This is a first for me. I signed up for a cooking contest and I’m entering my recipe here. I thought you guys might enjoy it even though I’m not really a foodie.

Anyway, “…as part of the launch of new Knorr® Homestyle Stock, an authentic tasting stock in a new concentrated format, 200 bloggers put their culinary talents to the test to become one of the Knorr Four™ – a panel of bloggers who will share their insights and expertise to provide tips and recipes, and participate in other food fun for exciting rewards. And the first reward is a big one – eight finalists from this recipe contest will win a free trip to BlogHer 2011!”

I already have my ticket to Blogher but I’m hoping I can win this contest and maybe give the ticket to my sister-in-law who is locked away up in Northern California. It includes airfare!

So here goes:

There are three things I like a lot: A strong cup of coffee, chocolate and a dry red wine. Not necessarily together of course but when I dreamed up this recipe for Knorr’s new concentrated chicken stock, I decided a little bit of all three might just be delicious. I’m calling it my new holy trinity.

And of course I sampled all three while I slaved away in the kitchen! That’s what good cooks do!! I didn’t sample the unsweetened chocolate though. That would be silly. I have my other stash of 70% dark cacao in my pantry but I did let Bug have a tiny bite so she’d learn just the way I did way back in the day that not everything that looks like delicious chocolate is. It was delicious in the chili, of course—just not so much by itself.

Yes, this chili with chocolate and coffee and wine is a little rich but I think in small portions it’s very very good, especially if you are big fan of mole like I am. Add a big healthy salad on the side and I don’t think anyone will complain. The chicken and corn and also the lack of anything tomato-based made it work for me but you might want to tweak to your own favorite chili flavors.

So here is my recipe:

1 can of black-eyed beans
1 can of white cannellini beans
1 can yellow corn (though white would have been fancy)
1 small can green chilis (I chose mild)
1 onion
1 clove of garlic (or 1 tsp of garlic paste if you are like me and HATE the smell of garlic on your fingers for days)
5 chicken thighs cut into bite-sized pieces with excess fat removed
2-3 Tbsp olive oil
2 oz unsweetened chocolate (shaved with a fine grater)
1 cup of strong coffee
1 cup of red wine (I used 2-Buck Chuck Shiraz)
1 tub of Knorr® Homestyle Chicken Stock
1 cup water
3 Tbsp chili powder
1 Tbsp ground cumin
1 1/2 tsp ground pepper
Avocado slices and goat cheese crumbles for garnish

First the prep work: Drain and rinse your beans and corn, chop your onion, mince your garlic, cut your chicken.

Saute onion and garlic in a generous amount of olive oil until translucent.

Add chicken and cook through until juices run clear. Don’t cook it to death of course. You want your chicken to stay nice and juicy but you don’t want to add your wine and coffee before it’s done because that can change the molecular structure of the chicken and taste nasty.

When the chicken is done and no pink is showing, add 1 cup of strong coffee (hold the cream and sugar of course), 1 cup of red wine (if you’re like me just slosh a glass-full in, sort of like picking blueberries: one for me, one for the pot) and 1 cup of water. Next add the tub of concentrated Knorr chicken broth (don’t worry about diluting it per the directions on the side of the package—that will just happen in the pot as you cook). Stir and let the gelatin break down into a soup like so:

Let this simmer for a minute or two and then add your chocolate.

I know! Chocolate in dinner! It’s like dessert, but not! Mmmmmmm…enjoy that heavenly aroma.

Once the chocolate has been stirred in, add your seasonings. Let that simmer for a bit while you go yell at the kids to bring in their toys from the front yard and you take a few more sips of wine.

Add your beans, corn, chilis and let simmer on low for about 30 minutes. Just enough time to go check your email and surf around Facebook for a while. It could simmer longer (I know some recipes call for an hour) but I usually just wing it. I’m sure sometimes it simmers for less than 30 minutes and it tastes fine. Just make sure you check it and nothing is burning of course!

Mmmmmmmm….it’s starting to smell like dinner around here!

Serve with some avocado slices and goat cheese crumbles (or sour cream if you’re sensitive to hot spicy chili) and ENJOY!

You know what brings all the kids to my yard? Popsicles that’s what. I’m keeping the whole neighborhood regular with these fruity yogurt pops. They are so delicious and good for you! Well, not counting the sugar in the vanilla yogurt I add… but the fruit! Delicious summer fruit!

This week I added apricots to the mix since we have so many of them. They are so tasty all blended up!

And pretty too!

It’s popsicle o’clock!

