Tag Archives: cooking

Attempting A Healthy Work Lunch, Oh Dear…

25 Jan

I don’t cook.  Well, that’s not entirely true since last Sunday I made a stir fry but in general cooking isn’t my thing. My idea of cooking meat is taking something frozen, putting it on a baking tray, throwing it in the oven, following the instructions on the package and being happy if it turns out edible. To me that is cooking.

None of this messing with raw meat stuff, nuh-uh!

Well, I had this oh-so-brilliant idea that I would change that so when I was grocery shopping the other day I bought two raw chicken breasts. I was inspired by the flyer showing there was a sale, I’m a sucker for a sale. Stupid sale! I also bought some Creole Dijon Sauce for the chicken, I’ve had it before and it is yummy…course I used it sparingly on cooked rice but let’s not get in to how I chose to use the sauce designed for chicken k? 😉

creole dijon sauce

I know there is some sort of a timeline when it comes to how long raw chicken can sit in the fridge and I’m fairly certain that timeline is short which has had me paranoid since I bought it that before I could figure out how to cook it it’d go bad. To me this is a completely valid concern! 😛

The website for the marinade had some recipe ideas but didn’t explain how to marinate the chicken, it just said to do it, sigh. Do they not realize some people are reeeeeally dumb when it comes to cooking? Eesh! I wanted to call my mom when I got home from work this evening to ask her what to do but thanks to lame time zones I couldn’t. She’s an hour ahead of me and I hate calling her and my dad any later then 10pm their time because I worry I’ll wake them. So it was left to me and internet to figure it out!

I found conflicting information for how long the chicken has to stay in the sauce, anywhere from 20 minutes to overnight, wtf, pick a time people! With the help of google I learned once the chicken is soaking up that marinade it has to go back in the fridge, covered, while it becomes flavourful so that is what I did. I drowned the two pieces of chicken in sauce, using a shallow glass pan, covered with saran wrap and put it in the fridge. I gave it an hour then popped one piece of chicken in the oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. The second piece I am marinating overnight and will cook tomorrow, not like I really want two pieces of chicken with the same flavouring two days in a row but I don’t know if I can let it sit soaking up the yummy creole dijon any longer without risking death…ahhh lovely food poisoning, how you cast a shadow over everything I do in the kitchen! 😛

The oven is about to beep at me saying the chicken is done, let’s cross our fingers it really is done shall we?

Since we’re already crossing our fingers let’s keep them crossed that this works cause this piece of chicken is the main attraction of the lunch I am taking to work tomorrow and I have no more time tonight to cook anything else, it’s this or bust! No pressure or anything…

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Stir Fry Sunday

19 Jan

I officially declare Sunday: Stir Fry Sunday! *insert parade here* 🙂

I don’t know why but I got the random idea to make stir fry for dinner tonight, I made a list of all the various ingredients I needed, hit up the grocery store on the way home from work and bam! cooking ensued! wOOt!

Because I was down about not getting to film the commercial today I wanted to make sure I did something that I would enjoy, well, either enjoy the act of or the result of during the time I would have been filming. I don’t particularly like cooking but I do enjoy stir fry, and eating lol I used to make stir fry fairly often years ago but I don’t really remember what I did back then so I was approaching this task as a newbie.

Normally I don’t use raw meat, unless it is frozen and requires minimal touching. Raw meat = yuch! Also, if I am not throwing a frozen chicken breast or frozen piece of fish in the oven then my protein usually comes from tofu, fake meat, eggs, things like that. I am always so certain I will under cook the meat and give myself food poisoning and duuuude, that would suck! …obviously lol…Well, today a friend gave me a look, you know the look, the kind that is clearly labeling you as a dumbass in their eyes when I told her I don’t cook raw chicken, she then gave me a thawed, raw, icky chicken breast, told me to cube it, throw it in the wok first with a bit of oil and I’d be fine.

