Fire Cheesesteaks

A while ago, when I started blogging about how bad I suck at life, Hub had a concern.

Hub: “I think if you take pictures of everything you do, every step of the way, things will go according to plan and there will be no disaster”

I am here to report that is not the case. In fact, I may have just encountered the worst disaster yet.

While browsing my favorite recipe website today I came across a few that I would love to try. Everything that I have made from Favorite Family Recipe has been super amazing, and many have become “repeat recipes” at our house.

I decided that I was going to try to make Easy Philly Cheesesteaks. I just now noticed that the word “easy” was in the title. People, don’t be confused, they may be simple, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call them EASY.

I drove my booty to the store, got all my goods, and came home super excited to make Hub a sandwich and potato wedges (also amazing). So here it goes, step by step to ensure that I do not mess it up.

 

First I made the potato wedges. Yum Yum Yum!!

These are easy. I think the pictures explain it all. Then pop them in the oven at 450 for 35ish minutes, or until golden brown and soft all the way through. (Note: make sure that you set the oven at 450 NOT 350… not like I know from experience….)

Then carry on with your main entrée.

 

*Please excuse the absence of the cream cheese, but it is VERY important!!!*

Combine your can on beef broth and a package of your onion soup mix and bring to a boil, then add your roast beef, and simmer for about 10 minutes (or longer if you are me and need to figure out what the crap you are doing)

*Pre beef, obvi.*

Sautee your onion and pepper in a large skillet. When the roast beef is done simmering, add it to your onions and peppers along with 4 oz. of cream cheese. (or more if you are me and A. love cream cheese, B. have no idea how much 4 oz. really is).

*That really was a ton of cream cheese. A TON.*

Spread the remaining cream cheese on your hoagie’s and add a mucho grande amount of your beef mix. Place your provolone cheese on top of that and pop those bad boys in the oven on broil until your cheese is super gooey and your buns are just barely broiled.

I know this is the part that you are waiting for, forget the directions, they aren’t very good anyway. You are so excited to see the finished product and be so jealous that we had this amazing dinner… but what I’m about to show you is far from perfection.

 

This is real. You think that its just really really burnt? No no no. I’ll tell you what happened. I quickly set the place mats down (ok maybe we are using dish towels at the moment because our place mats had bugs living on them (groooooooooossssssssss), grabbed two water bottles and put them on the table, turned around to bend down and open the oven, and then I saw the tragedy. My delicious easy cheese streaks were engulfed in flames. I stood up really quick because I didn’t believe my eyes, bent back down just to double check to make sure my worst night mare wasn’t coming true, and it was. Is it terrible my first thought was “where is my camera?! No one is going to believe this!” and then came reality, “OH ****!!!! THE WHOLE TOP OF THE OVEN IS ON FIRE!!! I HOPE IT’S JUST MY HOAGIES AND NOT THE WHOLE FLIPPIN GAS LINE”! Literally, the top of my oven looked like it was all on fire. The very center of the oven was in flames, and those flames were connected to my yummy dinner. I grabbed my oven mitt’s and ripped that cookie sheet out of the oven and blew out the flames faster than you could say “Only you could light dinner on fire”.

I was so so so stinkin’ excited to eat this meal, I can’t even describe it to you. I went outside to tell husband of our loss (he was cleaning the pool, surprised?) and then stumbled my way back down the hall into my smoke filled kitchen. Luckily I bought more hoagies, and the yummy beef hadn’t been scalded to death so I popped some new buns on a new cookies sheet and threw them in the oven that I had turned off. I left them in there long enough to brown and I kept my eyes glued to the stupid thing. I moved the gooey goodness from the charcoal onto the lightly toasted hoagies and dinner was back on, and you know what, IT WAS AMAZING.

Next time (if I’m brave enough to ever use the oven again) I might find out how much 4 oz. of cream cheese really is, but other than that, no changes whatsoever. Oh, except of lighting everything on fire. I’ll leave that one out… hopefully.

 

Not even documenting my semi-step-by-step dinner can save me from myself.

Yours truly,

                       -The Natural Disaster

 

PS. Please don’t tell me I’m the only one who has encountered a fire in the kitchen. Please?

Yum Yum Chicken Lime Tacos

We are so excited to go to Mexico on Friday, it’s not even normal. To celebrate this joyous ocastion (going to Mexico) I’ve been making a lot of Mexican food lately. I didn’t do it on purpose, but I have decided it’s because I’m so stinkin’ excited that subconsciously I'm trying to prepare our bowels! It started off with this tasty little number. Would I dare say that I used everything that they used? No at all. What kind of dinner would it be if I wasn’t substituting this for that, or making my own buttermilk? Not a very good one I’d say. But here’s the recipe.

1 1/2 Lbs. chicken, cubed
1/4 c. red wine vinegar
juice of 1 lime
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
4-5 green onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 Tbsp fresh cilantro (or to taste)
Flour tortillas

Optional toppings:
Pico de gallo
cheese
onions
tomatoes
jalapeno
guacamole
cilantro
sour cream

Sauté chicken in a medium skillet in a little oil for a few minutes until chicken becomes white all around. Combine vinegar, lime juice, sugar, salt, pepper, green onion, garlic and cilantro and add to chicken. Simmer for an extra 10-20 minutes until chicken is cooked through. Add chicken to tortillas and top with lettuce, tomato, cheese, avocado, cilantro, salsa, sour cream, or any other taco topping you like!

Simple, yah? It really was super easy, and I even took 2, count them, 2 pictures of the process.

I’m not super good at multitasking, so this shouldn’t surprise you that I totally forgot about taking picture of the process. You can imagine it though.

