Back of the Box: Minute Rice

I'm Chinese, and I think it's unethical--and quite possibly illegal--for me to make Minute Rice. So I was as surprised as anyone when I found myself standing in line for a chance to spin the wheel and win a prize from the Minute Rice booth at a charity walk a few weeks ago. Even more surprising was how embarrassingly giddy I became when I won a full-size box of Minute Rice, and all the losers around me just got refrigerator magnets and pencils. Ha!

I came home, put it in my pantry, and never gave it another thought, until today when I was trying to come up with a dinner that would not require a trip to the store. On the back of the box was a recipe for Parmesan Crusted Chicken. I have Parmesan! I have chicken! The only thing I didn't have was asparagus, but as it turned out, the recipe just said to serve the asparagus on the side. As if we can't think of our own side dish? Sheesh.

Parmesan Crusted Chicken
2 cups Minute Brown Rice, uncooked
1 can (14 1/2 oz) chicken broth, divided
1/2 cup water
6 butter crackers, finely crushed (double this)
2 Tbsp. Parmesan cheese, grated (double this too)
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 tsp. oil
1/2 cup chive and onion cream cheese
3/4 lb. asparagus spears, trimmed

Prepare rice according to package directions, using 1 1/4 cups of broth and water. Meanwhile, mix cracker crumbs and Parmesan cheese on the plate. Rinse chicken with cold water; gently shake off excess water. Dip chicken in crumb mixture, turning over to evenly coat both sides of each chicken breast with the crumb mixture.

Heat oil in nonstick skillet on medium heat. Add chicken; cook 5 to 6 minutes on each side or until golden brown on both sides and cooked through. Place chicken on serving platter; cover to keep warm. Add remaining 1/2 cup broth and cream cheese to same skillet. Cook on medium heat until mixture just comes to a boil, stirring constantly. Simmer 3 minutes or until sauce is thickened, stirring frequently. Serve chicken over rice. Spoon sauce over chicken. Serve with asparagus.


Rating: Weird. This is the strangest back of the box recipe I've ever seen. It's just telling you to cook rice, and serve it next to other things. The chicken recipe really has nothing to do with the rice, and why tell us to serve it with asparagus when we might prefer peas, or corn, or beans? Seems like rice should be an ingredient in the recipe. However, nitpicking aside, the chicken was good, and the sauce was delicious, considering how easy it was to make.

Friendly Competition: Quinoa

Our bellies are still full of grilled cheese and Amy at the Grody Gourmet and I are ready to cook healthy. We've chosen that supergrain known as quinoa as the featured ingredient in this week's recipe challenge.

I did a little research on quinoa and found that not only is it a complete protein (great for vegans), but it is high in antioxidants, can help people who suffer from migraines, can improve cardiovascular health--and pretty much everything else. I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow they announced it could reverse male pattern baldness. Why are we not eating this every day?

As always, we'll post our favorite recipes on Friday, and we'd love to have you join in. If you have a great quinoa recipe, let me know and I'll post a link to your blog as well.

Friendly Competition: Breakfast Grilled Cheese

This week's challenge with Amy at The Grody Gourmet was to come up with a great grilled cheese recipe. For most of the week I was planning to do sort of a chile relleno thing with Anaheim peppers and Monterey Jack cheese. I was toying with the idea of adding mango, when my brain kind of wandered into breakfast territory. What about mango with cream cheese on grilled raisin bread? No wait! Cinnamon bread! After much inner turmoil, I settled on this:

Breakfast Grilled Cheese with Pumpkin Butter

Butter two slices of bread, and sprinkle liberally with cinnamon sugar (1 part cinnamon to 3 parts sugar). Spread the insides of the bread with cream cheese and about 2 Tbsp. pumpkin butter. Grill until it's brown and the cinnamon sugar is caramelized on the bread. It gets all crunchy and awesome. This is a quick and reasonably healthy breakfast food that the kids can finish in the car, if necessary. (Now you know how our mornings go.)


Pumpkin Butter
1 15-oz. can pureed pumpkin
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. pumpkin pie spice, plus another Tbsp. of cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt

Simmer all ingredients on low heat for about an hour, until very thick and the mixture doesn't slide off a spoon.

Shameless Plug: Imaginative Play Toys

Perfect for the little boy who dreams of a career in the construction field
(note the absence of a "middle management" playhouse).

Your child's name above the door and felt "mail" with your street number
is a great tool to help kids learn their address.

Today I'm plugging an amazing shop that happens to belong to my Etsy BFF, Julie. She sews playhouses out of felt that fit over your card table, and fold up when you need to use the card table for something boring, like eating...or playing cards.

Look at all the details she puts in--makes my
scissors hand tired just thinking about it.

If you really want to send the playgroup (or better yet, the playgroup moms) into a tizzy, get Jr. the "Palatial Playhouse", with a peaked roof that allows the kids room to play standing up.

If you're like me, a grunt type who doesn't mind the labor but doesn't have the creative vision to design one of these, you can buy detailed patterns and sew it yourself. Check out Imaginative Play Toys at missprettypretty.etsy.com.

Back of the Can: Breakfast Casserole

Evaporated Milk: It's what's for breakfast.

Carlsbad 5000 weekend! This annual race is a big deal in our town. Runners from all over the world come for the "world's fastest 5K" but the day before the big race, it's all about the kids. The Jr. 5000 is an annual tradition for many families here, including ours, starting when they register for the "diaper dash" and all the way up to age 12.

That guy on the left can't believe his eyes when my daughter flies past him. It's like a bolt of lightning!