Since I can’t lose face over this I…cooked the chicken! *gasp*  I’m sure to you this is ho-hum but to me it’s a big deal cause ick, I had to touch raw meat, and cut it, and cook it well enough I didn’t get sick from it…that’s a lot! I also then had to bleach the sink, knife and cutting board cause there was raw chicken touching all those surfaces, or the juices from the raw chicken, and now I envision salmonella spawning all around my kitchen. Double ick! 😛

I used a bit too much oil, I drained a whole bunch before putting any veggies in the pan, but other than that the cooking went really well! I tossed in some frozen veggies from the Europe’s Best brand, there were orange carrots, snow peas, yellow carrots, water chestnuts, red peppers, baby corn and bean sprouts in that mix. I then added more water chestnuts (you can never have too many! lol), raw sliced red and yellow peppers, sliced mushrooms and at the very end some baby spinach (I just warmed it up, didn’t cook it), oh and I put some stir fry sauce I bought at Safeway in there for flavour. For plating it, I put the veggie and chicken mix over some brown rice, sprinkled a bit of soy sauce on and topped with peanuts.

Holy cannoli it was gooood! 😀

I made that! whoa!

I made that! whoa!

There is even more of a bonus to this delish meal, because I didn’t measure anything, just added stuff, I made enough for two servings, as you can see in the picture, so I now have lunch for tomorrow sitting in my fridge. How great is that? I have no idea if this was healthy or not since I didn’t measure anything, just poured in amounts of things that looked good lol I figure it can’t be too too horrible since it was a meal made up of mostly veggies, with some protein and a bit of starch. There is probably a healthier alternative to brown rice but I don’t know what that is. But hey, that is what Stir Fry Sunday is for! To experiment with different combinations of things on a weekly basis, fair warning, this could get weird lol

I had a distressing discovery when cooking, I no longer have my wok…I have no clue where it went to and I’m kinda cranky about that. I had a really nice wok, I can’t remember getting rid of it, and I can’t imagine why I would have, but since it is gone I must have decided at some point to give it away, sigh, stupid stupid move! This was made in a large frying pan and it just wasn’t the same, even though it did turn out delish lol

I’m going to wait to buy a new wok, see how consistent I am with Stir Fry Sunday, I figure if I make stir fry weekly for a month or so then that justifies buying a new wok, until then the frying pan it is! Which makes me a bit ghetto but oh well lol

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Forgotten Food Prep

7 Dec

I thought I was doing oh so well, I cooked chicken in advance so I would have meals for Friday and Saturday at work, I have all my stuff to make salads in my fridge, lots of frozen veggies in my freezer and yet…sigh, I forgot about Sunday and Monday! Ack! lol

Which means this evening when I got home from work I immediately went to the kitchen and started cooking, not how I generally like to spend my nights when I get off work! I didn’t have too too much to do, mostly cause I cheated lol but I still wish I’d remembered earlier in the day and gotten it taken care of before I went to work.

I hard boiled some eggs and cooked some turkey bacon and should have cooked some chicken or fish but that is where the cheating came in 😉

I was too busy to eat dinner at work this evening so I opted for leaving my chicken and vegg in the fridge at work and use it for lunch tomorrow. I will take a salad to put the chicken and vegg on top of and have a super tasty lunch. Is it sad that I like home made salads so much? I feel it might be…

Anyways!

