Day Seven: In Which I ask for your patience

I need to take tonight and tomorrow off. I'm sorry. I'm disappointed, too, but I have to work out some stuff that takes priority for 48 hours or so.

I will be back this weekend. That is a promise.

Thanks for being great.

Day Seven: Remember that one time when I was hungry?

You know, it's summer. In the summer, I don't eat nearly as much as when it's cold. I thought (and still think, don't get me wrong) that it would be an ideal time to do this project because the portion sizes are inherently smaller, and I won't have to turn on the big oven at all and therefore not turn my apartment into the 7th circle of hell.

But I didn't anticipate not being hungry at all. The best I've been able to manage so far today is a handful of pretzels and a big glass of water.

However, I've made a committment to this blog, and to my readers, that I will cook and eat from the EBO at least once a day, and I'm going to keep that committment. It looks like today's experiment will be confined to dinner only, though.

Tonight's dinner will be some sort of Mexican Chicken dish, with a cornbread crust on the bottom. I have some delicious dehydrated corn i may add for extra crunch on the top, and a whole jar of super chunky salsa to work with. I'm thinking I might have to do this one in a few stages to make sure everything is cooked to safe temperatures and is cooked all the way through, but that's ok. What else do I have to do with my evening, hmmm?

Bear with me kids. I have spent the past couple of days looking up recipes on the interwebs that I can play with, and this weekend will be an excellent time to play mad scientist, so things will probably liven up around here.

Back tonight with Results and the Recipe. Have a good afternoon!

Day Six: Results - aka We knew it was bound to happen

*sigh* I'm not hungry.

But I did cook! And I tasted, at least. Because I like to keep my promises.

So, let's get to it.

Breakfast was the Herbed Oven Omelette. I used thyme and Thai magic basil from my very own pots on my very own window sill for the "herb" bit.

I'm going to digress a bit-- Chime in here folks. Is the "h" silent or not? "erb" or "herb"? I always thought Herb was a guy's name. Like Herb from WKRP. But I was recently chastised strongly for not pronouncing the H.

Anyhoots.

I whisked the egg with a little bit of water, salt, pepper, and the diced herbs.



However, something happened. I am going to show you the underside because it's prettier than what happened on the top.



I'm not hiding it from you, I just don't want to gross anyone out. It sort of... well... it just looks funny. It's like the egg separated or something, even though it was beaten up really well. The whole thing cooked through, But the top was kind of shiny in an unnatural way and the herbs all floated to the top. Weird. Didn't taste bad, but looked weird. Maybe too much water? I dunno. I'm not a measurer, generally, but perhaps when I make the eggs I should use the measuring spoons.

Dinner was salmon with onions and peppers. I just seasoned the fish with salt and pepper, nothing fancy.



It actually smells really good. The fish, as was the case with the last two times I cooked fish in the EBO, was moist and flaky all the way through, and tasted good. The frozen peppers and onions cooked through, but were a little bit mushy. I'm thinking maybe all vegetables should be cooked via the foil packet and introduced to the protein later. The only issue with that is... if you're trying to use the veggies as part of the flavouring process for the meat, well, you'd be SOL.



Both dishes cooked for 20 minutes.

It's possible I'm being hard on the food tonight because I really haven't felt like eating it all day. Or maybe I just didn't try very hard, for the same reason.

At any rate, it was all edible. I just don't feel like edibling. Eating, I mean.

I promise, I'll be much more enthusiastic tomorrow.

G'night kiddos.

Day Six: Who knows?

After a long four day weekend, I'm back at work. It's nice to have air conditioning again, but I'm fighting a strong urge to just sit here and crochet all day.

But the show must go on, yes?

So here's today's menu:

Breakfast: Herb Oven Omelette
I have some fresh thyme growing like crazy on my windowsill, and I used a little last week, but I need to use more of that and the sage and basil before they take over the living room. I wonder if I'd still get my deposit back if i let my living room become an herb jungle?

