As you may know, I do the soccer-dad thing really badly. I do okay as a stay-at-home Dad—except that I always seem to be behind on the housework. But I am so glad I don’t own a minivan! I don’t know how I would cope if I had to cart the neighborhood kids around everywhere. Just dealing with my two plus one or two more (the most that can fit into our old Saturn sedan), just that overwhelms me sometimes. I tell my Beloved to take the car to work, in part because the alternative would be for me to spend 3 hours total driving her back and forth to work. But the real reason is because if I don’t have a car, I can’t be expected to taxi anyone anywhere!

I carry the really-bad-soccer-dad image into the kitchen, where the first thing you’ll notice is that I’m always behind on doing the dishes. The second thing you’ll notice is better-than-average junk food. I love to cook sometimes-elaborate meals, but I rarely have the time or energy. I do, however, throw together simple snacks (usually using prepackaged ingredients) with minimal preparation.

Ramen & Veggies

One of my favorite variations on a cheap classic, ramen noodles. Put a handful of frozen veggies into the boiling water and par cook for all but 3 minutes, then add the noodles. My favorite combinations:

• Chicken Ramen & Corn – Bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Add ½ cup frozen corn. Bring to a second boil, and add dry ramen noodles.[*] Cook uncovered for 3 minutes. Mix in chicken flavor packet & serve.

• Beef Ramen & Veggies – Bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Add ½ cup frozen mixed vegetables. Bring to a second boil, then simmer covered for 3-4 minutes.[*] Add dry ramen noodles, and cook uncovered for 3 more minutes. Mix in beef flavor packet & serve.

• Beef Ramen & Broccoli – Bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Add ½ cup frozen cut broccoli. Bring to a second boil, then simmer covered for 3-4 minutes.[*] Add dry ramen noodles, and cook uncovered for 3 more minutes. Mix in beef flavor packet & serve.

[*] Assumes corn cooks in 3 minutes, and veggies and broccoli cook in 6-7 minutes. Check package for recommended cooking times, then subtract 3 minutes, so that the veggies cook for the total correct time and the noodles cook for 3 minutes.

Frozen Burritos

Frozen burritos are also a junk-food staple in our house, the kind of burrito that you microwave on high for 2 minutes— Or according to my recommendation, 1 minute per side.

The kids are happy just to microwave and eat, but I love adding tomato sauce, salsa, or cheese. Or even a little cumin inside (because I love cumin). For a crappy beef burrito covered with melted cheese, microwave on high for 1 minute, flip, sprinkle on grated cheese, and microwave for another minute.

Frozen McDonald’s Cheeseburgers

And since I’m talking about frozen beef-and-cheese snacks, I might as well mention this one, which a bachelor friend of mine discovered during our younger years. Not a combination like the others on this page, but unusual enough.

Buy a bunch of McDonald’s cheeseburgers for a dollar apiece (or whatever they go for), bring them home, and throw them in the freezer. When you want one, microwave on high for a minute, flip it over, and microwave for another minute (a minute per side, 2 minutes total, just like a frozen burrito). Yum.

EZ Homemade Salsa & Nachos

Corn chips and salsa is an old family favorite. While salsa does come in jars, it’s pretty expensive (considering the cost of the ingredients), and I think most brands of salsa get boring pretty quickly. So I’ve developed a quick & easy homemade salsa (which the kids don’t go for so much, but it satisfies my cravings and those of the Missus).

Start with a can of petite-diced tomatoes (with or without jalapeños), and mix in one or more of the following:

• diced red onion (may be found in the produce section)
• hot sauce (my favorite is Frank’s RedHot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce, simple but effective)
• a dash of lime juice (or True Lime™ crystalized lime—which I haven’t tried yet in this context)
• canned kidney beans and/or some appropriate alternative
• cumin (because I love cumin)
• garlic powder

They say you should let the salsa sit for a while in the refrigerator to let the flavors merge, but I find that I can enjoy it almost immediately after mixing… and I often end up making enough to leave some in the refrigerator until later. The simplest variation of this is just a bowl of plain petite-diced tomatoes with several dashes of hot sauce, a fine and simple salsa (especially if I have tomato cravings, probably because I’m low on potassium).

