food – hellomelissa.net

Slacker Recipe: Perogies Alfredo

March 19, 2013March 17, 2013 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

I feel like I should introduce this post by reminding everyone that I am not the best cook. Better cooks: please proceed with caution.

I was trying to come up with a family-friendly dinner involving minimal effort on Sunday night. It was the last day of March Break and we were all feeling a little worn out and ready to go back to our usual routine. My googling led me to a Pierogies Alfredo recipe I found on Feels Like Home. It looked tasty, but I didn’t have any broccoli. Flora probably would have fought me on it anyway. I simplified the recipe even more to appeal to the pickier eaters in my household (read: Flora and Sean).

Pierogies Alfredo

Ingredients:

1 package of frozen pierogies (I used potato and cheddar, but use what you like.)
1 jar of Alfredo sauce
fresh black pepper
bacon bits

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9×13 baking dish with cooking spray.
Pour a package of frozen pierogies into the baking dish.
Pour a jar of Alfredo sauce over the pierogies and mix it all together.
Grind fresh black pepper to taste and sprinkle bacon bits over the pierogies. You can also do this step at the table if like me, you have picky eaters that will flip out if there are spices in their food. Being allowed to customize it at the table is fun too.
Bake uncovered for 40 minutes.

I didn’t take any pictures because I’m not a food blogger or food stylist. The pierogies were delicious, but completely un-photogenic. I made the whole package, so there were leftovers for our family of three and we had the rest last night. Flora liked sprinkling the bacon bits on them, but she picked at them as four year-olds like to do. Sean and I ate them with great gusto and I will probably make them again. If I was cooking them for more adventurous eaters, I’d add some onion. If I had more time, I’d have probably fried up real bacon to put on them (I did that with my leftovers and it was a good idea.) These are a substantial side-dish so make sure your main is light. We had it with ham slices and mixed veggies and they were good companions.

This would also be a good dish to take to a potluck. I’m writing this recipe down so I remember it the next time I need something easy, quick and comforting.

I can’t bear to eat this stuff

August 9, 2011 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

Everyone has a a weird food thing. A strange combination that makes the best snack. Eating candies in order of colour. An insistence that food items cannot touch on your plate. A food they cannot bear to eat.

Eggs look nice, but I cannot eat them. — Photo courtesy of Jaycee Barratt, burningwell.org

Here’s mine: I cannot eat eggs.

I’m not allergic, but I can’t even fathom the thought of eating an egg. I can’t remember ever eating a breakfast-style egg. I must have had a really bad experience when I was a baby before my memory kicked in. My parents never pushed eggs on me, so maybe they remember the experience I don’t. (Remind me to ask my mom sometime.) I have no problem eating eggs in baked treats (cookies, cakes etc.) or in pad Thai, but when I went to try Sean’s omelet at home one night, I took a miniscule piece that fit on my baby fingernail – and couldn’t bear to put it in my mouth.

Don’t offer to pay for my breakfast buffet at a restaurant – that money is generally wasted on me as I avoid all of the dishes involving eggs.. I love a good Sausage-only McMuffin though.

When I tell this story to people I know, the part that really shocks them is when I tell them I had to read my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (the cookbook that covers the basics in my house) to figure out how to make omelets. And maybe scrambled eggs. Sean had a hankering for some eggs and neither one of us had cooked them ourselves. Me due to the yuck-factor and Sean because his mom always cooked for him growing up.

I realize I’m probably missing out. I know eggs are a nutritional powerhouse and that they are more than a breakfast food. I like the idea of eggs – their convenience and versatility appeal to a slacker cook such as myself. It’s just that the thought of actually eating an egg that is not folded into a baked treat grosses me the fuck out. I’ve cooked eggs here and there over the years for Sean (and Flora – don’t want to pass down my neuroses!) but I don’t ever sample the dish and I just hope I’ve cooked them right.

