January 23: Corn Bread Stuffing with Sausage and Green Apples

Funny story. So, you remember I sprained my ankle yesterday. I spent today resting and going to the doctor and doing what was absolutely necessary. So I didn't do anything like washing dishes or cleaning house. I had every intention of making this recipe, so much so that I went to the effort of making the corn bread for the stuffing early this morning. But then my ankle started hurting and I ran out of time. After I picked up the girls from their schools, I found that my daughter had gotten into the cornbread and spread half of if all over the bathroom.

I never did get around to cooking the dinner, so we had leftover ham and half-eaten cornbread for dinner. Here is a picture of it:

 

Tomorrow is grocery day. I'd like to say that my ankle will be healed enough for me to get all the ingredients for the next week's crock-pot meals, wash up all the dishes, and prepare the meal (chicken stew with herb dumplings). My husband told me to go to WalMart (because they have a riding buggy), buy some stuff for sandwiches and paper plates, and eat that for the next few days. I'd like to stick to my plan, but we'll have to see what tomorrow holds. Maybe I'll feel excellent tomorrow. I'm praying I will.

 

About the stuffing, I do have all the ingredients, so I'll make it sometime, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. We'll have to see. I'll update this post when I do eventually make it.

 

ETA: 1/31/13

 

I made the stuffing today. It was about 3:00 when I started making it. I gathered up the ingredients:

 

I spread cubed French bread and cubed corn bread on a baking sheet and baked it at 350 for 20 minutes, until dry:

 

While that was baking, I cooked the sausage in a medium skillet and transferred it to the crockpot with a slotted spatula:

 

I put the chopped onion, apple and celery into the skillet and cooked it for 5 minutes:

To that I added sage, rosemary, thyme, and pepper (1/4 tsp of each), and 1/2 tsp salt. Then I transferred it to the crockpot. I added the dried bread cubes and stirred it up. Then I poured 3 cups of chicken broth over top:

 

I cooked it on high for 4 hours while we went to my Mops marriage meeting:

 

I ate this tonight as a midnight snack:

 

I really liked this stuffing, and the funny thing is that my husband liked it too. He has NEVER liked stuffing. He doesn't like soggy bread, he doesn't like celery, and he doesn't like sage. Now, I must admit, the small amount of French bread I put in this recipe turned into slime, and it wasn't good. But the cornbread burned out absolutely delicious. Not soggy at all, just pleasantly moist. And he loved the sausage! I couldn't taste the apples, but maybe it's because I used a red one instead of a green one (someone ate all my green ones). So maybe it's just his mama's super eggy, mushy cornbread stuffing and stovetop that he doesn't like. So far, he has liked all the crockpot bread recipes I've made (French toast, English bread pudding, and this one).

January 22: English Bread Pudding

Here is how I made this bread pudding. First I gathered up the ingredients:

 

I tore up the bread, poured 1 3/4 cups of milk over top, and let it sit for 30 minutes:

 

After that I added the chopped apple, dried fruit, and 1/2 cup of chopped nuts. I used pecans:

 

Then I mixed up 1/2 stick of melted butter, an egg, 1/3 cup of brown sugar, some cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. I poured that mixture over top. I didn't read the directions well enough. I thought it said to just pour it on top and cook it, but I was supposed to stir it up well. I didn't stir it:

 

I let it cook for 3 1/2 hours on low, and then I stirred it:

 

And served it:

 

Today was the coldest day of the winter so far. When I left to take my daughter to school this morning it was -11 degrees. Fahrenheit! I had to go pick up the girl I babysit after school, and I was outside for a short length of time. But when we got home, we were chilled to the bone. I cannot tell you how nice it was to come home to a sweet, hot, cinnamon-spiced bread pudding! It was so delicious, so warming, an absolutely perfect afternoon snack for a day like today. I ate so much of this, that I couldn't eat anything for dinner. I think I ate at least 4 big bowl fulls! My husband normally hates bread pudding and anything with soggy bread. But this bread was not soggy at all. It just tasted like sweet, warm bread slightly toasted, scented with spices and mixed with fruit. Even he liked it!

 

Here is what I would do differently next time:

1. Spray or line the crockpot before I put anything in it. The stuff stuck really bad.

2. Put a little more liquid or another egg into the mixture that you pour over top.

3. Definitely read the directions and mix it up after you pour it on top.

 

On a different note, tonight I twisted my ankle and fell coming down the stairs. I did it last year too. Hopefully it won't be as bad as it was last year, and I will be able to function. We'll see.

January 21: Middle Eastern Beef and Eggplant Stew

This recipe is from the Soup for Supper section. Here are the ingredients:

 

I cooked up the eggplant:

 

Then transferred it to the crockpot. I added quartered mushrooms, diced tomatoes, cubed beef top round steak, an onion, beef broth, garlic, salt, cumin, red pepper flakes, cinnamon, lemon peel, and pepper.

 

That cooked on low for 6 hours:

 

And we served it up:

 

My husband took one look at this and said, "I sure hope this tastes better than it looks." And it did. He said it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. But he wishes it was only beef and broth. I guess he didn't like the vegetables much. What I wonder is why you have to cook the eggplant first. It sure does get mushy. Maybe it's just for the flavor. I really liked the broth, and the chunks weren't too bad. Pretty good for a weeknight meal, I would say.

