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Tuscan chicken pasta

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (mine came out to 2.07 lbs)
splash cooking oil
dash salt and pepper
2 tsp paprika
1 cup chopped frozen onion
1 tsp basil
Garlic powder
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp thyme
dash red pepper flakes
4 1/2 cups chicken broth (used BtB)
1 cup milk
14 oz penne pasta
8 oz cream cheese
1 1/2 cup grated parmesan (used the dry kind, not fresh-grated)
4 oz dried sun-dried tomatoes
several large handfuls (about 4 cups?) fresh spinach and baby kale

Rub the chicken breasts with salt, pepper, paprika
Preheat pot on saute, then add dash of oil and sauce chicken (in batches) until browned on all sides; set aside.
add onion, saute until soft
add broth, seasonings, milk, pasta, and lay chicken on top.
Pressure cook for 5 minutes.
Quick release pressure
Remove chicken and set aside.
Stir in cream cheese until softened and fully distributed
Stir in parmesan, tomatoes, and spinach.
Chop chicken into bite-sized chunks and stir back in.

Result: Tasty. Made a lot – I divided into 8 portions which were a generous one-dish meal. I froze some portions and they thawed and reheated just fine. Keith seemed to like quite a bit. If I made it again, I might try mixing in some additional veggies? Some diced red/orange peppers, maybe.

Lemony Lentil Soup

This came from https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/lemony-lentil-soup/ with some variation.

Splash of cooking oil (recipe recommends olive oil)
1 cup diced carrot
1 cup diced onion (I used frozen chopped)
5 cloves minced garlic
6 cups veggie stock (I used Better than Bouillon)
2 cups red lentils (14 oz bag)
2/3 cup corn (I used frozen)
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp curry powder (recipe said 1.5, I screwed up and read wrong line and put in 2)
pinch saffron
pinch cayenne
2 tbsp lemon juice
(recipe recommended lemon zest but I didn’t have on hand)

Heat pot in sauce mode; when hot, add a splash of oil and cook onions and carrots in them for 5 min or until onion is soft. Add garlic and sauce for another minute or so. Add all other ingredients except lemon; pressure cook for 8 minutes. Allow natural release for at least 10 minutes then open. blend a bit with immersion blender to create a creamy texture. Stir in lemon juice.

Results: Not bad. A bit too intense, flavor-wise. Maybe make a weaker broth base next time, and cut back a touch on the curry powder. Also maybe up the lemon or add in lemon zest next time. The texture was quite thick, especially on reheating. I think it might be good to add a bit more liquid to have more of a soup-like texture.

For next time:
Acquire lemon zest
Add 2 cups additional water
use a bit less curry powder

Closet thoughts

I have a LOT of clothes. I have a considerably smaller set of clothes that I truly love wearing. Reasons why I don’t wear clothes are varied:

Too small
Too big
Damaged or worn
Not flattering
Not my aesthetic anymore
Nothing to wear it with
Inconvenient to wear: no pockets!

Meanwhile I find myself craving new clothes even though my enormous, privileged, first-world closet is pretty full now.

And, I have a yen to do some sewing.

So I have this idea I will try to narrow down my closet to a smaller subset of clothes – things that meet all the following criteria:

Fits well and in good condition
Has something it will go with (which hasn’t already been tabbed as going with some other outfit)
I enjoy wearing it.

Then I will see if that is enough clothing or still have too much… I would define “enough” as at least a week or two of outfits for a category like casual, formal work, casual work, etc. I guess I would define “too much” as more than a month of same? Also need to consider summer and winter.

From there, I would like to start building “capsules” (as seen on the internet) of clothing that can be recombined into different outfits. So for trips, could just grab a capsule or two and be ready to go. But that level of organization would also require some planning for maintenance –

Do I store capsules together rather than sorting clothes by type as I do now?
How to remember what goes in which capsule?
How to maintain the capsules through the laundry cycle? (Sew in grranimals tags?)

