A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

recipes

Recipe: Fish Chowder

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The other day I made fish for supper.  I tried a recipe new to me and lets just say no one really liked it so I put it back in the fridge.  I later got to thinking…there must be something I can do about that fish, otherwise I’d might as well toss it.

Fish Chowder!  That was my solution, why not give fish chowder a chance?

I found a recipe.   I made a couple of modifications based on other recipes I looked at.  This recipe seemed the most affordable to make though and didn’t require any odd ingredients.

Ingredients

1 tbsp (15 mL)
butter
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 bay leaf
1 tsp (5 mL)
dried dill or dried thyme
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 large Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
2 cups (500 mL)
water or fish stock  (I used chicken broth)
1/3 cup (80 mL)
all-purpose flour
3 cups (750 mL)
Milk
2 cups (500 mL)
chopped raw skinless fish fillets or cooked seafood (shrimp, lobster, scallops, crab, clams, oysters) or a combination
2 tbsp (30 mL)
freshly squeezed lemon juice
Whole grain crackers, crumbled
Changes I made to the recipe
  • I added 1 tsp parsley
  •  instead of butter I cooked up some pancetta and used the grease from that instead.  🙂  The pancetta will be added to another dish later on.
  • Oh.. and I had some whipping cream leftover from something else so I used that and topped it up with milk to the 3 cup mark.
  • the seafood I used was the leftover trout from the night before
  • I didn’t use the whole grain crackers as I don’t like crackers in my soups or chowders.
Directions:
In a large pot, melt butter
over medium heat; sauté celery, onion, bay leaf, dill, 1/2 tsp (2 mL)
salt and 1/4 tsp (1 mL) pepper for about 5 min or until onions start to
brown. Stir in potatoes; sauté for 2 min.
Increase heat to
medium-high; stir in water and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to
medium and boil for about 5 min or until potatoes are almost tender.
Whisk flour into milk
and stir into pot; bring to a simmer, stirring often. Stir in fish or
seafood; simmer, stirring often for 5 min or until fish is opaque and
flakes easily with a fork or seafood is hot. Discard bay leaf. Stir in
lemon juice and season to taste with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls
and top each serving with crumbled crackers.

Family Results:
My son’s thoughts who is reticent about anything new, MOM!  It’s edible!   Save some for me for later okay?”
My thoughts: I’ve only ever had Campbell’s clam chowder…(which I like) so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I approached this with skepticism and was pleasantly surprised.  I liked it.  🙂  Easy to make.

Recipe: Multi-grain, Whole Wheat Bread

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This recipe is loosely based off this one. 

Ingredients

  • 1/3 cup honey
  • 2 1/4 cups warm water
  • 1/2 tablespoon salt
  • 1 tablespoons active dry yeast 
  •  
  • 2 eggs beaten
  • 1 cup multi-grain flour
  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 2-4 cups white flour
  • 3 tablespoons wheat germ

Instructions

Mix
together honey, water, salt, and yeast. Leave until yeast dissolves,
about 10 minutes. 
Beat in eggs and 2 cups of flour. Allow to rest,
covered, for 30-60 minutes, until bubbly. 
Stir in enough flour to make a
soft, workable dough. Knead in wheat germ. Knead well and let rise  in bowl.   Grease bowl before returning kneaded bread to bowl.
Shape into 2 loaves and place in a greased 8 inch loaf
pans.
Let rise again until the loaves just crest the edge of the pan. 
Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes.

For more bread recipes see below  

Traditional White Bread.
Irish brown soda bread.
Irresistible Irish soda bread. 
Amish White Bread. 
Pizza Bread. 
Python Dogs and Sun Bread. 
Kim’s White Bread, altered. 
Grandma VanDoren’s White Bread. 
Hamburger Buns. 
Buns for Thanksgiving. 
Garlic and Cheese Breadsticks. 
Sweet Rolls. 
Scones. 
Scotch Scones. 
Whole Wheat Rolls and Buns.
Julia Child Sandwich Bread. 
Cheese Biscuits. 

Recipe: Tasty Buns

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I really liked the dough in this recipe, hopefully they taste as good as the recipe was to make.   Just so you know… THEY DID!!!

Ingredients

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour(I used one whole wheat, one white)
  • 2 (.25 ounce) packages dry yeast 
  •  1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp Salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 3/4 cup water
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil 
  •  2-3 cups all-purpose flour(I used one whole wheat and almost 2 white)
  • fine grated cheddar cheese

Directions

  1. Stir together 2 cups
    flour and the yeast, add in sugar
    and salt. In a separate bowl, heat milk, water, and oil heat to lukewarm in microwave.(in my microwave took 3 minutes). Add all at once to the flour mixture,
    and beat until smooth, about 3 minutes.  Use a mixer.
  2. Mix in enough flour to
    make a soft dough, 2 to 3 cups. Mix well. Dust a flat surface with
    flour, turn dough out onto floured surface, and let rest under bowl for
    about 10 minutes.  I kneaded it for a minute before letting it rest.
  3. Shape dough into 12 slightly flat balls, and place on greased baking sheet to rise until doubled in size.  Made enough for 12 flat buns and a bunch of little rolls.
  4. I added cheese to the little rolls once they had risen
  5. Bake in a preheated 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) oven for 12 to 15 minutes.

