Rice Pilaf

Oh, I wish my camera was working! I adapted the following recipe from The Joy of Cooking (2006) 75th Anniversary Edition. Adaptations included reduced liquid for use in the rice cooker and additions of spices and mushrooms. Tree, you must give this a try. I think you'll love it!

Kat's Rice Pilaf

What you need:
2-3 Tablespoons of butter
2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
4-6 green onions, sliced thinly
2 small bay leaves
2 cups rice (I use Jasmine)
4 ounces of angel hair pasta (I use Barilla) broken in to tiny pieces
small handful of dried mushrooms, soaked, drained, and chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
3.5 cups of chicken broth (4 if you plan to cook the pilaf on the stove or in the oven)

What you do:
Melt the butter in a large skillet, browning the garlic and cooking the onions until transparent, toss in the mushrooms and bay leaves.
Toss in the rice and pasta pieces and saute until golden. Dump in the rice cooker. Add 3.5 cups of chicken broth and salt and pepper to taste, close the lid, and turn it on!

The result is fabulous! Next time I might reduce the broth and use the water from the soaking mushrooms. I might also include cashews or almonds.

Computer Mishap

A few weeks ago I mentioned the Camera Mishap that left me without a digital camera and feeling quite miserable. Well, it seems my little laptop, Hello Kitty, is seriously ill. Her only symptoms were some odd error messages on Saturday night followed by the Blue Screen of Death (!) on Sunday morning ~sob~. I can only hope that she is able to be fixed.

MKT Trail

Saturday morning found Orion and I hitting the Katy Trail. It was the first time I'd taken Andromeda Dale (AnD) "off road". The trail consists of hard packed pea gravel so it isn't like biking on wet grass or mud. But the gravel does give beneath the tire and made for a most unsettling feeling at first. Once I gained some confidence, Orion and I cruised from Windsor toward Green Ridge for about three miles. We turned around, just past the Pettis County line to make our way back to Windsor to meet John at our predetermined time.

From Windsor we drove to Calhoun and then on to Clinton. With Calhoun only 7.5 miles from Windsor, I think that will be our first one-way adventure with John or another kindly friend meeting us there. Eventually I'd like to make it the 14 or so miles to Clinton.

My brother and his wife have biked the Katy Trail on at least two occasions. (They biked the stretch up near the Missouri River and on to St. Charles.) Listening to their experiences has been a major motivator for my own trail excursions. By spring I hope to be able to bike 20 or so miles in a day (not the 45-55 they did!) which will leave me time to explore, get the feeling back in my rear end, set up camp, make dinner, and rest before moving on the next day. I've got friends I want to bike with!

Ugh!

So this evening's bowling was not nearly as stellar as last week's, much to my chagrin. I must admit, however, that this week has been a trial. From technical issues Monday during class, to sick family members and rude billing folks at the doctor's office. Include a week's worth of insufficient sleep and today's wardrobe malfunction (Dark tea all over my white blouse before I had to observe student teachers for five hours!) combined with a house that is in such desperate need of a good cleaning that it smells funky!

Am I making excuses? Perhaps. But here are this week's scores. You know the motto: "Bloggin' my pain; bloggin' my shame!

Last week's game raised my average to a 108. Tonights games were:
09/17/09 117 101 89

Gobble, Gobble!

It's that time of year again. The bowling season began three weeks ago and each night I have berated myself for not once going to the alley to practice over the summer. I have also found a plethora of new bits and pieces that seem to ache just for the helluvit.

Last season I finished with an average of 106. The first two games this season weren't so promising with scores of:

August 27 100, 105, & 67 (shameful!)
September 8 99, 111, & 97

But I am quite excited to say that I bowled my highest game so far last night (as did a good friend, Ruth, with her score of 193 (!)). My scores for last night were:

September 10 106, 182, & 107 (Holy smokes!)

I like to think that I have been steadily getting better. Most of the time the ball goes where I want it to. Sometimes pins seem to have a force field surrounding them making them impervious to the 11 weight hurling at them at roughly 13 m.p.h. Ultimately, my throws are more consistent. Last night's second game was awesome! I had six strikes (!) and three of them aligned for a turkey. (My turkey dance and gobbles of excitement alternately delighted and frightened my teammates and friends.)

Last night was actually the second time I bowled this week. Tuesday I bowled fora make-up game. Perhaps it was a good thing... I am looking forward to bowling next week and I am actually considering practicing!

The Name Game, Continued

Readers, I am impressed by the names sent to me via email as well as by the comments section of my post "It's a Girl!" Several local friends also made suggestions. Some suggestions made me cringe, while others left me scratching my head (Stagger Lee? Why would I name my baby after him?). My favorites are listed below:

Robin (Several made this suggestion, not just Sally in the comments! I have a few Robins in my family (both sides) and will probably skip this to avoid confusion!)

Aqua Velva (I must say I absolutely love this name! But I am not entirely certain I can call my baby A-V with a straight face. I do agree with Jenn A-G, Aqua Velva is sure of herself!)

Azure Adventurer (A^2) (A very dear friend suggested this name after some thought. I do like the name, but fear I would stumble when pronouncing azure then there are several who don't know that azure is a color!)

