Recipes

Slow Cooker Beef Stew

Posted on by thegoodenoughguide

2 pounds beef stew meat (I actually used a discounted rump roast, cut into 1″ cubes and it was delicious)

1/2 c. corn starch
1 onion
1 carrot
2 stalks of celery
2 potatoes
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbs. rosemary
1 Tsp. dry mustard
1 Tsp. sage
2 Tbs. soy sauce
2 bay leaves
Salt and Pepper to taste
1/2 c. veggie broth
1 can diced tomatoes
Beef stew is such a wonderfully delicious and easy winter meal. Just cube the meat (if you need to) and roll in the corn starch, cut up the veggies, add the herbs and spices, pour in the broth and diced tomatoes, and slow cook for 6-8 hours. It’s a good one to use up vegetables or tweak to taste. Enjoy and stay warm!

slowcookerbeefstew

Chicken Taco Soup

Posted on by thegoodenoughguide

I made this recipe up on the first big snowfall of the year. We woke up to a dusting and throughout the day, our backyard got prettier and prettier. This soup will warm you from the inside.

chickentacosoup

2 chicken breasts (cooked and cubed)

2 Tbs. olive oil

1 green pepper

1 red onion

1 packet taco seasoning

1/2 tsp. cumin

1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper

2 c. vegetable broth

1 can whole kernel corn (drained)

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can black beans (drained)

Sriracha to taste

Serve with plain yogurt, tortilla chips, lime and fresh cilantro.

 

Cook the chicken breasts thoroughly and dice. In a soup pot, heat olive oil and saute onion and green pepper. Add taco seasoning, cumin and cayenne pepper and stir. Add vegetable broth and bring to a boil. Add corn, diced tomatoes and black beans. Add diced chicken and heat thoroughly. If you like things extra spicy, add a little Sriracha sauce before you eat. You’ll love every minute of the meal.

Side note: this soup goes great with beer.

Slow Cooker Pork Shoulder

Posted on by thegoodenoughguide

Here’s another one for the slow cooker. You can eat it plain, add some BBQ sauce, make it into carnitas… The possibilities are endless.

Pork shoulder
1 onion, cut into large chunks
3 (or 4 or 5) garlic cloves
1 tsp. fennel seeds
2 tsp. Thyme
1/4 c white wine
Potatoes, quartered

Cook on low for 8 hours. This is a really basic recipe for pork, but it is oh so good.

 

slowcookerporkshoulder

World’s Easiest Fish Fillets

Posted on by thegoodenoughguide

These definitely fall into the recipes for lazy people category. I’m new to cooking fish, and kind of new to eating it. This was the easiest thing I’ve made all week, because it was essentially cheating. But it’s a recipe that’s good for cooking over a single burner, which we may be doing more of in our tiny house. Here goes!

Thaw the fillets. I used perch.

Melt some butter in a skillet. Let it get good and bubbly.

Crush up a bunch of savory croutons and rub into both sides of each fillet.

Fry ’em up, and serve. Sprinkle on some lemon juice if you have a fresh one.

 

fishfillets

Shepherd’s Pie

Posted on by thegoodenoughguide

Now this one is good.

 

2 pounds mashed potatoes

butter

milk

salt and pepper

 

1/2 c. chopped onion

1/2 c. green beans

1/4 c. corn

1/4 c. carrots

1.5 pounds ground beef

1/4 c. vegetable broth

parsley

sage

rosemary

thyme

salt and pepper

 

Make your mashed potatoes: peel, quarter, put in cold water. Boil until tender. Drain and smash. Add milk (2 Tbl. or so) and butter (3-4 Tbl.). Add salt and pepper to taste.

In a frying pan, cook veggies over medium heat until softened. Add ground beef and cook until browned. Add veggie broth and herbs. I don’t measure the herbs but I use fresh when I’ve got ’em and sprinkle over mixture until lightly covered. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Put the beef and veg mixture into a pan, then layer with mashed potatoes. Cook at 350 for 30 minutes or so, until the potatoes start to turn golden brown.

 

shepherdspie

 

#sogood #comfortfood #cheapskate

 

Recipe Theory for Lazy People

Posted on by thegoodenoughguide

I am not a chef, and I feel that I should probably add that disclaimer to every recipe I post. Many of the dishes I make are tweaked from originals, or created in the grocery store (sometimes around the clearance bin), or are hardly recipes at all. I do love food, though, and I really enjoy working with it. Sometimes I think it’s the best way to shift gears, especially if you have a particularly emotional or cerebral job. I like to use my hands to slow down my brain in the evening.

I interviewed a chef once, who told me that he only creates recipes that use six ingredients or less. I asked him why six was the magic number, and he said anything more than that and you start to mask individual flavors. I liked that approach, and even though I’m not strict about the magic number, I started to cook more simple and straightforward meals. And as a result, I’m getting better at identifying flavors and deciding which ones I like to pair together. Win, win.

recipesforlazypeople

Another thing I use sometimes when I’m making things up is the flavor star. I don’t know who invented it and I definitely can’t take the credit, but it’s kind of fun to use it in experiments. I used this recently when I made up a spicy chicken recipe for the slow cooker. It was pretty cool to start with an idea (chicken), pour on some flavor (can of tomatoes with green chilies), add some salt and creaminess, and viola! A new favorite was born. When I think of a name for it, I’ll post the recipe. I’m sure it’ll be something really creative like Spicy Slow Cooker Chicken.

