Stinky Eggs. How's that for a Title???

Okay, so seeing as how I have a dress to fit into for my sister's wedding, which is coming up in less than THREE WEEKS (EEEEEEKKKK!!!!), I am doing my best to find low-or-no-carb recipes in the Betty Book. Hence the "Eggs with Kielbasa" recipe... Pretty much eggs, onion, green pepper and kielbasa. But, friends, here's the thing: you were supposed to make it like an omelette, but I messed it up and scrambled it instead. I also didn't use all the egg yolks since I couldn't in good conscience make something with that many fat grams.

Want to know something weird? Cooking kielbasa, peppers and onions stinks. Not like "It's hard, this stinks." but more like, "Scott, come and smell this... I think the eggs are rotten." Not really a good sign when you're hungry and tired. But all weird stinkiness aside, the eggs were actually really good. Yay!

You know what would have been even better with it? Toast. Hash Browns. Pecan Pie. Oh, wedding, you better be fun!

Sometimes a Sausage is Just a Sausage.

So Thanksgiving was a little while ago, but I did make a recipe from Betty's book for the occasion. Because Bets is the Queen of the Basics, I knew the stuffing recipe would rock. I read out the ingredients to my mom, and she said it sounded really similar to my grandma's recipe, except it was lacking sausage. Lo and behold, Betty had a sausage variation. Okay, despite the Freudian theme this post seems to be taking, the stuffing was delicious.

Of COURSE the grocery store was out of bread cubes, so I had to cut up an entire loaf of bread with scissors. And of COURSE I doubled the sausage (I think, it was in grams, Betty wanted pounds, I just wanted enough stuffing for everyone to eat). It tasted just like stuffing should. Oh, the comfort.

To counter-act the insane amount of fat and badness in the stuffing, I made a non-Betty salad. Mixed greens, pecans I sauteed with cayenne, salt and sugar, romaine, dried cranberries, red delicious apples, pumpkin seeds and Parmesan cheese. The dressing was fig balsamic, olive oil, Dijon mustard and cinnamon. O. M. G. It was a hit, I have to admit! I wasn't a huge fan, but my family was happy and it was so pretty!

All in all, alot to be grateful for... Betty included.

Next Time, Stick with Chocolate

What exactly about Swiss Steak is Swiss? It's tomatoes and meat and peppers... weird. The best part about this recipe was that Scott made me buy a meat mallet the last time we went shopping, so I got to pound the hell out of a side of beef. Awesome. No, like really, awesome. Talk about therapeutic! I guess you have to "tenderize" the beef first since you are then going to have to let it simmer for the next fifty years. Okay, for the next hour and twenty-five minutes, but STILL!!!! We were so hungry!!!!

The result??? Meh. I used fresh tomatoes instead of canned, since the only nice tomatoes I could find were in whole entire baskets and Scott doesn't like tomatoes, so I had a bazillion. I actually screamed "EWWWW!!!" when I touched a sticky, gross tomato at the store, and a nice man told me to go check out the baskets, they had nicer ones. This left me with a large amount of over-ripe tomatoes.

I didn't really care for this recipe. It took a long time and didn't taste like much. Swiss Steak is like a metaphor for my life this week... Huge effort, high hopes, beatings with mallets and entirely anti-climactic. I'm not going to hold it against the Swiss, however, as they have brought us such things as cheese and chocolate, army knives and neutrality (all of which are SUPER good) but their steak? I think I'll pass.

Today's Meal was Brought to You by the Letter "P"

I knew pecans were good in pie. I knew they were good when "pralined," but nothing prepared me for Crunchy Pecan-Topped Pork Chops. While I'm not sure Scott was as enamored with them as I was, we had a really nice dinner... along with the pork chops, I made rosemary potatoes. Pecans, Pork and Potatoes. Mmmm, healthy.

Luckily I stole my mother's Braun hand-blender awhile ago, and it has gotten me through many recipes otherwise requiring a blender or a food processor. It has this nifty little container that you put all your "stuff to be chopped" into, then you put the lid on and the hand-blender fits onto the lid and spins the blade at the bottom of the container. It's a modern miracle. And it'll do until I splurge on a Slap-Chop. The "stuff to be chopped" was parsley, pecans, salt and a slice of bread. You throw it on top of the mayo/Dijon/oil sauce and broil the pork. It really does get all crunchy and delicious. The potatoes, I have to say, were an oily mess. GROSS. (I was also feeling awful and cranky, so they were probably just a little wee bit gross.)

Because I am still not feeling any better, Scott handled dinner last night. He made crab legs, and I made rice pilaf and a salad. Betty says the pilaf is "savoury." Once again, Bets and I have a different idea as to what this means. It was also super-watery so I had to reboil it to cook off the liquid. But the crab was amazing. Point for Scott, who, by the way, makes the most delicious garlic butter I've ever tasted.

Potatoes, Pilaf, Pecans, Pork. Hmmm... I wonder if I should try Q next...

Caliente!

Oh, Enchiladas. You are hard to make and worth every minute. Has anyone out there actually MADE enchiladas before? They are time-consuming! You make the filling, with ground beef, onion, parsley, cheese and sour cream, then you set it aside. Then, you make a sauce out of cumin, chili powder, water, bell pepper, jalapenos, and tomato sauce, and boil it down. Then you put the sauce in a pie plate, and dip each side of eight tortillas into the sauce. Then you fill the tortillas with the filling (duh), roll them up and line them up in a baking dish. Throw the rest of the sauce over the whole mess and bake for 20 minutes. You can garnish it with green onions, cheese and sour cream. I used cheese and onions, since the filling used up the rest of my sour cream (Scott had late-night gigs all week and used up some sour cream for post-gig nachos).

We ate our fill Thursday night and I actually brought the leftovers over to my mom's on Friday and we ate them with some chips, salsa fresca and guacamole. They were even better the next day! Who knew Betty could do a Mexican classic so well???

SLIGHT problem: My hands and later on, my face, were almost obliterated by the capsacin in the jalapenos. I don't think my skin stopped burning for hours. Google said to try butter or oil (this blog should be sponsored by some butter company) as capsacin is fat-soluble, but if it's been a few minutes already, forget about it, you're stuck burning for the next 48 hours. AND, to add insult to injury, capsacin is re-activated by hot water. Needless to say, I tried my own home-remedy of Sauvignon Blanc, which helped until I washed my face before bed, which spread the burning to my face upon re-activation. Nice. Get this, though! Last night, as I was making the salsa, I asked my mom to pour some olive oil on my hands after I had handled the jalapenos. It worked!!! Good to know.

I had more wine though, just in case ;)