The easiest and tastiest mac & cheese you’ll ever make

Oct 21, 2011 by Ben

This is THE easiest and THE most tasty mac & cheese you will ever have.  When you bust this out at partys and pot luck meals your friends will come running over to you, hoist you on their shoulders, and parade you around for being a culinary genius. They will say such wonderful things as, “OMG, that is soooooo good.”, “Best mac & cheese ever!!!”, “You MUST give me the recipe!”.

And here’s where you need to stop.  You DO NOT want to tell your friends what is in this mac and cheese.  It IS the most tasty mac & cheese ever, but it may not be the healthiest of all meals ever.

This recipe is so freaking easy to make.  It only has three ingredients.

So are you ready to make the best mac and cheese ever?   Lets get started…

 Ingredients:

• 16 oz Pasta of your choice.  (I like to use penne pasta, but any will work.)
• 16 oz Velveeta cheese
• 16 oz heavy whipping cream.
• (pumpkin only for decoration)

Boil pasta as per the directions of your pasta

get your wonderful fake orange colored Velveeta out

cut it up into some chunks

Drain the pasta, and set it aside.  Throw the Velveeta chunks into the pot on low to medium heat

Pour in the heaving whipping cream and stir stir stir!  You do not want to burn the sauce

Keep stirring until you get a wonderfully gooey, cheesy, sauce

Pour sauce over pasta and voila

This is seriously THE best mac & cheese you will ever eat and it is ALWAYS a hit when I bring it parties.

Just do yourself a favor and go for a nice long walk or maybe a half marathon after you eat it.

Ben…

Please let me know if this is not THE best mac & cheese you’ve ever had.

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Simple way to cook and shuck corn

Oct 18, 2011 by Ben

I recently taught my dad how to forward email, which in hindsight may not have been the best idea ever, but he did send me this gem. This is by far the easiest way I have ever found to cook and more importantly, shuck corn.

I love it.  And I love Ken.  I want to adopt him as my grandpa. Now if I can only get my corn to grow in my garden!

Ben…

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Family dinner

Oct 6, 2011 by Ben

I have a master plan.

My plan is to live near my friends.  Or more accurately, have my friends live near me.  I grew up in Washington state and now live in California.  I’ve been slowly moving my friends down one by one over the last several years.  I have now moved 3 families down and am working on the others.  My plan is working very well (the sunshine helps).

One of the best things ever about this plan of mine is that we get together for our big family dinners once a week or so.  Just a night when everyone’s schedule is open that we can go over to one of our places and all sit and eat together.  We cook, we eat, we talk, we play games.  It is wonderful.

If this sounds nice to you, I encourage you to start your own family dinners.  I recently ran across a link on Reddit, (a site I waste entirely too much time on).  It was a great post about how a friend who had a job hosted dinners with his friends who were not as fortunate.  The post received tons of comments but his was one of my favorites:

carpeggio
Man, this struck a chord with me.
I don’t have a particularly needy past or anything of the sort.
Most people would say hey, “He’s cooking for his friends! It’s Easy!”
I thought that at first too, but it’s more then that.
In the picture they are all feeding on a quality homemade meal,that was made with love and care.
Something about that picture brought a tear to my eye. I think that you are accomplishing so many positive things with one act, and I am truly inspired by it.

There were also a lot of comments from users wising they had friends which made me a little sad and entirely grateful for the amazing friends I have.

So this is a call to action for you.

Gather your friends and have dinner with them.  Its so simple, yet one of the best things you could do.

Make a commitment to doing this today.

1. Call/text/email your friends right now.
2. Plan a night to get together and eat.
3. And make this chicken pot pie.  Your friends will think you are a genius.

“The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships.”
- Abraham Lincoln

Ben…

Now back to my master plan.  I still have more friends to move.

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The most amazing chicken pot pie you will ever eat

Oct 4, 2011 by Ben

I know that sounds like a slight exaggeration, but its really not.  I’ve struck gold.  A deliciously creamy pot pie of gold.

My wife requested pot pie so I was going to reach for the cream of chicken soup and some Bisquick and make it happen, but then she chastised me that she wanted REAL pot pie… my moms pot pie recipe.  So I texted my mom and she emailed me her recipe.  How 21st century of us.

And how good do those look?!  Plus its very easy to make.