I’m not sure if this is something I’ll get over during my lifetime. Here’s hoping that Sean gets the hang of cooking the breakfast eggs on the weekends. It seems unwholesome to have someone cook food that they would never eat themselves.

Photo courtesy of Jaycee Barratt, burningwell.org

I love a good magazine

April 20, 2010April 20, 2010 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

I love magazines. I’ve loved them for nearly as long as I could read.

When I was a kid, I stealth-read my mother’s magazines – she didn’t like me reading them even though the titles she read were pretty tame. My tween years were filled with pinup mags despite the fact I didn’t recognize half of the non-threatening teen boys they covered (we didn’t have cable till I was past the pinup mag stage). I spent my teens and twenties reading music, teen, and fashion mags by the armful.

Now that I’m in my thirties and a parent, my choice of magazines is changing again, but I’m struggling to find the perfect read. I feel like I’m straddling two demographics: woman and Mom. Of course, women can’t possibly be both of those things at the same time, so never shall the two demographics meet in one magazine. This makes me crazy. When will there be an article about how to clean kid’s snack residue out of your killer purse?

Recently I’ve felt like I’ve grown out of some magazines. I’ve decided not to renew my ten-year subscription to BUST because I think their niche is too small – hipster feminists who like to craft – I’m just not cool enough for that magazine anymore (not that I ever was, but I’m really feeling it now). I still read Glamour, but it’s a little fluffier (with a couple Serious Articles thrown in), and usually a bigger read.

I’ve subscribed to Chatelaine since their big redesign in 2008 and I enjoy it. I appreciate that they cover a bit of everything, but I wish they’d do more longer articles on Serious Subjects, as I think they do that very well. I’ve used several of their recipes and they have always turned out successfully.

I tried Canadian Family this month because I love their blog: Family Jewels, and their Twitter feed. I wasn’t disappointed, and will likely get a subscription soon. I love their down-to-earth tone. Parenting is Serious Business, but it’s also full of funny stuff, and I appreciate a magazine that gets that.

I saw an interesting ad in the May 2010 issue of Glamour magazine about “The Power of Print”. As a magazine-lover, the lead-in: “We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines.” really Has this ad come up in your monthly reads? Did you notice it? I think this is an American-0nly campaign, so it won’t show up in your Canadian reads.

If you know of any magazines that straddle the woman/Mom demographic, or are just good reads, let me know what they are in the comments. I would love to read them. Bonus points if they have a great online presence. Extra bonus points if that online presence works well in a mobile environment.

often

Slacker Recipe: Spinach Soup

April 29, 2009January 29, 2009 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

I like to cook, but I don’t tend to follow recipes to the letter. I love to read cookbooks but I never seem to have the exact ingredients on hand. Unless it’s something I’m making for a special occasion, I usually wing it or bastardize the recipe to accommodate the ingredients I have around.

This spinach soup was actually inspired by a post I saw on Vox shortly after I joined. Despite marking the post a favourite back then, I’ve never actually made it. Now, it may become a regular in my repertoire – it was easy, fast and very tasty. And more importantly, it’s very customizable.

I took a package of frozen spinach and plopped it into a medium saucepan. I cooked it on medium heat until it had defrosted and warmed. Then I threw in a box of ready-to-use chicken broth, a couple handfuls of penne pasta, a bunch of fresh ground pepper and two spoonfuls of Indian tikka paste. I stirred everything up and let the whole thing come to a boil, then simmer until the pasta was cooked through. When that was done, I stirred a tiny bit of feta cheese into it for a little bit of creaminess.

It turned out light and flavourful, and nutritious to boot! And the items are so easy to substitute to get a soup that you want. Vegetarian? Use vegetable broth! Don’t like Indian food? Use Thai curry paste, Jamaican jerk seasoning or some other sort of spice combo! Change the cheese! Don’t add cheese! Use rice! Add more vegetables! Add chicken! Add some more exclamation points! I hear they’re the next big food fad.

I had some leftovers and it was still tasty today, although some of the broth got sucked up into the spinach. No pictures because I ate it all up!