This last week I cooked even more than my wife. She wimped out and got them chicken nuggets on Friday and then took them out to a restaurant for lunch on Saturday after they went to an aqua park which had just re opened. Well, you have got to eat a lunch out after the aqua park, so that was nice.
Anyway
Cooking blogs and cooking magazines are always the biggest sellers. So I thought I would try to gain some cooking viewers to my blog. But really I am very proud of my expanding cooking repertoire that I just wanted to share a couple "Dad at home" cooking meals. Really nothing spectactular, very easy stuff. But stuff that is yummy, decent food and works. Well, if the chicken is correct. So please don't scoff or laugh at my selection and my description of what to do. Very easy stuff. When you start at close to zero on cooking knowledge (well, maybe ten), you are proud of a ten point jump to making meals. I won't be writing it like a recipe, but in regular writing format.
Very easy stuff, but I started adding the potatoes underneath the chops to cook in the BBQ and those are very delicious and makes the whole meal much tastier and "fuller". For three people I get 10 or 12 medium size chops, not huge and baste one side with BBQ. Small, couple grains of salt on each chop and even less pepper, just a bit on the first side. Put in oven at 180 or 200 C depending on the strength of your oven. You have to be pealing and then boiling the potato slices while you cook the first side of the porks. I boil the slices of potatoes to soften them up. After cooking the chops for about twenty minutes, I put the potatoes underneath the chops, turn the chops over and gently salt and peppr the other side and baste the other side with BBQ sauce too. If the chops are real thick, you may want to hammer them down in thickness a bit. I dont think the real thick ones cook as well, but actually I haven't tried those yet.
Ingredients you will need (but it can be varied)
cube of vegetable bouillon
one onion
one carrot
can of peas or frozen or fresh of course (about 12 ounce can amount)
jar or can of stewed tomatoes without peelings
fistful of rice noodles wide length
4 pinches of salt
Other vegetables to your liking, such as corn or beans.
I usually spice it up a bit with some sort of hot sauce like hot wing sauce or tobasco, a bit. But maybe IF the kids would eat it, I would lay off these spices.
I have been making this one when the kids are gone to the cottage with Mom and I am home alone in the city and trying to save the money or very little to spend at the end of the week in the budget. The kids don't like some ingredient or another in the soup.
1 liter of cold water with the bouillon cube in the water. Start to cook. I have the Isreali vegetable bouillon cubes left over from our trip to Isreal and they were very tasty. But I used the last one last night.
Right away when you start to boil the water, chop up the one carrot, the smaller the cube size, the softer they ll be. I am making them medium size now and still they are cooking down. Cut the onion too. I am cutting the onion slices bigger and bigger it seems. So I can get more taste out of it in a piece. Put them in whenever you have them chopped up. The carrot and onion need to cook longer than the peas and noodles. The first part is going to take 10-15 minute to boil. When it is boiling put in the peas and the can or jar of stewed tomatoes. My mother in law is making those so it is very good and healthy. Put a fist of rice noodles in at this time too, last. Then with four pinches of salt (or less maybe if you dont like salt, I do) and you are going to cook it all now at a low boil for at least another 15 minutes, maybe twenty or even thirty . Test it out to see everything is cooked to softness and the noodles are not hard at all. I tend to overcook a bit, too soft, but I seem to like it that way. So maybe just 15 minutes of cooking from the boiling. Maybe I even cook it for 25 minutes since it boiled. That is possible.
But oh my goodness it is a thick soup. Almost a stew. And it is so so good. I mean it should be enough for four people each with a big helping. But I can eat the whole batch in one evening after I have made it and I am writing or reading on the computer. I just keep going back for more. I guess that is how Westerners get fat. They sit in front of their computers and just keep eating. But this is good wholesome vegetable soup. I just can!t stop eating it when it is there. It calls me. I would even say more than a pizza. I can get enough of pizza, but this soup, I just keep taking more bowls. The only way for me to stop is to put it in the fridge, or just go to bed. Seriously. I even had the leftovers cold at work today because I didn't have a cooker. It was still good even cold.
Having grown up outside of Buffalo I have been eating these for decades. When we were teen agers we used to have competitions on who could eat the most of the suicide chicken wings. This Danish school buddy dude, Nils, was the winner all the time and he was quite proud about this. The trick is to not let the sauce touch your lips. That is where it burns the most. The lips are too sensitive for suicide wings.
