Davis at 16

Back in the '70's, there was a TV show titled James at 15. Does anybody else remember that? And when the show went into its second season, the opening credits started out with the title James at 15, but then it crossed out the 15 and wrote a 16. That's what I wanted to do with the title of this posting. But as far as I can tell, Blogger won't let me do that. So just consider the following the title of this posting:


Davis at 15. Nope, 16.

In this house, birthday boys get to pick their dinners. And according to the votes of my readers, birthday boys get to do so, even when their mother is on a two-month roll making delicious meals with no repeats. The readers agree on a birthday exception, so we add one more rule to the Remler menu guidelines: Birthday meals don't count.

Davis chose Calypso chicken for dinner, and for the recipe, I'll just refer you to the original posting from January. Fortunately, Davis did stick around for the meal this time, maybe because he knew he was getting presents and a swell cake.

Now, I've made Davis some pretty darn good cakes before, but not until this year did I have to make maroon frosting. You see, Davis's high school colors are maroon and white (well more like maroon and eggshell, but let's not get picky). Eggshell, of course, was no problem, but I went through I don't know how many batches of icing trying to turn white icing into maroon. Whenever I put the maroon food color in that white glob of sweetness, it just turned pink. More maroon food color would turn it purple. Where was the maroon?

And then I heard a little voice in my head--the voice of my hair stylist, Tina Warbington. Tina said, "Remember your color wheel. Red plus white makes pink." Of course it does! That's when I realized with white icing I'd never get the maroon I needed. So I called Stephen, who, thank God, was on his way home from Davis's lacrosse game and happened to be just around the corner from the Kroger. I asked him to please swing by for two cans of chocolate icing, which he did.

The chocolate did the trick. Maroon food color in brown icing makes maroon icing! Well, more like a brownish maroon, but it wasn't purple! So Davis got his famous BC Cadets birthday cake with military star candles.

And Lawson took the extra batter and extra icing to make his own cake, which he topped with little army tank candles. When it was all finished, it looked like a battle atop a human brain.

Happy birthday, Davis!

Graded Paper Sunday Breakfast

On weekends, Stephen likes to sleep in a bit, usually emerging from the bedroom around 8:30 or 9:00. Lawson is the second to appear, coming downstairs around mid-morning. Davis complains every time we wake him up at the crack of noon. So usually I'm the first one up in the morning.

Usually I check my e-mail and catch up on the morning news, enjoying the quiet of the house. Days like today find me at the computer grading freshman comp essays. After an hour or so, Stephen is usually up, and I need a break from slogging through firm grasps of the obvious, like "Things will happen in today's society" or "The future looks mighty auspicious."

So I make delicious breakfast.

Usually, my breakfast is a bowl of Fiber One and a banana--and not the flaky, nutty Fiber One, either. I eat the little sticks. So on paper grading Sundays, I need a more enticing breakfast, but one just as healthy as well. My vegetable omelet meets both criteria.

Ingredients:
2 eggs or 2 ounces of Egg Beaters (or another egg substitute)
any vegetables in the refrigerator, cut into small, small pieces
cheese (if you want it)
1 tbsp olive oil
cooking spray
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
Today I used eggs for Stephen's omelet and Egg Beaters for my omelet. In my fridge, I had squash, zucchini, onion, red pepper, broccoli, spinach, black olives and feta cheese. When I cut my vegetables, I make sure the broccoli is cut especially small because it's so dense and I want it to cook all the way through. After cutting up the veggies, I put the olive oil in a small nonstick skillet and saute them on medium heat until they're soft. When I do that, I put the spinach in last because it doesn't take long to cook at all. When the veggies are done, I remove them from the pan, and if necessary, I spray the skillet with cooking spray. Then I add the eggs (This is Stephen's omelet) and salt and pepper. I cook the eggs until they start to look firm around the edges. Then I add half of the vegetables, picking out the red peppers because Stephen doesn't like them. I put the vegetables on one half of the eggs; then I sprinkle the feta cheese on top. Gently, I lift the vegetable-less half of the eggs with a spatula and fold it over the vegetables. I let the omelet sit for a minute or so to firm up a little more; then I gently turn it over to let the other side firm up. I serve Stephen's omelet and then go through the same process for my omelet with the Egg Beaters.

The Egg Beaters version of the omelet is a fabulous Weight Watchers breakfast. Without the cheese, the omelet is only three points. Adding cheese, of course, adds points, but the number of points depends on how much cheese you use and what kind. Real eggs, of course, add points too.

Depending on the quality of the essays I've been reading, I'm sometimes also compelled to make berries and yogurt to eat with the omelet. Today was one of those days. I'm sure if my students had been in the room, they would have said, "In today's society, breakfast is a major part of our lives." Anyway, I served today's omelet with cut up fresh strawberries and banana, topped with a big dollop of fat-free vanilla yogurt.

Then I sat down with my husband and enjoyed my meal and beamed as he said, "Gee, Nance, you're swell."

Baked Spaghetti

Spaghetti is a comfort meal. It's easy. Kids like it. And it's cheap. It's also quick, especially if you serve the kind where you just throw some sauce on the noodles with some shredded cheese. Sometimes, though, a baked spaghetti is just right for a cold day. And in light of yesterday's absurd budget cuts on the University System of Georgia, I felt compelled to prepare an inexpensive comfort meal.

