Veggie, Tomato, Onion Breakfast Burrito

Let's face, breakfast time is the best time to experiment!

I have all day to clean up the mess I made. Seriously, I enjoy breakfast, and I'm generally making these for one because everyone else is already out, or doesn't want to be my guinea pig.

I've been making a lot of wraps lately, cutting down on the bread and toast (although not so much on the bagels -- I like my fresh bagels!).

This was my latest experiment.

Ingredients: Last night's leftover veggies, 2 eggs, some grape tomatoes and a slice of red onion, cut up real good.

Prep: reheat the veggies in the microwave for about 20-30 seconds. There isn't much there. You can also take out some frozen vegetables and cost them according to the instructions. I wanted something a little chunky, not just peas, carrots and corn. (Not that there's anything wrong with those, but that's not what I was in the mood for.)

Scramble a couple of eggs. While they're cooking, cut up a few grape tomatoes and the slice of onion.

Put the veggies on the tortilla. Add the egg. Top with tomato and onion. Season it, if desired. (Salt and pepper to taste, as they say.)

And you'll see the following results:

No pictures of the wrap, because I'm still working on my perfect tortilla roll!

Bagel Pizzas with Fresh Mozzarella and BBQ Sauce

Nothing incredibly original or stretching my skills here, but a good, quick snack nonetheless.

Luckily, I have a couple of good bagel stores in walking distance to get fresh bagels. (No pre-packaged, mini-bagels here!) And I can also get a fresh mozzarella, with or without salt. (We prefer without -- you can always add it if you need to.)

I didn't have any pizza sauce or leftover sauce from pasta, and I wasn't going to open a can of tomato sauce, figure out what spices I needed, for just two bagel halves. Next best thing, there was a bottle of BBQ sauce in the fridge from Dinosaur BBQ. A little on the spicy side, but that's a plus.

Cut open the bagel. Make a circular depression with your thumb going around the bagel. Put the bagel in the toaster oven and toast it for about half the time you normally would.

Spoon in BBQ sauce into the depression and spread it around. (Don't fill it like a trough.)

Cut up the mozzarella. Here's one time where the packaged stuff, particularly string cheese, might have been better. The fresh kind is a little watery, especially if you refrigerate it in water after you buy and use it the first time. I tried to dry the slice a little with paper towels. It worked a little.

Sprinkle some spices on top: garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, salt, whatever. Pop it back into the toaster oven and cook it some more. Watch that the cheese isn't burning ... or dripping all over the inside of the oven.

Apple Cider and Ginger Ale, A Nice Summer Beverage

Farmer's market is here every Sunday. Chinese take-out shows up here almost as often.

At the farmer's market, I'll likely to pick up a 1/2 gallon of fresh apple cider. If we order too much take-out, we tend to get a 2-liter bottle of Ginger Ale or Orange soda. (I suppose we might get Cola or something else if we asked in advance.)

Not too many soda drinkers in the house any more, so the bottle is still half-full. (Hey, optimist!) But it's going to go flat! (Pessimist!) And I need to finish the apple cider before it ferments (not likely to happen unless I totally forget it's there) and before next Sunday when I can buy some more!

Half a glass of cider with half a glass of ginger ale works out pretty well.

Enjoy

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More pictures from the past month or so coming soon.

Another Summer (July 4th!) Celebration -- We've Got Ribs

I'm back for another summer, and maybe I'll update, and maybe I won't. But I'll start with this picture while the oven is preheating:

Why the oven on the Fourth of July? Well, it looks like a hurricane is about to pass by outside. Besides, that what my recipe calls for. And that's why I started doing this before seven in the morning!

I'm cheating here, a little. I made these on Mothers Day, so I have a little practice. And I had nearly half the rub remaining. I added some more brown sugar to tone down the spiciness because of the guests coming later (and because there wasn't enough, of course).

The beef ribs are from Costco. They were good the last time. Let's hope history repeats itself.

Speaking of history: Happy Fourth of July! Happy Independence Day!

Made My First Quiche

Not that difficult, really. I was surprised it was so simple. I saw a recipe online, so I copied it down. I have a few "friends" who have been posting things that are supposed to be healthy and simple. The "simple" is what sells me.

Just six eggs, some cream, broccoli, and cheddar cheese. Naturally, the shopping was the biggest problem. There was literally one box of frozen broccoli, despite the store carrying two national brands and their own store brand -- and it wasn't even cut right.

Cheddar cheese turned out to be on sale, so they were out of it. I got an off-name brand. About the only thing they had was the heavy cream. (They had eggs, too, but those were in the house.

