Turkey and Green Beans

Ever feel like sometimes Mom is just phoning it in? Not paying attention to the things I like? Yeah, that happens, but every now and then she just shrugs and tells me it's what's for dinner and I end up eating it and liking it. This rare unicorn moment is what life is all about if you ask me.

 

Today's unicorn brought to you by Aunt H. and Uncle J. They always know what I like, whether it's totally obscure Indian cuisine, or roasted brussel sprouts, they just get me. Every time there is doubt in Mom's eyes, I can rely on those two to understand my complicated soul.

The main problem I see with this dish was that it was a little to easy to make. Mom seemed to not know what to do with her time when it was completed so quickly and the girl and I were only halfway through our leg hanging on routine. Also, I know Mom can read, so I'm not sure what's going on with substituting yellow beans for green. They are a personal favorite of mine so I didn't really mind, but I'm a bit worried Mom may be color blind.

I initially planned on just eating the hamburger portion of the meal and then going with the green beans, but then I saw the rice and thought, meh I like rice. So I ate this all in stages, but everything was so tasty.

I scooped and scooped until there was nothing left. The girl even seemed to enjoy this - I was a bit nervous this would be on the spicy side like her. She's not able to channel her inner Batman like I am.

She was getting a bit dramatic with these wrist flourishes and swirling around the green beans. I know it makes Mom nervous when she does that. It may have something to do with the amount of rice that ends up on the carpet around the girl's chair. Our little vacuum just doesn't seem to want to scoop all that stuff up. Silly vacuum!

Anyway, this was a big hit in our house and I'm sure you'll like it too. It's Pete approved. You can make it yourself by clicking here. Mom wants me to tell you that you can even make it with frozen green beans.

Unstuffed Cabbage

Welcome November. That means Mom is going to get out her crock pot and experiment on all those things she's been "pinning" all summer long. What this really means is that in the morning when Mom should be getting my breakfast, or turning on the TV for me (we can talk about PJ Masks later), or getting me a drink, or otherwise paying attention to ME, she's busy putting stuff in the crockpot for dinner.

This time, mom took some perfectly good hamburger (ground turkey) and plopped it in the crock pot with a bunch of cabbage and some tomatoes. I know I know I love tomatoes, but when they come out of a can I get really skeptical. What were they doing in there? Who put them in there? What do they taste like now? You have to EXPLAIN!

Well despite my skepticism, I actually ate some of this. What? It's November, a guy likes to be cozy. I'm not actually sure what cabbage is so I ate that too. It's what? A vegetable??!! Stop playing.

And the girl? Well.... She's still working on that fork thing.

If you'd like to get cozy like Mom, click here for the recipe. It's surprisingly Pete approved.

Lightened Up Slow Cooker Indian Butter Chicken

So fun fact, my mom loves everything about fall. She loves the leaves changing color, she loves the cooler temperature. She loves using her crock pot. She loves fall. So when fall came along, seems like Mom may have started forgetting to take pictures of us eating her experiments. Not that she wasn't still making them. I'm pretty sure MiMi's mac-n-cheese care packages are getting lost, because no way she would leave me in this health kick wasteland right?

So bear with me as we enter the time machine to go back to Mid-September when we had guests, which you know means Mom is going to try to get fancy and impress people. Which usually means she's going ethnic. This time around she made Chicken, which is a good thing, but it was covered in some kind of sauce which made it look not like chicken.

It was all shredded up, which I usually think means tacos. But not this night.

But, since she stuck me and the girl at the little table of shame, I felt like I could pretty much eat however I wanted, and not get yelled at.

So I started with broccoli. Broccoli pretty much always looks like broccoli. So it's always safe to start with. But you have to be careful and not tell Mom or Dad that you are hungry after you've finished just your broccoli, because then they say you can finish the rest of the stuff on your plate. Good grief.

I did end up eating some of the chicken. It was okay but not the best chicken I ever had. The girl ate it up. She doesn't seem to get that we can refuse to eat it and then cry later. I'll get through to her eventually.

