Fish Fry for the Brain Dead

Sorry for not posting Weds.  I'm totally fried.  My in-laws visited for the weekend and then my husband left for the week on a business trip.  Needless to say I'm totally zonked.  Note to self, never ever ever have house guests before Kyle goes away ever again.  Entertaining and then parenting solo do not make for a good combination.

All complaining aside, Ms. Laela had a kind of fun milestone today.  She has learned to talk to her Daddy on the phone.  She figured out how to open the phone and start chatting.  Little did I realize that she'd hit my speed dial and was actually leaving him a message haha.  It was pretty darn adorable!

On the food side of things, Laela and I have been on a fish kick all week.

Here's a good old fashioned fish fry that you can cook in less than five minutes with only half a brain functioning.

You'll need:
1 cup flour
1 cup corn meal
1 lb fish- deboned and cleaned (I prefer catfish or tilapia for this recipe, and you can pick up filets for pretty  cheap at your local grocery - don't feel like you need to clean your own fish!!)
Old Bay
Oil (a lot of recipes use peanut oil, but Laela can't have that, so I used olive oil)
1/2 cup lemon juice
3 sprigs of thyme

• Place your pan (as usual, I prefer cast iron) on the stove top, add a few good glugs of oil (I used extra virgin because it was on hand and I'm not ready to introduce Laela to anything peanut yet) and bring it to medium heat. 
• Combine your flour, corn meal, Old Bay and Thyme in a bowl.
• Combine your lemon juice with a 1/4 cup of water.
• Dip each filet of fish (you can cut the fish into strips if you'd like, it makes no difference in flavor, just shave a minute or two off of the cooking of the fish) into the liquid and then dredge it in the flour/cornmeal mixture.  Then gently place it in the pan.  Continue to do this until there is no room left in the pan.  Do not overcrowd the pan. 
• Cook the fish for 2 to 2 1/2 minutes per side.  (You'll notice that the fish will look "cooked" up the side when it's ready to be flipped and will appear flaky (especially if you fork it gently) when it is finished cooking.
• Place each cooked piece of fish on some paper towels you've set up on a plate to sop up some of the grease.
• If you're a salt lover like myself, sprinkle some sea salt on your fish once it's fresh out of the pan.
• Serve!

I love serving this fish with some Basmati rice with red peppers, tomatoes and kidney beans.  Just follow any Basmati rice recipe and add some salt, pepper, garlic and whatever grilled veggies you're in the mood for!

My camera is being wonky.  I'll post pics of this yumminess later!

Just Another Manic Monday

I'm pretty exhausted from having family visit over the weekend (and from Laela waking up at the crack of dawn because she got off schedule), so this is going to be short and sweet.

Is your little one refusing to take food from you, and only wants to feed himself/herself?  Make some fish, some large couscous with cheese, and steam some broccoli.  These are all things you can toss onto your little one's high chair tray and let them  feed themself, without the worry that they'll choke to death.  (Although, you should ALWAYS be watching your little ones when they're eating!!)

Wednesday I'll post a quick and easy fish recipe that everyone will love!

Perfect Roast Chicken

This chicken smelled so good, I ripped off some of the crispy, piping hot skin before I got a chance to take a picture of it!  The stabbed lemon and herbs stuffed into the cavity of the chicken sounds so simple and plain, but let me tell you, this will be one of the best bites of chicken you will EVER have.  Follow the recipe to the letter and you'll have a dangerously delicious and healthy meal that your family will love (or that you can live on for a week!).

It's a Jamie Oliver recipe from his Food Revolution cookbook, so be sure to try it!

Perfect Roast Chicken

Serves 4-6

1 x approximately 3 1/2-pound chicken, preferably free range, organic, or higher welfare

2 medium onions

2 stalks celery

1 bulb of garlic

olive oil

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 lemon

a small bunch of fresh thyme, rosemary, bay or sage, or a mixture (I used a mixture and it was fantastic)

To prepare your chicken

Take your chicken out of the refrigerator 30 minutes before it goes into the oven. 

Preheat your oven to 475 degrees.

There's no need to peel the vegetables- just give them a wash and roughly chop them.

Break the garlic bulb into cloves, leaving them unpeeled.

Pile all the vegetables and garlic into the middle of the large roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil. (The chicken roasts on top of the vegetables.)

Drizzle the chicken with olive oil and season well with salt and pepper, rubbing it all over the bird.

Carefully prick the lemon all over, using th tip of a sharp knife (if you have a microwave, you could pop the lemon in there for 40 seconds at this point as this will really bring out the flavor).