Here's how I did it:
Ingredients:
1/3 -1/2 box of whole grain spaghetti, cooked and drained
1 lb. lean ground beef (the leanest you can get)
cooking spray
1 jar Ragu Light tomato and basil spaghetti sauce
1 can Campbell's Healthy Request cream of mushroom soup
2 small jars of whole button mushrooms (because Lawson loves those thangs)
1 cup (more if you like) part-skim or fat free shredded mozzarella cheese

Instructions:
Brown the ground beef and drain off any fat. Spray a 9 x 12 casserole dish with cooking spray. Combine beef, spaghetti sauce, and mushroom soup. Add spaghetti and mushrooms. Top with cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

While the spaghetti is baking, you can make a green salad to eat with it. Then, when the meal is ready, you and the rest of your family can say the blessing, including a small request that the Georgia state legislature comes to its senses before it comes to a budget vote.

Just sayin'.

A Lenten Meal: Spinach Stuffed Trout

Ahh, the Lenten season is upon us. That means no meat on Friday. It also means we can finally eat all that trout Stephen and the boys caught last fall and tucked away in our freezer.

I was never a fish fan until recently. Although I loved shellfish of all kinds, fish filet, unless fried, always struck me as rather bland. But then I became a Catholic, and I had to learn to like fish because we just can't have shrimp and crab legs every Friday.

This dish is an especially healthy one--only four Weight Watcher points. What's more, it's tasty and easy to make. If you don't have fishermen in your family, purchase some trout filets at the Publix. If they don't have trout (or if it's too expensive), use tilapia. That fish works well too.

Ingredients:
4 (or so) trout filets
1 pkg. frozen chopped spinach, thawed
2 oz. crumbled light feta cheese
2 to 3 tbsp. Egg Beaters or egg substitute
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp dill
1/2 tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. While oven is heating, press all the water out of the chopped spinach. Then place it between paper towels, or even a dish towel, and press again, pressing out all the water. Put the spinach in a food processor with the feta cheese, Egg Beaters, and seasonings. Pulse several times until all those ingredients are well mixed. Line a cookie sheet with Reynolds Release Non-Stick foil. Lay the filets on the foil. Put a dollop of spinach mixture on each filet. Then roll each filet around the spinach mixture, securing with toothpicks if necessary. Put in oven and bake for 20 minutes.

I serve these tasty seafood rolls with grits (my husband's required side dish for fish) and another vegetable (tonight it was carrots).

The Votes Are In:
Oh, and many thanks to my readers who voted on the birthday dilemma. Overwhelmingly, the votes recommended allowing Davis to have the dinner of his choice. Readers did not mind breaking a streak for a birthday boy and graciously accepted that another Calypso chicken dinner would not "count" as a break in the streak. Davis thanks you all as well.

I Have a Dilemma

Davis's 16th birthday is Monday. We're having his birthday dinner on Sunday. Here's the problem: he's asked for Calypso chicken for dinner.

Now, my die-hard Remler Menu fans (all two of them) will remember that the first dish I made in 2010 was Calypso chicken, which I made at Davis's request. And then what did he do? He took off to eat at the Japanese restaurant with She Who Must Be Obeyed.

Unfortunately, I forgot to insert a birthday clause in the rules of the Remler Menu. Traditionally, in our house, the birthday boy gets to request his meal. But if I honor Davis's request, I will have repeated a meal, thereby breaking my streak! And I still have several other dishes to go!

What's a blogging, no-repeat cooking mom to do? I need your help. Should I make the Calypso chicken anyway and cross my fingers so it won't count? Should I let Stephen cook a Boston butt on the Big Green Egg even though Davis didn't request that? Should I make Davis cook the Calypso chicken, thereby allowing him to have his requested meal without breaking my streak?

Please leave a comment to cast your vote. Thanks!

Not My Great-Grandmother's Cornish Hen

Every now and then, it's just fun to cook Cornish game hens for dinner. Let's face it: from time to time, every boy likes to have his own little chicken.

Making Cornish hens always makes me think of the story about my great-grandmother's Thanksgiving dinner. One year, while my great-grandmother, Mima, was baking her turkey, my uncle called her outside, saying he had to show her something--I don't now what. But while she was outside being distracted, my great-grandfather, Popeye, swapped out her turkey for a Cornish hen. When the timer went off and Mima opened the oven, she thought her turkey had shrunk!

I never knew what Popeye did with the real turkey or how he managed to keep it warm (or still cooking) while Mima thought it was still in the oven. Somehow, though, he managed, because the Thanksgiving meal wasn't ruined, and nobody went home with salmonella.

I once tried to get Aunt Lorraine to help me play that trick on JoJo. But JoJo was too fast for us. She took her turkey out of the oven and cut it up before we could distract her.

Cornish hens are easy to prepare, easier, in fact, than a regular-sized chicken. And they look so elegant on the plate--like a tiny little turkey dinner. Here's how I do it:

Ingredients:
Cornish hens
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. While the oven heats, wash the Cornish hens and pat them dry with a paper towel. Salt and pepper to taste. I also season with garlic powder. Roast for 45 minutes covered with Reynold's Release Non-stick Foil. By the way, I need to put Reynolds Release on my list of favorite kitchen products, because that stuff rocks. Whereas regular foil would have stuck to the tops of those hens and pulled the skin right off, leaving them looking nekkid and unappetizing, Reynolds Release simply covers. Anyway, after about 45 minutes, remove the Reynold's Release Non-stick Foil and roast for a remaining 15-20 minutes (depending on the size of the hens) until nicely browned on top. Baste every few minutes with the chicken drippings.