Max and his buddy, collecting their first place medals (along with a zillion other kids).

Clashing mightily with the 5000 this year is Sean's favorite tradition, "good breakfast" day. I've somehow been suckered into making him some combination of meat, eggs, and potatoes once a week. So while he slept in (he's 15 now and has done his time at the 5000) and the little kids got ready, I mixed up a quick batch of this breakfast casserole from the back of the Carnation Evaporated Milk can.

I put it in the oven when I came home but what I didn't realize was how long it took to cook: one hour. We were starving by the time it was ready.

Rating: Not that great but has potential. Really, what is there to mess up? But the fat free milk gave it a really weird chemical taste. I think Carnation's recipe would have been great, had we substituted half and half or regular milk for the Carnation. Should I suggest it to them?

Hash Brown Casserole

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
6 large eggs, beaten
1 can (12 oz) Carnation Evaporated Fat-Free Milk (make it regular milk and you'll be a lot happier)
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1 pkg (30 oz) frozen hash brown potatoes (I just used 4 potatoes, shredded)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 small green bell pepper, chopped (I used a combo of different colored bells)
10 slices turkey bacon, cooked and chopped (I used sausage)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13x9-inch baking dish. Combine cheese, eggs, milk, salt, and pepper in large bowl. Add potatoes, onion, bell pepper, and bacon. Mix well and pour mixture into baking dish. Bake 1 hour or until set.

Kittytown, or Do it Yourself Cat Fencing

Can you spot the hidden Rocco?

Foiled!

She's thinking how immature he is. He doesn't care.

A few months ago, my friend Jennifer sent me a link to a story about a guy in Florida who has built a tall fence around several acres of land and runs a cat sanctuary called Caboodle Ranch, where the cats can roam freely about the property. Starting a dog and cat sanctuary is my ultimate dream, and this guy is my hero.

Since my home is built on a tiny 7,000-square-foot lot, for now I'll have to settle for (much) less. Jen's email got me thinking, though...what if I could fence the yard in so the cats could go outside? It has been difficult for me to keep the cats inside for their entire lives; it's just not natural. Yes, I realize it's safer for them but it would be safer for humans as well to never step foot outside the house. Doesn't quality of life count for anything?

So I dug in--literally. I began by Googling "cat fencing." You'd be amazed at how many companies there are that will provide you with an entire system. Some of them even launch the cats back into the yard when they try to escape--the video is quite amusing, I must say. The one thing that was consistent about each of these companies was their prohibitive cost. So being the resourceful type, I decided this was not rocket science, and I would do it myself.

Objectives: To keep the cats from escaping under, over, and through.

First step: a trip to Home Depot--hooray!--for chicken wire or any type of strong mesh with small holes (under and through) and something called garden fencing (over) that's apparently used to keep rabbits out of your yard. You'll also need lots of garden ties and possibly some smooth metal sheeting if you have trees that your cats can use to climb and escape.


Under: Try not to tackle this step on the hottest day of the year, like we did. Dig a trench under your fence that's about 8 inches deep. Bury a foot-high strip of chicken wire partially underground, bending it toward you when you lay it in the trench so the cats won't be able to dig under it. Make sure the top part of the chicken wire sticks out of the trench by at least a few inches.


Through: For any areas of fencing that are not solid wood, get your mesh or chicken wire, and zip-tie it to the entire length of the fence. Use more zip ties to attach the pieces of chicken wire that are sticking up from the trenches underneath the fence.


Over: If your fence is solid and nearly touches the ground, you may not need either the under or the through steps, but you'll definitely need the over. Fold your garden fencing over where the smaller rectangles meet the larger squares. I could manage about 8-foot sections at a time. Lay them so that the large squares are against the fence and the rectangles angle back in to the yard, creating a ceiling that your cats won't be able to jump over. I found u-shaped nails that worked great to attach these pieces to the fence.


Over (gate): If you have a gate, attach a length just to the gate, so it can swing out still, and put the garden wire at a slightly lower height on either side of the gate so the wire sections won't knock into each other when you open it.


Over (trees): If your cat can climb a tree and use a branch as a launching point, they will do it. George has mastered the trick of building up speed and then launching herself to heights I did not think possible. Bad kitty. I cut open the plastic zip tie canister (though when I get back to Home Depot I'll probably use a piece of metal sheeting) and wrapped it around the trunk of the tree so she could only go so high. Every time she races across the yard and then hits that plastic, I can almost hear the Flintstone brake squealing sound effect and see her legs spinning with smoke coming out. I yell "ha ha" at her every time this happens.

Your fence will probably look nicer than mine; I'm definitely a "let's get it done, right now and quickly" sort of person, rather than a perfectionist. (Imagine how happy that makes my engineer husband!) You will have to be vigilant about watching the cats for the first week or so; you'll be surprised at how they will find a way to escape through a tiny opening you left, or a piece of fencing bent down a little too much at the top that they can scale.

Now I have help with the yardwork!

Friendly Competition: Grilled Cheese

When I was a kid, I had two favorite meals. The first was breakfast: grits and Tang. Remember Tang? The astronauts drank it. The second was a sandwich my dad would make for me at lunchtime on weekends. Grilled cheese and baloney sandwiches with tomato and onion. Hey--don't knock it til you've tried it.

This week, Amy from the Grody Gourmet and I are making grilled cheese sandwiches. If you'd like to play along, come up with your most ingenious grilled cheese recipe and be ready to post it on your blog Friday. Send me the link and I'll post it here as well.