Wish Upon A Chef

My momma always told me not to wish my life away.

When I was a kid, I can remember wishing for the days when I would be an adult.  Looking forward to having my own place to live, my own money to spend, my own rules to live by. Wanting NOW what would inevitably come. Wishing....

I think by now we've all realized that being an adult is a total rip-off.  Momma was right.

Another year has passed us by and I can't help but be a little melancholy. While everyone is oversharing on social media their enthusiasms and goals for the next 365 days, I feel sad about the passage of time. It all moves so fast. While I'm glad to finally have my family's hardships that lingered from 2013 into 2014 behind us and look forward to much healthier days ahead for everyone, I just wish it would all slow down so we can savor and enjoy the good parts more. It seems we blow through 365 days at lightening fast speed.  One day it's January 1 and in the blink of an eye we are already making resolutions for the next year.

My resolution for this year is to enjoy anything and everything as much as possible.  I resolve to see the silver lining in what might not be an ideal situation and learn from it.  I want to surround myself with those who matter and focus less on who and what doesn't.  We only have one audition for life and I want to make the most of it before the final curtain call.  I want to revel in the good times. 

We always seem to end a year with plenty of indulgences - Thanksgiving feasts, holiday parties, Christmas dinners and gifts, Champagne-laden toasts at New Year - so it stands to reason that a new year is marked with humbleness.  Black-eyed peas and collard greens are typically served as a meal for good luck and good fortune.  Most Eastern European countries serve split pea soup as a sign of prosperity in the form of money in the new year.

Since I had a nice meaty ham bone left over from Christmas dinner and since I've never eaten it, I figured it wouldn't hurt to test the split pea soup tradition.  And guess what??  I'm pleased to report that I was told today that I would be getting a 6.25% pay increase with my first 2015 paycheck.

I am a believer!!


Slow Cooker Split Pea Soup with Ham
Servings: 4 to 6

1 (16-ounce) package dried split peas, rinsed
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 medium onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 bay leaf
1/2 Tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste
6 cups chicken broth
1 leftover meaty ham bone

Place all of the ingredients in the slow cooker and stir to combine. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours or on high for 4 hours. Remove the bay leaf from the soup and discard. Remove ham bone from soup and pull remaining meat from the bone and set meat aside. You can either remove a few cups of the soup, and puree the remaining with an immersion blender or use the immersion blender to puree all the soup slightly. Stir the reserved ham (and soup) back into the soup and serve warm.  (If the soup becomes too thick after blending, add water to thin.)

My favorite part of the holidays always revolves around the aspect of food – making and decorating gingerbread houses, baking cookies to fatten the coworkers, preparing appetizers for holiday gatherings, collecting festive recipes and wishing I had time to make them all.

So my absolute giddiness should be no surprise even in the days following Thanksgiving and Christmas when Boy Toy bestows upon me his beautiful turkey carcasses. My kitchen becomes much like the setting for a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth…

Scene: A dark Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder.

Enter the three Witches:

“Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”

Exit stage left.

My slow cookers are loaded with the bird leftovers and aromatics and simmer for a couple of days to produce the liquid gold that keeps my freezer stocked for most of the upcoming year. I use turkey stock interchangeably with chicken stock because there is no taste difference in my opinion. Bird is bird. And I use every leftover part of the bird for stock – bones, skin, scraps, cartilage, fat - all those pieces and parts that you wouldn’t eat for dinner and would normally throw out.

Homemade stock is a beautiful thing. Not only is it more flavorful, heartier and healthier than store-bought stock, it also makes use of something that would otherwise go in the trash. A 32-ounce carton of chicken broth can cost anywhere from $3 to $4, so making your own stock allows for extra money in the food budget over time. Soups are a huge part of my menu rotation, so it doesn’t take long for me to see the savings.

Making homemade stock is easy and not very time consuming and can be made on the stove top using a large stock pot if you don’t have a slow cooker. The biggest challenge for me is having enough vessels to store it in.  I'm usually scrounging up every empty jar or tub I can find.  I purchase whole chickens from Windy Hill Farms throughout the year but other times when I’m only cooking a few legs, thighs or bone-in breasts and don’t necessarily have enough bones at once, I’ll collect them in the freezer until I have enough for a batch (sometimes the contents of my freezer could be the makings of a good horror flick!) If you catch legs and thighs on sale for a really low price, pick up a couple of packs and use them for stock.

The beautiful thing about the recipe for homemade stock is that there is no set recipe. It can be modified to use whatever aromatics you have on hand, so don’t stress if you don’t have these exact ingredients on hand. I personally never season my stock with salt while preparing – I wait until it goes into whatever recipe I’m using it in so I can control the seasonings.

I also try to maximize my savings by using the same set of bones for two rounds of stock. After I strain the first time, everything goes right back into the pot for Round 2. The first round of stock is best used for soups and dishes where the broth is the main component of flavor and the second round is best used for flavoring things like rice or sauces.

Homemade Chicken Stock
servings = varies

1 onion, quartered
2 stalks celery
2 whole carrots
2 to 3 cloves of garlic
1 bay leaf
1 bunch fresh herbs of your choice (I like parsley, thyme or oregano or a combination of all)
2 Tablespoons whole peppercorns

Place all ingredients in the slow cooker along with your bones and meat scraps. Add enough water to fill the cooker, leaving about 1 inch of space. Cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 4-6 hours. If using stove top method, simmer in a pot over medium-low heat for 4 hours.

Strain contents of the pot through a sieve or colander and discard the solids (or use for a 2^nd round of stock.) Cool stock overnight. When completely chilled, skim accumulated fat from the surface. Use immediately or store in containers in the freezer.

