Food!!! (Katie)

For the past couple weeks I’ve had to get kind of creative to get my protein in my diet. Not because I’m on some weird celebrity diet or because I’ve had my jaw wired shut, I’m just sick of eating chicken and pork.

Chicken and pork have some great qualities, about them:

1. They are nearly fool proof. Seriously. I can’t count the times I’ve cooked the two and I have yet to screw up so badly we can’t eat.
2. They are healthy. All those college kids that are searching for a way to loose their freshman 30 or 40 – or 50 for you unlucky people – these two meats help. That’s not to say that you can eat all you want of the two and you’ll lose weight, portion control is pretty helpful too.
3. There are a billion and one ways to cook them.

However, If you’re like me and you’ve had enough, its time to find your creativity button. My first suggestion is to discover hamburger helper. They have endless flavors and ground beef is fairly cheep. For you health nuts out there, ground turkey is acceptable, if you can choke it down. My first REAL step into cooking was a semi jambalaya. It had tomatoes in it and I am well aware that REAL jambalaya is not cooked with tomatoes. In any case I’ll tell you how I made it anyways:

• 1 can (28 oz THE BIG ASS CAN) of diced tomatoes - undrained
• 1 onion – as finely chopped as you want
• 1 green pepper – as finely chopped as you want
• Smoked sausage – I used the mini ones you throw in bbq sauce before a party. I chopped them up and threw them in
• Garlic – as garlicy as you want, I think I used somewhere around 4 cloves
• Hot red pepper sauce – NOT Tabasco, Jesus Christ, I can see everyone ruining this meal with stupid Tabasco. I used something that looked very red and thicker than Tabasco. I tried it when I got home and drank half a jug of apple Juice. So I thought “hey! Just a couple drops, right?” WRONG. Go big or go home! The tomatoes cover hot sauces really well
• Uncooked, thawed, peeled, deveined, tail removed, medium shrimp – I have this theory that more shrimp is better. It works for this dish.

Put it all, except the shrimp, in your favorite crock-pot, set it to low, and walk away for a couple hours, like 4. Come back and stir it. Throw your shrimp in. Stir it again. At this point you can leave it sit for another hour. When you come back, make sure the shrimp are pink (that means they are cooked) and eat!

Side note: Make some steamed rice. Keep it separate from your jambalaya until you are ready to eat it. Then the rice won’t get soggy. Also, this feeds an army.

There you go! You had sausage and shrimp in one meal, AND a ton of veggies.

My next meal, I’m making as I type. Eggplant Parmesan. ½ of you just shuttered. That’s fine, I understand, not everyone is an eggplant person. I happen to be because I love tasting everyone’s food at the dinner table when we go out to eat and eggplant Parmesan happens to be one of my dad’s favorite Italian dishes. The first time I tried to make this dish, it turned out with tough pieces of eggplant. My mother and I forgot to fry it. Oops. THIS time I read the ENTIRE recipe and so far it is turning out very well. I slightly adjusted it because I misread it and bought the wrong stuff at the store, but here we go:

• 1 eggplant – yes they are supposed to be purple.
• ½ cup of breadcrumbs – I went with plain
• ½ cup of flour
• 4 large eggs
• Mozzarella cheese
• Parmesan cheese
• 1/3 cup of olive oil (keep the bottle out though. You’ll need more to fry the eggplant in)
• Garlic – I used somewhere around 5 cloves. I like garlic.
• 2 Tomatoes
• Salt

So what you do is, de-skin your eggplant. This is harder than it sounds because eggplants have odd skin. You’ll get the hang of it though. Then cut it into ¼ inch thick slices. Mine were not ¼ inch. I promise. Just make sure they are about the same thickness so they cook evenly. Find a strainer thing, for you kitchen-advanced people, it is called a colander, and lay one layer of eggplant in the bottom and salt. Keep layering and salting evenly. Leave it sit for 2 hours.
my eggplant salting
While it is salting, make the tomato sauce. In a food blender (or electric chopper) put your tomatoes, garlic and olive oil in. Then stick it in the fridge and wait.
all natural, very healthy, sauce
I chose to take a nap because the only thing on TV was something about plagues. After the 2 hours, dry them off some more with paper towels. Take a deep frying pan and put ½ inch of olive oil and turn the heat up. Combine the breadcrumbs and flour in one bowl, and then in a second bowl, beat the eggs. Put the slices in the breadcrumbs and flour first, THEN dip them in the egg. Once the oil is hot (you’ll hear it), slide a couple of your covered eggplant slices into the oil with a fork. Flip them once and take them out when they are brown on both sides.
Just fried eggplant slices
After all your slices are fried, take a baking dish and put a layer of sauce at the bottom, then eggplant, then mozzarella cheese, then some parmesan. Layer until you can’t layer anymore and top it off with sauce and cheeses.
layered eggplant ready to cook!
Stick it in the oven at 350°F for 30 minutes. Then let it sit for 10 minutes, and eat!
Side note: I ate spaghetti with it and it was super. This feeds a couple people with some leftovers. This also makes one hell of a mess in the kitchen. However, it heats up really well!
eggplant parmesan...done.

Brandon and I also make really good spaghetti. I think he would threaten my life, though, if I gave away what we all put in it. However, there is a basic idea here: get your favorite sausage, and veggies, sauté them, and toss them with your favorite noodles and sauce. This is good for the poor college student. It makes a ton of food and is pretty inexpensive. It also makes a jar of sauce go really far. It feeds Brandon, Caitlin and me and we still have leftovers. For some of you that means nothing, but Caitlin and I are manbearpigs – we eat a lot.