Shadow and Flame with Magik

http://www.deepsouthdish.com/2012/11/southern-fried-potatoes.html?m=1#axzz37vY2lGzh

This is the breakfast potatoes recipe that I hinted at a week ago.

I think I finally got the hang of it.

I’ll probably eventually work my way up to adding bacon to the recipe, but for now, I’m using vegetable oil.  The “add enough just to cover the bottom” took some work, as I wasn’t sure how much was too much.  Or, I thought I did, but still ended up with too much, in my first two attempts.   Now I know it is like basically half way up the Crisco cap.

I definitely have been making them the Potatoes O’Brien way, with both green and red peppers.

The very first time, I did add the onions to the potatoes at the initial phase but I’ve learn to not do that, as the onions get really burnt.  I also have experimented with not cooling the potatoes for ten minutes, as I start hearing the pop of the oil around the four minute mark.  Maybe that’s a sign that there is still too much oil?  I just had that thought.  So I usually, at the five minute mark, flip the potatoes, let them cook covered for an additional five minutes.

Then I add my peppers and onions, turn in sections of every two minutes for a total of ten minutes.  I think I have it done in five minutes, so next time, I’m going to try to stop cooking at five minutes and see how it looks as the potatoes seem done around then.  Five or six minutes.

The peppers really do make it look appetizing, and I’ve becoming more interested in adding color to my meals.  I’m probably being influenced by all of those cooking shows that we’re watching.  Taking my cooking game to the next level.  Or, at least, trying to.

. . .

We’re on the final episode of Daredevil, Season Two, that was the other television series we made progress on.  I love that Netflix is doing a countdown to the Defenders.  If only we were not two entire series behind, we could be getting hyped for that new series.

Easy Fajita Chicken Bake Recipe

I was going to make another Fajita Chicken recipe but my wife knew there was a simpler version of it.  So I followed her advice and made the above recipe.  I take forever to cut or dice vegetables.  I like doing it, but I have to add 30 minutes to every prep time.

Instead of trimming the chicken breasts, I cut the chicken thighs into strips.  We were going to make fajitas, so we wanted to not have giant chunks of chicken in our wraps.

We, embarrassingly, were out of taco seasoning so my lovely wife looked up Taco Seasoning on Pinterest.  I settled on the one that said it was the equivalent of one packet of store bought taco seasoning.

http://www.nutritionwithnat.com/2013/09/favorite-taco-seasoning.html#.WZGy51V95hE

Whatever the recipe calls for, in the order it is listed in, is the order I pour the ingredients in.  Am I the only one who does it?  What is the alternative?  Unless it is a dry good and I’m pouring liquid onto it, then I go in that order.  Starting wet and putting the dry goods in later, never seems to get everything moist like it should be.

Once I poured the Cumin in, I knew it was going to taste mostly like Cumin – which it did.  I was just working off the image but now that I looked up the recipe (so I can get the link above for it) I see they offer to double up the chili powder – which I would have definitely done.  Gosh, I just printed it to make that change, and I see “1/2 T chili powder” I wonder if I did one teaspoon instead of one tablespoon.  Though, I do recall making sure I put a tablespoon on the counter, so I must have done that.  Cumin has such a strong smell, that I already knew it was going to overpower the other seasonings.  I looked at everything, and couldn’t figure out what would have given it that distinct taco seasoning taste.  I would have gone more pepper instead of chili powder but I knew that wasn’t right.  It still tasted good, it just didn’t taste anything like taco seasoning.  Looking for that recipe, my wife found a slew of other “Do It Yourself” seasonings that we might try out.

I cooked it for 40 minutes and that seem to be perfect, probably could have been done in 35.  There was this liquid at the bottom, I’m sure it was the moisture from the vegetables and probably even the chicken.  I drained that as best as I could, as there was a lot of it.  Not sure how to counter that, but that’s what happened to mine.  Done was the wiser, but I knew I had to drain it before we started spooning the contents into our burrito shells.

I also went with the Kraft Mexican blend of cheese, as Cheddar is nice but I prefer various cheeses to just one cheese, if I have an option.

. . .

I think I did master that breakfast potatoes recipe, so I probably get that uploaded this week sometime.

Where am I in my current shows?

I’m currently on The Girl Who Died episode of Doctor Who.

