What's for Dinner #101 - the Holidaypalooza Edition! - December 2023

As long as it’s from being kind and not injecting bacon fat … :joy:

No doubt you’ll luck out there.

Do the meatloaves freeze well, and for how long? I’m thinking that making minis, each with different seasonings, would be useful for our (likewise) household of two.

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Yes, they freeze quite well. We do vacuum seal them individually. I don’t think we’ve kept any of them longer than a few months, though, so I can’t say. We eat them hot, and also love them cold on sandwiches.

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No pics of dinner tonight because of fast-approaching kid meltdowns as jet lag was peaking at various points (mine should be wearing off, but my nephews are at the worst point which drags me back down till they’re done).

We had a massive Indian Chinese meal: Hakka noodles, Egg fried rice, Burnt garlic fried rice, Soya chilli chicken, Chicken Manchurian, Veg Manchurian, Chilli paneer, Garlic string beans, Soya garlic broccoli, Chicken lollipops, sweet corn soup, wonton soup, and hot and sour soup. Phew.

I also ordered a half portion of sev puri for myself, after asking EVERYONE if they wanted any and being shouted down (ARE YOU CRAZY? WE’RE EATING CHINESE!) — any guesses for how much of that I got to eat?

Tomorrow we move on to the puri feast.

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Your creamed spinach looks wonderful. Will you please share your recipe.

While I think creamed spinach best made from fresh spinach with cream and no roux, this time of year (winter) I’m most likely to make it from frozen with a roux, as I did this week. The added advantage is that with a roux base, it can be made in advance and just reheated briefly before serving.

10 oz. package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well wrung of excess moisture
1 T. unsalted butter
2-4 T. minced shallot or other white/yellow onion
1 T. flour
¼ c. chicken (or other) stock
¼ c. milk (any kind)
Grated nutmeg
¼ t. Morton‘s kosher salt (or equivilent)
1/8 t. freshly ground black pepper
A squeeze of lemon juice, to taste

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Saute the onion until soft - about 2-3 minutes. Whisk in the flour and cook 1-2 minutes. Add the milk and the stock, whisking rapidly. Add nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring a few minutes until slightly thickened. Turn off heat and add spinach. Stir and fold well to blend. Adjust seasonings, adding a dash of lemon juice. Serve warm.

Enjoy!

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I’ve never had creamed spinach, other than an inedible frozen Stouffer’s purchase. I love spinach, raw in salad form and sautéed usually with olive oil, garlic, shallots - sometimes adding apples, raisins and pine nuts. How do you make it with just cream, and no roux?

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To make it from fresh spinach with no roux, I pretty much follow the same proceedure, except I start with 10 oz. chopped fresh spinach, sauteing until soft. Wring gently. Reserve. Proceed as per above, eliminating the flour and substituting heavy cream for the milk.

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I am trying to imagine your magnificent !feast

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Just seasoned with salt & pepper? What do you use for the saute - butter? Any nutmeg?

Lamb birria, from the slow cooker using lamb breast. Mug of the consummé out of shot. Adapted from https://www.bigoven.com/recipe/birria/38337 . Looking forward to the leftovers tomorrow in big, messy quesadillas!

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Lost at poker. Food was crappy Domino’s and good wings :slight_smile:

After a fairly substantial brunch today, dinner was a rather small & light affair: a big ole salad with harvest crunch, celery, radishes, cukes, flavor bomb tomatoes, blue cheese & walnuts in walnut vinaigrette & a few slices of that amazing smoked venison sausage with jalapeños and cheese. 'twas all we needed.

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A thread here on Hungry Onion about “Food trends that makes you roll your eyes” came up with lots of overkill ingredients over the past 30+ years or so.

One was sundried tomatoes in oil. Yup, those were definitely cheffed to death in the late 80s/ early 90s. Couldn’t get away from it. Their popularity finally dried up, but you can still buy it. And I’ve had some for awhile, and the thread got me wanting that flavor.

So…chicken breasts were stuffed with feta, spinach and sundried tomatoes (along with minced garlic, onions, and a drizzle of olive oil) was dinner tonight.

Seasoned with salt, paprika, and garlic powder, then pan-seared in butter and olive oil, then into a baking dish in a 400° oven for 20 minutes or so to finish cooking.

Added some white wine, chicken stock, and lemon juice to the searing skillet, brought to a boil, then simmered and reduced by more than half removing from heat and mounting with cold butter for a sauce.

Sliced and served on Near East rice pilaf. (I’m on a Near East kick.)

Wine.

Also made some Orange-Spiced Nuts to bring in to work tomorrow.

And finally, the boyz had a butt-to-butt nap for about an hour today :astonished: on the back of the couch with no fighting or biting. And Murphy didn’t even jump down when I went into the kitchen twice to do some clean-up. He just watched me. :heart:

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Looks tasty! Your co-workers are lucky.

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That is one adorable butt-to-butt kitteh nap :heart_eyes_cat:

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I had intended on having a spring roll bowl for dinner but after running around trying to find the fresh herbs called for in the dish and not finding a single one of them I gave up. When I got home and was thinking about what I had in the fridge that I would like to finish up for dinner I decided on the peas that I was going to have with tomorrow night’s dinner. I was also getting a hankering for pasta so that’s when budget bytes came ro the rescue so I made their pasta with peas and bacon.

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Yum!

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I culled a lot of cookbooks several winters ago after a pantry moth infestation of an area where they were housed near a container of birdseed near one of doors to our garden. I remember tossing many of them outside into the snow instead of going through pages and bindings with the vacuum to get rid of the worms and larvae. Two that come to mind were single subjects on “sun dried tomatoes” and “goat cheese”. Those were the culinary darlings du jour…

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Thank you!