Relocating

Oh, hi! Were you wondering where I've been?  

I've been wondering where my brain has been, truth be told. 

Anyway, I'm moving things around and combining my two blogs into one blog. If you want to keep reading you'll need to change your feed settings!  Click over to my other blog and subscribe from there.

Thanks, have a good weekend, and enjoy the SuperBowl!

Nontraditional Christmas - Mexican Pile On

GP and I spent Christmas at my Mom's house in Texas this year. It was wonderful; the temps were in the 70's, I got to play with my niece and nephew so much, I saw my best friend and her baby for the first time in over a year, and I ate Taco Bueno. We don't have this leader of fast food Mexican in North Carolina, so GP and I always stop by for lunch one day when we're in TX. We also wanted to get some real barbecue, but we sadly never got the chance. 

Strangely, of all the eating we did over the holiday, we never had a traditional Christmas meal. Oh, sure, we had the traditional Christmas breakfast that our family always shares, but we didn't have the turkey and dressing with cranberry sauce supper that we usually enjoy. Instead, we did things quite a bit differently this year. We got together with one side of the family and had tortilla soup and sandwiches for dinner, then had the other side over for Mexican Pile On. 

See, if you ever need to feed a humongous group of people but don't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, Mexican Pile On is the way to go. All you really need to do is cook up some taco meat and some rice, then set out an assembly line of food and let people make their own plates (pile it on their own plates, hence the name Pile On). 

Here's how it goes:

Prep time: 20 to 30 minutes

Servings: 8 to 12, with 2 lbs of meat

Can easily be cut in half or doubled

Ingredients:

chips such as Tostitos or Fritos

3 - 4 cups cooked rice

1 -2 lbs cooked taco meat (ground beef or turkey cooked with taco seasoning - easy)

diced tomatoes and onions

shredded lettuce

grated cheese

sour cream

guacamole

Procedure:

1. Cook the meat and rice

2. Lay everything out in the order listed above.

3. Give people plates, and let them build their meal however they want.

4. Eat.

Remember to take smaller portions than you think necessary, because by the time you make it to the end, your plate will likely be overflowing.

Happy New Year!

Well, I probably should have posted this one on New Year's Eve, on the off chance that someone not acquainted with this little tradition should want to join in. Unfortunately, I didn't even start the cooking until yesterday morning, so you get a late post. Sorry 'bout that.

Here in the South, but particularly in Texas, we eat black-eyed peas on New Years Day. The old superstition is that eating them will bring you wealth and luck in the year ahead. While I can't say I have ever really obtained either outcome, I can attest to the fact that I've never missed a year, I've never been too hard pressed to make ends meet, and I don't believe in luck (there goes that half!). However, with 2009 looming ahead as a year of big changes (dissertations, grad schools, moves, and job hunts), I'm not taking my chances. So after ringing in the new year with some friends, I managed to wake up early New Year's morning to put on a crock pot of peas.

Just throwing black-eyed peas in a pot of water with some salt and pepper and letting them cook will be delicious enough for most people. After all, they have a great flavor all by themselves. Still, as a girl who grew up on soul food and country kitchens, I know the real way to make anything taste better is by adding one of GP's favorite flavors. Bacon.

Black-eyed Peas

cook time: variable, depending on how you want to do it

serves: 4 for lunch as a main dish, with maybe enough left over for a small helping at supper

Ingredients:

20 oz dried black-eyed peas

7 cups of water

3 slices bacon, cut into half inch strips (I don't actually eat the bacon, 'cause I like my bacon crispy, not soggy)

salt and pepper to taste

Procedure:

Throw everything together in a crock pot or in a large pot on the stove. Heat until cooked through.  Eat, enjoy, and have a good new years day. I meant to throw in a chopped up cubanelle pepper for some extra spice, but completely forgot that I had the pepper on hand. Maybe I'll have to throw that in when I reheat some of these peas.

Now, my crock pot never understood the fact that it is supposed to be a slow cooker, so these peas were done in about 4 hours on the high setting. If your pot is not quite so hot, start your peas in the morning and they should be plenty ready to eat by supper. Just make sure to always keep them covered with water so they don't dry out. Easy-peasy! No pun intended. 

Happy Holidays!

This afternoon I'll be leaving to head home for the holidays! I hope you all enjoy some time off and get to see friends and family. Be safe if you're traveling, eat some good food, drink some good eggnog, and relax!

I'll be off in the land of dial up, so no blogging or commenting from me for about a week. 

Leftovers - Chicken salad

On Sunday night, I got back to healthy eating by cooking dinner for me and GP. We had chicken with a strawberry/spinach/walnut salad and mushroom/pea risotto. Now, you may have noticed, as I have, that for some reason chicken breasts always come in packs of three. So I cooked all three:

Gena's Sunday night easy chicken

Preheat oven to 325^oF. Line an 8" baking dish with foil for easy clean up.

