Thrown Together Pantry Pasta Bake

So while I was watching the Blauwkamps house, I was charged (okay, i volunteered) with the task of making their meals for the week they returned. With a brand new baby, plus a five year old in tow, you don't want to be wandering around the house all jet lagged trying to figure what in the world to make at 4am.

So, Mahi and I set about to make a few meals that would be ready upon their return. Here are two of the recipes we made that were particularly easy and quick.

THROWN TOGETHER PANTRY PASTA BAKE
1/2 a box of penne
1/2 a box of those spirally noodles.
1/2 jar of Newman's pasta sauce (forget which kind)
1 cup of shredded cheese (we used a 4 cheese blend)
1lb ground beef
italian seasoning

So first, boil yourself up some water. When it's a nice and bubblin, toss in however much penne and spiral pasta you could find in your pantry. (I found about a half box of each)

While they're in the bath, take your ground beef and start cooking it up in a frying pan. Nothing fancy. Just cook it. Maybe add a little italian seasoning if you want.

Once your pasta is nice and al dente, drain it and add some pasta sauce to it until the whole mixture is a healthy redish color. (I think we used about half a jar). Now take your ground beef (drain the fat) and stir it into your pasta.

Dump the whole concoction into a casserole dish and spread it evenly. Then take about a cup of shredded cheese and cover the whole mixture with it. (If you use more than 1 cup I won't tell anybody...)

Now stick it in an oven and broil it on low until your cheesey top layer is nice and bubbly. When it's good to go, take it out and sprinkle the top with some more italian seasoning while the cheese is still nice and goopey. Voila! You hardly did any work at all!

we also made....
Egg Noodle Turkey Bake Throwdown
1 bag of egg noodles
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of celery soup
1lb pulled smoked turkey leg meat
1 small package of crushed cheez-its.
1 small can of green beans

Take pot you were already boiling water in earlier (see previous pasta bake) and get it ready to go again! Start boiling up those egg noodles, and while they're doing that, find yourself a nice big smoked turkey leg. We got our turkey legs from BJ's and they were MORE than enough for a meal, so we used the rest of them in this. Pull the thick pinkish chunks of meat off the turkey leg until you have a nice sizable pile of meat. (maybe a poundish). It should kinda look like ham.

Once the noodles are alllllllll dente, drain them and spread them in a 9 by thirteen baking dish. Pour the cream of chicken AND celery soups over the noodles. Drain a can of green beans (or a similar green vegetable from your pantry) and dump'm into the dish as well. Throw in your turkey meat and mix it all around.

At this point, you can take your inner most anger out on a small pack of cheez its. Just crush'm up real good. Open up the bag and sprinkle their pathetic remains over the top of your turkey bake. Perhaps you find yourself thinking, i wish there were more cheez its on top. Well. Get yourself another small bag and repeat the process! Coat the top until there's a healthy layer of orange over the whole thing.

Shove that sucker in the oven at 350 for about half an hour. But you should probably keep an eye on it cuz I'm not totally sure it was half an hour. Sometime before the whole thing goes up in flames, take it out using an oven mitt. You can either eat it right away (as we wanted to) or cover it in foil and store it in the fridge for an easy meal at any time of the day (as we did :( )

What's nice about these meals is that all we had to buy was meat. Pretty much everything else was just sitting around the kitchen/pantry.

Even after making these 2 dishes we still had ground beef left that we threw together with some various cans of beans to make a chili. See what you can create from goodies already in your own cupboards. Let us know if you find anything good!

General Tso's Kabobs with Asian Guacamole

It's been a while! To backtrack... through one of many daily conversations about food, we decided to try to put Chinese food into kabob form somehow (because everything tastes better on a stick). Thus, General Tso's kabobs were born! To pair a side, we thought we could put a twist on guacamole by using Asian-inspired flavors instead of traditional Mexican.

