Cheesecake Experiment

INGREDIENTS:
I took a photo of what I thought I might use. I made some changes.

Crust:
2 Sleeves of Graham Crackers - 3 because you'll eat them
pinch of salt
1 1/2 to 2 sticks unsalted butter
1 oz chocolate
squirt of honey

Filling:
3 bars cream cheese
1 can condensed sweetened milk
1/2 cup almond milk
1 oz butter (plus left over chocolate/butter from crust if you have some)
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon corn starch
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 cup flour
1 squirt lemon juice

Before the steps are listed. These are some things that must happen:


1. Have a mixer. Mixing by hand is tiresome and not necessary when we have this thing called technology.
2. Set a timer. A loud one. 
3. Use aluminum foil! I don't care if the cheesecake cracks, meaning I don't care about the water steam thing. But I do care about butter dripping to the bottom of the stove and catching fire/smoking. So use foil to catch the drippings from the bottom of the pan.

MAKE THE CRUST:

Crunch crackers in a big ziplock bag.

Add melted butter and melted chocolate to the crunched up crackers. In a bowl, don't pour the melted stuff into the bag.

Use some of the butter to coat the cheesecake pan. We don't want this baby to stick. Take delicious mixture and put it on the bottom of the pan. Have it going up on the sides, this looks cool when it's done.

Place crust in the oven for 10 minutes at 325 degrees. Then remove. Let crust cool before you add filling.

MAKE THE FILLING:

Soften the cream cheese.

Seriously, a mixer. 

Then add the other stuff. 

Pour it in a pan and put it in the oven. 

Set timer for one hour, cook at 325 degrees.

About 30 minutes in realize the house is filled with smoke. Take out cheesecake, open windows and turn on fans.

Finally remember to add foil to the bottom of the pan.

Put cheesecake back in oven at 300 degrees this time, for 40 minutes.

Do not open.

After that 40 minutes is up turn off oven and leave the cheesecake alone for one hour. ONE HOUR.
Set an alarm. A loud one. That way you don't fall back asleep and wake up seven hours later, confused and hungry.

After one hour, remove cheesecake and put it in the fridge. It'll look like this-

Just ignore the part on top where I dropped foil on the cake and the part on the side where I kept eating the crust.

After about 8 hours in the fridge, take cake out.

Look how cool the crust looks!! 

Now cut you off some. 

OH hells yes. I aced this. 

Fried Pork Tenderloin

My grandmother had an electric skillet. Anytime I came over for dinner and saw that this thing was out, I knew it meant a good time. So it is not a shock to anyone that when I saw an electric skillet, on clearance at Target, I snatched that damn thing up.

Now let's get some things straight. It's an electric SKILLET! Skillet people. NOT A GRIDDLE. Ugh. Basic way to tell a difference, griddles are flat, skillets go up on the sides. You can't make fried chicken and gravy on a griddle. Which is why I wanted to slap the woman in the checkout line at Target. Looking at me like I was crazy because I'm going to go home and fry chicken in my new electric skillet. "Gravy? Hmm, well, we always made pancakes on mine. You know because of the edges." That's because you're thinking about a griddle! GRIDDLE! Shit, look. Look right here at the damn thing, this is not a griddle. This is a skillet, SKILLET! It's got a lid for pete's sake. A lid that it supported by walls of nonstick goodness. WALLS THAT CAN CLEARLY HOLD IN GRAVY!

Fuck, google it.

But I didn't say any of that. I'm from a place where we hide our disgust, it's called southern hospitality. So I simply smiled, cracked a joke about IHop not beating homemade, and turned away. All the while plotting her death in my mind.

Anyway. Now that I'm done with that rant. Let's pour me another glass of wine and turn on my HP.
(Oh and by HP I don't mean the computer, oh no, I mean the Harry Potter audiobooks. Stephen Fry, Jim Dale, I don't care which one. I love them both, and having them on calms me for some reason. I don't even care about that dumb lady in the line anymore, maysherotinhell HA just kidding.)

