May 2008

SR = Sketchy Recipe aka The Moms

RS = RockStar aka the 7 year old who must eat protein but sneaks candy when SR is posting on her blog

SR: So do you want to tell the folks about your bad self?

RS: Mommmm!

SR: Bad is good, honey.

RS: Ask me about my cooking.

SR: What about your cooking?

RS: HOW I cook!

SR: How do you cook, baby?

RS: Well, um, I’m usually taking liquid ingredients and mixing them with solid ingredients to see what I come up with, but usually I don’t eat it.

SR: Is that what all of that googe is in the various vessels on the countertop?

RS: Maybe. You don’t know.

SR: So give me some examples of ingredient combinations.

RS: Well, the other night I mixed together 5 sprinkles, some pear infused vinegar, and some raspberry champagne vinegar, and some watermelon sour candy spray, and a little bit of nail polish remover because see, I was thinking of making my own nail polish remover (just testing.) Oh yeah, I put a little dollop of lotion and about 2 or 3 drops of Blue Glitter and Mr. Sandman nail polish.

SR: I really hope you did this in the good china. And what was your result?

RS: My results came up with, oh yeah I didn’t do it in china, I did it in one of those silver bowls, and I did try it on a nail polished finger, but nothing came off but the glitter so I think it became a glitter magnet. And it turned brown.

RS: (Ask me about my b-word rabbit.)

SR: Tell me about your favorite thing to eat that is not in the candy family.

RS: Oooo, that’s a hard one. pause. fidget. It starts with M and ends with E.

SR: Puzzled look

RS: Mac…

SR: Ok. Mac n cheese. Wanna tell the folks about your special healthy mac?

RS: My special healthy mac is , well it has, um, oh yeah! It has carrots and sweet potatoes and Momma makes it and freezes it and when I ask her to cook the macaroni and cheese that you have to cook over the stove, she puts some in.

SR: Don’t forget the tofu.

RS: Oh Yeah! Wait, tofu?!

SR: That’s what makes it fun to mix in the blender. That block of goop.

RS: Wow. I didn’t know that. Well, how about you tell the folks about Baby Bear(bunney).

SR: Unless we’re going to cook Baby Bear, that discussion is beyond the scope of this blog.

Goodbye from Sketchy and RockStar. We’re off to have a bowl of Special K Chocolatey Delight and watch cartoons. Enjoy this photo of Sketchy & RockStar with chicken on head.

Here at Chez Recipe, it’s called Pasta Bake. As Mr. Recipe is currently living out of town most of the time, he feels compelled to recreate that feeling of “home” by making the very recipe that bores him to death here. Sweet justice for mama, no?

First, let me wax poetic about Barilla Plus pasta.

It’s not gross. It’s not grainy. It doesn’t taste like the box it came in. RockStar loves it.

Penne works best for the bake because the sauce can goosh into the tubes and cook the pasta from the inside and the outside. I use the rotini and the elbows for Kinda Greek Pasta Salad.

Pasta Bake

1 jar favorite pasta sauce (Mom’s is our house choice)

1 box penne

shredded mozzarella

Preheat oven to 350 F. Pour half the sauce on the bottom of a medium baking dish. Pour in pasta. Fill sauce jar back to the top with water and pour over pasta. Add salt or pepper and any fresh herbs you like. Make sure the pasta is level with the sauce or it will be too dry. Top with cheese and cover with foil. Bake for 40 minutes. Remove foil and bake for 10-20 more minutes.

That’s it. However, popular Recipe variations include: fresh mozzarella, a spinach and ricotta layer on top of the pasta with parmesan on top, and alfredo sauce over the pasta with italian bread crumbs on top. The possibilities are endless.

This is another planting weekend. Much to RockStar’s dismay, the Recipes are putting out the second wave of carrots and the first of beets. The carrots are some Purple Haze that I bought, and lost, and found, and lost, and tried to throw away but recovered, seeds from last year. The beets are golden seeds that I just got. No drama yet with them. So what is the best way to showboat some of these fancy colored carrots? Pasta salad, of course!

Kinda Greek Pasta Salad

1 box, Barilla Plus pasta, cooked al dente

1 c cherry tomatoes, quartered

1 c Carrots of Many Colors, cut into coins

1 can quartered artichoke hearts in water, rinsed and patted dry

1/2 cup roasted red/yellow peppers, chopped

1 chunk of feta cheese, chunked into lil chunks

1 tbs fresh oregano, chopped

Bottled greek vinaigrette (my secret shame. my secret love.)

Anything else you feel like chopping

Salt & Pepa

Mix it until it’s yummy. Best when room temperature, but cold ain’t bad.

This is another planting weekend. Much to RockStar’s dismay, the Recipes are putting out the second wave of carrots and the first of beets. The carrots are some Purple Haze that I bought, and lost, and found, and lost, and tried to throw away but recovered, seeds from last year. The beets are golden seeds that I just got. No drama yet with them. So what is the best way to showboat some of these fancy colored carrots? Pasta salad, of course!

Kinda Greek Pasta Salad

1 box, Barilla Plus pasta, cooked al dente

1 c cherry tomatoes, quartered

1 c Carrots of Many Colors, cut into coins

1 can quartered artichoke hearts in water, rinsed and patted dry

1/2 cup roasted red/yellow peppers, chopped

1 chunk of feta cheese, chunked into lil chunks

1 tbs fresh oregano, chopped

Bottled greek vinaigrette (my secret shame. my secret love.)

