Betty Crocker Cookbook #39 Cuban Pork Sandwiches (pg. 451) - 160218

Rather than buy roast pork, or make it in the extremely limited time we had available, Charlie suggested we use the pulled barbeque pork out of the previous night's slow cooker.

No pictures, again, but I can blame the pickles for that - a fine addition to nearly any sandwich!

Betty Crocker Cookbook #38 Pulled Jerk Pork Sandwiches (pg. 157) - 160217

When I visit Charlie, I tend to buy a nice big piece of meat for her freezer and her slow cooker. This time, it was a pork shoulder. This recipe calls for a 2.5 pound boneless shoulder, but those are hard to find in Regina so we ended up with a 4 pound bone-in shoulder. This worked quite well, and the resulting sandwiches were fantastic. No photos, because apparently I get easily distracted by great food.

This also supplied "roast pork" to the Cuban Pork Sandwiches we made for lunch the next day.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #35: California Black Bean Burgers (pg. 504) - 160215

For my first foray into the Vegetarian chapter of the Betty Crocker Cookbook, Charlie helped me make burger patties out of black beans. The "California" part of the name comes from the salsa used as garnish during final assembly; I gather that such non-standard burger toppings are stereotypically associated with the hedonism of The Golden State.

I took no photos of these burgers, mainly due to the extreme mess that results from trying to force a fairly wet bean paste into a coherent patty. They were also excellent, so I didn't put down my burger to pick up my camera.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #36: Chicken and Broth (pg. 434) and #37 Quick Jambalaya (pg. 433) - 160216

I visited Charlie in Regina over reading break in February, and together we completed enough recipes in this project to add considerably to her store of frozen meals.

Several of the recipes we chose - chosen as we drove back to Regina from Cypress Hills - were set up as prerequisites supplying key ingredients to subsequent recipes. In this case, the Chicken and Broth supplied chicken broth to the Quick Jambalaya; we also added some of the cooked chicken that resulted, despite not being called for in the Jambalaya recipe.

Some of the broth from the Chicken and Broth. I felt like we were using this simple recipe in the way the authors of the cookbook intended - this recipe doesn't produce a meal, or a component of a multi-dish meal, it provides ingredients to further recipes.

We didn't have frozen brown-and-serve sausage links as called for, and our shrimp still had tails, but we substituted regular sausages and added most of the smaller chicken pieces. I couldn't convince Charlie to dive all-in to this project and get instant rice, so we just simmered the jambalaya for longer and used regular brown rice.

Absolutely delicious!

***
 I had to go back and change the recipe numbers when I realized we made the California Black Bean Burgers Monday, and these recipes Tuesday.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #33: Spiced Corned Beef Brisket with Horseradish Sour Cream (pg. 156) - 160204

I chose this recipe to use up the rest of the very-salty "navel" beef I'd bought for recipe #21. I washed the beef chunks in running water for about 10 seconds to remove some salt. As with nearly everything I put into my slow cooker, everything emerged after 9 hours that same colour of brown, and quite soft.

Despite my slow cooker's tendency to colour everything the same, the taste is more robust. Especially salt. This was still pretty salty. Also, I'm now convinced that I have, at some point, completely ruined my ability to taste the hot/spicy part of the flavour of horseradish. I glopped a huge amount of the horseradish sour cream on this, and it was delicious but completely non-spicy.

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Also! I finally bought a freezer. $60 from a person moving out of a house in Cambridge.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #32: Beer-Cheese Soup (pg. 440) - 160131

After my heavy breakfast with sausages and eggs, I was happy to tick off a meatless soup for supper. Soup generally goes well with bread, anyway, and I'd bought some lovely beer at the local brewery in growlers.

I used Waterloo Dark for the beer, though I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes. The celery didn't soften as much as I expected. It wasn't crunchy, but it was more firm than I'm used to. Of course, most of my celery consumption comes out of my slow cooker, which turns most vegetables into brown paste regardless of starting characteristics.