A trip to Safeway gave us the necessary ingredients - canned Chinese stir fry vegetables, Iron Chef brand General Tso's sauce (yes, we cheated... if you want to make your own, be our guest!), avocados, broccoli, onion, and red bell pepper. We already had chicken breast, rice, and some other sauces and spices on hand. We also stopped by the Chinese food restaurant in the same shopping center to buy 2 bags of the crispy wonton noodle chips for dipping (only 50 cents).

To prepare the kabobs, we cubed the chicken into 1-2 inch chunks and marinated it in the General Tso's sauce. We cut up the broccoli (which is a bit difficult to skewer... make sure you leave a thick enough stem on each piece!), bell pepper, and onion and marinated them as well. When we were ready to create the kabobs, we discovered we only had 4 skewers (and Jaime didn't bring more over like she said...), so we grilled them in 2 batches, with each skewer PILED with meat and veggies. We forced it to make 8 packed kabobs, but it would easily create more!

While the first kabobs were heating up, we prepared a cup of rice. We began our Asian quac so we could snack until the kabobs were done! We mashed up the avocado and stirred in some gyoza and soy sauces from the fridge. We drained and diced half of the stir fry veggies into tiny pieces to add texture - the water chestnuts were great. If we did it again, we might add some fresh pressed garlic, sea salt, and a tiny bit of wasabi to spice it up. With the crispy noodles, it was a fun change from cilantro and tortilla chips!

Once the rice was cooked, we heated oil in a wok to make fried rice. We craked an egg to cook in it first, then added the rest of the stir fry vegetables and the rice and kept it moving over the heat. I don't think our oil was hot enough... we didn't quite achieve the texture we were looking for, but it was still an edible rice side!

We flipped the kabobs once during cooking and left the grill lid mostly shut, using a flipper on its side to prop it open a bit (what Jenna's mom always did). Jenna was ecstatic to FINALLY grill chicken perfectly, without it being dry and overdone! The sauce coated everything well and made nice seared lines from the grill bars. (As we've learned from our bff Alton Brown, blackened coating on grilled food isn't burned meat, it's the sugar in the sauce!)

We plated the kabobs on top of the rice and served more guac on the side with the crispy noodles. YUM. It was a fun way to enjoy some General Tso's chicken without the breaded coating, without paying for take-out, and enjoying the last warmth of fall weather!

General Tso's Kabobs
2 large chicken breasts
1 head of broccoli
1 red bell pepper
1 onion
10+ kabob skewers
bottle of General Tso's sauce

Asian-Infused Guacamole
2 avocados
1/2 can of Chinese stir fry vegetables, drained
soy sauce to taste
gyoza sauce to taste
(fresh pressed garlic)
(pinch of sea salt)
(wasabi to taste, not much!)
crispy wonton noodles

To Commemorate Johnny Appleseed's Birthday...

...how else would you do so but to make APPLESAUCE?!

Homemade. No more Mott's or Musselman's for us!

On the beautiful fall holiday of Yom Kippur, we observed the sacred holiday of John Chapman's birthday, who spread apple seeds all over this nation. It is amazing how many varieties of apples there are! As any good Alton Brown follower knows (if you don't watch Good Eats, or at least the Food Network... get off the computer and start. After reading this post, of course.), any apple concoction needs more than one kind of apple, so that flavors can compliment and combine to create unique and tasteful apple delights. So, to accomplish this feat, we headed to our favorite local farm!

...Well, first we headed to its restaurant for breakfast. And planned to buy apples at the market there. But, we quickly realized that picking our OWN apples would be far superior. So after entirely too much time spent taking pictures of Indian Corn, we headed for Baugher's farm just up the road. We boarded the tractor-tram-trolley-convertedschoolbusthing that took us to the apple section of the orchard. Baugher's has row upon row of apple trees, conveniently labeled with the names of the varieties so you can find what you're looking for. We headed for the back of the field and worked our way forward, choosing a myriad of tart and sweet apples. We chose Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Macintosh, ..another kind we can't remember at the moment..., and the hardest to find, Mutsu. Mutsus are a sweet yellow apple, and apparently popular, as the only ones left clung to the tops of the trees. Nothing a little tree-climbing and shaking can't fix. We picked 20 apples, about 1/4 peck.