Open chicken, and leave in package. Sprinkle with a tiny bit of salt and pepper, 1/8 tsp Tarragon, and 1/8 tsp thyme. Taking chicken out of package, put it seasoned side down in the baking dish. Repeat the seasonings on newly exposed side. Drizzle with just a tiny bit of olive oil. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until juices run clear. Eat!

GP and I each ate half a breast, leaving us with the equivalent of 2 breasts left over. Now, GP and I don't really like redundancy in our dinners, unless said dinner is pizza, in which case we will eat the same thing everyday for a month. What that means is that leftovers don't really get eaten in our house, except leftover pizza.

In order to keep this really delicious chicken from going to waste, I immediately tore it into thin strips and put it in the fridge. See, I was planning ahead here. I had planned to have extra chicken to be used in making chicken salad the next night! It was a stroke of pure genius on my part, one which may not be repeated for a very long time.  

Gena's Monday night leftover chicken salad

2 cooked, shredded chicken breasts (about 3 cups)

1/2 medium cucumber, diced small

1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped

1/2 red onion, chopped small

1/3 cup mayonnaise

4 oz crumbled feta cheese

salt and pepper to taste (or be bold and use Cajun seasoning instead!)

Mix it all together in a big bowl. Serve over a bed of spinach, or on toast, or with crackers. Whatever floats your boat. 

Somehow, I forgot to add the Feta. It was still tasty!

Now, of course you can use low fat mayo or Miracle Whip instead of real mayo if that's your thing. Also, plain yogurt or sour cream could be used as well. 

So there you go! One night you spend a half hour making dinner, and the next night you spend 5 minutes chopping stuff and don't have to turn on any kitchen appliance. I should really do this more often.

We ate on TV trays because the table looks like this:

Yeah, that's my fault.

In which I ramble about running and pie

Thanks, everyone, for the encouragement on the race! My goal was to have fun, keep my pace, and make it back in under 2 hours. I cut it pretty close, finishing in 1:59:36, and averaging 9:08 per mile! I was hoping to post some pictures from the official photographer's site, but apparently they aren't so fast in getting them up. Oh well.  

Not surprisingly, I ran a whole lotta miles while training for this half marathon. According to my running spreadsheet, I managed 88.72 miles in October and 79.3 miles in November (that was a tough month - foot pain made me take more rest days than I otherwise would have). One of the side effects of running that much is that I was hungry ALL THE TIME! If there was food around, I would eat it. Especially if it contained sugar. Because of that, I managed to fall prey to something that often happens to runners when training for distance events. I gained weight. Seven pounds, to be as precise as my $5 scale will allow me to be. 

Now, a good part of the gain is also because I am so tired coming home from work that we just order take out instead of cooking good, clean, healthy food.  Which is something I am doing my best to remedy now, in the last week before we head off on Christmas break, by getting back to writing out meal plans and having things ready to be cooked when I get home.  Or making GP cook, since he's done with classes now.

Do not be alarmed, people! I will still post unhealthy, delicious things on this here blog so that you can enjoy succulent dishes to your heart's content. Like the recipe and link to pumpkin pie I'm putting below!  

One of the unhealthy things I cooked for Thanksgiving supper this year was pumpkin pie. The other was corn casserole, which used an entire stick of butter for an 8-inch dish. I threw health to the wind this season! But back to the pie.  So, I was planning on using the world's easiest recipe, from my Great Aunt Pearl, but then realized I didn't have one of the 3 ingredients in my pantry. So I turned to allrecipes.com, the savior of many a cook, and found a recipe that did not require me to go to the store.  It was simple, easy, and sooo good!  

The filling (link here) made more than would fit in my crust, so I pulled out some ramekins, and GP and I each had a little pie for dessert that night. I ate some before I took the picture. Below is the recipe from Pearl (click to huge-ify), typed up and a scan of the original. See how easy it is? Yet, I didn't have the Eagle Brand milk. 

Pumpkin pie is one of my favorites. I hope you enjoy these recipes, and tell me what your favorite seasonal dessert is in the comments!

Prepared

I went just an hour or so ago and picked up my race packet for tomorrow's half marathon. Did I mention I'm running a half marathon? Well, I am. It's the first one I've ever raced, and I'm really just aiming to run it in a good time, enjoy myself, and making some good memories. I know I'm not fast, and I'm okay with that. I run because it makes me feel like I've accomplished something, and often amazes me that my body can carry me so many miles.

I've got my sports beans to give me that bit of energy I'll need to push hard through the last 3 miles. I've got my iPod playlist all set to go with 42 songs (Social D, Dropkick Murphys, Distillers, Flogging Molly - punk songs are short, so you need about twice as many) strategically planned to pump me up right when I'll start slagging. I've even got new running gloves and a new headband to keep my extremities warm, since it will be right around freezing temps when the race starts.

Now all I've got to do to finish prepping is wash my running tights, carb load, and get a good night's sleep. Here in a while I'll be making some chicken spaghetti and garlic bread.  

Wish me luck, and leave me any bits of advice in the comments!