Noodle Wieners

As men, we all like food that is (a) filling, (b) tasty and (c) fun to play with.

This gem fulfills all three of these needs.

I am going to give you a simple version followed by a more complex version and then some optional features.

What you will need:

Package of spaghetti (hard word to spell)

At least 10 wieners

A jar of spaghetti sauce (easy version)

A can of whole corn (advanced version)

A can of red beans (advanced version)

A pound of hamburger (advanced version)

Tomato Paste (ask someone in the store if you need help)

Package of enchilada seasoning (advanced version)

Two handfulls of shredded cheese (optional)

Sour Cream (optional)

Simple Version

Step 1:  Cut the wieners into one-inch segments. 

• Step 2:  Slide, uncooked (otherwise this is a really hard step) spaghetti through the wieners, 2 to 4 strands apiece.
• Step 3:  Boil just as you would any spaghetti with the following condition:  Do not allow the water to boil aggressively.  I did this on my first batch and the wieners sort of exploded.  So keep the water hot but not “rolling”.  It should take about 10 minutes to cook.
• Step 4: Drain water, add sauce and eat.

Complicated (and more tasty) Version

Steps 1 through 3 are the same as above.

Now we need to make our own “sauce”

• Step 1:  Cook the hamburger until all the pink is gone.
• Step 2:  Add half a small can of tomato paste, half a cup of water and a tablespoon of Enchilada seasoning. Stir until well blended.
• Step 3: Add a can of corn and a can of red beans. Stir until everything is warm
• Step 4:  Use this concoction like sauce.  It will be much thicker but that is okay.

Optional(s)

Sprinkle shredded cheese over the top.

Add a dollop (a unit of measure equal to a huge heaping tablespoon) of sour cream.

Eat and enjoy

Mexican Fried Eggs

This is really, really good.

It's also very easy to make.

What you'll need:
1 pound of Hamburger
1 package of taco sause (the kind you add water to)
a small can of tomato paste
3-5 eggs, depending on how hungry you are.

Cook the hamburger until all of the pink is gone.  Drain off excess oil.

Mix the taco sauce with water and tomato paste according to the instructions.  It's probably a good idea to read the instructions on the package before you leave the store in case you bought something more exotic than Safeway's finest.

Mix the sauce with the hamburger and then let sit on low heat for five minutes.  Drain off excess watery sauce.

Fry up your eggs and put them on a plate.

Put one heaping tablespoon of hamburger/sauce mix on each egg.

Eat and enjoy.

jim

Bologna Stack

First of all, if it weren't for the Oscar Mayer song, I would have no idea how to spell bologna.

This is a quickie that is high on flavor, low on appearance and is probably not the healthiest thing you will eat all day.

What you will need:

8 slices of bologna
mustard
4 slices of American cheese or any cheese that comes in sliced squares
Two tablespoons of chopped onions
Two tablespoons of chopped olives
Two tablespoons of chopped tomatoes (or diced if that is a better word.)

Now, what we are going to do is stack everything into a big pile, heat and eat.

It should be noted that the three ingredients of "Two Tablespoons" are approximate in size and can be left out or exchanged for other ingredients to suit your taste.

Let's start stacking.

Place two slices of bologna on a plate, slightly overlapping so they form a figure 8.  This is your base level.

Cover the slices with mustard, a lot or a little, its up to you.

Add sliced/diced tomato

Add a slice of American Cheese

At another "figure 8" of bologna.

Add the diced onions and a slice of cheese

Add a third "figure 8" of bologna

Add the chopped olives and a slice of cheese.

Add another "figure 8" of bologna and top off with the last slice of cheese.

Heat in the microwave at high (as if there were any other setting) for 2 minutes.

Eat and enjoy.

Paprika Chicken

I have taken a very complicated meal and made it simple.

What you need:

One chicken
One onion
Paprika (this is a red spice you can find in the spice section of most grocery stores)
Rice
About a quarter stick of butter

Let's start with the rice.  Pick the style you most prefer.  I suggest you look at the previous blog.  For me, I use four cups of water and two cups of brown rice.  Boil the water, add the rice, cover and cook at lowest setting for about 50 minutes.

Now for the chicken.

I recommend buying chicken already cut up.  You can cut it up yourself but you will need either, a special kind of scissors or a saw.  There are ways to cut up a chicken with a knife but this requires some attention to detail and who wants to bother with that.

Set the cut up chicken aside.  Now, find a frying pan with tall sides and a lid.  This is a fairly hard combination to come by so you can use a regular frying pan and then transfer everything to a pot with a lid later on.

Chop up your onion into whatever size pieces you like.  I have heard that if you chew gum while doing this, your eyes won't water.  If that works, let me know.

Over a high heat, melt the butter in the pan and then add the onion bits.  I think this is called saute-ing but maybe not.  In any event, stir to keep the onion from burning and continue until the union becomes glassy or sort of clear.  This should take about 5 minutes.

Add the chicken pieces.  For about 5 minutes, flip the chicken around in the butter and onions.  This will feel kind of clunky since the chicken pieces are likely to be big.  What you want to do is cook the chicken long enough to get rid of visible pink.  The meat will still be pink on the inside but white on the outside.  If this has not been achieved in 5 minutes, check to make sure the heat is turned on.

Now, let's assume you are going to use a pot.  If you are a single man, this may be problematic because there is a chance that you only own one pot and it is currently cooking rice.  Maybe I should have mentioned that earlier.  This is a perfect opportunity to borrow a pot from the cute girl down the hall.  Make sure she knows you are cooking with fire (as opposed to the microwave).  This sends the subliminal signal that you are at least partially domesticated; a definite turn-on as this represents less work for her down the road.

