Waffle-y Good

So I'm way behind on this because I've been on the road a lot and we're getting ready to move soon, but a couple weeks ago we tackled waffles for the first time. Nothing fancy, just some buttermilk waffles from the Joy of Cooking. So we got our first exposure to separating egg whites and egg yokes with our cool "yoke separator" and we got to use the mixer to whip the egg whites into a frenzy. As far as dinners go - yes, we made waffles for dinner - it wasn't particularly complicated, but we did make waffles, so I wanted to make sure I wrote it down. Every little bit counts!

Giraffic Park, Part II

Hey Dad, can I have a Stegosaurus pancake? 

Errr.... Sure?

And I want a giraffe. No wait, TWO giraffes.

Of course you do...

Old Reliable

Kept it simple this week with our "go-to" popcorn chicken and some frozen veggie bags. Saturday morning the kids had soccer and then we went to a play at the Seattle Children's Theatre in the afternoon, so the boys were burnt out by dinner time. As a result it ended up just being me in the kitchen for this one. The only thing I did differently this time is cooking the chicken in a pot instead of a pan since we were having issues with grease/olive oil spatter all over the cooktop. The pot definitely allowed for less of a mess so that may be the way to go moving forward.

Luggabeast of a Quiche!

Well, we branched out again this week when we took a page out of the BB-ATE Star Wars Cookbook to make the Luggabeast of a Quiche on Friday night. Now unlike the amazing quiche my wife makes, this recipe didn't call for a traditional pie crust. Instead, it just had us butter a pie plate, and coat it in a couple tablespoons of bread crumbs. After that, it was basically what you'd expect in a quiche: sausage, onions (guess who got to rock the onion goggles for a second week in a row), mushrooms, cheese, eggs, and then a sprinkle of garlic powder.

The recipe called for a 30 minute bake time, but we ended up needing almost 10 extra minutes for it to set up. I was a little skeptical when it first came out of the oven, but once it cooled off, it sliced real nicely and we were able to get some nice triangle-shaped slices out of it and everything. I thought it was really good. It definitely had more of a breakfast-y feel to it, but it was tasty, and I was pleasantly surprised how the bread crumb crust held up. I'd be willing to bet that you could give it more of a dinner feel if you changed up the veggies a bit, and maybe used a ham instead of a sausage.

Anyhow, we made our faux-Waldorf salad again since my wife and I both like that, and this time we went with apples and grapes just to mix it up. Plus, we had grapes that needed to be eaten. Oh, and in case you were wondering what a luggabeast is...

Photo Courtesy of StarWars.com

It's this big dude from The Force Awakens. We got a lego version in our Advent Calendar in 2017:

Photo Courtesy of jaysbrickblog.com

Fun with Pancakes

On Sunday we made pancakes, but whereas I usually only need to produce circles or "Mickey Mouses," this time I was asked to make a T-Rex and a Giraffe. Challenge accepted. Welcome to Giraffic Park.

We're Like Butter, Because We're on a Serious Casserole!

Last night marked our first attempt to cook a dinner that didn't come out of a kid's cookbook. As one of the conditions of settling on pizza last week, we made the boys agree to do something new, and so we pulled out the family cookbook and whipped up a Hamburger Noodle Bake.

The highlight of this attempt was easily cutting up our onion. Why, you ask? Because I got to rock our super awesome pink onion goggles. I'd bought my wife the goggles for Christmas a few years ago, but they didn't fit her. As a result, they don't get nearly as much action as they should in this house. Behold, the awesomeness:

This dish also gave us an opportunity to redeem ourselves for our browning fail last week. Now that we were actually prepared, we produced something much closer to what we were looking for.

Now the recipe in the book made enough for two whole casseroles, so we cut everything in half since we weren't sure how it would turn out. Last thing we needed was to bake a whole second casserole that no one would eat. And it's a good thing too, because neither of the boys ended up liking the dish very much. My wife and I think there's probably two areas where we could improve the likelihood of them eating it if we did this again. First, cut down on the breadcrumbs. The layer on top was pretty thick and it makes the dish kind of a mess to eat. Second, instead of using tomato soup, my wife suggested trying tomato sauce. The boys will eat tomato sauce on pizza and in spaghetti (sometimes), but in general they don't really do tomatoes. And it's possible that the tanginess of the soup turned them off. But they tried it at least, and that's progress for us.

To go along with our casserole, we made our go-to faux-Waldorf salad. This time we used a Granny Smith apple with our walnuts and feta cheese. So overall it was a successful endeavor and now we have lots of leftovers.

Pizza and a Movie!

Friday night the boys and I tackled pizza for the second time for our Pizza and a Movie night. Once again, my lovely wife took care of the dough for us, and the boys and I took care of rolling everything out, and all the toppings. Her dough recipe gave us enough to make 12 personal pizzas. The boys helped me out with four, and I made the other eight. They probably would've been willing to help with more than that, but we started the movie after the first four went into the oven, and that was the last I saw of them.

Anyhow, the toppings we used this time were tomato sauce (obviously), red bell peppers, mushrooms, shredded mozzarella, spinach, olives, basil, and sausage. The goal was for me to "brown" the sausage, but we probably should've done some more research on what that entails before we started. By definition, browning is: the process of partially cooking the surface of meat to help remove excessive fat and to give the meat a brown color crust. The key phrase there being "PARTIALLY COOKING THE SURFACE." So instead of having browned sausage, we had fully cooked and slightly blackened sausage. Whoops.

We made progress with my oldest this time in his pizza making as we moved up from his red pepper, tomato sauce, no cheese "pizza" to using four slivers of mozzarella in creating "pizza-owls." Pepper ears, mushroom eyes, sausage nose and mouth, and cheese whiskers. Now you might be one to say that owls don't have whiskers, well pizza-owls apparently do. And now you know.

Our three-year old took a simpler approach declaring "I want cheese pizza!" And so cheese pizza he had.

For the remaining eight pizzas, I only took on one edgier pizza. So when I was in Germany like a decade ago, they had this pizza you could order with an egg in the middle of it. And they were fantastic. Obviously it hasn't really caught on here in the states, but I figured I'd give it a whirl. Other than the challenges of fitting a whole egg on a mini-pizza, it actually turned out all right. It was definitely messy, and absolutely an eat-it-with-a-fork kind of dish, but it was good.

As for our movie, the boys picked the Lego Movie of course because after all, everything is awesome.