Rejected clothes will largely go in my growing pile of things to try to refashion, so I can get creative without spending a bundle!

So, here goes. Going to post now as a commitment to myself!

Beef Stroganoff in the Instant pot

Not a truly authentic one since I used stew meat cut in chunks – I gather the truly authentic recipe would use flank steak cut in strips?

Beef Stroganoff

– Dash of canola oil

– 1 tbsp butter

– 2 – 2.5 lb beef stew meat, cut into 1-inch cubes – mine was barely 2 lbs

– 1 ½ cup chopped onion (frozen or fresh) – used frozen

– 16 oz baby bella (cremini) mushrooms

– 1 1/2 cups beef broth – used BTB beef

– 2 tbsp flour

– 1 tbsp dried minced garlic

– 2 tbsp worcestershire sauce

– 1 tsp salt

– 1 tsp black pepper

– ½ tsp dried thyme

– ½ tsp parsley flakes

– ½-1 cup plain greek yogurt – used a full cup and more

– Barley or noodles, cooked separately – did barley, which worked out great.

Mix flour with seasoning (salt, pepper, garlic, thyme) and then toss with meat to coat the meat.

Turn on pot to saute setting. When hot, add oil and then saute meat until brown; remove to plate.

Add butter to melt, then add onions; cook until starting to soften.

Then add mushrooms, cook until reduced in size by half.

Add broth and Worcestershire sauce, make sure bottom of pan is deglazed and then add meat back in

Set pot to manual, high pressure, for 15 minutes. Allow 10 minutes pressure release.

Turn to saute.

If very runny, suck up some broth and mix it with 2 tbsp cornstarch, stir into sauce with setting on saute to thicken.

In a separate measuring cup, stir some broth into your yogurt until soft and creamy. Then add to pot and stir until sauce is nicely thickened.

Barley – in separate batch – ratio is 1:2.5 which is about the most water I’ve seen in any recipe. I think I did 22 or 23 minutes.

Result: there was definitely too much broth, so it required corn starch to thicken. And then, it was maybe too hot? Because even though I mixed broth into the yogurt separately first, it still separated when I added it to the broth. And then I kept adding more yogurt in hopes of fixing it and the new stuff kept separating also.

Despite that – it tasted really good. Rich and a bit tart just like it’s supposed to.

Next time, I will cut back the liquid a little so maybe we won’t need the corn starch. After some googling, I think the dairy separation was due to the yogurt being cold and the beef broth being boiling. I will try to prevent the separation of the yogurt at the end by setting the yogurt out to come to room temperature when I start the beef to cooking, put the yogurt in a much bigger container and mix a lot more of the liquid into the yogurt a bit at a time in the separate container, and perhaps let the whole mess cool a bit before I add the yogurt.

The barley ooked up nicely, though it was a bit sticky – I didn’t rinse it first, that probably would have helped. And I think I like the combo of stroganoff and barley better than over noodles even. Yum!

Chicken Tikka Masala in the Instant Pot

This was, once again, a consensus recipe composed of several online sources. I should really capture the sources and credit them, but I forgot to do that.

Marinade

· 2 lb boneless skinless chicken (breast or thighs) – I had a bit under two pounds of boneless skinless breast tenders.

· 1 – 1 ½ cup plain greek yogurt – used 1 1/2

· 3 tbsp lemon juice

· 1 ½ tbsp garam masala

· 2 tbsp dried ginger

· 2 tbsp dried garlic

· 1 tsp ground coriander

Sauce

· Splash of oil

· 1 cup diced onion – used frozen chopped

· 2 tsp minced garlic

· 2 tsp ginger paste

· 1 tsp paprika

· 1 tbsp garam masala

· 1 tsp turmeric

· 1 tsp corander

· 1 tsp cumin

· 1 can (14 oz) diced tomato

· 1 can tomato sauce

· ½ cup chicken stock

· 1 1/2 cups half and half. I ended up using a “fat free” product I bought by accident.

