Check out the 100 Menu’s giveaway over at Dinner’s on Me. She posts her weekly menus (and they usually sound delicious!) along with recipes. It’s a great site for dinner time inspiration — and goodness knows, I often need it!
This week features Anne Burrell, who apparently has her own show on food network. I had no idea — I only knew her as Mario Batali’s sous chef on Iron Chef America. I guess her show is one they only show on weekends, and I don’t get to watch FoodTV on weekends, only during the weekdays when the kidlet and DH aren’t around.
So, for the Challenge, hosted by I Blame My Mother, I wanted to prepare “Asparagus, Pecorino and Red Onion Salad”. I could NOT find pecorino cheese. I tried three different places, and aside from travelling across the city with a 4 month old to find a gourmet shop (not happening), I ran out of places to look. So a quick check of the internet said that any of the semi-hard to hard salty cheeses could be substituted – parmasan, asiago, romano. Well, pecorino is a sheep’s milk cheese, and the potential substitutes are all cow’s milk cheese, so I’m guessing that none are ideal for getting the original flavor the recipe is going for. I ended up picking asiago. It USED to be made of sheep milk, so maybe it will be the closest (I’ve never had pecorino, so I wouldn’t know the difference ;)). [I’m having some trouble with my site, pictures aren’t uploading properly, and when they do, I can’t re-size them. They are either gigantic or smaller than a postage stamp. I’ll try and fix it later, until then, sorry for the weirdness!]
Asparagus, Pecorino and Red Onion Salad
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Recipe courtesy Anne Burrell
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1 bunch pencil asparagus, tough bottom stems removed
1 small red onion, finely diced
1 cup coarsely grated aged pecorino
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
Extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
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Cut the asparagus, including the tips into very thin slices, crosswise and place in a medium bowl. Add the red onion and pecorino and toss to combine.
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Dress with the vinegar, olive oil and salt and toss again. This salad should be fairly heavily dressed. The vinegar will sort of “cook” or tenderize the asparagus. It is best to do this about an hour or so in advance to let the flavors “marry”. Semplice!
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I thought the asparagus would be too crunchy for my taste, but after an hour+ of marinating, it was perfect. It would make a really refreshing summer salad as an alternative to a heavier potato salad. I didn’t love the texture of the asiago. Possibly I grated it too coarsely, or else pecorino is different in texture. However, the flavors are good – I’d make this again; but I’d grate the cheese smaller. I’d wait until Spring though. This is a very expensive recipe with asparagus out of season and the spendy cheese. Not budget conscious!
The oddest thing happened while I was taking pictures of todays box. Of course, I didn’t discover it until after the kidlet left with his lunch — but for some reason, even though I am SURE that I centered all my pictures, they are showing up as half a photo, sliced down the center. I took 6 and only one of them shows the whole bento.  It’s not a great picture, and is also off center, but its what I have to work with today. Strange.
The words to learn to read and write this week are “the” and “little” so I present “The Little Red Hen” except I forgot to put in “the” in the rush this morning ;) Regardless, he can read and write both already, but I’m planning on doing the words of the week every week. Eventually we’ll get to one he doesn’t know!
The hen is made from an egg sheet, which I colored with food coloring before cooking. I am really not sure he will eat it (he has refused to eat a number of colored items, along with nori, kamaboko, seeds, okra, and star fruit – its getting harder to make cute theme bento as he eliminates colorful ingredients!), so I built her on a slice of cheese that he can just lift away.
The eggsheet and cheese accent hen is on an egg salad sandwich. We also have a checkered apple, plum, blueberries and a few pomegranite seeds, broccoli, radish, multi-color heirloom baby tomatoes and corn in the faux eggshell cup.
Time taken: 45 mintues total between last night prep (cooking the egg, steaming broccoli, etc) and this mornings assembly.
