Dinner #12 - Chicken Tenders!

If there's one thing I love more than chicken, it's smaller, bite-sized bits of chicken! I decided to give a whirl at making my own battered and fried chicken tenders!

The batter consisted of a little more than a cup of flour, about a tablespoon of black pepper, and a dash of cayenne pepper. I had forgotten to put the chicken out to thaw before leaving for work in the morning, so I put it in the microwave and set it to defrost, but stopped it while it was still a little frozen in the middle. I used a giant knife and cut the breast pieces into nice long and thick strips, rolled them in the batter mixture, and dropped them in the fryer.

Once the chicken was done, I sliced up some mushrooms, battered them, and fried them as well. While the last bits were frying up, I tossed together a nice spinach and tomato salad with a little Parmesan cheese and raspberry vinaigrette dressing. I then topped the salad with the fried mushrooms and served the chicken with a little BBQ sauce for dipping.

I was surprised at how easy it turned out to make the chicken tenders, and how good the were. The mushrooms were alright, but the thicker pieces were better than the thinner and crispier ones.

Dinner #11 - BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches!

We live in Texas, and one of the staples of Texas cuisine is BBQ. I picked up a huge pork shoulder from Sam's and decided to make us some pulled pork sandwiches! Today is Martin Luther King day and the high school is closed, so I requested the day off to spend with my wife as well. This worked out to give me some extra time to focus on the BBQ pulled pork as well.

The pork shoulder was too big to just drop in the giant crock-pot we have, so I had to cut it into large chunks first. I also chopped up two onions and had a bottle of my favorite BBQ sauce - Sweet Baby Ray's Honey BBQ. I put one chopped onion in the crock-pot, piled on the large pork chunks, added the second onion to the top, and covered it all in a full bottle of BBQ sauce. I then set the crock-pot on low and the timer to twelve hours.

When I got up this morning, I pulled the large chunks of meat apart. This didn't take much effort though, as the meat just fell apart as I picked it up. I then turned the crock-pot back on low for another four hours. Once it was time for dinner, I put the pulled pork on the bolillo rolls, added some more sauce, and some pickles. Even after dinner, we had tons of leftovers, so we'll have having BBQ pulled pork sandwiches for lunch the next few days!

Dinner #10 - Chicken Salad Sandwiches!

One of my favorite meals my wife makes is chicken salad sandwiches. I decided to duplicate her recipe for a nice Sunday night dinner, and there were plenty of leftovers for Monday's lunch as well!

It starts with putting some shelled pecans in the oven with a little garlic powder, onion powder, and a few pads of butter. Once they're nice and toasted, they get a little sprinkle of cayenne pepper. I had picked up a whole roasted chicken from Sam's and pulled all the meat, dark and white, off the bones. Once removed, I shredded the chicken and put it into a good sized mixing bowl. I added in the roasted pecans, craisins, and miracle whip - all amounts just eye-balled until it looked like a nice mix of the ingredients. These were stirred and served on "bolillo rolls" from Sam's bakery with a slice of cheese and some chips.

Dinner #9 - Hamburgers!

No matter the time of the year, there's nothing quite like a good ol' hamburger.  Instead of just buying the hamburger patties, I decided to make them myself this time.  I mixed together about 1.5lbs of 100% angus beef, 0.5lbs of breakfast sausage, black pepper, garlic powder, 4 giant mushrooms (chopped), and about half of a medium-sized white onion (chopped as well).  I also squeezed in 4 whole limes worth of juice.  I made this into 4 giant burger patties and stuck it in the freezer until burger night.

Once the patties were thawed, I fired up the stove and prepped the pan with some Country Bob's all purpose sauce.  Normally I'd just use Worcestershire sauce on the meat, but Bob's was calling to me when I passed by it at Kroger.  Bob's has a very nice flavor and tastes like a mix of both Worcestershire sauce and A1.  While cooking the patties, I got some sweet potato fries going in the oven with a little black pepper, sea salt, and cinnamon.

The patties were big, but fit nicely on the large Kaiser buns, and were accompanied by tomatoes, a little raw onion, and a slice of cheese.  The flavor of the meat with the various ingredients and Bob's sauce was fantastic, and the little hint of lime with each bite was a refreshing addition.  I wasn't completely happy with the texture and consistency of the meat though and I'm not too sure what I could do differently to improve it with the current ingredients.  Maybe I should have made smaller patties...but this is Texas.  Everything is bigger in Texas!

Dinner #8 - Gnocchi!

Wikipedia describes gnocchi as a type of pasta, resembling various thick, soft dumplings, and I've only ever seen it filled with potatoes. I've also only ever seen it at fancy restaurants when my wife orders it, so when I saw it at the local Kroger on the pasta aisle, I knew I had to give it a try!