Put the lemon inside the chicken's cavity, with the bunch of herbs.

To cook your chicken

Place the chicken on top of the vegetables in the roasting pan and put it into the preheated oven.

Turn the heat down immediately to 400 degrees fahrenheit and cook the chicken for 1 hour and 20 minutes. 

Baste the chicken halfway through cooking and if the vegetables look dry, add a splash of water to the pan to stop them from burning.  (Be careful, this may cause the pan to steam up at your face if you're too close to it.)

When cooked, take the pan out of the oven and transfer the chicken to a board to rest for 15 minutes or so.

To carve your chicken

Remove any string from the chicken and take off the wings.

Cut through the joint and pull the leg off.

Repeat on the other side, then cut each leg between the thigh and the drumstick so you end up with four portions of dark meat.

Place these on a serving platter.

You should now have a clear space to carve the rest of your chicken.

Angle the knife along the breastbone and carve one side off, then the other.

When you get down to teh fussy bits, just use your fingers to pull all the meat off, and turn the chicken over to get all the tasty, juicy bits from underneat.  You should be left with a stripped carcass, and a platter full of lovely meat and roasted veggies.

note:  Jamie Oliver has a recipe for gravy and bread sauce for this, but I made the chicken without gravy since it was so moist and delicious.  Plus Kyle, Laela and Darin were hungry, so I had to get to serving dinner!

A Mad Hatter Tea Party and Some Delicious Treats

This was one BUSY weekend!  Sunday was my girlfriend Ali's bridal shower.  Ali's parents and the bridal party did a beautiful job with the food and all of the creative Alice in Wonderland decorations. It was quite the Mad Hatter Tea party!  I whipped up some chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with red and white vanilla buttercream icing, some yummy sugar crusted scones, and some rich chocolate fudge brownies with vanilla buttercream icing. 

I'll post more pictures when I get some better ones!

See you Wednesday for some delicious lemon and herb roasted chicken!

Some Separation Anxiety Mixed With Couscous

Dear Separation Anxiety,

While I understand and respect that my daughter wanting to cling to Mommy 24-hours a day is a part of her development, I was really beginning to enjoy getting a full night’s sleep, and getting to read an entire article in a magazine again. If we could strike a compromise, it would totally make my day.

                                                                        Sincerely,

                                                                        Mama Snyder

Needless to say, this week hasn’t started out the way I had planned. Kyle’s birthday was on Sunday, so we stayed up late drinking yummy craft brews and watching movies with Kyle’s best friend Darin every night of the weekend. During the day, we went to a couple of restaurants, and the little miss got taken off schedule, so on Monday, I had to work to get Laela back on her schedule. Thankfully, she went to sleep pretty easily, but she kept waking up crying for her Mommy. After three hours of rocking, cuddling, praying to the baby sleep Gods that she would pass out and stay passed out, and wondering what the heck I’m doing wrong (which I know now that I’m awake that she’s probably just readjusting and getting visited by the separation anxiety fairies), I’m kind of feeling like I’m having an out of body experience, watching myself zone through the day- and it really isn’t fun.

On a happier note, Laela is back on her normal feeding schedule, so hopefully she’ll sleep better tonight since I’ve stuffed her with plenty of roast chicken and potatoes with couscous.
Mommy foodie tip of the day? Pick up some couscous- both regular and “grande”. The grande is great for when the little ones want to feed themselves, and it’s great mixed with pretty much anything. The best part? Both kinds take only a few minutes to cook!

Also, stop buying those pre-made boxes of couscous. It’ll save you up to six bucks! All you need is a thing of plain couscous and you can mix it with any of your favorite spices, or just plain old salt, pepper and olive oil. I like to add a little parmesan cheese and veggies and you have a ridiculously quick and easy meal on the table in five minutes or less.

Coming soon…a section of “cooking tips”, and a section for all you parents out there trying to feed your kid something other than jarred “mystery veggies”.

Anniversary Chicken

When I was single, I had a few rules that I tried to abide by (the key word here is "tried").  One of those rules was not to cook for a guy until we'd been dating for a reasonable amount of time, because otherwise, the next thing you know I'd have another idiot thinking that he either found a Mommy fill-in or a nice girl to take advantage of.  He'd get all crazy clingy and want to marry me or something.  And not take me to dinner anymore.  I don't know about the rest of you, but as much as I like to cook, I love to go to great restaurants and really enjoy some quality cuisine, delicious desserts (or hoity-toity desserts as Kyle calls them), and good wine/craft beer.

