Same goes for blog themes. In case you haven’t noticed, I like to change stuff around here fairly often. I’m always on the search for the perfect blog theme. What if there’s one that combines the perfect layout with the perfect font and the perfect color scheme? What if there’s one that contains everything I’ve ever wanted in a WordPress theme?? Again, it’s a never-ending quest.

So I have this same obsession with recipes. I try new recipes all the time, and I very rarely make the same recipe twice. There are exceptions, such as the Newcastle Pot Roast I made last Christmas, and two Christmases before that, and a few times in between. But for the most part, I’m always on the search for the perfect recipe. What if there’s one that calls for a secret ingredient that makes all the difference? What if there’s a recipe out there that combines all my favorite foods–avocados, cheese, bacon, and snickerdoodles??? Okay actually that sounds kinda gross.

Anyway.

Here’s a recipe that Ninja Kid and I cooked up the other night. I don’t know if it’s one that will get repeated, just because it didn’t blow my socks off and because I have so many other untried chicken recipes on deck. That said, it’s quick and super easy, and it tastes really good.

Chicken and Asparagus in White Wine Sauce
adapted slightly from Cooking Light, October 2007

• 1-1/2 lbs. skinless, boneless chicken breast tenders (or 4 breast halves)
• 2 T butter
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 white wine (I used Clos du Bois chardonnay)
• 1/2 chicken broth
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 bunch asparagus, trimmed
• 2 T chopped fresh parsley
• 1 T fresh lemon juice
• salt and pepper

Place each chicken breast half between two sheets of wax paper and pound to approximately 1/4 inch thickness. (NOTE: if you are using the breast tenders, which are cut into smaller pieces, you can probably skip this step.) Sprinkle chicken breasts with salt and freshly ground pepper.

Melt the butter in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.

Place flour in a shallow dish, and dredge the chicken in the flour. Cook chicken until done, about 3 minutes on each side.

Remove the chicken from the pan and keep warm. Next, add the wine, broth, and garlic to the pan and cook for 2 minutes, scraping to remove the browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. Browned bits. Yes, I said it.

Add asparagus and cover with a lid. Cook for about 3-4 minutes or until asparagus is crisp-tender. Whatever that means.

Remove the asparagus from the heat and add the parsley and the lemon juice. Serve asparagus and sauce with chicken.

Yes, that is a cloud of fluffy mashed potatoes you see in the background there.

Everybody knows that I make the best mashed potatoes in the history of the world. These are facts that are well documented. However, making the world’s greatest mashed potatoes takes time and planning. The world’s greatest mashed potatoes cannot be made on a whim, people. And every once in a while, necessity calls, and you find yourself desperately needing mashed potatoes but lacking the time to prepare them from scratch. This is a huge problem.

I can fix it, if you’re desperate.

In a pinch, you can buy some of those ready-made mashed potatoes in the refrigerated section. We used Country Crock, and it was the first time we tried this, and they turned out fine. Anyway, you prepare the mashed potatoes according to the package directions, and then you add in a WHOLE bunch of shredded Parmesan cheese. The key is not to really look at the mashed potatoes until after you’ve cooked them and added the cheese (and some salt and pepper) and stirred them around a bit. If you look at them too much before this point, you’re likely to gross yourself completely out. If you can hire someone to do this step for you, all the better.

Now back to work, all of you. I have to get back to my quests. So many quests.

Anyway, the soup du jour is almost always TO DIE FOR. The best is the cream of mushroom, followed closely by the French onion soup, which is baked in a hollowed-out onion and is soooooo yummy. Unfortunately for me, it seems like almost every time we eat at Rain Uptown, the soup du jour is clam chowder. BLECH. Me no likey.

But there was this one time that we went with Cousin Laura (who has a blog and has not yet posted an entry despite my begging and pleading–so I linked to it in an effort to humiliate her into posting something because I’m mean like that) and the soup du jour was navy bean soup. I didn’t order it because I didn’t think it sounded great, but Cousin Laura ordered it and guess what? It was great great great. Great great. Wonderful, even. So I’ve been wanting to try to recreate it in my kitchen, and this is my first effort.