The corollary to salsa is, of course, nachos: Throw some yellow (or white) corn chips on a plate, and top with salsa (optional) and grated cheese. Microwave a minute or two, until the cheese melts.

(I find that the cheapo store-brand corn chips work perfectly well for this application, by the way. So I don’t bother to pay the premium for name-brand in this case.)

Mashed Potatoes or Stuffing, & Gravy

I’m talking about instant mashed potatoes (from potato flakes), instant stuffing, and canned (or jar) gravy. My daughters don’t care for instant mashed potatoes, and I usually don’t care for stuffing. But between the lot of us, we finish off them both. A simple, classic side-dish turned into a snack.

Prepare just one or two servings in the microwave, following the directions on the package. Top with gravy from a jar or can.

(One of these days, I’m going to try to make potatoes au gratin in the microwave with grated cheese. Haven’t gotten there yet.)

Microwave Baked Potato

Of course, if you hate potato flakes (like my daughters), you can prepare a baked potato in the microwave fairly quickly and easily.

Wash & scrub a medium russet potato to remove any dirt or schmutz on the skin. (That itself may disqualify this one from being a true junk food.) Poke the skin with a fork, and microwave on high for 7 minutes. Split and top with butter, sour cream, bacon bits, or whatever you like on your baked potato.

Cereal & Ice Cream

I used to do this more when I had ice cream in the house. I rarely have it in the freezer, because it disappears so quickly—and that can’t be good—that I don’t even bother to buy it anymore. But when we do have ice cream, I love to top my dry cereal with it, with milk, not all the time but as a dessert or other special treat. This of course is another classic, which I didn’t invent.

What are your favorite junk-food combinations?

-TimK

-TimK

P.S. We’re also making Craisin®-Nut Bread, by the Little One’s request.

Leftover Ginger Chicken Stir-Fry, still yummy

Yesterday—which is when I’m actually writing this—I told the Missus, “You know, every time I make a new dish, I should take a picture of it as a matter of course.

She agreed without hesitating.

Because I had made dinner Sunday afternoon, and we had eaten our fill, and only then did I think that the recipe would make for an interesting Monday blog post.

So that’s why you, unfortunately, get only the leftovers. But they’re still yummy, and in fact, the Missus made a little snack out of them yesterday evening, and I’m sure she’ll finish them off for lunch today.

I based this recipe on Paula Deen’s Chicken Stir-Fry (and other recipes), but I modified it, stay-at-home–dad–style, to be even quicker and easier—which is quite a feat considering how simple hers is—and to use ingredients we commonly have on-hand at our house. So, only a little menu planning, only a little shopping, practically no prep (except to cut up the chicken), and only 10 or 20 minutes in front of the stove.

UPDATE: I updated the recipe to use fresh ginger, because it really does make a difference.

One of these days, I’ll write about how recipes (and housework) are often designed for women—not to be sexist, but let’s face it: men and women are different—and the kinds of challenges I face as a work-at-home dad. (If you can’t imagine where I’m coming from, maybe I really should write that post.) Ultra-simple recipes like this help me provide delicious, homemade (or semi-homemade, anyhow) meals for my family, while still giving me opportunity to get plenty of my own work done.

-TimK

Homemade hot dog rolls (with dogs & fries)

My first experiment with using the Dough cycle on our bread machine, to make homemade hot dog rolls: success! True, some of the rolls came out looking a little funny, because I had never rolled homemade bread before. But the good news is that the rolls we rolled last came out the best, so we were clearly getting better with practice.

I made enough dough for a standard size loaf (1½ lb), using the “Basic White Bread” recipe, because I already knew I liked how it tasted and felt with hot dogs. I divided it into 4 equal pieces, and each of those into halves, forming 8 rolls, each the length of a bun-size hot dog.

To form each roll, I flattened it out, dusted it with a little AP flour, and rolled it into a strip a little longer than the final length (because I knew the dough would spring back a little). Then I rolled the dough into a small loaf. After leaving the rolls to rise for another 30-45 minutes, I popped them into a 400°F oven for 10 minutes, until they were golden brown and delicious.