Lunch: Believe it or not, I had some leftover jerk chicken from last week. I had chopped enough chicken for two pans, so I decided to go ahead and cook them both. So for lunch, i'm having leftovers. Delicious, cheesy leftovers.

Dinner: Salmon with onions and peppers. I have a frozen onion/pepper mix in the freezer that I haven't even opened yet. I'm thinking it's time to see how frozen veggies do in the EBO.

I really want to try some vegan or vegeterian stuff later this week. If any of you have any good recipes you think would adapt well, please let me know! Or even if you don't think they'd adapt well but you're one of those sick meanies who likes to read about glorious failure, that's ok, too! It can't all be sunshine and roses, right?

Have a great day kids! See you on the flipside.

Day Five: Let them eat cake!

Ok. Not cake exactly, but dessert.

I had coffee for dinner, but I know that I promised you lovelies SOMETHING, so I decided to come home and make dessert.

I'm not sure what to call it. It's raspberries on a graham cracker crust with balsamic mixed in to the filling.

Let's call it a Balsamic Raspberry Tartlet. (look! i made a tartlet in a tartlet pan! what a novel concept!)

The Recipe

I mixed about three tablespoons of crushed graham crackers with 1 egg white, and poured that mixture into the pan to bake first as a crust. It baked in 12 minutes. Kind of looked like a cookie when i poked at it a little.



Then, I arranged fresh raspberries around the edge, and crushed up about 3 or 4 more tablespoons of raspberries with one packet of Splenda and put that mixture in the middle. Then, I drizzled some balsamic into the middle, about a teaspoon or so, and mixed it in a little to the crushed raspberries.



It baked for 18 minutes, and if I can say nothing else about this particular dessert, it LOOKS pretty, yeah?



ok, i know it looks kind of like it did before it baked, but trust me, it TASTED different.

The crust is sort of... chewy-ish. Not crispy. It held up well and didn't disintegrate under the filling, but I probably should have added some Splenda to it because it's definitely lacking in the flavour department. However... the raspberry filling is pretty effing delicious. Not too sweet, but the flavour of the fresh raspberries really comes through.

So, I think if i work on the crust a little, this could really be a killer dessert. I also think it's missing whipped cream, Or a little scoop of ice cream. Melting all over it... hot out of the oven omg mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Ok. Sorry. *embarassed face* I went away for a minute.

Anyhoots, I will call this dessert an "almost success," and probably make it, or some form of it again so I can tweak it and get it perfect.

Before I go, some of you have mentioned that you haven't been able to leave comments. Well, I think I got that little issue corrected. I tested it out and the comment window now pops up for me, where it didn't before, so we should be good to go.

Please! Comment! Suggest! Give me ideas!

Tomorrow we go back to our regularly scheduled programming. G'night!

Day Four: The Alpha and the Omega

Get it? Because I'm only doing one post today and...
aww. Forget it.

Today for breakfast I made an egg. It was over easy, and inside a little bed of thin sliced deli turkey. I don't know what you'd call it. Kind of like toad in the hole, except no bread, and really no hole. Ok. Scratch that. Not like toad in the hole at all.

Anyhoots, I just lined a tart pan with three slices of deli turkey, cracked an egg in the middle, and sprinkled a little salt and pepper on it. It took about 22 minutes to cook.



The egg was still pretty soft, but the whites were cooked through, and the yolk was runny, which is just like i like it. I imagine if you left it in there for 30 minutes while you enjoyed your first cup of coffee or took your morning shower, the whole thing would set up a little more.

But me, I like a runny yolk.


This one was pretty easy. Took maybe three minutes of prep time, and I will probably do it again just because it's so easy. I didn't expect any sort of revelations from this recipe, but I did expect a yummy breakfast, and that's exactly what I got.

I'll be back tomorrow evening sometime with dinner.

I hope all of my American readers (all what? 2 of you? ha haha) have a safe and happy Independence Day!

Day Three: Recipes and Results

It's late. I haven't been terribly hungry today, but for you, I cook, and I eat.

I might, however, have run out of clever for today. So, we're going to get right to it.

