Comfort food

I have a few easy things to add to this list. I usually have the ingredients on hand, and it is easy for you to do so too.

This is a fun thing to do when you are doing a movie night. Instead of calling up and ordering pizza, make your own! Heat the oven to 350. Pull out anything you might like on a pizza- onion, meat, peppers, etc etc etc, tortillas, and some spaghetti sauce. Spread the sauce on the tortilla, and all the ingredients. Sprinkle on some pizza seasoning, or at least some oregano. They go for about 15 minutes at 350. Pull it out when you think it is done. The great thing about doing it like this is everyone gets to custom make their pie! Get it a little crispy, use a cutter in 6 pieces, and no silverware required. Often I just eat it off the cutting board.

Ok, take two. Growing up, I decided I was a grilled cheese fan. Nothing has changed, but there is a place you should frequent if you are like me, and living in the Denver area. Chedd's is the premier place to get a tomato soup bisque and sinfully good grilled cheese to order. It is so good, that I copied the recipe and have made it at home. I think there are three Chedd's now in the Denver area. Seek them out.

Anyway, the one I love is called Farmer in the Dill... Rye bread, spread with basil pesto. Tomato, green pepper, Havarti dill cheese. Havarti is a great melting cheese. If that isn't your speed, someone at Chedd's will find what you want, trust me.

http://www.chedds.com/
Only your diet will be sorry for going there.

update:
Unfortunately the Chedds locations in Denver have closed. 

Szeshuan Chicken in Lettuce Bundles

I had better do a healthy dish we like because one of the cookbooks I got for Xmas is Seduced by Bacon- you will think I only do really unhealthy cooking once I start posting those up. I also got an Alton Brown book (my favorite Food TV host) and another book that is full of food definitions- all the french words etc etc that you probably learn in culinary school. Currently my favorite is amuse-bouche. I don't know how I got that one stuck in my head, but it's quite fun to say.

This recipe comes from Healthy Cooking for Two (or just you). It lays out recipes in 1 and 2 servings. We like this lettuce wrap recipe, we have done it a couple of times. The book says one serving is 161 calories. I will write up the 2 serving version.

1 tablespoon oil- for this I would use peanut
8 oz boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut in 1" strips
1/2 medium red or green pepper. I like red better- the sweetness counters the pepper flakes in the recipe. I also just added the whole pepper, not half. Cut them into the dice size you'd prefer.
1 cup celery cut in 1/3 inch slices
2 teaspoons minced ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon low sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice or distilled white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (I put some more in)
2 tablespoons dry roasted peanuts (I would go with non-dry roasted... and I'd chop them up)
2 green onions, thinly chopped
4 iceburg lettuce leaves

If you have a wok, I'd use it- otherwise a large nonstick skillet. Put it on high heat, add the oil and cover the pan. Get it hot. (don't get the oil smoking- too hot!) Add the chicken, peppers, celery and ginger. Cook and stir until the chicken starts getting opaque.

Stir in the garlic and sugar. (I would actually just put the garlic in with the oil as I was heating the pan) Add the soy sauce, vinegar and pepper flakes and continue to cook until the chicken is done.

Stir in the peanuts and green onions and remove from heat.

Put servings on plates, and put the lettuce next to it. You eat them just like lettuce tacos.

PF Chang's has a lettuce wrap appetizer that is good- I think this is a little more flavorful.

Guest Post #1

Let me preface this by saying my wife is a much better writer than I am. Let me also say I don't know anything about any kind of "torture" that might be referenced in the following story. I'm not sure what she has in mind for post #2, but she is already thinking of one. Without further ado- here is her first one.

Why I don’t eat mayonnaise and other childhood traumas

If you know me at all, then you know that I don’t eat mayonnaise. I don’t eat it. I don’t smell it. I don’t touch it, and if I can help it, I don’t even look at it. So of course, one of Darin’s favorite forms of entertainment/torture is to chase me around the kitchen with a jar of mayo as I scream and fight back waves of nausea.

My distaste/hatred/fear of mayonnaise started with an innocent enough childhood memory. When I was about four, my father took me to see my first movie in a theater -- a weekend matinee of the Disney classic, Song of the South. I’m sure the movie had a plot, but at four, I only grasped a little of the narrative, which involved an Antebellum plantation with a boy, a bull, and some slaves. As the boy recuperated from a run-in with the bull, one of the slaves, Uncle Remus, entertained him with tales of Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit.

That rascal Brer Fox hated Brer Rabbit on account of he was always cutting capers and bossing everyone around. Brer Fox decided to capture, cook, and eat Brer Rabbit. So Brer Fox sculpted the figure of a cute little baby out of tar and placed her on the side of the road. Along came Brer Rabbit, who tried to strike up a conversation with the Tar Baby. Getting no response, Brer Rabbit shouted, "I'm gonna kick the stuffin' out of you!" and pounced on the Tar Baby with both feet. As his feet sank deep into the tar, Brer Rabbit punched and head-butted the little creature until he was completely covered with tar and unable to move. Trapped and at Brer Fox’s mercy…..

Well, I won’t spoil the ending. Needless to say, the image of Brer Rabbit completely consumed by the gooey, oozing Tar Baby made an impression on me.

One dark night, not long after seeing the movie, I snuck out of my bed, wandered into our kitchen, and came face to face with -- dun, dun, dunnnnnn -- the MAYONNAISE Baby! The door of the refrigerator was ajar, casting a creepy florescent wedge of light across the floor. Sitting on the floor, wearing nothing but a white cloth diaper, was a baby made entirely of mayonnaise. The damp, thick smell of eggs and oil choked me, and I began to sweat as I watched the Mayonnaise Baby eat tiny fistfuls of the slimy goo straight from a gallon jar. Was I to suffer the same fate as Brer Rabbit and be absorbed into the oily blob of mayo?!

The world went black. As a means of self-preservation, my subconscious has erased the remainder of that night from my memory forever. I’ve been told that the baby was merely covered in mayonnaise (and bore some resembled my little sister). Doesn’t matter. The damage is done. I DON’T EAT MAYONNAISE.

By the way, in most cases, cream cheese is an excellent substitute for mayo in recipes.