I thought it turned out okay, and son liked it, but it wasn't very filling, and I needed something to go with it. (My wife was a little less impressed, probably because she knew that we needed something to go with it, and partly because she could do it better, I'm sure.)

Basically, it would've made a good weekend lunch, but it was missing something for dinner.

By the way, I did cook some bread to go with it. That will be the next update.

photo is coming -- I have to upload a few pics.

Spinach Omelette on a Hero Roll

Trying to make my eggs for breakfast a little healthier. There's a bag of fresh spinach in the fridge, so I took out a handful, cut the stems, washed, dried and cut up the leaves and added it to the pan while I was whisking the eggs. I went with two eggs instead of three. Small steps, you know.

Not a lot of extra prep time and I'm happy with the results.

No bagels in the house, but there were hero rolls, which we had bought for hot dogs. (You can actually fit two regular hot dogs on one roll, if you're planning on having two dogs any way.) So I cut the omelette up and spread it out a little.

I wanted to add some mozzarella, but we seemed to be down to the last string cheese, and I don't want to steal the kids' snacks.

Finally, I added a little salsa. The bread would've been dry, so it was either add some salsa or butter the roll. Salsa was the better choice.

No pics. It wasn't "photo-worthy". It wasn't ugly, either. But it was good and worth the extra time.

Chickpeas, Rice ... That's a Wrap!

One of the problems I have with people posting recipes on Facebook is that they post Pictures of them, which I neglect to save in the way that I might save something that's written. For that matter, when it's typed out, I have a shot at finding it through some kind of text search.

A week or two ago, someone posted a picture for mix-and-match wraps. Take a tortilla and then add one item from each of the next four or five rows. I forgot to save it, even though I meant to.

Well, there are tortillas in the fridge from last night's dinner as well as the casserole we had, but I'm not in the mood for that. Besides, we'll probably have that for leftovers tomorrow night (or the next). But there are ingredients. There's the yellow rice, a container with chick peas, a glass dish with cooked asparagus, sliced sirloin steak (which I cooked a few days, but it was sliced up for last night's dinner), etc.

Goes together well.

Put some yellow rice, some asparagus and steak into a bowl. Microwave for about 45 seconds. In the meantime, put a little spicy mustard on the tortilla.

Put the heated ingredients on top, add some chick peas and sour cream. Wrap it up.

I'm enjoying it. Your mileage may vary.

Edit: As I type this, my son has decided to follow my lead and make a wrap. He skip all the other stuff, except the rice, and pulled out some leftover chopped meat. I miss those days. (Ah, hell. I'll probably do that tomorrow.)

Making Zucchini on the Grill

We have a vegetable basket for the grill, so I tried grilling zucchini as a side dish.

Two things to keep in mind: first, zucchini shrinks when cooking. Just because there's a layer covering the entire bottom of the basket, it won't look like enough 20 minutes from now. Cut some more.

Second: keep an eye on things and don't trust what the knob on your burners say. The basket straddled the center and right burner, and both were between Medium and Low, closer to low. Everything looked good, so I ran inside a few minutes to work on salad. I was gone about 5 minutes when I came back and found the those slices over the center burner turning brown and smoking a little. Another reason to cook extra.

The stuff that didn't burn came out okay. I just wish I'd made more.
I also baked some plain Idaho potatoes. Next time, those will have to be spiced up a little.

What's a Good Recipe for Iced Coffee?

There's a heat wave in New York City, which means three or more days of 90+-degree heat, with the accompanying humidity. And yet, I still like having cups of tea or coffee. Now, for tea, I need a cool breeze or something. I can't drink tea in the middle of a hot afternoon. Coffee, on the other hand, I can pick up at any store at any time of the day (especially McDonald's where the large coffee is still a dollar).

The one problem I have at home is that tea can be made one cup at a time, but coffee requires a pot. Even half a pot, if I wanted, but still wasting a filter that could make a pot. So I made 8-10 cups, most of which sat there for a while, until I decided to try making Iced Coffee.

Note: I would not call this a success, but it wasn't terrible either. I could work on it (or I could just get someone else's recipe).

Basically, here's what I did: In a large cup (one of those plastic, extra-large drink cups from one of those stores) I put in
4 - 5 ice cubes
2 scoops of vanilla ice cream
10 - 12 ounces of room-temperature coffee, previously brewed
3 - 4 ounces of milk

Then I realized that I needed to sweeten it because the ice cream wasn't going to do that much. So I added ...

a little Light Corn syrup, because we didn't have any Dark syrup,
a little Dark Corn syrup, which I found as I was putting away the light syrup
about a teaspoon of sugar
a little smidgen of honey

I was worried about it being too sugary and having to scrape the syrup off my teeth. Also, I was afraid that it was all going to settle too the bottom of the cup (the main reason I don't make unsweetened iced tea). In fact, there was some syrup stuck on the iced tea spoon I was using to stir the concoction, so I kept stirring vigorously.