I was completely out of my element with Kyle.  I've always been a very free spirit, and didn't like to be held down or told what to do.  Hell, I have a cell phone and it wasn't until I had a child and a husband that worried that I began carrying the darn thing around.  I've just never been the leash- electronic or otherwise, type.

Anyway, the point is that once I met my husband, I saw him everyday.  Not practically everyday, not everyday but one day a week.  I'm talking everyday.  We ate dinner together every night, and damn it if I didn't break down and make the boy dinner much earlier in the relationship than I had ever planned.

So now, whenever it's an anniversary or Ky needs cheering up, I make "Anniversary Chicken".  It's a very simple breaded chicken that for some reason impressed Kyle's roommates (Doby declared that "it looked like restaurant chicken!" when we met), and I hope you enjoy it too.  Oh, and to all you parents out there, my little one LOVES this chicken.

Anniversary Chicken
(serves 4)
1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts
Bread Crumbs (doesn't matter if they're seasoned or not)
1 tsp Onion Powder
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
3 cloves Garlic (crushed)
3 sprigs Thyme (leaves only)
2 sprigs Rosemary (chopped finely)
2 Eggs
3 Tbs Milk
Sea Salt (to taste)
Pepper (to taste)

Clean the chicken breast.  If you don't have great knife skills, no worries, just use some sharp kitchen shears.  If you're afraid of cooking a whole breast, you can slice it in half so that it's thinner, and cooks about four minutes faster.

Now that the chicken has been butchered, beat the eggs and milk together in a medium sized bowl.  Add the spices and herbs to the egg mixture.  Get another bowl and fill it with breadcrumbs.  Before you dredge the chicken, heat the skillet to medium low heat.  Add a few glugs of olive oil.  Let the pan get hot before you put the chicken in the pan.

While you wait for the pan to get hot, dip the chicken in the egg mixture and then in the breadcrumbs.  To test if the pan is hot, flick some water in the pan, and if it sizzles, you can put the breaded chicken in.  Cook the chicken for about six minutes per side (depending on thickness).

Let the chicken rest for a minute or two before eating it so it stays nice and juicy.  Enjoy!

Shake me all life long!

This past Saturday, our good friends Lizy and Wyatt got married.  The entire shabang was completely beautiful (can you really go wrong with a wedding in the Finger Lakes?  I think not.), but what really got me was just how much they love each other.  They've been together a long time, they understand and accept one another for who they are, and they have so so much fun together.  They're one of those couples that are just lovely to be around because they are exactly as a couple should be- two wonderful individuals that create a really fantastic union.

Their wedding was the first time we ever left Laela, and honestly, it was the first time in a long time that I really got the chance to remember some of the silly things that made me fall in love with my husband.  Sometimes, living life is busy, and through going through the motions, we don't get a chance to express ourselves the way we'd like.  When it was just us, the love letters were longer, the dates more elaborate.  But now, we have to cram a lot of love into a smaller amount of time, so it was nice to "escape" for a little while and get to just be for a moment.

When I met Kyle, he told me he was going to marry me or kill me.  I figured I'd dated enough psychos to be able to tell if he was a total nutjob, so I gave him a chance to be right, and you know what?  It's the best decision I ever made.

The first time we ever danced was to the song "You Shook Me All Night Long" long by ACDC.  It may not sound romantic to you, but he told me he was going to shake me all life long, and I have to say he has.  If you know my husband, he is one exasperating individual.  He's as stubborn as he is generous.  He's the most loving person on the planet.  And while you may not like what he has to say, it's never a lie.

I shared some of this with a friend after the wedding.  I told him how much I love my husband, how I think he's the greatest guy in my world, how he can make me laugh on the worst of days, and I realized in that moment that romance is what you make it.  Love is what you make it.  Love is not just hot lovin' (although I do think that's very important), it's about friendship and being able to be yourself- whether it's the very best version or the very worst, and being accepted and genuinely loved as that person.  With the exception of asking Kyle not to be evil in church, or to put the seat down, I really don't want him to change.  I married him for who he is, not my idea of who he should be, and I really think that (and hope that), Laela grows up knowing that her parents love and accept one another, and that we'll love and accept her- even when we disagree with her,  or with one another.

I know this post is a bit off tangent with my other posts, but all these weddings have me all mushed out, and I can't help but give this one piece of advice.  Be happy.  I have single friends that feel like they have to be on the hunt to be married, and you know what?  Hunting doesn't always work.  Sometimes finding the right person takes a lot of meeting the wrong people.  And for those that are married?  Happy Mommies and Daddies make for happy kids : )

Tune in Weds for my simple "Anniversary Chicken" that even the pickiest of eaters will love.