And at meal time, it's kind of fun to watch my sons tear into their hens like they're preparing to play Henry VIII in the school play (and let me tell you, they'd get the part).

Good Mallets Make Good Chicken

I have a silicone pie protector and an avocado slicer. I have assorted graters for various kinds of cheeses and zests. I have a cake icer and even that bunny wine cork remover the Bank of America sent me for no apparent reason. But out of all the many utensils I own, my favorite is a rubber mallet.

I came upon the rubber mallet by a stroke of luck. Three years ago, when we moved into our house, we had plantation shutters installed on the windows and doors. They snap shut with this tongue and groove bracket thing in the window sill. They're pretty secure, but even so, when my boys run out the back door and slam it shut, that shutter pops wide open. And it's a pain to snap back. It takes more than a firm shove or pound with a fist. For a while I resorted to Chuck Norris round house kicks until Stephen saw me and fussed at me for getting shoe prints on the door.

So I requested a rubber mallet.

Soon after that, my sister in-law Kelley came home from the dollar store with a rubber mallet in hand. She said when Lawson (who always accompanies Kelley to the dollar store) saw it, he reported that I must have that mallet. So there it was.

While the mallet works well for snapping shutters closed, one must be careful when using it for that purpose. Lawson learned that lesson the hard way. One evening, while Stephen and I were on our walk, we returned home to find Lawson on the couch with a bloody lip and Davis, phone in hand, saying, "I've been trying to call y'all!"

Apparently, during the half hour we'd been roaming the neighborhood, Lawson slammed the back door shut and loosed the shutter from its bracket. So he used the rubber mallet to set the shutter right, forgetting that rubber bounces. So when he slammed the shutter with the mallet, its head bounced right back and whacked him in the mouth.

The lip stayed swollen for about two days. Lawson's stayed away from that mallet for about two years.

After that, the mallet lived in the laundry room drawer until I needed something to crush my Ritz Crackers for a casserole. Hello, mallet.

Now I use that mallet to crush all kinds of things. Crackers. Nuts. Hard candy. About a year ago, though, I found a recipe that calls for pounded chicken breast.

Cool!

Lemon parsley chicken is a Weight Watcher's recipe, only 4 points per serving. It's tasty too. We never have leftovers. But the most fun about it is pounding the meat with that mallet.

Here's how to make it:

Ingredients:
1 bunch fresh parsley
1 lemon
Salt & pepper to taste
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter

Instructions:
Finely chop the parsley. Grate the lemon rind. Mix the grated lemon rind with the chopped parsley. Set aside for a few minutes. Put the chicken breasts in a plastic bag (I use two plastic grocery bags--just in case one tears) and pound them with the rubber mallets until the breasts are about 1/4 to 1/3 inch thick. Pound those babies! Flatten 'em out! Then remove them from the plastic bag. Pounding chicken breasts makes them much wider. Sometimes I have to use my kitchen scissors and cut them in half. Salt and pepper the chicken to taste. Then, using a fork, apply some of the lemon parsley mixture to each breast, pressing it into the meat so that it sticks. Put olive oil and butter in a skillet and heat to medium high. Add chicken breasts, parsley side down. While they're cooking, add the parsley chicken mixture to the tops of the breasts, pressing the mixture into the meat so that it sticks. After about four to five minutes, turn the breasts over. Cook another five minutes or so.

I served my chicken with broccoli and roasted potatoes. This meal is a family favorite, and we were so eager to eat it, that I was halfway through dinner before I remembered my photo! Stephen's plate looked the least demolished, so that's what you see here.

Chalk it up to a healthy meal: Rubber mallet chicken, a low calorie dish and a great stress reliever. That's the best dollar Kelley ever spent.

Little Wellies

Remember Little Willie rhymes?

Little Willy was a chemist.
Little Willy is no more.
What he thought was H2O
Was really H2SO4.

Well, tonight I served Little Wellies.

Little Wellie was a dinner.
Little Wellie is no more.
Because the Remler family ate it.

If any of my readers can come up with a rhyming Little Welly verse, please submit it. I'm having trouble thinking of an eating word that rhymes with more.

While you sharpen your pencils, I'll explain where this meal came from.

I used to make a Beef Wellington during the holidays. I used a recipe I found on Martha Stewart's website. Because I was out of class for the month of December, I enjoyed taking the time to make the dish, but I eventually stopped for several reasons.

First of all, it takes two days to make, and it was hard to find the right size cut of meat. It's hard to find a 2-3 pound beef tenderloin. When Publix does have it for sale, it's usually a ten pound piece. So either the butcher has to cut it up, or I have to keep my eye on the meat counter for an end piece. Either way, that was a little bit of a pain.

And if the tenderloin is a pain to find, duck pate is even harder (These were the days before Savannah had a Fresh Market. I might be able to find all the necessary ingredients there). And then once I got a 2-3 pound beef tenderloin and duck pate, I had to sear the meat on all sides, even the ends, and then tie it up into a loaf shape. Then I had to refrigerate it over night before I could do anything else with it.

Then the next day, I had to coat the beef with a chopped mushroom mixture and duck pate and then cover it with a large piece of phyllo dough before putting it in the oven. The preparation wasn't so much of a pain, but transferring the Wellington from the foil-lined roasting pan onto a lovely, holiday-style platter was a bear. Then, after all that trouble, we'd cut open the Wellington and enjoy it, but the roast looked like a slaughtered football. Tasty but messy.