I modified it slightly and I think that’s where the magic happened

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup butter or margarine
• 2/3 cup flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. pepper
• 3 1/2 cups chicken broth
• 1 1/3 cups milk
• 4 cups chicken, cut into bit sized pieces
• 2/3 cup chopped onion
• 1 1/2 cups Carrots
• 1 1/2 cups Potatoes
• 1  cup Peas (frozen is fine)

*you can also add other veggies that you like, zucchini, corn, etc

Here’s everything you need minus the peas.   I forgot them in the freezer for this picture

First, cut up your chicken into good chunks.

Throw them in a zip lock bag and add a pinch of salt and pepper and shake it up.

Then add a few handfuls of flour and shake it up again.  This will create an awesome coating that is the consistency of glue.  Very sticky and messy, but that is all part of the magic here.

Fire up a hot skillet on the stove and add some butter or oil.  Cooking on a medium high flame add the chicken.  You only want to brown the chicken, so only cook it for a few minutes, turning over when brown.  Now the flour coating may make the chicken stick to the pan while frying, but thats OK.  Actually its better than OK.  That’s where the magic begins.  Take the browned chicken out and place it in a larger pot.

With all those good fried chicken bits stuck to the pan add your butter and let it melt.

Here is where the magic happens.  Run a wooden spoon around the bottom of the plan and get all that good fried chicken goodness loose.   Add the 2/3 cup flour and mix

Add the salt and pepper and stir that awesome goodness up.  It will be nice and thick and awesome.

Stir in chicken broth and milk. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir for one minute.

Pour that awesome creamy mixture over the browned chicken and stir in the vegetables.

oh wow this looks good already.  Now time to make the crust.

I forget how easy it is to make dough from scratch.  For some reason I have it stuck in my head that his is some crazy-super-hard-time-consuming endeavor, but it never is.

Crust Ingredients

1cup and 2 TBSP flour
1/3 vegetable oil
1/2 to 1 tsp salt
2 – 3 TBSP cold water

Add the flour and salt to a mixing bowl.

Then add oil and water.

Then you mix it up.  That’s it.  Seriously.

No need to sprinkle surface with more flour. This just makes your pie crust tough.  Simply wrap the dough in between two layers of saran wrap and roll it out.

Lay the dish over the top to get the right size when rolling out the dough.

I made a bit more pot pie than I anticipated, but that’s never a bad thing.  I was also cooking for a big family dinner with some of my great friends so more is always better.  I had to make two batches of the dough for all of these little pies.

Lay over baking dish (no bottom crust for this pie) and then cut slits (as artistically as you please) so steam can escape as you bake.  Notice my super artistic attempt at a little leaf on top.  Key word attempt.

Just stuff the crust around the edges.

Cook uncovered in 425 degree oven until crust is brown – 45 – 60 minutes. It bubbles up and over so I usually put a cookie sheet underneath to keep the oven from getting all messy.

And voila.  The house smells amazing and the pot pies are gorgeous.

Oh wow… yum

And my leaf turned out kind of cute too.  Kind of…

But lets talk seriously for a minute here.  This was THE BEST pot pie I’ve ever had in my entire life.  The crispy browned chicken bits de-glazed off the pan to mix with the creaming goodness and the veggies and then the crust; It was just all so amazing.

I cannot recommend this highly enough.  If you only make one recipe ever from this site, this should probably be it.

Do yourself a big favor,

1. bookmark this recipe
2. go buy the ingredients
3. plan a family dinner night and make this.

Your greatness will be praised from the mountains and you shall be hailed as a hero.  No exaggeration here, it is really that good.

Ben…

P.S. When (not if) you make this, let me know the wonderful things your friends and family say about you.  Its nice to be loved.

and thanks Mom!  Your the best.

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A simple marinara sauce – plus zucchini noodles!

Sep 24, 2011 by Ben

Been doing a ton of traveling lately and came back home recently to find my tomato plant overflowing with tomatoes.  Were talking TONS of bright little red cherry tomatoes.  I planted some beef stake tomatoes too, but those did not grow for some reason.  In fact I only got one single tomato plant to grow.

But boy did it grow.

So we’ve been eating tomatoes like crazy.  Caprese salads, on regular salads, an on anything else I can think of.