Now go make some. Here’s my official recipe:

Cut your ripe juicy fruit up (maybe a cup or two). Add two heaping big spoons of vanilla yogurt, blend in your trusty blender, pour into your popsicle mold of choice, freeze for a day and EAT!

I made hamburger buns from scratch last night and they were the most rewarding experience ever. They weren’t super duper healthy full of wheat flour or flax seed or anything but they were from scratch so they had considerably less guar gum and monofalutinwhateveritis. I might just turn out to be a baker after all. Well, maybe. This is a small victory for me.

I followed this recipe and only altered the rising time. I read the reviews at the bottom and everyone said to let the dough rise longer than twenty minutes, so I did. Good thing I started making them early because of course I didn’t realize I needed to allow extra time to the rising time until I was elbow deep in the dough. That always happens to me.

The dough was super sticky and I was sure it wouldn’t turn out. I tried to make balls like the recipe said but they looked more like pudgy balls of skin with disgusting flaps and flour globules. Kind of gross actually. But then I remembered how Bethany reassured me that lemon scones looked ugly and they turned out perfectly. So I carried on. Turns out Bethany was right! Dough isn’t always pretty but it sure bakes up nice.

They were so pretty! And the sound they make when you squeeze them? A perfect spongy crunch just like Colette says in Ratatouille. “A symphony of crackle…” I love that line! If you haven’t seen the movie you must watch this clip. It’s my favorite part of the movie.

I should make bread more often. You know how when you buy hamburger buns at the store there are always too many left over and then they sit around in your kitchen mocking you because they are really good for nothing else except maybe Sloppy Joes or pulled pork and we never make that because Toby hates sugar in his meat (the fool)? And then you end up throwing them out or feeding them to the birds and you feel guilty for wasting? Maybe that’s just me.

Well with these buns I’m glad there are leftovers! There are tons of leftovers and I’m going to have them for breakfast with butter and jam! Yum!

Even Bug liked them. She said they were better than McDonald’s which is very high praise coming from her. Toby liked them too. I was feeling a little cocky after such a huge success so I asked Toby what I should try to make tomorrow night. He said ice cream. I said he could buy me an ice cream maker. Harumph.

I’m out in the sticks visiting my family for a few days and everything here reminds me of all the things I love about summer. It’s hotter than heck, as it always is in the high desert. The apricots are falling off the trees, leaving that sticky sweet fermented smell in the air. Days are spent hiding out in a darkened house, listening to the fans blow or plunked down in a kiddie pool wearing a too-small bikini you haven’t seen 1999. I love it all.

While I was out here, CC surprised us by making beignets for breakfast the other day. She was going to stay up late the night before and make special dough just for the occasion but something happened with her iphone alarm clock or whatever and she ended up just using that store-bought biscuit dough that comes in one of those pop-cans instead. No loss for us, they were delicious!

It took me right back to New Orleans where I first discovered these lovely fried doughnut things. All we needed was some chickory coffee and a few vampires. I looked and looked all over my computer for my old pictures from New Orleans but I think they were sadly lost in the crash of 2006. I know I have them somewhere on a cd but man, trying to find a batch of photos in my boxes and boxes of archived images is worse than finding a needle in a haystack. One of these days…maybe when Bug is in school I’ll tackle that project.

In the meantime maybe you’d like to try a batch of beignets at home!

First you roll out your dough really thin. CC said the most important thing she figured out was it’s super important to keep the dough cold. She worked with small batches and kept the remaining in the freezer while she was pounding and rolling.

Then you cut up small 2-inch squares or rectangles from the dough and fry them in about 1 cup of oil. Lots of recipes say to fry in enough oil to cover the beignets but I watched CC and she didn’t use that much. I think you just have to turn them a lot. When they are toasty and golden, remove them from the pan and let them cool on some paper towels.

Then drop them in a bag with a bunch of powdered sugar and shake, shake, shake!

Shake your Bootay! (You’ll need to shake it a lot to counteract all the calories you’ll soon be consuming.)

And then go enjoy them in the backyard so you don’t get powdered sugar all over the place!

My life is so boring right now I’m going to blog about making spinach cubes. I know. I hate to blow the air of mystery I have around here but seriously, I’ve got nothin’ going on. It’s just parks and grocery shopping day in and day out. If I’m not counting to one thousand while I push Bug on the swing then I’m probably writing up a grocery list and plotting how I’m going to zig-zag across town getting the best deal on groceries.

The highlight of my week this week was going to the local Persian market and buying a giant pillowcase-sized bag of raw spinach. I’m not kidding! The bag was so huge I should have taken a picture. I didn’t want a bag that big. I wanted one one-fifth the size but they didn’t have any and the GIGANTIC one was only $3.49. I must have wheeled my rusty metal grocery cart up and down the crowded narrow aisles of that market eight times trying to weigh whether or not I could actually use as much spinach as a small restaurant.

