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.

The Same Old Song and Dance

They say if something's not broke, don't fix it. Well, we're on a roll with our popcorn chicken, and last night's Kitchen Dadventure was our third time cooking the same dinner in like the last four weeks. But you know what? It's easy, and the kids will eat it.

We only did a couple things different this time around. We doubled the recipe and made two pounds of chicken instead of one, since last time when we made one pound we had no leftovers. We also ran out of mustard when trying to make a big batch of honey mustard dipping sauce, so we settled for a small batch of homemade honey mustard and I ended up using ranch dressing for my chicken.

I had planned on spicing up our "Waldorf" salad with some grapes this time, but my "helpers" ate the rest of the grapes during my chicken preps. Thanks, team. So once again, we made the salad with feta cheese, red apple, and walnuts. I still think it's really good, and again, really easy to make.

Overall another successful dinner, but I think it's time for the boys and I to branch out and try something new.

I Feel Like Chicken Tonight!

Back by popular demand, the boys and I attempted to make our popcorn chicken for the second time in three weeks. The only real difference was that we weren't doubling the recipe, and I didn't prematurely add the olive oil this time (huzzah for reading the directions!)

To go with our chicken, we made our not-quite-a-Waldorf salad, some homemade guacamole to go with some store-bought chips, and the same two dipping sauces we made last time, honey mustard and curry mayo.

With nothing "new" on the menu, we weren't really challenging ourselves, but sometimes it's nice to make something familiar and continue to build some confidence in the kitchen.

Originally we intended to add grapes to our "Waldorf" salad that already included a fuji apple, chopped walnuts and feta cheese, but the red grapes we had hoped to use had gone soft so we had to stick with what we've done before.

With the salad made, we moved onto the guacamole. While the recipe we have does offer some options to add some additional flavors (salsa, garlic, jack cheese, onion, and cilantro are all listed as possible additions), we've continued to keep our recipe simple: avocados, lime juice, salt. No surprises. And the best part is that we had enough left over for more chips and dip the next day!

Next, we moved onto our dipping sauces. We prepared the same two we made a couple weeks ago because 1) they were easy to make, and 2) they got eaten the last time we made them. What I didn't realize was that apparently I'm the only member of the household that cared for the curry mayo, so I think next time we might make a double-batch of the honey mustard instead.

Last came the chicken. As I mentioned earlier, I learned my lesson about the olive oil from a couple weeks ago. The other lesson that we learned was to double-bag our bread crumbs when it came time to shake everything up. Last time we had a blowout, this time, we made it through unscathed.

The end result: another pretty edible dinner. Of all the main courses we've made so far, I think the popcorn chicken has been our most successful, so I'm sure you all will see it on here again.

Homemade Guac vs Store Bought Guac - Cost Breakdown

So according to the USDA's Weekly Advertised Fruit & Vegetable Retail Prices, the weighted average for a lime over the week of 1/26-2/1 was 37 cents for an inorganic lime and 85 cents for an organic lime. Over the same range, an avocado costs an average of 83 cents for inorganic or $1.48 for organic.

Our local Safeway carries large Hass Avocados for $2.89 apiece (small ones cost $1.79) and large limes cost 60 cents ($1.55 for organic).

Meanwhile, 8 ounces of Wholly Guacamole can cost $4.99 and it looks like the 16 oz jar next to it looks like it costs $6.99. While I didn't measure it, I'm thinking we could probably fill a 16 oz jar with  what we got out of two avocados, so I'm going to say - for now - that our homemade guac is the more economical of the two.

Holy Guacamole!

I never really ever realized how easy it is to make guacamole. It's literally three ingredients in a bowl. Avocados, lime juice, salt. Done. Now that I know this, and that I've mastered how to slice and pit an avocado (maybe "mastered" is a stretch), this might be something I have to do more often. I mean, who doesn't love chips and guac as an appetizer or snack? I suppose the real question is, what's more expensive, making your own guacamole or buying the stuff at the store? We'll have to look into this. Anyhow...