Evelyn (Jenn A-G suggested this name and it does just roll off the tongue. In fact, I found myself trying the name out on Tuesday whilst cruising KNSP. Still uncertain.)

I must admit that I have been kicking around some names of my own. (Keep your giggles to a minimum, please!) Maria or Mary Magdalene (Yeah, I like that one too!), Andromeda Dale (AnD (pronounced Andy) for short), or one of my favorite Greek Muses: Calliope, Polyhymnia, Clio, Urania, or Thalia.

Who would have thought naming a bike would take more time than naming one's offspring? But I suppose most parents have a more than a few weeks to discuss baby names. I'm still taking suggestions, but I promise to commit to a name soon!

Crock-Pot Mishap ~ Camera Mishap

Wednesdays are days where the crock-pot is in charge of dinner. When things are running smoothly (giggle!) and things are as they should be (snort!) the week look something like this: Monday is Orion's day, Tuesday is my day, Wednesday belongs to the crock-pot, Thursday is whatever (I'm bowling and don't care what or if the boys eat!), Friday and Saturday are John's days (but not always), and Sunday it's back to me. I had rather hoped that the boys would take pity and man crock-pot Wednesday, but alas, I am still hoping. Last week's Lemon Chicken was rather tasty. And while tonight's dinner was edible, I was almost glad the camera wasn't working.

When I began experimenting with the crock-pot years ago, I seemed to have more misses than hits. But after reading several cookbooks and blogs as well as chatting with friends who know and love their crock-pots, I have found that I now have more hits than misses. And I am not quite certain how to classify tonight's dinner.

This afternoon I thought I would give Mongolian Beef a try. I visited Crock-Pot 365 and Recipe Zaar and looked at both of their Mongolian Beef Recipes. How could I go wrong with ginger, garlic, soy, wine, and chicken broth? Right? Well, to start, I dusted the meat in too much corn starch (I'll omit that entirely next time!), and secondly, I used a 3.5 quart crock-pot instead of the larger one. It smelled great. And tasted fine. But looked like something from the black lagoon. Really! (Again, grateful for not having a camera to blog my shame!)

I think I'll retry the recipe, but not any time soon. And as for the left overs, I am not certain what to do with them. But I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Now then, you may wonder about the Camera Mishap part of this post. Sunday I went out with Orion and Shannon to bike for a bit. I took the camera for the sole purpose of snapping picture of my bike and hopefully getting one of my bicycle mates to snap one of me and my baby to share with you! The camera dropped (crash!) and it's toast. We've had the camera for a decade or more (it's a Cannon Cool Pix 4.3 and it has been dropped many times before, but its number was up!). I am hoping to send it off and have it fixed. ~Sob~ I suppose I could dust off my old Cannon AE-1, but just the cost of printing gives me the willies.

Dinner's Ready...

Lemon Chicken and Chicken Fried Rice

School resumed just over two weeks ago and I have already contracted some horrid sinus funk. I honestly think it is allergy related. Last Friday I had that horrible "allergy eye" that feels like pink eye.

Feeling poorly only increases my appetite for homemade, well-balanced meals. And Stephanie over at A Year of Sow Cooking always has some very tasty suggestions. Today, I thought I would give a couple of them a try.

First, I started with the Lemon Chicken. I took four chicken breasts and hacked them into manageable chunks and dusted them in flour with salt and pepper. I browned them a bit and tossed them into my Crockpot.

Then I mixed up the sauce and dumped it on. I goofed, and added the entire container of lemonade. Ooops! Also, I used rice vinegar instead of the suggested balsamic vinegar.

Then I decided to give the Chicken Fried Rice a try. I was feeling a bit dubious about the efficacy Crockpot Fried Rice, but I was feeling adventurous... Or perhaps it was just all the antihistamines I had consumed. I trucked out all of the goodies I thought I might need: chopped onion, chopped green onion, peas, carrots, and left-over baked chicken.

I tossed in a good amount of soy sauce, a touch of sesame oil, and gave it a good stir. I made sure to leave a well where I poured in three eggs, scrambled. It was my hope to return in about an hour and give it a good solid stir, combining the cooked egg with the rice. But alas and alack! The Crockpot was on "warm" instead of "high". Again, it must have been the antihistamines. So I gave it a stir and cranked it up. Hoping that the hour I had lost wouldn't make a huge difference.


The results were not only attractive (see the first picture in the post), they were quite tasty. I am thinking fresh pineapple and a hint of red pepper would be just the ticket on the next go around. Even with the extra 1/2 of a container of lemonade John still gave the chicken a 7/10. I gave it an 8.5/10. The fried rice was another story. My left-over rice was a bit moist and I think it would have fared better if I had used three or four day old rice. With the Crockpot on "warm" for the first hour, the rice didn't heat as quickly as I had hoped. The stirring broke up my long Jasmine rice grains into short, stubby bits. But the taste was quite good. I could have used a bit more of the sesame oil and the soy sauce, but I was guessing as I was working with a lot of rice. The rice got a 4/10 for texture (my fault, I'm sure) and a 7/10 for taste.


Readers, give it a try and let me know what you think. And thank you Stephanie for the inspiration!