Category: Creative Content

Okay, so almost a week later and I am just about recovered from Christmas.
So Quickly, for Christmas Dinner, I didn’t do every tradition food that my family usually consumes, but a variation.

I made 2 appertizers to snack on. One was BBQ Pigs in a Blanket. Simple to make, yummy to eat. I got the little beef sausages and dipped in BBQ sauce, then wrapped them in crescent roll dough and bake.

The Second Appertizer was shrimp and cheese pillows. I placed uncooked clean shrimp and a cube of cheese or two (I used sharp chedder cheese and pepper jack) in a square of Puff Pastry. Place another square on top and seal, then bake until golden brown at 350 degrees, then brush melted butter on the top and place back in the oven for about another 5 or 10 minutes.

Now for dinner, I usually would have made mac and cheese and stuffing, but I didn’t feel like that this year. I did however do both turkey and ham.

The turkey I washed and seasoned with butter, seasoning salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder. I Added water to the pan and cooked it back side up first and then once it was brown flip it so breast side was up.

The ham that I bought was a spiral ham, but it didn’t have a glaze, so I made my own. I used pineapple juice and brown sugar mixture.
I poured it over the ham
place pineapple rings all over the ham and pour ginger ale soda into the pan and bake until warmed through. Ocassionally, I took a spoon and based the ham.

For the sides, I had to make candied sweet potatoes. I also made fried corn again since my family enjoyed it so much at Thanksgiving, and I stir-fried fresh green beans with garlic, shallot and fresh gingered with a chardonnay sauce.

Dinner was great, and I still have left over ham and turkey, so I probably won’t have to cook to much for New Years.

Happy New Year to Everyone!!!!

So First off Happy Holidays to all!!! Christmas at my house was fun and super exhausting. It is the day after Christmas and I’ve spent most of my day in my room in bed.

So Christmas Eve, my girls and I made cookies. The traditional chocolate chip cookies, and sugar cookies. However, the sugars cookies we made had a bit of a twist. We used store bought sugar cookie dough and made sugar cookie cups.
This is easy to do, but be careful, because they burn easily. I should know, we burned our first batch 🙁

So along with the cookie dough, a mini muffin pan is needed. Brush the muffin pan with melted butter (I used cooking spray the first time and they burned, so use butter). Press the cookie dough down in the pan and bring up on the sides so it looks like a cup. Bake as directed and let cool. Be cafe you don’t burn them.

Now for the filling. I used a strawberry cream cheese filling. Easy to make: One pack of room temperature cream cheese. Added sugar (sugar amount varies on how sweet you like it) and juice from macerated strawberries (macerated strawberries: added sugar to fresh strawberries and put in the fridge for a few hours. This brings the juice out) and mix with a hand mixer until smooth.

Add filling into cups and place a strawberry on top. Let sit for a few moments and then enjoy. We really enjoyed these.

CHRISTMAS BREAKFAST

Yesterday morning, I decided to make my own waffles. So I went out and got a waffle maker and made waffle batter from scratch.

So the batter consist of: 2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 2 eggs, 1 1/2 cups of milk, and 2 or 3 tablespoons of 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 pinch of salt, 5 tablespoons of melted butter (3 tablespoons go in mixture, the other 2 is for the waffle iron) and cinnamon (but any flavoring can be subsituted, vanilla, chocolate). Mix everything together until all dry ingredients are mixed well. Follow direction on the waffle iron. I used sliced bananas to top off my waffles.

To go along with the waffles, I made scramble eggs, hashbrowns and bacon. Just a heads up, the waffles were so big, no one could finish them alone. So one waffle is enough for two people. 🙂

Since Christmas is like 2 days away, I didn’t want to make a big meal because we are gonna have a lot of leftovers. So today, I made a small corn beef brisket, half a head of cabbage and homemade cornbread. Only leftovers is the corn bread, which will be eaten over the holiday.

So Corn beef comes with a packet of seasoning. So the longest part of preparing this meat is boiling it in water with the packet of seasoning until it is fork tender. Then remove the meat from the water and place in a pan, fat side up and let bake until fat is golden brown. Then slice.

For the cabbage, there are many ways to make it. My mom always use to boil it in water with some smoked meat. I use to do it that way as well, but now I like to pan cook it. I first, render out some salt pork, or fat-back for the oil that come off of it and the salt content.
In the same pan with more than half the oil removed, I stir-fry the cabbage that I have sliced, until it is tender, but not soggy. I season with black pepper.

