Tinfoil Chef

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I was looking through some Diabetic friendly recipes and ran across this one that sounds really interesting and I’m going to want to try it sometime soon.

You take two to three onions per person. The original recipe called for them to be “cooking size”, but nothing defined exactly what “cooking size” is. I’m assuming medium to medium-small onions.

Without cutting or peeling them at all, put the onions in a foil lined baking dish and give them an hour in the oven at 400 degrees.

When they’re done, cut off the root end of the onions and squeeze the stem end and the cooked onion should come out whole. Butter them and season with a bit of salt and pepper to taste.

This isn’t exactly what I’d call a main dish but it’s certainly an interesting way to cook onions. Of course, I’d definitely recommend using a sweet onion such as Vidalia. I’m also certain that using garlic butter would also be an interesting variation.

Technorati Tags: baked+onion, butter, Diabetic+friendly, Dinner, garlic, garlic+butter, onion, side+dish, vidalia, recipe

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I think it’s safe to say that there’s a lot of people that are going to like this one. I get some serious cravings just describing it. To be fair, I have to say that while this sort of dish is a seriously good taste and is absolutely perfect for getting warm after a cold winter day. It’s enough of what I think of as a “carbaholic’s dream” to make it something that you probably shouldn’t have too often, unless of course you need a good excuse to spend all your spare time working it off on that Precor elliptical exercise machine you got last Christmas

Brown a couple pounds of ground turkey. As it’s going, chop up a green bell pepper and a medium onion and add them to the meat. Add in a cup of mushroom (I usually like to saute them first.). Stir in a can of tomato paste and a can of whole kernel corn. Season with a bit of salt, pepper and some Italian seasoning mix, perhaps a bit of garlic powder as well.

While that’s simmering, make up a couple boxes of a macaroni and cheese mix according to package

directions, adding milk and margarine. When the macaroni and cheese is done add it to the turkey mixture. Mix well and top with some shredded cheddar and cover over a low heat for a few minutes to allow the cheese to melt.

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One of the things I’ve always wondered about is so-called “pearl onions”. Normally I love onions of all kinds but I have to make an exception here for these little beggars. Especially aggravating is the fact that when you get pre-packaged stew vegetable mix you can almost always count on opening the bag and looking in there to see, not Tahitian pearls, but pearl onions.

Why don’t I like ‘em? Honestly, it’s got almost nothing to do with taste. Onions and onion flavor has been a favorite of mine since forever. The problem with pearl onions however is the simple fact that they’re tossed in pretty much whole.

This makes them difficult to handle, nearly impossible to cut once they hit the plate and so on. There’s no way I’m going to hunt the things down before they go into the pot and make sure they all get cut. Instead I prefer to find veggie mixes that don’t include them and just dice up an onion or two myself and throw them in.

Besides, that way I get to choose what kind and if possible, I’ll opt for Vidalia or other “sweet” onion anytime.

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Once upon a time I wasn’t anywhere close to overweight. My 6 foot 3 inch frame used to tip the scales at around 175 or so for a long time. I was actually able to stand sideways beside a telephone pole and not be seen from across the street. Ok maybe that was a little bit of an exaggeration but not too much but I did look like the “after” picture in tv ads for weight loss pills. Then later on I averaged around 190 to 210 or so for several years.

Then came the fateful day in when I started working in a pizza delivery job. Oh, things didn’t change right away but I had (and still have honestly) a weakness for pizza. I’m always ready to have some. Over the first two year stint I did delivering pizza I managed to put away a LOT of the stuff.

Now it’s years later and I still love a good pizza but at now I don’t eat it every day and I suppose that’s a good thing. The one hazard of delivering pizza or any job in a pizza place is in over enjoying the easy access to the food. It may be a long time before I can hide behind a telephone pole again.

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I remember a bunch of years ago when some fast food place, Dairy Queen I think (but can’t swear to) came out with a “Black Forest Sundae”. I remember how rich it was and how great the tastes worked together. Which is why I was glad to run across this recipe in a file I hadn’t looked at in a while.

It’s called “Black Forest Coffee” and it does a good job of reminding you of that Black Forest Sundae. You start out with a cup of coffee and add a couple tablespoons of chocolate syrup and another of maraschino cherry juice. Mix this in thoroughly and top it off with some whipped cream, a cherry and some chocolate shavings or chips and you’ve got a hot treat that’ll remind you of a Sunday afternoon at DQ in the summertime.

Technorati Tags: black+forest, coffee, dessert, recipe, sundae, treat

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One of the jobs I’ve always hated is the task of once in a while going through the refrigerator not only to clean it (which isn’t a bad job in itself really), and find the occasional mystery item that got put away only to slip behind or under something else and get forgotten.

You know, the block of cheese that suddenly looks like blue-green home theater carpet, the plastic storage dish that you forgot was in there and when it’s opened you suddenly decide you don’t care why it’s in there or what it once was. That sucker’s going in the trash and if it won’t easily come out of the container then the whole thing gets pitched.