The last ingredient is "Popped popcorn, if desired". I don't normally desire, but I have a bit of regret that I did not pick up any popcorn in anticipation of this recipe. Presumably there are other recipes that call for this American staple, so I can correct that oversight.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #31: French Bread (pg. 84) - 160131

My first yeast bread from this recipe book for this project! I decided to make this, as well as do some needed household chores, instead of going for a Sunday Drive this week. Every recipe in this book comes with a time estimate, usually broken down by major stages: prep, cook, stand, etc. The totals, however, can conceal a pattern of work / rest with more steps than simply "prep", "rise", and "chill". Betty Crocker's French bread suggests 25 minutes of preparation, 3 hours 15 minutes of rise, 4 hours of chill, and 20 minutes to bake.

These totals are probably accurate (except the bake time). There are three rise stages, each about an hour long, separated by blocks of preparation. I've baked bread a few times before, so I consider myself to know my way around kneading and yeast-handling. The big variant here is the repeated applications of sprayed-on water, and the pan of water in the oven during baking. This helps to develop a crispy crust, apparently.

The baking time was described as "18 to 20 minutes" but I think my oven struggles to acheive and maintain high temperatures, so I left the loaves in the oven for about 30 minutes before they looked the right colour to me.

I goddam love fresh bread. I couldn't wait, so I cut one loaf using an oven mitt to hold the hot loaf and smeared butter on the cut pieces. Fantastic!

Betty Crocker Cookbook #30: Mexican Scrambled Eggs (pg. 221) - 160131

I think the easiest recipe in this book is Scrambled Eggs, so I took on the variant, Mexican Scrambled Eggs. This is very similar to the breakfast burritos I sometimes do - scrambled eggs, stir-fried onion & pepper, wrapped in a tortilla with cheese - but with some chorizo sausage added. The sausage wasn't really "chorizo", it was whatever sub-category the sausage the Mennonites sell at the St. Jacob's farmers' market falls into. There are Mennonites in Mexico, and I didn't go for the garlic sausage, so I'm going to call this substitution "close enough".

No photo, so I can't show you how I made a rather large breakfast for myself. I was pretty stuffed.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #29: Broiled Fish Steaks (pg. 243) - 160129

I bought enough basa fillets for about four meals (at least!) so I decided to make more room in my freezer, still lacking a stand-alone unit, and broiled up a trio. I don't yet have a broiling pan, an oversight I covered with my metal trivet balanced on a cookie sheet, but I'll need to get a proper one before I tackle any other broiling / roasting recipes. The variant for this recipe is fillets, and the instructions are nearly exactly the same as for fish steaks.

These were actually kind of bland, but that's not really surprising, they were seasoned only with butter, salt, and black pepper. Still, not bad and nearly as quick as advertised. I'd picked up some sweet-potato oven fries and broccoli at the grocery store, mainly because I had the realization in the frozen isle that I hadn't bought anything that could be described as "prepared food" since I began this project. Frozen pizzas were a prominent part of my diet last year, and I'll probably break down and buy one or two eventually but so far I'm not really missing them.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #28: Pecan-Crusted Fish Fillets (pg. 243) - 160127

It took me a while to make up my mind regarding the fish to purchase when I was at the grocery store this week. Most fresh fish is pretty expensive around here, but I settled on Basa fillets (boneless and skinless) because they seemed suitable and were not nearly as pricey as (for example) the tilapia or the Atlantic cod. One aspect of this project I'm really looking forward to is the fish and shellfish chapter, because I eat very little fish normally. Aside from the occasional bit of tuna, I almost never eat anything from the sea or freshwater.

