Bless me, readers, for I have sinned
I bought potato chips and a carton of Whoppers and some pineapple juice at the grocery store in addition to milk, asparagus, apples, tempeh for the shepherd's pie I'm going to make, Boursin for the mashed potatoes I will top my shepherd's pie with, and monterey jack. I shouldn't have but I did. I'm going to be eating so many potatoes over the next couple weeks. There's potato in my pot pie, there'll be potato in my shepherd's pie, I have a meal's worth of pierogies left, and now chips. Gah. If I had to buy a crunchy unhealthy snack I should have had the sense to make it Cheetos instead.
Skipped breakfast today because I woke up feeling sickly. Felt better by lunchtime and had:
Lunch: Rice 'n beans 'n a lotta seasonings in a tortilla, yum.
Dinner: Vegetable pot pie. I used cheese sauce in the veggies and it came out nasty again, although it's a little hard to tell in the finished pie since the biscuit topping absorbed most of it. Is Monterey Jack just not a good sauce-making cheese? I could have sworn I did everything in the right order this time. On the subject of biscuits: I freaking LOVE biscuits. Every time I eat a biscuit I think "I freaking love biscuits. I need to learn to make biscuits so I can have biscuits every day if I want." But I tend to forget about how much I love biscuits when I haven't had biscuits very very recently, so I never learned to make biscuits and have generally only eaten biscuits when my family has gotten KFC. But now I know a biscuit recipe because I needed one to make a pot pie, and it is simple and absofreakinglutely delightful, at least atop mixed veggies. I threw in some oregano and some garlic powder into the biscuit batter because I thought they sounded awfully plain, and they are eeeeexquisite. nom nom nom nom nom. Here's hoping it'll be as yummy microwaved the next day (and the next and the next, lotta pot pie to eat.)
Dessert: Polished off the cake. Tomorrow I make brownies.
I have a lot of leftovers. I have at least four or five servings of lentil soup, I have one really big or two normal-sized servings of rice and beans, I have the half a can's worth of beans I didn't use in the rice and beans, and I have at least eight servings of pot pie left. I also have cranberry sauce that isn't finished. I don't think the pot pie and the shepherd's pie I plan to make will fit into the fridge at the same time, at least not if I want to keep anything else in there, so I need to either finish everything except the pot pie, or finish the pot pie, before I can make the shepherd's. I probably need to resign myself to not finishing the shepherd's pie, because a nine inch square pan (which is all I have) makes about nine very generous servings of whatever I put in it, and I'm only on campus until the 17th (on which day I won't be having meals here, so really more like the 16th) and then I have to split. I suppose I could generously share the shepherd's pie when it's fresh out of the oven (I wouldn't try to offer my roommates my leftovers, that'd be weird, but anything that hasn't gone in the fridge yet is shareable) and wind up not having to throw any out.
My biscuit recipe:
Combine 2 cups of flour, 1 tablespoon of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of salt. Cut up 7 tablespoons of cold unsalted butter into little pieces. Massage the butter into the dry ingredients with fingertips until it's pretty uniform. (Warning, potential hand crampage.) Stir in 3/4 cup of milk. Spoon out (into individual biscuits, or into a sorta-level topping over a pot pie) and bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until starting to get brown and crispy on top.
Variation:
I didn't have enough unsalted butter, so I used some salted and just put in a scant teaspoon instead of a level teaspoon of salt. It turned out fine. I also threw in a couple big pinches of oregano and a liberal sprinkling of garlic powder. I don't usually measure spices when I'm improvising like that, so I can't help you with amounts, but I think this recipe could probably stand two or three total tablespoons of seasonings as long as they weren't all chili powder or cayenne or any of their spicy spicy friends. I wouldn't want all two or three tablespoons to be the same spice, either, that might get overpowering. I might try something wacky in the future like putting in some honey in these for sweet biscuits on which to put jelly!
Skipped breakfast today because I woke up feeling sickly. Felt better by lunchtime and had:
Lunch: Rice 'n beans 'n a lotta seasonings in a tortilla, yum.
Dinner: Vegetable pot pie. I used cheese sauce in the veggies and it came out nasty again, although it's a little hard to tell in the finished pie since the biscuit topping absorbed most of it. Is Monterey Jack just not a good sauce-making cheese? I could have sworn I did everything in the right order this time. On the subject of biscuits: I freaking LOVE biscuits. Every time I eat a biscuit I think "I freaking love biscuits. I need to learn to make biscuits so I can have biscuits every day if I want." But I tend to forget about how much I love biscuits when I haven't had biscuits very very recently, so I never learned to make biscuits and have generally only eaten biscuits when my family has gotten KFC. But now I know a biscuit recipe because I needed one to make a pot pie, and it is simple and absofreakinglutely delightful, at least atop mixed veggies. I threw in some oregano and some garlic powder into the biscuit batter because I thought they sounded awfully plain, and they are eeeeexquisite. nom nom nom nom nom. Here's hoping it'll be as yummy microwaved the next day (and the next and the next, lotta pot pie to eat.)
Dessert: Polished off the cake. Tomorrow I make brownies.
I have a lot of leftovers. I have at least four or five servings of lentil soup, I have one really big or two normal-sized servings of rice and beans, I have the half a can's worth of beans I didn't use in the rice and beans, and I have at least eight servings of pot pie left. I also have cranberry sauce that isn't finished. I don't think the pot pie and the shepherd's pie I plan to make will fit into the fridge at the same time, at least not if I want to keep anything else in there, so I need to either finish everything except the pot pie, or finish the pot pie, before I can make the shepherd's. I probably need to resign myself to not finishing the shepherd's pie, because a nine inch square pan (which is all I have) makes about nine very generous servings of whatever I put in it, and I'm only on campus until the 17th (on which day I won't be having meals here, so really more like the 16th) and then I have to split. I suppose I could generously share the shepherd's pie when it's fresh out of the oven (I wouldn't try to offer my roommates my leftovers, that'd be weird, but anything that hasn't gone in the fridge yet is shareable) and wind up not having to throw any out.
My biscuit recipe:
Combine 2 cups of flour, 1 tablespoon of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of salt. Cut up 7 tablespoons of cold unsalted butter into little pieces. Massage the butter into the dry ingredients with fingertips until it's pretty uniform. (Warning, potential hand crampage.) Stir in 3/4 cup of milk. Spoon out (into individual biscuits, or into a sorta-level topping over a pot pie) and bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until starting to get brown and crispy on top.
Variation:
I didn't have enough unsalted butter, so I used some salted and just put in a scant teaspoon instead of a level teaspoon of salt. It turned out fine. I also threw in a couple big pinches of oregano and a liberal sprinkling of garlic powder. I don't usually measure spices when I'm improvising like that, so I can't help you with amounts, but I think this recipe could probably stand two or three total tablespoons of seasonings as long as they weren't all chili powder or cayenne or any of their spicy spicy friends. I wouldn't want all two or three tablespoons to be the same spice, either, that might get overpowering. I might try something wacky in the future like putting in some honey in these for sweet biscuits on which to put jelly!