I'm not sure who wrote the directions on the box, but I was instructed to use 5 quarts of water for about 30 little potato dumplings. If you don't know the conversion there, 1 quart is 4 cups, so I would need 20 cups of water. This just seemed insane to me and I only went with 3 quarts - it may have also had something to do with me not having a pot big enough to hold 5 quarts of water, let alone bring it to a rolling boil. Secondly, the box included a quick little recipe for a tomato-based sauce, that required a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes. Again, if you're keeping count, that's 3.5 cups of tomatoes. I kept rereading the box, but that is exactly what it asked for. So, I dropped the gnocchi in the boiling water and got started on the sauce.

The sauce was pretty simple, a little garlic in some olive oil, add in the crushed tomatoes, some oregano, and black pepper. Simple enough, but at that point the entire sauce pan was full and I still had 30 gnocchi to mix in. Once the gnocchi started to float, and as the instructions directed, I pulled the little potato pockets from the giant vat of water and mixed them with about half of the sauce. I also used one of the Kroger brand vegetable steam bags in the microwave, and was ready to serve up a most delicious dinner!

Well, that was the plan, anyway. I was left with too much water, too much sauce (which then, it turns out, was over-seasoned and too spicy), under-cooked gnocchi...and all after following the direction as close as I could. I figure the directions were originally for a larger box of gnocchi and there's someone out there making a batch for 500 soldiers, but our cooking instructions were switched.

Definitely not one of the better meals on this list, but better than that time I made BBQ tuna spaghetti back in college! (BBQ sauce, can of tuna, and a package of top ramen - those were the days!)

Dinner #7 - Pizza!

Pizza is one of my favorite food groups. I used to work at Domino's Pizza back in my senior year of high school and freshman year of college. There wasn't a single step, from taking the order to delivering the final product, that I couldn't do. My wife and I used to order pizza every weekend, but with the quality of the various chains going down, the best around in our area for the last eight months has been the $5 "hot & ready" products. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it leaves customization options as nonexistent, and we haven't ordered pizza in a few weeks because of this limitation. So, I decided to make pizza!

I've made pizza before, using my father-in-law's fantastic dough recipe, but I also wanted to make it without much preparation and decided to go with a pre-made crust. I also picked up a jar of pizza sauce, a bag of pizza cheese (a mix of various Italian cheeses), and some pepperonis. I also browned some ground beef with a little Worcestershire sauce, black pepper, onion powder, garlic powdered, and fresh cut mushrooms.

Once the meat was ready to go, I place two pizza crusts on baking sheets, spread a layer of sauce across each, added a thin layer of cheese, and loaded them up with the toppings. The first pizza would be considered "double pepperoni" while the second was the beef and mushroom mixture. A final layer of cheese and both were slid into the oven for 15 minutes at 450 degrees.

Both came out really well, and although the crust wasn't the same as the family recipe, it held up in flavor.

Dinner #6 - Wings!

A few years ago, my wife and I used to meet down to this little wings place once a week after work flappy goodness and fries. We've since found other wings places we enjoy more, but in an attempt to capture that same old excitement of "wings night" ...I made wings!

Kroger had a nice big pack of chicken wings on sale, so I washed them up, prepped the oil, and got to work.  I decided to do half of them "naked" and the other half with a light flour and black pepper batter. While the naked wings were frying, I tossed some sweet potato fries in the oven, and got started on the sauce. I found a recipe online for a "honey soy wings sauce" but didn't have all the ingredients and improvised a bit. The main part of the sauce was equal parts honey and soy sauce (we prefer the low sodium kind). To liven it up a bit, I added in just a little bit of the Sriracha chili paste.

The fries came out nicely and I seasoned them with a little sea salt, black pepper, and cinnamon. I decided to put the sauce in a little dipping bowl instead of coating the wings, that turned out to be a good move as it wasn't as messy to eat. Both types of wings, naked and bread, were fantastic!

Dinner #5 - Pho!

On Friday nights I try to make it down to the TX/RX Labs open house event, but I didn't want to leave my wife to fend for herself - I am supposed to be responsible for dinner for 31 days straight, after all.  We talked about it last night and there's a nice little Pho place near my office, that's not too far from her school as well, called Pho Saigon.  We've tried noodle soup and Vietnamese egg rolls at several different places around Houston, but I'd venture to say Pho Saigon is my favorite so far!

We both ordered noodle soup, mine was all white meat chicken and my wife's was beef and meatballs.  Still though, I think my wife said it best tonight: "The egg rolls are the best part of the meal!"

Dinner #4 - STEAK!

