Ziti, the correct way

I was so bored with our weeknight dinner rotation that I dug deep tonight. I dared to make the dinner from the infamous "dinner and a tantrum" blog post.

I give you....baked ziti the correct way! (Insert Christmas Vacation drumroll) Joy to the Worrrrrrrrrld!


There is really no real point to this blog. I just wanted to share.

Click here for the original recipe and subsequent painful blog about it.

Day after Thanksgiving - Turkey Noodle Soup

Sasch, this one's for you!

A couple of days after Thanksgiving, the tradition in my house is we (or rather, I) make turkey noodle soup. Chris had been doing it before he met me and I have cheerily taken over this time honored Schedler family tradition. Our friend, Sascha, is usually the one to remind me that since it's almost Thanksgiving....we will be making the soup and since she lives in Arizona now, she is always sad that she won't have some. Don't worry readers, I gave her the recipe :)

I just finished making it and am currently eating a bowl so the recipe is fresh in my mind. Compared to the actual Thanksgiving dinner, this soup is a home run over the green monster and out of the park! Sad, isn't it? When the soup made from the Thanksgiving turkey is better than the actual Thanksgiving dinner.

First things first - you make turkey stock. Chicken stock simply won't do. What I do is take the turkey carcass and put it into this Nesco oven thing I have along with an onion, carrots, celery, garlic and thyme and let it simmer for hours. This year, I did it at night and let it go until the morning. The house smelled wonderful.

The stock is really the most time consuming part. Once that is done you are ready to go. Ok, this is not a low calorie soup. And you can't skimp. This soup calls for cream and you really need to just suck it up and add it. But be careful and don't add too much or you will end up with cream soup with a hint of turkey flavor. Kind of like my gravy from Thanksgiving. No bueno.

Here is the recipe. It is one of those that really doesn't have measurements. I know, I know...but once you make it you will see why not. You truly just make as much as you want with as much stuff in it as you want. Oh, a secret of mine for thickening cream based soups is to thicken them with instant mashed potatoes. Try it!


Turkey Noodle Soup

Turkey Breast diced – a handful or so
Carrots diced – about 3
Onion diced – ½
Egg Noodles – a few handfuls
Turkey or Chicken Stock – add enough to give you the desired amount of soup
Mushrooms (1 package sliced)
Heavy Whipping Cream - maybe ½ cup?

Directions:
In a stockpot saute veggies in butter together until desired doneness. Add the stock. Cook noodles separately until almost done in another pot. Add turkey and noodles to soup. Add heavy cream until it looks creamy enough (you don’t want to drown out the stock flavor though…). Season to taste. Simmer for a few minutes until heated through. If you need to thicken it, add instant mashed potatoes a bit at a time until you reach the desired thickness.

Cashew Chicken

After the "meh" Thanksgiving of 2009, I was feeling like I needed to create a sucessful meal. Just to prove to myself that I still could.

Enter Cashew Chicken! As adapted from Everyday Food by me :)

Holy cow, this was yummy. It has the perfect balance of tangy and savory. I even used my new rice cooker from Tupperware which worked quite nicely. Now, this meal wasn't without drama. There was the matter of the small grease fire that occured under the large burner I was using to brown the chicken. I had a small panic because of course I forgot how to put such a fire out. I did remember not to put water on it however - yea for me! Note: tossing flour on a grease fire just gives you burned flour all over the place. I did get the fire out and on today's agenda is buying a new burner for our stove at Home Depot.

Back to the meal. You marinate cut up chicken in sherry and ginger, then saute it till golden. Put that aside and in the same pan saute green onions, garlic and toasted cashews. Add the sauce mixture, put the chicken back in and voila (or is it voici?) you have it. Serve over rice and yum. I think I liked it better than Chris did but I will definately make it again.



Cashew Chicken
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons dry sherry (or cooking wine, or leave out)
2 tsp. minced, peeled, fresh ginger
3 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
coarse salt
1/2 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2/3 cup unsalted cashews, toasted
2 green onions, white and green parts separated and thinly sliced

Directions
In a medium bowl, toss chicken with sherry, ginger, and 1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch; season with salt. Refrigerate 30 minutes. In another bowl, combine broth, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, and 2 teaspoons cornstarch. Set sauce aside.
In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium-high heat. Add half the chicken and cook until golden and cooked through, about 5 minutes. Transfer chicken to a covered plate. Add 1 teaspoon oil to skillet and cook remaining chicken (reduce heat if chicken is over-browning). Transfer to plate.
To same skillet, add 1 teaspoon oil, garlic, cashews, and green onion whites. Cook, stirring constantly, until garlic begins to soften, about 30 seconds. Whisk sauce and add to skillet along with chicken. Cook until sauce thickens, about 30 seconds. Top with green onion greens and serve over rice.

Thanksgiving - The "Superbowl" for us, food nutjobs.

Thanksgiving. Everyone has their own idea of what that word means, don't you agree? For a food nutjob, Thanksgiving is the Superbowl of all dinners for the year. You either win or lose. How did my food Superbowl turn out? Let's just say that it didn't live up to the hype. Oh, and to make things extra fun my in laws were over so I had an audience to my dinner theatre.

