• 1/2 cup Quaker Quick Oats
• 1 cup whole milk (Sheeder’s of course)
• pinch of kosher salt
• 1 TB of packed light brown sugar
• dash of cinnamon
• less then a 1/4 cup of raisins

Add the first three ingredients to a microwave safe bowl. Microwave this mixture for 2 mins on high, then stir the mixture. Return it to the microwave and cook for another 1 min of high, which should result in a thick oatmeal mixture. Now that the oatmeal is fully cooked, stir in the brown sugar, cinnamon, and raisins. Enjoy.

Side Notes:

• I’ve tried using a couple of different sweeteners in the oatmeal (white sugar, light brown sugar and clove honey.) Its really a toss up between the light brown sugar and the honey, both are great to sweeten the oatmeal. While the white sugar is worthless in this application.
• You can use water for the cooking liquid, but I think that milk adds more of a creaminess to the hot oatmeal that you just can’t get with water. Kind of like making hot cocoa with milk instead of water.
• Why would you buy one of those Quaker Instant Oatmeal – Raisins & Spice packets with artificial color/flavoring, when you can make the same thing yourself with all-natural ingredients?  Is 3 minutes to long to wait for hot natural oatmeal verse 90 seconds for a packet of instant artificial oatmeal?
• I didn’t take any pictures for now, but as soon as a make it again. I’ll make sure to post up some pics.

So after many failed attempts and so so results, here is version 4 that finally came out good:

2 ripe Avocados
1 roma tomato, diced with the seeds and core removed
1 or 2 TB chopped Cilantro
5 to 10 pickled jalapeno rings, finely diced (preferably homemade)
1/8 tsp Cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
1/2 tsp Ball Fruit-Fresh Produce Protector
1/2 tsp Kosher Salt
Couple of cracks black pepper

Basically put all the ingredients in a mixing bowl. And with a potato masher, mash it all up until smooth, but with a few chunks remaining. Then spoon into a serving dish and enjoy.

Side Notes:

• Since the Fruit Fresh Powder contains citric acid, don’t add any lemon/lime juice in addition to the powder. Trust me I learned this the hard way (sour guacamole sucks!)
• Don’t try using lemon juice, instead of lime juice. The final guacamole won’t taste the same.
• If the guacamole is going to be sitting out for longer then 30 mins, consider adding the Fruit Fresh powder instead of lemon/lime, to help keep the color of the guacamole.
• What to look for in an avocado: Green skin and rock hard to the touch means you’ve got more then a week until they are ripe. Once they turn black skinned and soft to the touch, you’re in a race against the clock before it spoils.
• To increase the spice level of the guacamole, add more pickled jalapenos instead of cayenne pepper. This is another lesson learned the hard way.

If you don’t know how to make a salad, then you should have no problem in making a caprese salad since it only has seven ingredients. And those ingredients are fresh mozzarella, a tomato, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, kosher salt and pepper.

And putting it all together is just as simple as the ingredient list. Slice the tomato and mozzarella into ~1/4″ slices, and arrange on a plate or platter alternating between the tomato and mozzarella. Finally top with the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, kosher salt and pepper. And that’s it! How much more simple can you get? (Other then getting a bag of mixed salad greens and topping it with bottled salad dressing.)

Side note:
1) Since I didn’t want to get fresh basil from the grocery store. I just used some of the basil that I dried from my garden.
2) If you have some nice salt (black salt, red salt, etc) by all means use it. I just happened to use kosher salt, even though I had some red salt on hand but forgot to use it.
3) For the olive oil, I used some extra virgin olive oil that JRR got for me a while back.

Well now that Fall is slowly transitioning into Winter, I though that it would be a good time to make some soup to warm my bones. But what kind of soup did I want to make? This is when the “freezer rejects” get brought into the picture, with the cauliflower leading the pack. After a little bit of recipe searching on my bookshelf, I happened to have a Cream of Cauliflower soup recipe from King Arthur Flour.

With a recipe now in hand, it was time to make this soup. Well out of nowhere crept in a strange irony, I wanted to eat a bowl of hot soup, but I didn’t want to do any cooking. So after about a two week stalemate with myself, I finally broke down and spent the 60 minutes to make the soup (for some reason I thought that it would take longer.)

I have to say, I had pretty low expectations on how this soup was going to turn out with my freezer burnt cauliflower. But I’m pretty happy with the results.