Recipe review and cost breakdown
Chicken Paprikash
1 pound shredded chicken  (I used leftover chicken (about 1/3 5lb bird) from roast chicken earlier in week 1.66)
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt (pantry)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper (pantry)
1 tablespoon canola oil (pantry)
2 large green bell peppers, thinly sliced (4/1$ at Farmers Market – .50)
1 large onion, halved and thinly sliced (.37)
2 teaspoons hot or sweet paprika (pantry)
1/2 cup dry white wine (1.00)
1 1/2 cups canned crushed tomatoes (1.39)
1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth (free, from roast chicken carcass and leftover veggie bits from my freezer bag of stock veggies)
1 tablespoon lemon juice (half a lemon, used other half earlier in the week .25)
1/4 cup reduced-fat sour cream (.38)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (.06)
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Add bell peppers and onion to a sauté pan with oil and cook, covered, over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add paprika and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add wine; increase heat to medium-high and cook, stirring, until mostly evaporated, about 1 1/2 minutes. Add tomatoes, broth and lemon juice; bring to a boil. Add shredded chicken to the pan; reduce heat to a lively simmer. Spoon some sauce over the chicken and cook, stirring occasionally (don’t stir vigorously, just kinda turn it over, like you were folding in egg whites, otherwise the chicken will shred to nothingness and you’ll lose the good texture of the chicken), until the sauce is reduced and the chicken is warmed through, several minutes. Remove from the heat; stir in sour cream. Sprinkle with parsley.
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I served it over noodles (.75)
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Total: 6.36 for 4 generous servings (about 1.5 cups per person). Here, that makes more like two meals, and I’d half the recipe next time.
Post is linked to:  5$ Dinner Challenge at 5dollardinners.com and Tempt my Tummy Tuesdays at Blessed with Grace.
This bento was put together without a plan. For my cute / character bentos, I usually have sketched it out and have a basic idea of what is going into it and roughly where (altho its never set in stone!). I had planned to make mini pita pockets, but I’d frozen the bread, and it thawed out hard and solid and wouldn’t open nicely. So, this is a “what do we have in the house right now that I can use instead” meal. I think it came out ok though, plenty of color and tasty looking.
Puff pastry pepperoni pizza bites, lil’ smokies, 1/2 egg, checkered apple, black flame grapes, cheese and sweet potato hearts, tiny fresh mozzarella balls (Ciliegine) and peas on picks. Mr. Froggy has lemon pepper for the egg.
Time taken: I put it together last night while watching Amazing Race with DH, so I was a bit distracted. I was at it 45 minutes or so, but that was not solid work time.
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I didn’t do as well this week sticking to plan or budget. I was sick a good portion of it, and ended up buying convenience foods, ordering in and otherwise paying over and above since I didn’t feel up to cooking.  I think I can make up for it this week a bit. I don’t have to buy any meats this week except tilapia, the rest is already in the freezer, and I tried to pick sides I could prepare mostly from my pantry. My grocery list is pertty small; most of it is lunch making stuff. So I *should* be able to come in budget for the month once it averages out. Knock Wood.
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 I’m running out of farmers market weekends, which makes me sad. I’ve been relying on thier beautiful inexpensive produce, especially for the kidlet’s bento lunches. Although they continue through the end of October, what’s available isn’t as appealing. This is Oregon, after all. September was already pretty bleak, without much local items aside from apples, pears and some squashes. Our favorite heirloom tomato vendor has had a few baskets the last couple of weeks, but as of today, it looks like he’s exhausted what he can coax from his plants.  What even grows locally to be harvested in October? Squash, brussel sprouts and pumpkin. Not easy lunch packing materials!
Monday: Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Beef Bolognese Sauce, Green Salad
Tuesday: Salmon Cakes & Tartar Sauce, Garlic Noodles , Asparagus, Pecorino and Red Onion Salad for Food Network Chef Cooking Challenge.
Wednesday: Italian Roast Chicken, Tomato Bruschetta, Green Beans
Thursday: Chicken Ramen Stir Fry
Friday: Ribeye, Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons (Buying the gnocchi, way too much work from scratch! Will toss cooked gnocchi with zucchini ribbons and shallots that I sauted in browned butter), brussels sprouts
Saturday:Â Bacon Ranch Tilapia (method below), Rice, Peas
Sunday: Chicken & Dumplings (chicken broth, veggies, cooked chicken, poultry seasoning topped with bisquick dumplings), Fruit Salad
For breakfasts we always have oatmeal, cold cereal, scrambled eggs, toast, freezer muffins, yogurt, cottage cheese and fruits to choose from.  This week we also have Apple Cheddar Bagels and link sausage. I also keep us stocked with lunch meats, cheeses, etc for bentos.  My lunches this week are taco soup (4x), chicken salad on greens (2x), and veggie ramen stir fry (1x). Even when not specifically listed, I usually have a mixed greens salad and fruit available for dinner.