And Beef Wellington doesn't really keep well for leftovers. The meat does fine, but the dough can't really survive the juices and the refrigeration.

Several months ago, I had a hankering for Beef Wellington, but not much of a hankering for the effort. So I started thinking, what if I got little steaks and cooked them in individual phyllo doughs to make little Beef Wellingtons? How would that taste?

Turns out, it tasted just fine. Both my boys like it, and Stephen did too.

Then I forgot about them (Little Wellies, not my family), and the meal didn't occur to me again until New Year's when I started making a list of all the meals I knew how to cook to determine how long I could go without repeating a dinner.

So tonight's choice was Little Wellies. They're easy to make. I bought some mock tender steaks at the Publix (I have no idea what cut of meat that is. But they look kind of like filet mignon only with a smaller price tag). This morning, I seasoned them with salt, pepper and garlic powder; then I seared them for one minute on each side. I did not try to sear the edges. Then I put them on a plate and put them back in the refrigerator until dinner time.

At dinner time, I chopped some mushrooms and 1 Vidalia onion into small pieces and put them in a small skillet with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil. I sauteed the mushrooms and onions until they were soft and the liquid had absorbed.

All the while, I was pre-heating the oven to 400.

Once the mushroom and onion mixture was ready, I placed 1/4 of the mixture onto each piece of dough. Then I put a steak on each piece of dough and covered the meat, pinching the edges of the dough so that the steak was snugly wrapped in its only doughy blanket.

And that's when I realized I was using the wrong kind of dough! I had not bought phyllo dough yesterday. I had bought pie crust! Little Nancy was an idiot. . .

Well, by that time, it was too late to do anything but spray the pie crust with some cooking spray and put the Little Wellies in the oven for about 15 minutes until the crust was golden brown.

They were fine. Only they didn't taste like Beef Wellington. They tasted like beef pie. But beef pie's not so bad. Stephen and Davis added salt (I'm noticing Davis adds salt to everything I cook). Lawson liked the dough better than the meat. My verdict? I've had worse meals than beef pie.

Still, at some point I think I will repeat this recipe because I didn't cook it right this time. With phyllo dough, my Little Wellies will be worthy of a full poetic tribute.

I Declare That's Good Chili!

Tonight was the first annual chili cook off of the Hombuilders' Association of Greater Savannah. Stephen Remler and Ross Daniel entered the contest and cooked their entry on the Big Green Egg. Their contest entry name: Egg Head Chili.

Using a pound of spicy sausage, a pound of mild sausage, a pound of ground beef, peppers, onions, and a secret ingredient for seasoning, Stephen and Ross cooked up their batch of meaty goodness in a cast iron pot and simmered it for hours in the Big Green Egg.

The result? A pretty darn good pot of chili. Unfortunately, after tasting a dozen spoonfuls of various chilis (some made with chocolate, others of the five-alarm variety), some judges' taste buds got a wee bit confused. So the Sales and Marketing Council won the judges' prize. But the other guests at the Homebuilders' meeting knew what they were eating, and they voted Stephen and Ross's Eggspert recipe the one to win the People's Choice trophy.

Way to go, Stephen and Ross!

February 16: Baby Back Ribs and Bloody Slaw

I got the idea for tonight's dinner from my sister in-law, Nichole. My mom tells me Nichole makes a mean Boston butt in the slow cooker. Mom recommended that I cook a crock pot Boston butt for the Remler menu but with a Big Green Eggthusiast in the house, I dare not venture into Boston butt territory. But then I started thinking--if Boston butt cooks well in a slow cooker, wouldn't ribs do the same? I decided to find out.

So Sunday at the Publix I bought four racks of ribs for tonight's dinner. Then last night, I took my crock pot out of the cabinet and lined it with my Reynolds Slow Cooker Liner, ready to be filled up in the morning.

So at 6:00 am, I padded into the kitchen, made a pot of coffee and got started on the ribs. Here's how I made them:

1. I sprinkled them with Big Green Egg seasoning.
2. I put them in the crock pot.
3. I turned it on.

That's it!

When Lawson got home from school, he turned off the crock pot because that's his usual job. Then when I got home, I made the slaw.

You have to understand that my step-mother's slaw has been family legend for the past three decades. BB serves that slaw at almost every meal. We used to tease her that she kept a giant slaw vat in her smoke house. I always assumed that her recipe was a secret. But then last summer, Davis asked her for the recipe, and she just told him right there. Just like that.

Davis immediately got to work making his own slaw, and BB was so delighted that he was making it that she gave him his very own food processor. Now whenever we eat pork, we also need slaw.

BB's slaw has a distinctive flavor because it has bell pepper in it. Well, when I got home from work today, I thought I had three green bell peppers in my bag, but I only had two. And I had to reserve those two peppers for Thursday because Stephen's going to use them in the Homebuilders' Association of Greater Savannah chili cookoff. So I used a red bell pepper instead.

The slaw tasted the same, but I won't use a red pepper again. At first the red bits of pepper gave the chopped cabbage kind of a pepperminty look. But once I added the dressing, the slaw just looked bloody. From across the kitchen, the plastic slaw bowl looked like some poor animal had been mutilated in it. Eew.

