slow-cooker mashed potatoes

Happy “Gobble, Gobble” Day! You didn’t think I would forget to post anything on the biggest binge eating day of the year, did you?

As mentioned in a previous post, I always serve up fried turkey, broccoli rice casserole, StoveTop stuffing (I like the chicken flavor best), kernel corn, and Betty Crocker Homestyle mashed potatoes (get the butter & herb flavor). This year, I’m going the extra mile and will make the mashed potatoes from scratch.

I’ve made mashed potatoes from scratch before in college, and it’s often turned out to be a disaster. It’s utterly time consuming; even with a hand mixer, my arms ache from mashing pounds and pounds of potatoes; and the end result is never as good as that darn Betty Crocker woman’s boxed kind. Regardless, I’m going to try this recipe I found online this year. What attracted me to it (besides the positive reviews, of course) was that it utilizes the slow-cooker. I am a fan of the slow-cooker–even though most of the dishes I’ve had that came from a slow-cooker were never anything to rave about, I like that you can just throw in all the ingredients and forget about it for hours. With John and I having such busy lives, anything convenient is welcome in our kitchen. Of course, I don’t like to sacrifice quality and taste for convenience, so if this pot of potatoes turns out under par, you can bet I won’t hesitate to throw the recipe out.

Making these mashed potatoes will give us the chance to try out this Cuisinart hand blender that we received for our wedding shower. A friend had told us it was the “new thing” in contemporary kitchens, but the last few times I’ve tried to use it, I only managed to make a mess in the kitchen. I think of it as a substitute for a hand mixer, but I think it’s more of a blender. All the cookie dough I’ve used it on ended up splattered across our blacksplash. Oops. Hopefully it will redeem itself with these mashed potatoes. If not, it’s time to get one of these for future baking and just use the fooc processor for mashing potatoes.

green bean casserole

Every Thanksgiving, I serve fried turkey and broccoli rice casserole (which I make from scratch), and corn, stuffing, and mashed potatoes (which I don’t make from scratch). The sixth side always changes from year to year. First it was asparagus (which I later realized is a mistake because asparagus is apparently out of season in November). Then it was steamed green beans which turned out to be very boring. I knew I wanted this fifth side dish to be something green since so many of the other dishes were not as nutritious, and we all know Thanksgiving is the week of binging on high-calorie, high-sodium foods, so I figure why not throw something a little more healthy in there? Well, the steamed green beans were too healthy, and so this year, I will settle on a compromise between healthy and tasty. I will make a green bean casserole. (Okay, I know with these canned beans and all the cheese, sour cream, and butter, this is far from healthy, but I’m deluded into thinking anything green = good for you.)

Casseroles never sound that tasty to me; I always think of a slop of leftover ingredients piled on top of each other in a baking dish and thrown into the oven until it all melts together into some congealed mass. I think of it as the American version of fried rice: its sole purpose is to use up leftover food, and anything goes. That is, until I made that broccoli rice casserole some nine years ago. Then I thought, Maybe, just maybe, casseroles don’t all have to be nasty.

Fast-forward some years later to 2007 or so. Our church catered our holiday dinner from Cleburne Cafeteria. I had the first enjoyable green bean casserole. So now in 2010, I will attempt to make a version of this homestyle favorite.

I do have to admit that the great thing about casseroles is their ability to be prepared ahead of time. For example, today I will prepare both the broccoli rice and this green bean casserole, cover it securely, and refrigerate it until it’s ready to go straight into the oven. So go ahead and prepare these casseroles today, then bake it tomorrow. For big holiday dinners (or just any time you’re entertaining), it’s nice to have a repertoire of dishes that can be prepared ahead of time so that you don’t find yourself scrambling to do everything last minute on the day of.

I’ve found that typical green bean casseroles contain condensed cream of mushroom and are topped with a layer of fried onions. I found this alternative version of the dish which uses sour cream and Ritz crackers instead. Once it’s out of the oven, we’ll take a photo and upload it, and I’ll adjust the recipe according to my personal taste and experience.

broccoli rice casserole

Recounting the first Thanksgiving I ever hosted back in 2001 (the year I graduated college and finally had a kitchen and place I could call my very own), in addition to the deep-fried turkey, I made this broccoli rice casserole. I probably found the recipe online but I honestly don’t remember where–it could’ve possibly been before I discovered All Recipes.

Regardless, it was very simple to make, and my dad raved about it, asking to take home a chunky portion as part of his Thanksgiving leftovers. My friend, Mark, also asked for the recipe, followed by Danny years later. Nearly going on its tenth year in the making, this dish is a must-have at all my holiday comfort food gatherings. I’ve also brought it to several potlucks; up or down the ingredients according to number of people. Remember, if the Blind can Cook it, so can you.

Note: I’ll upload a photo of the dish come Thanksgiving when we actually make it. For now. here’s a photo of the Pancake Bunny.