In the end I decided I could. I figured I’d call up my neighbor and give her some. I’d eat probably a quarter of the bag raw and then cook the rest. Cooking spinach is like some kind of circus show where the clowns pile into an impossibly small car. You can add handful after handful of raw spinach to a boiling pot of water and it just magically disappears. My mom says there is a great debate over whether raw spinach is more healthy than cooked and now I know why. You are probably getting 10 times the amount of vitamins when you eat it cooked simply because it condenses down to such a small size. Five bowls raw probably equals one bite cooked. It’s pretty amazing.

Of course, enjoying cooked spinach is probably key. Which I do. I don’t love it but it’s not bad. I especially like it drenched in lemon juice. Lately, what I’ve been doing with my raw spinach (and the reason I was buying it in the first place) is making smoothies. Cheeky Lotus Shakes to be specific. I don’t know if this diet works. I can’t stay on it long enough to tell you but I can say that I like drinking super-healthy smoothies after I’ve binged on Pop-Tarts for a week. Nothing soothes a bloated tummy and a guilty conscience better than a delicious fruit smoothie packed with ground flax seeds and raw spinach.

I know a lot of people will think this breakfast is disgusting and it is if you think about it too hard. But you don’t taste the spinach at all. Everything is sweet. Blended bananas cover a multitude of healthy fibery things. The texture is funny but I’m not one of those people who is bothered overly much by textures. I’m weird that way.

So that is my breakfast. A smoothie (or shake) and my big cup of coffee. And now you know why I made spinach ice cubes. Because I want to use them in my shakes. I can’t tell you how they tasted yet because today is Pop-Tart day but I’m sure I’ll be able to let you know by the end of next week when my third-of-a-pillowcase-sized bag of raw spinach runs out or gets slimy.

I’ve been tweaking and tweaking my old enchilada recipe and I think I’ve finally settled on a dish that everyone likes. Except now it’s not very much like the original chicken enchilada dish and we’ve been calling it Vegiladas because it has so many vegetables crammed into it. It’s not vegetarian, it just has a lot of vegetables.

So here it is if you are interested.

Vegiladas

Ingredients:

• 1-1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken (breast or thighs will work)
• 1 large (28-oz?) can of enchilada sauce (mild or spicy, green or red—your choice)
• about 16 10-inch tortillas (flour or corn, your choice)
• 2-4 cups shredded Mexican-blend cheese
• 1 15-oz can of black beans
• 1 head of broccoli
• handful of asparagus
• 1 medium onion
• 2 stalks of celery
• 1 bell pepper (I like orange or yellow)
• olives and sour cream for garnish

Directions:

1. Put your chicken in a slow-cooker set on high with about 3/4 of the can of enchilada sauce. Reserve last 1/4 of can for later.

2. Let it cook, let it cook, let it cook! (for 4-6 hours while you get on with the rest of your life)

3. A half-hour before you’d like to have dinner turn off your crock pot. Chop up all your vegetables into bite-sized pieces. You can preheat your oven now to 350 F if you like.

4. Pour a little olive oil into a skillet set over medium heat and saute the onions, celery and bell pepper until soft.

5. With two forks shred the chicken right there in your slow-cooker.

6. Add drained and rinsed black beans to pot with chicken.

7. Add 3/4 of cheese (save some for garnish on top).

8. Add sauteed vegetables and broccoli and asparagus.

9. Mix together. Cheese will begin to melt.

Don’t worry contents of slow-cooker are far yummier than they appear.

10. Scoop a large spoonful into a tortilla, roll it up and place in a 9×13 baking dish with the seam side down.

11. Repeat until baking dish is full of rolled enchiladas. They should be in there pretty snug; usually that size dish will fit 16 filled and rolled tortillas.

12. Top with remaining enchilada sauce, cheese and sliced olives.

13. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes or until sauce bubbles.

14. Serve with sour cream as a garnish.

Enjoy!

I was supposed to have a photo here of a nicely garnished plate but we were so hungry we gobbled them all up and forgot completely about the camera.

Later on that night Troy and I decided to attempt to make a White Russian. I’d seen the recipe earlier on Jora’s website and have been wanting to try one ever since. We didn’t have the right kind of glasses so no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep the cream separated from the vanilla vodka and Kahlua.

Nevertheless, they were quite delicious even if they were muddy. Especially when paired with Bethany’s freshly-baked black and white cookies (care of Smitten’s recipe). I might not have seen all the tourists sights while I’ve been on vacation but I have definitely tasted a lot of yummy food! Going home is going to be very sad and diet-filled.

