Flan

So I am operating now on  a six day work week which really cuts into my cooking time!
Any way class let out at about 3pm today so I stopped on my way home to explore this little shopping district on Ferret. (I was really looking for the farmers market but it wasn't there.) I ended up spending all the cash I had on me buying 2 skirts and a blouse for 17$ in the Junior League thrift store and then wandering into the little Honduran Grocery down the street. So I am in the Honduran Grocery where they will take my debit card but only if I am buying 10$ worth of stuff. Since I am out of cash and really want a cold drink I proceed to wander around picking out strange grocery things to supplement the weeks groceries (for the record Guava paste is really yummy.)  Anyway that is when I spot the box of flan mix. Sold
Now mix you are saying to yourself, how hard can that be? That should not even count!
Well for the record the first instruction on the box is to brown a half cup of sugar a task I have never done in my life followed by a step that involves boiling milk something I don't think I've ever done on purpose except as a cure for insomnia.
I am sitting now waiting for the flan to cool.  The sugar browning went okay except that my spatula has a hard candy coating now. I used a glass bowl as the mold which now that I am looking at the spatula I think may have been a bad call. Maybe something flexible would have been a better plan? Well worse comes to worse I can always just fill the bowl with water and let it sit, the sugar has to dissolve eventually... right? 

Epilogue 
So it totally fell apart coming out of the "mold" but it was super yummy and tasted just like the real deal so I'm pretty happy.The excess sugar however is still stuck to the bowl so we'll see how that goes.

No Roll pie crust

So I discussed the pie crusts the other day,
I thought I ought to link to the pie crust recipe I used for the 4th of July pie.
This is the no roll one.
It doesn't look as good as the roll one but it is super easy
I filled it with some flour, sugar, apples, cinnamon, cloves, lemon juice and blueberries.
On and i did some lattice strips for the top by mixing up some flour, butter and honey.

Apple pie

So I have been learning to make pie crust.
I tried two recipes one that had to be rolled out and one which did not.
I think I like the one that needs rolling better.
It looks nicer although I haven't tasted the pies yet.

Happy fourth of July Ya'll

Fish soup

So I started with a chicken soup recipe  from the book "recipes to the rescue."
But I decided that this would be a good way to use fish from my recent fishing trip.
Uncle Mitchel and I went out for a day on lake Ponchatrain.
It was a beautiful day and we were on the water before the sun even came up.
I do love riding on a boat, wind in my hair and watching the sunrise.
We caught lots of fish mostly trout but a few redfish ect.
It was also nice to spend some time with Uncle Mitchel
By the time I got home I was heat sick from the hours on the water.
So I stuck all the fish in the freezer all in one bag.
Now of course I have a block of frozen fish.
This is what I started with.

So I rinsed warm water over the giant block of fish and cut off pieces until I had 2 cups.
I poured some vegitable stock over it and stuck the whole thing in the microwave for 2 min to defrost.
Meanwhile in a stock pot I started cooking with hot oil and two chopped cloves of garlic, and a bunch of chopped green onions.
Once those had cooked up a bit I dumped in the fish and stock.
I cooked just this for about 5 min
Then I added a can of creamed corn and the rest of the the box of vegitable stock.
Once that had boiled long enough for the fish to look done I beat a couple of eggs.
I stirred the egg into the boiling soup making egg drop shreds.
I let the whole thing boil for a bit more and stirred in some Tabasco and Tony Chacheres.
The soup came out really yummy and pretty quick.
 
Ingredients:
1 table spoon of vegetable oil
2 cloves of garlic
1 bunch of green onions.
2 cups of fish
1 can cream corn
1 box (50 ounces) of vegitable stock
2 eggs
Some pepper, or Tabasco sauce.

Eggplant Caviar

SO the recipe for this stuff is in a cookbook that I gave away when Jessy came for a visit.
But I am okay with that since it took hours to make and wasn't all that great. It involved insane amounts of veggie chopping blending frying ect. In the end you got brown paste that was basically the eggplant equivalent of re-fried beans. I was okay but It took way too long and the recipe makes a ton. I took it to work, no takers on brown goo to go on crackers..... go figure

Eggs in a basket

This was a recipe I got from a cookbook in the shelter office back when I was shadowing all the time. Basically the shadowing entailed sitting with Megan waiting for the phone to ring so that I could listen to her take a crisis call and learn how to handle it. After an hour or so of not catching much of any calls I started reading the cookbooks they keep back there for ideas. This recipe is supper easy. You just take a piece of bread and use a cookie cutter or something to cut a hole, then you butter fry the toast just as if you were making toast in a frying pan then you crack an egg into the hole. The result is like a cross between french toast and a fried egg. Yumm.

Emergency Pizza

This is a recipe you are going to have to read to believe.
click here to to read the recipe.
I was enjoying the tax holiday and using it for its intended purpose, that is creating my very own emergency kit. So naturally I start looking for recipes things that I could make if the power went out during a hurricane.
That is when I found this recipe with it's attendant use of canned white beans, tuna, pizza crust, tomato, and vinegar I just had to try it. It is a little weird and I did cheat and toast the pizza crust in the oven but all in all it was quite yummy.
Happy Hurricane season Ya'll