Dinner was still a success. I had three or four ribs. So did Stephen. Davis and Lawson demolished the rest. The meat just fell off the bone. I'll recommend slow cooker ribs to anybody. Everybody joined the clean plate club tonight, and Stephen requested that I cheat on the Remler menu and repeat the ribs before I exhaust all my other options.

I'm thinking about it.

Meanwhile, tonight's dinner score is ribs 100, slaw 1 1/2.

President's Day Dinner: Eye Round Roast

JoJo taught me how to make eye round several years ago. It's really easy--if you remember the recipe. I really should have called JoJo to refresh my memory, but I was too lazy. Besides, I thought I could handle it. Turns out I could--once I turned off the fire alarm.

Really, dinner was not a disaster, just a little bit of a surprise. Roasting an eye of round is similar to roasting a standing rib roast in that you first have to sear it in the oven for a few minutes before turning down the heat. Well, I seared mine for too long. I think I was supposed to sear it at 500 degrees for ten minutes. But I seared it for ten minutes per pound. Then I opened the oven to see how the roast was doing, and the smoke billowed out to the extent that all the fire alarms in the house went off.

Never one to over-react, Lawson never flinched from his X-Box game. He just hollered from upstairs, "Mom, is that just you cooking?"

I assured him that it was, and that I was just fine, thank you very much. I didn't want him to worry that I'd burned myself or anything.

I put some foil over the roast and put it back in the oven and turned it all the way off. Then I left the meat in there for about an hour, and when it came out, my roast was cooked just right--with a little circle of pale pink right in the middle. What's more, with the foil over it, the roast had collected a nice au jus in the bottom of the pan.

Tired of potatoes, rice and grits, I opted for a different starch tonight: gnocchi. It's so easy to make and so tasty. I boiled a package of gnocchi until the little pasta balls floated to the top of the water. While they were cooking, I combined in a small bowl about 1/4 cup of olive oil, 1 minced clove of garlic, salt, pepper, and a few chopped leaves of fresh basil. After boiling the gnocchi, I drained it and put it in a bowl. I tossed it in the olive oil mixture and then tossed in some fresh spinach leaves until they wilted. Then I sprinkled ground parmesan on top.

I also made some stuffed mushrooms. My mom used to eat those all the time. She thought they were little fungal buttons from heaven. As a kid, I didn't find them that delectable, but as an adult, they're more appealing. I just sort of made up the recipe last night. I took some medium-large mushrooms and pulled out the stems. I chopped up the stems and put them in a bowl with some finely chopped Vidalia onion, a minced clove of garlic, a smidge of olive oil, some chopped fresh spinach leaves and salt and pepper. I mixed all those ingredients with a fork and then put some in each mushroom cap, which I had placed in a small baking dish sprayed with cooking spray. Then I sprinkled grated parmesan on top of each stuffed mushroom. I baked them at 400 for about 20 minutes, and they came out looking tasty. And tasting tasty too.

Rounding off the meal was a combination of fresh broccoli and cauliflower florets, which I tossed in olive oil and salted before roasting for about half an hour. I don't care what kind of vegetable it is, if you toss it in olive oil and roast it, it's heavenly.

So the President's Day meal consisted of a delicious roast, plus several side dishes I'll be sure to serve again. But before I cook the eye of round again, I'll double check with JoJo on the searing part.

For Susan Baldwin: Chicken Pot Pie

To view the video, Facebook readers can link to Remlerville blog (http://remlerville.blogspot.com)

The above video has inspired many a dinnertime ditty in the past sixteen years. Every time we have this golden, crusty, home cooked favorite, my boys and I sing the chicken pot pie song. Then, when I reconnected with my high school buddy Susan Baldwin about a year ago, I learned from her blog that she and her children are also chicken pot pie singers! And that is the best evidence available that great minds think alike!

When Lawson came in the kitchen last night and saw I was making chicken pot pie, he did a little dance right in front of the dish washer.

My recipe is not made from scratch. Nor is it complicated. But it is pretty darn good. Here's how I make it:

Ingredients
3 chicken breasts, cooked and shredded
1 sixteen ounce bag of frozen mixed vegetables
1 can Campbell's Healthy Request cream of chicken soup
1 can Campbell's Healthy Request cream of celery soup
1 refrigerated pie crust
cooking spray

Instructions:
I finally learned how to shred chicken. After reading my curried chicken crepes posting, my mom e-mailed me and told me that to shred chicken, you simply cook the breast and take it off the bone. Then you put it in a plastic bag and twist it up. Who knew? Well, apparently my mom.

After shredding the chicken, put it in a skillet and turn the stove up to medium high heat. When the chicken starts to sizzle, add the mixed vegetables. Cook until kind of soft. Add the soups. Stir over the heat until bubbly. Put the soup/vegetable/chicken mixture in a pie plate. Cover with refrigerated crust. Cut little vents in the top and spray with cooking spray so the crust won't scorch.

Bake at 400 degrees until the pie is bubbly. The edges of my crust usually get done before the pie, so I use my trusty silicone pie protector for the last fifteen minutes or so. I love that thing.

Sometimes I have a little chicken/soup/vegetable mixture left over. When that happens, I put it in an individual sized disposable aluminum pan and make a crust with frozen biscuits. That pie will do in a pinch, but my family likes the pie crust better.

Superbowl Food

"I'll be in charge of the Super Bowl Food tonight."