The reason it took me a long time to choose the basa was mainly because it is not included on the list of fishes on page 242 of Betty Crocker - there's a helpful table for classifying fish. Mostly it comes down to the texture of the meat. Some recipes call for "medium-firm texture", others for "delicate to medium" or "firm". I gather these differences would affect cooking times and temperatures, and the ways one might handle the fish pieces during cooking. A bit of googling reveals that basa is southeast-Asian catfish, farmed in the Mekong river. There's actually a fair bit of discussion regarding basa online, and I'm not sure I'll buy it a second time. This is part of the reason I so rarely eat fish: I don't want to contribute to an industry that has so many harmful environmental impacts across so many different ecosystems.

No photo this time, because somehow it completely slipped my mind. Chopping up the pecans took a bit of time, and only about half of them stuck to the egg-dipped fish fillets. So some of the pecans ended up fried directly in the pan, which was fine, it's not like nuts go soft in a frying pan or anything.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #27: Orange Smoothie (pg. 63) - 160126

This is labelled both "Fast" and "Low-fat", but I think the second one depends on the use of vanilla frozen yogurt, rather than the alternative built into the main recipe (this actually has no variants) of vanilla ice cream.

As usual, this recipe makes enough for multiple servings, in this case four. I cut it down to a single serving because a) it's just me and b) I only had a little more than 1 cup of vanilla ice cream anyway (and no frozen yogurt of any flavour).

This was very sweet, but pretty tasty. Too sweet for me for breakfast, really, but this would make a pretty good dessert. Especially, I suspect, with frozen yogurt.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #26: Skillet Calzon (pg. 525) - 160125

I played Pathfinder with my friends on Monday night, starting about an hour after I got home. I threw together this meal from the "20 Minutes or Less" chapter, and even though it actually took closer to 30 minutes (this is a pattern for me) it worked quite well. Fortunately, I can mute my microphone through roll20.org, the website that lets us play this "tabletop" role-playing game (RPG) online: nobody else had to listen to me chew.

I guess you can buy mushrooms in little jars in the USA, because this is the second recipe I've done from this book in which I've substituted a 10-oz can of mushrooms for the called-for 4.5-oz jar. I like mushrooms, so it was no problem. The basic idea is to cook up this tomato / ground beef / vegetables sauce and slather it on some toasted French bread with Parmesan cheese. The instruction "French bread" is a little vague, though, I think they must be using much larger loaves than what I bought. I used what amounts to a baguette, though at some local grocery stores I know I can sometimes buy "French bread" that's wider.

This handily made enough leftovers for a second meal. I'm not sure where the name comes from, as a calzone is a kind of stuffed pastry and this doesn't involve anything like that. Also, the use of a 10-inch skillet seems wildly inappropriate, the volume of sauce - even accounting for my excess mushrooms - is far larger than would comfortably fit in my 10-inch frying pan, and a quick Google Image Search suggests I'm not wrong in thinking "skillet" is a synonym for "frying pan".

Betty Crocker Cookbook #25: Hungarian Goulash (pg. 291)

If it weren't for the 30-minute prep time and 1:40 cook time, this would almost qualify as "bachelor chow". It certainly fit nicely in my usual bachelor-chow plastic containers, and made enough for two and a half meals - I had it for supper, then for lunch, then for lunch again but with dessert (chocolate DOOM cake) the second time, to keep my total mass of food intake high.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #23: Chocolate Cake (pg. 101) and #24: Fudge Frosting (pg. 115) - 160124/25

Last Sunday was a remarkably productive day for this project, partly because this cake counts for two recipes.

It's chocolate cake, so I'm not sure how much I can say beyond "Delicious!". Of course.

However, I ran into some trouble with the frosting. The recipe includes heating most of the ingredients to a slow boil, then cooling for 45 minutes before adding the powdered sugar and vanilla. I messed this up, by boiling everything, but I don't think that really bothered the icing sugar. The more serious error was my decision to ice the cake the following day. I had to re-heat the frosting, and then I didn't let it cool enough.

