Skillet Lasagna

Lately I've been trying new recipes in an effort to expand my repertoire as a cook as well as to find healthier options for my family to eat.

With our toddler in daycare and my wife's shift changing week to week we normally have a limited amount of time to eat dinner by the time we get home. So most of my recipes have been for slow cookers.

But this week she was on the early shift so I was able to try some recipes that take slightly longer to make. We had tacos that I'm thinking I'll try as a taco salad instead (since they fall apart in UR hands anyways).

Last night I wound up trying the recipe for Skillet Lasagna that my cousin had posted a month or so ago. For the first time in I don't know how long I actually followed the recipe without changing or substituting ingredients (aside from adding some spices for flavour).

It turned out NOTHING like the picture I saw. I think I was supposed to leave the lid off while it simmered because it wound up being VERY watery. After leaving it in the skillet during dinner and dishes afterward the noodles absorbed most of the juices and was much better.

Perhaps next time I'll try this on the weekend and/or with the lid off. We like our pasta. So I refuse to give up on a different method of cooking one of my all time favourite meals.

Twirly Whirly Pizza

So I tried this recipe posted by my cousin on her blog (http://foolovesfood.blogspot.ca/2012/12/whirly-twirly-pizza.html). It didn't turn out exactly as planned. But I did like the overall idea of it. It just needs some tweaking.

First off, I used regular flour for the counter instead of cornmeal. But I liked the tip of using olive oil on my fingers to keep the dough from sticking. So I put it on the knife when when I cut the log and it worked out pretty good. I also used regular pasta sauce instead of "pizza sauce".

For ingredients, I used finely chopped bell peppers and shredded sandwich ham. When I put the logs sections in the dish I covered them with the chunks of ingredients that fell out when I rolled the log. Then I put extra sauce and cheese on top.

I put it in the oven and after cleaning up for a few minutes I put on the timer for 15 minutes. When the timer went off I just turned off the oven and let it sit there for about 10 minutes while got ready for dinner.

The bummer part is it didn't cook all the way through. :( it's probably because I cooked it in a corningware casserole dish instead of a glass one. It only cooked around the edges. Which thankfully wound up being enough for each of us to have a full serving. So while we ate I put it back in the oven at 350 for another 20 minutes.

I like the way it fills the dish I used. So next time I'm going to skip topping it with more sauce and cheese (it wound up being too cheesy). I'll add some baby spinach (or some other green). I'll prolly drop the temp to 350-375 and doubling the time to 40 minutes. Because what came out the oven the second time was really good.

Grilled Not-So-Cajun Ranch Pasta

So my cousin Foo has her own blog where she posts about meal plans, various recipes, and how they turned out. This past week she posted a meal plan that included a recipe for Chicken Cajun Ranch Pasta.  I liked the sound of it and have been looking for some new chicken recipes to use on a regular basis.

As usual I changed things to fit what I had on hand and prefer.  The words struck out are what I didn't use and the words in bold are the additions or changes.

Chicken Marinade
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup ranch dressing
3 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp Cajun Seasoning
2 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp white vinegar
1/4 tsp ground black pepper, or to taste
1 Tbsp white sugar, or to taste
3 Skinless boneless chicken breasts
1/4 cup of hickory barbecue sauce

The recipe also asked you to pound the chicken ahead of time.  But my daughter was sleeping so just pressed them out with a rolling pin.  Then I put it in a Tupperware container and put it in the fridge overnight.

Pasta & Sauce
2 cups of orzo pasta
2 1/2 cups Homo Milk (3.25%)
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 Tbsp pepper
2 tsp Cajun Seasoning
1/4 cup butter
1/4 c. shredded Parmesan cheese (not a huge fan of parm)
2 cubes of frozen chopped spinach
1 tsp of Sriacha Sauce

While my daughter was sleeping I cooked the chicken in a George Foreman grill cuz it's freaking freezing outside (-20 C with the windchill) and I liked the charred effect I saw that you can really get in a pan.  Then I put them in Tupperware in the fridge until later.

I cooked the orzo until it was nice & fat.  I strained it put it back in the pot and added the sauce.  It was still REALLY soupy.  So I put it on medium-low and stirred while I chopped and mixed in the chicken into small bite-sized portions (my daughter is only 19 months).  Then I put turned off the burner, put on the lid, and let it sit for about 10 minutes until it had thickened.

Overall I liked the recipe and I'm going to add it to my go to list.  Though I think it will have to wait until the summer when I can do it on the barbecue (using a tiny little George Foreman was not fun).  It also takes some prep work.  So I'll have to plan ahead to put in rotation.  So it'll prolly be for Saturdays.

Here is what I'll do different next time:
I'll knock out the salt & ground pepper and use just Cajun seasoning and Sriacha sauce instead.
For the marinade I'm going to try brown sugar instead of white.
Switch out the Parmesan cheese for mozzarella or ricotta cheese.

Pork Roast

So the past little while I've been laxidasical with my meal planning. Now that I have a handful of recipes under my belt for slow & regular cooking I've been slacking off and just rotating them out. Tomorrow is that story again. We had a busy weekend without a chance to do groceries.

Thankfully I plan ahead for this. Whenever I see a Marc Angelo pork roast on sale I buy it and throw it in the freezer. So today I pulled it out to defrost at noon and we stopped by Sobeys on the way home so I could grab some potatoes.

Ingredients:
5 medium new potatoes
2 large carrots
3 cups of waters
1 package of Beef Bouillon

Chopped potatoes & carrots about the size & thickness of my thumb. Placed the roast on top. Mixed water & bouillon and poured over the veggies.

I set the slow cooker on low for 5 hours.

Caches, Waymarks, & Challenges (Oh My!)

