All Alone Debauchery

Ed works weekends these days & I'm left to decide on dinner by myself. I wanted to head back home but it stormed all day. Sadness.

Tonight's dinner is what I make when I'm home alone. It's simple, quick, probably not health food but is best consumed with a movie. "Dave" was playing on tv & lifted my spirits as I devoured the dish.

JazzyJ's Saturday Night Home Alone Philly Food

- Get about 6-10oz of thinly sliced "philly" beef & throw in the frying pan with 2 Tbsp of A1 sauce on low heat.

- Chop up 1 small yellow onion & 1/2 a bell pepper. Add to the skillet & turn up the heat. Add a dash of pepper & garlic powder or 2 minced garlic cloves. Stir it all up.

- In the meantime, kick the oven on broil. Put a pat of soy butter on two slices of whole wheat bread. Stick in the broiler for about 3 minutes to melt & brown. Sprinkle with garlic powder. Set the bread on a plate.

- Finish the skillet trimmings til the veggies are soft & the beef is cooked through.

- Spoon the skillet goodies over the slices of bread on the plate. Top with two pinches of shredded cheddar. I also sprinkled with parsley & more garlic powder.

DEVOUR! :)



(iphone post)

SharePod

Okay - so maybe I'm late to the game, but oh I'm so happy I'm here.

For those of you with an iPhone, I'm sure you've found just as frustrating as I have when you want to just add one song, one movie, one little thing to your iPhone, you have to go through this horrendously long process of syncing with iTunes to get it on there.

Welcome to SharePod!! I found this through a simple Google search. You can sync one files, multiple files, delete single files, and do things much more quickly than having to sync with iTunes.

You can also find other iTunes helper files by doing a simple Google search if you want to find more involved programs to keep you from having to deal with the iTunes sync.

Have Fun!!

Morning Love

This isn't really a recipe, and not necessarily a health nut item, but it's quick, easy, & good. :)

My healthier Egg & Sausage Muffin: 

- Turn your oven on broil.  Put a pat of veggie/soy butter on an opened English Wheat muffin.


- With one pat of the veggie/soy butter, cook a free-range, Omega-rich egg in a pan.

- Take one frozen sausage patty, throw in the microwave on defrost.  Then cook for 30 seconds, flip, 30 seconds, check, 30 second increments til done.

- Put your muffin in the oven, broil til the butter melt & the edges are crispy.

- Use the bottom of the muffin as the base.  Add the egg, add some cheddar, add the sausauge, a dash of minced garlic or sage or parsley (what I used), top with muffin top.
The sausage is not necessarily good - but you could use veggie/tempah sausage, or turkey sausage or just skip the sausage.

Enjoy the lovely morning :)

Caramelized Onion Chicken Pasta

I found this recipe on Epicurious too; however, I don't really care for it. It was a lot more complicated than it needed to be and it could have been made a lot better. However, I think the general idea of the recipe was good so I am listing it here with my updates :)

- With a Tbsp of olive oil, cook up about 3-4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts that have chopped up into pieces. Move from the pan to a bowl.

- In the same skillet take 2 medium sized red onions-chopped, and throw them in with a Tsp of olive oil. Cook them down for about 7 minutes. Add about 8oz of a nice red wine vinegar - I prefer the red wine garlic kind. Add 2 Tbsp of sugar. Let it cook down a bit til the onions are nice and caramelized.

- While you're caramelizing the onions, cook about 4oz of bow tie pasta. Drain, hold in the strainer.

- Chop up one good sized hot-house tomato - better yet, one from your garden. Throw in the pan with the caramelized onions. Add some fresh chopped marjoram leaves, fresh chopped basil leaves (2), add a couple dashes of salt & pepper, and 12oz (1.5 cups) of low-sodium organic chicken broth. Bring to a high boil, stirring constantly.

- Throw the pasta in the pan, stir, reduce heat to medium-low. Make sure the pasta gets covered by all the liquid. Throw in 2 handfuls of torn spinach leaves. Stir.

- Throw the chicken back in the mix, go to medium-high, stir, marry everything. Then turn down to low-simmer, and let it all gel together for about 10 minutes or so.

- Divide into your plates, and top with crumbled goat cheese. Serve.

Delicious!!

So what did I change? Well they wanted a lot more tomatoes, a lot more pasta, and they kept wanting to take everything out of the pan as it cooked to cook the next thing. That was just eh - I don't think it made it any better.

Enjoy!!

Quick Chicken Curry

I found this recipe at Epicurious, so I can't take credit for it but I did make some changes.





It was my first time making a curry dish at home & it was goooood!

- Take 2 Tbsp of a curry paste, I used Pataks, 1/4 cup white wine, 2 inches peeled/grated ginger root, 2 tsp ground cumin, 2 tsp ground cardamom, & blend it all up together. I used my Ninja, but you can just use a fork or whisk, but mix well!!

- Chop up 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts into bout 1" pieces. Throw the chicken & your just made curry sauce in a bowl. Toss it all around to coat the chicken pieces.

- Put a Tbsp of olive oil in a skillet, turn the heat up high, put the chicken & all the curry in the pan. Add 2 dashes of salt & pepper. Cook til the chicken has cooked through, bout 8 minutes.

- Take the chicken out of the skillet & set aside.

- Throw about 2 small chopped onions in the skillet. Add a dab (1/4 cup) of water, and stir it all around to pick up whatever goodies that was left from the chicken fry. Once the onions start going clear, put in one 6oz can of tomato sauce. Maybe its 4? Whatever that lil can is. They used diced tomatoes, and we didnt like it. But the sauce would have worked. Bring all this to a high simmer.