In the end, it was refreshing and I could take the sweetness, but it still had a bitterness to it that I didn't like. Yes, coffee is bitter, but not if you sweeten it properly. I'll work on it some more.

Maybe even later today, if I put on another pot of coffee.

EDIT: I should read my own blog. I might've remembered this entry:
Drink With Maple Syrup, from 2010!

Back for Another Summer

Another summer break is here, and I'll venture to try to do two things: first, to experiment in cooking because I don't have a very large recipe file in my brain; second, record my successes and failures and post them here!

I failed on the second part last year. Most of this was because I wanted to post pictures to go with everything, but I didn't set time aside to upload the pictures. Part of it was because I didn't want to make multiple posts in one day, so when I did find time, I had a self-imposed limit. And then I didn't get back to it.

Let's hope Summer 2013 is better than Summer 2012, even if I'm the only one reading this.

And if I'm not here, I hope that means I'm doing something productive, like writing my hypothetical novel.

Ultimate Bacon Burger

We first fired up the grill at the end of May, when the weather first started getting warmer (before it got way too hot). And my first big Sunday breakfast consisted of eggs cooked in the cast iron skillet and I even toasted a bagel on the grill. Somehow, I never got around to taking a picture of it. Oh, well. It turned out pretty well.

Anyway, Fathers Day rolled around, and, somehow, there was no bacon involved. How is that again? There should be extra bacon on Fathers Day. I made up for it a few days later.

I saw the following on the Internet many times before, so I decided to try it, sans hot dogs. With the franks added, it's supposed to look like a cooked turtle. Without them, it's just meat and a whole lot of bacon.



Simple to make: there are two pre-maid hamburger patties (total weight: 1/2 pound) and 6 slices of bacon. Yes, that's a lot of bacon in one serving, but if anyone didn't want me to make that, there should have been bacon of Fathers Day!

It was interesting, and a little icky, weaving the bacon, and it almost didn't make it around the two burgers stacked in the center.

Cooked it on the grill a lower-than-usual flame for a longer time, and flipped it a couple of times.

Tasted good.

Summer's Over, but I Do Want to Wrap Up

Life got busy in August. Busier than I expected. As a result, I didn't get to post as much as I wanted to. But I was still cooking and grilling and taking pictures. I'll pop some of them up on the website as soon as I can. Yes, I know that I'm the only one reading this (although I got a couple hundred pings on the last post because of a link elsewehere), but I'd like to have a record for myself for next year. Maybe I'll see something that I'll want to try again. Or try to improve a bit.

Sierra Mist and Orange Juice -- Who Knew?

I was having a nice Sunday breakfast (nothing new, nothing big) and I wanted something cool to drink instead of hot tea or coffee. Orange juice is nice, but too acidic for me to have more than one glass.

Okay, so try something new. The worse that could happen is I waste 16-20 ounces of beverages and have a glass of cold water.

I took one of those hard-plastic souvenir cups from a national chain, which was covered with advertisements, which makes it a keepsake. I put about half a tray of ice in it and added a can of Sierra Mist.

Topped it off with orange juice. Well, "topped" is not right. It's a big cup. I poured in about 6 to 8 ounces, so I'm guessing the ratio of soda to juice is about 2:1.

Lemon-lime soda with orange juice? Not bad. I like it.

Why not ginger ale? We were out of it.

Substitutions: Next time, particularly if it isn't breakfast time, I'll substitute the OJ with Hawaiian Punch. That's is always plentiful around here.

Comfort Food: the Double-Decker Fried Egg Sandwich with Cheese

It doesn't take a genius to make comfort food. The genius comes in knowing when you need to make it. And knowing how to improve upon it.

One of the first things I learned how to cook was a scrambled egg (although it often came out somewhere between scrambled and a mini-omelet). Unfortunately, I didn't always have the patience (or, frankly, the ability) to properly scramble an egg. So I had a lot of fried eggs.

Fried eggs are just plopped into the flying pan after the butter has melted.
You don't have to flip a fried egg, and it isn't uncommon for certain eight-year-olds to break the yolk making attempts to flip fried eggs and then whining and crying about it.

