Appliance Troubles

Friday morning I was making porridge as usual in the microwave (Red River Cereal). When it beeped, I pulled it out and it was uncooked; in fact, the water was cold! I thought I must have pushed the wrong buttons, so tried again with the same result. I had no more time, so grabbed a banana and dashed out without my breakfast.

Saturday morning I was explaining to Ruth that my microwave seemed to have died and I put in a small fruit cup to show her - setting the MW for 1 minute. It promptly overhead and exploded all over the inside. So then we started experimenting. What we've figured out is that it works up to 6 minutes but if you set it for anything longer than 6 minutes, it doesn't work. Maybe the numbers aren't working? I dunno.

I think it means that I don't buy a new MW yet - but I don't exactly trust it either.

I had a tenant explain to me last month that her stove wasn't working, so I bought a new one off kijiji for her, to discover that the stove now works but the oven on the new one doesn't. I'm a little disgusted. I guess I'll have to try again.

It's been an expensive month for me at the 4-plex. I've had the boiler go out - the service guy replaced a motor and a connection; and the stove replaced; and then a service man in to look at the stove I bought to replace it. Hopefully things will run smoothly for me over there for awhile now.

Final, final post for today

Have I mentioned how much I like my fridge? I bought myself a new fridge and matching freezer this fall. It's an all fridge and upright, auto-defrost freezer. They have lots of room and I can find everything I put into them. This makes me really happy. Even after doing a week's meals for two families (the Pradzynski's and my own household), I still have room in the fridge. The first picture is of all of our salads and soups. We buy those containers when they have them in the stores before Christmas. They're so nice because they stack easily and they fit perfectly into the fridge. The larger containers hold eight cups, while the smaller ones hold four cups. Unfortunately we always seem to have more bottoms than tops; we accidentally had three lids on the burner when it was warm a few weeks ago and melted holes into three lids - so sometimes the top container of a stack will have plastic wrap instead of a lid on it.

The casserole we made today was lasagna. Now my niece Rachel will inform you that I don't actually make lasagna, I make a nice cheesy casserole. That's because if the lasagna isn't like your mother made, it's not really lasagna. Her mother used to make lasagna with tomato sauce, meat and cheese on top. My kids would tell you that it's not really lasagna without spinach and lots of vegetables inside. Here's my lasagna recipe:

Lasagna
In a large dutch oven combine:
1 lb lean hamburger - This is actually optional; you can do it meatless and most people won't know provided you have enough "chunks" of things in it. I've made it with 1 cup red lentils instead, or just lots of other vegetables, and no one really notices (except Rachel, but I've already explained that).
1 - 300 gr. package sliced mushrooms - This is the standard package from the store. I work full time and don't have time to spend washing and chopping, etc.
3 large carrots cut into pennies
2-3 green peppers, cut into chunks
2 yellow onions, chopped
2 TLB chopped garlic
Any other vegetables I may have in the fridge that need to be used up.

Brown the hamburger with the onion and garlic, add the rest of the vegetables. Also add:
1 large can spaghetti sauce or tomato sauce (the 700 mL size)
1 large can water
1 small can tomato paste
Add enough water until the dutch oven is half full and it's all pretty soupy.

In a separate bowl mix together:
2 packages frozen chopped spinach (I usually thaw them in the microwave)
1 L creamed cottage cheese
1 egg (the egg's actually optional, but the original recipe I followed and made my own did call for an egg)

Layer the lasagna:
a layer of the meat sauce
a layer of uncooked noodles
a layer of meat sauce
a layer of uncooked noodles
a layer of the cottage cheese and spinach mixture
a layer of noodles
a layer of meat sauce
grated mozzarella cheese to cover

Cover with a layer of parchment paper then tinfoil. The parchment means that the cheese won't stick to the tinfoil. Much better that way. I don't have my cheese on the lasagna shown in the picture because I'm out, but I'll add it before baking it.

This recipe actually makes two large lasagna pans or my giant roasting pan full.
I usually freeze it at this point or if I'm making it Saturday for Sunday potluck, I put it in the fridge and bake it Sunday morning.

