xyzzysqrl: (Sqrlfixti!)
As Adam Savage once quoted, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down. Accordingly, here's my notes on the soup I decided to make because we had a bunch of leftover random-ass vegetables laying around and I wanted some soup:

I mixed:

One chopped red pepper
One bag baby carrots (probably a pound?)
One bag fingerling potatos (maybe a pound-ish? a little over?)
One half-jar pickled pepperoncini and also some of the pickling liquid (oops)
Four cups vegetable broth and one cup chicken broth (left over from other things)
2 tablespoons pepper
1 half tablespoon salt
A couple really big shakes from the "Italian Seasoning" shaker (I should read what's in that someday)

in the instant pot and pushed the "soup" button with vast optimism.

While it was busy coming up to pressure, I realized suddenly that I had forgotten to add any of the goddamn LEFTOVER CABBAGE that was the purpose of this exercise in soup to begin with. So I stopped it and added one large bowl of leftover cabbage and also a small chopped up tomato and a few shakes of worchestershire sauce and pushed "soup" again.

I'll see how it came out once it's done. Probably rather salty.

(ONE HOUR LATER)



Somewhere in the above "recipe", I made a Mistake. Did you, the alert reader, spot my error? Did you have a moment of "oh my god, wait, don't!" as I should have? Let's focus in a little.

2 tablespoons pepper

Yeah that's it.

Oops. I have accidentally created Death Pepper Broth, in which little can be tasted beneath the overwhelming warmth of THE OBLITERATING ALL-CONSUMING PEPPER THAT MAKES UP THE FUNDAMENT OF OUR REALITY.

Beyond that, it's fine. Like, once you get into a potato or something, delicious. Mm.

But ... well. I have leftovers I can re-heat now, I suppose.

Uh, does anyone know how to -un- pepper a soup?

[EDIT:

Added some milk to it.
That helped a LOT. Like, a whole lot. It's not perfect but it's more edible.]
xyzzysqrl: (Message for you!)
Today's recipe comes from the bottom of this page, and is in part thanks to Venerable Red Dragon Silverstar, who seems to have some vested interest in me getting fed for some mystery reason.

Okay, the usual litany of changes and observations:

I don't give two craps about 'keto' or whatever, so I tossed in some beans. This was in part for fiber reasons and in part because it's hard for me to imagine chili minus the beans, although I know it's done in places. Those places aren't my kitchen. Yeah it's glycemic and probably bad for the diabetes but... it's delicious.

While I was chopping garlic I just sorta went "ehhh you know, we have 3/4ths of a head here and that's not MUCH more than the recipe calls for, let's peel and throw in the whole thing" so now we have Extremely Garlic Chili. I'm not complaining.

Browning onion sure makes the bottom of the pot... uh, brown, doesn't it? Maybe I wasn't burning the garlic/onion mix on the sausage & cabbage after all. I'm starting to get the feeling you have to WORK to burn onion.

Our can-opener broke (or something? It sure isn't opening cans anymore) in the middle of popping the second can of diced tomatoes, so the BF broke out his old swiss army knife. (Someday I have to find out if he was a scout or what.) Anyway we got that open, I just wanted to mention it so I can remember to get a new can opener.

Measuring out the spices was tough because the cumin and oregano were hard to get 'flowing' through the big holes in the sprinkle lid. Instead of popping those off and scooping out half-spoons or whatever, I just kinda went SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE. I may have used too much or not enough. ... Whatever good enough.



You can see the coarsely-chopped garlic cloves, if you look.

...
I have no complaints about this chili. Like, maybe if I'd have thought about it, I'd have added some hot sauce during cooking, or something. I dunno. This is a perfectly fine meal and I'm happy to have made it. It's NOT quite as good as the chicken chili I made a while back, I think.

Maybe I have to figure out what the difference is and start working towards that.

Anyway FOOD WAS MADE.
xyzzysqrl: (RUN AWAY)
Oh, I fucked this UP in just about every way you can fuck up a recipe, I think.

To start with, I got this one off Furaffinity, which is a place you can get recipes now it seems like. I don't know why this is a thing but sure I'll make some furry food.

A: One head of cabbage is TOO FUCKING MUCH. (Or so I thought. See below.)
B: I managed to successfully brown the bottom of the pan instead of the bacon and onion, using saute.
C: Because (supposedly) WAY TOO FUCKING MUCH CABBAGE I just panicked, threw a bunch in there with the stock and seasonings and sausage, spooned in too much butter and let it go. I didn't brown the sausage, I didn't add the potatos or the extra carrots I planned to add, I just closed it up and hoped for the best.
D: I did not get the lid on right and it was happily bubbling away under no pressure at all for a while.
E: It says on the instant pot very clearly not to overfill it, but the way the cabbage cooked down from "a 65% full pot" to "25% of a pot". I ... should have used more? But that would have meant overfilling the pot. Nervous about that.

Whoof. So... No potatoes or browned sausage or carrots, plus I messed up every way I think I could. I wasn't even sure I could eat the results at first. It smelled okay, but what if it was raw or something, even after ten minutes of high-pressure cooking?



It came out mostly okay. There was enough for two bowls, even if I should have done more to it. I feel like... man, this was a learning experience. I panicked a lot and I messed up what should have been a simple meal.

