Pintesting In The Kitchen - Crockpot Potato Soup

Oh my! this particular pintest began a little misleading! My husband and I hadn't eaten lunch for the day yet and it was already seeming to get a bit late so I needed something that was tasty and could be whipped up relatively quickly.

When I first read this pin, I thought that it said that this recipe takes only 30 minutes. Not so! It takes 5 hours and 30 minutes - huge difference. Five hours still left me with enough time for a late-ish dinner so I went ahead and made it anyway. It was already on my list of things to make during this pay period.

I gathered my ingrediants.

Into the crock pot went the has browns.

Chicken stock.

Cream cheese.

Cream of chicken soup.

Realize the cream cheese isn't supposed to go in yet. take it out and put it in a Tupperware sandwich keeper while it waits its turn to be added.

Pepper. I used a full teaspoon since my husband is a big fan of pepper.

I also had to omit the onions because he is vehemently opposed to onions.

While I waited the five hours I chose to make a chicken kiev to tide me over.

 Finally the time came!

The whole family enjoyed the soup. We tried it with cheese; and then with cheese and a bit of garlic salt. I consider the fact that my little lamb also ate a huge bonus.

Kitchen Testing And Getting My Kid To Eat More Vegetables - Ethiopian Cabbage

The very first time I visited Columbus, Ohio I took notice of the places in the campus area to eat. After all, I would soon be moving to that very area - knowing what there is to eat is always key to me.

One of the top two that jumped out at me and had me excited to try it was a restaurant called Blue Nile. Ethiopian food in central Ohio wasn't exactly what this Virginia girl was exactly expecting. My husband is the very definition of a picky eater so there was no chance that he would ever eat there so I would just have to wait for my opportunity.

While I waited for my moment to pounce I did actually hear someone's opinion of the restaurant. A neighbor of ours that can only be described as a pompous, pushy, annoyingly, know-it-all told me it was disgusting. I don't remember him even being able to tell me what he ate while he was there. Knowing this fella', there was a very real chance that he was just blowing more of the hot air we'd come to associate with him.

My chance finally arose. Two women I knew from a local yarn shop (or LYS to those of you in the fiber community and knitting-know) wanted to meet for lunch. I don't remember whose idea it was to meet at the Blue Nile and I really don't care. I was just ecstatic to finally be going.

One of the other women had also never tried the food there but the other had been going for years and was able to offer us some gentle guidance about what certain words on the menu meant.

Four or five years later and I still jump at an opportunity to eat at Blue Nile. I've moved further away though so the food isn't as quickly accessible as it once was.

For today's kitchen test I will be attempting to make a dish similar to one of my favorites at Blue Nile. Brought on by a desire to go as well as a little girl decidedly becoming fussy about eating vegetables (she's never been picky before) - now seemed like a good time to find an Ethiopian recipe to test out at home.

I only had one large carrot left from making yet another bath of Vietnamese pickled vegetables to try to add to the amount of veggies my little lamb is eating.

Shred a head of cabbage and wash thoroughly.

Dice five potatoes. I like to let mine soak after I rinse them a couple of times to rid them of as much excess starch as possible.

I probably didn't slice it as thinly as the recipe really wanted but I was happy with the thickness.

Cook your carrots for about five minutes on medium heat until they are nice and hot. I didn't have any onions :(

Add cabbage and spices. Allow this to cook for around fifteen to twenty minutes.

By the time you are ready to add the potatoes you should have the wonderful smell of your spices wafting in the air.

Cover and continue to cook until the potatoes are soft.

Serve and eat.

Was it exactly like Blue Nile? Well, no - it wasn't going to be because they don't include carrot and potato. The dish was however, very good. It's just really, really too bad I didn't have onions because that would have made it just about perfect.

Did the decidedly picky eater decide to join in on the Ethiopian noms for the evening? She had seconds!

Pintesting In The Kitchen - Crockpot Ham

We ran into some issues with our dishwasher and garbage disposal the other week. Ultimately I ended up with a massive pile of dishes that needed to be done once the dishwasher was finally fixed. When you just keep running out of dishes and you allow yourself to be convinced that your apartment complex will be fixing things the next day cooking anything can become quite a chore.

Once I got the dishes to a much more manageable place I was able to not just consider cooking but to pretty much resume my regularly scheduled life.

