Vicky Learns to Cook

Pecan any kind of fish is yummy, in my opinion, so I was excited to try this recipe. Turns out it was pretty easy and pretty quick! Lay out the fillets on a sheet that has been sprayed with oil. Mix up some olive oil, lemon, cajun spices and .baste on to the fish. Next mix up finely chopped pecans, parmesan cheese, parsley, bread crumbs. To finely chop the nuts, I use my Pampered chef chopper and bang it about 8 times. I love that thing. Pecans are really soft so they almost paste up if you chop them more.  Sprinkle this over the fish and bake for about 10 minutes at 425F.  But I really should have started with the corn pudding because it turns out it takes a HOUR to bake! Unfair. I love corn pudding.  This takes 5 eggs! You just crack them and mix them up with a whisk.  Then add a can of creamed corn plus 2 1/2 cups frozen corn kernels.  Add either half milk and half heavy cream or.... half and half. This is what I had so I used i...

Today I made Chicken with Sage Pan Sauce, Toasted Quinoa, and Spinach Casserole. I checked all three recipes, printed them and put them on my fridge with magnets. The longest cooking time was going to be the spinach casserole, so I set the oven to 350F and put the frozen spinach in a bowl. Did you know you HAVE to cook the spinach thats frozen? If you read the package, according to the Food Safety administration, you can't just thaw and eat. Huh. Next I peeled an onion and cut off the ends, chopping it into wedges. Since it was going into a casserole, I didnt want big chunks, so I grabbed my Pampered Chef chopper for it. I love this thing. Mix those two things in a bowl. To this, the original recipe called for cooking, cooling, and chopping bacon. Bacon is good, but we've been staying away from pork. Also this weekend I went on an organization rampage, cleaning out my spices, my racks of cakepans, etc. So I came across this Tastefully Simple "Howling horsera...

Every now and then we have a vegetarian night.  My favorite meal, one I often get at restaurants, is Eggplant Parmesan. It's not terribly hard to make.  You start with an eggplant, usually one large or two small.  This was a fun experience, shopping for the eggplant. You see, my Kroger here apparently is having trouble figuring out how much stock to have out. It's fairly new, less than a year, and I think more popular than suspected. So for example the entire strawberry section was just empty while produce workers were diligently dragging crates of produce out and dumping them in. Unfortunately its like ants at a picnic and people were swarming as they were dumping.  Anyway, I ended up finding one of the three eggplants left in the building.  Start by slicing the eggplant. Cut off the ends and a long slice of skin. Then salt and put in the colander until it sweats out the water.  Squeeze out the excess water. Next beat a couple...

This is something you have to be careful with: lemons. Sure they are pretty good inside a chicken but you gotta watch putting them on the onions that  go on the gravy. It's no "lemon chicken" (dont ask) but it was close. Let me back up. So I've been trying out some Martha Stewart recipes and making them my own, lately. This one is a roast chicken with lemons and onions, parsnip mashed potatoes, and Broccoli hache. I had to look up the word hache. Is it like, hash? Apparently it means diced, but really what is hash but a dice, right? So I'm going with yes. It's your new word for the day. You're welcome. I started off with the chicken, you get a 4 or 5lb bird, then you clean it up and stuff it with onions and lemons. The one thing that scared me was you cook it at 500F for an hour. That's pretty hot. That's like pizza oven hot. I was worried I'd end up with a charcoal chicken. It seemed to me like they were trying to get this to pa...

There are few foods as elevated in my heart as scallops. And these suckers were the size of softballs. I love New Year's day eating, because EVERYONE is eating seafood. The Kroger line for the cooked cold shrimp for shrimp cocktail was wrapped around the counter. (By the way, I learned that shrimp is good for 3 days only, so don't hang on to that stuff, eat up!) Next  to the shrimpapalooza, we saw the scallops just waiting for a new recipe. I love their sweet clean flavor. I always start with the main dish, do the sides, then the salad. The main dish is a shrimp and scallop stew, over a brown rice pilaf I took off of an Israeli couscous recipe, and a winter salad. Lets cook! Leeks have a great flavor, but you don't eat the dark green part. For this recipe, chop that off and also the root so you're left with pieces like this. Next cut them in half the long way, and then make 1/2 inch cuts the short way. Add these and some c...