Goulash

Normally on Easter, I like to have a delicious boiled ham dinner made by my mom.  Sadly, that hasn't happened for the last several years, what with my folks living several hundred miles away and all.  Rather than make that myself, which would result in about a ton of leftover ham (you need a good sized ham for it to turn out really well), I decided to try something new: goulash (which also resulted in a ton of leftovers).  This is another slow cooker recipe, which means the only very busy parts happen at the beginning, assembling the ingredients, and at the end to finish it off.  The middle part involves mostly just hanging around playing through the fantastic Bioshock Infinite.

What you'll need for this recipe includes: 1 1/2-2 lbs stew meat, but into 3/4-inch cubes; 1/2 C beef broth; 3 Tbs paprika; 1 1/2 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp caraway seeds; 1/4 tsp pepper; 3 onions, chopped; 2 cloves of garlic, chopped; 1 14.5-oz can whole tomatoes (undrained); 1/4 C cold water; 2 Tbsp flour; 6 C cooked noodles.

Goulash fixin's!

In a large skillet, cook the meat over medium heat until it's browned (about 5 minutes or so).  Drain and transfer to the slow cooker.  Now mix in everything else except for the water, flour, and noodles.  Break up the tomatoes a bit with a fork, too (and watch out, because they will squirt you!).

Put the cover on and set to low heat for 8-9 hours.  At the end of that time, shake up the flour and water in a tightly covered container, and stir the mixture in to the rest of the stuff.  Re-cover and turn the heat up to high for 10-20 minutes, until the whole thing thickens up.  While that's going on, cook the noodles.  Serve the goulash over the noodles, and you're done!

Magazine Wall of Underwater DOOM!!!

At the library I work for, we have a wall with fold-up shelving that houses our magazine subscriptions.  A few years ago most of these shelves ended up being empty due to budget cuts and it somehow became my job to beautify the area so it didn't look so depressingly empty (though we've since mostly bounced back with the number of our subscriptions).  I used to try and do seasonal displays, but since I can no longer be sure I'll be able to get to it often enough, I switched themes a while ago.  First I did the End of the Dinosaur Age, with a giant meteor coming down from the sky (which was made by my incredibly talented coworker) and dinosaurs stuck in tar pits.  Next up was Deep Space, in which the giant meteor was re-purposed into a comet, there were some planets, a UFO (also made by my coworker), Sputnik, and about a million sparkly stars I punched out of a corrugated glitter sheet.  This time, I decided to go with the Deep Sea.  First, here it is in all its glory:

Way down there in the right corner, I've got part of a giant squid lurking.

Hi there!

A little further along are some of his tentacles waving around.

Those are some pretty fine tentacles, if I do say so myself!

I hope things go ok for that whale!

Hello.  I am a whale.

Up at the top, we've got a school of creepy jellyfish.

They actually look kind of awesome from a distance.

The first of my coworker's contributions to the wall is this absolutely fantastic submarine:

Followed by some perpetually angry angler fish:

And my faaaavorite thing that she made based on an offhand comment of mine:

Her reward from me was a copy of Bioshock for her very own.

And finally, a somewhat smaller giant squid that I made:

Hello.  I am a squid.

I think I'm pretty good at making squids!  I'm sure I will find endless uses for this talent throughout my career.  Now I need to start coming up with ideas for the next display, which will go up a few months down the line.  Anyone have any ideas?

Meatloaf

This week, we're doing meatloaf!  No, no, wait!  Come back!  Contrary to what sitcoms tell us, meatloaf, if done right, can actually be very good.  For this one, you'll need: 1/2 C plain bread crumbs; 1/2 C milk; 1 lb ground beef; 1 lb ground pork; 1 egg, beaten; 1/2 C grated Parmesan cheese; 1/4 C chopped parsley; 1 tsp minced garlic; 1/2 an onion, chopped; 1 pinch dried sage; salt and pepper; 4 slices bacon.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and greased a rimmed cookie sheet.  In a large bowl, combine the milk and bread crumbs, letting the crumbs soak up the milk for about 5 minutes or so.  Now add in the beef, pork, egg, cheese, parsley, garlic, onion, sage, and some salt and pepper.  Mix it all together with your hands just until it's all pretty evenly distributed.  Don't overmix or you'll end up with a meat rock instead of meatloaf.