My mother used to tilt the pan and spoon some of the grease onto the top of the egg to cook it. That was difficult for me because the pan was hot, even with the pot holder, so I just covered it with a pot lid, and it would cook just fine.

The moment of brilliance comes when you realize that if you're making toast, and you decide to make a sandwich out of it, it doesn't matter if the yolk breaks. In fact, you want it to break. That actually gave me the courage to practice flipping my eggs.

So how do you improve on the simplicity of one egg, one frying pan and two pieces of toast, which bring back childhood memories?

Well, yeah, a bagel or a roll or something. Sure.

But how about two eggs?

One egg isn't very filling, but two eggs is too much for most rolls or bagels. Not that I mind having stuff hanging over the sides, but I don't like burning my fingers while I'm eating breakfast.

And then the brilliance struck.
This was recent. I would never have had the patience for this as a kid.

A double-decker fried egg sandwich.
Make two eggs, but make them one at a time. The first egg won't have time to get cold, and you'll be putting a second hot egg right on top of it.

Can you improve that?
How about a slice of cheese in between. (I use the slices from the bricks at Costco.)

There wasn't any ham in the fridge this morning, but I did have a little package of mini Canadian bacon. I heated it up for a few minutes in the pan to top it off.

And a slice of tomato that was almost as wide as the bagel.

Sorry, no pictures. It was a little sloppy when put together.
And by the time I thought to take a picture, there was a big ol' bite taking out of it.

Comforting.

On Top of Ol' Frankie! (All Covered with *Stuff*!)

There was a time, when I was a kid, when I had two choices when it came to topping a hot dog: ketchup or mustard. And you had to be careful where you were because some people were adamant (okay, I didn't know that word back then, but they "insisted -- a lot!") that mustard goes on franks and ketchup (or catsup back then) goes on burgers.

Now let's not get into which kind of mustard: yellow stuff, which looked icky the first time I saw it; Gulden's, the brown stuff in the jar; or Kozi-- Kazi-- Czoski-- the other spicy brown mustard that my father bought sometimes for his pastrami sandwiches. (You could wash the jar out when you were done and it was a drinking glass, with a handle.)

No, let's not get into that. There are only two things that are important now:
First, I know more people who prefer ketchup and wouldn't even consider mustard.
Second, I'm bored of just plain ketchup.

That means finding other toppings.

Disclaimer: I don't eat beans, so chili is right out. Don't even suggest it.

I like sauerkraut, when we have it. And if it's hot. Be careful not to stain your pots. (DO NOT cover it! I am NOT kidding.) And I'll skip the ketchup. Maybe try mustard.

Onions are good, if someone else made them.

So what else is there?

That's the beauty of eating three hot dogs in one sitting. You can try things out.

Frank #1 got a folded slice of American cheese in the bun, under the dog, and a quarter wedge of crunchy kosher dill on top. And ketchup.
My wife had a problem with the combo, as has her sister on a past occasion.
"Pickle on a hot dog?"

What do you think relish is?
"Big difference between relish and kosher dill pickles."

True. Relish is generally too sweet. My mother used to buy India Relish (IIRC) instead of Pickle Relish. And I avoid the overly bright green kind.

Can someone tell me if it was an old Popeye cartoon or maybe an Abbott and Costello bit, which included the phrase "with a pickle for a nickel and the mustard on top" when someone was buying a hot dog? Really, I am not the weird one here. (At least, not with regards to this.)

Frank #2 grossed my daughter out because I tried some salsa, which is good on everything else. She had a point. I won't be doing that again.

Frank #3 had one of the more filling options for toppings you can have: veggies. Now, I'm not talking strange stuff like Californians with their Pineapple-topped pizzas. There was some leftover broccoli-rabe, which my wife heated up. Okay, it was her idea, but it was a good one, so I copied it.

Other Vegetables to try:
Escarole
Swiss chard

I like them. They're leafy. Problem is, they aren't likely to be in the house any time soon unless I go get them with one specific purpose in mind. (Mwu-ha-ha!)

Any other suggestions? (Do you like how I'm assuming that someone is not only reading this blog, but reading this far, and still planning on responding?)

No Ice? Use Ice Cream.

I bought a 20-oz soda when I went out for lunch but didn't get a chance to drink it right away. Figured I'd drink it at home. But there weren't any ice cube trays in the freezer. (They're probably in the other freezer because we needed space.) I could check the other freezer ....

Or I could use a scoop or two of ice cream.

The nice thing: it's kind of hot and sticky out right now.
The nicer thing: it's vanilla bean ice cream and it was already a vanilla coke. Double the vanilla. Whoop whoop!