The cake came from my oven. The frosting came from Mordor. Notice in the photo it's attempt to cover the land (i.e. my countertop) with Eternal Darkness. I had to put the whole thing on my balcony to allow winter to stop the spread.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #22: French Toast (pg. 79) - 160124

With bonus Shirred Eggs

Feeling the pressure to keep this project rolling, I threw together French Toast last Sunday before departing for a Sunday Drive. I had meant to half the recipe (but use 2 eggs instead of 1.5 and just fry the excess egg coating mixture), but I added the full amount of both eggs and milk and had to just roll with it.

Three eggs plus 3/4 cup of milk makes for a pretty runny mixture. This is good for coating bread, but when I fried the leftovers - I used 4 slices of bread rather than the full recipe's 8 - it didn't act like normal scrambled eggs. The sugar and vanilla were lovely on the bread, which of course was the point of this meal, but made the milky, scrambled eggs oddly sweet. In any case, this is a pretty standard French toast recipe and was delicious.

PHOTO

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It's not a full recipe, just part of a general-guidelines table at the beginning of the "Eggs and Cheese" chapter on page 220, but the day before the French Toast I baked, or "shirred", some eggs for my breakfast.

I ended up baking them for about 50% longer than the guidelines suggested, and I'm still not sure how to "dot with butter", but they turned out quite well.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #21: Corned Beef and Cabbage (pg. 289) - 160120

I wasn't able to find corned beef brisket as described in the recipe, so I went with "Cured Navel Beef" because it was packed in brine; the recipe specifies beef with brine, and step 1 includes "add juices and spices from package of corned beef". I took this to mean I should add some of the red-tinted liquid my navel beef was floating in. I also did not find a small head of cabbage, so I used about half of a large head of savoy cabbage. Everything went into the slow cooker (onion, garlic, and enough cold water to submerge the beef being the other ingredients) and I went to work.

When I came home, my apartment smelled as good as I expected - slow cookers tend to release delicious aromas, almost regardless of their contents. I nuked some potatoes and settled in for my supper.

SALT!

After mentioning the brine, I'm sure most of you are completely unsurprised that this meal was basically salt with meat and salt and salt. Once I got past the SALT the flavour of the meat was quite nice, and the slow-cooked cabbage was interesting and not at all bad (the onions and garlic had basically dissolved, as is usual for the slow cooker). I ended up throwing the rest away because I couldn't bring myself to eat any more, especially after the fat congealed as a floating paste in the 'fridge. I only used about half of the navel beef, and I found another recipe that specifies soaking the salt out of the meat before cooking. 

No photo this time, I forgot to grab my camera while I was chugging huge amounts of water.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #20: Chicken Tetrazzini (pg. 140) - 160119

This is a recipe that calls for cooked chicken, suggesting the purpose is to serve as a sink for leftover cooked poultry - I used leftover, frozen christmas turkey (mostly white meat). Some of the other ingredients are very hard to find here in their exact specifications; I used a whole can (10oz) of mushroom pieces-and-stems rather than the 4.5oz jar that Betty Crocker seems to think I'll have. This recipe also finished off the chicken broth Charlie had made for me, so despite my wanton use of Meleagris gallopavo there was still some Gallus gallus domesticus in this.

This is also a fun recipe because it provides a lovely excuse to buy lots of whipping cream - I have multi-use plans for the cream (if I can find or make ladyfingers) and I'll probably toss some in to a morning smoothie.

Overall, this is the first even-slightly disappointing recipe. Don't get me wrong, this is pretty good stuff, but my expecations were perhaps unrealistically high given the record from this book so far. The picture in the book shows a side-salad that's probably what I'm missing - some bright, crisp vegetables and festive tomatoes would complement this slightly bland cream-sauce pasta very well. But! I only ate half of it tonight, so I can seek out salad components for the leftovers.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #19: Apple Oven Pancake (pg. 77) - 160117

I had planned to cook Popovers (pg. 76) on Sunday afternoon (I definitely slept in, well and truly, on Sunday, having gotten up rather early on Saturday) but my errand-running on Saturday afternoon had not netted me a popover pan. I trust the internet will be able to supply these extra-tall muffin tins.