That was Stephen's code for "It's time to fire up the Big Green Egg."

And that was fine with me. Whenever my husband offers to cook a meal, I'm all for it.

Super Bowl Sunday is just the right day for grilling. Stephen can
cook the meal, and I can watch all the good commercials. Except for when we went to the Publix, he was all about the
grilled sausage, cheese dip and Buffalo wings. After feasting the
past two nights on curried chicken crepes and Beef Bourguignon, I was in the mood for something healthier. Don't
get me wrong. Some foods are worth getting fat for. Velveeta
ain't one of 'em.


So he put his sausage and chicken wings in the cart, but I added
to them some drumsticks, cucumber, eggplant, portabello mushrooms and fat free mozzarella cheese.

Did you know that when you take the skin off a drumstick and
grill it, it's only one Weight Watcher Point? And vegetables
don't have any points at all, so with my menu, I could eat as much food as I wanted.

Stephen started the meal with an appetizer of sliced navel oranges. My, they were juicy and good. Then he grilled the
drumsticks (and the wings), along with the eggplant and
mushrooms. While he was doing that, I made a cucumber
and tomato salad. Davis had his own dish in the making. He
worked on a pizza, which he also cooked on the Big Green Egg.

Once Stephen came in with the eggplant, I topped them with tomato and fat-free mozzarella (I topped a mushroom too)
and put them in the oven for a few minutes.

So we enjoyed an evening of tasty goodness without all the
empty calories.

We complemented the healthy meal with a cocktail Stephen
learned while boating on the Ocmulgee: vodka, cranberry,
and soda, garnished with an orange slice.

Davis made several pizzas tonight, but he learned the hard way
that heating the grill up to 800 degrees means he has to keep
an eye on that pizza crust. That second one came out black. But the third pizza was perfect.

Now, if the Saints can just score the way this dinner did, we'd be in business. And the commercials? So far my favorites are Betty White playing football and the violin-playing beaver.

Buff Buggy Nyong

This month's rainy weather has been perfect for cooking in the crock pot, but with the new Remler menu project underway, I can't yet go back to turkey breast or pot roast. So earlier this week, I browsed the internet to find some different slow cooker recipes. During my search I found a swell new blog: A Year of Slow Cooking by Stephanie O'Dea. Now, here's some evidence that great minds think alike because like my project to see how many times I can cook dinner with no repeats, O'Dea wants to see if she can cook an entire year in a slow cooker. Actually, I think she's already met her goal because I saw some entries from 2008. But the recipes are still good, and I found a doozy:

Slow cooker Beef Bourguignon.

Now, by this time, most of us have already read and/or seen Julie & Julia, but trust me. I'm not invoking Julia Child (or Julie Powell) with this dish. I don't have that kind of ambition. If I did, I'd be cooking the stuff the good old fashioned way. Instead, I prefer the slow cooker way, where I just throw the ingredients into that trusted appliance and get about my day.

And today I needed that kind of recipe because Stephen and I were up at 6:00 am and on Tybee Island by 7:30 for the Critz Tybee Run (except that we walked). We met our friend Viviane there, and we finished that 5K in just under 48 minutes. Viviane even won first place in her age bracket! Congratulations, Viv!

Anyway, after an early morning 5K, I knew I would not want to spend 2 1/2 hours in the kitchen cooking dinner like I did last night with the curried chicken crepes. Slow cooker Beef Bourguignon was easy, different, and French.

As usual, I modified the recipe I found by adding mushrooms (Some other beef Bourguignon recipe I saw called for mushrooms, and that addition sounded tasty to me). So here's O'Dea's recipe, with mushrooms (and comments) added:

Ingredients
3 lb. beef roast or beef stew meat (I used beef stew meat)
6 slices uncooked bacon
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion sliced in rings
1 cup chopped carrots (I just used those baby carrots)
2 cups white mushrooms, washed and quartered
4 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped
1 tbsp. herbs de provence
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp black pepper (Oops. I just remembered I forgot to put in the pepper)
1 tbsp. tomato paste
2 cups red wine (I used Cabernet Sauvignon)

Instructions:
Use a 6 quart slow cooker (Those are O'Dea's instructions. I think you should use whatever slow cooker you've got. Who's got more than one?). In the bottom of your stoneware, smear around the olive oil (Because I use Reynolds Slow Cooker Liners, this part was a little more difficult. I probably could have skipped that part). Then lay down 3 slices of bacon. Add sliced onion and garlic. Put the meat into the pot on top of the onion and garlic, and sprinkle on dried spices and herbs. Toss the meat to distribute the spices to all sides. Add tomato paste. Lay the other 3 slices of bacon on top of the meat, and throw in the carrots and mushrooms. Pour wine over the whole thing. Cover and let cook on low for 8-9 hours or on high for 4-5 hours, or until meat has reached desired tenderness. If you are using a roast, you may want to flip the meat about an hour before serving so more liquid is absorbed into the meat. You can also cut the meat into chunks and return it to the pot, if you would like more moisture to absorb.

O'Dea suggests serving this dish with mashed potatoes, but I served it with whole grain egg noodles and green peas.

And now that we've eaten it, honestly, I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Don't get me wrong. It's good. But I was expecting, I don't know, fireworks? A medley of flavor on my tongue? Savory goodness that made me exclaim, "How did I live 43 years before tasting this?"

Instead, I had beef stew.

Maybe it was because I forgot to add the pepper.