Since logging my 100th find a few weeks ago I've found about a dozen more caches and yesterday I was able fit in a few more.

On my last post I said that I had found my largest cache container yet and possibly ever.  Well I was wrong.  Two weeks ago I had some time to kill before the appointment at the garage for my cars scheduled maintenance so I decided to grab a nearby cache that was on my to do list.  It wound up being a shed in someone's backyard (yes a shed!).  There is even a wooden trunk dedicated to travel bugs and signature items.  After a few minutes of letting me discover the bountiful cache one of the people who lived there came out and we talked for a bit before i had to leave.  I even got a container I plan to use for a new hide.  Saweeet!

Well a few days ago Geocaching.com sent out an email to members saying that they are discontinuing Challenges.  Challenges had been their answer to replacing virtual caches where instead of going somewhere to sign a logbook you are 'challenged' to go somewhere and DO something.  I had accepted a few challenges since signing up for geocaching.com but had never actually done one.

When I had to go to a nearby town for work yesterday I decided to leave a little bit early and do some caches over my lunch hour beforehand.  The cool part was that one the caches I had picked was also the site of a waymark AND challenge.  w00t w00t!  Now I can kill THREE birds with one stone.  Well, technically log three different finds with one smartphone and one location.  But who is splitting hairs? (you'll get that joke later on).

The cache is near the site of a mill 125 years ago.  The miller decided it was a shame to waste the energy of the water flowing out of the mills turbine.  So downstream he built a tower where water twisted the turbine under the tower, a series of gears and shafts spun a large sheave [shEEv] near the peaked roof. Like a giant laundry line with a cable looped around two wheels, water power was transferred from the small tower to the main mill.  What makes this site even MORE unique is that it's one of the only surviving examples of auxiliary water power still standing.  Now that's a cool waymark!

I think the creator of the challenge thought it was pronounced [shAve] instead of [shEEv] because the challenge read:

Stand in front of the Tower and take a picture of you cutting someone's hair with either clippers or scissors and then upload the picture.  No need to actually fully shave, but would be a bonus for sure!

Well I didn't have someone else or scissors with me.  So, not to split hairs (get it now?) I just took a picture of myself pretending to cut my hair with my fingers.

The cache itself was about 40 ft downstream.  I had a bit of a tumble on the way there due to frozen moss on the path (note to self... frozen moss is S-L-I-P-P-E-R-Y).  But it was well worth it for a find at this kind of location.  I dropped one of my signature items, signed the log, took some pictures of the tower for the logs and went on my way.

The rest of the day was a couple simple caches (an LPC) and a DNF on the final of a multi (the way to find the coords for the final was well done).  All in all it was a good day of caching.  I'll leave you with a few more pictures of the tower and a short (I mean SHORT) video of the water running under the bridge.

100th Find

Just over a week ago, for the first time in a long time, I spent the day Geocaching.  The wife was off scrapbooking with a friend and the little one was spending the day with my mom.  I had a HUGE list of caches I wanted to tackle but precious time to find them.  the day wound up being far from what I had planned but much more.


Biggest Container Yet (Ever?)



I had made a Pocket Query a few days beforehand.  So I loaded it into my iPhone and off I went.  However, I forgot to check on the recent logs of the caches.  Or else I would have known that many of the caches of the one series I was interested in were in somewhat disrepair.  Oh well, there are plenty of caches on my 'To Do' list.

So after dropping the little one off with Grammy I whipped out the iPhone, loaded up the GC.com app, and did a search for nearby caches.  Up came 'Sticking Around For The Beer'.  Yup, sounds like a good cache to start the day off.  It was a nice and easy walk into a suburban park and (aside from the familiar feeling of pine needles on my skin) was a nice start to the day.



Very Clever Hide



Next up were some caches in the Caching Migraine series.  You see (up-to-this-point) I logged my one and only FTF (First-To-Find) on #2 in the series.  So I've wanted to try some more and show that it wasn't just a fluke.  This is when I found out that many of the caches in the series are in need of some maintenance.  I'm not about to spend a rare day of caching hunting for hides that may not even be there.  The 2 caches I did find in the series were worthy of their name.  It was nice to check a couple of them off my list.



By now I was getting close to that triple digit number and I could almost taste it.  But I needed a couple more so I went for cache known to be rather large.  Judging from the maps I thought it was just on the outskirts of a sports field.  However, it proved to be quite the trek through bush with many trails going this way & that.  When I finally arrived at GZ I was slightly disappointed that part of cache that made it interesting (other than it's size) had been disabled :(  On the way back to my car I realized that I had parked about 10 metres from another cache.  And despite being out in the open it had me scratching my head for a few minutes.



Caching Down Memory Lane



With 97 finds I started to head towards my goal cache.  On the way I grabbed a cache beside one of my favourite burger joints and met another cacher while I was there.  I then grabbed a cache from my high school stomping grounds.  Then I headed off to the goal cache.



I had been here once before and had left only slightly stumped because I had forgotten the tools I had known I'd needed.  This time I didn't leave anything to chance.  But the cache was right behind a persons backyard, with a low fence, and a muggle relaxing on a lawn chair DOH!  This is going to take some stealth.

Armed with a multitool I made my way to cache in a semi crouch style walk.  I carefully released the cache from its resting place.  All the while watching the muggle to ensure I don't draw any attention.  Once in hand I dash back to the car.  A clever cache indeed!  I signed log and carefully put it back.  Not before taking some photos for personal reference.

I wound up grabbing one final cache before going to have dinner with the family.  A great ending to a great day!

Testing

I'm just testing my new IFTTT.com Recipe for sharing blog posts to Facebook and Twitter.

If this had been a real test I would have provided you with the answers.

1:18 pm 2012-10-29