Impromptu Kettle Corn

Well dear friends, it was inevitable.  I am sick.  I (not so) secretly blame my boyfriend, since he was coughing and sniffling far earlier than I was (darn him for being so cute that I can't resist his kisses, even when they're germ infested).  So to get to the point of my story, when I'm feeling under the weather I live by the motto, "Feed a cold, starve a fever."  Don't ask me where I heard it, but it works like a charm every time.  So since my temperature is completely normal, I hereby commence stuffing my face.

After devouring leftovers from Super Bowl Sunday (including dinner and dessert), I decided I wanted popcorn.  But not just regular popcorn.  Kettle corn.  More specifically, the kind that comes in the red bag with the white letters!  But of course, no such luck having any in the house.  So Typhoid Sara officially has to improvise.

Enter one bag of microwave popcorn.  I stuck that in the microwave for 2 minutes and poured 3/4 cup of water and 3/4 cup of sugar in a little pot and turned the heat up.  I let it boil gently for about 8 minutes (or long enough for me to eat a bowl of soup), until it coated the back of a spoon.  I turned off the heat, poured it carefully (very hot sugar = bye bye skin) over the popcorn in a large bowl and shook it up to coat everything.  Voila!  Instant kettle corn, minus the fuss and the money (and everything I used was already in my house).  This is my kind of snack!  I would post a picture, but really it just looks like shiny popcorn - not very interesting to look at.  I think next time I make this I will sprinkle the top with cinnamon.

In other words, no frills AND the sick girl got a yummy snack with very little effort.  I love when the simplest recipes come together.

Now if only the puppies would stop trying to stick their noses in the bowl. :)

Poor (Wo)man's Potato Salad, Take 2... Let's try this again!

After the bowl of potato salad was empty yesterday, I got a question from my father.

"Why did you only make a little?"

So I proceeded to explain that I wasn't sure how it would taste and didn't know if anyone else would want any.  His response?

"Please make more."

How do you say no to that? :)  So I made more and took the opportunity to take a picture to share since all I got a picture of yesterday was the empty bowl. 

Enjoy!

Poor (Wo)man's Potato Salad

Some days, I wake up wildly craving something specific... today, it was potato salad.  Ever since I was little, my Aunt Kathy has made the BEST potato salad and would bring a vat of it to every family cookout and barbecue we ever had.  That potato salad tastes like summer to me; I can almost feel the sun on my shoulders when I'm eating it.  After a month and a half of almost non-stop snow in New York, I needed some summer - I NEEDED potato salad.  Of course, the ideal would be to have Aunt Kathy's potato salad miraculously apparate (yes, that's a Harry Potter term) into my fridge, but in the midst of an ice storm there was no chance of that happening.  I was officially on my own.

Now, I consider potato salad pretty low maintenance fare in the first place but after a birthday weekend vacation and two weird allergic reactions, even a low maintenance task like boiling potatoes was too much for me to handle this afternoon.  After exploring the contents of my refrigerator, I found my saving grace - left over roasted potatoes.  I proceeded to chop them up and throw them in a bowl... but they were cold and I think I speak for most of us when I say nine times out of ten cold potatoes are too dry to be delicious. I had to heat them up.  But how?  Oven - too time consuming.  Microwave would dry the potatoes out even more.  Stove it is.

Three slices of bacon later, I threw the potatoes in the pan with some onion powder and the bacon fat to warm them through.  While that was happening and the bacon was draining on paper towels, I chopped up some celery and a hard boiled egg and combined that with some mayo and some honey mustard (which was laying in my fridge calling to me to use it).  Potatoes went in next, got stirred up, and the crispy bacon was quickly crumbled over the top. 

Best. Potato Salad. Ever.  (Sorry Aunt Kat.  I still love you.)  Even my brother liked it and he is notoriously difficult to impress with food.  The best part?  I didn't have to venture out into the ice storm to spend money on a single, solitary ingredient AND I used up leftovers.  This recipe was ridiculously successful.  You can find all the approximate measurements and everything below.


I went back to take a picture after eating my bowl of potato salad (because it was extraordinarily good looking potato salad) and this is what I found:

I suppose that's the best critique of all.

[Just a note about my recipe writing - unless I'm baking, I am not very particular about measurements.  I think when cooking becomes about perfect measuring, the fun part just gets lost.  Nobody wants to stand there with a measuring cup and 8 measuring spoons when trying to make a quick meal, so I don't write my recipes that way.  When I'm following other people's recipes, I change them according to my own taste buds.  If I like a specific ingredient, I'll probably add more of it than the recipe calls for.  If I don't like something, I'll switch it out for something else.  If I absolutely hate an ingredient, I leave it out altogether.  Feel free to do the same with my recipes - after all, you're only going to use them if they taste good to you.]


Poor (Wo)man's Potato Salad Recipe

3 slices of bacon, cooked until crispy

4-6 cups leftover roasted potatoes, chopped (I should have used more, this was gone in a flash)

1 tsp onion powder

1/2 to 3/4 cup mayonnaise (depending on how much you like)

1/4 cup honey mustard

4 stalks of celery, sliced

1 hard boiled egg, chopped

Salt & pepper

 

Cook the bacon in a pan until crispy, then remove and drain on paper towels.  Add the chopped potatoes to the pan, add 1 teaspoon onion powder, and warm through.  Slice the celery and chop the hard boiled egg and place them both in a large bowl.  Add the warm potatoes, mayonnaise, and mustard, and stir.  Crumble in crispy bacon and stir to combine.  Serve immediately and pray that your family doesn't eat it all while you're not looking like mine did.


And a huge thanks to my boyfriend for the title of this post - he's so clever. :) 

No Frills, Just Food.

We're all friends here, so let's dispense with the boring, drawn out introductions - my name is Sara, I'm a 25 year old graduate student, and I taught myself how to cook (with a little help from my family and the Food Network).  I currently live at home but my boyfriend and I are hoping to change that soon.  (Helloooo full-time teaching job, where are you?!)  In the meantime, I'm trying to substitute teach, finish my Master's degree, and build up a repertoire of meals so that when it comes time for me to have to cook dinner every single night by myself, I won't be feeding my boyfriend mac and cheese out of a box (I'm pretty sure that's not how you get a big, shiny engagement ring... but don't quote me).

This brings us to my issue.  I am a no frills kind of cook.  I can't be bothered with things that have 73 ingredients (72 of which I don't currently have in my house), 18 pages ("FRONT AND BACK!" for you Friends aficionados) of directions, and 12 hours of active cook time.  No.  I'm sorry, no normal person ever cooks that way and I'm far too impatient to try it out myself.

So here is my quest: find (or create) simple recipes with a normal amount of ingredients (hopefully most of which will already be in my pantry) that will use up my leftovers whenever possible and won't make my bank account scream.  I'll use this blog to share what I come up with (whether that ends in delicious dinners or kitchen catastrophes) and I'm sure you'll hear from my boyfriend now and again, interjecting his opinions on my efforts.  He's hilarious (and brutally honest), you'll like him, I guarantee it. :)

In other, more concise words - no frills, just food.  (And good food, at that.)