So the lessons learned:
1) This recipe called for sharp cheddar. But I already had a ~9.5 oz block of Pepper Jack cheese so I used 8 oz of that block instead of cheddar cheese. I thought that it added a nice bit of heat.
2) Instead of white wine or sherry I used a 1/4 cup of Bud Light from the free keg.
3) If you follow the steps in the original recipe, more then likely your roux will break in the end, since it happened to me. Next time I would cook the onion in a little bit of olive oil instead of butter. Then after the soup is done cooking, I’ll make the roux separately and add it at the end of the recipe, instead of in the beginning of the recipe.
4) Instead of 24 oz of chicken stock, I used a whole 32 oz carton.
5) I’m totally using evaporated milk from now on when making a “cream of” soup. Since it is much easier for me to have a couple of cans of evaporated milk on hand, instead of a small carton heavy cream or half & half.
6) Bagel chips make a great dipping companion with the soup.

-Fresh brats in the fridge
-Polish style hot dogs in the fridge
-Three piece of defrosted tilapia in the fridge
-1lb of defrosted hamburger meat in the fridge

And the final selection……(drum roll please).……tilapia for a fish fry. Now I’m going to put this on the table right now, I’m kind of 50/50 when it comes to tilapia out of all the different white fish. But hey, they always have it for a great price at Costco, and as Sammy Hagar sung “suckers walk, money talks.” And money is talking a little bit louder then usual now a days.

If there is one thing I learned in art class in high school….it is that you always produce your best work with the weight of a deadline. It forces you to get creative in a hurry. After changing out of my work clothes, I starting to heat up the skillet of oil that I had sitting on the range from making buffalo wings on Sunday night. This basically gave me ~10mins of total prep time, before the oil would be at 350F. So a quick trip through foodnetwork.com, allrecipes.com and my own vast recipe memory bank. I was able to cobble together a recipe and prep the fish right when the oil hit 300F. So I was cutting it close to say the least.

So here is the recipe, if you could even call it a recipe.
-Three filets of tilapia, cut into six “tenders”
-Two eggs
-~1/2cup AP flour

1) Rinse off the fish, leaving it wet in the sink.
2) Beat the two eggs in a bowl
3) Take the AP flour, and put into a 1-gallon kitchen bag.
4) Take a couple of fish tenders and place in the flour bag. Pinch the top of the bag closed with you hand, but before shaking, use your mouth to slightly inflate the bag. Now give it a good couple of shakes.
5) Remove the fish from the flour, patting the flour down into the fish. Let the fish sit for about 30-60 seconds before dunking in the eggs, and giving it another shaking in the flour bag.
6) After the final shaking in flour, just drop the fish into the hot oil, making sure not to shake off any excess flour from the fish. Since the extra flour is what gives the fish its crazy looking coating.
7) It will only take about 2 or 3 minutes to cook the fish, so don’t leave for a smoke break. After the fish have floated to the surface and are nicely browned. Serve right away.

Side Notes:
I’ve done fish fry’s a handful of times, and usually I’ve been personally disappointed with the results. But to the people that were actually eating the fish, they gave me nothing but rave reviews to my own bewilderment. But this time I can honestly say that I was satisfied with how the fish came out on a couple of different fronts.
1) The fish was very flaky, which usually isn’t the case with tilapia in my experience. My best guess of the cause of the flakiness would be from the double freezing/thawing cycle (frozen at the packer and defrosted at the store, and me buying it at the store and putting it back in the freezer and defrosting only what I need.)
2) The flour-egg-flour coating. I’ve tried coating fish in tempura, cornmeal, spiced flour, bread crumbs…. you name it….all with less then satisfactory results. But the flour-egg-flour coating worked out very well, almost giving the fish a look and texture of KFC chicken (which looks awesome for presentation by the way). After the first shaking of flour and patted down the fish with my hand, let the fish sit for about 30 sec before the egg coat. After the second shaking, don’t shake off the excess flour before dropping the fish in the pan. On the first two piece of fish, I shook off the excess flour before dropping it into the pan, and it didn’t develop the crazy textured crust, like when you leave the extra flour on. Go figure.
But overall, I’m totally making this again.

I really didn’t get a chance to do a side-by-side tasting of a full grated pancake verse a grated/shredded pancake. But since it is only composed of ~25% shredded potatoes, if anything it adds a little bit more potato texture without turning the potato pancake into a hash brown. But on the flip side if you like croquette potatoes and there smooth interior texture, you might prefer just sticking with a fully grated potato pancake. Really the options are limitless, so lets get cooking.

