Alison Kent's Blah Blog

I am not a cook. I CAN cook. I can follow recipes, but I can’t use ratios or judge ingredients or do any of the cool things real chefs can do to make a dish come together in an edible fashion. The husband can do that. He only recently bought a bread machine to experiment with. And the best loaf he’s made is one where he eyeballed ingredients and used the live yeasty growing thing stored in the back of the refrigerator for leavening. He does the same with other dishes. He makes the best meatloaf ever. I don’t even know what goes into it. I only know it’s better than mine.

The first loaf I made in the bread machine was a huge fail. It was a jalapeno loaf, or would’ve been had I managed the yeast correctly. The second loaf I made was much better, but not great. It was a Sally Lunn recipe and when fresh, had a great flavor, but dried out way too quickly. The third loaf I made was your basic white, and it was good. We cut thick slices and toasted them for huge sandwiches, then as it dwindled, cut thinner slices to toast with butter, parmesan, and garlic to eat with lasagna. But the fourth loaf? Yeah. This one was a winner, and my first made with wheat flour.

The recipe I used is a copy cat of Outback Steakhouse’s Honey Wheat Bushman Bread. We don’t ever eat at Outback, so I can’t speak to how close it comes, but we do eat at Salt Grass Steakhouse, and it’s very similar to their beer bread. The Outback recipe didn’t call for beer, but it did call for cool things like cocoa and instant coffee! I did take the advice of commenters and added powdered buttermilk and molasses, plus it did indeed require the extra flour several reviewers mentioned. I was happy to see that someone had done the whole thing in their bread machine (since that’s the point), and using the settings she recommended, I managed to come up with a very yummy result – though don’t ask me how the weird crust thing happened.

Since Pioneer Woman had posted a recipe for Spaghetti with Artichoke Hearts and Tomatoes, and I knew I had a can of artichoke hearts in the pantry, I had to give it a try. Problem was, I had no spaghetti. We don’t eat spaghetti. In fact, we don’t eat much pasta, or rice, or potatoes. Or even bread, though the above experimentation makes it sound as if we do. Trust me. We don’t. We don’t even eat much in the way of cereal, avoiding simple carbs as much as we can. I don’t really even LIKE pasta. I’ve always thought it had the texture of gooey slugs. I do like lasagna, and I do like spaghetti, but don’t even get me near a pasta salad. Ugh. That said, I’ve been eating more penne and rotini since we’ve discovered Dreamfields’ low glycemic pasta.

The rotini worked. I also diced up two yellow squash and tossed them into the mix. Since I’m the one doing most of the cooking lately, and failing as often as winning, the husband and I have a running gag about yellow squash that’s too complicated to explain, so adding the extra veggies to the dish was a bit of an inside joke, but they were really good. I did leave out the nutmeg; not a fan of the flavor outside of baked goods. I also used half cream, half evaporated milk. I will definitely make this again.

Here’s where the meal gets even weirder. After seeing Pioneer Woman’s recipe for Simple, Pan-Fried Porkchops, I’d bought chops and they were in the fridge needing to be cooked. So I did – even though my side dish was pasta. I’m sure pasta with grilled chicken would make more sense, but call me a rebel. The pork chops were wonderful. I mean, I’ve made pork chops a gazillion times. Usually we grill or broil them, and I’m sure I’ve fried them in the past, but I actually don’t fry a lot of foods.

Again, don’t judge my food intake by the pictures here. I really really don’t eat a lot of bread or pasta or fried things. (Chocolate, on the other hand . . .) This just happened to be ONE OF THOSE DAYS, and as horribly unhealthy as a lot of this is, it all came together swimmingly and was Very Very Good! The husband agreed, though he did say none of these things needed to be on anyone’s plate at the same time, heh.