Lunch was a mahi mahi fillet marinated in some traditional asian shtuff, and a salad.

The Recipe
2.5 ounce piece of thawed (from frozen) mahi mahi
2 T low sodium soy sauce
2 healthy pinches of Chinese 5 Spice
1/2 tsp dark sesame oil
sea salt and cracked black pepper

The fish hung out all day in a Ziploc bag, marinating away. This was really a pretty simple, straightforward thing to cook. If you've had mahi before, you know it's not an extremely fishy fish, and it's very good at maintaining its integrity while at the same time allowing other flavours in.



Twenty minutes in the EBO, and what I got was a flavourful, moist, flaky piece of fish.



I have always been a fan of baking fish, but the trick every time is making sure it's cooked through but doesn't get dry. Oddly, that seems to be a much less daunting task in the EBO. Just like the salmon, 20 minutes inside that baking chamber doesn't seem to do anything bad, and in fact, seems to intensify the flavours of both the fish and its seasoning.

*Gumpvoice* And that's all I've got to say about that.

Dinner was a tuna noodle bake and packet cooked red bell pepper (I didn't realize I had run out of broccoli. whoops!)

The Recipe
1/3 can of tuna in oil
1 packet of low sodium instant miso soup mix
Slightly more than 1/4 cup of Maifun noodles
1 healthy pinch of Spanish paprika

The peppers
1/4 of a red bell pepper, cut into chunks
sea salt and cracked black pepper

First, I know some of you made a face about the tuna packed in oil. Eventually, I'll stop explaining myself about stuff like this, but I want you to feel ok about it. I really do. Most of the oil was drained off, but I did retain a bit of it to make sure the tuna stayed moist, and the additional moisture also helped the miso soup blend into it better. There was also the question of how and if the noodles would finish cooking properly inside the EBO, and I thought the little bit of oil left in the tuna would help with that, as well.

I soaked the noodles in very hot tap water for about 10 minutes. Maifun noodles are a wheat free, gluten free noodle made from rice flour. If you buy a box of Maifun noodles, you'll see that this hot water soaking method is what you'd do to the noodles if you were planning on using them in stir fry. It takes the noodles about 3/4 of the way there, and allows them to finish cooking quickly with whatever they're going to be served with. Maifun noodles are NOT going to turn to mush. They are happiest at al dente and you'd probably have to boil the bejeezus out of them to get them to go all soft and mushy. Maifun noodles are kind of a hardass.

After the noodles had soaked, I mixed them with the tuna, the miso soup, and a little salt and pepper. After arranging the mixture in the tart pan, I noticed that it just looked... boring. I knew the flavours weren't, but we eat with our eyes, first. I kinda wish I had some green onion or something, but I don't, so I sprinkled on some Spanish paprika to give it a little colour.



The tuna bake came out.... uuuuuh. It was ok. I put it through the oven in two 10 minute bakes. The miso soup mix is a pretty assertive flavour, but not obnoxiously, although I'd say next time (if there is a next time), rather than just mixing the dry soup mix into the tuna I'll mix it with just a little hot water first to get the "powdery" taste out.

The noodles are perfectly cooked. They got crunchy on top, but stayed tender inside the dish.



This recipe definitely needs some tweaking, but it's edible and definitely has potential.

The peppers just went onto a 12 x 6 inch (ish) piece of foil, and got a sprinkle of salt and pepper. I did spray the foil VERY lightly with some non-stick spray. Then, I just folded the edges up and made the packet as flat as possible.




The peppers cooked in 10 minutes, and they are definitely steamed through, and are broken down nicely without becoming mushy. This is definitely something I'll repeat. Packet cooking (at least for peppers) in the EBO is a success!



And that, kids, is Day three.

I am off to the bustling metropolis of Brush, Colorado tomorrow to visit Coree, so I will probably just be making breakfast, and I'll be combining my menu post and results post because I won't be back at home until sometime Monday.

So, I'll meet you back here bright and early tomorrow. Gnight!