 

When you date a food nerd, sometimes you just don't know which way a conversation is going to turn.

 
I've been on a slow cooker roll here lately!  It seems that after I griped about the lack of things to prepare in my pot, recipes started jumping out at me left and right and from behind bushes.  And I recently came into possession of my 92-year-old grandmother's Crock-Pot and I'm totally digging the whole retro vibe of it.  I also scored her 1960's (I think) era combination slow cooker/fryer  called   Hy-Fry which looks just like this one.  It's never been used and she still had the original instruction booklet where she had penciled the date of December 25, 1974 which means she got it as a Christmas gift when I was 3 years old.  Call me sappy, but I'm hugely sentimental about things like that. 


I found a marinara recipe on Budget Bytes, which is a neat site that features really great recipes that are budget friendly.  Beth estimates this recipe costs a little over $5 to prepare - of course that's going to depend on prices in your geographic area and other variables like coupons, sale prices, etc. but even if it's a few cents more, it's still a pretty sweet deal.

I love having my freezer stocked with things that I can pull out last minute, thaw and have a good home cooked meal on the table without much effort at all and this fits the bill perfectly.  After the sauce cools, portion it up into 1/2 cup or 1 cup servings and freeze.  In addition to serving over pasta, this makes a great marinara for pizza (try this one topped with bacon, cheese and pepperoni or throw your favorite veggies on this homemade pizza dough.)

Slow Cooker Marinara
approximately 13 servings (1/2 cup)

Printable Recipe

2 (28 oz.) cans crushed tomatoes
1 (6 oz.) can tomato paste
1 onion, diced
1/2 Tablespoon garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
1 Tablespoon dried basil
1/2 Tablespoon dried oregano
1 Tablespoon brown sugar
1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Add all ingredients to your slow cooker, cover and cook on low for 8 hours.  When done, stir the sauce and remove the bay leaves.  Season with more salt and pepper if needed. 

Last week I harped about not having many Crock-Pot recipes that I enjoyed and I subconsciously suggested that I should take a lesson from the Boy Toy because he crocks alot.  So I took my own advice and asked him to share one of his favorite recipes and now I'm getting even more lovin' from my Crock-Pot.

Cacciatore means "hunter" in Italian and it's typically a rustic dish that includes chicken, bell peppers, onion, and tomatoes.  The meat is typically braised and everything simmers together in one pot for about an hour, which makes it a perfect recipe for the slow cooker. 

I used a combination of white and dark meat chicken because that's what I had on hand, and if you have a splash of red wine just begging to be used, by all means, throw it in too.  When Boy Toy makes this for his kids, he chops the veggies small so they are undetectable (he's sneaky like that) and serves it over rice.  I dished mine up over pasta but you could also just use a nice crusty Italian bread to sop up the yummy sauce. 

I prepared a double recipe and portioned it into freezable containers.  On the nights that I don't feel like cooking from scratch, I'll just thaw out a portion and prepare the rice or pasta.  Easy peasy and delicious! 

Crock-Pot Chicken Cacciatore
Serves 8

Printable Recipe

8 chicken thighs, with the bone, skin removed
28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
1/2 red bell pepper, sliced into strips
1/2 green bell pepper, sliced into strips
1 large onion, sliced
1 teaspoon oregano
1 bay leaf
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
fresh herbs such as parsley, for garnish

Season chicken with salt and pepper and place in slow cooker.  Pour tomatoes over the chicken, top with onions and peppers.  Add oregano, bay leaf, more salt and pepper and give it a stir to combine everything.  Cover and cook on low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours. 

Before serving, remove bay leaf and adjust seasonings if desired.   If you'd like your sauce a bit thicker, you can remove the lid and continue to cook on high for about another hour. 

My Crock Pot and I have a love/hate relationship.  I love the convenience of using it and I love most of the foods that come out of it (we can count the so-called "lasagna" as a colossal failure.) But I hate the fact that I can never seem to find more recipes that float my Crock Pot boat, and believe me, I spend alot of time surfing Pinterest for recipes when I should be doing my real job in my spare time.

Whereas Boy Toy uses his Crock Pot incessantly, I use mine mostly only for roasts (this one being my favorite), an occasional soup (although none of them have turned out to be blog post worthy) and for making these caramelized onions from the lovely Becky Turner of Random Musings of a Deco Lady (we miss you Becky!)  Maybe I should take a Crock Pot lesson from the Boy Toy because he cranks out some tasty dishes from that thing. 

This recipe is one of my favorites to prepare when I catch pork roasts on sale.  I served it with BBQ sauce instead of the gravy as a sandwich for the kids and actually got two compliments from the Little Miss and the Teenage Boy ate FOUR sandwiches, which I deem to be an unspoken compliment.  I enjoy it alongside typical BBQ trimmings - a helping of homemade mac & cheese and coleslaw. 

It is fall-apart tender and any leftovers can be frozen and enjoyed later.  What's not to love?


Crock Pot Pork Roast with Gravy

printable recipe

4 to 5 lb. pork loin roast
2 cloves garlic, sliced
2 medium onions, sliced
1 bay leaf
1 cup water
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Rub roast with salt and pepper. make tiny slits in meat and insert slivers of garlic. In Crock Pot put 1 sliced onion on bottom. Add roast then remaining onion and other ingredients. Cover and cook 1 hour on high. Turn to low and cook 9 to 10 hours or until done.

GRAVY: Remove roast, onions, clove and bay leaf. In separate cup or bowl, blend 2 tablespoons cold water with 2 tablespoons cornstarch to form smooth paste. Set Crock Pot on high and pour in paste. Stir well and let come to a boil (10 to 15 minutes) until thickened.