I keep trying to make cheese buns like what I can buy in the store with cheese that you pull apart and taste ever so yummy.  Hoping these will do the trick.

End result:
The boy (age 11) devoured, “adding they need more cheese, and better than the store mom”
Hubby said “good buns hun, better than store bought”  
Me: Enjoyed them.. both with and without cheese, though the ones without cheese seemed a tad flat (probably cause I made them smaller than they should have been) 

Linked up at 
Hip Homeschoolers. 
Turn it up Tuesdays.
  

Recipe: Chicken Heart Casserole

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I’m calling this a casserole though it isn’t really….

This is something I make frequently and I change it all time time.  Most of the time I take some rice, seasonings, and chicken bouillon and toss it in a casserole dish in the oven.  I am the ONLY one who eats it in this house and I make it when I feel stressy in my head.

Today I reworked it a bit to see if it would appeal to others in the house, and it was a bit hit and miss. 

Take your crock pot.
Add 900 ml of chicken bouillon.
Add some brown rice (2 cups) and some leftover soup mix (with lentils, brown rice etc in it).
Add a small flat package of chicken hearts (about a pound or so).

Put in some seasonings

  • Costco no salt seasoning
  • salt
  • pepper
  • 2 bay leaves
  • garlic powder

Cover and set on low, making a point of stirring it off and on throughout the day.

It’s done in about 7 hours.
Pop the lid off.   At this point it is done if you want it to be.  🙂

I decided to play around with it a bit though.
I heated up some cream soup in a large fry pan I have.  Then put the chicken/rice mix into the soup (removing the bay leaves).   Added a whack of fine grated cheddar cheese and some more salt and pepper.   Mixed it all together and heat through.

My son’s opinion: I like it better this way mom.  🙂

So.. WOOT WOOT.. success.  🙂

Recipe: Homemade Marinara Sauce

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Take a few marina sauce recipes, see what they have in common, and find a way to make it work.  This is what my hubby came up with.

Here is how we put it together:

Two 28 oz can of tomatoes and one 6 oz tomato paste.   Blend this together until smooth.

4 tablespoons of olive oil   Put in a pan warm it up
Add 4 cloves of minced garlic, cook for a few minutes.
pour tomato mixture into pan and stir.
Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.
Add 1/c cup red wine.
Add seasonings

  • parsley
  • salt
  • pepper
  • basil
  • oregano

Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens; serve

We added meatballs.
Served over spaghetti noodles.
With Parmesan Cheese

Recipe: Seasoned Teriyaki Chicken

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This is one of those throw it together dishes that hubby and I often collaborate on.

Take four chicken breasts.   If you dislike any kind of fat like hubby does, trim off that fat and leave for your spouse to fry up with some mushrooms.  🙂

Slice one large onion thinly and lay it in the bottom of a casserole dish.  Use more if you really like onion.   We are a mixed bunch in this house so we met in the middle.

Salt and pepper one side of those chicken breasts, and lay the seasoned side down on the onions

Season the chicken: Feel free to use what you like eh?
we put on

  • salt
  • powdered garlic
  • basil
  • pepper
  • no salt seasoning (from Costco)

Take 3/4 of a small bottle of diana’s teriyaki marinade and splosh it over the chicken.  The marinade we used was a thinner type of marinade, but not too thin.  It thinned more as it cooked. letting off a delicious aroma.

Stick in in the oven for about an hour, at 350.  About 50 minutes in, I cut the chicken breasts in half and moved them around a bit in the liquid.

End result:

International student: tastes good.
11 year old boy, somewhat food suspicious lad: I like this mom!   Can I have some more?
Mom: This works.
Dad: I really like how we did this.  WRITE THIS DOWN hun. 
—————-
As for the leftover chicken bits.   I tossed them in a pan with some sliced thin small chucks of portabello mushroom.  I tossed in some garlic salt and butter as well.  It was a really quick fry up.  I like cooked mushrooms, and this gave me a way to use up the chicken fat so it didn’t go to waste.

Recipe: Tuna Melts

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I grew up on tuna melts…. it was a quick and easy meal that us girls could make and mom wouldn’t be wondering what we were up to.  🙂

The recipe I grew up with used relish and boiled eggs, salt and pepper in it along with miracle whip and I used to love, but as I matured though I’ve developed a resistance to relish so have needed to find a way to replicate the taste without side effects.

This had led to be playing around with what I like in my tuna melts.

My current rendition:

Ingredients:

1 regular can of tuna, drained…  for melts I like flaked tuna.
mayonnaise
PC lemon-herb seasoning
2 pickled eggs 

2 slices of bread 
2 slices of cheese

Directions: 

Chop up the pickled eggs.
Then mix the rest of the first four ingredients in well.  Add mayo and seasoning to taste.  I tend to like a drier mix, others like wet.

Put on two slices of bread. 
Cover with cheese slice (one for each slice of bread eh?)

Put in oven to heat through (350 if I recall until bread is browning basically), then under the broiler until cheese is all melty… or if you are like me until slightly burnt (if using the black diamond style cheese slices).

Works equally well in regular oven or a toaster oven.