After buying some apple cider to accompany our applesauce adventure, we alliterated almost all day. Okay no. But we headed home laden with apple products to get to work. (After smothering kittens with affection at the petting zoo... and refraining from shoving "Emily" and "Sarah" out of the way to get to "Butterscotch" the cat.)

Mahi and Mahi's Homemade Applesauce

20 Large/Medium Apples (Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Macintosh, Mutsu, and the kind we can't remember...sub in your favorite!)
3ish Cups Water
Honey
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Vanilla Extract
Almond Extract
Caramel Vodka

We washed, peeled, cored, and chopped the apples into approximately 1-inch pieces. We weren't exact, which left some delicious larger chunks to vary the consistency of the sauce.

We lack a giant stew pot, so we used the 3 biggest pots in the kitchen and divided the apples among them. We added about 1 cup of water to the 2 medium pots and 1 1/2 cups to the slightly larger pot. Bring the water to a boil, cover, and reduce the heat to let the water and apples simmer for 15 - 20 minutes. This let the apples cook down until they were quite soft, and some of it cooked down into pulpy applesauce consistency on its own.

At this point you will want to say to yourself, "I wish we had a potato masher". Then you should promptly turn around and grab the potato masher that is sitting in plain sight. Take that potato masher and mash the heck outta those suckers (can you guys tell when the narrator has changed?). You'll want to mash to your desired consistency. The more you mash, the more fine the bits of apple will be. We like things a little chunky. So we left some of the bigger apple chunks in.

Using a variety of tart and sweet apples in the mix will give you an applesauce that doesn't require any additional sugar. SO we had three pots of applesauce... why make the exact same thing three times?!

In the first pot we added about five big spoonfuls of local honey. If you don't know where to get any local honey, do what we do, drive up to a non descript house. It won't be marked. But take it in good word that an old man who lives there sells honey. Don't ask why. Just trust. So knock on his door. He will talk about 1915 for a while and then sell you 12 bucks worth of delicious honey.

Or there are the bears in the super market. They work too. But don't taste nearly as good.

In the second pot, we added cinnamon, nutmeg, almond extract, and vanilla extract. Don't ask us how much. It was all a blur. Let's just say... to taste.

And finally...in the biggest pot (the daddy pot) we took those delicious looking apples, and poured a healthy dose of Caramel Vodka in. I would say "To Taste" but honestly, each time we tasted it, we just added more vodka...so maybe...just add some and hope it's enough.

So now you've got your delicious apple sauce! As we set off on our apple sauce adventure, we felt a bit overwhelmed. We had zero experience making this sort of thing, but it turned out to be WAY easier than we thought. If you're looking for a good food to start your cooking adventures with, we vote applesauce. Keep in mind, the applesauce does NOT have any preservatives in it like the store brands do, so you'll either want to freeze it, can it, or eat it in about a week.

P.S. If you are honoring Johnny's birthday, you'll want to cook with a pot on your head. Which upon further reflection doesn't make sense, since he wore the pot on his head so he didn't have to carry it but could use it to cook IN. But it feels official and celebratory.

~Mahi & Mahi

The Original Idea COMES TO LIFE!

Well, back at our fated Red Robin visit, we were brainstorming about this whole "making new foods" idea and our very first HAD TO DO recipe was the brie burger. We were discussing what sort of ways we could work brie into a burger and I feel we have come up with a rather nice twist on the traditional burger formula.