This is a variant on Puffy Oven Pancake, prepared with a layer of apple slices and brown sugar on the bottom of the pie plate; the batter is poured over and into this layer and it takes a little longer to bake.

My plan while I was making this was to eat 1/2 of it for breakfast on Sunday, and have the remainder Monday. However, I wasn't really full after 1/2, and I ate it all. I can rationalise this (easily, I ain't gotta justify nothin', really) by considering the ingredients - 2 eggs, a little flour, milk, and sugar, and one apple, is about the amount of food I'd have for breakfast, typically.

***

To have a hope of completing this project in a single year I would need to maintain an average of a little less than two recipes each and every day. Some days and recipe combinations are easier than others, for example the two or more recipes that can be combined to make a solid square meal. However, to keep up that pace requires a greater committment than I can really spare. At the beginning, I was on vacation with Charlie, who provided support and encouragement for that critical launch phase. Now, though, I'm back at work and generating more leftovers than I can eat in each following-day lunch. So, I'm pushing the deadline back to two years. I'm pretty happy with the pace I'm keeping now, a bit ahead of one recipe / day, and this will allow me to relax and enjoy this project rather than feeling pressured to keep cranking out exotic (to me) food.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #18: Skillet-Fried Chicken (pg. 321) - 160116

Highly unusually for me, I got up early on Saturday morning. I took a co-worker to the St. Jacob's farmer's market because she wanted to find a source of meat and eggs that she could trust - she would rather not eat factory-farm raised animals. Fair enough, and I'd been meaning to check out this locally-famous farmer's market anyway, for deals on large amounts of fruit to make into wine.

The market turned out to be a bit overhyped, I actually prefer Kitchener's farmer's market, it's less obviously trendy-and-bourgeoise. But I bought a chicken! From people wearing slightly-more-traditional-clothing! Plus some sausage, from a woman wearing a bonnet! When in Rome...

Preparing to cut up the chicken. The steel bowl is for good parts as they come off, the prune yogurt container for garbage (in this case, mostly skin and fat; the spine and ribs went directly into the garbage can. I have no need, and no space, for more broth at this time).

I was happy to go to the farmer's market and buy a whole chicken because I feel like I'll never gain skills like "cutting up a whole chicken" if I don't practice them often enough; too long an interval between such attempts and I'll have to start over.

I think the bird I bought was considerably heavier than the 3- to 3 1/2-lb chicken this recipe calls for. A long time ago, I read a kind of write-in trivia-answers thing that I remember mentioned trends in chickens. Apparently, many (American) cookbooks were originally written in the middle of the 20th century, when typical whole chickens at local butchers were under 4 pounds (about 2kg). By the end of the century, average whole chickens for sale had increased in weight, leading to a mismatch between recipes and real-world experience. I experienced that mismatch, this took a really long time to cook!

The basic idea is to "shallow-fry" (my own term; a continuous layer of oil boiling in a hot pan, insufficient to submerge the food) the cut-up chicken pieces, first for 10 minutes skin-side down, then 20 more minutes skin-side up. My chicken didn't fit in the pan, I only managed to get about 2/3 of it in for the first round. And that took around an hour to fully cook! The remaining 1/3 took less time, but still more than the 30 minutes the recipe suggests.

In the end, though, very tasty bird and the cutting-up process went pretty smoothly.

Betty Crocker Cookbook #17: Rice Pilaf (pg. 339) - 160113

Instead of regular chicken broth, I used the heartier chunky-chicken broth that Charlie made at the cottage from the parts of the first chicken I cut up. Rice pilaf mix - you can buy it as an envelope in the gravy section of a grocery store - is usually a somewhat alarming shade of yellow, which this recipe has taught me is because of the yellow chicken-broth-powder.

I like rice anyway, and I like chicken broth and onions, and what those things (plus butter) do to rice. I ate this with the stuffed pork chops, and some frozen peas I threw in the microwave.