The ingredients couldn’t be more simple:

1.5 to 2 lbs – Burbank russet potatoes (~4 medium potatoes)
1/4 cup AP flour

Basically peel the potatoes, grating about three quarters of the potato, then shred the rest. More then likely after you’re done grating/shredding the potatoes, you’ll have some potato starch pooling in the pile of potatoes. You could drain it if you want, but I just leave it in the bowl. Now that the potatoes have been processed, add 1/4 cup of AP flour using a rubber spatula to mix it all up.

I cooked the pancakes in a 12″ frying pan over medium heat, with just a little bit of vegetable oil in the pan. Using a 1.5oz disher, scoop up some of the potato mix and drop into the pan. Repeat until you have three pancakes in the pan, using the disher to flatten out the pancake.

The first batch will take longer then latter batches. But the clue for me when to turn the pancakes, is when the potatoes start to look dry on top, then you know it is time to flip them over. More or less it is about 3-5 minutes a side, depending on the heat of the pan and how crispy you want the pancakes to be. I like to season with salt and pepper afterwards, which is just an old habit for me. After seasoning I’ll top with either plain sour cream or ranch dip made with sour cream, either one is a good topping in my opinion.
Now Enjoy.

• Yellow corn tortilla chips
• Shredded mild cheddar cheese
• Shredded mozzarella cheese
• Leftover taco meat
• Leftover cooked bacon
• Bottled salsa
• Romaine lettuce
• Sour cream

More or less I stacked up the nachos in that order. I ended up microwaving this hot mess for a couple of minutes at 50% power. While of course excluded all the cold items (salsa, lettuce and sour cream), until after the microwave got it all good and hot. Since nothing is worse then hot and soggy lettuce. Could I have done this in the oven? You bet. But since its summer time right now, and I haven’t put in the window a/c unit at my house. The less that I need to use the oven, the better for keeping me and the house cool.

This was actually a recipe I got in my inbox from Hershey’s of all websites. Yeah I know it totally doesn’t make sense, since the only Hershey item in the whole recipe is when you make the barbeque sauce from scratch. Which I didn’t even bother to do, since I had a new bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s in the fridge, which I thinned with a little bit of High Life.

When I saw the picture for this recipe in the email, it started to make my mouth water, I just had to make it. So luck be told, when I got the recipe my sister was coming into town the next day and she wanted to eat some shrimp. It couldn’t have worked out any better.

Here are a couple of lessons learned with this recipe:
1) Try not to use wooden skewers, even with a 15 min soak in water the bamboo lit up like a matchstick.
2) If you needed to make a lot (if wanting to double the recipe), skip the skewers and use one of those clamping grill baskets. And it will also make flipping easier and quicker.
3) If you need to roll them ahead of time, you totally can. Since the roll-up takes a little bit of time to do.
4) Like I said above. I thinned the Sweet Baby Ray’s with a little bit of High Life, just for ease of coating the shrimp.
5) Since the original recipe doesn’t use any salt or pepper. I had to give it a little bit of seasoning. So I ended up give the shrimp and bacon a light dusting of Chicago Polish Seasoning from The Spice House in Chicago. It added a nice bit of smokiness to the dish.
6) Watch them like a hawk, because I only left them on for 2 mins on the first side & i was getting crazy flare ups from the bacon. Total cook was maybe 6 mins total, but no more then 10 mins.

These were pretty damn addictive after the first bit, and I will definitely be adding this to my emergency cooking memory bank. Because it looks awesome and tastes awesome.

So once again I’m pulling out a recipe from my time in Germany, which was inspired by my moms taco salad recipe. When I was a kid I always thought that her taco salad seemed so complex, but it is very simple to make…. also a story for another time.

When I normally think of “chicken salad” I think of a mixed lettuce salad with chicken mixed in. And not cubed chicken mixed with mayo and god only knows what else. So it is long overdue to reboot the chicken salad from scratch, and actually add some salad to the chicken salad, since it does make up half of the phrase.

Before I knew what the American version of chicken salad was, since my mom never made it while I was a kid. I always though that it was basically a lettuce salad with chicken mixed in, which would make sense if you had never seen the white pile of mush version.

So here are the ingredients that I’ve come up with for my version of a chicken salad. This salad may not be for the health conscious types out there. But for the ones that actually like to have their food taste like something other then bland, this may be for you. Also if you ever tell people you are going to just have a salad for dinner, you’ll have the real story.

