Showing posts with label Cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cooking. Show all posts
Set your steak so that it gets to room temperature. I went ahead and had my cast iron skillet on the stove with the heat on high. The trick is to make sure your skillet is super hot. While that was heating up, I lightly covered the steaks in oil on both sides, then added my favorite seasonings. I threw on some salt, pepper, garlic seasoning and onion seasoning. The original recipe called for keeping the steak in the skillet once you put it in the oven BUT I had four steaks and one skillet. I got out one of my Pampered Chef Stoneware dishes and put that in the oven at 400 degrees so that it might be similar to the skillet and it's heat.
Once you are ready, put one steak in the skillet and leave for 1-2 minutes. I peeked to check to see when it was browned to my liking. Once it has a beautiful brown coloring, flip it and do the other side. Repeat with all of your steaks. As they cooked like this, I added them on a plate. It's a pretty quick process. Once they were done "frying", I put the steaks into the hot stone dish with a pat of butter on each one. Leave in the oven until cooked through!
As you can see, I served it up with a side of green beans, garlic mashed potatoes and some good ole cornbread. Dessert? Brownies made from cake mix! Check us out for that recipe next time.
P.S. Remind me to get better at taking food pictures!
We often get asked if we can manage to eat a decent, filling meal with the items we stockpile. Here's what we're feating on tonight, all prepared from our pantry.
Assorted Bone In Pork Chops 4.49 for a package of 5
Ken's Marinade .89 after coupon @ Publix
Betty Crocker Au Gratin .30 (.60 a box, used just one package)
Lima Beans $1
Cost to feed the family tonight? 6.68 plus tax. Not bad for an enjoyable meal at home!
I think my husband may propose to me again if I keep cooking like I have been! We had leg quarters (5 for $2.80) out yesterday to thaw and that moment came. That moment of what shall we do with these?
Don't freak out when you see the ingredients. Bobby is NOT a fan of mayonnaise and LOVED these. My Dad is not a fan of chicken and LOVED these. the mixture keeps the breading on as well as sealing in the juices. This was the most tender, juiciest chicken we've had in some time.
Leg Quarters (any chicken will do)
Mayonnaise
Milk
Ranch Dressing
Flour
Bread Crumbs (I mixed original with Italian)
Preheat to 400
First, wash your chicken and pat it dry. Put some flour on a plate and your breadcrumbs on a seperate plate. In a bowl, mix 1 cup mayo, splash of milk and a few squirts of Ranch dressing. I made my mix a bit thick, which is what you want. This will stick better to the chicken.
Dip your chicken in the flour mixture first. Once I had both sides coated, I used a BBQ brush to add my mayo mix to one side of the chicken. Now place the may coated side on the breadcrumbs plate. I then coated the bottom of the chicken with the mayo mix, then flipped it to cover it with breadcrumbs. Coat them well!
Put your chicken in your baking dish. (I covered a cookie sheet with foil for less cleanup!) If you see spots that need more breading, sprinkle some! Repeat this process for all of your chicken pieces. I let ours cook for about an hour. These are so pretty and tasty!
I served this with broccoli rice au gratin and we were stuffed, with leftovers to boot!
Okay, I am on a roll this week, and the family is getting spoilt! Last night for dinner we had pan seared pork bites, rice, organic green beans and croissant rolls.
Pork stew meat (on sale for under $3)
Salt and Pepper to taste
Garlic (the powder is fine in a pinch)
Onions (the powder is fine in a pinch)
Butter (it makes life better, trust me)
Wash your meat first, arrange it out on a plate and season well. We wanted to keep it simple and just used salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. There is so much you can add to oomph this up, though, so if you are feeling creative, GO FOR IT! Throw a tablespoon or two of butter in a hot pan. Let this melt well and get super hot. Once it is, toss in your pork stew meat and let it cook until it is a pretty brown. Then turn over and let this side get nice and brown, too. Remove from heat and put on a seperate plate. Because some of the meat is larger than others, it may be pink on the inside still. Just to be safe, once all the meat is browned, I put it in the oven for a minutes.
Again, these were so delicious! My family loved how tender and juicy they were. We served it with steak sauce (ketchup for the little one). Two nights in a row, everyone had seconds.
What made us buy pork stew meat? Well, if you have tried to buy beef lately, then you know why. Beef has gotten so expensive, we look for alternatives, i.e. turkey burgers, pork stew meat, pork steaks, etc. My Dad didn't even realize it was pork and thought it was just really tender steak.