So what did I learn?

Well.
1. Read everything. Three or four times.
2. Vegetable matter can and probably will cook down in the pot. It MAY be safe to 'overfill' it. I need to research this.
3. I should probably be supervised. The BF was asleep and I forged ahead anyway. Every now and then I start thinking I'm competent enough to do things without adult supervision and it's like: nope.
4. As the good book says, DON'T PANIC. My worst mistake was flipping out and trying to rush through shoveling stuff in and out of the instant pot instead of slowing down and thinking for a few seconds or stopping entirely. I had cold fried chicken in the fridge, I could have just had that.

This worked out and was edible food but it's NOT the recipe I was trying to make and that's a failure, but it's a learning failure.

So... I dunno, now I have some potatoes and a full bowl of cabbage because I didn't use it all and ... maybe I'll get some more sausage and try again, or maybe make a vegetable soup of some kind, or maybe just stick to chili for a while.

Still, I learned something.

[UPDATE: The leftovers, after a night in the fridge, were oddly delicious but boy howdy was there a fat layer crusting the top. I absolutely shoveled in waaaay too much butter. On the other hand? Still delicious. Absolutely gonna try this again later ... but chili is in my future.)
xyzzysqrl: (Challenger)
Today's recipe was this one, modified slightly:

Left out the corn, because I'm not in a position in my life where chili with corn feels conceptually right.
I added the leftover fluids from the pork cookery.
Discovered partway through I had chicken thighs, not breasts. Worked fine.

What worked: gosh uh everything? This turned out rich, slightly spicy (not enough so for me, but it was a first try and the Woof is a giant-sized baby wimp about spice) and I pretty much demolished two and a half bowls.

What didn't: I'm unsure about the dairy. Meat and milk is a little odd. The cream cheese didn't quite blend out perfectly, so the entire bowl has a somewhat speckled look I'm not entirely sure about. Also when I was opening the thermos with the meat juice in it, I promptly drenched myself a bit. Now I am delicious and will be eaten by wild animals.

Verdict: I filled up and we have a huge bowl in the fridge under plastic wrap for later. That's several meals. This is economically viable, with hamburger or (potentially even cheaper?) as a vegetarian option if I pile in more veggies and less meats. Or, heck, if I made less and make a kind of sauce, I could mix it with those hard boiled eggs? Maybe not, but.

I'm starting to get actual IDEAS regarding cooking with this thing. That's a positive.

EDIBLE FOOD WAS MADE.
xyzzysqrl: (Sqrlfixti!)
We did this, except:

No onions, just carrots. Four big ones, peeled, but we didn't chop them.
Three cloves of garlic, peeled ... as best we could by hand? I'm sure there's a trick to this. I don't know what it is.
1 cup chicken broth, 1 cup apple juice.

What worked: The pork came out chewy, but completely cooked inside and out. It tasted good, too. The carrots had a lingering sweetness from both the carroty... carrotness and the apple juice.

What didn't: The carrots were nearly ATOMIZED by cooking right next to the roast for all that time, so soft they were dissolving. Didn't really taste the garlic or garlic powder. Or much of the apple juice for that matter. Maybe more liquid next time? Roast was slightly mushy, could've used oven time to crisp it up some.

Verdict: Yeah this was food. This was pretty good actually, for a first-time thing where I deliberately found the simplest recipe I could and read the steps off my phone while we were cooking.

Woof: "I wouldn't serve this to Gordon Ramsey or anything, but this tastes good."
Sqrlmog: "I forgot how CHEWY pork is. I'm pretty sure that's on purpose. Also, did I really get ALL the skin off the garlic? I'm still worried."

We had a good bit of liquid left over, maybe we'll strain it into a thermos and try... I dunno, pouring it into chili? What do you do with leftover, uh... cooking ... fluid ... if you're not gonna make a gravy right there?

Woof: "If we do put this in the fridge, I'm laying increasing odds every day that you'll absent-mindedly root around in there, pop the thermos open and drink the contents without thinking about it."
Sqrlmog: "...no, that's ... that's fair. That would... that might happen. I can't deny that."

Anyway.

EDIBLE FOOD WAS MADE.
xyzzysqrl: (RUN AWAY)
Remember back in like 2003 when I was super hype that I'd made a grilled cheese once? Yeah good times.

I'm starting to think I'm just naturally too afraid of heat sources to ever really be able to cook, but we did pick up an instant pot/multi-setting pressure cooker lately, so I've been experimenting. I keep hearing it's super easy to use, but so far I've been just as afraid of it as I am of anything else.

Damn thing hisses like a xenomorph about to bust out of the air vents, and I know from decades of horror stories about pressure cooking that if I get one thing wrong it will explode and I'll end up blown through a wall with a spatula up my asshole.

That said, it works well. So far I have made:

1. Delicious plain steamed hot water. If I ever need to autoclave myself, I'm covered.
2. Hard boiled eggs. This is more promising. I made egg salad once and I can perpetuate it again.

That's it.

We have some meat (some pork in the fridge and some chicken in the freezer) for later experiments, a lot of spices, some carrots... maybe I can come up with something. I plan to try.

I don't think I'll ever stop being afraid of this thing though.
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