Blooming onion garlic bread
- Isn’t it lovely how simply cutting a dish differently can completely change it? And somehow, a dish always tastes better when it looks better.
- 20 oz flour
- 12 oz water
- 2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp yeast
Knead for 10 minutes. Let rise for about an hour. Bake at 450F for 10 minutes and then 375F for 15-20 minutes.
- For the blooming onion variety, just shape into 4 small loaves and when cooled slightly, slice almost through to the bottom in inch segments. Add butter and garlic to each piece. Yum!
Even just keeping the vibrant colors of salad toppings separated in a bowl somehow make it more cheerful before hitting the plate. Love it.
Ladybugs on boats and bacon caterpillars – Tyson grilled chicken
I guess they’re more like rafts, since I didn’t add bacon sails like I considered, but still better than ants on a log.
Actually, my final dish is completely different than what I originally had in mind. Tyson and Foodbuzz sent me a coupon to try out Tyson’s new Grilled & Ready items. Turns out, my store only carries the chicken variety and not the steak like I was planning on, so those plans got scrapped.
Then I thought they were more stick-like and less flat, so my ideas involving various sized cubes wasn’t really going to look right. The next step I got mostly right, realizing they were larger pieces, but I was a bit disappointed to see that it wasn’t all strips like I thought it’d be.
See? There are a fair number of chicken strip type pieces but most weren’t very long and there were way more “bits” than I would’ve expected. Oh well. At least there were plenty of little pieces to taste test, I guess. :P
Ultimately, instead of the chicken becoming the main focus of the dish like would be typical of a review, the pieces were used as vehicles for my ladybugs. Had there been more full pieces like there should’ve been, there would’ve been way more ladybugs.
I wanted some bacon caterpillars, but wasn’t sure how well they’d hold up.
To get this little guys, I sliced turkey bacon into smaller strips, folded it onto toothpicks (skewers for the larger snake-esque ones, and just free form with the squiggly ones), and baked them on an greased baking sheet.
They slid off surprisingly well, but that left me with some holes to deal with. Which of course meant, more smiley faces. :P
It looks more like a ghost there, huh? Ooooooo.
While I’m at it, I had some other, um, odd turnouts. Before I settled on exactly how to make the ladybugs, I tried several variations.
Some were obviously better than others. When I was trying to cut the tomatoes the other direction, I got some weird lumpy ones, so I added smiley faces to those, too, and made ‘em look like something from Monsters Inc.
Alright, alright, enough pictures. Anyway, Tyson’s Grilled & Ready chicken was definitely tasty. L even said it was her favorite part of the dish, even over and above the bacon (*gasp*). It stayed tender and moist, heated up quickly, and the grill marks were a nice touch. I do wish the pieces had been more uniform in size and shape, but oh well, it tasted great and gave me a reason to split up the package into two dishes.
Salmon guacamole wonton cups – Work what ya pantry gave ya
Okay, so the song is really Shake What Ya Mama Gave Ya, but the idea is the same…..work what you have.
On one of many nights where I just didn’t feel like cooking much at all and hadn’t gone grocery shopping in a while, these babies were born with little effort and items already sitting in my pantry.
The girls loved them. And I was happy they were edible and only took 10 minutes to throw together.
What’s in them?
- A can of salmon, a can of spicy diced tomatoes on the bottom
- An avocado chopped small and mixed with sour cream (mayo or cream cheese would work, too), lemon juice, and some salt
- Baked wonton cups made by slicing eggroll wrappers into quarters, putting in muffin tins, spritzing with cooking spray and salt, and broiling for 3-4 minutes
- Chopped chives sprinkled on top because as L says, it makes them “look fancy,” and suddenly a million times more appealing to them.
Yay for another laziness-inspired success.
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