All those spices and special foods I bought? Figure out how to use them, or purge them or something...

On Thanksgiving, I Frankenstiened two things – the injector from one kit and some Cajun butter sauce injector liquid without an injector for the turkey. The turkey was great with the Cajun butter sauce, but there was way more butter sauce than we needed. The kit the injector came with had some flavored sauce with it…but, to be honest…it looked very molasses-like and the ingredient list wasn’t heavy on the natural side.

Today, I tossed the remainder of the Cajun butter sauce after realizing that I didn’t really have anything else I wanted to inject with it in the near future. I also tossed the scary packet. I’m keeping the actual injector in a drawer since I know that I can do crazy things like melt butter and mix it with seasonings if I want to inject chicken breasts in the future. :)

In the name of partial bottles of stuff everywhere, let us say goodbye to the following:

- That last bit of Cab-Merlot that’s been hanging around.
- A final bit of Worcestershire Sauce (don’t worry, there was another full bottle waiting to take his place)
- A little bit of Balsamic Vinaigrette Salad Dressing
- A little bit of Wishbone Bountiful Italian Dressing

What for? A steak marinade. A pretty tasty one, if I do say so myself. And it freed up some space both on my kitchen island (that wine’s been out for a while – I have that wine-saver air taker-out thingy) and in my fridge for the two salad dressing bottles that went away. Oh, and I guess I did get that tiny bit of space in the pantry when I moved my new Worcestershire Sauce to the space in the fridge where the old bottle was.

I found half a bag of frozen dumplings from the Asian store – bought not only because they were on sale (down from ridiculously cheap to stupid cheap), which allowed me to finish off the bottle of Gyoza sauce in the fridge.

I’m glad to get rid of that, because I always have soy sauce on had – and rice vinegar. Which is pretty much Gyoza sauce and I can add hot pepper flakes and garlic if I want to be fancy. I don’t have to have that additional bottle in the fridge.

And the dumplings are pretty dang good. :)

Well, this wasn’t really my idea originally, but husband was in the mood for some chili and I was searching for some new ideas. I came across this recipe on Big Oven

All I was really missing were Habaneros. Crazy, eh? Not really because I had leftover fresh Anaheims and Serranos – in the absence of habaneros, I simply decided 6 Anaheims and 3 Serranos would do. And while I had frozen Italian Sausage, I didn’t have spicy – but I did have spicy dry garlic pepper chutney!

But that’s not the best part. I have had dried wasabi powder and some instant espresso forever. I mean, I drink coffee, but how good would espresso be in this chili? OH – and I still had some beer left from the Tamale party.

So let’s recap:

Super-Special ingredients used:
Wasabi Powder
Espresso Powder

Leftovers in desperate need of being used:
Anaheim Chili peppers
Serrano Chili peppers

Not so desperate need:
A beer!
More of my dry chili garlic pepper chutney mix

And how was this chili? AWESOME. Not too spicy, a little sweet and a whole lot of flavor. I will say that I really didn’t use 4 tablespoons of oil and I drained the meat of the oil – so I didn’t end up with the site photo grease ring. But I did end up with some delicious chili.

Still in the cryo-pack!

This had been there for a while, but it defrosted beautifully. We’ve been on a bit of a polenta kick lately, so I was surfing around for some recipes and came across this one – http://community.cookinglight.com/showthread.php?t=69674

While it was good, I made some tweaks and adjustments since I’ve been a bit more calorie-conscious of late. That, and I only had ground lamb…

I cut the 1/4 cup of olive oil down to a tablespoon since I was using a nonstick pan. (I ended up draining out some excess fat as it was.) I only had 1% milk on hand, but I ended up taking the liquids for the polenta to a 2 cup water, 1 cup chicken stock, 1 cup 1% milk mixture. I had lowfat cream cheese instead of the mascarpone cheese – all good trades that cut nearly 300 calories per serving.

This is a tasty dish. To be honest, we’ve been on the polenta kick for a bit simply because it’s more filling than pasta. And quicker to cook in a lot of cases (obviously if I want to cool it and cut it, that’s a whole different ball o’ wax). You can make it in lowfat and highfat versions and everything in between. Not that I don’t love pasta, but this has been good. Plus, a canister of cornmeal is dirt cheap.

Anyway, glad to no longer have this staring at me when I open the freezer.

Because of sales at the grocery store this week, we’ve had a lot of ground beef and chicken for dinner. I wasn’t in the mood yesterday. So I found a recipe for Chili-Cheese Black Bean Enchiladas that had a nifty little note – If you’re unable to find soy crumbles, chop thawed veggie burgers to use in their place.

Guess what I had frozen in the recesses of the freezer? That’s right! So I started defrosting a box of Morningstar farms veggie burgers (only 10oz, but I figured I would live) and got cracking. I thought I had a second jar of Old El Paso’s short-lived fancy Enchilada Sauce, but after I cooked everything and had made the enchiladas, it turned out what I had was a Sweet Onion and Garlic Sauce designed for cooking chicken and steak. I opened, I tasted it – I decided to roll the dice.

Delicious! We actually have a second box of veggie burgers, so husband has said we need to make these again. I’ll pick up a can of enchilada sauce this time since the Sweet Onion & Garlic sauce no longer exists.

But this recipe is a winner – and super filling. The cream cheese really does do something for the filling.

Well, I know where to get more now! And let me tell you, it was a bear to find this North African paste at first. Now there seem to be six stores where I can always find it. It’s paste that’s tomato-based with lots of chilies, garlic, cumin and coriander in it – it’s good stuff. And a tablespoon goes a long way.

I used the last of it in a batch of Sopa de Albóndigas (Meatball Soup) when I thought I had canned chipotles but I didn’t! This stuff absolutely did the trick. By the by – there are probably a zillion versions of this soup, but I swear, the Cooking Light recipe is our favorite. Nutritious and easy too.

Now to get more Harissa. :)

Who would think that the two of these things could be used together? Well, I was just looking for something to do with ground beef that would be quick and not involve a ton of calories – Cooking Light to the rescue with a Polenta Lasagna recipe.

I’d had a tube of prepared polenta for a while (I get them every so often because I like them, but this one hung out for a while). And then I remembered this random bag of frozen zucchini & squash rounds I’d bought for no good reason. They weren’t even that fancy or anything.

Husband has been eating this all night. I think I’ll be buying more polenta.

I got these at Trader Joes…uh, yeah…I don’t remember the last time I went to Trader Joes.

Anyway, the other night, I made a Chicken Carbonara and while I was boiling the pasta, I threw in the frozen asparagus tips for the last few minutes of boiling. Tossed the pasta and asparagus with some bacon, chicken, onion, half and half, eggs, Parmesan and pepper. Good stuff. Carbonara is one of those go-to meals we have when we can’t think of anything else to cook. It’s fast, it’s easy and you can toss a bunch of random things in it.

And no, I’m not afraid of the raw eggs. You have to live on the edge every so often.

Tonight I made a Burma Pork Curry – I didn’t wholly use ingredients, but I was able to use Tamarind Paste and a Mango Pickle in the dish. It took a while to make, but it was a really tasty pork dish. I also know that in the episode of Chopped where the chefs were confused by Tahini paste that I would have totally schooled them – because I know you don’t actually use the paste straight. I know you soften it in boiling water and push it through a sieve because the stuff is actually rather tough and you really just want the flavor.