Back to cooking.

Put the chicken/onion/butter mess into the pot.  Add about 4 heaping tablespoons of Paprika.  This seems like a lot but its okay; after all this isn't salt.  Now, add enough water to cover the chicken.  Stir until the Paprika is dissolved in the water.  Bring water to boil, then reduce heat to minimum and cover.  Cook for 45 minutes.

By now you have forgotten completely about your rice so check the time.  DO NOT uncover the rice until 50 minutes has passed.  The rice should be done before this next step with the chicken.  If there is still water in the rice, test the rice to make sure its soft.  If its not, cover and cook for a few more minutes.  If it is soft, drain off the excess water and set aside.

Back to the chicken.

After 45 minutes, the chicken is barely hanging on the bone.  One piece at a time, take the chicken out.  Take the skin off the piece and set aside (the skin not the chicken).  Take the meat off the bone and put it back into the pot (the meat not the bone).  Be careful because chickens sometimes have secret bones that are easy to overlook.  Throw the bones away.

Gather up all of the chicken skin and feed it to your dog saying, "Whose a good boy?"

By now, we have a pot full of chicken meat and red water.  We have another pot filled with rice.  In a giant bowl, mix the two pots.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  I'm not sure what this means but I know it when I taste it.  I start with 1 heaping teaspoon each of pepper and salt.  Stir it in and taste.  Remember, its always easy to add a little more salt.  It's a real pain to try and take out salt if you find you've added to much.  So be careful.

This is enough food to last a person for a week.  However, single guys tend to base their consumption on flavor and how much spare room they have in their stomach.  This stuff is delicious so I give it 2 days at the most.

Enjoy.

Jim

Rice-n-stuff

There is a ying and yang quality about rice.

On the one hand, it's very filling and goes well with just about everything.

On the other hand, it takes time to cook.

Once you figure out how to cook rice, a whole new world of food opens up.

You basically have three options.

Option #1 is to buy Minute Rice.  Just add hot water and you are good to go.  There is not really a downside to this other than cost.

Option #2 is to buy a Boil in the Bag product.  This rice comes in a couple of different types, including brown.  You basically, boil a big pot of water and then toss the rice, bag and all, into the water.  It's ready in about 10 minutes.  This is the most expensive option.

Option #3 is to buy regular rice and cook it.  I recommend you practice this.  It is the least expensive and offers the most varieties of rice.  The downside is that it takes 45 minutes to an hour to cook.  Here is how to do it:

Add 1 part rice to 2 parts of boiling water.  For example, boil 2 cups of water and then add 1 cup of rice.  Next, and this seems to be very important, lower the heat to the lowest setting and cover tightly for 45 minutes (some rice may indicate an hour).

After 45 minutes, turn off the heat and remove the lid.  Let it set as excess water will steam away.  Test the rice.  If it's crunchy, you didn't heat it long enough.  If it's stuck to the bottom of the pan, you cooked it too long.  I know this sounds iffy but there is actually quite a long period that is considered acceptable.  For example, if your rice needed 50 minutes to be perfect, then it would be edible in 45 minutes and probably wouldn't stick to the pan until well after an hour.

Now that your rice is ready, it's time to add stuff.

My favorite is to add chunks of meat such as ham or even cut-up hot dogs.  Then I add the secret ingredient: Campbell's Cheese soup.  Don't add water, just the soup.  Stir it all in together and you are ready to go.

This stuff keeps well in the fridge so make plenty.

The Kareful Kitchen

It's time to take a break from recipes to talk about a couple of hazards lurking for the unsuspecting single man  in the kitchen.

First of all, there is a biological difference between men and women that make the male particularly handicapped when it comes to cooking: Men can only do one thing at a time.

Women can cook (several dishes at once) while talking on the telephone and watching television.  Men can do all of these things, but only one at a time.  This is a problem when it comes to monitoring your meal as it cooks.

Guys tend to put something in the oven and then turn on the television.  Once they start to focus on whatever is on the TV, the meal is out of their mind until the smoke alarm notifies them that their baked potato is on fire.

A smoke alarm should only be used as a timer for you most robust meals.  Or, if its raining outside and you need to bring your BBQ inside to cook. When that happens and the smoke alarm goes off, its probably time to flip your burgers.

I once screwed up a two-step meal by adding a third step.  I was cooking Lentils.  This is basically Step 1:  Heat Lentils in a pot of boiling water and Step 2: After 45 minutes - eat.  Between these two steps, I added "play golf for 6 hours."  I started the lentils and then someone called and wanted to play golf.  The lentils were our of my head until I came home and they chemically fused to the metal in the pot.

So, get a timer.  No timer = burned food.  A timer will eliminate the number one problem men face in the kitchen.

The second problem is dirty dishes.

We tend to let the dishes pile up until either (a) the sink is over filled or (b) we are out of bowls.  There is nothing wrong with this.  In fact, it's just good time management.

However, there are a couple of things that need to be washed right away.  The following will permenantly bond to any plate if left for more than just a few minutes: egg yoke, Catsup, oat meal anything made with flour (like pasta).  The easiest solution is to simply keep the sink filled with water.  In this way, you can let the dishes stack up and still keep the food from drying on them.

The last thing is the refrigerator.  Most stuff that you eat has a "shelf life."  This is the amount of time you can keep something before it goes bad.  The expiration date is usually put on the package somewhere.  I tend to treat these as rough guild lines.  However, it it's a dairy product and the expiration date has been reached, toss it.  Otherwise, the smell will quickly become overwhelming.

My rule of thumb is to do a sweep through the fridge about once a month looking for things that are turning green.

Well, that covers just about anything that can go wrong in the kitchen.  Happy Cooking!!

Jim