Cornbread is so good, and I will admit that I typically just make a box of jiffy mix cornbread. But today, I decided to make it from scratch. One cup of flour, One cup of yellow corn meal, two teaspoons of baking powder, 3/4 cup of sugar, 2 eggs, and about a cup to a cup and a half of milk. Mix together.

In a baking dish, or round bread pan or cassarole dish, melt some butter in the oven, about 3 tablespoons, or 3 thin slices. Make sure the bottom and sides of the dish or pan are greased, and pour remaining melted butter in the mixture, and stir. Then pour mixture in dish or pan and bake until brown and cooked through at 350 or 375 degrees. Take a steak knife and poke through center, if the knife comes back clean then the cornbread is done. If there is still mixture on the knife, turn down oven and let bake a few more minutes.

A little goes a long way with this meal. The bread alone is sweet and filling.

Love a ribeye steak any day of the week, so today I made sweet and sour ribeye steak with Jasmine rice and stir fried broccoli.

So first the steak, I marinated in white sugar and lemon juice right before I pan cooked it.

Pan cooked the steak in olive oil with sliced shallots and sliced baby bella mushrooms. For the sauce, I just added a bit of water to deglaze the pan and a little more sugar.

Now, I have never had Jasmine rice, but I wanted to try it. I followed the directions right on the container, and it tastes fairly close to regular long grain white rice.

Fresh broccoli is very healthy and can be cooked in so may ways. I like my broccoli stir-fried with a sweet brown sauce. The sauce is simple. It is just soy sauces and sugar and thicken with flour in water.

Quick meal very yummy.

Last night, I had a late dinner after the kids had gone to bed. Swai with Fingerling Potato Mash.

I am orginally from the east coast of the United States and we love to eat fish there. I grew up eating lots of fish, but my favorites are Black, White and Striped Bass, Red Snapper, and Blue Gills (we call them Sunnys). However, since I moved to the west coast of the United States, I can not find Blue Gills at all, and the Bass and Snapper are sometimes out of my price range. So I have been trying new fish like Tilipia, which I like and last night I tried Swai for the first time.

I got the fillet frozen in the frozen fish freezer section. It is a mild white fish, very good and easy to prepare. So I seasoned both sides with seasoning salt, garlic powder and black pepper and pan cooked it with butter and sliced onion.

For a side, I boiled 4 fingerling potatoes, 2 white and 2 purple. Once they were done, I sliced them and browned them slightly in a pan with a little butter and salt. I then put them back in a pot and mashed them with the skin on. I added salt and pepper to taste and milk to smooth them out some.

The quick meal took about 30 minutes from start to finish. Quick and Yummy.

Tonight I wanted to do something I haven’t done in a while and something I have never done before. So tonight, I made Egg rolls, one shrimp, one Chicken, which I haven’t made since last year. And I have never made Chicken Cordon Bleu, but today was the day, and of course, I had to do it with a Gloriousgal flair.

So first the egg rolls. The basic vegetables in the egg rolls are thinly sliced carrots and shredded cabbage. I also added shallots, garlic and fresh ginger.

I stir-fried the above items in a wok with olive oil with salt and pepper. Once they began to soften, I added about 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and 2 to 3 tablespoons of rice vinger. Remember to keep stirring.

In a seperate pan, cook chicken (breat meat, cut in chunks) seasoned with salt and pepper until completely done. Same with shrimp (Shrimp seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh ginger).

In two different bowls, I divided the veggies into equal amount and then added the shrimp to one bowl and the chicken to another. Mixed both and then placed them in the fridge until the cooled and I was ready to cook them. Once ready to actually cook the egg rolls, I beat one egg in a bowl to help seal the egg roll wraps closed. I removed the veggie mix from the ice box. Time to roll…

Lay the egg rolls out and brush the outer edge with egg, then added the stir-fry mixture to the center of the wrap diagonally.
Bring the bottom edge up to the center, fold in the sides to the center and then roll the remainer to the top, be sure the edges with the egg touch, to create a seal.

For frying these egg rolls I used canola oil, but put any cooking oil will work. I fried these in a wok until brown, but they can be deep fried or fried in a regular frying pan until brown and crispy. Set on paper towel to drain oil.
For dipping sauces, I had 3 store bought sauces, plum, hoisin, and sweet and sour, I really didn’t like the plum sauce. The last was a honey mustard, which was just yellow mustard mixed with honey, simple and was actually my favorite outside of the hoisin.

Now the Main Course:

5 chicken breast that I sliced open like a book and seasonded with seasoning salt and pepper and olive oil then set aside.

