Vicky Learns to Cook

  Let me take you down the rabbit hole of my mind for a moment.  So today was Salmon Teriyaki day. Until I muttered about my Cookery class cookbook only had French sauces and why was I looking for a Japanese sauce .... then I realized hubby didnt want teriyaki sauce. Plan B was to sprinkle it with this citrusy blend that I had .... somewhere... and cook it in lots of butter.  Butter burns and I tend to cook things too hot. The fire alarm agreed. (Shhh, Mom.)  After fanning the smoke alarm and dumping the burned butter, I lowered the temp and made the second fillet (see pic above).  I knew I was going to make rice pilaf from the same class so I searched my cookbook library, thinking I had translated these to online docs. No.  So then i went in search of the binder we kept with recipes, looking for the rice pilaf recipe. No.  Finally i looked for my "cookery" cookbook. I discovered the class was called cookery but not the cookbook, which was actually On Cooking. Sigh. But I fou

 OMG you guys this one is my favorite so far! Just look at it! So I had some shrimp left in the freezer (It's frozen food day today, did you know? Ask Sandra Boynton). It wasnt a LOT of shrimp, so I had to be sure to use it in something that wouldnt matter too much if you didnt get a lot.  I found a Tuscan Shrimp Pasta on Delish.  You start with the garlic. I have a beautiful bulb. Sometimes you get those ones that have been around the block a little, and they end up brown or rubbery. Not these. Full of garlicky oily goodness.  These have been crushed to remove their skins and chop.  Since I didnt have a lot of shrimp, I cut them into thirds.  Here is the garlic chopped and sizzling with butter and red pepper flakes. Smells good in here! The shrimp was added, turned pink, and removed. Then since I forgot to add the parsley when it was cooking i threw some on while resting on the plate. Looks like grass clippings but I assure you it was parsley.  In the same pan, I added a box of ba

 Today was Scallop day.  Scallops are good with Risotto. I only had maybe a cup of the rice left, so I made do.  I chopped up half an onion and added both oil and butter to cook the rice in. Next I used up my sourdough discard by making sourdough biscuits. Basic biscuits but instead of milk use discarded sourdough starter.  Meanwhile, I cooked scallops and zucchini in butter.  And finally the biscuits are done. With some raspberry jam they are the BOMB. I also ran through my inventory of meats, since I do sort of a Fibonacci spiral, starting with meat and veg, then adding starch, fruit, dairy, drinks and finally non-food as I make my grocery list.  Each day find the meat you want to make, (you can sub a non meat protein here if you want), figure what veg goes with it typically, and build from there.  My freezer is now only 2/3 full downstairs and my fridge freezer is only half full. Getting closer to my goal of using everything up! Stay tuned for another episode of Shopping the Fridge,

So lately I've been watching Youtube videos on the TRY channel, where Irish people try American foods. I get such a kick out of their reactions.  Anyway they tried Five Guys Burgers, fries, and hotdogs, and saw how much they liked the hot dogs that are cooked split on a bun.  This is my attempt at doing something similar with Italian sausage.  I squashed down the sausage so the curved side would be up and split it:  Then I fried them in some olive oil spray. It doesnt need much because the sausage is fatty.  I didnt realize until now how much they looked like tongues. Ew.  This is them cooked.  But what goes with sausage sandwiches? Why leftover peppers of course.  This is a red pepper with it's baby, a green pepper. It was inside when I cut the pepper! These got cut into little strips: I did onions the same way but the picture got deleted. But I mean its a small onion, so , you probably have seen one or two of those in your lifetime. :) Heres evidence. I cooked these in the gr

 Starting to see the inside of the fridge again! I needed to get some green leafy in me, so I knew I'd be making asparagus, at least.  I had some mushrooms and some hamburger so I decided to make Beef Stroganoff.  There's some chopping involved, I wont lie.  Mushrooms Onions Butter cut into cubes Cook them with some garlic Add beef stock. I had chicken so I used that instead. And some worcestershire sauce.  You put in 1 cup and cook, then add 1/4 c flour plus 1/2 c broth mixed together to get a gravy.  Adding the sour cream. Lots of it! I added some paprika to give it a better color, since I had the chicken instead of the beef stock. The asparagus was snapped , then cut into thirds. I just cooked them in butter until they turned an even darker green but before they got soggy.  The result was YUMMY.  Hubby didnt like all the onions, so next time I might use half and cut them smaller.  See you later for another episode of Shopping the Fridge! Vicky PS here is the recipe.  Beef St

 It's gotten to the point where the fridge is just full of stuff. I don't even know what's in there anymore. And check both the top freezer of my fridge and the small extra freezer, they're both full.  Time to do some Shopping the Fridge for dinner tonight.  From the veg/fruit subscription, I had a couple bags of small potatoes. I put those in a pot of water to boil and thawed out some thick pork chops.  I had a half box left of Shake n Bake for that. But it wasn't going to be quite enough, so I pulled out the mustard and rosemary.  Or so I thought. Note the empty rosemary jar. Turns out I was out of rosemary from the garden, so went for the spice I found in my spice rack. That was not coming out of the tin. I dug to try to get some out, but it was kind of ... I guess sticky? I realized it had gone rancid when I took a sniff. Ick. Into the trash that went. Gross. Digging around some more in the spice rack, I found some Marjoram. I know its' in the Oregano family