Basmati Butter Rice

· 16 ounces basmati rice (white)

· 2 cups water

· 3 Tbs butter

· ¼ tsp salt

· Cut chicken into chunks

· Mix all marinade ingredients in a bowl, mix well with chicken, cover, and leave in fridge at least an hour and ideally overnight.

· On day of cooking – turn pot to saute mode. Add a splash of oil. Add in the onion, cook until softening.

· Then add the spices, stir a few minutes until toasted and aromatic.

· Add chicken chunks in batches, brown them. Remove from pan.

· Add broth, deglaze

· Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, and chicken, stir well.

· Add trivet and second pan. In second pan mix all rice ingredients.

· Switch pan to manual high pressure and set for 5 minutes.

· When complete, allow natural pressure release for 10 minutes.

· Then remove lid and return to saute mode. Slowly stir in cream and cook until sauce is thickened.

· Serve over rice.

Experience and results:

Well, this recipe is edible but can definitely use work.

The sauce was far too watery, and by the time I added enough cream to make it at least somewhat thick, it turned out to be an enormous amount of sauce for the amount of chicken. Also, the chicken ended up tasting/seeming more like it was stewed rather than grilled – breaking up into fairly small pieces and no sense of tasting “browned”.

As I was cooking it, the initial onion + seasoning mixture cooked to kind of a slurry, so when I put the chunks of chicken in to cook they didn’t really brown at all, they just kind of stewed. The extra yogurt marinate in the chicken contributed to this effect, and I probably put too much of the chicken mixture in the pan at once.

The flavor of the sauce wasn’t bad – the tomato flavor was a bit brighter than the effect I was going for. That could be resolved by adding more cream, which I didn’t want to do because it was already too liquid and sooo much sauce.

The pot-in-pot cooking resulted in rice that was delicious. Note that the amount of rice fully filled the bowl I used. The overall pot was so full that some of the red sauce from below seemed to have bubbled all the way up to the lid and then dripped down into the rice a bit, which made the rice tinted a bit red and flavored a bit. Not really a problem.

For future tries, here are some of the things I’ll change:

More chicken, and instead of cutting it up into small chunks in the marinade, I’ll do bigger chunks (whole tenders) through the browning stage, then cut up the pieces after they’re browned.
Instead of browning the onions and spices first, will brown the chicken first, in smaller batches, and will sort of shake the excess yogurt off the pieces before browning. That way they can get truly browned. Once those are done and out of the way, will toss in the onions and spices, and will add the remainder of the yogurt marinade to the mix when I return the chicken pieces to the pot just before pressure-cooking.
Reduce the recipe liquids – skip the half-cup of chicken stock entirely. Maybe do tomato paste instead of tomato sauce?
Use real half-and-half instead of whatever was in the fat-free stuff. I’m afraid whatever they use to thicken the fake stuff breaks down under heat?

A couple of other observations – I bought a tube of ginger paste to use instead of chopping my own ginger or using dried ginger. This was super-convenient but I think that the couple tsp I put in the recipe (um, is that tsp? I wonder… maybe I used tablespoons?) was about all that was in the tube. If so – not a very good value. So will probably look for larger-quantity prepared fresh stuff, or will convert the recipe to dried ginger.

And, I bought some whole grain naan from the store which … was perfectly tasty as bread but neither of us felt it really captured what we love about restaurant naan. Will try a different product or skip that next time.

Red Beans and Rice (instant pot)

Recipe compiled from six or seven internet sources.

· 2 Tbsp bacon fat

· 1 1/2 cup chopped onion (frozen)

· 1 cup chopped celery (fresh)

· 3-4 tsp chopped garlic

· 2 or 3 bay leaf

· 1 tsp thyme

· 1 tsp oregano

· ½ tsp sage

· 1 tsp Paprika

· 1 tsp Red pepper flakes

· 1/2 tsp black pepper

· 1 tsp cayenne pepper

· 1 tsp salt

· Parsley flakes – 2 tbsp

· 1 lb small red beans

· 6 cups water

· 1 pkg andouille

Pot to saute mode. Brown andouille sausage and remove from pan.

