Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Late Winter Tuesday Cooking Practice
 egg bites and slow chicken

Okay so, 1) no more Sunday cooking practice, just Tuesday and Thursday, and 2) Tuesday and Thursday afternoon instead of morning, which is a leetle bit risky. Because if it's morning, there's still afternoon to get a little rest in. Before evening, which is when I do my most work. All of the recipes I'm making right now are real easy, though, and actually I think they get even easier as it gets warmer. Like summer is the easiest, I hardly cook at all, ahh I can't wait. But it is still late winter, which still means mostly winter recipes and an early start on egg bites. Anyway, on paper, Tuesday is supposed to be egg bites and slow chicken and Thursday is supposed to be slow carne, greens, and mashed potatoes, but really I have these two blocks to cook whatever needs to be cooked, and I also cook Friday night dinners and leftovers from that (helloo extra dirty eggplant rice) also go into the rotation; but I will take you through two so-called normal cooking practices.

First, I line my baking pan with parchment for egg bites. Frozen vegetables go into the microwave, get mixed with green onions, bread crumbs, and cheese, and then here I am doing something different than the posted recipes, I dump the vegetables into the lined baking pan, and then I blend my eggs in batches in my rocket blender and pour them over the vegetables in the pan. Idk why but this winter, a dozen eggs doesn't seem enough to cover the vegetables, so I've upped the eggs to sixteen. Which means that I quarter the egg bake both lengthwise and crosswise to yield sixteen pieces:

cauliflower parmesan extra egg bites

Two pieces per jar for one serving, plated with a half or whole cut up avocado and a cut up tomato with a sprinkle of lime juice and salt.

I do the slow chicken when the egg bake is in the oven, which is for forty minutes, and you only need like fifteen minutes to chop up whatever vegetables (or fruit!) and layer them in the slow cooker with the chicken. I'm still playing with cooking times with my new slow cooker:

slow cooker

::ANGELS:: AHHHHH ::ANGELS::

And actually it kind of works better to get it started in the afternoon, probably late afternoon is even better, so it can be cooking when I'm out training or practicing, and I have delicious slow chicken or meat ready for me when I get home and if I'm starving and don't want to just nibble on nuts. It's seeming like six hours might be the sweet spot, maybe eight? So that means start the cooker around four...

Anyway, summary, in order:

  1. Prep egg bake and put in oven
  2. Prep slow chicken
  3. Go do something else, like wash dishes.
  4. Take egg bake out of oven and let cool a bit
  5. Go do something else, like nap.
  6. Start cooker around 4pm
  7. Cut egg bake into bites and put into jars
  8. Go to train or practice
  9. Put slow chicken into jars