The eggs are sitting in cold water, the turkey bacon is cooling so I can put it in Tupperware and soon it will all be in the fridge, placed beside the containers with my salad and dressing and I will be hightailing it to bed, somewhere I should have been a while ago but I’ve been dealing with computer stuff (upgrades an stuff, boring but necessary, shrug)

There were Girl Guides visiting at work today, caroling and visiting with the residents, they brought cookies to share and man were they tempting! They left extra boxes that anyone could take and I was thisssssss-close to plucking a box from the bag and bringing it home. I could practically envision myself sitting and mindlessly eating cookies while watching tv or doing stuff on the computer or whatever. I don’t even particularly like Girl Guide cookies, but they were still super tempting. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t really know how I managed to avoid taking a box and gorging on them…except that even while I could envision myself eating them I also couldn’t envision myself eating them…I know that doesn’t make sense but that’s the only way I can think of to say it…

I have my goal, and I so want to reach it! I couldn’t envision myself eating the cookies because then I’d feel horrible about myself for days for taking three steps back when I’d been doing so well going forward. Which means if I brought them home I’d have put them in my pantry, not eaten them and ended up throwing them out in a month when I wanted to clear the space and if I did that I’d just be annoyed with myself. Seemed easier to save myself the trouble. 😛

Mmm! Cookie! I like the vanilla ones best!

Mmm! Cookie! I like the vanilla ones best!

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Toasters Can Melt?!?!

7 Nov

I haven’t written in a while because I have been sick sick sick, ugh. All I would have written about is how I lost: my voice, my ability to swallow, my ability to breath, my ability to sleep and how I had gained: a fever, a throat that hurt so badly I was sure it was being hacked to pieces from throat gremlins, an upset stomach, a never ending cough and general misery. Double ugh!

It is now day, hmm, let’s see here, day 11 of being sick and all I can say is I think I am vaguely, slowly, bit by bit on the mend. Mostly all that is left to deal with is the inability to breath, talk and swallow…oh! and the cough, can’t forget the evil cough. sigh.

Putting all that aside, today is the first day since getting sick I have used the oven. This may seem shocking but keep in mind I barely cook normally so really, 11 days without using the oven isn’t all that shocking lol. 😛 When I had to go to work the kitchen fed me food I am sure was delicious but I could not taste, not even a little bit, it was depressing and when home I have been too tired to care about cooking so I’ve been living off of toast, banana pudding (soooo soothing on the throat!), I had chicken noodle soup one day (couldn’t taste a thing, sigh), um, and, there must be something else…oh yeah! a couple times I cooked an egg. Oh so exciting huh? See why I haven’t been writing? lol

Today I decided this is it, I actually feel different today! I’m still tiring easily, my throat still hurts, I’m still coughing, I still can’t breath through my nose and I still prefer to not talk buuuuuut something in me shifted. Maybe I am just sick of being sick. Maybe I just reached a level of boredom never before reached. Maybe my body is finally starting to fight back and I can somehow detect that. Personally I like the third option 😉

Because I felt differently today I decided I was going to cook an actual meal for dinner, sort of snub my nose as whatever bug has invaded my body. 🙂 It was a simple meal, some mixed frozen veggies and a turkey breast, easy peasy. I put the chicken in the oven, the veggies in the frying pan (no heat yet) and sat down. Then this smell started getting through even my blocked sinuses. It was the smell of burning. I couldn’t figure it out, there was nothing that could be burning in my apartment, so maybe it was coming from upstairs and working its way through the vents? I checked everything in my apartment that is electric, nothing was smoking, nothing was glitchy, so  I opened a window and tried to forget about it. After all, no smoke detectors were going off so whatever was causing that smell couldn’t be all that serious, right? Right!

Ha!

I went to the oven to finally turn the heat on under the veggies and noticed the smell was stronger. On top of the stove lives the kettle and sometimes the toaster. Normally both those items sit on the non-burner part of the stove top buuuut someone (possibly kitchen gremlins?) moved the toaster so it was sitting on top of one of the burners. Unfortunately the toaster was sitting on the back left burner which is where all the heat from the stove comes through, oops!

The result is this:

my poor toaster :(

my poor toaster 😦

The smell was disgusting! Plus, the plastic melted right on to the burner didn’t it? Why yes, yes it did, a nice big glob of melted plastic being all goopy on the burner. Ick.