I decided to try my hand at a marinara sauce and it turned out quite well

Here’s what you’ll need:

Ingredients:

• 1 onion
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 3 Tablespoons basil
• 1 small can of tomato paste
• 3-4 cups of tomatoes
• Salt, pepper, & dried oregano

The zucchini are for the noodles I made, Lets get started making the sauce

dice up your garlic

Cut up your onion and throw it in a large deep pan with some olive oil.  Add the garlic and saute for a few minutes

dice up the basil and throw it in with the garlic and onion.  This will smell delicious!

throw the tomatoes in your food processor and pulse them up good

add to pan and throw in the tomato paste

add in a healthy pinch of salt, pepper and sprinkle liberally with oregano.  Lower the heat and let it simmer for a while.  You want all the flavors to mix together.  I let mine simmer for an hour.

While that is simmering you can make these awesome zucchini noodles.

You’ll need a mandolin slicer or a peeler that will also slice into little noodle strips.  I have a mandolin slicer so I set the blade for 1/8th and add the julien blade and slice the zucchini on all four sides until you reach the seeded part in the middle.

You will get a nice pile like this. Use your fingers to separate the strands and place them out on some paper towels to soak up the moisture.  I also add a pinch of salt over the top to help draw out the moisture.  When you are ready to cook these, place another paper towel on top and get any excess moisture out.  You can either boil these very quickly or throw them in a pan with a little olive oil.  That is what I did.  Either way you only need to cook these for a minute or two, nothing more.

I also cooked up some sliced zucchini and threw it all in a bowl with the noodles and covered with the sauce with was awesome and a very good use for all of my tomatoes.   I’ll definitely be making this again.

Got any good recipes for tomatoes, please send them my way.  My garden still overfloweth.

Ben…

 

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Pancake day!

Aug 13, 2011 by Ben

Had a craving for some pancakes the other day, but not of the normal variety.  I decided to make both potato and German pancakes for dinner.   They were both awesome and easy to make.

Here are the potato pancakes.  I’ve you’ve never had them you are missing out.  We usually get these at one of our favorite breakfast joins, the Beach Break Cafe.  I decided to try my hand at making some.

Here’s what you’ll need.  I doubled this recipe. Not sure why.  I just like to make way too much food sometimes.

Ingredients

• 1 large baking potato
• 1 small onion
• 2 green onions
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• Some oil, for frying

In a food process or salad shooter, like I used, you want to shred your onion and potatoes

Next you want to drain out the moisture.  I put the onions onto a few paper towels to drain.  For the potatoes place them in a towel or cheese cloth and twist it tight to extract as much moisture as you can.  Set them aside.

In a bowl add your egg

then add your salt, pepper and flour

mix it up into this awesome looking mixture

add the potatoes and onions and mix it all up

It will look like this

chop up a couple green onions and stir them into the mix last.

Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil into a heavy pan and turn it on medium-high

Scoop spoon size balls of the mixture into the pan and then flatten them out with the spoon.

When the edges get brown its time to turn them over

flip them over and stand in awe of your amazing creations

Take them out and let them drain on a plate with a paper towel on it.   Then eat them.  Because they are so good.

Now, onto make the german pancakes

These things are so tasty!

Here’s what you’ll need:

Ingredients

• 6 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 5 tablespoons butter
• Freshly-squeezed lemon juice
• Powdered (confectioners’) sugar

These are also very quick and easy to make.  Here’s how you do it.

Preheat your oven to 450 and throw in your pan.  If you have a cast iron skillet, I recommend using that.  I just picked up 3 cast iron skillets at Sears the other day for 14 bucks on sale!  I bought them for camping, but they worked great for this.

Add your eggs into your mixer and start mixing

add the milk

and the vanilla

mix it up

throw in the flour and mix until its very smooth and bubbly

take the pan out and throw the butter in

pour the batter into the pan

…and throw it in the oven.  See how easy that was?

we borrowed some lemons from our neighbors tree as our tree did not have any ripe ones yet

Bake it for 20-25 minute until the sides rise up out of the pan and get all golden puffy like this

take it out of the pan and sprinkle the entire thing with powdered sugar and top if off with the fresh squeezed lemon juice.  You can also add syrup if you like, but its not needed with the lemon and sugar topping.

German pancakes taste so awesome.  If you’ve never had one you will want to try these.

Ben…

Let me know if you made these and how much you loved them

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