If you are the head chef of your household, keep fighting the good fight. And if food isn’t fun anymore, just start over and see what you can make on your own, maybe with six ingredients or less. Or just read this article, which is great. Happy chefing!

2 Ingredient Spicy BBQ Chicken

Posted on by thegoodenoughguide

The degree to which we’re minimizing means we really are going to have to change the way we cook. Our refrigerator is slightly bigger than the average dorm fridge, we’re still undecided about whether or not we’ll have running water in the tiny house, and to be perfectly honest, we usually go on pretty big grocery trips.

I recently listened to an awesome story about food waste from NPR. According to the story, the average American family wastes 25% of its purchased food every year. That is astounding! But when I stopped to think about it, I don’t think The Artist and I are doing much better than the average. For the two of us, we often buy food to last us for a week’s worth of meals. But I have never gotten good at remembering that we’ll have leftovers after most dinners since there are only two of us eating.

Throwing away food is hugely disgusting to me. It’s like throwing away money. But when I cleaned out the refrigerator (“regular sized” refrigerator) today, I threw away several items that were beyond saving. (The NPR story, by the way, has some excellent tips for using foods that may be only slightly off.) One of my goals with this tiny new lifestyle is to stop wasting. Period. And I think food is a great place to start.

As I’ve started recalculating how to cook for two in a tiny space, I’ve come up with a lot of recipes that only require a handful of ingredients, can be made for two people or twenty-two people, and use only one pot/bowl/skillet, etc. These are the recipes I’ve been sharing on this blog, and these are the recipes I’ll continue to share.

For the record, I once interviewed a chef (a real chef) who gave me his secret: any worthy recipe should only have six ingredients. Any more than that, he said, and you can’t taste the additional items anyway. I haven’t been awesome at following that rule, but I do keep it in mind whenever I make something new. This recipe for BBQ Chicken easily fits within that six ingredient limit, and it is freakin’ awesome. Here goes!

2 Ingredient Spicy BBQ Chicken

Chicken Drumsticks

Trader Joe’s Sriracha and Roasted Garlic BBQ Sauce

Smother that chicken. Fire up the grill. Cook until blackened.

bbqchicken

A fair warning: this BBQ sauce is spicy! But we love it so much we’ve carved out a space for it in our tiny refrigerator. It’s definitely a staple in our house. And we won’t be throwing any of it into the trash anytime soon.

Apple Breadcake

Posted on by thegoodenoughguide

Here’s a little recipe I made up this weekend. The Artist’s parents were here visiting and brought us lots and lots of fresh apples. This seemed like a pretty beautiful way to use quite a few of them.

Apple Breadcake

2 c. flour + 1 t. baking powder. Mix.

1/3 c. sugar

1 + 1/4 c. brown sugar
2 t. cinnamon
3/4 c. apple sauce
2 eggs
5 c. apple chunks. Mix.

Slowly stir the flour mixture into the apple mixture. Pour into a greased pan. (I used a pie pan plus some smaller ramekins.) Bake at 350 for 1 hour.

As is, this recipe is like a sweet bread or a mild cake. We ate it once with ice cream, then we ate it again after I made this glaze, and I think it was even better…

Glaze

1 c. powdered sugar
1 T. butter (Amish butter if you have it, because there’s nothing better on the face of this earth)
1/2 t. vanilla
Milk. Hardly any.

Mix powdered sugar, butter and vanilla. Add milk as slowly as possible until it’s good enough.

Happy fall, friends!

applebreadcake

#applesandapples #cakeorbread?

French Onion Soup

Posted on by thegoodenoughguide

This soup needs to explanation whatsoever. Bon apetite!

French Onion Soup

6 large yellow onions

4 T. butter

1 t. salt

1 T. sugar

Splash of brandy

8 c. broth (beef, preferably, or vegetable)

1-2 cloves garlic

Bay leaf

French Bread

Gruyere Cheese

Melt the butter into a soup pot over medium heat. Add the thinly sliced onions and stir. Cook for 20 minutes or so, stirring every few minutes. Bump up the heat (medium high should do it). Cook another 15 minutes, stirring often. Add the sugar and salt and – you guessed it – cook another 15 minutes. The onions will start to brown in this stage. Add the brandy and cook another 5 minutes or so.

Once the onions are caramelized, add the garlic, broth, and bay leaf. Boil the soup, then drop to a simmer and cover it up. Simmer for 30-40 minutes and you’re nearly there.

As the soup is getting close, cut up the French bread and cover it with gruyere cheese. Broil in the oven to your liking, dish up the soup, and plop the toasts right in.

frenchonionsoup

This soup will make you a kinder person. Guaranteed.

#fortheloveofonions #soupseason