Bubbleland! It's been too long! What have you been doing with your summer vacation? Working? Me too.
So here's the deal with the sound of silence – my oven was broken.* What is there to talk about when your oven is broken? You make do with your toaster oven.** You put your head down. You get it done. But at the end of the day, is there really anything to delight in?
*And if you're interested, the oven had a leaky gas valve.
**On the plus side, I did learn that if you wrap food in foil and put it on top of the hot toaster oven, the toaster oven serves as a pretty decent warmer.
So, we're back! Business as usual.
A little catch-up since I've seen you last...
We dog-sat Hanndy's pup, MJ, for a week while they visited family out of state. She was a delight and the two girls were like sisters.
Helping hold down the bed on laundry day
Here's when you know a new animal has been accepted as one of the fam – when Claudette deems you worthy of being ignored.
This went on long enough for me to take a ton of pics
I'll only bore you with the one
By the end of the week, dog and cat alike were completely exhausted.
And I the filling in a sleepy sammich
Towards the end of the dog sitting week, my parents came in town for the weekend. We had a fabulous visit. Fab. U. Lous!! Friday, we munched on Flying Fish. My parents are from Houston and appreciate fine, unfrozen seafood. Fried shrimp, catfish, and grilled tilapia abounded. (Abounded? Is that right?) And a cheeseburger for The Hubs. A well rounded restaurant, that Flying Fish! With full bellies, we took a Redbirds game. I think it might be my last game of the summer. It is officially HOT. Ain't pretty from here to, ohhh, about September.
Saturday, my mom and I took in a Viking Cooking School Class. Pies & tarts! We made lattice apple pie and lemon curd tarts from scratch. It was a blast. And I scored a tremendous peeler called The Piranha. It makes fast work of apples and potatoes alike and if you're in the peeling business, I HIGHLY recommend it.
While the ladies mixed & munched, Dad book-browsed before joining The Hubs for some tasty Memphis BBQ. In Memphis, you gotta get a lil BBQ, right?
I'm going to say it now, my Pappy used to get me wet Texas ribs and I'm a wet ribs type of girl. Love the Memphis dry rub. But I feel driven to put this on the record.
Later that night, we took the parents to Memphis Pizza Cafe. If you're visiting the M-Town and love – or even just like – pizza, do yourself a favor and hit MPC!
Ok, enough restaurant tour guiding and plugs for free. On to Sunday lunch!
After church, I made Sunday lunch. I had had the oven people out the week before and really thought the kitchen would be in full working order by Sunday lunch. Not so much. I reconfigured the menu and I think it turned out pretty well. On the menu –
- Spicy honey-brushed chicken thighs with brown rice
- Roasted cauliflower
- Herbed green beans
- Baby greens with a warm gorgonzola dressing
Did I smoke the house up with my cast iron skillet? Yes. But I thought it turned out quite lovely just the same. And the smokey haze added an 80's rock quality to the meal. BONUS. But then the icing on the... Lunch. (Ok, that analogy could use a little work.)
HOMEMADE APPLE PIE
This one was Mom's
Since they were going home that day so we ate hers and froze mine
So pretty it deserved a second pic
It got a little brown due to being cooked in a toaster oven. But the taste was nothing but muah!
With that the parent visit came to a delicious close. Good time and a great weekend! A special thanks to the 'rents for making the drive!
That night, we took the half-pie left over to Tryko & Mannie K's house. They fed us. And we had a grilled steak salad with homemade dressing & grilled corn. It was DELISH. I should have taken a pic of the meal as a whole but the steak alone was giving me such flirty eyes, well, I had to answer.
To me, this is STEAK perfection
If only my iPhone had a flash...
Mmmm. I wish I could eat it right now. Heh, and I might get close... Countdown to The Hubs getting home from his basketball game cuz it's Steeeeeeeak Niiiiiiiight! (If that was Wheel of Fortune rules, those vowels would have cost me a lot.)
With the oven being out and us mooching meals off friends, I had time to focus on other things. Like hugging my garden. Ahem. I mean planters. And like a proud mama, I show you how they've grown!
I got a late start but 3 'maters, 1 jalapeno, & much used basil
Basil. The gift that keeps on giving.
'Mater bloomies
Jalapeno bloomies
And then. It happened. The leaky gas valve thingamajigger came in and the oven got FIXED. And then I wanted to cook EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE!!!!
I started with some oven "fried" chicken drummies. I had some great drumsticks that were really lovely and meaty. Of late, I've really become a big fan of dark chicken meat and I had this recipe I was dying to try for months. It's a light "fry" recipe where you use a breading of bran flakes and you bake. It was pretty good but I didn't have a baking rack. I'd like to give this recipe another go. Since I didn't have a rack, the drummie breading stuck to the baking sheet. (Well. Aluminum foil on a baking sheet to save the scrape time.) It thought it was pretty decent just the same.