On my most recent trip to the grocery store my chosen splurge was a ham.

Nothing really large because we are only a family of three, but large enough I felt like we had a good shot at some leftovers.

TO MY CROCK POT!!!! .... but first TO PINTREST!!!!

Today's kitchen pintest comes from this pin and the source pin here.

Cooking ham is usually a pretty simple affair but what can I say? I enjoy testing out the pins on pintrest.

I rubbed my ham with brown sugar.

Then chose to mix my maple syrup and pineapple juice together before pouring it over the ham.

I set the crock pot for five hours and felt good about the fact that tonight there would be an actual home-cooked meal.

The resulting ham was really good. I didn't get around to taking pictures because I was so hungry by the time it was ready that pictures weren't even on my list.

Is this pin worth a try? It sure it. It's a really common way to prepare ham just with the addition of a crock pot.

I don't make it a habit to keep pineapple juice so I just used the juice from a can of pineapple slices. The husbands favorite dessert is pineapple upside-down cake so I figured this was a great excuse to make him a yummy dessert to follow up a meal that involved actual cooking. Sadly when I went to do so I found we were out of eggs so I ended up making a quick spice cake instead.

Kitchen Testing - Winter Sore Throat "Tea"

Some months ago it seemed that a great deal of the women I know on Facebook were all "like"ing the same "Farmer's Pal" post. But of course, that's really how it works isn't it? One person "like"s it and then we all see it and then people start following suit.

What was all the hubbub about? "Winter sore throat 'tea'"

I mentioned recently that my little lamb and I got sick. My sore throat far outweighed the annoyance of my ever dripping nose.

This is a recipe you should really make months in advance but who can really remember what you had going on months ago that kept you from doing it? Besides - there are still more winter months to go!

I bought ginger with the intention of using it in some kimchee for my mother, but my piece was large enough that I could spare half to make some tea.

I sliced it up and then got out my lemons.

Layer lemons and ginger.

Then pour honey over top and watch it drip through the open spaces.

Now I play the waiting game. This mix looks so wonderful I almost hope for a sore throat. By the time this post goes out it will only have been in the fridge six days. The original post says to wait months but I'll be trying to keep an eye on it to see when it congeals.

Foodie Friday - Home-Made Raising Cane's Sauce

I friggin LOVE Raising Cane's chicken. I was even insistent that there be Raising Cane's at my wedding!

If you've ever had it before I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you that the 100 pieces of chicken we ordered for our very, very small wedding, went incredibly fast. I had a guest come late that knew there would be Cane's and when he met up with me he was sadly holding a cup of Cane sauce saying that he could tell it was here but that was all that was left.

When I first tried Raising Canes, I loved the chicken but didn't care for the sauce. The second time I had it the obsession that so many Cane's fans feel for it finally hit me. I've tried it on many non-chicken foods including hot dogs.

Copy cat recipes have popped up all over the internet and it seems where you find these recipes you always have someone who has worked for Canes leaving the comment of how they already know the recipe and/or the recipe you are looking at it completely wrong. I have yet to see an employee tell anyone in a public forum what the real recipe is.

It was dinner time and we needed to eat. I decided on some leftover fried chicken and some chicken patties (because frankly we didn't have enough of the "fried chicken" to go around). Suddenly I felt the urge to test one of these alleged Cane Sauce recipes.

I went with the one I found here.

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup ketchup
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Lots of ground pepper

Mix first 4 ingredients the cover top with pepper. Mix well and cover again with pepper.

Refrigerate for several hours to let the flavors marry

I wasn't going to wait hours for sauce. We were already hungry. I think I waited a bit more like 10 - 30 minutes. When I was ready to eat I asked my husband to go get the food - I knew he'd take forever to do it so that added some extra time on from my 20 - 30 minutes for my flavours to marry.

The results:

First impression? Needs a tad more ketchup. But I was too hungry and too lazy to do anything about it so I kept on keepin' on.

It was good. Was it dead-on exact? Definitely not but still pretty close. If I'd had garlic salt I would have used that instead but I was out. I think that could improve the taste even more.

The recipe is totally worth trying and close enough I don't feel a true Caniac should be disappointed.

*I used Hellmans mayo and Heinz ketchup
**My husband took the pictures not me