The sauce takes the longest to make so I don’t put my chicken together until the sauce is ready to go. So for the sauce I used Roma tomatoes, diced elephant garlic, sliced shallots, dried basil, oreagano and thyme. I also used salt pepper and white wine.
After adding the wine, let simmer and then added a little flour water to thicken the sauce and remove from heat. Now time to put the chicken together.

I used two cheese for this dish, fresh Mozzeralla and Tillamook swiss cheese, which is a real cheese, not processed (made in Tillamook Oregon). I sliced the Mozzeralla and I used five slice of swiss cheese and folded each one in half. For the ham, I used Oscar Mayers Honey ham (nothing special, just lunch meat). Now it’s time to layer. First the swiss, then the ham, and finally a slice of Mozzeralla, then fold the chicken flap down. Easy. Pour over sauce and place more fresh mozzeralla over each piece of sauce covered chicken, then bake in the oven until chicken is done.

For the sides, glazed carrots and rice-a-roni

Went to the grocery store yesterday and saw the most pretties lamb chops and I could not pass them up. So today I made pan cooked Lamb Chops in a Mushroom Sherry Sauce on a bed of Papparadella pasta.

The lamb was seasoned with seasoning salt, pepper, garlic powder and cooked in olive oil. Seared all sides of Lamb and added sliced onion and baby bella mushrooms halved. Deglazed the pan with cooking sherry, then thicken the sauce with flour water.

Lamb was served on a bed of Papparadella Pasta.

So my Thanksgiving was very chill, and my meal was great. We ate until we were full and sleepy, just like that particular holiday is suppose to be like.

For dinner I made sweet potatoes, fried corn, stuffing, collard greens and the star of my table and meal was a beautiful duck.

So my sweet potatoes I do in a pot because they cook faster. Peel them and cut in huge chucks, and then put them in a pot half full of water, sugar, butter, nutmeg and all spice. boil until potatoes are soft and juice is thick.

My stuffing, I started with two boxes of Stove Top Mix, and added two or three piece of toast ( crumbed, or torn). In a pot, I boiled chicken gizzards and heart in water with salt pepper, diced onions and celery, powder sage and poultry seasoning. Once the gizzards are tender, I take the gizzards and heart and give them a quick pulse in the food processor, (usually I slice them by hand, but the food process works the same way but faster). I add them to the stuffing mix, along with the broth; mix together. Boil 3 eggs, and then once done, peal and pulse them in food processor and then added to mix. Last I cut up a medium onion and dice celery and saute in some butter and add to my stuffing. Mix everything together and taste. If it is not seasoned enough, salt, poultry seasoning and sage can be added. I choose to make this the night before and place it in the fridge, then Thanksgiving, an hour before the duck was done, I bake the stuffing in a pan until browns on top.

Alot of my friends want to know how to make fried corn, so here it is. I had six fresh ears of white corn. My daughter helped me shuck it and was washed them. On a plate or in a bowl, with a sharp knife in hand, place the ear of corn in the bowl and hold it at the top. start slicing the corn off the cob. Once the corn in sliced of, take the knife and scrap the cob, this will get the milk or the juice from the corn cob in the bowl. In a frying pan, render out several pieces of salt pork or fatback (for those folk from down south). Place the cooked meat on a paper towel. Do Not pore out the oil from the meat. This is what we fry the corn in, and because the oil from the meat is salty, no extra salt is required. While the oil is still hot, toss in the corn and the juice and watch the magic. Added pepper and stir the corn so it does not burn. Once the corn start to get soft, added about a quarter cup of milk and stir. Turn the heat down and let simmer. Easy, and so very good.

I made fresh collard greens. In a big pot, boil some smoke meat of any kind. I used smoke ham hock. Boil with salt pepper and crush red pepper, until meat is tender and the water has boild down to an inch. For those whole have seen collards, but didn’t know what they were looking at, they look like a big leaf.
Wash each green leaf in cool water, making sure there is no dirt. Once all the leaves are clean, take a few leaves and roll them together tightly.
With a sharp knife, slice the greens.
Add greens to pot of boiled smoke meat and cook until green are tender and turn a dark green. Added salt to taste.

The Star of the day was the Duck. I had a whole duck and 4 additional quarters. I washed them and seasoned inside and outside of duck with seasoning salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder. I place on a rack in a big backing pan. Now you place a duck on a rack so that the grease from the duck will drip in the pan and the duck is not being baked in it. This is a step poeple forget and then their duck turns out grease. Before I put the duck in the oven, I place a onion in the cavity, quartered, and two carrots cut into chucks. For the first round of baking, I place the duck breast down. When the back is brown, I flip the duck and so breast is up and bake that way.

For dessert, I made a apple pie.