Do you like my new hat?

country green beans

Let’s face it. Most Southern cookin’ recipes are not the healthiest–fried this, fried that, butter this, lard that. Typically, a hefty scoop of mashed potatoes would go wonderful with this birthday meal #2 next to the chicken fried chicken and the baked mac ‘n cheese, but I decided to “healthen” it up a bit and cook some fresh green beans instead. The nice thing about this choice is that it also adds color to the dish, making it more appealing to our visual sense. (I know this shouldn’t matter to the Blind Cook, but I am, after all, cooking for others who are sighted.)

Okay, so once I took a look at the list of ingredients, the green beans didn’t look too healthy any more, but I figured I’d be using much more butter in mashed potatoes, so better to just stick with the greens.

It turned out this was the only dish that incurred no leftovers. Was it because a pound of beans could easily be devoured by six hungry stomachs? I like to think that it was just that good. The best thing about these country green beans, however, may be that it was damn easy to cook. I mean, look at the instructions–it’s only one step!

what do i do with all this pumpkin?

My laziness got the better of me, and the other night, we did not carve a single pumpkin. We did not get a single trick-or-treater. We did not watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. I was able to convince a friend to take home one of the pumpkins, but I still have a huge pumpkin sitting in my foyer that I don’t know what to do with. At first, I figured I could puree it and use it to make a pumpkin cheesecake (recipe forthcoming) for Thanksgiving, or give it to John to use in the bread maker and bake a pumpkin gingerbread loaf, or even use it to make pumpkin ice cream. But alas, while doing some research online to figure out how to turn fresh pumpkin into the canned variety (which so many of these recipes call for), to my dismay, I discovered that a carving pumpkin used for jack-o’-lanterns (also called a field pumpkin) is not the same thing as a sugar pumpkin, which is darker and squatter and whose sweeter flesh is more suitable for baking. Ugh. Now I’m stuck and clueless with this field pumpkin. Besides roasting the seeds, does anyone have any idea what I can do with this thing? John suggested leaving it in a corner of our yard and taking a photo of it every day for a year and posting in on a site we’d start called shrinkingpumpkin.com, but I know laziness will overtake us once again, and the photo-taking will soon cease, and we’ll just have a rotten, ugly gourd in our yard. So any other suggestions, anyone?

panera bread’s broccoli cheddar bread bowl soup

The soup minus the sourdough bread bowl

Did you know that as the weather cools, our bodies start craving comfort foods? I think there are two reasons for this. First of all, cooler weather reminds us of the holiday season (Thanksgiving and Christmas) where comfort foods are served. Secondly, our bodies experience a physiological change in external temperature, and hearty foods help our bodies warm back up. (Okay, so I pulled this last reason out of my butt, but I’m willing to bet there’s something to it.) So here is the first of many comfort recipes to come.

When I first met my husband and we were just friends (well, I thought we were friends–he was trying to court me), we used to go to Panera Bread together to take advantage of their free wifi and do some work. His absolute favorite thing to order there was the broccoli cheddar soup that comes in the sourdough bread bowl. Even when we weren’t anywhere near a Panera Bread, he would go out of his way to drive there and order it.

This is why I was happy to find the knock-off on the Food Network Magazine online. Now we can control how much salt and butter goes into the soup and, better yet, save a good chunk of change.

It’s a fairly simple recipe. I had John taste the final product, and he approved, saying it was very similar to Panera Bread’s recipe. Sweet! So now if the Blind can Cook it, so can you.

roasted tomato basil soup

Since our wedding in May, our house has filled with nice things for cooking and dining. From now on, instead of agonizing over what gift to get, I’ve decided to utilize the new spiffy kitchenware and dinnerware and practice cooking at the same time by hosting dinner for friends in celebration of their birthdays.

The first two lucky friends were Jade and Uyen (and their husbands), who happened to make up 1/3 of my bridal party. I don’t really know what I got myself into because Jade and Patrick are both the biggest foodies I know, Uyen loves to eat, and her husband Brent is the chef in their kitchen. I was facing my most judgmental critics, and to make things worse, I woke up the night before from an anxiety dream in which I forgot to bake the dessert.

Nonetheless, I began preparing the food a day ahead by making the soup and mixing the custard for the dessert. On the day of the dinner, I planned to make the entree, bake the dessert, and reheat the soup right before guests arrive.

So here is the first of three courses. (Stay tuned for the others.) I got the recipe from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. But because my culinary skills are intermediate, of course I botched things here and there. What I did to remedy the recipe and tweak it according to my taste buds are noted in the “variations” section of the recipe. (I won’t be afraid to admit my mistakes–after all, that’s why I’m the Blind Cook and not the Blind Chef. I will, however, note where I went wrong and offer what I tried in order to fix the recipe.)

And remember that if the Blind can Cook it, then so can you.