Absolute BS

Tonight we didn’t feel like going to the store so I thought I’d play a little Survivor: Kitchen. I found a chicken breast in the freezer, so I let it defrost in some teriaki/peanut oil/salt/peper and then sauted it with onion, red and green peppers, and an orange. The sauce was mostly (and probably too much) orange juice with a little plum sauce (no idea why I have this) and sriracha. I added a little brown sugar at the end because it wasn’t sweet enough. The chicken was a little over cooked because I left it in the wok while the sauce was reducing, but overall it was pretty good and it didn’t get voted off the Island.

I’ve always loved pizza, and in my quest to make pizza at home that tastes better than pizza I can buy, I purchased “American Pie” by Peter Reinhart. The book is an interesting read about Peter’s search around the globe for the perfect pizza (which, incidentally, he finds at Pizzaria Bianco in Phoenix), but it also contains recipes for every type of pizza crust imaginable. I tend to agree with Mr. Reinhart as I usually prefer thin, crispy crusts, ala Napoletana. But I though I’d try something different the other day, so I made his Chicago-style cornmeal deep dish crust in a 9 inch cake pan. It was the best pizza I’ve made at home so far. The cust wasn’t too dry, it was oozing with cheese, mushrooms, sausage, and pepperoni, and I could only eat a slice of it before I was full.

The nice thing about this crust is that, according to Reinhart, it doesn’t benefit from a night in the fridge, so you can make this one on relatively short notice (only about 3 hours of total rise time). I’m glad I made enough dough for 2 pies

This was supposed to be Valentine’s day, but we got busy and made tacos instead. Portobello slices sauteed with oregano and pepper with grilled Asparagus and half of a huge New York Strip steak. Taken with my new Canon EOS Rebel XTi that I just got today!

I found some old manicotti and made the best survivor kitchen yet.

It was stuffed with a cut up pork chop, some old mushrooms, and a succulent 3-cheese blend featuring pepper jack, cottage, and grated parmesan. Topped with a mix of 2 jars of pasta sauce from the fridge, this was probably the best meal I’ve even had without going to the store first. And props to MB for putting tomatoes on the garlic bread.

When MB moved in, we combined kitchens, and I realized that we have waaay too much food. I realized this in force when I looked in the cupboard and found four (4) cans of corn.

So I devised a game called “Survivor: Kitchen.” The rule of the game is you have to make dinner with what’s in the kitchen, not going to the store. After 2 weeks, we agreed we can go buy veggies, milk, and bread, but nothing else. So far it was pretty easy: lots of pasta and tacos. But now I’m out of frozen ground beef and tomato sauce, so it’s starting to get interesting.

Tonight we used 4 cans of food, including 1 can of corn (score). The result was corn-bean casserole and smoked salmon melts. Yum: