Happy Weekly Food Fun to you!

We started the week with some stir fry.

Chicken, carrots, peas, broccoli over noodles.  The asparagus I just steamed lightly.  There are many options for stir fry seasonings.  I start with some olive oil and a little sesame oil to cook the chicken.  Then start the seasonings and layer in the vegetables.  My favorites are some fresh grated ginger and Chinese Five Spice herb blend.  Once every thing is almost done I add in House of Tsang Classic Stir-Fry Sauce.

Next up, St. Patricks Day.  My guys are not real joyful about corned beef so I opted to make Shepards Pie.   Ground beef, made some fresh gravy, then topped with mashed potatoes.  Baked it just enough to crisp up the potatoes.

I make a basic recipe for Irish Soda Bread.
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
Mix dry ingredients then add in the buttermilk and mix.
Bake at 375 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

I cooked mine in my cast iron dutch oven.  It turned out nice and crispy on the outside and moist on the inside.

I still wanted to cook corned beef for ruben sandwiches and corned beef hash, so I bought a small one and cooked it in the crock pot through the day.

The ruben sandwich turned out good, although I decided to use the soda bread instead of rye so it did fall apart and create a mess.  It still tasted really good.

Then for the corned beef hash. This was my first time making it from scratch even though my recipe was modified.  I will be making it again.  I melted butter in the skillet, sautéed onions, added in salt, pepper, basil and instead of potatoes I used tater tots.  I thawed them out, and crumbled over the onions and cooked until a little crisp.  I then added the chopped corned beef, mixed it up.  Sprinkled with a little bit of parmesan/asiago cheese, then cracked the eggs on top.  I baked in the oven at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes.  Sadly my eggs were over cooked for how I like them, it still had all the good flavor.

There is something beautiful about burgers on the grill.

We tend to load up our burgers as much as we can.  This week was  mayo, relish, ham, burger, cheddar and swiss cheese, a fried egg and top bun had spicy mustard on it.

My final weekly food fun.  Well, I wanted to cook it, although didn’t have any of the main ingredients.  Where there is a will there is a way to make something.  I had chicken already thawed out for dinner. And, well, a staple at our house, tater tots.  I will be making the actual recipe when I get pork chops and potatoes.

Original recipe by Sarah Olson, The Magical Slow Cooker – Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue pork chops and potatoes.
Recipe here.

I am enjoying using yogurt as a marinade for chicken.  So for this recipe to stretch my barbecue sauce I mixed about half and half plain yogurt with the bbq sauce.  I mixed in garlic and cumin, covered the chicken and put them at the bottom of the crock pot.  Cooked on low for 3 hours, put the layer of cheese, added tater tots and a layer of the bbq sauce without the yogurt and cooked about an hour longer.  For starting as a trial missing ingredients it gave me an idea for a new adventure and a new dinner smile.

Always enjoy the fun of food, and the adventure of recipe substitutes.
Sometimes it does turn out pretty good.