There used to be a place here in Houston off of West Gray called The Tavern.  Every Thursday night was "Steak Night" at The Tavern, and it was amazing.  Their steaks were aged for 30 days, seasoned, and cooked on an old charcoal pit.  Sadly, The Tavern moved in closer to down town to a smaller location with terrible parking, and closed a few months later.  In honor of "Steak Night" from The Tavern (and because Kroger had the Nolan Ryan steaks on sale), I decided to make...you guessed it: STEAKS!

I didn't want to just have the same old steaks we've had before, I wanted to try to recreate the tastes I've missed on those wonderful Thursday nights.  To do this right, I was going to have to age my steaks.  I had seen Alton Brown explain it once before, so a quick run to Google and I confirmed the steps.  I washed the meat, dried it, put a layer of salt on both sides, wrapped the steaks in a paper towel, and set them on a rack in the refrigerator.  The salt pulls the moisture out of the meat and the paper towels soak it up, so the meat becomes less hydrated and has a higher protein-to-water ratio.  The good meat flavor does not come from what the cow drank.

So, after work today, we came home and I got started.  I decided to give the steaks a nice thick rub of just black pepper and tossed them in a frying pan.  It didn't take long to get a good sear on both sides and get them to the requested temperatures (my wife likes a little pink left in the middle of her steak, I prefer no pink).

While searing and flipping the steaks, I brought a pot of water to boil and added in some nice baby carrots.  Once they were soft, I drained most of the water, added in some butter and honey, and stirred until it all melted together.  Sweet tasty goodness!  I used the leftover fat and grease from the steaks to cook up some mushrooms with a little Worcestershire sauce, black pepper, onion powder, and some flour to thicken it a little at the end.  If you're having steaks, then you've got to have rolls of some kind.  My personal favorite bread-like items are crescent rolls.  It turns out we had one last can in the refrigerator, so I rolled them up (1/2 plain and 1/2 with cheese in the middle), and started them baking.  I'm not sure if the oven wasn't quite hot enough or they weren't in quite long enough, but they didn't really puff up like normally.  They still tasted great though!

Dinner #3 - Shredded Chicken Tacos

Okay, I'm not sure why, but I seem to be on a Mexican food kick this week.

Anyway, I still had some of those delicious homemade tortillas left over from Monday night and decided to make tacos with them again.  I had picked up a rotisserie chicken from Sam's the night before, stripped the meat, and added a mix of various spices (garlic, cayenne pepper, black pepper, onion powder, mixed in 1/4 a cup of chicken stock and 3/4 a cup of water) to the zip-lock bag with the meat, and shoved it in the refrigerator.

So, for dinner tonight, I tossed the shredded chicken into a pan and shoved it in the oven for 15 minutes at 400 degrees.  While that was heating up, I sauteed some mushrooms and black pepper in butter, then added in some fresh baby spinach.  I also tossed half a brick of Velveeta into a pot, added in 1/2 a cup of milk, and kept a close eye (and stir-stick) on it.  Once the cheese was nice and melted, I added in 1/2 a small jar of picante sauce and stirred until it was an even pinkish color (worst color for cheese dip, but fantastic flavor!). Next I fired up the tortillas and put the tacos together.  I was surprised at how well the meat worked out, I have a tendency to over-spice when I go by the seat of my pants like that, but these turned out very tasty!

Dinner #2 - Turkey Chili Nachos!

Wow, that's probably three words you don't hear said together often: "Turkey Chili Nachos!"  But let me tell you, they were fantastic, and pretty easy to make too!

To start off, I browned the ground turkey with some black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, and Worcestershire sauce.  Once that's ready, I added in one can of black beans, one can of whole kernel corn, and one can of tomato paste - stirring vigorously!  Once the colors looked evenly spread throughout, I let it simmer for a bit while I microwaved a bunch of restaurant style Mexican chips (On The Border brand from Sam's is my favorite!).  I tossed the warm chips in a bowl, covered them with the turkey chili, added a layer of shredded cheese, and a dollop of sour cream.  Quick, easy, and delicious!

Dinner #1 - Breakfast Tacos!

Tonight's dinner was based on 4 major things:

1. We had breakfast sausage.
2. I love tacos.
3. Heather mentioned something about having eggs.
4. I love tacos.

So, I stopped off at a little hole-in-the-wall, authentic Mexican food place near the office and picked up some homemade tortillas.  I browned up the sausage, tossed in 4 eggs, 1/2 a can of original Rotel, some black pepper, and scrambled it all together.  This was my first time using the "orgreenic" pans (I ordered them online to try them out, then saw them at CVS for a few bucks cheaper) and they really worked well.  A quick wipe out with a paper towel and I was heating up tortillas in the same pan.  Once the tortillas were heated up, I tossed in the scramble mix and added some cheddar and monterey jack cheese to top it all off.

I tell you this: I will never eat another tortilla from a grocery store, if possible.  I'm pretty sure I heard angels singing while I was enjoying the homemade tortillas.