Roasted broccoli, caprese salad & 2% mac & cheese completed the meal
I feel the need to point out 2% so you think me not decadent
As aforementioned, I really needed a baking rack. I may be too lazy to do anything with my hair in the morning but lackluster drummies galvanized me. Not long after, I was out Bed Bath & Beyond where I purchased a baking rack. Actually, they didn't have a baking rack so I bought a cookie/cake cooling rack. But I think it turned out even better that way because it was expandable. And I like to be master of my domain so that floats me boat.
Ok. So I got the "baking rack" AND a pizza stone.
I'd been wanting a pizza stone. I had planned on buying par-cooked dough and making some easy-breezy (beautiful-cover-girl) pizza. But once I actually bought the stone, something came over me. Plus, I had a Saturday with nothing much to do. And a fridge with ingredients I needed to use up that would serve as random pizza toppings.
I pulled out my beautiful wedding gift Cuisinart mixer for the very first time. (That should tell you how much I don't bake.) And started to whip up some dough. It poofed up immediately since I got special pizza dough yeast. None of the wait in this digital world we live it. Almost didn't feel right.
Doh! I mean... Dough!
I – unrightfully so – felt somewhat confident in my pizza-making ability. So we invited over Tryko, Mannie K, & Fozziebear (Sugarbear's doggie boyfriend. As you may have guessed.)
The first pizza was a pepperoni.
Pretty, yes?
Being an inexperienced pizza-pie maker, I was SEVERELY disappointed to find that moving the loaded pizza to the stone was, well, freakin' impossible. The pizza lost it's shape. The toppings tried to jump ship. It was a real eye-opener of what I had signed on for.
But whaddya do? I somehow got the – slightly misshapen – pizza to the stone and waited. Moment of truth? It wasn't pretty. I hadn't rolled out the dough and it was too thick. Too much tomato sauce and it was a little soupy. Take a bite and all the cheese slopped off.
But even with that, you know what? It wasn't bad. And we ate it.
In the pepperoni munchy chaos, I forgot to take a pic. And even though it wasn't pretty, I would show you. I swear.
On to round #2. Bacon, garlic, onion, & mushroom. It still wasn't round but I got the sauce ratio right.
One of the reasons you don't judge a book by its cover
Round #3, in my opinion, was the best. Closest to a circle in shape. And by this time, after much searching, I FINALLY found my rolling pin. (Like I said, I don't bake much.)
Tomato, goat cheese, & home-grown basil
They may not have been pretty. They may not have been perfect. But they were tasty and that's all that matters.
Pizza making. I will be seeing you again soon, sir! Plus, I found a tip about using parchment paper to shape your dough. It doesn't burn so you can just lift it, circular & with toppings, to the stone and move it in one piece. So that's cool.
Like I mentioned, this was the first weekend after getting the oven fixed. (And did I mention it had been out for months? MONTHS. That's why I got all cracky-crazy about it.) And I wanted to cook everything. Everything being things that I either had wanted to try but couldn't do in a toaster oven or recipes I love. And needed more cook space. One of my favorites (and if you're a Bubbleland resident, you know) is the Alton Brown wings recipe. I'm not super-into repeating pics of things I've made before. (Unless they're super gorg.) BUT for this wing recipe you really need a baking rack. And I never had one before. So, of course, I had to document the difference.
I steamed the wings. Let them sit for a couple hours. And then I baked them. On the RACKs.
And they were golden brown
Like Rapunzel's hair
Only hair is gross to eat
Just... Never mind.
I did three types...
Frank's Sweet Chili
Frank's Buffalo Hot & Sweet Baby Ray's Honey BBQ
Good times! You could really tell a difference with the racks. Much crispier. While I was making the wing & since I'm a fan of multi-tasking, I made a shepherd's pie for Monday.
Monday, I was tired from stinkin' Monday. (Somebody had a case of the Mundayyyyys.) Came home and just put the shepherd's pie in.
I made a couple of minor tweaks. Well. Major, depending on how you look at it. Olive oil instead of butter. Ground sirloin instead of ground round. (I had bought it for something else so I had that on hand.) I used carrots, celery, & onion. And added garlic. A LOT of garlic. Me like garlic.
Cooked whole
It's not as pretty as it tasted
And the bowl somewhat competes for attention
Eh. Whatevs
Ok. The Husband's home. Steak night time! I have some more so check back soon for pork chops with a mushroom bourbon cream sauce!
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