Lunchbox

Every now and then the Daughter gets more than a sandwich to take to school for lunch. Some time last week she took some tuna sushi rolls, which I'm happy to report she loves. The thing with something like sushi is that you have to keep it cold, and those blue ice block things take up too much room in a little girl's lunch box.

That's when a snack like grapes comes in handy.

Place grapes in a single layer in the freezer until solid - you don't want one big block o'grape. Once they're frozen you can put them in a ziploc bag and they'll keep your food cold until lunch time arrives.

I cut her sushi rolls real thin, so they can go in a regular square sandwich container and leave plenty of room for the baggie of grapes in there, too (I use parchment paper as a divider).

The Carnivore Agenda, Spaghetti edition

Make no mistake: When given the chance, time, ingredients and caffeine, I would much rather cook pretty much everything from scratch. It's hard to tell from nearly every entry here, but I am ALL for spending 8 hours in the kitchen working on two or three dishes.

That is not the case, today.

An 8-item grocery list turned into a full cart, and in the interest of coming up with a quick dinner we decided on Spaghetti, the Faking It version.

1 box spaghetti noodles
1 lb ground beef
1 jar spaghetti sauce of your choice*
Roughly chopped spinach
Chopped parsley
Garlic
Grated ginger
Oregano
Chipotle (powder or en adobo)
White pepper
Bay leaves

The most pain-in-the-ass part of making spaghetti is getting that huge pot of water to BOIL ALREADY. Huge pot of water, some sea salt and a few bay leaves thrown in. While that's taking its sweet time, brown the beef and drain all the fat. Lower heat to a simmer, pour spaghetti sauce in (*I like the mushroom or meat ones). Add spinach, a clove of crushed garlic, some ginger, oregano, as much chipotle as you think you can handle (I add just a dash for flavor, not heat), white pepper, a couple of bay leaves. Simmer that until your water FINALLY BOILS, and leave it on there through the 9-11 minutes it'll take the pasta to cook (watch for the splatters). Just before the pasta is done, add the chopped parsley and another clove of crushed garlic into the sauce.
Drain pasta, remove sauce from heat and stuff your face with awesome.

Now, the garlic toast thing really works better with a baguette or something to that effect, but I don't have that kind of foresight when I do groceries. Soften some butter in the microwave (soften, not melt), add salt to taste, crushed garlic (because there just isn't enough garlic in this post already) and whatever herbs rock your boat. Spread over some bread and put it in the oven at 300F for some 10 minutes or so.

If you're worried about the garlic, that's what wine is for. Tomato dishes = red wine.

Tuna Ring, in which my ability to speak English deserts me

It's Friday.

I don't observe Lent, but it does give me an excuse to make some people around here eat fish.

There's a delicious abomination called a Taco Ring, you may have heard of it or even eaten it before. It involves croissant dough, ground meat, taco seasoning and a metric ton of CHEESE. It's pretty awesome, really, but I always feel like such a phony Mexican when I make it, because, seriously, taco seasoning??

Anyway, as I said, it's Friday. No meat for J today. We IMPROVISE around these parts.

Tuna Ring
Croissant rolls dough
Canned tuna (I used a 12oz can)
1 metric ton of shredded cheese
1 egg
Bread crumbs (what, about 2 tbs.? Give or take?)
Finely chopped parsley
Sprinkle of ground ginger
Sprinkle of garlic powder (which I hate, but this was a lazy, fakin'-it sort of meal)
Annnnnnnnnd...
Mashed potatoes. Again, I'm going half-ass on this, so I used instant. This was about making a Really Quick meal, not a gourmet one, bear with me.

Preheat oven, 375 degrees.

Drain tuna, mix with everything else.

Lay out the croissant triangles on an ungreased cookie sheet so they make this circle thing. It's a tricky thing, and I'm sure a masters degree in applied geometry would help make this easier, but do the best you can. Spoon the tuna mush onto it and fold the dough over it so that you end up with an actual ring. I could have taken pictures, but didn't. What. I'm just going to use pictures other people have successfully taken of a taco ring.


My croissant circle of doom never looks that cool.

Bake according to the directions on the dough can, usually 12 or so minutes at 375 degrees or until a nice, golden brown.

Mind you, this is what/how much I made. Yeah, after piling up all that tuna and the mashed potatoes and ALL THAT CHEESE, it was almost too much for just one can of croissants. And maybe my little circle of death would've looked much neater if I'd used two, but it worked out.

If I'd wanted to spend more time on this thing, I may have used roasted (or super finely chopped fresh) garlic, fresh grated ginger, maybe some steamed spinach. I'm kinda feeling some chopped green olives, here, or jalapeno.

Maybe next time.