Turn your meat pile out onto the greased cookie sheet and mold it so it's kind of loaf-shaped.

Drape the bacon over the top, tucking the ends underneath the meatloaf.

Bake this in the oven for 45-60 minutes.  It'll be done when it's browned and no longer squishy and a meat thermometer will read 160 degrees. 

Let it rest for about 5 minutes, slice it up, and you've got yourself dinner!

Nutella Knots

I've had a request!  Thursday my sister sent me an email telling me about these Nutella Knots that her friend Amy (purple dress) makes and asked if I would kindly make them and post the results (and yes, she referred to her as "Amy (purple dress)" with no picture or context.  Therefore, that is how she shall be referred to here (I figured out (all on my own!) a while later that she was referring to the fact that Amy (purple dress) wore a purple bridesmaid dress at her wedding)).  Anyway, I had taken the day off Thursday and needed something to bring to a friend's house later that evening, so this seemed perfect!
For this recipe, you'll need: 2 cans of crescent roll dough; Nutella.  Somewhat fewer ingredients than the recipe I made last week.

Yup, this is all you need.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and grease a mini-muffin pan.  Pop open one of the crescent roll cans and spread out the dough, keeping the other one in the fridge until you're ready to use it.

See all those seams in that picture up there?  You're going to want to pinch the dough to close those so it's all one piece.

Spread a thin layer of Nutella on top of the dough.

Cut the dough into twelve strips.  Now here's where things get a little tricky.  The recipe that my sister sent me from Amy (purple dress) just says to "twist the nutella and dough strip together and place in a mini-muffin pan".  I have no idea in what way I'm supposed to be twisting these things, so here's what I ended up doing: First, kind of twist it around so the nutella is (mostly) inside the dough.

Like so.

Then, roll that up, so it looks kind of like a snail shell.

Thusly.

Now just put that into your mini-muffin pan.  I eventually got sick of doing it this way since it does get super messy, so I also did about half of them just rolling the strips up kind of like a jelly roll. 

Once you're done with this first can of crescent roll dough, get out the other one and do the same thing.  You'll wind up with 24 of these little guys.

Bake them for about 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.  Let them cool for a couple minutes and remove them from the pan.

So how did they taste?  Holy crap, they were fantastic.  I tried one just to make sure I wasn't going to be bringing something horrible over to my friend's house and was then very sad I'd given up sweet stuff for Lent.  Especially when I then had to smell them in the car all the way to Virginia Beach.  I will definitely be making these again (probably on Easter).

Have a recipe you want me to try making?  Let me know!  It saves me trying to come up with something on my own!

Seafood Casserole

It's Lent, and for many people, that means no meat on Fridays.  Normally I just have a peanut butter sandwich (or a grilled cheese and peanut butter sandwich if I'm feeling ambitious!), but this week I figured I'd go a little fancier and decided to try out a seafood casserole recipe one of my coworkers found a few weeks ago.  To make this dish, you'll need: 2 Tbsp butter; 2 Tbsp flour; 1 C milk; 1/4 tsp salt; 1/2 C sharp cheddar cheese; 1/2 C sour cream; 1 lb fish fillets cut into chunks (I used tilapia); 1 C crab meat; 1 C scallops; cooked wide egg noodles; 1/4 C toasted pecans.

Preheat your oven to 325.  In a medium sized skillet melt the butter over medium heat and mix in the flour and stir in the milk.  Cook this, stirring constantly, until it's thickened up a bit.  Add in the salt and cheese and stir until the cheese melts. 

Set it aside and when it's cooled a bit, stir in the sour cream.  Spread the cut up bits of fish on the bottom of a greased 9 x 13" pan.  Mix the crab meat and the scallops into the cheese sauce, then pour into the pan over the fish.  Stick in the oven for 20-30 minutes, or until the fish is cooked (it won't be translucent anymore).

Serve it over some wide egg noodles (or regular noodles, or rice, or whatever you want) and sprinkle some toasted pecans over it.

And you've got dinner!  This was pretty tasty, but I'll be honest: it was kind of bland.  What I did with the leftovers (and it warms up pretty well, by the way) and what I'll do the next time I make this, is I added some Old Bay seasoning.  It's also a kind of pricey dinner, what with the crab meat (though you can substitute shrimp instead).  I'd definitely make this again, probably for the folks, but it's really a once-in-a-while kind of thing.