With that in mind, here are some quick hits of some things
food related that have happened since my last post:
--- I briefly mentioned in my last post that I was going to
try a different recipe for shepherd’s pie.
Well it was so-so. Normally when
we’ve done shepherd’s pie, it’s the lazy route versus the traditional way. It’s just a quick version that I devised,
kind of based off of tator tot casserole.
The “underneath” layer is the same – browned ground meat, mixed with
cooked mixed frozen vegetables, and a can of cream of mushroom soup. Then instead of topping with tator tots you
top it with mashed potatoes (boiled and mashed up potatoes that you’ve added
milk, butter, and seasoning).
Well this new recipe was odd in that it was half traditional
and half quick. It used ground turkey
instead of beef or lamb, which is completely fine and which we often do
anyway. Of course, the mashed potato
topping was also the same. The weird
part was the vegetables. It used frozen
pearl onions and frozen peas, but then used raw carrots. Especially after re-remembering how much of a
pain it is to chop carrots into small chunks, this recipe will be changed to
use frozen next time. The raw carrots
didn’t add that much more carrot flavor anyway.
The thing I did like though is that instead of using a can of cream soup
to thicken the meat and veggie mixture, it basically had you make a gravy with
chicken broth and flour in the pan with the ground meat as you finished
browning it.
I think my new go-to recipe for shepherd’s pie will be
something between this recipe and what I’ve normally done. The frozen mixed vegetables will remain, but
I think I’ll lose the cream of mushroom soup.
Instead I’ll make the simple gravy because, well, who doesn’t like
gravy?
--- When planning dinners for the week, I always like to
have at least one salad. This past week’s
salad was just sort of made between Joan and I and it was a huge hit. We had some leftover bacon from BLTs the
night before, so we topped our romaine lettuce with that as well as walnuts,
gorgonzola cheese, Granny Smith apple, and a simple vinaigrette dressing. It was sooo good. It had a good amount of “stuff” in it, so it
was filling and hearty salad, good for a cold winter night.
--- On one weekday night last week (don’t remember which),
we finally made our way to the TeaSource
in Saint Paul so I could pick up my January tea as part of my “Tea of the Month”
club membership. We also had some gift
cards to use up from Christmas, so it was the normal tea buying
extravaganza. This month however I didn’t
try any new teas or any different green teas, so the tea purchased was pretty
ordinary. Well ordinary for us anyway in
that it was all black tea. We go through
black tea quite quickly since we make a big strong pot every morning. The teas we purchased were Breakfast Assam
(for making chai and drinking straight), Grand Keemun, Welsh Morning, China
Black Special, and Moon over Madagascar.
--- Lastly, I just wanted to share a picture of the copious
amount of canned goods that I purchased on the last grocery run.
The Progresso canned soups are meals in themselves of course
and the two cans of Rotel were on sale (we’ll use them for chili
eventually). Everything else though will
be going in the slow cooker is currently in the slow cooker with other
ingredients for this evening’s dinner – Chicken Enchilada Soup. It’s been great soup weather today, with this
morning’s 8 am temperature of -15 and the balmy daytime high of 5F. Besides warming us, Joan and I are hoping the
soup will be similar to the great chicken enchilada soup at the Grumpy Troll (the Madison area
restaurant we probably miss most). If it’s
anything remotely close, this recipe will be a keeper, and I’ll be sure to
share the recipe on here.
--- Ok, one last pic.
Do you think we might be making cheesecake soon?