Our next episode of The Office is Season Two’s Christmas Party.  All I want to do, is work in dialogue from the Office or talk about a show that has been off the air for four years.  I kept thinking it was five or six years, but the show ended in 2013.  Nine seasons instead of the seven I thought it was.

I’m thinking of doing back-to-back episodes of Doctor Who and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as I’m on the second or third episode of the latter and should finish that episode.

No additional progress with Sherlock but I feel like Doctor Who and Sherlock, back-to-back, might be a bit much.

Turns out, we were completely out of the loop on Hollywood Game Night’s fifth season so we caught the first two episodes of that.  So far, so good – hard to mess up that show.  I do feel like there are only a handful of truly great episodes or segments but can’t really beat the pool of talent they draw from.

This weekend was mostly made up of watching Trolls and Sing with Trolls being watched twice, I believe.

I keep debating, once I finish Living Between Wednesdays, I sort of want to go back through Turtle Soup and compile a list of favorite moments – like I did for the Uncanny X-Cast.  I feel like I want to take on a giant project and I might end up with some additional free time soon.  By “soon” I mean in a few months, as I’m on episode 21 of LBW and there are a total of 104 episodes, so I”m doing it.  Its just slowly.  It is the only podcast, where I can’t hear it loud enough unless I have headphones on.  All of my other podcasts, I can turn the volume as high as possible, put my phone in my van’s cup holder and still hear it well.  I keep thinking that is going to change but it hasn’t.  So I mostly can listen to it at lunch and right before bed, if I’m not trying to work in the back catalog of Fighter and the Kid, which I’m tempted to give up on doing that.  Those episodes are so long.  Hey, does anyone listen to Mixed Mental Arts?  I saw they are on episode 270 (or so) and that’s another one, if I decide to give it a shot, that I’ll just listen to the current episodes forward.  I do enjoy me some Brian Cullen.

I thought I had one more television item but I can’t think of it.  The weekend went pretty fast, as it always does.

http://www.food.com/recipe/loaded-baked-potato-chicken-casserole-505862

I completely forgot, again!, that I was taking pictures of Sunday Dinners for this blog!  So that’s a picture of Walker Dennis’ uneaten serving.

I had misgivings of baking it at 5oo degrees, like the recipe required.  If I know why food had to be baked at certain times or what ingredients do recipes, like the science of it all, I could probably be better at cooking instead of learning by experience.

What I’m getting at is, the potatoes were baked way to long.  Next time, I’ll bake the potatoes for 30 minutes, stirring them every ten minutes, instead of every 15 minutes for 45 minutes.

I will also cut down the chicken baking for 12 minutes and modify that to six minutes.  That’s what I should have done last night, but I went against my better judgment and my instincts.  I think I’m at the point now when I have to trust my cooking instincts.  The potatoes around the edges were pretty badly burnt but there were some in the middle that were pretty tasty.  This entire meal had a pretty nice spice to it.  I figured it was going to with the three tablespoons of hot sauce, I went with Cholulua brand of hot sauce.  It was that or Tabasco but I prefer Cholulua, myself.

It was a very tasty meal, I just wish the potatoes stood a chance.  By the time the recipe called for cheese, bacon and green onions, my family was getting pretty hungry so I only cooked that section for three minutes instead of the four I was going to, for the 3 – 5 minutes requirement.

Heck, as far as I know, the potatoes were probably ready at the 30 minute mark.

I’m still not great at frying bacon, I think I just don’t have the patience for it, as it starts popping and I need to put salt down or something to prevent that from happening so I can get the bacon as crispy as we prefer.  So I went with the Oscar Meyer microwaveable bacon.  I prefer cooking with their bacon bits but my wife wanted to make sandwiches with the remaining bacon – which I completely support.

Which meant the chicken didn’t get to cook in the bacon grease, but again, I’m not sure if that meant it wouldn’t have been so spicy or does that mean it would have been as spicy but with that delicious bacon flavoring.  I don’t think it needed that.

I also only went with six potatoes so I could keep five potatoes for breakfast this upcoming weekend.  I’m hoping the potatoes last that long.  I should post that recipe, once I have it mastered, as I keep modifying it.  My wife is a big fan of fried potatoes and instead of buying the Ore-Ida Potatoes O’Brien, I’ve been trying to make my own.  It was pretty good last time but I keep modifying times and such.  Expect that one, one of these days.  I was making it every weekend, for three weeks, but our schedule didn’t permit it for this last one.

. . .