On the other hand, I learned something once about hard blocks of cheese. When they get that fuzzy blue-green growing on them, all you need to do is use either a sharp knife or a cheese slicer to cut off all of the outer surface layers. Those you pitch, the rest is perfectly good cheese.

It’s a good idea when doing this to make sure that none of the clean surfaces you expose touch the stuff you’re cutting off. The way I avoid that is to clean the knife I’m using every cut or two in order to prevent any of the blue-green from collecting on the knife and spreading onto the rest of the cheese.

I’d say that it almost goes without saying that once this is done it’s a good idea to be sure to use that cheese soon. And if you don’t use it right away, be sure to store it in a fresh, clean container that seals tight.

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Anyone that knows me will quickly agree when I say that my tastes are not always what you’d call “mainstream”. It’s not that I actually like genuinely nasty things, however some of the concoctions I’ve come up with over the years has left more than one family member shaking their heads in … um … wonder. Yeah, wonder.

This little breakfast treat is something I came up with a few years ago because I thought the taste combinations would be interesting and I was right. However few have dared to give it try. That’s ok I say, more for me. “You can have it!” they declare in unison.

Ok, enough of the drama, now to unveil a little gem I call the “Tunafish Omelete“.

It’s pretty much a normal (for us) made in the microwave oven style omelet. I like to start out by dicing some onion (about half to a quarter of a medium small onion per serving you’re going to make) and saute that in some olive oil with a bit of diced green pepper.

As the onions begin to caramelize, dice up about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of whatever kind of mushroom you like. I’m partial to Portabella when we have them but the basic white button mushrooms are great too. Once this is done crack an egg into a microwave safe bowl, add a dash of milk and the onion, mushroom & green pepper mixture. Add in some shredded cheddar cheese or grated parmesan cheese.

Now comes the part that has made family members shudder and go “Ugh!”. Open a can of tuna packed in water and pour off the water. Take about half a can or so, give it a rough chop to break up the pieces and add this to the bowl. Stir this vigorously to mix everything up and work some air into the egg mixture.

Put it into microwave with a loose cover on it and cook on high for 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 minutes. When it’s done all of the egg should be cooked through with no raw spots. I like to add some cheese to the top and give it another 30 seconds in the microwave and then let it sit for a moment with a cover on it for the cheese to melt.

I like to have this with a variety of condiments on it ranging from ketchup to spicy brown mustard or horseradish sauce. I’ve even used the sauce packets from Taco Bell or Arby’s.

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While we don’t exactly have a huge library of cookbooks and stuff, there is a pretty good amount of them around here. It’s not just cookbooks either. There’s a whole stack of Rachael Ray’s magazine and loads of other magazines, printouts from web sites, and so on. There’s even three or four of those recipe card sets (well, ok, it’s only the first freebie bundle of each set)

We have managed to (finally) corral that mess into a couple of places, but it’s not always the handiest thing in the world. Someday, I’d like to get real adventuresome (and maybe a bit insane) and make some kind of computer searchable database with every recipe, tip, idea and so on in it and then make a few copies of it on some of those keychain style usb flash drives.

Not a bad idea, now all I need is laptops to use the flash drives in for some real portability.

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Vanilla Beans come from the Vanilla orchid, which is native to Central America. The Vanilla orchid is also the only orchid that produces an edible fruit of any kind. It’s got a long history going back to the Mayan and Aztec civilizations.

It has been considered an aphrodisiac and a cure for fevers. It’s often used in “aromatherapy” Modern science has shown that Vanilla causes an increase in catecholamines such as adrenaline, which means it could be considered mildly addictive. Another thing that science has discovered about vanilla is that it’s able to block bacteria from knowing there’s enough of them to overcome the immune system of a host (it’s called “quorum sensing”).

The bean itself doesn’t actually have any taste until it’s been cured and fermented. It’s used in a wide variety of products and is an extremely popular taste, probably second only to chocolate.

The Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla beans are considered by many to be the best variety and something like 60% of the vanilla comes from Madagascar.

When buying vanilla beans they should be dark, oily and flexible. They should be stored in an airtight container for up to 18 months

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I know that probably most people in the US have heard of (and had) that wonderful creation, The Corn Dog. You know the one I mean, it’s the hot dog on a stick that’s dipped in a cornbread batter and then deep fried? Yeah, I know, they’re not supposed to be “good” FOR you, though they are just plain good.

Best served with a dollop of mustard or perhaps a swirl of mustard and ketchup. Or any number of other sauces work great too. I’ve even seen some people cook them so “well done” that they look like they’d taste like a warm length of CAT5e network cable. Not appetizing for me but I guess it’s all up to individual taste.

I had a thought though and I don’t know if anybody has thought of this before, but why don’t we see sausage versions of it next to the corn dogs in the freezer section? I mean, it’d have to taste just as good but with the flavor of the sausage (of whichever variety) mixed with the cornbread.

I can envision a whole line of “corn dog sausages” or somesuch made with every variety of sausage from little breakfast links to kielbasa corn dogs or even summer sausage corn dogs.

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