First, we did away with the bun. We have instead opted for crescent roll dough to serve as the transporter of these delicious patties. We then of course added brie to the formula, and borrowed melba sauce from the Monte Cristo sandwich to form a ONE OF A KIND burger experience. It may also be a meatloaf experience. Or a glorified shepherd's pie experience. Anyway, let's get down to business...

*NOTE: this was a completely invented recipe, so it involves a lot of trial and error!

Ingredients:
1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground turkey
4 tubes large crescent rolls
1 pack raspberries
1 jar Polaner raspberry preserves
14 oz brie cheese (you'll only need 10, so either look for a 10 oz package or snack heavily)
1-2 tablespoons sugar
2 eggs
parsley
cracker crumbs
lemon juice
cornstarch
salt
3 oz Blue Mondo


First thing's first, you'll want meat. We used one pound of ground beef and one pound of ground turkey (to give people options). In a bowl for each, we combined the meat with cracker crumbs, an egg, and dried parsley to taste (we want fresh next time!). We formed 1/5 pound patties (...if you do the math, 5 of each! duh. but you never know.). Place the patties in a baking dish and bake for about 17 minutes, until they are browned on the outside.

In the meantime, slice up about 10 ounces of brie cheese. Make sure you eat the little tiny mistake slices. Wouldn't want them lying around...

For the melba-inspired sauce, we used most of a jar of Polaner rasberry preserves (Polaner is great; it's only sweetened with fruit), a container of fresh rasberries, a splash of lemon juice, sugar, salt, and cornstarch. Also, we squirted our secret ingredient in. We mashed the rasberries into a paste and combined them with the preserves in a sauce pan over low heat. We added the lemon juice, sugar (1 - 2 tablespoons to taste), a pinch or two of salt, and a few teaspoons of cornstarch to thicken it. Once the sauce was thoroughly heated and thin, we removed it from the heat to let it thicken.

Once the burgers looked ready to come into contact with the dough, we drained the excess fat that had cooked out and prepared 2 baking dishes with nonstick spray. We unrolled crescent roll dough - we used the larger size roll dough by Pilsbury and used 2 triangles per burger (you'll need 4 tubes for 2 pounds of meat, which will leave you with 4 triangles left over to make rolls for your next meal!). We layered each patty with brie and wrapped it in the dough and placed them in the baking dishes. We then baked them for about 20 minutes as our sauce set.

Once they are golden brown, they are ready to eat! We served them with the sauce on the side, for dipping or to be drizzled on top.

For great side ideas, we're thinking asparagus fries would be perfect (or just broiled asparagus with some garlic). They will be an upcoming venture...

Our dinner guests raved, and rejoiced at the endless possibilities this fancy meat pie could bring!
"The best burger I've ever had! It's a princess burger with ROYAL sauce!" - JB, Westminster, MD
"I think I definitely don't like brie." - JR, Westminster, MD
"You could even put BACON in it!" - AS, Bacon-aholic, Frederick, MD
"I want one when I grow up!" - Zander Lewis, Frederick, MD

We're so blessed with great friends to eat our food, and we're gaining confidence in the kitchen to put us further along on the journey toward Iron Chef America... wait, no. Toward the vision and mission of A Taste for Change. Which we're really looking forward to, hopefully before Christmas!

~Mahi&Mahi

First(ish) venture...

So, we thought maybe we should hone some cooking skills before launching glorious international feasts for all to enjoy. Encouraged by our previous burger endeavor (including both beef AND black bean varieties for our veggie-loving friends), we brainstormed and concocted an original recipe that the world had never known!

...really, we DID think of it all by ourselves. It just so happens, so did a lot of other people, which we discovered later. But great minds think alike.

And now... Pineapple Teriyaki Turkey Burgers!

(preface: as we are guessing ourselves as we go about this, you may find our recipes lack some specific measurements. Think of it as a Choose Your Own Adventure cookbook [omg... patent pending.] Good luck!)

Begin with 1 pound ground turkey - fat/lean content to your liking, but more fat can be helpful for grilling. Just be aware your burgers will shrink the higher the fat content, so take that into account when forming your patties!