So with my brand new electric skillet my goal was to try and recreate fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Just like Nanny :) I talked to my dad about what Nanny did- how she soaked the chicken the night before in salt water, used the left overs from frying to make gravy, all that good stuff. Then I decided to also look up online what other people did. That way I could separate what was essential to basic frying, and what was essential to frying like my grandmother used to.

One thing is for certain, not everyone says to soak your meat in salt water the night before, and not everyone says to use the leftovers in your gravy (pshh losers). But if that's what Nanny did, you best believe I'm not ignoring those two steps.

Ok so research is over, let's do FRIED CHICKEN.
But wait. I don't have chicken. Or potatoes to mash up and eat them with.
I'm a southern failure.
But I am NOT going to the store to spend more money.
So I'll have to make it work.
I'll use what I have in creative ways. So here's what I do have:

INGREDIENTS-
4 Frozen Pork Tenderloins
Flour
Salt
Pepper
Teriyaki Sauce
Rice
Worcester Sauce
Butter
Vegetable Oil

1)
Night before take pork out of the freezer and place in bowl with salt water. Put bowl in fridge and wait a nighttime's worth.

2)
(Next day when pork is thawed). Start by getting the rice started. This is our mashed potatoes substitute. Follow instructions on the box it's generally a ratio of 1:2, rice:water. I like to get my water boiling with some butter too.

General rice instructions: Once boiling add rice. Continue to boil for 5 minutes, then cover and reduce heat to simmer for 20 more minutes.

3)
Put worcester sauce and Teriyaki Sauce in a bowl. I did more Teriyaki than Worcester. Essentially, 1/4 of a cup teriyaki with a few splashes of worcester.

4)
Put 3/4 cups flour on a plate, mixed in with some Salt, Pepper, and any other spices you desire.

5)
Get a clean plate you can put stuff on.
Now take the pork chops out of the salt water,

shake them off some and dip them in sauces,

and then dredge them through the flour and spices.

Do this to all four tenderloins and now place them on a plate.

6)
Add some butter on your already heated skillet, that should already have oil on it too.

Oh yeah, you should have heated that to about 315 degrees. (Not sure where to put your oil line? Make it about half. If your tenderloin slices are an inch thick then have the oil just under half an inch.)

7)
Add the pork.

Cook for three minutes on either side. And don't forget about them like I did. Again. I need to set timers more often.

Take em out and put them on a nice clean plate.

(I just washed the one from before real quick). Also be sure to return the skillet to simmer for gravy.

8)
Now the experimental gravy. Which for me, is more of a sauce because someone didn't have milk either.
Take out some of the oil. Not a lot, but some. There's more oil in there than we need. Add the sauces (about 1/4 cup) and flour (about 3/4 cup) from before and another 1/2 tablespoon of spices. Mix it up, get it going, and then turn it up to 320 degrees for a bit. Not sure why I did this, or for how long? But that's what my drunken notes say.

Just the sauces. 

And then the flour and spices.

9)
Combine everything we've done-

Not bad. I'm pretty ok with how this experiment turned out.

Brussels Sprouts. What?!?

For a food that's supposed to be the epitome of gross, this has been one of my favorite dishes. Which means one of three things-
A. Brussel Sprouts aren't really that gross.
Dos) My tastes must not be fully formed, as long as it's warm- I'll eat it.
or Lastly- both.

Honestly though, who cares? I don't know why you're panicking about it anyway. All that matters is that THIS DISH IS SIMPLE.

Another thing to think about is that FRESHER IS BETTER for this one. It's a shorter time to cook, and from what I understand, the sprouts will come out crispier. I'm honestly not sure yet because I'm cheap. I would rather get the frozen brussels and enjoy a slightly soggy sprout.

:::INGREDIENTS:::

Bag of Brussels Sprouts
a dish like the one pictured (not really an ingredient, more to hold the ingredients)
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper

Ok preheat the oven to 425! NOW!

Excellent work. Now we must open the bag of sprouts and dump them in dish. Well done.

This is where it gets exciting. Drizzle the Olive Oil on top of the frozen sprouts! What? DRIZZLE?!!? Oh no you didn't!
Oh yes, yes I did.
and now sprinkle the salt and pepper all over and MIX IT UP!