For the tilapia on Saturday, I’ll fry up a few slices of bacon. Once nice and crispy, I’ll remove from the pan and set aside. Dust the fish with some flour mixed with part of a packet of dry hidden valley ranch dressing, and then fry them up in the bacon fat (sinful, but tasty!). Set fish aside. Deglaze pan with a little veggie stock, add a squeeze of lemon, some chopped green onions and crumbled bacon. Swirl in a pat of butter, and serve over fish immediately.
Linked to: Menu Plan Monday. Check out all the other menus you can find this week!
So bento-ing and my attempts to be involved at the school may have gotten me into trouble! Each year, the schools foundation holds an auction to raise money to help keep positions in the school that the state isn’t able to maintain anymore. Although a public school, the neighborhood is fairly affluent (we’re kind of the oddball family here; we couldn’t normally afford where we live, long story), and has very involved parents. Apparently they raise a fair bit of money. Even after the cut that is required to go to the state to help less-well community supported schools, the auction money pays for the PE teacher (can you beleive that many portland public schools just have NO PE at all? I was shocked!) and for the music teacher and part of another normal staffing position, as well as some other stuff. They do so well that the school has been able to eliminate all the cheesy wrapping paper and greeting card type sales.
Anyway, one of the things they sell at auction are classroom art projects. These aren’t your garden variety projects Kindergarten fingerprints turned into bugs on a terra cotta pot.  For instance, last year a kindergarten class covered a donated birdbath with ceramic tiles, that they had mosaic’d in patterns in smaller broken tiles. Apparently it sold very well. The various classroom projects go for several hundred to several thousand dollars. So on my volunteer interest form, I guess I indicated that I was willing to help with my son’s classroom art project. And I am. But the teacher seems to think – based ENTIRELY on my “creative and artistic lunches” – that I’m some amazing artist person who has a strong idea of what the classroom project should be and am taking the lead on it, and I don’t know what else. I had two different parents come up to me at the back to school event on Thursday, opening with something about me being artistic and running the classroom art project.
Yikes. I’m not that person. I’d like to think I’m creative, but I am a bit of a dabbler. I do a little of this and a little of that. I don’t have a strong talent for any particular genre, so I don’t give over a big time committment to any of them. Besides, I rather like being a dabbler. So, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.
PLUS! I’ve committed to sharing the responsibility of “head parent” in my son’s class, involvement in the PTA, expressed interest in the green team, and it looks like I may end up volunteering for the parent driven art literacy program, as we currently have no parent in kidlet’s class signed up, and without a parent, that class just doesn’t get the material.
Ay yi yi
This would have been a handful without a baby on the hip. I have a feeling its going to be a busy year 😉
TGIF? The kidlet loves going to school as much as being at home, so he doesn’t really think of Friday as anything special. And I actually found in last couple weekends that I *missed* making bentos — at least until I got sick, and then I didn’t mind the break so much 😉
I think he’ll like his lunch today. Although right now cats are his professed favorite animals, he does like the puppies too. He also said that the checkered apple yesterday was “super cool”. The apples (which I made Wednesday night, dunked in lemon water, and then wrapped up well) are still looking pretty good. Not brown, and the texture still seemed crisp. If they are still usable tomorrow, I’ll call that make ahead a good success and do that again another time.
Black flame grapes (oops, there’s a cute little puppy pick in a row of grapes, but my camera angle cut that corner off), checkered apple, a few strawberry flowers, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and carrot flowers. Ham and cheese sandwich with a cheddar and mozzarella doghouse on top. The pup is bologna, not ham, because ham doesn’t cut nearly as cleanly (its not a single texture like bologna) and its hard to make really small pieces with it. The sun rays and puppy accents are made from an egg sheet — my very first one!Â
Aside from needing to be beaten a little better (I had a couple whitish patches), the egg sheet came out beautifully. I used a little cornstarch in with the egg and it was very tough and durable — no ripping or tearing, easy to flip to cook both sides. I always seem to over brown my eggs when I scramble them, but I watched carefully, cooked at a low temperature, and it came out a lovely yellow color – no browned rubbery bits!
Time taken: 25 minutes. About 15 minutes last night making the pup, house and sun (including cooking the egg sheet), and 10 minutes this morning to put it all together. Pup and sun were really easy. I used my wheel cutters for super fast construction. For instance, the ears are the same shape as the arms. After cutting out the shape, I flipped the cutter around and trimmed off the flatter side to make it shorter and more oval. The doghouse I did with a little template that I made out of paper.