Baking Breakfast on the Grill

Sunday morning I decided to cook my breakfast outdoors. It was a last-minute idea, so I had to raid the fridge for ingredients.

Years ago, I had a recipe that I used with the kids on Mothers Day morning, which was basically a couple slices of bread, the top slice with a hole cut out, and an egg was dropped in. Then it was put into the oven to bake for a while. Unfortunately, I have to find that recipe because I don't remember the temperature or the amount of time and I'm not experimenting.

Anyway, it was too hot to use the oven, and I was too lazy to empty it of all the trays and pans (and restock them later). So I went to the grill and used my trusty cast-iron pan.

Ingredients: one oversized bagel with almost no hole to speak of,
one egg,
butter,
shredded cheddar cheese,
jalapenos (one of my go to items, keep a jar in the fridge for the summer)

What I didn't add, but should have:
bacon -- none in the house, and I would've had to clean up
salsa -- didn't think of it, and I couldn't use very much anyway.
ham -- there was a slice in the fridge, but I didn't notice it
salt -- this I just forget. When the ham or bacon, it isn't necessary. I added it later, but it wasn't the same.

Procedure
Preheat the grill. When it's hot turn off the middle burner.
Put the pan on the middle burner. Add a little butter.
Carefully, cut a cone-shaped hole in the middle of the top of the bagel into the center. After that you can make it a cup-shaped hole.
If you can see out the bottom of the bagel, stuff some bread into the hole and press it down.
(If the bagel had any appreciable hole whatsoever, you can't do this. Get a nice-sized roll, or use two slices of bread.)

Put the bagel in the pan. Drop some butter into the top of the bagel.
Slice up a couple pieces of jalapenos and drop it in.
Crack an egg and plop it in. It's up to you whether you want to scramble it first, or just drop it in, or to crack the yolk afterward.
Cover with shredded cheese.

I let it bake on the center burner with the other two on high for 10-15 minutes.
Just to be sure, at the end, I put the center burner on low for about 3 minutes, to make sure the egg was cooked.

Results
I enjoyed this, but it could've used salt.
Also, I should have gotten out a little earlier so I wouldn't have had the sun right on my back as I was cooking. If I do this again, get an earlier start.

Live and learn. But that's the point of this blog.

Summer is Coming

To steal a phrase from A Game of Thrones, Summer is Coming.

Time for me to get back to work. Not that I stopped, I just didn't have the time for experimenting like I did last year. I still cooked when I wanted to and when the opportunities presented themselves. I just didn't write about it. Kind of like the six or seven posts I meant to write last August.

I've already made one creation, which was as much a mess as anything else. I'll talk about it next time.

Right now is a reminder to get those simple tools you need or buy those few ingredients that you like to use.

I generally use a small cast-iron frying pan because it's the only one I own. The rest belong to my wife, and I don't like to use them if I think I'm going to mess them up. Well, now I know that I either have to use them or buy a bigger pan for myself. I'll make less of a mess that way.

I've also noticed that cooking for one isn't cheap if you don't want a lot of leftovers. But it can be fun.

A Tale of Six Bushels

They were the best of tomatoes. They were the worst of tomatoes. They were big, round and shiny. They were small, misshapen and blemished.
They were from the South. They were from south of the border.
They were sliced, diced and boiled. They were placed in jars, preserved for years to come.

from A Tale of Six Bushels

Grilled Hot Dogs and Mac & Cheese -- Did I Say it Was a "Side Dish"?

My son has friends over, and they're still young enough that they can enjoy a side serving of mac & cheese along with whatever I've got on the grill -- which is usually hamburgers or hot dogs.

Well, they were involved in their videogames and then into the pool and the food is ready. I can't let it go to waste (or is that "waist"?).

First off, the homemade macaroni and cheese is a family recipe going back at least ... a decade or two. It had to start somewhere. Basically, it's a box of pasta, the sliced cheese from Costco (not the Kraft singles, ick!) and some milk. Single servings can be made using any leftover plain pasta, some cheese, milk and the microwave. That's just as good, if not better, because it's individualized.

Today, I made the full box, filling a sauce pot with elbows and cheese. I added in a couple of ounces of shredded cheddar cheese to give it a little more flavor. That was for them.

For me, I took a serving in a bowl, took a hot dog and sliced it, added a couple of tablespoons of salsa (I'm liking salsa). Mixed it and nuked it for 22 seconds. (The M&C had cooled off although the hot dog was right off the grill.)

Nice. This is comfort food. I need the comforting. They're hogging the pool.