Navy Bean Soup (adapted from Paula Deen)

one 1-pound bag of dried navy beans
64 oz of water
one 3/4″ thick slice of ham off the bone, diced
1/4 stick of butter
onion powder
salt–lots and lots of salt

Pour dried beans onto a plate or a shallow bowl (a dark color, if you have one, makes it easier to see) and check to see if there are any stones or other inedibles in your beans.

Then rinse the beans in a colander under warm water for about 3-5 minutes to get them good and clean.

Pour the water in your soup pot and add the rinsed navy beans, and then bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer with the lid on for about 3 hours, adding water as necessary (I had to add about 32 extra ounces over an almost 4-hour period).

After about 3 hours, or when beans are tender and fully cooked, add the butter and diced ham to the soup pot.

Now this is my favorite part!! After the butter has melted, you get out the most excellent kitchen tool OF ALL TIME–the immersion blender.

This is important: you don’t want to puree the whole pot of beans, just enough that it turns the broth into more of a creamy-looking liquid. If you do this for too long, you’ll have navy bean baby food, and that’s just plain disgusting. So you just run the immersion blender in the bottom of the soup pot a few times. I think I did it about 3 or 4 times for about 10 seconds each time. When you get the consistency you want, add onion powder and salt to taste. It requires a lot of salt, just so you know. Oh, and this is also important: you don’t add salt to the beans until the very end, because if you add salt too early it makes the beans tough instead of tender. Anyway, when you’re done, the soup should look something like this.

So if you don’t have an immersion blender, it’s okay. You could probably use the back of a big spoon and kindof smush some of the beans if you wanted to, or if you have a blender you could take out some of the beans, puree them that way, and then return them to the pot. Or, I suppose you could just skip the smushing altogether if you want. But really, you guys, you NEED an immersion blender. Especially if you like soup, like me.

The verdict? My navy bean soup turned out really well. Plus it made my house smell FAB-YOO-LUSS. But it wasn’t quite as good as what we had at Rain Uptown. Back to the drawing board.

Except she’ll remaster the soundtrack to replace “Mr. Grinch” with “Momma Grinch” and she’ll have a plastic me in the yard instead of the Grinch in that video.

Anyway.

So I did cook, and it was pretty delicious, so I thought I’d share. Ninja Pops was here for a few days and I cooked a pot roast and mashed potatoes. Yep, that’s it. Meat and potatoes. What?

Newcastle Pot Roast
adapted slightly from Cooking Light

• 2 T butter
• 2 pounds sliced onion
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• cooking spray
• 5 lb roast (I used two chuck roasts, 2-1/2 lbs each)
• salt & pepper
• 1-1/2 to 2 cups beef broth
• 1 T fresh thyme leaves
• 12 oz dark beer (Newcastle)
• 3 T cornstarch

First, you melt the butter in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat.

Then, you put the chopped onions and garlic into the pot and sauté for about 12 minutes.

After that, you turn the heat down to medium-low and cook for about 40 minutes or until the onions and garlic are sortof carmelized. Remove the onions from heat and transfer to a bowl. Preheat your oven to 300°.

Next, season the roast with salt and pepper on both sides.

Then spray cooking spray on the bottom of the Dutch oven and turn the heat up to medium-high again. Brown the roast for about 5 minutes on each side.

Assemble your remaining ingredients: beer, broth, onion mixture, and thyme leaves. Add them to the pot with the roast.

Bring this to a simmer, then cover and bake at 300° for 2 hours, turning the meat over after 1 hour.

When the roast is finished baking, remove it from the pan. Over medium-high heat, add the cornstarch to the pot and stir constantly until boiling for 1 minute. Then serve over the roast.

And here’s the finished product:

Okay actually that looks kinda gross or something. Let’s try again:

Hmmm. Not much of an improvement. Maybe a shot from farther away?

That’s a little better. Anyway, regardless of how it looks on camera, it was delicious.

Trust.

Oh, and here are my best mashed potatoes of all time.

And when I say “best mashed potatoes of all time,” I do actually mean “best mashed potatoes of all time.”

Happy Holidays!!

Cilantro-Lime Chicken with Avocado Salsa
adapted ever-so-slightly from Cooking Light

For the chicken:
1 pkg boneless chicken tenders
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, minced
2 1/2 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lime juice
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
cooking spray

For the salsa:
2 Roma tomatoes, chopped
2 small or 1 large avocado, chopped
2 teaspoons fresh-squeezed lime juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

To prepare chicken, combine first four ingredients in a large bowl; toss and let stand 3 minutes. Remove chicken from marinade and discard marinade.

