

All in all, they were thoroughly boring and I probably won't eat them again.

Save your money, this sucks!

That was fun, can I have a wedding now?

I usually don't like crab meat or mushrooms, but after yesterday, I suspect that what I don't like are bad crab meat and mushrooms.

The Mr. and I went to the wedding of two of his friends yesterday afternoon, and the food? Was fantastic.

(I mean, so was the ceremony, but this isn't a blog to talk about how weddings make me cry like a little girl, it's a blog to talk about how great the food was.)

At any rate, after the ceremony, we all trundled out into the foyer to nosh on hors d'oeuvres and get snockered on Pinot Grigio. Thankfully, I hold my white wine like a champ. As for hors d'oeuvres, I don't hold them at all, because they don't stay in my hand long enough for it to be considered "holding" so much as "moving from table to mouth."

I wish I had taken some photos of the table before it got utterly decimated. There were some cheeses I would really have liked to identify, particularly the one that made me gag. I know there was Brie and some cheese that was cheddar on top and bleu on the bottom.

But I started this post to talk about the mushrooms.

I'd picked one up from a tray that was offered to me and had it most of the way to my mouth when I realized it was a stuffed mushroom. Oh well, I thought, it won't kill me.

So. Tasty.

The mushroom was perfectly bite-sized and soft. It tasted sharp and earthy at the same time.
I didn't find out until after I'd had three more that the filling was made of crab meat and feta cheese. Just the picture is making me want more right now. I have got to find a recipe for this!

You know, I learned something today...

I love Costco. Nowhere else (with the possible exception of the Old Country Buffet) can food be found in such gluttonous quantities for so little money.

We have a bag of rice so large that I could use it to work out. Don't ask me what two people are going to do with 15 pounds of white rice -- it seemed like a good idea at the time.

My mom froze food a lot when I was growing up. Find some bread or cheese on sale? Throw it in the freezer! And that's why I love Costco: they have so much cheap, tasty food that I can freeze for later.

With apologies to Ron White, I'm telling you that story so I can tell you this story:

The ciabatta rolls were perfect when I thawed them. So were the ham steaks and chicken thighs.

The cheese, though? My wonderful, delicious, 2-pound block of pepper jack cheese? Not so much.

Oh, it tasted just fine. But when I tried to shred it, it crumbled. When I tried to slice it, it crumbled. When I got over the initial disappointment (I wanted slices!), I realized how great crumbled cheese would look in a salad.

So if crumbling cheese is so easy, why do cheese companies try to sell us pre-crumbled cheese for more than the cost of regular cheese?

Mmmm, Mexican!

We had my mom over for a late lunch/early dinner yesterday afternoon (why is there no word like "brunch" for that meal?). SO TASTY.

(That picture makes me crave a new camera as much as I'm craving drunken noodles right now. Mad kudos to my mom and The Mr. for putting up with me photographing the food all the time.)

The cheese enchiladas with green sauce were just amazing. I accidentally left the sour cream out of the sauce, which must be why it came out so thick, but the taste was still amazing.

• Be sure to have extra cheese on hand to sprinkle over top of the enchiladas before baking. A cup and a half just isn't enough to make it nice and gooey.
  
• 1/2 cup of chopped onion? What were they thinking?! That needs to be at least 2/3 cup, minimum.

The rice came out of a bag. In the chaos that was my kitchen, I threw it away to make more room. Sorry!

I got the chiles rellenos recipe from a cookbook and adapted it to cut the prep time. Here's what I did:

Ingredients

• 1 Anaheim chile for each person
• Shredded Monterey Jack cheese
• 2 eggs, separated (put the whites in a large bowl)
  
• Flour, lightly seasoned with freshly ground black pepper
• Vegetable oil
• Red sauce
  

Process

• Cut a slit down the side of each chile (I cut along the wide side). Cook them over a dry skillet, turning occasionally, until the skins are blackened and blistered.
• Immediately put the chiles in a heavy-duty freezer bag for 20 minutes. Close the bag tightly!
• Use a hand mixer to beat the egg whites until they are stiff and form peaks. Beat the yolks until they turn pale. Fold the yolks into the whites.
• Put the egg mixture in a shallow dish and the flour on a work surface.
  
• Remove the chiles from the bag and peel off the skins.
• Remove the seeds through the slit
• Lay the chiles on a work surface. Stuff them with the cheese until they are quite full but still close. Really smoosh that cheese down and pack it in!
• Heat the vegetable oil in your skillet until a scrap of tortilla fries quickly.
  
• Coat each chile in the flour, then in the egg. Fry until golden brown. Drain on paper towels.
• Plate the chiles, then top them with red sauce to taste. I used Old El Paso chipotle sauce, because it looked good in the store (it tasted good on my plate, too). It's a little bit strong, so use it sparingly at first.

The chiles were pretty good, but I thought they were missing a little something. I think they would have been better with a stronger cheese. Asiago would be ideal, but it's ridiculously expensive. Next time, I'll try a cheddar-Jack blend like the enchiladas or grab a bag of pre-shredded "Mexican blend."

Happy eating!

So I finally found basil the other day. I had to find a stocker to dig it out of the back room for me, and when he came back, he handed me a ginormous plastic tub of it (okay, about 4 ounces, but do you know how many leaves that is?!).

I got to make my bruschetta last night, and it was a bit disappointing. I just used 6 diced Roma tomatoes, 1/3 cup of basil, some freshly ground sea salt and black pepper, a garlic clove minced very fine, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil. I let it sit for an hour for the flavors to blend, but... blah. I think the garlic was just too much, and it needed some Parmesan sprinkled on top of the individual bruschetta.

The tortilla pizza was great, though. Now, this is something worth making:

• 1 large flour tortillas
• 1/4 cup shredded Italian cheese (I used an Italian 5-cheese blend)
• 2 tablespoons (ish) of feta cheese
• 1 tablespoon (ish) of finely chopped basil
• 1 diced Roma tomato

Sprinkle the shredded cheese onto the tortilla, then the feta, basil, and tomato; bake at 400 until the cheese is gooey and the tortilla is golden and crispy.

Now I have a bunch of basil, feta cheese, and tomatoes at home. It's salads for lunch tomorrow!