In any event, right now, dinner is great because when we are done I get to have a piece of my hard-earned Halloween candy that is all mine and Mom and Dad would never ever eat ever.

If you want to make vaguely chicken looking chicken, click here for the recipe. It's Pete approved.

Shrimp and Grits

Since we live in the South now, Mom thought she would make something for Mimi that was authentically southern. My vote was for fried chicken, or barbecue, but since I didn't actually vote ahead of time and instead voiced my opinion after dinner was served, it looks like I was overruled. I blame Mom for not anticipating my needs.

So here it what Mom made - shrimp and grits.  The grits part I don't really understand, but they had some cheese in them and Mom said they were basically like Mac-N-Cheese.I was seriously dubious about this meal.

She was wrong about them being like Mac-N-Cheese, but I ate them anyway, after my broccoli was gone.

And hey, they were actually pretty good. Mom said she didn't stick with all the cream that had to go into the recipe and used milk instead. I'm not the one in this house watching calories, but I'm also not the one doing the cooking so I guess it's fine.

Here's the girl making a face at Mimi. She liked the grits part, but she kept trying the shrimp over and over and I think it was too spicy for her. She must have been hungry to think that each new bite of shrimp wouldn't be spicy. Me, I don't go for that kind of nonsense and instead stuck to eating just the grits.

So the grits are approved and if you'd like to make the shrimp part to go with it, I can't stop you. Click here for the recipe.

Chicken Again! - PB2 Slow Cooker Thai Chicken

Every now and then something comes along that makes my mom get all giddy and excited. She tells people about it and gets excited when the want to talk about it. For some reason right now she's excited about peanut butter that is powdery? I don't get it. peanut butter is perfectly fine as it is, but for some reason she thinks this is great.

The only real upside for me is that Mom has been putting the peanut butter powder in her protein drinks, and usually she tells me I can't drink any of it, but if I pretend I'm interested in the peanut butter powder, well then that's a whole new story and she lets me have a drink.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when the new favorite of my mom's started turning up in our dinner recipes.

This is a photo of Mom's plate. She doesn't let herself has as much rice as we get, so you can't really see it under her chicken. She said the chicken looked a bit like dog food - she was supposed to crush up some peanuts to put on top which would have assisted in de-dogfooding it a bit, but I didn't mind. I actually really liked this.

I didn't even just eat the rice this time around. I ate the noodles too. Daddy said something about them being made with zucchini, but I don't see how that's true since noodles are not made with zucchini, everyone knows that. I ate them happily. It was a good peanut butter flavor, I'm not sure what happened to the powder.

Even the girl ate it.

So give it a shot. Pete approved. You can find the recipe here.

Sausage and Green Beans

Folks, there are few foods more perfectly formed in this world than sausage. It's like someone took the tasty bits of the meat and put it in a tube for us to enjoy - I'm sure it is amazing to watch it being made. Maybe I'll ask Mom to take me to a sausage factory soon. Anyway, I've talked to you about smoked sausage before (see here). And even though it was soooooo long ago, I still love it. And the girl loves it too. So we tried to eat all the sausage before it went into the pot, but Mom was on to our game. Wait, what? She's telling me it was TURKEY sausage? I feel lied to, I feel... eh, I don't care it was still delicious.

Sorry this is not the way it was supposed to look in a plate, but admittedly, Mom was dodging my hands as I tried to grab the sausage off her plate.

I think when we've had this before Mom used white potatoes, but she read somewhere that sweet potatoes are better for you or something. It doesn't really matter because it's not like I ate the potatoes anyway. I'm here for the sausage you know?

I did eventually eat some of the green beans too. I'm a worldly type of guy you know. I can eat green beans. Plus, I was assured that there was no more sausage to be had.

Even the girl ate some of her green beans. Don't mind those goldfish on her tray, those are probably mine, or at least I determined they were mine once I saw them and leaned all the way across the table to grab them.