I have actually been making these for over a year now since we found the sauce to put on them. I am not going to say which sauce it is, though it has the word "Buffalo" in it. Kind of demeans the whole recipe just knowing that the sauce is from a bottle. I guess you could make your own sauce. Tobasco sauce. I tried to make a chipotle hot wing the other night, but it didnt have much taste. Mind you, I am oven cooking these. Other people deep fry them or something else, so maybe that makes it a bit different. I ought to try to read how other people do them soon.
Easy. 10 -12 wings for three people. Baste one side with the hot wing sauce. I am using about a half bottle of 354 ml hot sauce per dinner. a dab, a small dab of salt on the wings. No pepper. It doesnt work with these wings. Put in oven 200 Celsius. Cook one side up for about 20-25 minutes. Take out and baste another helping of hot sauce on the other side of the wings with a couple granuals of salt per wing. Put back in the oven and cook another 25 minutes or so. Its going to be at least an hour from start to finish. After making these for more than a year, I still don't have it down on how to make the skin crispy and the sauce really sticking to the chicken. But I think I make em well enough and I have enough sauce in the pan that I spoon it over the wings after they are on the plate. Which gives them extra sauce, and watery sacue, which is good. I should only eat 4, but if I can get 5, that is enough to fill me. Oh, but they are just so heavenly that if one is left over, I ll eat that one too.
I am not fat, but my wife says I eat too many portions. And this WILL get me fat. Tummy is rounding out more. But seriously my tummy is as round as others who are twenty years younger than I am. But.... I should cut out those extra helpings.
Sadly I probably won¨t be able to do the chicken wings anymore, or just for myself. My older daughter was mad at me when I made the chickent wings the other night. Mostly because the chicken label is or was owned by this politician here who is corrupt and very bad. He should have divested his business interests when he got into office, but it is very probable that he did not or still has strong connections to them. So, I agreed to stop buying chicken from that supermarket and get it from the local butcher. I should buy more from small stores anyway, as I have a small store. I will try from now on. But then she said she didn't like the wings anymore. That would break my heart. I think of tall Nils eating his suicide wings every time, and all the wings I ate as a teenager. Oh well, different people different tastes.
But really once you have the sauce, it is just a matter of basting the sauce on and sticking them in the oven to cook. Easier than spaghetti. I love a spicy, hot food, so I could eat these every week.
In fact I love all my recipes. The soup took a couple weeks to get right, but now it is so tasty as I already pointed out.
I have more recipes in my repertoire. Chicken Cordon Bleu, a good easy lasagne which the kids really like, a spaghetti of course and a couple others. The point is to find some recipes that your wife or spouse IS NOT making. Otherwise you are just copying and your kids will compare your food with the food their mother makes. But actually they said I make a better lasagne now. I am going to try a frankfurter soup, but Grandmother makes a good version of this, so I have to find a different version.
So, there I hope it was an interesting little cooking spiel I have presented. Please please this time, if you want to send over your recipes, Dads, please I would really love it this time. I dont care what they are. The simpler the better. Salads, eggs, pancakes, whatever. By the way, I am sorry to say that these pictures are not mine. I am not one of those who takes pictures of his meals. BUT for these I really should have my own creations pictured. So, I am going to put in these stock photos for now and hopefully exchange them sometime for my own creations, once I make them again and get a picture of them. Its just kind of stupid hype pretensiousness to me, but... I ll do it.
Bless all of you and if you read this that means you made it, so far, through the pandemic and you are safe. Don't drop your guard completely now. Still keep a distance from strangers. It is still going around. We still have to wear the masks inside shops, but I really don't mind that. Rather safe than dead by disease. Excuse me now, I have to make my dinner salad.
Love
Still listening to the bondage label (I hate that label name). This is bondage 12053 Alex Ranerro with a remix by the Pornbugs (another bad name), which just grooves very nicely. It makes you just nod your head back and forth and tap your foot. This is 2020 deep house, quite different from 2000 aughts deep house. That was more housy with more vocals. This 2020 stuff is more minimal house and techno sounds. I am partial to dub techniques which there are more of. Also echo and minimalism in the techno and house. Reverb too. Less vocal and a nice steady easy tempo. Very good music for writing, especially at night.
I ll be getting in 12053 and 12054 soon. Both very good.
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