I got some of my own television watching in this weekend, which I couldn’t believe.  So I’m trying to learn more about Jodi Whittaker, the future 13th Doctor, and caught the first episode of ABC’s The Assets.  I was going down a Wikipedia spiral that landed me on the cases of Aldrich Ames (the CIA double agent for the Soviets) and a slew of other spies such as Robert Hanssen, the FBI version of Ames, and subject of the film, Breach.  So my two interests align – which is always fun when that happens.

I then watched the first episode of Broadchurch, well, up to the point where Tennant and Whittaker have their first scene together.  My wife and I had watched this episode, months ago, when we wanted to compare Gracepoint and Broadchurch, as she had watched the entire season of Gracepoint.  I knew Tennant was in both, so I thought it would be a fun exercise to see how different they were.  She thought it was a pretty straight forward adaption of the pilot episode.  So she didn’t need to watch the rest of Broadchurch.  I opted to watch more of Broadchuch, but never came around to it.

I had to stop right then, as I realized I still haven’t finished The Empty Hearse episode of Sherlock, so I went back and finished that one.  I’m sure the months in-between viewings hurt it, as it started off so strong but the case seemed to wrapped up so easily.  I’m not sure when I will get around to watching the rest of the series – probably after I finish Doctor Who Season Nine.

Which, I was able to watch Episode 2, Witch’s Familiar.  Apparently I was more than half way through the episode, which I didn’t remember that so I wasted some time watching that section again.  I’m excited to watch the next episode about the underwater base and the ghosts.

I’m really going to miss Jenna Coleman when she’s no longer on this show.  I know it is coming, just not sure when.  I see Amazon has season ten but I rather not have to pay for it, so I have to track when that happens.  It’ll be nice if it happens by the time I finish season nine.

So Doctor Who Season Nine, Sherlock Season Three and Assets – are the shows I have to finish.

We also got another episode of Person of Interest’s final season under our belts, I think we are nine more before that’s over and we’re two away from finishing Daredevil Season Two.  So we’re doing it.  Slowly but progress is happening.  We’re also now on season two of The Office, which is fun finally delving into that show.

Oh, and I saw that Sing film, as of course, we have time to watch children films.  I saw Sing and Moana, for the first time.  My family had seen it already, fully, but this was my first time seeing it straight though.  Now it is Monday and I got various clips of songs playing in my head.  Mostly the chorus lines.

I picked out Jemaine Clement’s voice, so quickly, and I wish the Rock had done a voice for the film, like an accent or something, as for the first 30 minutes of Maui, I kept thinking about Dwayne Johnson in the recording booth.  But one doesn’t hire Dwayne Johnson and then have him do an unrecognizable version of his voice.  Clement had some change done to his voice, it wasn’t until he started to sing that I recognized him.

Not a bad weekend, at all, really.  Wish dinner was a larger success but I have plans to make it again but with my modifications.

We also got our family portrait done, for our church’s directory, and our son was all smiles.  Which we knew he would be, as that kid loves saying “cheese” and smiling big when we ask him for “big smiles” so it went quickly.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/228109/slow-cooker-chicken-with-stuffing/

The picture is from my second helping, I was so hungry, I forgot to take the original picture!

My parents, my sister and her two kids (with the third in her belly right now!) came up from Arizona to spend the weekend.  Is there a faster way to refer to one’s own parents, sister and her two children?  I’ve been struggling with a nice phrase to summarize this group for a week now.  I don’t want to say “my family” as I have a wife and on my own son, and it doesn’t imply who exactly is coming up for the trip.

So with having to feed eight people instead of my typical three, I doubled the recipe.

We went with two Costco packages of chicken thighs, two cups of chicken broth, two cans of cream of chicken soup, two boxes of Chicken Stove Top stuffing and a cup of water.

I Googled it and you don’t actually change the cooking time at all, when you double a recipe.  The rule is to cook it for the same amount of time, and then check on it like every fifteen to thirty minutes, to see if it needs additional time.  Since we went to Lake Helena, I had to keep it on the warm setting for an additional hour.  We were back within 30 minutes, but with three kids under five, it takes us a while to get everyone ready.  I wish we ate around that 30 minute mark, as the stuffing still looked pretty great.  Instead, it looked a little darker than I would have preferred.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it except for Walker Dennis and the younger cousin.  Which is odd as Walker really enjoys stuffing but with two new playmates, they didn’t have time for meals, with all of the playing they could do.