This week in food

I do a lot of cooking and baking (and thus a lot of dishes).  This is chronicle of everything that I made for a week, starting on Thursday, January 26th.  Thursday was probably a bad day to start, because I cook less on the weekends so I can spend more time with Dan, but c'est la vie.

Thursday:
Butterscotch Rum Cake

The icing didn't turn out exactly as planned

This is something I made last week and sent most of it to work with Dan.  He said it was a hit with the people who ate it (some people abstained because they don't drink.  Yeah, I think it's weird too.)  Since it was so good, and I felt ripped off because I shared so much, I made another one just for me and Dan.  But there was a problem: no butterscotch chips.  Well, if there's a will, there's someone on the internet doing it the hard way, so I made my own butterscotch sauce.  I didn't include it on the list, because I made it Wednesday.  Anyway, it's delicious and at the time I am writing this, the entire cake has been eaten and I'm trying to think of something spectacular to do with the remaining butterscotch.  Butterscotch Snickerdoodles perhaps.

Rotel Mac

Not Pictured: Health Food

Dan and I like Hamburger Helper.  Noodles, meat, usually cheese, what's not to like?  Well, it's not something you can get here, and my dad has always made his own HH so this is my version.  It's one pound each noodles, ground beef, and velveeta cheese, and two cans of Rotel (always available here which I think is weird).  It's a ton of food and now I won't have to cook anything for dinner until at least Sunday.

Friday I rested.  There was cake, there was mac, there were Bugles.  No need to cook at all, although the desire for Sweet Potato Fries was there, I ignored it in favor of finishing my eLibrary book before it expired.

Saturday:
I needed something to do and that something was Soft Pretzel Bites.

Yes, this is what I bring Dan to snack on on the weekends

 

 

They are super easy to make, and just as delicious as they sound.  The dip is Garlic Cheddar Ranch (I put that stuff in the microwave and melted it together.  Magic!)

I also made iced tea. 

No, I don't remove labels before I use things.  Deal with it.

I know it's not really cooking, but it's something I do every other day or so.  I make two kinds: a flavored black tea and a flavored green tea. Pictured are Lipton Forest Fruits Black Tea and Bigelow's Pomegranate Green Tea.

Sunday:
Sunday is the first day of the work week here.  I didn't feel too well and stayed in bed until noon instead of going to get my fingerprints taken for my Emirates ID (a pointless exercise in bureaucracy I will probably write about when it's over).  I didn't actually feel like cooking at all, but sometimes I just can't help it, not when the butter is already soft and someone has asked about it so....

Dark Chocolate Cherry Cookies

Sorry, Wing.  I ate them all.

Using the same sugar cookie base I've had success with before, I added a cut up 60% Cocoa chocolate bar and dried cherries.  I planned on sharing with Dan's coworkers, but Dan was home sick and by the time he would have taken them, I'd eaten most of them.  Secondary project: Diabeetus

Crispy Oven Sweet Potato Fries

According to Congress, that's two vegetables right thar

I thought I ought to eat something other than cookie dough, so I made these.  Although they are white-fleshed, these are local sweet potatoes.  They crisp up much nicer than the orange fleshed ones that cost so much more.  I did a lot of experimenting to get them just right, and only the white ones come out the way I prefer.  Seasoned with garlic, salt, and pepper, and great with ketchup.

Monday & Tuesday:
OK, so this turned out to be a bad week to document my cooking.  Dan has some kind of bug and I'm on a new headache med that makes me want to do nothing but eat sweets and watch TV with my eyes closed.  So the only thing I made was this:

Turkey Bacon Club on Tomato Ciabatta

It's Butterball Turkey.  Seriously.

One on Monday, one on Tuesday.  Big enough to share.  I think cooking bacon in the microwave has weakened my Ikea plates because I've broken all but two of them and I only dropped one.  The others were freak accidents.

Wednesday:
Last day of the documentary, and I wanted to finish strong, so I kicked it up a notch.

Strawberry Banana Bread

As you can see, I've acquired a bigger dish, to avoid the icing waterfall effect

I needed to make banana bread, because I keep buying bananas and they go bad crazy fast here.  I also had some strawberries.  I had planned on chopping them up and freezing them for the future, but thought, what the heck, and added them to this recipe.  I didn't add much strawberry flavor, but the bread is very moist.

In case you were wondering, I don't own a loaf pan, so two loaf recipes get made in this pan.

Crispy Honey Mustard Chicken, Homemade Stovetop Stuffing, and Steamed Broccoli and Carrots

It's almost possibly good for you!

This is the kind of meal I put out when I'm really trying.  I started making my own Stovetop when Lulu's stopped carrying it.  I LOVE Stovetop Stuffing.  It's something I can eat anytime, no matter how I feel.  And now it's homemade and not from a box.

The veggies are there because you have to have a vegetable or it's not a real meal.  I like broccoli, Dan likes carrots, so this is the compromise.

Minty Fudge Cookies

This pyramid of fudginess predicts 2012 is the end of days (for Minty Fudge Cookie Pyramid).

I'm really kind of showing off today because it's the last day, so I baked cookies after dinner, even though I usually doze on the couch while pretending to watch Dan play video games (after we've watched The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, of course).  These are soft, almost cakey, and Dan say's they are better than Girl Scout Thin Mints. Take that little girls!

And that's all she wrote.  A whole week's worth of cooking.  Not as impressive as I hoped, there's usually more actual food in there, although I do do that much baking on a regular basis. It's Wednesday night, and there's still Rotel Mac and plenty of leftovers from tonight. Those will keep us a bit.

Fin