Borscht

This is (possibly) my final post for today. We also made Ruth's famous borscht today. It's not originally Ruth's recipe, she got it from a Ukranian restaurant in P.A. It is very good though, and really easy, provided you have a food processor.

Beet Borscht
3 beets - shredded in food processor
3 carrots - grated in food processor
2 sweet potatoes cut into cubes (I'm sure the original recipe called for potatoes, but I'm allergic to potatoes)
2 yellow onions - chopped fine
1/2 cup dill pickle juice
1 can pork and beans
1/2 coil garlic sausage cut into small cubes
2 tsp chopped garlic

Put everything into the slow cooker. Because it's all been chopped so small, it really doesn't take that long to cook either.

Fish Chowder

OK, I'm doing lots of posts today (it's either that or get busy and do dishes). Here's Ruth's totally awesome Fish Chowder recipe. Now, to be honest, it's more of a fish casserole than fish chowder; it's really dense, without much broth. This isn't a bad thing though - it's really delicious, regardless of what it's called.

Fish Chowder
2 fillets of fish (about 1 lb - your choice of fish, we usually use a whitefish of some kind) - cut into small cubes
This time we also added 1 fillet of salmon (because I had it in the fridge.) also cut into cubes
Add:
2 yellow onions, chopped.
1.5 cups chopped beet greens
.5 cup chopped celery
2 cups cooked brown rice
2 TLB lemon juice
2 TLB oil
1 diced red pepper
1 cup chicken bouillon

Saute onion and fish; add vegetables and broth. Simmer until everything is cooked and tender.

Saturday cooking, post #3

We also updated our Lentil Brown Rice salad, but not by much; we just changed the amount of curry powder; the original recipe called for 1 tsp curry powder; we actually put in 2 TLB curry powder, because if you have curry powder in the recipe, you really want to be able to taste the curry powder. (I guess it also depends on how strong your curry powder is.) Anyway, since the recipe is essentially unchanged, I'm just posting the picture; you can go back and check out the original recipe in my older blog.

Saturday cooking, continued

OK, so you'll have to scroll down to start at the first entry for today; this is actually the second entry.
In addition to the Winter Vegetable Salad (see below), we also made the Green Bean Salad and the Lentil Brown Rice Salad. Now I've already published the recipes for these two salads (see Salad Recipes, or check way back in August), but we felt we needed to update our recipes to reflect what we actually put in the salads. In addition, we weren't happy with the vinaigrette we used on the green bean salad, so we reworked it. Here's the reworked

Green Bean Salad (Second Try)
1 two lb bag frozen green beans (not french cut)
1/4 cup fake-um bacon bits
1 diced red onion
2 red peppers, diced
1 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup sunflower seeds

Vinaigrette
1/2 cup oil
2 TLB soya sauce
6 drops liquid smoke
2 TLB lemon juice
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 tsp sugar or Splenda

Saturday cooking - with pictures!

This morning Ruth and I made three salads, two soups and a casserole. We were done by 10:30 or so, except for the clean up, but need to take a breather before finishing up. So, what did we make? A new salad:

Winter Vegetable Salad
1 large sweet potato (or two small sweet potatoes) - cut into 1/2" thick slices
2 carrots - cut into pennies
2 parsnips - cut into pennies
2 small beets, cut into 1/2" thick slices

Now I need to digress a little; the recipe we started with had us peel all of the vegetables, cut them into small cubes, toss them with virgin olive oil and then bake them. What we did was not peel the vegetables, cut them into wedges, not toss them with oil, but we did bake them. When they were baked, the peel comes right off of the sweet potato pieces, and we then cut them into small chunks. The carrots, parsnips and beets don't need to be peeled if they're scrubbed really well before baking; we just cut them into smaller pieces. So, the actual baking instructions for the way we make the salad is:

Bake on baking parchment at 425 F for about 20 min. until soft. Cut into smaller pieces.

Add:
1 red onion, chopped small.
1/2 cup slivered almonds (the recipe called for walnuts but I can't eat walnuts and I can eat almonds)
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled.

Vinaigrette:
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 TLB lemon juice
2 tsp Dijon mustard

This salad is good either warm or cold.
And... it comes with a picture! (I know this is rare for me, but I actually pulled out my camera this morning and took photos!)