Here’s what I substituted:
Red Wine Vinegar= Apple Cider Vinegar
Garlic= Some garlic salt (when I opened up a clove it had started to grow a plant… I’ve had it for awhile apparently)
+ a jalapeno and it was grrrrrrrrrrreat. It says to add it to the top, I just mixed mine in with everything else!
+ I melted the cheese on the tortilla on the griddle for a little Café Rio feel, and I’d do it again.
Have I ever mentioned that we live in a kinda ghetto part of town? It’s older, like our house was built in the 1940’s kind of older. So naturally the closest grocery store isn’t so much marketed toward Americans, but I just love it! I’ve only been a few times, like twice, but I decided that if I’m making tacos, I’m making Mexican grocery store tacos!

Doesn’t it just look magical? I wish you could hear all the mariachi music that they were playing, it’s amazing. They really did have the best produce, and it was stinkin’ cheap.

What’s your favorite taco recipe? Or Mexican food recipe really. Share it with me, pleeeeeease!

Disaster Averted... For Today

Last night, just after I put dinner in the oven, and just before letting out the GIANT sigh of relief that says I'm-so-glad-this-is-over-now-I-can-clean-my-kitchen the hub asked me if I wanted something for dessert.

"We could make brownies, cookies, cake..." he suggested.

On this rare, very rare occasion do we actually have all of these things on hand. This day we actually did because we had gone to the grocery store. Shock. (I don't think we've been since April). Something you may not know about my darling little hub; this man has a saaaaweet tooth for chocolate. Brownies are in the running for favorite, but chocolate chip cookies are the end-all-be-all as far as he's concerned.

As I start cleaning up the mess from dinner the conversation goes a little this way,

Hub: "Or we could make The Thing Kyle's Mom Made with the brownies AND the cookies".

I knew right then that we were headed for a Natural Disaster.

At the age of 17 I tried to make brownies. Apparently, boxed brownies are to hard to handle and I ended up switching the amount of water and the amount of oil. THEN I proceeded to bake them in our very old oven that required you to change the setting from "pre-heat" to "bake". These brownies were like trying to chew on charcoal, everyone wondered why you were doing it, and no one wanted to join in. They went right in the trash and I'm nearly positive I haven't made a box of brownies unsupervised since.

As I got all the ingredients out to document this most likely disaster I remembered what Hub said the last time I made a cake, "We are officially out of vegetable oil after this. Add it to the list". I didn't add it, he didn't add it, it didn't fall off the shelf at the grocery store into our cart and then later into our cabinet. It's still at the grocery store, but it has made the list this time.

So I pulled out my lap top and did what only a Natural Disaster would do and googled "vegetable oil substitutes". As it turns out, apple sauce is a good substitute! Or melted butter, melted Crisco, or really any other kind of oil. I immediately wanted to use apple sauce! We had it, so WHY NOT USE IT?! I'll tell you why, I love my Hub. And I knew he had his little chocoholic heart set on The Thing Kyle's Mom Made, so I went with the safer choice, melted Crisco.

Here's how you substitute for vegetable oil in The Thing Kyle's Mom Made

Ingredients:

Box of brownie mix (for lazy people)

2 eggs

1/4 c. water

1/2 cup Crisco (melted)

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (store bought for the extra lazy)

Mix your lazy people brownie mix, eggs, melted vegetable oil, and water together

(and if you're like me, use your Kitchen Aid because honestly it doesn't get used that often, show it some lovin'!)

Then put the brownie mix in the cute pan you've never used before, and if you don't splatter it all over the side you are doing it wrong.

Clean up the terribly embarrassing mess before anyone judges you, and let Hub snack on the dough balls

Take a dough ball and push it into your brownie batter, evenly spaced apart.

Make sure that you've let your cookie dough sit out for a really long time so that its really soft and difficult to push into your brownie batter. (don't really do that. Leave them in the fridge until the last possible second. I think it would be easier. But I don't listen to rules like that)

Look past all those perfect disasters going on on the side of your pan and your cookies that wont go in the brownie batter and throw this Low Cal, healthy snack in the oven and bake according to the brownie box directions.

Take a quick sec for a game with these two and then assign dish duty to the man asking for The Thing Kyle's Mom Made.

Now go change your clothes. You are gonna need to take off those jeans and put on your fat day stretchy pants that are so old you they have holes everywhere. This allows for the more room to expand.

I would probably top this with some ice cream and chocolate and caramel sauce, but as we have it our options were mint chocolate chip (toothpaste anyone?) or Strawberry. So we did without.

Then Enjoy!

Forget about manors, just scoop it on to the plate!

GET IN MY BELLY

*Note the fat day stretchy pants*

All in all, I feel like The Thing Kyle's Mom Made was successful. I satisfied the hub's sweet tooth for now, and I don't think I'm ever going to buy vegetable oil again... Ok probably not true. The batter was a little thicker than I thought it should be, but again, it's been a few years since I've made brownies.

Disasters:

-Not having any vegetable oil

-Not using the apple sauce

-Making something edible... Those fat day stretchy pants with the holes are a little bit more snug today

-Not actually knowing if this is how Kyle's Mom made it, or if there is a name rather then The Thing Kyle's Mom Made

-After taking the first picture the water spilled down my cabinets, resulting in a little baby water fall

-No ice cream. none. ugh. I'm still upset

-Half the pan went missing last night. I looked in the trash, and there was nothing there... I guess that means we ate it.

-Never using the orange pan before. Sure it's cute, but does ceramic cook different than glass? I have no idea!

-Soft cookie dough. Boooooooo.

Disaster's Averted:

-Wanting to ever fit into my jeans again. Mmmmmmmmmmm so yummy.