Anything else you feel like chopping

Salt & Pepa

Mix it until it’s yummy. Best when room temperature, but cold ain’t bad.

This is another planting weekend. Much to RockStar’s dismay, the Recipes are putting out the second wave of carrots and the first of beets. The carrots are some Purple Haze that I bought, and lost, and found, and lost, and tried to throw away but recovered, seeds from last year. The beets are golden seeds that I just got. No drama yet with them. So what is the best way to showboat some of these fancy colored carrots? Pasta salad, of course!

Kinda Greek Pasta Salad

1 box, Barilla Plus pasta, cooked al dente

1 c cherry tomatoes, quartered

1 c Carrots of Many Colors, cut into coins

1 can quartered artichoke hearts in water, rinsed and patted dry

1/2 cup roasted red/yellow peppers, chopped

1 chunk of feta cheese, chunked into lil chunks

1 tbs fresh oregano, chopped

Bottled greek vinaigrette (my secret shame. my secret love.)

Anything else you feel like chopping

Salt & Pepa

Mix it until it’s yummy. Best when room temperature, but cold ain’t bad.

This yogurt is heaven. It is bliss. It is all that yogurt should always have been, but never was. It is also impossible to pronounce for the Sketchy Recipe family.

Is it Fay’juh (lite schwa at the end)? No.

Is it Fay’yuh, as BabyDaddy asserts? Maybe?

Let’s consult the packaging, shall we. It states the correct pronunciation is “fa yah”. No long, short, or oomlot symbol provided as to the proclivity of that first A. I think I’ll just call it greek yogurt.

Seven Minutes in Heaven

1 container greek yogurt

1/4 c salted, shelled pistachios

honey

Put the nuts on the yogurt. Put the honey on the nuts. Eat. Savor. Contemplate modern Greek vowel pronunciation. Put more honey on the yogurt.

This yogurt is heaven. It is bliss. It is all that yogurt should always have been, but never was. It is also impossible to pronounce for the Sketchy Recipe family.

Is it Fay’juh (lite schwa at the end)? No.

Is it Fay’yuh, as BabyDaddy asserts? Maybe?

Let’s consult the packaging, shall we. It states the correct pronunciation is “fa yah”. No long, short, or oomlot symbol provided as to the proclivity of that first A. I think I’ll just call it greek yogurt.

Seven Minutes in Heaven

1 container greek yogurt

1/4 c salted, shelled pistachios

honey

Put the nuts on the yogurt. Put the honey on the nuts. Eat. Savor. Contemplate modern Greek vowel pronunciation. Put more honey on the yogurt.

This yogurt is heaven. It is bliss. It is all that yogurt should always have been, but never was. It is also impossible to pronounce for the Sketchy Recipe family.

Is it Fay’juh (lite schwa at the end)? No.

Is it Fay’yuh, as BabyDaddy asserts? Maybe?

Let’s consult the packaging, shall we. It states the correct pronunciation is “fa yah”. No long, short, or oomlot symbol provided as to the proclivity of that first A. I think I’ll just call it greek yogurt.

Seven Minutes in Heaven

1 container greek yogurt

1/4 c salted, shelled pistachios

honey

Put the nuts on the yogurt. Put the honey on the nuts. Eat. Savor. Contemplate modern Greek vowel pronunciation. Put more honey on the yogurt.

Salmon burgers are gross. Period. It’s just a Bad Idea.

My soft salad, however, is very good.

1 $3.99 (!) bag of spinach - this is not the GIANT bag of spinach, nooooooo. This is the small bag with some kind of magical four dollar property. BabyDaddy and I are going to try to smoke the rest of it after RockStar goes to bed.

1 ripe avocado - $1.99 *hold me* - sliced

1 container marinated goat cheese, oil drained and used as dressing base

fruit flavored vinegar

salt & pepper

Make dressing. Put expensive avocado on exorbitant spinach and add some cheese. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and dress.

If food prices continue to climb, Sketchy will be forced to start an entirely different kind of web venture to support the family’s food bill.

Last night’s post-Ironman/pre-bedtime snack:

1 container grape tomatoes, quartered

1 container perlini

2 tbs fresh basil, chopped

olive oil

cheap balsamic

salt & pepper

Mix to taste

The perlinis were great. They made the salad pasta-like. Even rockstar ate it up. Snap some up if you can find it in your store.

This morning’s recipe is fairly safe and straightforward.

Make toast

Spread with Nutella

Eat with the one ripe raspberry from your garden

We planted a raspberry a few weeks ago and now we are reaping the benefits of one fruit per day. That brings the cost per raspberry to $3 so far. I’m sticking it to the man, yo.

I’m Sketchy and I have a Rainmanesque ability to recite recipes to friends and strangers. I also believe in the power of freeform cookery. This is my attempt to deal with my unrelenting need to test, perfect, discard, and archive my autistic food-related experiments. In my strange world are BabyDaddy, my leftover Dispos-All,  and RockStar, the 7 year old lab monkey for hidden vegetables in seemingly innocuous favorites.

I will let you know what is safe and what is terrifying. I take no responsibility for your individual results if you don’t live in my house, love butter and sodium, or have any english mastiff hair in your kitchen.