Sprinkle chicken evenly with 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Heat a grill pan over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add chicken to pan; cook 6 minutes on each side or until done.

To prepare salsa, combine tomato, lime juice, salt, and pepper in a medium bowl. Add chopped avocado and stir gently to combine. Serve salsa over chicken.

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Yes, that’s a paper plate in the last picture. Don’t judge.

Once again, Chef Ninja Kid has produced a winner. We did make a few minor adjustments to the original recipe.

• We used chicken tenders instead of chicken breasts, simply because the tenders cook faster and we were really hungry.
• We omitted the 2 tablespoons of finely chopped onion from the salsa because we don’t like raw onions.
• We used a skillet rather than an actual grill pan.

This was really delicious. We served it with saffron rice out of a box, which was surprisingly good and much cheaper and easier than if we had bought saffron threads and tried to make it ourselves, and black beans. I can’t remember now what the poundage was on the chicken tenders that we bought, but this ended up being four meals in all (two at dinner and two for lunch leftovers) and it was just as good warmed up the next day as it was the first night.

If you click on the original recipe link above, you’ll notice that in their picture the avocado salsa looks prettier, as in not so mushy. I guess our avocados were riper, or maybe Chef Ninja Kid over-stirred the salsa. Regardless, it tasted great.

Future possibilities:

• The salsa would be great with salmon or pork.
• Might try letting the chicken marinade longer in order to infuse  more of the cilantro-lime flavor, which got a little lost in the avocado salsa.
• And, because I believe that everything tastes better with a little gaaahlic, might try either some minced garlic in the marinade or some garlic powder/salt in the salsa. I do love me some garlic.

I developed a brilliant plan.

I told Ninja Kid that I’d pay her to cook for me. She picks the recipe (I do retain absolute veto power), we go get the groceries, she cooks with minimal assistance from me, we eat, and then she does the dishes. Depending on the difficulty level of the recipe, she gets paid between $5 and $10 per meal. We can’t eat on less than $10 unless we eat fast food, which I’m really trying to limit, so I figure this is reasonable. Plus, she gains experience, we bond in the kitchen, and I don’t have to do the dishes. Sometimes I amaze myself.

Here’s the inaugural recipe for Chef Ninja Kid.

Avocado Salad with Bacon & Sour Cream
adapted slightly from allrecipes.com

4 slices of bacon, chopped
2 avocados, chopped
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 to 1 teaspoon onion powder
salt to taste

Fry the chopped bacon in a skillet over medium heat. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel.

In a bowl, combine the drained bacon, chopped avocado, sour cream, and lemon juice by gently mixing. Add onion powder and salt to taste.

Serve on a bed of lettuce. Serves 4.

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I can’t begin to tell you how delicious this is. We just ate ours with a fork, and we were almost literally licking the leaves of lettuce clean in order to get one more bite. We have a Mexican food restaurant here that serves this heavenly avocado cream dip, and with a tiny amount of tinkering this recipe would duplicate that dip. After mixing the avocados with the sour cream and other ingredients, it becomes really too mushy to be classified as a salad in my mind, but the taste is fantastic.

Possible tweaks for the future:

• garlic powder or minced garlic instead of (or in addition to) the onion powder
• addition of tomatoes
• lime juice instead of lemon juice (or even key lime juice)

Suggested uses:

• serve with pita chips and use as a dip
• sandwich spread on toasted bread with turkey or chicken
• serve inside a hollowed-out tomato

Mini-Me’s dance company kicked some major bootie at the dance competition. They won a platinum award for their jazz dance and a double-platinum award for their tap routine, coming in second and first places, respectively. This qualifies both dances to proceed to the national competition at Disneyland in California this summer! Woot!

Anyway, I was reminded of a recipe I had seen on the Weight Watchers site that I wanted to try. You get some egg roll wrappers and place some chopped lean ham and Swiss cheese in the middle.

Then you roll up the wrappers, place them on a cookie sheet, and spray them with cooking spray.

Bake at 400 degrees for about 18-20 minutes, turning them over and respraying with cooking spray halfway through, then voila!

