Feed Your Kids

We had such a busy night, with Taekwondo and Occupational Therapy, lots of homework and some of us coming home late, that I wasn’t sure that we were going to all be able to eat at the same time, so I took this photo of the meal while it was holding in the warming drawer – how sad is that?

Strip Steaks with Rosemary Balsamic Butter Sauce (click on title to see recipe)

An Epicurious recipe. This was pretty yummy and very easy. I didn’t do all of the grilled onions to go with it, because my family isn’t really big on onions by themselves (except onion rings), but I just made the steaks and the sauce. The sauce has a slightly Marsala-ish flavor. I would make this again. The sauce does separate really quickly as it sits, so if I make this again, I will hold the sauce separately and not pour it over the steaks until just before serving (you can see in the photo that it’s starting to separate slightly) – or I will just serve immediately, and not try to “hold” these.

Asparagus with Lemon and Butter (click on title to see recipe)

Another Epicurious recipe. Very plain and simple – unobjectionable. As some of the reviewers on Epicurious mentioned, it’s a pain to peel the bottoms of the asparagus spears, but since it’s boiled in this recipe, it does help the entire spear cook evenly and ensures that the top doesn’t cook more quickly than the bottom. I added a bit of tarragon, because I like it with aspargus.

For the rice, I just made a couple of cups of long-grain brown rice (my favorite) in the rice cooker. I almost always use chicken stock for the cooking liquid (I did tonight). When the rice was done, I just added a couple of tablespoons of pre-made pesto and stirred it in. Easy and yummy. Super kid-friendly.

I didn’t think about it until I was putting this on the table, but I went a little overboard on the herbs tonight (rosemary on the steaks, basil on the rice, tarragon on the asparagus), but we like them….oh, well.

Overall, a pretty good meal. It’s been a really long week for all of us, and we’re pooped, so we probably didn’t have the energy/enthusiasm that we normally would have had. Girl is tired and grumpy (she had a lot of tests last week and was out late on Halloween). Boy had occupational therapy and Taekwondo (he’s testing for his Purple belt next week) tonight, so he’s wiped out. Hubby is working on a HUGE programming job that will take him a few weeks to finish, so he’s slightly stressed. I have become a gym rat and did my first “spinning” class yesterday and am STILL limping and sore – I could barely make it through my “Body Pump” class today. I was excited about this menu, but I probably should have just ordered something in tonight, so we could take it easy. My best friend mentioned to me that tonight is actually “Men Make Dinner Night” (a Canadian holiday, apparently) and suggested that Hubby should make our meal tonight and, of course, she said, it should be something “bloggable” (how we now refer to meals that are blog-worthy), but, truly, we are ALL happier if I do the cooking. Hubby has many talents other than cooking (although he can make omelets MUCH better than I can), and I don’t like other people in my kitchen, anyway.

Time for bed…….

Unfortunately, my camera has suffered a fatal accident and so I will not have photos for a couple of days. Hubby tried to take a photo of our dinner tonight with his phone, but it turned out AWFUL and completely devoid of color:

I was downloading photos from Girl’s volleyball tournament this weekend (her team won first place!!!) and it (the camera) fell off the counter where I was working. Now the lens won’t go in and out anymore. I’ve attached a GREAT volleyball photo of Girl for you as a consolation prize – luckily I got those photos all downloaded before it was too late!

Girl, in the middle of the front row, with glasses.

I was DESPERATELY in need of a new camera, anyway (the power button had been repaired with a thumbtack – I am VERY tough on electonic equipment), so Hubby has promised that he will buy me a new one ASAP. Being a “techie”, though, he feels the need to research and comparison-shop before buying any new electronics, so it may be a week or so before I have one. I did want to mention this meal, however, since I tried a couple of Epicurious recipes.

The first was the Basil and Bacon-Wrapped Chicken Breasts from Gourmet magazine (July 1996). This recipe was really good. I added a little parmesan cheese to the basil stuffing, as a couple of the reviewers on Epicurious suggested (I didn’t have feta on hand today). I always work better when I have a photo, and this recipe didn’t have one, so I’m not sure that I assembled the chicken breasts precisely as they were “supposed” to be (and, alas, I’m not providing a photo for you, either), but they were still tasty and fairly attractive. I did have to use some toothpicks to hold the bacon on the chicken in the oven, and almost burned myself trying to put them in, but it did hold together, eventually. The bacon imparted a different flavor to the chicken that I wasn’t super-crazy about, but Hubby and kids LOVED it, so I think it was just my own bias. I’m used to having bacon-wrapped filets, but had never had it with chicken before, so I think it was just “different” for me. The chicken was, however, VERY moist and juicy.

This Green Bean recipe (from September 1999 Gourmet magazine) was really good and VERY easy, although I did adapt it a little. I didn’t have almonds on hand, so I substituted pine nuts, which were quite good. The butter did foam alarmingly while I was saute-ing the garlic and nuts, but it turned out fine in the end. I cooked the green beans in chicken stock for a little extra flavor. Sometime, I’ll post my recipe for making homemade chicken stock. It’s time-consuming, but WELL worth the effort, if you haven’t ever done it, and is a rewarding thing to do on a rainy day.

I know that Fried Okra doesn’t “go” with this, but the kids love it and had been asking for it. I made some a month or so ago and had it frozen, so I pulled it out to make them happy tonight. It freezes much better than I would have expected (this was the first time that I had tried it), although nothing compares to having it right out of the hot oil. When I froze it, I placed it in a single layer on a cookie sheet lined with waxed paper and then put it in the freezer until the individual pieces froze, then put it in a Ziploc bag. To reheat, I put it (straight out of the freezer, not thawed) on a cookie sheet (lined with foil and sprayed with Pam) and baked it at 400 degrees for 15 minutes – that was the time and temperature that tonight’s chicken had to bake, so I just put it in there with the chicken.

We had some Pizza Bread, from Great Harvest, also to go with this. Yummy.