So, tell me, what do you like to eat when you are on vacation?

So um. I guess this is the end of Lemon Week. I was calling it citrus week earlier because I had tangelos too but we just ate those plain or gave them away. So there’s nothing all that exciting to report on the tangelo front. I still have a freezer full of lemon juice and zest so I guess I could continue with lemon week but it’s not the same as when you have a bowl of fresh ones on your counter threatening to mold if you don’t use them up.

As you can see I did not complete my mission successfully. When I looked at the fruit bowl this morning it was a sad sight. This week was fun though. My mom still has a tree full of lemons so maybe I’ll try it again next time I visit her.

I cook with lemon juice all the time just to “brighten” things up but this week was extra fun because it forced me to try new recipes and you all know how I am about recipes. They are a challenge! I actually had fun though and discovered some new things I like.

I made this Oregano-Lemon Chicken dish which I admit I was so not excited about. I did not expect it to taste good at all. It was way too easy to make and felt like I was just dumping some chicken in a pan, dumping some lemon juice with oregano in it and calling it a day. I was actually pleasantly surprised when 45 minutes later the chicken tasted pretty good.

It was a late night cooking so I took no photos of the completed dish. The light is horrible in my kitchen once the sun goes down. Also, it was the day before I needed to go grocery shopping so I was out of everything and just served it with boring old white rice and a side of butternut squash (TWO starches, as my mom would say disapprovingly). It wasn’t exactly photogenic.

However! Today I chopped it up and put it in a pita sandwich with sprouts, grape tomatoes, cucumbers and some plain yogurt and it was delicious!

I say anything that tastes good the next day cold is a winner!

Even Bug liked it!

Good thing I’m the boss here at Lemon Week SAJ because anybody else would be FIRED! So it’s day two…sort of. I didn’t say I’d do all the days in a row! Whatever, right? Just write something already.

So far we’ve made lemon scones, lemonade, a vodka drink for me (that I called SAJ-quil because I was fighting an irritating cold that I am now over) and Lemon Bars!

I love LOVE lemon bars. It’s really bad. I inherited this love of lemon and sugar and butter from my mom and now just like my mom, I find myself battling extra pounds on my body that make me less lithe than I’d like to be. Dumb genetics! I shouldn’t have made the lemon bars because it is next to impossible for me to walk by the refrigerator door without hearing those little bars screaming for me.

Shut up! Lemon bars, shut up!!!!! (I can hear them all the way from my seat at the table.) I am so taking them to a friend’s house and leaving them there. Ack.

Weight schmeight. (My attitude becomes me, I know.) In my book, you can’t have a lemon week without lemon bars so here I am introducing them to Bug just like my mom introduced them to me. Hopefully, Bug takes after her dad and doesn’t inherit my thunder thighs or my incredible lack of willpower.

Bug loves to cook with me in the kitchen, the poor kid. She also has to put up with my harebrained method of recipe-reading that involves frantic number-checking and re-checking and then weeping and wailing because I cannot read a recipe from top to bottom in order without skimming or leaving out major parts.

I’ve always thought I was retarded because I cannot keep numbers in my head longer than a butterfly sneeze. I’ll read 1 1/2 cups and then by the time I walk from the cookbook back to my mixing bowl, I’ve forgotten whether it was 1/2 or 1 1/2. I know most of you will laugh at me but this is a serious problem for me when it comes to baking. In fact, this is why I don’t bake usually. It’s way too much work for me. You should see me racing back and forth across my kitchen trying to put together a list of three ingredients. It’s insane. And then sometimes I mix up teaspoons with tablespoons and you can see why things don’t always come out right.

I’ve self-diagnosed myself with dyscalculia, which is sort of like dyslexia but with numbers instead of letters. I’ve always hated math ever since I was forced to play “math baseball” in second grade. I remember I practically peed myself in fear as I stood at the blackboard staring at the squiggles while the class shouted at me to add or subtract. I’ve managed through the years, figuring out ways of counting on my fingers secretly or making up complicated dot patterns. But recently with motherhood it’s gotten worse. Sometimes when I’m at the bank, I have to write my account number three times before I get it right. It can be pretty embarrassing.

Anyway, this is not a moan-fest about how much I hate math. I just wanted to include that so you can see why baking is extra fun for me. I can design notecards and web banners and even packaging while using a ruler and fractions and picas just fine but for some reason when I’m in the kitchen, I get struck with major anxiety about reading numbers or just plain reading. It’s weird.