Last night the boys and I made chicken, bean & cheese quesadillas to go with our guac, and a Waldorf salad. As a I said above, the guac is really easy to throw together. Two avocados, the juice from half a lime, and a 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Mix it all up, and bam. Guacamole.

Once we had that done, we moved on to the Waldorf salad. So I looked it up and I guess technically what we made isn't quite a Waldorf salad. According to wikipedia, a Waldorf salad is:

"a fruit and nut salad generally made of fresh apples, celery, grapes and walnuts, dressed in mayonnaise, and served on a bed of lettuce."

Now we checked the apple box, the walnut box and the lettuce box, but our salad didn't have celery, grapes, or mayo (we used a store-bought balsamic vinaigrette) and we sprinkled some feta cheese on there as well (the cookbook recommended bleu cheese). Honestly I don't know that I'd like the traditional Waldorf, and I know that my non-mayonnaise-loving wife would prefer the vinaigrette dressing. Waldorf or not, I thought the salad turned out pretty good.

So when we cut up the apples for our salad, I tried our apple corer/slicer. The results were somewhat mixed. I feel like it shouldn't take my full bodyweight to force a slicer through an apple, but there we were. I was able to get through it eventually, but I don't know that it really saved me any time. Fun to try new things though.

So with our guac and our Waldorf salad done, we moved onto the quesadillas. The recipe was just for a bean & cheese quesadilla (which we'd actually made before), but this time we decided to add in some chicken. So we bought a rotisserie chicken from Safeway and I shredded some chicken breast to throw on there. Two key things we learned in our quesadilla making this week:

1) Make sure the tortillas you use aren't too big as it makes them really difficult to flip

2) The more things you put in a quesadilla, the heavier it becomes, and the harder it is to flip

So the flipping wasn't especially pretty, but we got them made, and they tasted decent with the guac. If we do the recipe again, I think the main thing we'd do different is using smaller shells. Overall though, not a bad dinner.

Get Your Popcorn Ready

Friday night marked a first for us on Boy's Cooking Night as we prepared a dinner for... GUESTS. It was only my parents, but still, it's a milestone. Anyhow, we opted to go with our go-to salad, the spinach-strawberry-almond with a maple-mustard dressing, and popcorn chicken with a variety of dipping sauces.

We'd been trying to get the boys to attempt the popcorn chicken for a while, but my oldest kept shooting it down. Finally this week he relented, and our first foray into poultry-cooking was on. Now normally my assistants are pretty overbearing and intrusively energetic, but on Friday it was a struggle to get people involved. It ended up kicking off with just me and the four-month old, but hey, he was ready to go.

Anyhow, I started by throwing together the salad and the dressing. Once again we opted to hold the garlic in our dressing mix. If I'm being honest, I haven't really missed it. So we got that out of the way pretty quick, and then it was time for the chicken, and my assistants slowly started trickling in. 

The dish was actually pretty easy to put together. We only had one wild card, and that was doubling the recipe to account for our extra people. Fortunately there weren't any odd fractions, so that made our lives pretty easy. HOWEVER, I didn't read the instructions and the olive oil that was supposed to go in the pan AFTER we mixed everything... went into our chicken mixture instead... Whoops.

Anyhow, after coating the chicken, we dunked it in our ziplock bag full of breadcrumbs, and the boys went to town shake & bake style. We had one near catastrophe when the first bag ripped, but we caught it early before dumping the entire dinner on the floor. Crisis averted.

Once our chicken was all mixed up, we set about making our dipping sauces. Being that none of us are into real spicy foods, we went with a honey mustard sauce and a curry mayonnaise. We even got Grandpa involved!

Finally, it was time to cook the chicken. It was here that I realized our mistake with the olive oil. Fortunately it didn't hurt us. We got off to a bit of a slow start, but eventually it all came together.

As far as how it tasted, I really thought it was one of our best dishes so far. The chicken turned out great and we had fans of both dipping sauces. Of everything we've cooked so far, I think this is the dish we're most likely to do again.