Add bacon grease to pot and allowed to melt. Add onion and celery and garlic, cook until softened.

Add all seasonings and stir in for a couple of minutes.

Add water and beans, set pot to manual high for 40 minutes.

When finished, allowed pressure to release naturally

Used potato masher to mash a few beans to thicken sauce.

Stir sausage back in.

Serve over rice. (brown rice, 2 cups rice, 2 1/4 cups water, 23 minutes on grains setting)

Results: When I first tasted this out of the pot, I was afraid it would be too spicy. After mixing about 50:50 with the rice, the level of spiciness is perfect – just leaves your mouth warm without burning it.

The texture came out perfect – the beans are melt-in-the-mouth soft but are not paste.

The flavor is fine, but not oh-my-god-delicious. I felt like it was missing a slight punch – I think next time I make it, I will add a pinch more salt, and then after cooking I will stir in just a couple tablespoons of something tart like lemon juice or vinegar. Not enough to make it sour, just enough to make the umami pop. I wonder if it also could use a little more paprika… I guessed on the amount because all the recipes called for “cajun seasoning” which I didn’t have, and all the cajun seasoning recipes seemed to involve paprika.

This made six very generous servings with a little left over. It probably would make eight very reasonable sized servings without leaving us hungry.

I was going to take a picture of it but I snarfed it down before I remembered. Here’s one of the beans just after I opened the instant pot:

Honey Mustard Chicken for the Instant Pot

Ingredients:
splash of vegetable oil
1.5-2 lbs chicken (I used six boneless skinless thighs)
3 tbsp honey
1 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp mustard (I used plain yellow)
1 tbsp malt vinegar
2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 cup chicken broth (used Better than Broth bouillon)
2 tbsp corn starch + 2 tbsp water

Combine honey, soy sauce, mustard, malt vinegar, garlic powder, pepper, and broth to make a slurry, set aside.
Cut excess fat off of chicken.
In instant pot, add a little oil and turn to saute. When oil is hot, brown chicken both sides.
Remove cooked chicken from pot, remove any excess oil, then add a little water and scrape up any bits stuck to the pan.
Add liquid slurry and chicken to pot, turn chicken so it is fully covered in the slurry, then set pot on Manual high pressure for 10 minutes.
While it’s cooking, combine corn starch and water, stir until there’s no lumps.
When complete, quick release and remove chicken to a plate, leaving sauce in pot.
Turn pot back to Saute. Add corn starch + water combo, stir into broth. Stir for a few seconds until liquid is thickened.
On the plate, shred the chicken into bite-size pieces. Add back into sauce.

Serve on your preferred grain. I made a brown and wild rice combo to serve it on. Made four generous servings.

Conclusion: the flavors were nice, but not too strong. Could possibly use another tablespoon of honey for those who prefer things a bit sweeter, or another tablespoon of mustard for those who prefer the spicy. The chicken was nicely tender but not mushy.

I made up two full cups of (dry) rice and distributed it four ways. Next time I think I’m make the rice portions smaller – 1.5 cups divided four ways would be plenty as that would be 3/4 cups per serving.

Gotta remember to take some pictures as I cook!

Musing about meal planning

Every time I have a spell of culinary activity, I think maybe I could develop an approach to meal planning that would actually be sustainable. That is,

I could manage to complete all steps of the process (planning, shopping, cooking, storing, cleanup) in a small enough timespan that it would be feasible to do this in a normal work week
The result would be tasty enough and offer enough variety to keep us happy
I’d feel good about the diet we were eating for short and long-term health goals

Achieving all of that seems to be a project with a lot of complexity and moving parts. There are certainly lots of resources and tools I could use for each stage of the process.

