Cooking Dinner- Tuna Fish in a Fish!

We recently got a "kids" cookbook so we can involve the girls in picking and making one dinner/meal each week. They look through the book and pick the recipe they want to try. Our first was a cutesy dish that was basically a tuna melt in fish-shaped pie crust.
The girls helped with everything (except chopping, of course). It is hard not to jump in and "fix" or do things for them. It got kind of messy and some things took forever, but I think they learned a lot about basic cooking.
We talked about being clean while cooking. It was hard for them to remember and we went through a couple of spoons and forks that they licked before they were done!
I love this pic of EJ- can you tell she's my kid? She has to stick her tounge out when thinking hard about a task. She is sealing the fish pockets with the "magic trick" Daddy taught them. Both girls had fun brushing the egg wash on their finished fishies.
Unfortunately, we forgot to spray the pan, so the fish were kind of hard to get off. The taste was suprisingly good. The crispy pie crust was an interesting departure from bread with the tuna melt. In all it was a successful experience. Both girls had no problem eating their dinner!

Tomato, Tomato

A while back, DMP and I canned tomatoes. Lots, and Lots, and LOTS of tomatoes. We were very optimistic and bought about 25 lbs at the farmers market. This is the first time we've canned tomatoes and it was pretty fun and easy. We'll see if and how we use the final product!

As you can see from the pic above, we canned diced tomatoes, salsa, and when we discovered we still had a TON of leftover tomatoes, we decided to try tomato sauce.

Canning tomatoes is a gory process- very suitable to October. Especially squishing their guts out for tomato sauce:

Thanks to DMP for helping. I learned that canning with company is WAY more fun than canning solo- plus there is someone to take pictures of your gory hands!

I'm Famous!!

My blog was linked to from Rachel Ray's blog! Check it out:

http://rachaelrayblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/rachael-ray-roundup_28.html



I'm obviously not as cool as my big sister with her cookbook, TV and Martha Stewart Radio interviews, but it is still pretty fun!

Recipe- Eggplant Pannini

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I've kind of had blogger's block. I was actually trying to think of something interesting enough to post and came up with nothing. Good thing we went to an indoor arena football game and had a family party this weekend to spice things up!

In the meantime, I wanted to share a recipe for the awesome sandwiches we had tonight. We gobbled them up so quickly I forgot to get a picture- sorry! We got this recipe from our new BH&G "Vegetarian Cooking" cookbook.

Eggplant Panini

1 cup torn arugla (can sub spinach, arugla is spicer)
2 t. red wine vinegar (we had garlic flavored- yum!)
1 t. olive oil

Toss together in a small bowl.

1 Eggplant, cut into 1/2 in. thick rounds
3 oz fresh Mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced
1 12in. plain or seasoned round foccacia bread, halved horizontally
1 large tomato, thinly sliced
1/3 c. seasoned dry bread crumbs
2T parmesan cheese
1 egg
1T milk
2T flour

In a shallow dish, beat together egg and milk. In another dish, stir the bread crumbs and parm. cheese. Put the flour in a third dish. (we're breading the eggplant, see how that works?) Dip the eggplant slices inot the flour to coat, then dip into the egg mixture and last, into the crumb mixture.

In a 12 in. non-stick skillet, heat 1T oil over med. heat. Add eggplant slices and cook for 6-8 min. or until lightly browned, turning once. Top the eggplant slices with the mozzarella cheese. Cook, covered, just until the cheese begins to melt.

To serve, put the eggplant slices cheese side up on bottom half of bread. Top with the arugala mixture and tomato slices (and the top half of the bread, of course). Cut into serving-size wedges.

TIP: To keep the eggplant from tasting bitter, you will need to "degorge" it (I know, it sounds disgusting). Just make sure you rinse it really well- we didn't do a great job and it was a bit salty...

This was super-quick and really, really yummy! You can also make a great "second day" meal with the leftovers- just put some spaghetti sauce and some of the parm cheese on the eggplant/mozz and viola- eggplant parm!

A Mystery Decoded- Sort Of

I like food- alot.  That means I also like to cook and watch cooking shows.  Lately on the "watch someone else travel and eat yummy food" shows it seems there have been several instances of a beloved southern meal of fried chicken and waffles.



I've spent a lot of time thinking about this dish (I know, I'm crazy).  As you can see from the picture, it isn't chicken strips, it is chicken "on the bone". So are they meant to be eaten together like you would take a bite of chicken and eat it with a bite of creamy polenta?  Are they totally seperate? Do you pour syrup over the whole thing- fried chicken included?  Who the heck came up with this dish? 

So, my blog public, I turned to my old friend, Wikipedia for answers.  Turns out, this dish has a long history- particularly among the African-American slaves in the "olden days".  They would typically get leftovers and waffles at that time were a great novelty and they rarely got fried chicken.  So it apparently became a special occasion meal for them and, later, many families would have a hearty breakfast of chicken and waffles before church. Now there are a couple of restaurant chains that specialize in the dish.

So that answers a lot of my questions, but I still don't know- do you pour the syrup on the chicken?  Based on my intense 30 scanning of pictures on Google images, I'm going to say no. But perhaps it is like eating bacon or sausage with your waffles- some people don't mind or even enjoy the mixing of maple and meat.