Kitchen Reveal

I heard that there is a 2nd annual "Kitchen Reveal" where people post pictures on their blog of their kitchen being hosted by Lake Lure Cottage Kitchen. I'm nosey and love to see how other people live so I think this is pretty cool. Instead of just being a voyeur, I thought I should post some pics of my own little kitchen.

First, I feel like I need to show what the kitchen looked like before we moved in:

That was all the counter space I had. Just out of frame on the left side of the picture was a sliding glass door that took up the entire wall. Oh, and the dishwasher and oven were used by the previous owner as dish and cookware storage. Neither of them were in working order.
This picture is of what was supposed to be an eat in kitchen area. The picture was taken while standing at the sink. You can see a tiny bit of the sliding glass door at the bottom right of the picture.

We have one of the smallest houses in our neighborhood so making the kitchen into a bigger usable space was a bit of a challenge. I really wanted a pantry, but that meant losing the eat in kitchen. We solved that problem by changing the front room, which was supposed to be a family room, into a dining room, and the basement "den" into the family room.

This picture is taken standing in roughly the same spot as the first before picture. We added a little pass through window where the fridge used to be to add a bit more light and so that it is easier to talk to someone in the dining room when you are in the kitchen. Less shouting is a good thing.

We also added the peninsula. This is my second favorite change to this kitchen. It makes cooking with Blockette so much easier. Aside from the peninsula giving me an actual food prep area, Blockette can sit at the end and help mix, eat a snack, draw, do school work, etc. while I'm cooking.

Here's another view from the entry into the kitchen. You can see that the wall where the sliding glass door used to be is where the fridge is now.

This area hardly seems big enough to have held an eat in kitchen. Without the pictures I don't think I would have believed it myself. The pantry is my favorite part of the kitchen. Here's why: Where would I put all this stuff if I didn't have a pantry? The pantry allows me to save money on our grocery bill. I can buy the jumbo package of paper towels and 10 cans of peaches when they go on sale. I've found that little stuff like that really adds up!

So that's my kitchen in a nutshell. It's not the fanciest kitchen ever. There are a few things I would do differently if I had the chance to do it all over again. But the kitchen turned out quite nice considering our limited budget.

Turkey Stock

This was our nummy Thanksgiving turkey. It's been many moons since Mrblocko or I cooked a turkey and we were a bit rusty. We did pretty darn good if I say so myself. We didn't really do anything special. Just rubbed herbed butter over and under the skin and let it sit in some chicken stock as it cooked.

Somehow the turkey got done a full hour than we expected. I hadn't even baked the stuffing yet! It all worked out in the end though. The turkey was cold, but all the side dishes, including the gravy, was hot. Truth be told, ya can't tell if your turkey is hot or cold when it is smothered in molten gravy. We will be eating turkey left overs for some time. This bird is so massive that I cut up the carcass into thirds. I made turkey stock with the first portion and froze the others to make stock later.

I wasn't sure if Turkey stock should have different seasonings than chicken stock so I looked up a few recipes on line. The two recipes I found, from gracious bowl and cooking by the seat of my pants, were almost identical to my go to chicken stock recipe. The only change I made to the chicken stock recipe was to leave out the cloves, add some dried rosemary, and sprigs of fresh sage, thyme and parsley. I only used the fresh stuff because it was still green in my garden.

My plans for this, and the other batches of stock are to make soups with the leftover turkey. I've been on a hunt for some good recipes, and I think I have found a few. We'll see if they pass the taste test!

Belated Thankful Thursday

It's kind of weird that my thankful Thursday post for the day that you are supposed to be thankful is late. Blame it on the tryptophan. I bought a 17 lb turkey for just the 3 of us so we will be eating turkey for the next 27 years. It was $4, I mean come on! 5 lb roaster chickens aren't even that cheap

Anyhow, aside from the awesome deal on a turkey, I've got so much to be thankful for. I'm so lucky to have a healthy family, a roof over my head and plenty of food in my belly. All that stuff sounds really corny, but after the past few years and this pooptacular economy having those three things makes me feel really blessed.

On a lighter note, I'd like to add one more thing that I'm thankful for: a husband who is willing to help wash the dishes. AMEN!

Nutmeg Banana Smoothie

One weekend afternoon I had plunked myself in front of the TV to induce a nap. TV was so boring that I did indeed fall asleep. I awoke to some lady on Everyday Food making a Banana-Nutmeg Smoothie. I'm not the biggest fan of banana's but that sounded really awesome to me.

I went on their website and their recipe is all kinds of messed up. It is missing ingredients and amounts that were different from the show. I happened to have 2 bananas in the freezer so I just used that. A half cup of milk was not enough liquid to process 2 bananas, let alone the 3 that the recipe suggests. I used a full cup and my smoothie was still extra double thick.

This is going to be my go to recipe for using up extra over-ripe bananas. I'd rather have this than banana bread.

Here's what I did:

2 large frozen bananas broken in eighths
3/4 c ice cubes
1 c skim milk
1 single serving size container of light and fit vanilla yogurt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 generous squeezes of Hershey's dark chocolate syrup

Toss all that stuff in a blender and mix it up until it is nice and smooth. Add more milk if you want it thinner.

Bratwurst and Potato Soup

Here is the lovely Bratwurst and Potato Soup from Eatin on the Cheap. I made this one night after Blockette's Art class. I knew we wouldn't be getting home until almost 5pm so I did all the chopping and shredding earlier in the day. That way all I had to do was let the soup cook, bubble and simmer away. You can even peel and cut the potatoes up in advance. Just store them in the fridge in a container large enough so the potatoes can be completely covered in water. This way they won't turn any funky colors.