Meal planning

Capture ideas
Individual recipes: try things out and track what works (the lab journal)

First time for a recipe
Further experiments
Final plan would include shopping list, portion size, notes for storage, etc

Develop a template for quickly pulling together a week’s cooking

The planned recipes – a template could help ensure that each week’s cooking has a balance of

Flavors – sweet dishes, tangy dishes, savory/rich dishes, spicy dishes, etc
Ingredients

At least one thing a week of certain desirable foods like legumes
At least one or two veggie recipes a week

The related grocery lists
The plan for using resources efficiently (eg start something in crockpot and then cook things in oven, pressure cooker, etc, while crock is perking along)

Shopping and food inventory

Shopping would be easier if had standard inventory of basics, with straightforward approach to re-stocking as I use things.
Organizing my panty would help, as it would be easier to see if an ingredient was running low.
Explore using tools like online shopping and/or grocery store curbside pickup

Storing food

Ideally would put up food in ready-to-serve format whenever possible, so can just heat up without further effort.

o Explore what’s the best sort of container for that sort of thing. Should be able to tolerate freezer and microwave conditions.

o How to label things in a way that would survive the freezer but not last forever?

Broccoli balls

Composed long ago and never posted. Who knows where the source recipe is? But since I apparently completely changed the recipe, maybe it doesn’t matter?

I used prechopped stuff and finished chopping in the food processor because I am lazy.

How handy that the cheese comes in 2-cup size. Wish the broccoli had.

And yes, I am still lazy so it is pre-grated. And health-ish lower fat cheese.

OK, to sub in egg whites we have this conversion:

But I want the volume of the whole egg not just the whites so I tried 2/3 cup.

And I substituted oats for the bread crumbs. Which are not sticky like bread is so I was left with something that showed little or no interest in sticking together into balls.

So experimentation time.

Experiment 1 is just to make small heaps on the cookie sheet.

Experiment 2 is to fill little silicone muffin holders with the stuff.

At ten minutes the recipe says to flip them. There is a little visible meltage – maybe this will work?

The piles broke apart a bit. The ones in cups stayed more intact but had more of their cheese pooled at the bottom (now the top).

The ones in the molds turned out much more solid:

Taste test:

Broccoli is a bit undercooked. Cheese fully done; would be burnt if left longer. Oats barely noticable.

For the next batch the main variable was letting the ingredients sit for a half-hour before baking. The hope was that the oats would soak in some of the egg liquid and become sticky. The mixture did seem a bit stickier when I did this batch.

Also I realized I could use the muffin molds to shape nicer piles.

These definitely came out more solid:

The next two experiments involved adding a bit of milk to the mix and letting the mix sit for a half-hour. To account for the extra moisture I increased the bake time to 30 minutes, with the first 15 inside a muffin cup and the second 15 with the cup removed.

These were really tasty on the taste test. Of course by now it was practically a quiche. Which gives me ideas for my next bout of making quiche.

TP rolls for seed starting?

Follow up: Composed this long ago and never posted it. Posting now because it might be useful for someone someday.

This was a qualified success. Used to plant things that sprout quickly and go into the ground relatively soon after sprouting, these were great. But when I tried using them for seeds that take longer to germinate and grow to having second leaves, the cardboard from the rolls started to have problems – it got moldy and attracted fungus gnats and then started to fall apart.

Since the quick-sprouting, quick-maturing seeds tend to do relatively well in the ground anyway, I’m not sure this approach really has a lot of long-term merit.

+ + +
Saw this on Pinterest and it seemed worth a try. Seed pods are not much good for deep rooted or larger plants. I have a few more nubs of ginger I want to sprout indoors as insurance in case the main stuff doesn’t sprout. I also will want to get some beans started and they are notoriously hard to transplant. These seem like the cheap alternative to peat pots.

Start with a pile of TP rolls