All for 'potatoes'

We made chili using a bunch of different seasonings. We also ended up using a good amount of taco seasonings. In the end, we decided it tasted a bit like our much beloved taco stew. Not a bad thing but not really chili either.One of these days, we will perfect a chili recipe!

The mashed potatoes were made the healthy way. We used non-fat greek yogurt, Olivio (only a bit) and Molly Mc Butter. That, along with garlic and onion powders. They were a bit dry but pretty tasty.

An orange meal! The salmon burgers were from Trader Joes. They weren't anywhere near as good as the ones from Costco. They had less flavor and cooked out a lot more fat.

I also made sweet potatoes like I do hash browns. I microwaved them for a bit, then I used a sauté pan.

I made grilled chicken and salt and vinegar potatoes. For the chicken, I marinated chicken breasts (cut in half) in Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce and then cooked it on the grill. Nothing special. I did overcook them a bit, but I still enjoyed them. The sauce caramelized nicely.

I was originally going to make salt and vinegar butternut squash but my squash had gone bad so I used potatoes. I made lots of changes to the recipe. I used white potatoes instead of waxy, and I used apple cider vinegar since white wine vinegar was expensive. I assumed I could let it boil for less time since the potatoes were different so I only have them 3 minutes at a low boil and then turned off the heat. They were lacking a bit of the vinegar flavor so next time, I'll use a longer boil and maybe white vinegar instead. Since I suck at using a charcoal grill, some were more cooked than others. I had to move them to the center where it was noticeably hotter

I had two pieces of chicken for dinner and I ate the third for lunch on a multi-grain english muffin

Meredith and I made an easy dinner. We started with the crispy roasted potatoes I have done before, but with purple majesty potatoes. As I noted the last time, I used a lower heat. I did 450 but kept the 20 minutes. However, I only did the other side for 6 or so. I again just did half-moons since you have to turn them halfway and this helps. They were in fact rather crunchy, though I thought maybe a tad dry.

We did the salmon the usual way on the stove then oven. And, since the oven was already cranked up, we just did the asparagus for 5 minutes with the smoking salmon. That actually gave them a bit more flavor. The 5 minutes at 500 was perfect for "normal" people, though I prefer them a bit more cooked. The salmon came out dry. I do not know if I went too long, the fish was thinner than I am used to, or this was lower quality salmon but it was far from as good as it often is when I cook it this way. Oh well.

We are starting out the new year cooking healthily (and plan to continue). This was our ease-into-it meal.

We made simple seared salmon with dill. Nothing special but really good as always. The shape of it made it hard to estimate when it was done though.

The main star of the meal with Hasselback Tots but done with Patatas Bravas sauce. I actually just updated that recipe too to account for how I did it. Note that it doesn't make a ton of sauce but it was enough since we didn't have a lot of potatoes.

We made the tots using the same technique from 2015-12-05 except much less oil (but still tossed a second time) and with purple potatoes.

Oops

One problem with this meal was that after I tossed the potatoes the second time and put them back on the tray, I forgot that the tray just came out of the oven. I grabbed it with my whole hand. I let go quickly but not before dropping everything on the floor and giving myself a nasty burn

Meredith made us these for brunch. We used the recipe from Inspiralized Cookbook (Local Copy). She followed the recipe pretty closely except she used extra cinnamon and an extra egg.

It was pretty easy and the end result was fine. I do not think you would have convinced anyone they were waffles, but they were enjoyable unto themselves. And, they were pretty low points with just the potatoes and egg (and maybe some incidental oil on the waffle iron).

Meredith also made broiled grapefruit. She put some brown sugar (not much) on them and broiled on high for about 10 minutes.

Sweet Potato Waffles (From Inspiralized)
Local Copy (U: guest, P: name of my dog, lower case)

Meredith and I wanted to make a dinner that was a bit nicer than something we would do during the week but also not go too crazy. I did a bit of googleing and we came up with making Chicken Cordon Bleu and roasted potatoes.

Chicken

For the chicken, I very loosely followed this Betty Crocker recipe (Local ¹). We bought 2 breast for about 1.25 pounds of chicken² and flattened it out as best I could. I did some salt and pepper on both sides. I then spread some dijon mustard on followed by lacy (low fat) swiss and (low sodium) ham. As seen in the pictures below, we then added fresh chives (forgot before) but we ended up moving them down to the mustard layer.

I rolled them up as best I could and used a toothpick to hold it. We made an egg wash of 1 whole egg and a bit of water. I then took panko bread crumbs and broke it up and bit before adding salt, pepper, and hot-but-not-smoked paprika.

I put it in the oven at 375°F (+convection) originally for 27 minutes but ended up adding another 20 (47 total) since I kept getting some low temp readings (as well as high-temp ones. I was confused). In the end, I think it was fully cooked and wasn't too dried out. We cut them in half and saved two servings for lunches. The flavors were really good though. And, one of them came out really pretty as you can see in the photo below.

I also really liked having the mustard it in there. I am glad I read that addition.

Potatoes

At Thanksgiving, my mom made super delicious potatoes. They had a great texture with a crisp outside and a creamy center. It turns out she used canned potatoes. I was a bit surprised, but I think that was really the key. They were essentially par-cooked already.

I decided that I am comfortable using canned tomatoes all the time; why not canned potatoes. We used two cans of whole potatoes and tossed them with 1.5 Tbsp of melted butter. We used some Emril's Cajun Essence and Penzeys' Roasted garlic powder. I originally was going to do 40 min at 375°F (+convection) but since I had to let the chicken keep going, I ended up at an hour. I had tossed them every once in a while to keep them from burning.

They came out really good. Maybe not as good as my Mom's but still had a nice texture. And I want to explore using canned potatoes for other things.

Additional Photos

U: guest, P: name of my dog, all lower case ↩
The recipe says 4 breasts for 1-1/2 pounds. You really cannot find chicken breasts that small these days ↩

We made our regular Patatas Bravas. Meredith made the sauce, though it came out really spicy.

The new thing was trying to use canned potatoes. It was had to find the diced ones but we eventually found them. We really liked them on 2016-12-03 so we decided to try diced. I drained, rinsed, and dried them (with the salad spinner), then tossed them with oil. I used some smoked paprika and a tiny bit of salt (though they are really salty already so I went light). I was worried they wouldn't come out very good since they all stuck on the tray, but I think they worked fine. They had a similar texture to the full-sized ones. Sure enough, they had a nice crunch with some creamy interior.

Once the sauce was done (Meredith followed the recipe but it was super spicy) we topped it and then put on a fried egg.

KitchenKatalog

Oops

Chicken

Potatoes

Additional Photos