It seems almost too easy to make a broth with a stick blender.  It seems like that invention opened the world of soups and soup making wide open.  The way I think about things with this invention is you have your solids and your broth.  You can’t mix them until you’ve blended.  You can prepare them separately or together after the blending point.  Most people are only looking for hot food in a soup.  For this I thought calling it purple soup would make it appealing to kids.  You could come up with a descriptor about it’s flavor as well.

Ingredients:

• 1 28 oz jar cheese based pasta sauce
• 1 24 oz container cottage cheese
• 16 oz greek yogurt plain
• 3 15 oz cans black beans
• 8 medium sized yukon gold potatoes
• 2 lbs ham cubed
• 1 lb fresh mushrooms
• Milk or water

Instructions:

1. Place all ingredients except the solids, the ham and the mushrooms, in a crock pot.
2. Add milk or water to cover eventual broth ingredients and cook through water, first cold, then warm, and finally boiling, in a crock pot on low for 8 hours.
3. Blend with stick blender.
4. I am choosing to cook the solids separately, so in a frying pan I sauteed my mushrooms in olive oil.  The ham I cooked in the mushroom juices until browned.
5. Place a portion of ham and sauteed mushrooms in a bowl.  Cover with broth.  Stir and serve.

Mexican food is widely popular outside Mexico.  In the Dutch meat and potato environment of my childhood, it probably was popular enough to make an appearance of about once a weak in some form.  I saw Tasty on Facebook using 10 burrito shells to make a loaf on a cookie sheet.  I wanted to try it.  Their recipe held little appeal to me.  My mom made a 9 x 13 casserole called mexican casserole which was similar to lasagna exchanging flour tortilla shells for noodles and Mexican ground beef mixture for Italian ground beef mixture.  Using the memory of this casserole, a few ingredients which are my go-to, and my knowledge of science, I made up something of my own.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. Chicken thighs deboned and skinned, cooked to your desired doneness, then shredded and cooled
• 3 15 oz cans diced tomatoes
• 1 8 oz can tomato sauce
• 1 27 oz can black beans
• 3 colored bell peppers seeded and sliced
• 1 16 oz fresh mushrooms sliced
• 2 15 oz cans refried beans
• 1 8 oz package Mexican blend cheese
• 1 package of 10 burrito size flour shells
• 2 Mexican spice packets
• 2 small avocados sliced

Instructions:

1. Saute mushrooms and bell pepper in olive oil in large pan.  I used a 14 inch frying pan with tall sides.
2. Add spice packets.
3. Mix well.
4. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, and black beans.
5. Bring to a boil.
6. You want to reduce this mixture so that it is similar to a paste.
7. To do this you will use science.  I used conduction, convection, and absorption, but feel free to pick from any in your repertoire.  Conduction is between the stove burner and the frying pan.  Conduction is also between the frying pan an the liquid touching it.  It spreads outward from there.  Convection is present because we are talking about a liquid.  Because that liquid is boiling there is a self mixing of the heat.  As the viscosity or thickness of the liquid increases, your self mixing of the heat decrease and you have to resort to more mechanical mixing so conduction doesn’t take over and burn your liquid to the frying pan.  As for the absorption, I just didn’t feel like waiting that long so I added about 5 Tbs. Rice.  This won’t really change the taste of your material much.  Think of of it like ice in a drink.  Anyways 10 – 15 minutes later you have much less water and are closer to a paste.
8. When you have a paste set aside and allow to cool.
9. Oil or spray your cookie sheet.
10. Set the tortilla shells on the cookie sheet so that you have 1 half on and half off the cookie sheet for each of the smaller sides of the cookie sheet, 2 half on and half off for each of the longer sides, and 2 for the bottom middle.  Reserve 2 shells for the top middle.
11. Take the 2 cans of refried beans and make a layer on the shells on the cookie sheet.
12. Cover the beans with the shredded chicken.
13. Cover the chicken with the cheese.
14. Cover the cheese with the paste.
15. Cover the paste with sliced avocados.
16. Place the two shells held in reserve on the center top of your loaf and fold over all of your half shells from the bottom layer to make a loaf.
17. Oil the bottom of another cookie sheet.
18. Put this sheet over your loaf.
19. Weight it down with something oven safe.
20. Place in preheated 325 degree oven for 35 minutes.
21. Allow to cool.
22. Slice and serve.

