It’s buried in there somewhere!

Anyhow, so I decided to try making polenta. I’ve gotten polenta in a tube before, but it’s just not very good. So I got me a package of corn grits. You have to cook it on the stove for 30-45 minutes while it thickens. Thing is, it sputters at you pretty regularly, and it has to be stirred almost constantly so it doesn’t scald the pot. So I used a spoon with a rather long handle to get me out of harm’s way, pulled a chair into the kitchen, and watched an episode of Dexter while I sat there and stirred. So, not too bad.

The restaurant’s polenta had black beans in it, so I’d also made some black beans in advance which I dumped into the pot. And while the restaurant’s polenta was also vegan, I’m not, so I added in a bit of butter.

So after that 45 minutes, I dumped it into a greased bowl, let cool for 10-15 min, then dumped on a cutting board. It totally congealed and held its shape. So I sliced it into bars, and pan-fried it with some olive oil. Came out pretty amazing, and I made way too much so now I’ve got polenta in the freezer as well.

As for the vegetables, I chopped up onions, red pepper, garlic, kale, shredded some carrots, and stir-fried these in olive oil. At the end I topped it all off with cilantro, a bit of basil, shredded romano, and almonds.

Came out really good, I was quite pleased. Wish I’d been able to figure out a version of the carrot-based sauce that came with the original meal, but it was still good without that. So I’ve actually been eating the leftovers for breakfast lately, and I’ve got two more brick in the fridge that I need to fry up, not to mention another whole chunk in the freezer to eat eventually.

Course, these are not latkes, per se (as far as I know, I don’t claim to be an expert!). But, they do satisfy the requirements of containing potatoes and being pancake-shaped.

So the process is relatively easy – dump in a bowl, mix in some water, watch it all get fluffy.

So the recipe says this makes like 20 of them. Or something close to that. I could look at the box to check, but it’s way over there and I’m way over here. Anyhow, I guess mine are “jumbo sized” cause I only made like 14 of them. Still a decent number.

So these fried in oil for a bit, then I flipped them and kept frying. I really like the fact that I don’t have to touch a grater when making these. My knuckles fear graters like nothing else. Course, there’s something to be said for eating potatoes over potato flakes, but convenience and lack of blood in your food is a nice thing as well.

These were quite tasty! Checked the ingredients, and there’s an interesting range of spices including paprika, nutmeg, and cinnamon. I wrote down the ingredient list, actually, so the next time I feel like shredding potatoes I can toss in a few bonus flavors. So the package has got you eating these with sour cream, but I didn’t have sour cream. I did have yogurt, which shares similarities to sour cream, but I think the only flavors I had were like blueberry and key lime pie, and I wasn’t quite ready for that kind of gastronomic experimentation. So I dumped some chunky applesauce on these, which worked quite well. And in conclusion, though I’m not sure I’d necessarily buy these full-price (I mean, have you seen how cheap potatoes are?) I would totally get this again should I have another encounter with it in the discount bin at King Soopers.

And, this was a fortune I recently got, last time I went for Chinese. I’ve, uh, never had a cookie hit on me before.

Bizarreness!

Anyhow, I’ve got all these blasted pins on pinterest, all of which I’ve added after fully vetting that their linking content is actually a thing I’d realistically try making. Meaning I pin things that look good, have ingredients I’m apt to have around, and don’t look like they’d take too much time. So, along comes this pin for some Nutella cookies, and considering there’s three ingredients, I figured I’d have a go.

I mean, the pin claims they’re the best cookies EVER, so I’ve gotta try making them, right? Turns out I don’t have a cup of Nutella. Cleaned the jar out, and was left with around 2/3 cup. But, you know, Nutella’s pretty powerful stuff, so I decided to wing it. Added the egg and the cup of flour, and added a second egg for a bit more liquid – figured the egg would just make them a bit more fluffy.

Tried sprinkling some powdered sugar on top in that sorta lazy “don’t feel rolling these into balls and powdering them the proper way” kinda manner.

Baked for 7 minutes, and took them out when they had that “I kinda want to leave them in a bit longer but know that if I do, they’ll be super hard” look to them.

So yeah, they weren’t too bad. Nice and soft, and remained soft even after cooling. Not too sweet either. At the same time though, nothing too special. I suppose it’s a drawback of a recipe with three ingredients, you can sort of imagine what the flavor of those ingredients combined would be. They were, well, Nutella in cookie form. Not as intense as they’d be if I’d used the whole cup, of course, and a bit fluffier than in the pinned photo thanks to that second egg.

These reminded me of a recipe for peanut butter cookies I made back in the day with two ingredients, peanut butter and sugar. Which seems awesome on the one hand cause, hey, two ingredients, how simple is that? But the resulting flavor is also just that – simple. Think I prefer to put the extra effort out there to get a cookie with more complex flavor. Like, in terms of a Nutella cookie, I bet some variety of sugar cookie with straight Nutella as filling would be a bit more pleasing than these. Actually, I bet these would be great for kids, come to think of it. Kids don’t really seek out complex flavors (some are actively turned off by them) and in terms of a baking project, three ingredients is about as kid-friendly as you can get.

I’ve been wanting to make minestrone soup for awhile now, actually. I eat the Campbells canned version on occasion, and while I enjoy it, it’s really salty and I figured homemade would be better. I’ve also been known to enjoy Olive Garden minestrone, so I figured that would be a good starting off point. And thus I found this imitator recipe to try.

Since I have a slow cooker that I try to use for as many things as possible, I decided to use the recipe more as a loose set of guidelines rather than following accurately. So, I started by gathering together all of my non-seasoning ingredients into the following pile.

I didn’t really use exact proportions, but to summarize, here’s the above ingredients in list form:

-Can o’ kidney beans
-Can o’ diced tomatoes
-olive oil (used a few dollops of it)
-a mix of pinto and northern white beans
-some leftover broth (which was still in the process of unfreezing when this photo was taken)
-cilantro (the recipe didn’t call for it, but I had it, so hey)
-green beans
-onion
-zucchini
-celery
-carrot

One of the reasons I deviated a bit from the recipe here is also because my slow cooker isn’t particularly large, and there were a great number of plants that needed to be shoved in there. So, when chopping up the vegetables I just used my best judgement as to how much to use, so proportions would be even and such.

And, for fabulous efficiency everything went straight into the same pot.

While the recipe called for basil and parsley, turned out I had neither. Luckily I’d added fresh cilantro earlier, and I also swapped in rosemary as well. They’re similar, right? Right?!?

So, I guesstimated when adding all of those in, and cranked up the slow cooker to go, setting it on high for 2 hours and 50 minutes.

The shells would come in near the end. The advantage of adding the shells in later (aside from the obvious “no ginormous squishy shells” benefit) is that any seasoning can be adjusted at that time, since the shells will still need to cook in there for another 30 minutes anyhow. This is especially important with salt, as I have a habit of putting in far less salt than I actually want due to trying to avoid putting in too much salt!

Anyhow, the resulting minestrone soup was pretty good. I’m glad for the variety of beans, and the seasonings seemed to work themselves out well. Also, while the soup cooked, it made the apartment smell like the inside of a Subway for some reason. Bonus? Next time I think smaller shells might work out better – I only had medium ones and went with that. I could also see the addition of potatoes to this being tasty as well.