YESSSSSSSS NICE!

good good. Stick in the heated oven.

Leave it there, untouched, for 20 minutes. You can do this. I believe in you.

Take it out, stir it.
Add some more salt and pepper if you want.

Stick it back in.
Leave it there, untouched, for ANOTHER 20 minutes.

Now take it out. Maybe stir it again. (Mine's a bit crispy because I forgot about it. So awesome. Next time set a timer dumbass.)

Now you enjoy it! Perhaps as a side dish? Perhaps as a main dish? Perhaps as a satallite dish?
You decided.

I had chocolate milk with mine. Like a boss. 

Chunky Avocado Stuff

Ingredients:

2 1/2 AVOCADOS (because that's all I had)
1 TOMATO, diced
2 heaping spoonfuls of plain YOGURT
1/4 of an onion, DICED
2 CARROTS, shredded and cut
a little bit of GARLIC
CILANTRO and SALT to taste

MIX:
Pit avocados and put in bowl.

I aced this one.

Next add the diced tomato--

then the Yogurt--

Diced Onion and Garlic--

Carrots!--

Salt and Cilantro-

Then mash avocados while mixing all the ingredients together. (Looking back, I really should have mashed the avocados and THEN added the rest of the ingredients. Oh well, you live and learn. Also when I do this again I will cook the onions a little to make them a bit softer, perhaps with the garlic. Or maybe dice them finer, or use onion salt instead. Or maybe no onion at all? No that's a silly idea. Who knows, stop pressuring me.)

Thumbs up for mixing and smashing completed--

This is how I enjoyed my Chunky Avocado Stuff--

YUMMY

3 can goodness

INGREDIENTS:

1 can BLACK BEANS, drained

1 can CORN, drained

1 can TOMATOES southwest style, drained

plain YOGURT, two heaping spoonfuls

CILANTRO, GARLIC SALT, and CUMIN to taste

MIX:

Put it all into a bowl and mix it up. DONE. 

Put it on a tortilla. 

Put it on a salad. 

Put it on a chip. 

It's yummy. 

Almost Nanny's Sweet Tea

Ingredients:
5 tea bags (I chose Earl Grey)
2 bags of flavor, (I chose a melon one)
3 mason jars of water
1/2 cup of sugar


Directions:
Fill a mason jar up with water.
Pour water into tea kettle.
Heat it up.
While heating up, get tea bags out.
When water is heated pour back into the mason jar with tea bags.
Cover with lid, or a tiny plate.
Let tea steep for 15 minutes or more. I usually do about 30 because I forget about it. You can totally steep for hours, but I get impatient.
Put sugar in the bottom of the pitcher. You can use more sugar than this, but diabetes IS a thing. You can also use less, but then it's just balls nasty.
Mix warm tea with sugar.
Add cool water into the pitcher. For me it's about 2 1/2 more mason jars worth.

DRINK!

Almost Nanny's Pork and Sauerkraut

Ingredients:

















Boneless Pork Tenderloin, 5 Ibs

Sauerkraut, 4 Ibs (2 bags)
Meat Tenderizer
Pepper

Cook:
Get out your crockpot / slowcooker.
Realize the pork tenderloin won't fit in the crockpot.
Cut pork tenderloin in two.

Put 1 bag of kraut bag in the fridge.
Put half of the remaining bag of kraut on the bottom of the slowcooker (1 Ib)

Then layer on half of the pork tenderloin (2.5 Ibs)

Then the rest of the kraut (1 Ib)

Turn on slowcooker, cover, set to high for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

(This is the part where I cut up the remaining half the pork tenderloin into slices for easy freezing.)

When the timer goes off set the crockpot to low for 6 hours.

The pork will start to look white at some point. The first time you notice this (for me this is when 5 hours  was remaining on the timer), put a layer of meat tenderizer on both sides and stab with a fork to get it on in there. Move the kraut back on top and add a light sprinkle of pepper. Yummy.

I check it occasionally, and half way through the 6 hours I flip the roast in the pot.
Timer goes off.

Pork roast will be flakey and pull apart like buttah. Yummy.