I’m a single guy and most of the food I make is large recipe.  I easily make enough to feed a family.  I can typically make 8 to 10 main dish meals from a recipe.  One thing that keeps well and almost seems to be made for our microwave lives (no time to start a fire, just the world of button pushing) is lasagna.  I have experimented with alternative sauces made from other blended vegetables like avocado.  I have experimented with no cheese on the top.  If you have tomatoes on top and you do it right you can caramelize the tomatoes.  This is a flavor I have enjoyed since having a wet burrito fresh out of the oven for the first time, where you scrape the caramelized tomato sauce off the plate.

For this lasagna I threw out previous experimentations and tried a few different one.  I added a cheese pasta sauce, commercially bought, to the sauce mix instead of cottage cheese or ricotta cheese.  I added heavy whipping cream to the sauce to make it richer and add variety.  I also used chorizo as a meat to add spice and flavor.

The recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 28 oz bottle of pasta sauce
• 3 15 oz cans diced tomatoes
• 2 8 oz cans tomato sauce
• 1/2 bottle commercial cheese pasta sauce
• 6 oz heavy whipping cream
• 12 oz chorizo
• 12 oz mushrooms canned or fresh and sauteed
• 15 lasagna noodles
• 1 C mexican blend cheese

Instructions:

1. Remove chorizo from casing. Brown, then chill for 30 minutes.
2. Mix all ingredients in large bowl including chilled chorizo and excluding lasagna noodles.
3. In 9x13in pan, preferably borosilicate glass, start by covering bottom liberally with sauce.  Then use five dry lasagna noodles to make a layer overlapping them a bit.  The dry noodles will cook while the dish bakes, absorbing water.
4. Make another layer of sauce and noodles.  Repeat till you have your 4th layer of sauce.  You should be near the top of the baking dish.
5. This recipe will have extra sauce.  I froze mine to be had with a plate of pasta like farfalle later.
6. Preheat oven to 350.  Cook for 65-70 minutes.  Start checking at 60 minutes to see if your dish is getting done.  If you used a glass dish you will see water boiling up the sides.  When the liquid on the sides of the pan starts to thicken or congeal, you should move on to the next step.
7. Add cheese to top of lasagna.  Put back in oven to melt cheese.  Should take 5-10 minutes.
8. Remove from oven.  Allow to cool. Serve.

Notes:

I thought this could use more spice.  Maybe add a hot pepper.  This would also be good with zucchini or asparagus.

I’ve been experimenting with candy making for several months to a year now.  When I say candy making I’m referring to the complicated things you can do with sugar, not like chocolatiering, which is what you find more examples of in the candy aisle in the grocery store or the gas station.  In most candy making you need a starch so you are not just eating sugar, although the just sugar form is popular in caramels and hard candies or something else you would have had in church as a kid.  I’ve used popcorn and various types of store bought cereals.  It occurred to me that if I used oatmeal I would have something similar to granola.

Ingredients:

• 1 C Light Karo syrup
• 1/2 C Butter
• 1 C White Sugar
• 1/2 C Bootstrap Molasses
• 15 Large Marshmallows
• 6 C Oatmeal
• 2 C Crisp Rice
• 2 C Dry Roasted Peanuts

Instructions:

1. Pour cereal, oatmeal, and peanuts into large bowl you can mix in.  Set aside for later.
2. Over medium heat melt butter in medium saucepan.
3. Add Karo syrup, white sugar, and molasses.
4. While stirring, mix thoroughly and bring to a boil.
5. Allow to boil for approximately a minute, allowing sugars to candy, stirring to keep from burning to bottom of pan.
6. Remove from heat add marshmallows, allowing them to melt into mixture.
7. Stirring will help melt marshmallows, and it is your goal to incorporate them into the other sugars as a homogeneous mixture.
8. Let sugars cool for approximately 5 minutes.
9. Pour sugars over bowl containing cereals and nuts.
10. Stir until starches and sugars are well mixed.
11. Divide in 2 and pour each half onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
12. Place cookie sheets in preheated 325 degree oven.
13. Cook for 18 minutes rotating position at the halfway point.
14. Remove from oven, allowing bars to cool.
15. When bars are fully cooled they will crack like peanut brittle and you will not be able to cut them.  In order to stop the inevitable for a more desired conclusion, while bars are still somewhat hot score/cut bars into portions.  Then you will be able to tear them apart when they are cooled.