I almost knocked over Mom's glass of what she calls "Mommy grapejuice" but she acted like I was about to spill liquid gold all over the table. Sheesh, I was just trying to get MY goldfish. Sheesh.

The sausage part of this one is approved.

You can make it here, even if you want to try to trick your family by using turkey sausage and sweet potatoes.

Sugar Hamburger - Korean Beef

I have this really great knack for helping Mom in the kitchen when she's trying to make dinner. She really couldn't do it without me. Well, maybe she could, but would she really WANT to? I think that question answers itself. Sometimes, helping to make something can yield unexpected rewards, like licking the brownie bowl (see here) or eating left over crushed cookies (here). This time, turns out, you put brown sugar INTO THE HAMBURGER. I found this hilarious until I discovered how amazing brown sugar was, then I wanted more of it to go into my belly instead of into the hamburger. Mom says maybe she'll cut down on that next time, but it was super exciting.

Hiding in that beef is a bunch of brown sugar. I had to be reminded of this fact in order to eat the beef. I was certain it was going to kill me. So I ate all my broccoli first.

 Then, when that was gone and I was assured there was no more and NO I was not allowed to eat the girl's even though she wasn't eating it, I tried the beef.

It was actually good. And I ate a bunch of it, but was pretty full from all my broccoli so I didn't finish it all. Daddy finished it for me. He's handy to have around.

The girl ate some too, but look at all that wasted broccoli on her plate and also it kind of looked like the keen-wah exploded all over her tray.

Anyway, this is Pete approved and you can make it here. Save me some brown sugar though. I'll come over and lick it off your counter if you need help cleaning up.

Tacos! - Barbacoa Burritos

I'm not sure if you guys have ever had Tacos before. We have them sometimes. They are pretty good. It takes some assembly and I get pretty upset when my taco doesn't stay together, but I do like trying it out.

Mom made this in the morning before we left for school and when we came home I thought we'd just get right to eating, but turns out she wanted to make some rice, and cut some tomatoes and lettuce. It was exhausting for me and the girl. We made sure to each cling to one of Mom's legs so she would know we were hungry. And if that didn't do it, we both alternatively practiced our screaming so she would really know. I'm not sure how long rice takes to make in our rice cooker, but we kept it up for about that long.

But the results were worth it. I noshed hard on these once they were all rolled up, even though I declared that I was not going to be eating any of the beef filling. Once it was inside the burrito it was fine. See, it becomes part of the taco then, and tacos I like!

The girl ate hers without rolling it up. What. A. Chump.

If you want to make them, you can find them here. Hope you don't have more than two kids, because what leg would the third one grab on to in order to let you know they were also hungry?

Pete approved.

Crunchy Chicken - Baked Salmon with Parmesan Herb Crust

So let's recap and see if you can remember what I like. I like chicken. I believe this is well documented. I also like crunchy stuff. And I also like to be involved in the cooking process. So this started out well. Mom said we were having salmon, which I assumed is just another kind of chicken. Turns out it is not, but we'll get to that.

This particular food needed a topping and Mom said I could help make it. Turns out that involved stirring gently, and that's just not my style. Since Mom knows I like crunch she added some panko crumbs to the crust mixture which is cool because when you "accidentally" spill these out of the bowl, you can poke them with your finger and they stick!

Mom's started to smell a little burnt as she was baking it, which I think is why it looks a little dark in this photo. Oh and we also had some rice and asparagus on the side, but that didn't make it onto the plate for the photo.

Anyway, we sit down for dinner and all of the sudden, Mom says that salmon is not a type of chicken.

I was not pleased.

Then I was shocked.

And then I finally ate some.

And so did the girl. With her fork as an accessory. She's not actually using it.

If you want to fill your family with false hope of chicken only to pull the rug out from under them, click here for the recipe.

I guess it's approved, but I'm still a little traumatized by the experience.

20 Minute Turkey Chili

Can everybody tell when Dad's been out of town? I can. It usually means at least one night of Mom making mac-n-cheese for dinner and some other night where she gets super lazy and makes something else that takes a lot longer. And then, she forgets to take a picture of the finished product for you.

