Kitchen Clean-up

-


I’m scheduled to leave in two days to be there for the birth of my 4th grandchild. I will probably be gone a month. 

I looked around the kitchen, thinking about the things there and which ones would likely be sitting right there when I got back. So, I checked some dates and decided that I needed to prepare a meal using a couple of things. 

A canned Pillsbury crescent sheet, some smoked salmon, some avocados, and a plantain. It was a puzzler for sure. 

For the plantain, I ended up just cooking it and serving it as a side dish. I peeled it, sliced it and sauteed it in butter, over medium heat. This browned the outsides and cooked the middle to a lovely tart sweetness. 

The Crescent sheet I cut into 6 squares, put on a baking sheet and baked according to the package instructions. 

When they were done I spread them with cream cheese, sprinkled some minced onion on top, added a sprinkle of capers and then topped all of that with the smoked salmon. To top off the salmon I added a dollop of mashed and seasoned avocado  and some thinly sliced radishes. 

I needed a few extra bits to round out the menu, but I used everything I needed to use. 

Tomorrow I need to use a half bag of frozen cheese ravioli,  a half jar of spaghetti sauce, a ¼ of a container of cottage cheese and a half package of mozzarella cheese. I think this one won’t  take much creativity at all! I think I might even have some kalamata olives in the back of the fridge. My favorite ravioli bake‼ Yum‼


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One Pot Meals – Pasta

-
Image
The thing about One Pot Meals is that frequently they aren’t. They have you cook the sauce in a pot then boil the pasta in a pot. Or they cook the meat in a skillet then add it to the sauce in a pan.  My goal was to make truly one pot meals. There will always be a few other tools like a knife and cutting board, bowl for marinade or cut up veggies, a measuring cup if one is needed, etc.  I also want to be able to walk into the kitchen and put a meal together in about 30 minutes. So here is how it starts. I looked into my veggie drawer and found zucchini, half an onion, some chopped garlic and a package of mushrooms. I also had some frozen pesto from last fall and a jar of capers. All those things pretty much defined the sauce.  But say my veggie drawer didn’t have zucchini and mushrooms. I could do pretty much the same things with a bag of frozen peas and carrots. (If your kitchen doesn’t have onions and garlic – it’s past time you made a grocery store run!!) For the prote...
Read more

The Sheet-pan Trend

-
Image
I didn’t intend to be trendy. I really just wanted to do fewer dishes. It seemed reasonable to cook an entire meal on one sheet pan. Who knew that sheet pan meals were going to become the new trend? If you look around on the Internet, you’ll see all kinds of sheet pan meal recipes. People are putting all their vegetables and potatoes and meats on one pan and cooking them together. Then, one pan to wash!! In fact, if you walk down the freezer aisle at the grocery store you can find a line from Birds Eye. They come in a bag and are called Sheet Pan or Oven Bake meals.  But the concept is pretty simple, and is easily tailored to what’s in your fridge for supper. I have done this with many kinds of meats and veggies. The trick is to think about how long you would usually roast each component then do a little math. The longest cooked item goes in first. When the remaining time is how long you want to cook the next thing, add that. Continue in this way until everything is in. I season ea...
Read more

Pumpkin Brownies

-
Image
Some of you may remember the pumpkin project last fall. I ended up with a freezer full of pumpkin purée. Recently I finally got to use most of what I had left by making pumpkin brownies for a bake sale. They were really good and very easy to do. I have written about my opinion regarding box cake mixes . I really think they are one of the great Food Science masterpieces of our times. So in this case I started with a simple box brownie mix. The one I used was the plain one from ALDIs. It called for water, oil and eggs to be added.  Home puréed pumpkin is wetter than canned pumpkin, so I substituted one cup of my frozen pumpkin for both the oil and water. It was brownie mix, 1 cup frozen pumpkin puree, and two eggs.  I did a trial recipe to see if it was going to work using a 9x13 pan. They were too thin and the texture was a little stoggy. So I used a 9x9 pan and added a tsp of baking powder to the powdered mix.  I baked them according to the package times and to an intern...
Read more