We ate these with some spicy honey mustard sauce. It’s best to let them sit for a few minutes after they come out of the oven, because they’re really too hot to eat right at first. These turned out well, but they’re probably better as a snack than as a meal.

Croque Monsieur Egg Rolls
adapted from www.weightwatchers.com

• 2 cups lean ham, finely diced
• 1 cup grated Swiss cheese
• 10 egg roll wrappers
• cooking spray (or melted butter, if you’re feeling reckless)

Preheat oven to 400. Combine ham and cheese in a bowl.

Lay an egg roll wrapper on a flat surface in a diamond shape with corners pointing north, south, east, and west. Place about 3 tablespoons of the ham and cheese mixture along the north-south axis of the wrapper. Dip your fingertips in water and run them along the outside edges of the wrapper for sealing. Fold the top and bottom of the wrapper together, meeting in the middle, and then wrap the sides around, again using fingertips dipped in water for sealing the edges. Repeat with remaining ingredients.

Place rolls on a cookie sheet. Lightly spray the rolls with cooking spray and bake for about 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Turn the rolls over and spray with cooking spray again, then return to the oven for another 8-10 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve with honey mustard sauce or ranch dressing for dipping.

The following is all that’s needed to produce a batch of comforting, fudgy, warm, rich, decadent, and FAT-FREE (!!) brownies:

Basically, you just mix the brownie mix with either some fat-free vanilla yogurt or some fat-free unflavored yogurt and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract until you get this:

Then bake and let cool…

and you get this little square piece of heaven:

It is amazing to me that these are fat-free brownies. Seriously. Fat is yummy. But in this case, it’s completely unnecessary. I’ve made this both ways: with the vanilla yogurt and with the unflavored yogurt and the vanilla extract. To my taster, the second version with the vanilla extract tasted better, but it could’ve been the fact that the mix was a little newer. Anyway, I’m going to make them again — I know, it’s a rough job, but I simply have to get to the bottom of this! — and see if I can still tell a difference. In the meantime, go straight to your local supermarket and get about ten boxes of this stuff. Worried you’ll be tempted to eat the whole batch in one sitting? There are instructions on the side for making a single serving. Guilty pleasure, sans guilt.

These days, cooking a roast causes great consternation for my mother. According to her — and I believe her — the quality of beef available at the grocery store is just not what it used to be. Plus, they don’t cut big hunks of meat much anymore, like the size you would need if you were feeding a large group, so in order to get enough meat you have to buy two roasts, which can cause havoc with the cooking times, etc. As a result, my mom is on an ongoing search for a good, large roast. Her husband even resorted to buying a whole side of beef from some independent rancher. Didn’t cut it.

The roast that I made comes nowhere close to the ones my mom used to make when I was a kid, but it turned out pretty good. I bought two 1.5 lb chuck arm roasts from the grocery store because I wanted to have plenty of leftovers. I’ve since learned that chuck arm roast is not diet friendly, so I’m limited to eating about 3 ounces of this at a time. I actually made this a week ago and I’m still eating leftovers a week later. I think next time I’ll use the same cut of meat but just get one roast instead of two. I adapted this recipe slightly from various versions that I’ve seen all over the internet.

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First, you cut up an onion or two and put the onions and meat in the slow cooker.

Next, you dump some spice packets into a bowl and mix with beef broth.

Dump the beef broth mixture over the roast and onions, put on the lid, turn it on, and leave it alone.

Editors note: It’s really probably more like a stew than a soup, and it’s chock full of ingredients that I’d never put on an actual taco, so don’t blame me for the misleading name.

Taco Soup

1-1/2 pounds of lean ground beef (93% lean, 7% fat)
1/2 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 large can of diced tomatoes
1 can of Ro-Tel tomatoes and green chilis (I used mild)
1 can of whole kernel corn, drained
1 can of black beans
1 can of pinto beans (I made my own pot of beans instead)
1 packet of McCormick Taco Seasoning
1 packet of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix
4 cups of beef broth

In a skillet, brown the ground beef with the onion and garlic. Transfer to soup pot and add remainder of ingredients. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer on medium heat for about an hour. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and shredded cheddar cheese.

1 cup = 1 serving = 3P (sour cream and cheese are 1P extra each)

This is even better after it’s sat in the refrigerator for a day. It makes a ton.