Where did we find affordable, good quality meat? We mainly buy our meat from Food World, and swear by their quality. We check once a week in the meat section for sales. When we find something cheap, we stock up. Rather than buy 2 packages of chicken legs for $2.50 each, we will buy 6-8 packages. That way on the weeks when there aren't meat sales, we still have plenty.
All I can say about last night's dinner, is WOW. OH, WOW!! We have a large stockpile of chicken, especially chicken legs. Well, I had chicken legs out for dinner, knew everyone was tired of fried (gasp! a southerner tired of fried chicken?!) and baked chicken, so I went searching. My mission? Anything other than fried or baked chicken (duh). This is what I came up with, and yes! we had everything on hand!
12 chicken legs (use whatever cut you have)
3/4 cup soy sauce
1 cup brown sugar
sesame seeds (not necessary, but they look pretty, lol)
Preheat oven to 350-400
Wash chicken off thoroughly. Mix all ingredients except the chicken in a bowl. If you have the time, let the chicken marinate on both sides in the sauce for a few hours. I didn't have the extra time and it still came out yummy! Cook for about an hour. I sprinkled some more brown sugar and sauce on the chicken towards the end.
These are delicious. Well, we needed a side that fit the taste of teriyaki chicken, so I went on another search and came up with a simple, modified version of Fried Noodles! Again, I just used what we had in stock, so this is a base recipe and can be foofooed up. Yes, I said foofooed.
1 box Angel Hair Pasta (Ramen is what it calls for)
1 bottle soy sauce
Vegetable Oil
3 Eggs
Sesame seeds
Pinapple Juice
Salt, Pepper to taste
Chili Seasoning
I cooked the noodles to al dente (2-3 minutes). As the noodles were cooking, I beat 3eggs and scrambled them in a pan. Put those in a small bowl for now. Once your noodles are done, drain. I put a 3-4 tablespoons of oil in my pain, got it hot then added in my noodles , the soy til it is a pretty brown, eggs, splashes of pineapple juice, sprinkle in some chili powder, some sesame and stir. I had frying tongs I used to toss the noodles around. There was no science to this recipe. There was a lot of praying and "God, please let this at least be edible..."
Taaaaaddaaaaa! YUMMY! I was shocked. I tried two new recipes in one night, and both came out splendidly. Everyone wanted seconds and yes, there were thirds for some. Lucky Bobby has it for lunch. The pinapples were cut up and served as a side and will be part of my Dad's snack today. Try this, add to it, but most of all, enjoy it!
Sorry for the brief break! As most of you know, it was Mardi Gras Tuesday and our family went downtown for the day. Thanks to a fantstic stockpile, we had plenty of ribs, drumsticks, wings, hot dogs and hamburgers (from my cousin's stockpile!). We were also able to pack plenty of drinks and snacks from what we have on hand. We spent very litte which is always our sensible goal!
Tonight for dinner, we are having Pork Steaks grilled by Bobby! We bought the pack for under $5 and it normally has about 9-12 steaks in it. Plenty for two nights and maybe a lunch or two, too! Sides will include a salad ($2), Uncle Ben's rice (under 75 cents generally). You can feed your family for LESS!!
We've already begun our list for Publix this week, as well as our lists for CVS, Walgreens and the Farmer's Market. For fruits and vegetables, we often go to Saraland Produce or Jimmy Lowe's. Saraland is closer to us therefore we visit it more often.
I was talking to someone recently who asked, what do you fix for dinner? She pointed out she didn't see a lot of main course or side course foods in my pictures or lists always.
See, that's the thing about being stocked up so much. I have lots to choose from already! A lot of what we buy is to restock in certain areas of our little Anderson store, erm pantry or snacks for around the house, parties or lunches. You also have to remember that we spread the groceries between our house, Jeanna's parent's house and Jeanna's grandmother's house.
We will try to keep you updated with dinners in our house just to show you that yes, we eat real food, no, it isn't a diet of chips and coke, and that we eat well, too! Our house feeds a minimum of five people every night (Jeanna, Bobby, Aidan, Nanna and PawPaw). On weekends, it is nothing to randomly invite people over for dinner at the last minute simply because we can and we enjoy the company.
So, what did we have for dinner last night? We had ribs (under $5 for the pack), baked beans and texas toast. The ribs were enough for each adult to have two and still have leftovers for tonight! Aidan doesn't like BBQ (we have to change this if he plans on staying in the South!) and asked for something simple. He wasn't feeling up to par and just wanted one Toaster Strudel.
Tonight we plan on eating the leftover ribs, leftover beans and adding another side to the mix. I'll make Aidan something else, of course (see anti-BBQ above).