I mostly wrote all those words about math anxiety and dyscalculia so that you don’t laugh when I tell you that I misread the lemon bar recipe (thanks Calee for the link!) and somehow couldn’t figure out how to make the shortbread crust that goes under the lemon bars. I thought it wasn’t included in the recipe so I found another recipe online and used that. But it wasn’t enough so I had to make two batches. Amazingly, it all turned out fine. I don’t know how but it did. I guess shortbread crusts are indestructible.

But because of my crazy-making recipe reading, Bug had to wait quite a bit between the crust-making and the lemon-bar-mix—making which is fine. Patience is a virtue right?

The lemon bars were divine.

Me and my many chins enjoyed them mightily.

Welcome to Citrus Week! Or maybe I should say week-let because the lemons are already dwindling! Can you believe it? I thought I had so many! We may have gotten a little over-enthusiastic with the juicer. I let Bug try a few and she had so much fun she wouldn’t stop. I know I could have stopped handing her lemon halves but I was having fun too.

Whiiiirrrr! Whirrrrr! Go little juicer go!

The first thing we decided to make were lemon scones. We used this recipe. They were fun to make and delicious!

We zested. Actually, I made a lot of zest.

Just call me Zesty!

And then we made some scone dough. It was very easy! We popped them in the oven and then magically the house began to smell like yummy lemony goodness!

They cooked up perfectly! (Why have I been wasting so much money on coffee shop scones?!! These homemade ones are soooo much better!) Bug made her own mini version which actually turned out pretty good. Hers was just a little crisper, almost like a cookie.

If I had known scones were so easy to make I would have been making them for years! I could whip these things up in half an hour and they are so fresh and tasty! Someday when I have a guest room with a real bed and fresh flowers on the night stand, I will serve these to my guests in the morning.

“Good morning? Can I interest you in a freshly baked scone and a cup of coffee?”

“Why, thank you! Don’t mind if I do!”

I’m back. I’m sorry to leave you in the middle of the meal planning but life got in the way—that pesky life. So where was I? Meal Planning Day Four was leftovers. Technically, I was in Pasadena having fancy pizza with Bethany and friends but Toby was at home having leftovers for me.

Meal Planning Day Five was Roman-Style Chicken (ala Giada) with oven-baked potatoes and onions. I love Everyday Italian with Giada. I watched her show once and thought, I could do that. So I did. It’s never happened again. But then, I don’t get much time to watch television anymore.

Below is my trailer-park version of her fabulous recipes.

I make the potatoes first because they take longer to cook. This time I decided to make sweet potatoes with my potatoes. Are they yams or sweet potatoes? I always get them mixed up. They call them one thing in the store, another on the internet. I think we should just call them “swams.” You know which ones I mean. They are reddish purple on the outside and orange on the inside. They cook up to be nice and sweet and not dry or mealy like the white ones.

Ingredients:

Directions:

1. Blanch your little cippolini onions in boiling water for one minute. Let them cool under cold running water, then peel and cut the ends off.



I like cooking cippolini onions because it gives me an excuse to use this neato strainer when I blanch them. I got it cheap from the Chinese market. Sometimes I can’t find little cippolini onions. I’ve tried regular boiled onions and they were a pain. It’s really not that big of a deal if you leave them out.

2. Peel and chop up the swams and potatoes into bite size pieces. Sometimes I cut them up to look like french fries, sometimes I don’t. You just want them thin enough to cook evenly. I probably loaded up my pan too much in the photo above.
3. Toss swams and potatoes and onions in a bowl with olive oil, salt and pepper so that all pieces are coated with oil.
4. Spread evenly on a tinfoil-lined cookie sheet. I spray the tinfoil with cooking spray because even though these puppies are dripping with olive oil, they still stick sometimes! What is up with that?!!
5. Bake at 400 F for 45 minutes or until cooked through.
6. Empty into a serving dish and you’re done!

Onward with the Roman-Style Chicken!

Ingredients:

Directions:

1. Season chicken with pepper and salt.
2. Brown chicken lightly on both sides in olive oil in a pan. Remove and set aside.
3. In the same pan add peppers and bacon. Cook until bacon is crispy (ish) and peppers are browned.
4. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute.
5. Add tomatoes (with juice), wine and herbs.

Her recipe says to scrape the brown bits off the bottom of the pan but I’ve never had that… I may be missing something in this part of the recipe but it still tastes good.

6. Return chicken to pan. Add stock and bring mixture to a boil.
7. Reduce heat and simmer until chicken is done. About 20-30 minutes.

Serve with potatoes and a green salad and enjoy!

Upcoming: Day six is leftovers again and day seven is lasagna but I’m taking a rain check on the lasagna because I made a quick trip out to the sticks instead. Next week perhaps!