My Version of Chicken salad
Serves 1 as large main course or 3-4 as side salads

• 8 oz pre-washed & bagged iceberg salad mix
• 6-8 slices cooked bacon
• A couple of shakes of french fried onions
• Less then a handful of sea salt bagel chips
• A couple of ounces of homemade buttermilk ranch dressing
• A couple of shakes of grated parmesan cheese
• 2-4 cooked chicken fingers

You’re probably looking at this recipe and saying, “What the hell, this isn’t a recipe, but more like an outline?”, and that’s the whole point. I could have listed the exact measurements for each and every item, but that really isn’t how to make it, since a lot of this salad is about the visual look of how the items are distributed. So you almost have to make it by eye, due to all the irregular items that are being combined. Cooking by eye, is at the bottom of my preferred methods of cooking, but I’ve tried at add a couple of measurements just the get the ball rolling.

If anything I would advise that if you are going to make this chicken salad, start with all the minimums for each item. Then after you’ve mixed everything up, you can visually assess the salad to see what more you need to add. “Well this salad needs a little bit more dressing and more french fried onions.”, and kind of go from there until it looks right for you. Enjoy!

Lessons learned and other musings:
1) Don’t use a romaine mix, it tastes very strange with ranch dressing.
2) I think that store bought croutons are the biggest rip-off in the world. The bagel chip idea just kind of came out of nowhere. It probably helps that I buy bagel chips by the big bag at Sam’s Club, so I’ve also got them on hand. Plus it was a very cost effective and more flavorful substitution for croutons in my opinion, since you don’t have to scrimp on the crunch factor.
3) If you happen to add to much dressing, it can be solved one of two ways: more salad or more bagel chips. The best part about going the bagel chip route, is that since the bagel chips are bone dry to begin with they will absorb up any excess dressing. So add them at the very end of the mixing to fix any mistakes.
4) You can easily turn this from a chicken salad into a taco salad by swapping out the chicken fingers for cooked taco meat, and changing the bagel chips for regular Doritos’s. You can also add some canned green chilies, for a little bit of spice/heat.
5) Heat up the chicken fingers in the microwave before mixing, also adds a nice little touch to the salad.
6) Want to make it a buffalo chicken salad, just add a little frank’s red hot to the chicken fingers. Let them soak it in for a couple of minutes, then cut them up and toss in the salad.

I’ve seen a ton of different methods for cooking bacon: on the grill, frying pan, microwave, and the oven. Personally I’ve become a big fan of cooking bacon in the oven. It’s great if you want to make a lot of bacon, and it’s one of the cleanest methods that I know of for cooking bacon. One of the bonus items about cooking in the oven with a jelly roll pan, is that you can save the melted bacon fat for other uses (like making scrambled eggs.)

I’ve tried and used plenty of different brands and styles of bacon. But my normal everyday bacon is Sugardale Hickory Smoked Bacon 23/30 Ct., and for a 10lb box at Sam’s Club it is only $22.42, which is a pretty good price, since I go though about a box a month.

I kind of laugh because my sisters best friend picks on me, because I do most of my grocery shopping at Sam’s Club or Costco, even though I live by myself. So she finds that even more humorous.

Yeah I live alone, but I look at it from a cost savings standpoint. You just can’t beat the prices of buying in bulk. Personally I use a lot of shredded cheese, mostly mozzarella and mild cheddar. At Sam’s Club I can buy a 5 lb bag of shredded mozzarella for $8.33, or $0.833 for 8 oz. of cheese. If you wanted to get cheese that cheap at the grocery store, you would have to wait for a sale. And even then you can only get the store brand cheese for $0.99 for 8 oz. So I’d rather not wait for a sale, when I can buy it cheaper in bulk, and just freeze the rest. Its just common sense (or cents) for me.

Back to cooking bacon, and the cook times couldn’t be more straightforward. Pre-heat an oven to 450F. While the oven is pre-heating, fill up a jellyroll pan with bacon. Don’t worry about overlapping the bacon, since it will be shrinking quite a bit in size during the cooking process. After you’ve filled up the pan or pans with bacon, put the bacon in the oven for 10 minutes. After that first 10 minutes, pull the bacon out of the oven and flip the bacon. After flipping, put the pan back into the oven and cook for another 8-10 minutes. This is when the cooking process gets a little tricky depending on your oven, and the kind of bacon you are using. Since in just 30 seconds the bacon can go from soft cooked to super crispy/burnt very quickly. So check after 8 minutes, and then every 30 seconds afterwards.

One other thing to keep in mind is that the bacon will continue to cook for a little bit, after you pull it out of the oven. So pull the bacon out of the oven just a little bit before your desired doneness level. One other thing, cook the bacon one pan at a time. I tried once to cook two pans at once, and it didn’t come out the same. So take the time to cook it one pan at a time.

Now make the biggest BLT you’ve ever had.