January 20: Autumn Apple and Squash Soup

Tonight's meal was a vegetarian soup from the "Veggie Variety" section of the cookbook. I meant to take it to the hymn sing tonight, but it got started too late and it was supposed to cook for 8 hours. So it became more of a midnight snack, and we'll have it for lunch tomorrow. When we got home from our afternoon church service, it was almost 3:00. That's when I started by gathering the ingredients:

 

I melted some butter in a sauce pan and added the chopped squash, celery, and onion. For some reason, the recipe didn't say to chop the onion or celery, it probably meant to, but I followed the recipe. It all worked out in the end, but chopping could have made this step easier:

 

Then I added those vegetables to the crockpot with the apples, thyme, and sage. That cooked on high for about 8 hours:

 

When it was all cooked, I pureed the whole lot with my new immersion blender that I got for Christmas. This is the first time I used it. It was SO much easier than transferring everything to the blender in batches!

 

The pumpkin seeds were toasted in water and honey in a small skillet:

 

The soup was served with blue cheese and toasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds) on top:

 

This soup turned out very delicious! The flavors are deep with the fresh herbs, aromatic vegetables, and the vegetable stock. The apples give it a nice, but not too strong sweetness, as do the pumpkin seeds. And the blue cheese gives it just the right complexity of flavor. It would make a good first course to a meal, but I don't think my husband would want as the entire meal. I will send him to work tomorrow with a portion of this along with some leftover ham from yesterday.

 

There are some variations on this meal listed at the bottom of the recipe. It says "Add lump crabmeat or serve with cinnamon and butter toasted croutons." It also gives a description of the pumpkin seeds: "Pepitas, or shelled pumpkin seeds, are available at specialty and Latin food stores and make a great garnish to almost any soup or salad. They can be sweetened and spiced as desired and lightly toasted in a skillet on the stovetop."

January 19: Harvest Ham Supper

Today's recipe was a simple one. The ingredients were few:

 

I cut up 6 carrots and quartered 3 sweet potatoes and formed a rack with them in the bottom of the crockpot:

 

Then I put a ham on top and poured a cup of maple syrup over everything:

 

It cooked on low for 6 hours:

 

I really like the carrots and sweet potatoes like this, but this is not the way I like my ham. I like it cold, straight out of the package. I wonder if the ham was on the bottom, it would have made it more moist, if I would have liked it better. DH didn't really like it. He said the carrots tasted like sweet potatoes, the ham tasted like carrots, and the sweet potatoes tasted rotten. Next time I'll just cook the carrots and sweet potatoes, then serve it with cold ham.

January 18: Vegetable Jollof Rice

I had a problem today. It was a sick child and a lack of motivation. So, after taking my child to the doctor at 1:30 in the afternoon, I hung out at Walmart for at least an hour waiting on a prescription. Then, when I came home to start the dinner, I realized I had to chop an eggplant and let it sit in salt for a whole hour before I could even start cooking. So this meal didn't even get started until 5PM. Which is when my husband comes home from work. So I cheated. I put the mixture in a pot on the stove and cooked it for 25 minutes instead of 3 1/2 hours in the crockpot. Other than that, I followed the recipe exactly. Here is how I did it:

First I gathered up the ingredients:

 

Then I cut up an eggplant and salted it and let it drain for 1 hour. After the hour, I rinsed and drained the eggplant:

 

The eggplant was browned on all sides in 2 batches in a skillet:

 

It was removed to a plate, then onions, carrots, pepper, and garlic were cooked in the skillet for a few minutes:

 

All that was supposed to be put in the crockpot, but I put it in a large saucepan. Then I mixed in the rice, chili powder and salt:

 

I drained some tomatoes into a 1 quart measuring cup, added 2 cups of vegetable stock, and then filled it up with water to make a quart. All that and the tomatoes were added to the pot:

 

The cooked eggplant was put on top, and the whole thing cooked for 25-30 minutes.

 

I gave it a good stir and served it up:

 

I don't make vegetarian meals that often because they don't fill up DH. This was tasty, and it was very filling, to me. The first step of salting the eggplant took away it's bitterness. I really like eggplant most of the time. I didn't really need meat today, but I did eat quite a generous helping of this. My DH had some peanut butter and crackers just now to make up for the lack of meat, so it's all good.

 

There is a tip at the bottom of the page. It says, "Jollof Rice (also spelled "jolof" or sometimes "djolof") is an important dish in many West African cultures."

 

I know I made this on the stove, but I have no doubt it would have been just the same in the crockpot, so I'm counting it, even though I cheated a little!

January 17: Seafood and Tomato Herb Ragout

Today's recipe is a ragout... which I think is supposed to be a mixture of different kinds of food in a sauce. This turned out more like a soup. Today was grocery day, but I was feeling extremely exhausted to the point of being sick this morning. So I took a morning nap with the baby and then met hubby for lunch. I did my shopping after lunch, so it was 3PM before I turned on the crockpot.

Here are the ragout ingredients - all very fresh:

 

I chopped up the vegetables and dumped all the ingredients in the crockpot except the seafood:

 

 I cooked it on high for 3 hours since it was so late, then I added the scallops, shrimp, and haddock and cooked it for 30 minutes more:

 

We served it up over rice:

 

This meal was very expensive, so I think my expectations were so high that I couldn't enjoy the meal. I expected the scallops (which were over $1/piece) to taste like heaven itself! But they were kind of tough and very bland. A couple of the shrimp were undercooked, and the veggies were still crunchy. I think it could have stood to cook another hour or so.

 

This is the kind of meal that I think some people love. I like seafood, but when you put it into a tomatoey broth, it just doesn't do it for me. I would prefer something creamy I think. Not that I won't eat this, but I don't think I'll make it again.