- Throw the chicken in the skillet, and stir all round. Let all the stuff marry in a low simmer for a smidgen, add water if you want to thin it a bit.

- Serve over jasmine rice and top with fresh chopped cilantro!

My next try will be to cut out the paste & make my own "paste". See ya!

(iphone post)

Kentucky's US Senate Race - The Unknowns

May Primary elections are upon us. One of the more significant openings in KY is the US Senate seat finally being vacated by the career politician, Jim Bunning (R). He's beeng sitting up there on the Senate thrown for a decade now, and if you think about it - a lot has happened in the last decade. I definitely think it's time for new blood.

We have several candidates up for his spot. I thought I'd start by giving you some snippets of what I call the "unknowns". These candidates are not as well known, and I don't believe I've seen a commercial for any of them. This is by no means an endorsement from you, but I post the info in the spirit of being an informed voter. I've included links to their websites so you can judge for your self.

And the nominees are...

• James Buckmaster (D): http://www.buckmaster2010.com/issues.htm
  I'm really confused about Dr. Buckmaster. He is running as a Democrat, yet he sounds like a typical neo-conservative Republican/GOP candidate. He is against same-sex marriage, he believes in the Iraqi war, he's against abortion rights, he's high on prayer in school-work-life, & against free trade. He's not the candidate for me at all - but there is his website, you choose for yourself.

• Darlene Fitzgerald Price (D): http://www.darlene4senate.com/index.html
  Darlene Price sounds more like your run-of-the-mill Democrat candidate, except I do notice she steers clear of most social issues. It looks like she wants to support education through government, strengthen the rights of veterans, deal with immigration issues, and work on health care. I do agree with her at the very least on the immigration issue. She supports actually enforcing the laws that already exist - kudos! But avoiding addressing social issues makes me think she either a) has opinions which would not jive with the typical liberal voters or b) does fall in line with typical liberal voters but doesn't want to say so in order to get more pseudo-conservative votes. Either way, social issues have to be addressed in this country since the government has chosen to meddle in them already, so for me, the avoidance of such issues makes me weary enough not to vote for Ms. Price.

• Maurice Sweeney (D): http://www.sweeneyforussenate.com/theissues.php
  This gentleman has been busy in his life. I think he's done some great things. However... I see a lot of rising taxes in his plan to overhaul education. He also does not think we should question the President on the war in Afghanistan. We should always question - in my opinion. Even if the President is the greatest person ever to have lived, we should question. Christians even at times in their lives question God - Jesus; we must absolutely question the President about their policies. Well any politician. He does get brownie points for wanting Senate term limits - the only candidate I've seen yet to push for such things.

• Gurley Martin (R): http://www.gurleylmartin.com/Home.html
  Mr. Martin still has a lot of spunk for an 86-year-old; however, I feel it is severely misguided. He talks of all Liberals being haters, and lots of his information sounds like it spewed forth right out of a Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh rant. Thanks, but no thanks.

• John Stephenson (R): http://www.jstephenson.com/Issues/Issues.htm
  John Stephenson has some good ideas such as the rail system; however, once again, like much of the GOP party, his good ideas are tainted with his personal religious views so much, I'd be concerned that he would be more worried about using the government to push the Christian agenda rather than pushing the conservative agenda. He says he's running for God. He says we need to make a "U-turn" back to God. I say, the government needs to make a U-turn back to staying out of lives - including our religious lives.

• John J. Scribner (R): http://jonscribner.webs.com/
  Can't tell you much about Mr. Scribner. His website is quite underdeveloped. He does state in a comment reply to someone that he is against abortion except in cases of Rape & Incest, he believes we need TORT reform, a balanced budget, & a strong military. The KFTC is sending him a survey, maybe we'll see more of him later?

So there you have it folks. Beyond Grayson, Paul, Conway, & Mongiardo, those are the other choices we have. In my opinion, it's not much, but you make your own decisions. Unfortunately, no independent or 3rd-party folks are running, so I may end up not casting a vote at all for this seat.

Enjoy the weather!

VegChili & Thai Pie

That pictured pizza is not mine, but it's close!!


I took more than inspiration from Saul Good's Thai Pizza tonite to make something delish! It is still a work in progress though so no recipe yet. But the sauce that makes it is the sweet chili sauce! Omg it's good! Tonite I used some tofu cubes & veggie mozzarella too. Forgot the peanuts and I need a better dough so stay tuned!

Sunday night we had a veggie chili. It was simple yet tasty! I used a spice chili veg mix from Whole Foods - a bit spicy but yum! I threw some tofu crumble in the pan, heated. Added water, spice mix, stirred heavily. Threw in kidney beans with their water, chopped onion, lots of garlic cloves, salt, pepper, ta-da! Boiled for a tad bit, simmered for 20, and yum yum good! Leftovers for lunch tomorrow too!

Have a great Tuesday!

(iphone post)

Ahhh VEG Out!

A healthier year... That was a resolution I made for 2010. I didn't get specific - I'm hoping to do that with mini-goals along the way.

We took a trip to Whole Foods today. I thought it was going to be outrageously expensive but I was surprised by the total bill for a week's worth of breakfast, lunch, dinner, & 2 snacks a day - about $28 a day for two!





I was very disappointed in their produce selection. Sure everything was organic, but there was not much diversity. We couldnt even find any green onions or fresh parsley!

I did love their measure your own aisle for beans, rice, dried fruits, and nuts. Lots of diversity there! I was surprised to see only a small section for tofu - maybe this is demand driven?

But we walked away with some good stuff - hopefully a lot less cholesterol & fat, and even a little less in calories.

We made a veggie meatloaf that was a bit spicy but mmm mm good - and no cholesterol!

Here's to a good start!

Location:Richmond, KY