Above, is my plate: kosher dogs with ketchup, yellow mustard, spicy brown mustard, and Howards™ hot-pepper relish, served with zesty curly fries. Here is the Little One’s plate; she prefers her hot dogs and fries with lots and lots of ketchup:

Margaret and I got a bread machine for our wedding, almost 16 years ago. Just recently, I’ve started using it regularly to bake actual bread. In fact, we’ve all but stopped buying bread from the grocery store, preferring instead sacks of bread flour and jars of active dry yeast. A loaf of home-baked bread from the machine costs less than a dollar and tastes better than from the store. The bread machine makes the process relatively painless, because it does all the hard work for you; just put in the ingredients, and 3 hours later, fresh-baked bread. And baking bread at home also provides plenty of opportunity for variety and experimentation.

One of my experiments paid off, because the Little One specifically asked for it yesterday, Daddy’s homemade Craisin®-Nut Bread, badgered me to make a loaf. I wanted to take a picture of it. Unfortunately, I didn’t act fast enough, and it disappeared first. I have to admit, it’s quite tasty, especially warm with a little butter spread on it. Good for breakfast, brunch, or dinner.

Our bread machine is a Welbilt® model, and this recipe is based on its standard recipe for “Basic White Bread,” a 1½ lb loaf. But I use the Sweet cycle (instead of the Basic cycle), and I add a half-cup of Craisins®-brand sweetened, dry cranberries and a half-cup of chopped walnuts, at the appropriate time during the cycle.

Here’s the whole recipe, for reference:

If you try this out, I’d love to hear how it turns out and how you like it.

Yummm…
-TimK

P.S. UPDATE: I just discovered that Suzie the Foodie, whose blog I just recently started following, earlier this month had posted her own recipe for Cranberry Bread. She calls her recipe “Craisin Bread,” although it doesn’t use real Craisins®. She uses real, dried cranberries (which is quite kewl), and brown sugar to sweeten it. Her recipe sounds delicious as well, and I might try it sometime. I’m also sure it would also taste good with walnuts added.

P.P.S. I’ve also considered playing around with making a quick-bread variation. If I do, I might post it as well.

From Bacon Today–and I swear I’m not making it up–via Radley Balko:

chicken stuffed in duck, stuffed in a turkey, all wrapped in bacon

Urrmmmmph. Please excuse me while I go dig up an antacid.

-TimK

-TimK

P.S. The subject of this post is blatantly and unabashedly ripped off from a funny Frasier quote, regarding “eggs in a nest”: “Ah, yes, the Crane family specialty. Two fat-fried eggs, dripping with grease, swimming in fat, with thick pieces of bacon and mayonaise on a piece of white bread, no crust. I can practically hear my left ventricle slamming shut even as we speak.”

I don’t know where this recipe came from originally, but if you search on Google, you will find numerous variations on the same theme. I’ll note my own variations below.

Honey-Baked Chicken

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Arrange in shallow baking pan skin-side up:

3-3.5 lb chicken breasts

Combine and pour over:

2/3 cup margarine
1 cup honey
4 Tablespoon mustard
2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon curry

Bake 1 hour, basting every 15 minutes until chicken is tender and nicely browned.

My own variation:

I usually cut the recipe in half, because that’s a lot of chicken. I use 1 to 1.5 lbs of chicken thighs (not breasts). i also use the following in the sauce (for 1-1.5 lbs of chicken):

1/3 cup margarine (I use Earth Balance brand)
1/2 cup honey
2 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
(only add salt to taste, if at all)
2 teaspoon curry (double what’s called for above)
1 teaspoon ground mustard seed (for an extra kick in the pants)

I make the sauce ahead of time, simmering the ingredients in a saucepan until the margarine is melted and the ingredients are combined. (Make sure it doesn’t boil!) Then I pour it over the chicken and either refrigerate until baking time, or bake immediately. This dish can also be baked ahead of time and reheated (if you want to eat it on the Sabbath and if your Sabbath tradition permits that).

I also do not baste the chicken while baking, because basting is bad. (It requires you to keep opening the oven and letting the heat out, and it does nothing for the taste or texture of the chicken.)

Other variations: Try boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Also, try adding a little cumin or cayenne pepper to the sauce (as in other recipes on the net).

For tomorrow, I plan to serve it with rice, vegetables, and an Israeli-style salad (chopped lettuce, diced tomatoes & cucumbers, &c). But it also works well with couscous. (And probably with lots of other side-dishes as well.)

My mouth is watering…

-TimK