But it wasn't bad. In fact, Davis had two helpings--after he added salt. We all cleaned our plates. But Lawson said he preferred the "regular" mushrooms (which are the Green Giant button mushrooms in the jar). And Stephen and Davis said they like the "regular" pot roast better (which is the one I cook using Cambell's and Lipton soup mix).

The most fun about dinner was teaching my kids how to pronounce beef bourguignon. I wish I had recorded them. Lawson's still trying: "Buff. . .Buggy. . .nyong." He says it best when his mouth is full.

The Crepes of Wrath

Because I haven't cooked in a couple of days, and because the weekend was upon me, and because I knew I didn't have plans and therefore had time to cook up a good meal, I decided to make something special, not just something I hadn't cooked this year, but something I'd never cooked before. So I cooked curried chicken crepes.

I found the recipe in Louise Dodd's cookbook, Cooking from the White House to the Jail House. Louise is a friend of my mother's, and Mom gave me the cook book several years ago for my birthday. Louise's book has lots of good recipes in it, such as Hello Dollies, which are to die for, and Savannah Pie, which I'll make for dinner one night when I feel like gaining another ten pounds. Not only are Louise's recipes tasty, but they're often very easy to make. At least I thought so until tonight. I had not yet made curried chicken crepes.

The recipe was a wee bit misleading. It explains how to make the curried chicken part, but at first glance I didn't think about the fact that her recipe calls for already-cooked and shredded chicken and already-made crepes. So before I could even start on her recipe, I had a lot of cooking to do.

First of all, there's something I've never quite understood: How exactly does one shred a chicken breast? Does that happen in a food processor? Should I want the chicken pieces to be chopped down to a chicken salad-looking kind of lumpy mush? Is that shredded chicken? I've never quite understood. So after I cooked my chicken breasts, I simply used a knife and fork and cut it into little pieces, cutting against the grain of the meat so that it would also come apart into those little stringy pieces it tends to fall into.

Secondly, I've never made crepes. I've always understood the general idea--they're really flat pancakes, so they cook really fast. But I've never done it. Still, I thought crepes would be a good idea because 1) my older son Davis loves crepes, which he learned how to make at his Uncle Brett's house, and 2) because of Davis's love for crepes, he received for Christmas a box of crepe mix, which he has never used, and I thought it needed to see the light of day.

Now, when I think of crepe mix, I think of dumping the powdered substance into a bowl and adding water. No, it's not that simple. Crepe mix calls for six eggs. Six eggs! I hadn't thought of that when I went to the Publix in the pouring rain to buy ingredients. And when I looked in the fridge, I found, to my dismay, only two eggs. So my heartfelt thanks to my next-door sister in-law Kelley, who happened to have four eggs in her fridge, thereby saving me another trip to the grocery store. So once I had the required number of eggs, I beat them, added the mix, added the water, beat that mixture for a while, added more water, beat that mixture to death, and it was still lumpy! So I strained the lumps out of the batter.
Finally, I got to cook the crepes.

A box of crepe mix makes about two quarts of batter. Each crepe takes about two table spoons of that batter in the pan. I had a crepe-a-palooza in my kitchen. What's more, I had to set the crepes aside until I was ready to fill them, and to keep them from sticking to each other, I had to separate them with pieces of wax paper. I never knew crepes were so high maintenance.

So after about an hour or so, I was finally ready to start Louise's recipe.

The curried chicken crepe filling includes chicken (of course) and curry (natch), but I was a little nervous about the curry. For a very good reason, I haven't eaten curry in more than forty years. I have my grandmother to thank for that. She loved curry. She adored it. She put curry in everything. Chicken salad. Deviled eggs. It wouldn't have surprised me to learn she'd put curry in her chocolate cake. She was a curry fiend. But at four years old, I wasn't the biggest curry fan in the world, and my heart always sank when I anticipated a delectable meal at Grandmother's, only to enter her house and smell that familiar, strong curry aroma. It was my signal that nothing at the meal would taste good.

So I decided upon embarking on this recipe that I would greatly reduce the amount of curry in the dish. Louise calls for 1 1/2 tablespoons of curry powder. I used a teaspoon. I thought that was just enough.

The recipe also includes apples, onions and carrots. On paper, it seems really good. And the instructions were pretty easy--until I had to add the 1 1/2 cups of chicken stock and 2 1/2 cups of milk. Then for about thirty minutes I stood at the stove, stirring constantly until the sauce came to a slow boil. S-s-s-s-l-l-l-l-o-o-o-o-w-w-w-w boil. I didn't think I'd ever see those bubbles! But the sauce finally boiled, and according to the instructions, I added the carrot and lemon juice, then covered the sauce to simmer for seven to ten minutes, during which time I made a salad.

Finally, it was time to uncover the sauce and fill those crepes. But when I took the cover off, I was dismayed to discover my milky sauce had curdled!

As soon as I saw those curds, I thought, Well, duh. When you put lemon in milk, the milk curdles. Still, I was surprised. After all, Louise said to put the lemon juice in. And I have a feeling when she puts the lemon juice in her milky sauce, her milk stays nice and creamy.

By this point I was about two hours into this venture, and my family was hungry. So I stuffed the crepes according to the recipe's instructions. Then I put the whole dish in the oven for about thirty minutes, during which time my children starting biting their nails because they were so hungry.