Welcome to Kid Friendly Friday, with Mr. Linky hosted over at I Blame my Mother.
I’m not much of a baker. It’s generally too much work and requires too much preciseness for me to really enjoy it, ESPECIALLY with the kidlet.  Getting exactly one cup of this and 25g of that and 2 teaspoons of this other thing is hard enough for me. Add the kidlet in — some ingredient ends up on the counter, floor, shirt, anywhere but the bowl. This recipe has few ingredients and seemed very forgiving. These cookies are very easy — even young children can help. The dough is mixed and kneaded in a zip top bag. After a brief chill, you can shape and bake.
After we made these I realized that I should have taken “in process” shots with the kidlet, but I didn’t, so words will have to suffice today!
I started with the pancake mix cookie dough post over and Anna the Red’s bento site. I changed the recipe a little bit. I used a high fiber oat-bran pancake mix and I substituted one tablespoon of that for ground flax seed. I also added an extra teaspoon of sugar to make them just a little sweeter and added a touch of cinnamon. This makes a crisp cookie; good for dunking!
Pancake Mix Kawaii Cookies
3 T. unsalted Butter
2 tsp. Sugar
1 Cup minus 1 T. Oat Bran Pancake Mix (ie, 15. T instead of 16 T.)
1 T. ground Flax
Sprinkle of Cinnamon
1 T. Milk or Water
Candy decorations, if desired
Preheat oven to 350F. Place the butter in a zip top bag, seal it and let your kidlet squish it until soft. Open and add the sugar, and knead again to mix. Add the pancake mix, flax and cinnamon and squash it around really good. Pour in the milk (or water) and knead a final time to finish the dough. It’s usable now, but pretty sticky. If your little one has any patience, I’d refrigerate a little bit to make the dough easier to handle and not gum up your fingers. Roll and shape the dough any way you want – I don’t think it will roll like a sugar cookie with a rolling pin to be cut; you need to do it by hand, which makes this really fun for the kids. We just rolled a small ball in our hands, flattened for the face, then made even smaller balls for snouts, ears, etc. Decorate if desired. Depending on thickness, bake for 10-12 minutes.
The really great thing about this dough is that it doesn’t spread out or puff up very much. So when you sculpt a cookie, it retains most of its details. As you can see from the pig cookie, even the little holes I made in his snout remain visible after baking, as do his ears.
Kawaii: An adjective in Japanese meaning ” pretty; cute; lovely; charming; dear; darling; pet” It’s stem is two kanji meaning “can love”. It is commonly used by anime and manga fans.  However, it has narrower definition than the English word cute. When applied to pop culture, cute will suffice; however kawaii refers primarily to the affection of a parent toward a child coupled with the protectiveness for the innocent and weak. Thus a pop cartoon character is considered kawaii because it exemplifies the innocence of a child and evokes general protective, caring instincts in the viewer. Other translations of kawaii can include adorable, precious, lovable or innocent.
So, did we succeed in making a kawaii cookie? =)
Blueberries, PB & J sandwich under the (suprinsingly not too unhealthy) bear cookie. Celery tucked under the checkered apple (my first attempt!). Side car has cottage cheese topped with lemon pepper, carrot flowers and scallion. I had meant to layer some spinach under the cottage cheese, but when he saw me packing it, kidlet asked me to please not put the “green stuff” in his cottage cheese. So we nixed that 😉
We made the cookie using Anna the Red’s recipe for pancake mix cookies (I plan to post more about it tomorrow for kid friendly friday). I used a high fiber oat bran complete pancake mix and subsituted 1 tablespoon with ground flax. I also added a pinch of cinnamon.
Total time: It took me six minutes to put everything together this morning. I had spent maybe an hour last night, while watching House on DVR with the hubby, cutting several carrots (you can blanch and freeze them, so I was trying to make some ahead) and an entire apple into checkered apple slices (I’m going to find out how long they are worth eating. Dunked in acidulated water, they shouldn’t brown, but I’m not sure if they will hold up in texture more than a day or two). So I’m not sure how much time it would have taken if I’d had to make the apple and cut the carrots this morning. All I had to do was gather the ingredients, cut some small celery sticks, and pack everything up.
I LOVE this particular bento set. It was the first one I ever bought. I also have a square side car and even a plastic mug with that sweet mushroom design. I doubt I’ll be able to get away with cute and pink boxes with the kiddo for very long (right now he doesn’t think of anything being “for girls” or “for boys”).