Because the brats I had were Jennie-O Turkey Brats I changed the recipe up a bit. The weight on the package is 19.5 oz, and the original recipe calls for only 12 oz. I mostly just increased all the ingredients so the dish had a more reasonable meat to veggie ratio. Mrblocko said that this was now his new favorite soup. We all liked it, but I wouldn't say it was any better than any other soup I've made.

Bratwurst and Potato Soup adapted from Eatin on the Cheap
1 large sweet onion, chopped
2 large carrots, shredded
3 large potatoes, peeled and diced
3 c chicken stock
1 (19.5 oz) pkg turkey brats
1/2 c frozen corn

Boil the sausages in about an inch of water until you think they are cooked, or at least cooked enough to slice. I hate the skins on turkey brats so I peel them off at this stage. Take the peeled sausage and cut in half lengthwise and then into half moon shapes. Saute in a skillet with a few swirls of olive oil. Let the meat get brown and caramelized. Remove the meat from the pan and brown the onions in the meat drippings. Boil the potatoes in the chicken stock for about 20 min until the potatoes are tender. Blend 3 or 4 ladlefulls of stock and potatoes in a blender and return the mashed mix to the pot to thicken the soup. Add the meat, onions, corn, and carrots and simmer until the soup is heated through.

Insert "Squeee" Here

I got quoted by The Food Librarian on her "I Like Big Bundts 2 Round up."

See her post HERE.

I'm feeling giddy, like I've had some sort of brush with fame. I'm just about as excited as the time when my mom and I were eating at a restaurant and we realized we were sitting behind Pat Morita.

Guess it pays to question someone's sanity. I maintain that Mary the Librarian is crazy in all the right ways. I hope she keeps on in her lack of mental instability, cause I like these month long culinary journies through bundt-ville.

40 Clove Chicken in the CrockPot

I say this with my best friend in mind...don't fear the roaster chicken in the crockpot. You can do it!!!! Bad things will not happen! Yooou Can Dooooo it!

Ok. Seriously, Crock pot chicken with 40 cloves of garlic by Crepes of Wrath is a most awesome roaster chicken recipe. It isn't one of those dump and go recipes, but it is worth the extra effort. Really, all the extra effort is used in pealing 40 cloves of garlic. Even with the little Youtube link that Crepes of Wrath provides that demonstrates how easy it is to peel garlic, 40 cloves is still going to take a bit of time. Again I say it is so worth it.

The only change I made to this recipe was by replacing the white wine with white grape juice. The recipe says you can omit the wine, but I figured since I had the juice I should use it. I wanted to have a bit of liquid in the crockpot to help speed up the cooking.

Speaking of speeding up the cooking, after 3 hours on low my chicken was seriously undercooked. This is probably due to my particular crockpot. I always forget that the low setting on my large oval crockpot is lower than most. I turned up the heat to high and came back an hour and a half later and everything was perfectly cooked. (This is also why there is no photo, we were all so hungry that the chicken was carved up and mutilated before I got around to remembering I wanted to take a picture for this blog entry.)

Even though the chicken got a bit mangled while checking for done-ness, the meat was still exceptionally moist. So much so that Blockette squealed, "OHHH! It's so juicy and tender!" after she took her first bite. Now if you've already checked that link out you might be saying right now, "Well it was probably the gravy that made the meat so tender." Au contraire mon frere. Blockette opted out of the gravy. Yet another point that leads me to believe she is indeed an alien from outer space. I mean Mrblocko and I subscribe to the Homer Simpson theory of drinking eight glasses of gravy a day.

If you are thinking of skipping the gravy step because you are, like me, a lazy person. Get. Yourself. Motivated. Get up off your chair, do not pass go and make the drippings and garlic into some gravy baby. (Not to be confused with gravy made from babies...that's a whole 'nuther post.) This is hands down my favorite gravy ever in the whole history of gravy making. When I was making the gravy and I thought it was done simmering, I tested it for seasoning. As soon as that sweet sauce hit my tongue, my eyes rolled back in my head and I started making all kinds of scary unintelligible noises.

I must have made a fairly big production about it because Blockette came bounding into the kitchen exclaiming, "I wanna try it! I wanna try it!" I looked at her and said, "Really?" She replied, "Yes please Momma!" So I let her have a taste. She agreed that the gravy was quite tasty and then said, "It is good, but I don't want any on my chicken or potatoes OK?" I patted her on her head and assured her she didn't HAVE to have any. Secretly I was doing the happy dance of joy in my head because that meant MORE for ME!

Crock Pot Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic from Crepes of Wrath
3 1/2-4 pound fryer chicken (chicken cut into serving pieces)
salt and pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil
40 cloves of garlic, peeled but still whole (about 3 bulbs of garlic)
3/4 cup white wine (optional, but highly recommended)
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon butter

Spray tcrock pot with non-stick spray. Rub chicken generously with salt and pepper. Place in crock pot. Heat olive oil in a small skillet and add peeled, whole garlic. Cook 5-8 min over med heat til  garlic is golden, then add white wine and stir til liquid has mostly evaporated, 3-5 min over med heat. Pour garlic and white wine over chicken in crock pot, and sprinkle thyme and rosemary over everything. Add in bay leaf. Turn crock pot to low and cook for 3-4 hours. When ready, remove  chicken and place on a separate platter, cover with foil to retain heat. Set aside. Pour juices from pot through a mesh sieve into a pot, press garlic through sieve to form a paste. Cook gravy with T butter over med-high heat til slightly thickened, 5-8 min. Serves 3-4.