This morning for breakfast/early lunch, I made cinnamon/raisin pancakes with whole wheat flour, and Hubby took charge of some bacon and scrambled eggs. We're not a gluten-free, egg-free, vegetarian, or lactose-free family - we enjoy our lactose-laden dairy, our farm-fresh eggs, and massive amounts of gluten. And our meat, oh my god, the meat. Lots of meat, maybe too much meat, in every size and shape and color.
Dinner, on the other hand, was much more complex.
Meet some salmon, spices (salt, pepper, red pepper, parsley, paprika, minced garlic), saltines, onion, and egg in a container. You will probably recognize it as a plastic Country Crock butter container, and you would be correct - that is EXACTLY what it is. I can't usually get anybody around here to eat any type of fish that isn't tilapia or fish sticks around here without a fight, and only recently has Hubby decided that maybe other non-white fishes aren't completely evil, so I haven't had a good salmon patty that hasn't been made at my mom's house in years. I miss them.
So tonight they became dinner.
I mixed the crap out of that, with my hands of course.
Then I worked on my side dish: rice and red beans. Simple, but tasty, and something we have NEVER had here. I mean, seriously. Ever.
Yes, we have a rice cooker, thanks to my mom! I've honestly never used it before, but Hubby has; in fact, it's the only thing he uses now to cook rice in. I don't blame him. It did a great job. Anyway.
Above, you will meet something Hubby affectionately calls "chicken Jell-o." I hate that term, but I can't argue. It's a little less viscous, but otherwise acts and looks identical to Jell-o, it's just made from chicken instead. Hubby makes this stuff from the chicken we go get when it's on sale - legs and thighs, usually, for super-cheap because they're on sale. He sticks them in a deep pan with some water and spices and basically bakes them in a brine for hours on end until the chicken's falling off the bone. We reap several benefits from this: 1) Cheap chicken in massive amounts that we can reuse however we please during the next week or so, 2) rendered chicken fat to use with things as we please, and 3) this "chicken Jell-o" that, when mixed about half and half with water, makes an amazing chicken stock replacement that is MUCH cheaper than buying prepackaged stock in the store - and we know where all the ingredients came from, and exactly what's in it!
Anyway, instead of using packaged chicken stock, since we don't have any, or plain water, I mixed water with this chicken Jell-o to make our own chicken stock to give the rice some extra flavor and spice.
This is the homemade butter I've mentioned before. We make it with organic cream a half-pint at a time; oddly enough, organic cream is actually cheaper at our local store than regular cream. Figure that one out. Anyway, this is fresh, unsalted butter. It's harder than the typical tub or even stick butter that we're used to, but it tastes amazing and is always super-fresh. When properly rinsed after making, and drained of buttermilk, it's lasts for quite some time.
This is eventually what became of the rice and beans. I rinsed the beans before adding them to prevent the addition of too much sodium, and too much extra unnecessary liquid. I put in parsley, paprika, our homemade butter, some salt, pepper, and a little bit of green pepper flake. It tasted great, although Hubby and I both agreed afterwards that it needed more salt. Even G sat and ate some, about half a serving, without too much prompting!
Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of what became of the salmon patties. Everybody was starving, and I had no intention of further delaying food when the general consensus was that We. Needed. To. Eat.
Tomorrow we're going to talk carriers.
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