In a medium-sized bowl, combine the turkey, 1 egg, 1/2 to 1 cup of crushed Ritz crackers, 1/4 - 1/2 cup pepperjack cheese crumbles (we bought a brick from a farmer's market, but if you're lazy, they may sell them pre-crumbled...), about 3 crushed cloves of garlic (we like garlic... we used a garlic press, but you can also use the flat part of a large-bladed knife to crush the clove), and 3 splashes of teriyaki sauce (to taste). We used Lawry's teriyaki pineapple marinade. Yum! Mix the meat and ingredients together, but be careful not to over-mix, as this will make the burgers sloppy and harder to grill.

Take your patties out to the grill, along with a bowl of teriyaki sauce. Once they are in place, brush more sauce onto the burgers. If your roommate seems to not own a cooking brush, finding a mop-style paintbrush in your bedroom will also suffice (to clarify... if we cook you dinner, everything will be sanitary and safe!). Tip my mom always did... Once your patties are on the grill and have been for a few minutes, lower the lid and use your flipper on its side to prop it open several inches. This helps your burgers cook evenly but still lets air circulate so it's not too hot and dry for them. Poor little guys.

We also used some leftover fresh pineapple to top our burgers! We sliced them and splashed them with lemon juice and honey. Place the pineapple in a grill pan and set it on the top rack while the burgers are grilling. After a few minutes, we recommend grabbing the metal grill lid handle with your bare hands. It's extremely hot, so this part may take some practice. When you grab it, scream out in pain until someone in the kitchen runs out to see if you're okay. While you go wash your hand off, he will open the grill up, knocking the pan of pineapples to the ground. He will scream and jump to avoid them landing on his feet and then moan in a very distressed manner. When you finish washing your hand you will then see the spilled pineapple. The two of you will lament your misfortune before implementing the five second rule. After you have the pineapple BACK on the grill, it's time to flip those patties.

To prepare for plating... We love toasting buns whenever possible in the oven. You could grill them instead if you prefer! We bought French bread hamburger rolls from Safeway - DELICIOUS. If you can find them, go for it. If not, pick your favorite roll! (We, being twentysomethings, also recommend checking the reduced-for-quick-sale bakery items in any grocery store - they're usually just a day old, still taste great, and save pennies!) Slice some more pepperjack and place on the burger patties for the last few minutes of grilling to melt the cheese.

Once your buns are toasted (...heehee.), place the piping hot patties on the bottoms, layer your grilled pineapple on top, drizzle some teriyaki over the top if desired, and slap the tops on! EAT UP!

...If you're looking for a side, we picked up a quarter peck of green beans from the local farmer's market. So fresh and good! Snap the ends and sautee with some olive oil and fresh garlic added at the end, as well as any other spices to taste (we used roasted red bell pepper and oregano).

The burgers were wonderful. Try them out! Or come over and we'll make them again :)

-Mahi&Mahi

Hello World!

Hello world! Welcome to the cooking blog of Mahi and Mahi. Mahi and I will be using this blog to post our cuisine creations, experiments, and musings. Additionally, we will be using this blog as a way to document A Taste for Change, our world tour of culture and cuisine!

A Taste for Change seeks to expand people's horizons through something everyone loves- eating! Each evening will feature a meal from a different region of the world. We will prepare these meals in order to learn about the people and places from which they come. We are very blessed to live in an economic setting that makes it feasible to provide food, shelter, clothing, and most of our basic needs and wants for ourselves. It is our goal to partner with others to see past the barriers of wealth and secure living. To understand the truth that lies beyond our neighborhood driveways. To aid these cultures in light of our knowledge of their living conditions. We hope to enable and equip people to take action against the imbalance of resources across the globe.

That's all for now! We will post updates on our attempts to master the art of preparing various foods throughout the world and what we learn about the people of those places in the process.