Readers, I have had an epiphany! Don't mess with a Thanksgiving menu that is successful. That is going to be my New Year's Resolution.

Before I continue I would like to say that I did not have any meltdowns, tantrums or crying fits on Thanksgiving day due to the meal being all kinds of jacked up. I worked on that this year. Hopefully, I won't have a meltdown typing this blog...

Schedler Thanksgiving Menu (all but the pie and potatoes are new recipes):

Spachcocked Turkey
Cream Gravy
Roasted Asparagus
Green Beans with Lemon Vinaigrette and Walnuts
Mashed Potatoes
Sausage and Apple Stuffing
Mixed Berry Pie
Rolls

I will now break down the dinner...I even tried to take pictures but I have to be honest, I kept forgetting so the pictures are sketchy at best which actually..mirrored the meal.

Spachcocked Turkey (I remembered to take the picture after Chris had started carving)


This is a method originally from Martha Stewart as adapted by me, in which, you remove the backbone of the turkey..flip it over and break the breast bone. The turkey is flat and it roasts in a shorter amount of time. This was a good and bad way to cook the turkey. The best thing about it is that you still have room in the oven to cook other things and it yielded the most pan juices that I have ever gotten from a turkey. Ok...the bad. Since this list is rather long, I will get right to the point - when you roast any poultry for a short time at a high temperature it doesn't come out juicy and tender (at least mine don't) it comes out chewy...CHEWY! How many of you look forward to a chewy turkey on Thanksgiving? (insert cricket noise).

That's what I thought, me neither!!!!!!

Next year, I will still spachcock the turkey BUT I will season it like I normally have and put butter under the skin. I will also roast it at a much lower temperature (325) instead of 400 for longer as this produces a juicier bird. Even if it doesn't..I am convinced that it does and so that is what I am doing next time. Seriously, the main part of this meal is the bloody turkey and when that gets messed up, it's all downhill.

Cream gravy

This SEEMED like a good idea. Adding heavy cream to gravy, what's not to like? I just don't know what the heck happened here. I think that the cream diluted the gravy just enough to make it taste like thickened infused cream. The turkey flavor was soooooooo faint that it's like, why even bother? At least the year I accidentally dumped the turkey stock down the drain I had an excuse for the gravy being ruined. People, just make the turkey gravy with stock and roux. Don't go messin with something that works because the result will be your husband saying something to the effect of "can we make another batch of gravy for the leftovers?" Um, yah.

Roasted Sad Asparagus

When roasting asparagus, this is one of the only times that you want the thicker kind of veg. Even if you have to peel down the stems a tad, it will be much better than what I served. In my own defense, I usually flash-saute asparagus so I get the skinny kind. You see where this is going, right? I roasted the skinny kind of asparagus and the result was, as Chris said, and I quote "It had the texture of canned spinach". We were all dished up and eating and he casually says "honey, have you tried the asparagus?". That is NEVER good. I say, no. He says "you should". So I take one and start to chew and promptly get up to spit it out in the garbage. Yes, it was that bad. I then banned anyone from taking some. My father in law had already been eating some and insisted on finishing it. I said I was sorry because, really, there wasn't much else to say.

Green Beans with Lemon Vinaigrette


Here is the crown jewel of our dinner. These were so good that it made the rest of the meal just downright laugh-out-loud funny. This recipe could not be easier! You boil green beans and then toss them in this lemon vinaigrette and sprinkle walnuts on top. Super good.


Mashed Potatoes

Chris makes these every year and they are always good. Potatoes, butter and cream. Yum. Too bad the gravy sucked.

Sausage and Apple Stuffing


Meh. I made it up. Day old french bread is toasted and mixed with sauteed onions, sausage, celery and apple. Add stock and 1 egg and bake. It was ok. At least it didn't completely suck like the rest of the dinner.

Mixed Berry Pie

This is a tried and true recipe of mine. Homemade crust is filled with a combination of mixed frozen berries (blueberry, marionberry and raspberry - I think), lemon juice, sugar, tapioca and butter and baked. The "new" part of this was the top crust. I didn't do a normal one (as the theme of this Thanksgiving is turning out to be) but instead, I saw these super cute fall cookie cutter thingies at Williams Sonoma that you use to decorate the edges and top of pies with. I did a leaf pattern on the top which, didn't cook at the same rate as the rest of the crust. After broiling it (yes, you read that right) oh...and then forgetting it was under the broiler the top was a bunch of burnt leaves. And by burnt, I mean black. The kind of filth you scrape off your toast. Remember how I said I didn't have any meltdowns on Thanksgiving? Well, I made the pie the night before and the process of cutting the burnt parts off the leaves brought me to tears. But NOT on Thanksgiving! Ha! The pie looked like crap, but tasted good (I cut all the burned parts off). I should have taken a picture of it before I baked it because the leaves looked really cool. After I was done surgically removing all the gross of the top, it just looked like a big mess.

Rolls

How do you screw these up? You over bake them, that's how. We actually had hockey pucks for rolls. The insides were soft, but the outsides were knock, knock, knock hard! They were perfect for sopping up the tasteless gravy.

The moral of the story: If it ain't broke, don't try to "fix" it.