I unplugged the toaster and moved it over to the sink area (I don’t have a kitchen counter, hence my toaster living on top of the stove) and hoped the plastic would cool quickly enough it wouldn’t goop onto the sink. Then I took a knife and scraped off the melted plastic from the burner. I’m gonna hafta take it off and actually scrub it but it was too hot to handle at that moment so scraping had to do.

I’m not certain if the toaster is safe to use at this point…I think it most likely is, I mean, the plastic at the bottom doesn’t have anything to do with the inside parts that actually toast the bread…right? And really, how important is structural integrity to a toaster? It’s only a toaster!

Personally I think this is further proof I am meant to be rich so I can hire a housekeeper/cook cause someone needs to save me from the various kitchen disasters I get into! lol 😉

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A New Kitchen Toy

9 May

I bought a microwave. It’s still in the box, sitting on my kitchen floor waiting to trip me tomorrow morning, hmm, maybe I should move it to the side or something…

It’s not some super fancy microwave, it’s not even a brand I recognized lol but it was on sale, and is small, and is black, so there ya go. 🙂

what mine looks like

what mine looks like

I wasn’t intending to buy one, personally, I’d rather a new blender but my dear mom insisted I buy one, her dime, because I have been without one for quite a while lol.

My old microwave died an electrical smelly death randomly one day so I took it to the recycling place, where past their prime electronics go to pass on to their next incarnation. I almost felt guilty as it was a present from my brother, a reeeeeeally nice microwave, and so pretty! Stainless steel with black accents, sigh. Oh, and it was big, as in bigger then anything I would ever need lol but I live in North America so isn’t bigger supposed to be better? 😉 I had it for over 5 years though and it moved with me many times over those 5 years so I guess it did it’s job.

But yeah, so, old microwave died, and oddly enough I didn’t jump in my suv and go right to the store to buy a new one. I figured, sometime a long time ago people survived without microwaves right? So, theoretically, I could do that…I could survive without one…This would (1) save me the money of buying a new one, (2) give me one less thing to pack the next time I move and (3) force me to cook more using the actual stove. These are all good things!

Well ha-bloody-ha!

(1) I still ended up buying foods usually heated/cooked in a microwave but instead of stocking up on Lean Cuisine when it is on sale I was buying those pre-packaged at the deli meals at Safeway and Superstore, so even though I saved money on not buying a new microwave, my food bill went up a bit I am sure.

(2) I still own a lot of shit so seriously, packing one more thing is not gonna make that big of a difference lol.

(3) I ended up eating even less if you can believe it! If I didn’t feel like cooking something in the oven or on the stove top well, there was no other way to cook it, so I either ordered in take out or didn’t eat…and of those two options I usually chose the not eating. So by not having the microwave, I actually ended up eating less food because my laziness is just that impressive! *rolls eyes*

It was number 3 that got to my mom I think. She didn’t like the idea of me not eating soooooo she insisted on my buying a microwave. And! She knows me so well! When I said ok I would search to find one on sale she went and did the searching for me and then told me where I could find one for sale…I guess she figured out my “research” could conceivably take a long time cause well, I’d keep forgetting to do it. *looks guiltily at the ground*

I actually got the one smaller then the one she told me about, same brand, mostly the same features, but like I said, smaller and therefor cheaper. I would have automatically got the one she told me about but the friend I went shopping with noticed the smaller one and pointed out the smaller one would most likely be big enough for me. He was right, so smaller I went! With the money I saved I bought a food splatter thingy to put inside of the microwave, I feel so grown up now lol 😉

I don’t envision my eating habits changing a whole lot super quickly but I’m sure before I realize it I’ll be using the microwave more and more…if only so I can eat popcorn! Mmm popcorn… 😛

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Fully Baked

4 Dec

No, not me! eesh, like if I was I’d blog about that?? 😉

The potato I had for a late dinner tonight, it was baked, in my oven, in my new apartment – the first thing to get put in the oven since I moved here, yah me for cooking! Well, ok, it barely counts as cooking, just like boiling some pasta and throwing a jar of pasta sauce on top of it doesn’t count as cooking either but hey, it’s the little steps! lol