I think she learned her lesson though about making the Girl and I wait too long for dinner after we get home. Yes we have a snack in the car on the way home, but that's not nearly enough. We want to eat when we walk in. And if we don't eat right when we walk in, we want Mom to hold us and play with us while we wait. That's not too much to ask right?

Anyway, Mom made turkey chili which she was promised would only take 20 minutes, and maybe that's true if you get to just make the chili instead of getting milk and lemonade for me and the Girl. Opening the crayon box. Getting some paper out. Looking at my drawing.... LOOK AT MY DRAWING!!!!

Phew, my favorite part of eating chili is that Mom will sometimes make us noodles to go underneath. I dig those out and eat them - unless they are touching the chili like the noodles in this picture. They were tainted so I'm choosing the ones that have the least amount of chili on them. I also ask for my cheese on the side, so there is my pile of cheese on my napkin.

I eventually ate some of this.

And so did the girl, although she pulled out all her pasta to eat separately. She also liked her cheese on the side. Like me!

This meal seemed put together really fast. I only cried once in the time it took to make it, so I guess it was good for a school night. You can make it yourself by clicking here.

Pete approved (but only if it comes with lots of cheese and noodles).

Hamburger (Larb)

Larb? I don't know what that means. This meal consisted of hamburger and salad.

See... hamburger, and salad.

I think Mom forgot to take some photos of this too, but as you can see, there's not much to it.

But it was plate licking good. You are supposed to take the hamburger and roll it up in the lettuce but who has time for that (and really who has the fine motor skills for that?). Not me. I like my food fast.

The girl also wasn't able to get the whole lettuce wrapping concept. Seriously, why does she have four spoons on her tray? This is getting absurd.

In any case, Mom says the recipe is so easy a baby could make it, but then she didn't let me or the girl help at all, so I think she may be wrong. Mom said you can also make it with turkey, chicken, beef, or pork? Is one of those hamburger?

If you want to make it click here.

Pete approved.

Meat and Rice (Mediterranean Stuffed Pork Tenderloin)

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Mine was awesome. I played t-ball, watched a little Jake and the Neverland Pirates, went to a friend's house, and got to use Daddy's hammer in the garage while I was helping him build something. Then, last night, to top it all off, I ate a cupcake. Without icing. Mom says that's the best part, but I like the cake part.

Oh but before the cupcake, there was something else I had to eat.

Whoops, mom forgot to take a picture of it again before cutting it up. That's okay all you're missing is the burnt sundried tomatoes on top. she cut off the burnt parts and shoved the rest back inside. Apparently she was supposed to cut them up small before hand but sometimes this lady, she just goes rogue!

There is also goat cheese (supposed to be Feta) and spinach in it. I ate around those parts.

I loudly challenged everyone at the table to a race to see who could finish first (Daddy), but then I realized that would involve me eating everything so I changed it to a rice race.

Ha, the girl is so slow. She lost.

I did end up eating some of everything. I can't say I totally loved it, but I did eat it, and without complaint. You can find the recipe here.


Pete approved.

Now..... on to those cupcakes.....

CUPCAKES!!

Do you really need me to write an entire blog post about how great cupcakes are? They are great. They are wonderful. And they don't need icing. I insisted on no icing on my cupcakes. So Mom said that was crazy, but okay. Here are a bunch of photos of me and the girl eating delicious chocolate cupcakes.

We had fun. And in case you don't believe that I liked them so much, here's a picture of me eating them on a completely different day.

Suns out, guns out. Ammiright? I got to help make these so the end result was satisfying for a hard days work. At one point, I may have jumped off a stool and grabbed Mommy's arm on the way down causing her to have a massive overflow on one of the cupcakes. She was not amused. But, she still let me eat all these great cupcakes. So we're still friends.

Mom said something about Martha being queen and I've never met the woman but she makes a mean cupcake. You can make your own here.

OF COURSE IT'S APPROVED!