After all of that, what was the family's assessment? Well, Davis had a second helping, and he said he liked it after he added salt. Lawson also had a second helping, but he claimed he only liked the chicken and the crepe, not the saucy part. Stephen said he thought it was good, but it looked like a pain to make. And me? Well, I thought it was fine. Just fine. But definitely not worth the time and effort it took to prepare it.

And now I've made that meal. Time to move on.

For those of you who are curious, I'll include the recipe. Maybe your milk won't curdle.

Ingredients

1 1/2 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 apple, chopped
2 tbsp. flour
1 1/2 tbsp. curry powder
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
2 1/2 cups milk
pinch of sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 carrot, grated
2 tbsp. lemon juice
4-6 cups chicken, shredded
Crepes

Instructions:
Heat olive oil in large skillet. Add onion and apple and saute until onion is transparent. Add flour and curry and cook one minute. Add chicken stock and milk slowly, stirring constantly. Then add sugar and salt. Bring to a slow boil, add the carrot and lemon juice and simmer covered for 7 to 10 minutes. Sauce should be on the thin side as the chicken will absorb some moisture and some will bake off. Divide the chicken among the crepes, cover with two tablespoons of sauce and roll up. Place crepes in a buttered baking dish and spoon over the rest of the sauce. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until bubbling.

Grits

This morning before I left for work, I pulled some meat out of the freezer to thaw so I could cook it for dinner tonight. But my husband got home before I did, and when I walked in, he was already cooking our meal.

Swell!



Now, when my husband cooks, I can be sure I'll have grits with dinner. I've never known someone to like grits as much as he does. In fact, once when we were dating, we decided to grill a couple of steaks for dinner. I went to the fridge to pull out two potatoes to bake, but he stopped me. He went to the pantry and pulled out the Jim Dandy Quick Grits. I'd never heard of steak and grits before, but he acted like steak and baked potatoes only get served in restaurants.

Stephen will eat grits with anything: steak, pork chops, fish, fried chicken. My eleven year-old, Lawson, is following in his footsteps. He loves grits sandwiches (grits spread between two pieces of white toast).

Stephen thinks it's a special treat to have cheese grits with dinner. I love the cheese grits too, but I don't cook them very much because they have so much fat in them. But tonight, in honor of Stephen's cooking dinner, I'm adding my cheese grits recipe to the blog.

I got this recipe from a cookbook I got for a wedding present: Pines and Plantations: Native Recipes of Thomasville, Georgia. I have the 1990 edition. It was a gift from a distant cousin whose name I don't remember, but I do recall that she spoke with a fake British accent. Nothing fake about the southern recipes found in this cook book, though, and I have stained many of its pages with drippings from the dishes I've cooked in it. I've modified this recipe, though (What else is new?) because the one in the cook book makes enough grits to serve the senior class at my son's school. I only need one casserole dish full:

Ingredients:
3/4 cups quick grits
salt and pepper to taste
paprika to taste
3 eggs
1/2 stick butter
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Instructions:

Bring 3 cups of water to boil in a 2 quart sauce pan. Add grits and reduce heat. Simmer for about five minutes until they're done. Add salt, pepper, paprika and butter (I add enough paprika to give the grits a faint paprika color). Remove from heat. Let cool for a few minutes. While the grits are cooling, spray a 9 x 12 inch casserole dish with cooking spray. Break the eggs into the dish and beat lightly. Add the grits, little by little, to the eggs, stirring constantly so that the hot grits won't cook the eggs. When all grits have been stirred in with the eggs, stir in the cheese. Bake at 400 for about 45 minutes.

People love these cheese grits so much that we never have any left over.

Country Fried Steak

After my slow cooker, the appliance I use the most in my kitchen is my electric skillet. It's lightweight and easy to clean, and it holds more than a stovetop skillet. I have a West Bend. It's probably the cheapest one on the market. No matter. With my electric skillet I can prepare any meal that requires covered cooking. Typically, I use my skillet to cook Calypso chicken (see January 3rd blog) and country fried steak.

I got my country fried steak from a Paula Deen cookbook. But let me say right now that when I cook any recipe of Paula's, I remove all the butter. All of it. I know she's famous for adding a stick of butter to everything, but I've discovered that in most cases, the butter just isn't necessary. I also added mushrooms to my modification of Deen's formula. Finally, any time a recipe calls for any kind of onion, I use Vidalia. It's the only onion my husband will eat; besides, I live an hour and a half away from the town. I ought to be supportive.

Cooked my way, country fried steak can be prepared for only 5 Weight Watchers points. So if anybody out there is trying to lose some holiday weight, this entree gets the green light.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup flour
salt and pepper to taste
4 cubed steaks
2 tbsp olive oil
cooking spray
2 cups beef bouillon (or 1 can consomme' or 1 can beef broth)
1 Vidalia onion
2 jars whole button mushrooms

Instructions:
Put flour in a plastic bag. I use a plastic grocery bag from Publix. Liberally salt and pepper cubed steaks. Then toss them in the bag until the meat is coated with flour. Put olive oil in skillet. Then coat skillet with cooking spray. Turn it on to about 350 degrees. When it's hot, add the cubed steak. Brown on one side and then turn to brown the other. Add the beef bouillon (or consomme' or beef broth), onion and mushrooms. Cover and reduce heat. Simmer for about 45 minutes.

I serve this meal with Uncle Ben's whole grain brown rice and a green vegetable. Tonight's vegetable was a yellow/zucchini squash mixture.