It’s weird, I used to cook everyday, but since moving in to this apartment I barely use the kitchen, and when I do it’s to make tea, Mmm tea 🙂

First it was because when I moved my stuff in I blocked off the stove and could only open the fridge wide enough to squeeze out a small bottle of diet coke. You’d think I’d move the stuff in the kitchen so I could access those two appliances fairly quickly, but nope, not me, didn’t see the point. For the first week or so of living here I survived off of Clif Bars and diet coke, so healthy huh? Then I got some food in, actually wait, did I? Huh, no, I actually didn’t. I ate at work or grabbed take out or ate with friends and brought back left overs, but didn’t stock up the kitchen. I take some sort of weird pride out of my almost empty fridge, like the less items I have on the shelves the better. I don’t know where that mind set came from and really, I don’t care enough to track down its origin within my brain, it is just there, shrug.

But the other day I went grocery shopping, I was actually going specifically for milk for my tea (Mmm tea! lol) and while I was there I meandered on over to the produce section. I wasn’t really in a shopping frame of mine, well, food shopping, if it had been shoes or clothes or that ring I saw on ebay I really want then I’m sure I’d of dived right in to the shopping experience, but food? Nah. On a whim I decided to get a potato, I’d gotten the image of a baked potato in my head earlier that day and I guess it stuck enough that I was still semi-thinking about it when I was in the shop. Well, if I am going to bake a potato I need toppings for it right? Right! I already had cheese but I required maple flavoured baked beans to make this meal perfect. Don’t make that face! I can practically hear you making a cringy face and going “maple flavoured baked beans on a baked potato???? gross!” to that I say “don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!” 😛

I love anything maple, yummmm! and maple baked beans are a particular favourite, they are made by Heinz, go Heinz! lol They have other flavoured baked beans if maple isn’t your thing, but, well, how could maple not be your thing? *confused face* It had been so long since I baked a potato (I wasn’t allowed them on my most recent meal plan and they have remained on my personal list of “don’t touch that food!”) that I actually had to google how to bake a potato, lame. Luckily, I found a great site, not like baking a potato is hard *rolls eyes* but they had some ideas I hadn’t heard of before and I quite like how the potato turned out. Basically, oven at 425F, scrub clean the potato, stab potato, rub potato with olive oil, sprinkle some salt and pepper on it, place on tin foil that is on a baking tray, stick in oven. It takes 50-60 minutes in the oven, remember to turn the potato every 20 minutes and occasionally stab it to check on its progress. Easy peasy!

My addition of course is to heat up the baked beans so when the potato is done I can cut it open, put some cheese on it, drown it in baked beans and then settle down to a nice cozy yummy dinner. 🙂

The result had a nice crunchy skin and fluffy inside. 🙂 I think I will skip the salt and pepper next time though, I never use salt in anything, seriously, never. I am not that person who feels salt needs to be added to every freakin dish to provide some flavour. I generally like how foods taste when they taste like themselves, not when they taste like salty versions of themselves…this seems to be something not many people agree with me about, ah well, it’s good to be different lol.  I found the salt and pepper taste to be quite strong and I didn’t use all that much, I guess it is because I so rarely use pepper and never use salt that my taste buds notice them quite easily. For the most part though I could drown out the salt and pepper flavour by making sure some cheese and baked beans were on the spoon with the potato.

I suppose I should get back in to the swing of things cooking wise. Don’t really have the excuse of not being able to access my fridge or stove anymore but, sigh, I got so used to not cooking that the idea of doing it again, on a daily basis, *groan* is enough to make me take a deep sigh and contemplate living off of Clif Bars again. 😛 Well, Clif Bars and maybe a multi-vitamin or something…

😉

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