12 July 2010 Comment

Brokey: Preparing for Unexpected Guests

Our social schedule has been busy, what with bocce, birthday parties, more birthday parties and the unscheduled drop-in.

Piles of shoes don’t get put away,
lots of dishes in the sink,
a diaper bag plundering.

I did tell you that we love to drop in on each other, didn’t I?

I used to think that only happened on television — Dylan stops over just as I’m making out with Brandon! Bummer! — but the small town we live in celebrates it. Hooray! A drop-in!

And if it’s not welcome, you just say, “It’s not a good time.”
No harm, no foul.

Your community most likely has different guidelines.
Your friends would be pissed.
But here, here, we embrace the delight with an unexpected guest.
(And more often than not we’re ready for them.)

My brokey unexpected guest preparation checklist

Sparkling water (could be club soda).
Iced tea in the fridge.
An emergency container filled with dark chocolate, dried fruit, almonds and shortbread cookies.
(My emergency guest container has been filled over time.)
Oranges in the fridge.
A mint plant.
A willingness to set aside my to-do list.

The last one is the most important to me.
My friends are big gifts.
I’m always thrilled when gifts arrive on the porch.

Mix the above items to serve iced tea with mint.
Serve cool orange slices with bubbly water and shortbread cookies.
Make chocolate bark by melting the dark chocolate and stirring in dried blueberries and almonds.
Nom.

By the way, the brokey part of that is that I’ve collected these items over time.

3 August 2009 1 Comment

Brokey cream cheese appetizers.

What? I didn’t tell you that I’m continuing my brokey series? Well, I am. For at least two more weeks. So there.

So people are coming over and you’re out of money.
You will need to feed and libate them (libate? can that be a verb please?) but you don’t have cash.

Here are two recipe ideas that are significantly cheaper than prepared foods. Please use store-brand cream cheese. It’s fine here because it’s mixed in with plenty of other ingredients and the texture doesn’t matter too much.

Brokey Stuffed Mushroom Recipe

Ingredients
12 whole mushrooms that you have wiped clean
1 tablespoon vegetable/olive oil
3 cloves worth of minced garlic
1 8 oz. package cream cheese that’s been left out for an hour or two
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne

Directions
Heat oven to 350° fahrenheit.

Chop tough ends of stems off of mushrooms. Break off stems of mushrooms. Chop remaining pieces of stems into tiny tiny pieces.

Over medium-high heat, heat oil in a large skillet. Add chopped mushroom stems. Frizzle them up until stems are dry and cooked add minced garlic. Cool.

Stir in cream cheese, Parmesan cheese, black pepper, salt and cayenne. The resulting glop should be very thick.

Using either a filled baggie with a corner cut off or a tiny spoon, fill each mushroom cap with as much stuffing as it can take. Line up the stuffed mushroom caps on a cookie sheet lined with a Silpat, parchment paper or a light oil layer.

Bake the mushrooms for 20 minutes, or until the mushrooms are hot and start to get a little liquidy.

Jelly Cream Cheese Dip

Ingredients
1 package cream cheese, room temperature
1 jar peach or cherry jam
1/4 cup tiny sliced green onions (on the diagonal)
Your choice of cheap crackers

Directions
Find a mold. It can be a coffee cup, a tiny brioche pan or even just a cereal bowl. Line the mold with plastic wrap. Press the cream cheese into the plastic-lined mold.

Unmold onto a chilled plate. (Aren’t chilled plates fancy? And lo, no cost to you!) Pour the jam over the unmolded cream cheese and sprinkle with the green onions.

Serve with your fave crackers.
(I’m particularly fond of the Ritz, but I know those can be, er, ritzy.)

26 July 2009 Comment

Brokey. Kitchen Cleaning.

Fewer things are more annoying than running out of cleaning supplies when you have no money for replenishing.

22 July 2009 4 Comments

Brokey. Garlic greens.

Hello, I am a post that accidentally showed up earlier this month. I’ve been sheepish to publish because Helen Jane was embarrassed that she made the goof.

So here post! Fly free!

It’s like you can barely afford any sort of main dish much less a side. These garlic greens are a go to for any kind of roast meat. Greens are cheap to buy and cheaper to grow.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons water
1 bunch greens (collard greens, kale, swiss chard, mustard greens, dino kale, spinach or even beet or turnip greens)
1 clove finely minced garlic

Directions
Wash the heck out of the greens. I soak them for a minute in cold water in a filled sink and rinse and rinse.

Cut out the thick center stem from the greens, chop crosswise into 1 inch wide ribbons.

Add three tablespoons water to large saut

20 July 2009 1 Comment

Brokey. French Onion Soup Recipe.

Oh man, remember those days?
When Hilsy and I were broke, living in that apartment on Lily Street with nothing but our wits and our shift dog from the hot dog cart?

We had no money.
What money we had, we put into 1.5 Liters of Woodbridge Sauvignon Blanc.
We had very little hope.

Until we discovered that we could dine on French Onion Soup three times a week for less money than practically any other food.

Brokey French Onion Soup

Ingredients
2 tablespoons butter
5 medium onions sliced thin
6 cups chicken broth (we would make this ourselves from the magically unfolding roast chicken I’ll tell you about later this week)
One can (10.5 oz) beef broth
1 teaspoon dried thyme (you can use fresh here, it’s just not a very brokey ingredient unless you’re growing it or stealing it)
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper
Bread — if you can afford a baguette, spring for it, if not, just use some stale bread laying about your kitchen. Cut the baguette to about 3/4″ slices on a diagonal.
Make sure you have enough bread for two slices per bowl.
Some sort of Swiss or Emmenthaler cheese
Grated Asiago or Parmesan cheese

Directions
Melt butter in a large pot over medium-high heat. Throw in the onions and 1/2 teaspoon salt, stirring the whole time to make sure the onions are all slathered in their oily coats.

Keep cooking the onions over medium-high for almost 30 (!) minutes, stirring as often as you can make it over to the stove. Feel free to fix the heat if the onions seem to be getting too black and not roastybrown enough.

When the onions are sticky and brown and reduced and syrup-ish, stir in the rest of the ingredients.

Stir in the broths (chicken and beef)
Stir in the thyme and bay leaf
As you stir, scrape the bottom of the pot with your spoon to make sure all the tasty bits are incorporated into the soup.
Simmer for a half hour.

Remove the bay leaf and toss it. Add the balsamic vinegar. Taste the soup and add salt and pepper to make it just the way you love it.

Now this onion soup is fine as it is, but if you need to go the distance, you add the cheesy topped toasts and broil.

Move your oven rack to the upper-middle position and preheat your broiler. I am always absent-minded about this and preheat the broiler before I move the racks. Learn from my mistakes people, we don’t have money to go to the ER with severe knuckle burns.

Put some oven-safe bowls/crocks on a baking sheet and fill each one with soup. You can find the real, restaurant-style FOS (that’s French Onion Soup) crocks at most thrift stores for cheap. Still, I just use regular bowls.

Float 2 baguette slices atop each bowl and cover with a single layer of Swiss or Emmenthaler cheese. Sprinkle with the Asiago and/or Parmesan.

Set your timer for 2 minutes and carefully set into the oven.
Check at two minutes.
Continue to set your timer and check to make sure that the cheese doesn’t burn.
(That cheese doesn’t grow on trees and we need to preserve our investment.)
Broil until all toasty, bubbly and delicious.

Make sure you cool for about 5 minutes (the longest 5 minutes of your life) before eating. You don’t need an ER trip for a badly burned tongue now, do you?