Perfectly Abnormal Suburban Living

Pretending to be a normie in the 'burbs

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Cheesecake Followup

I forgot to post photos of our cheesecake from last weekend. Here you go: Look at this bad boy. This thing was a beast. Dense, flavorful…decadent. A delicious slice of cheesecake. If you like a good cheesecake, you owe it to yourself to bake this recipe at least once in your life. It puts commercial cheesecakes to shame. And best of all, it’s all ingredients that you know and understand:…

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Weekend Bake: Cheesecake

My wife loves cheesecake. I’ve been meaning to make one for her for weeks now, but what with one thing and another – first the holidays and family visits, then work, then a birthday trip to celebrate her recent birthday – I hadn’t gotten around to it. Today, however, is the day. Today I’m baking her a cheesecake. I always use the same cheesecake recipe. It’s tried and true, and it’s not too…

Weekend Bake: Cheesecake

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Homemade Tomato Sauce

There’s something special about homemade tomato sauce. Building a sauce from scratch is a lot of fun. Metaphysically, taking a pile of vegetables and turning it into a delicious sauce is a wonderful act of transformation. More concretely, you can convert about $15 of fresh vegetables into food that will actually get eaten instead of rotting in your fridge. You can build this sauce from prep to…

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Pasta e Fagioli

Pasta e Fagioli is a delicious soup. Rich, earthy, nutritious, and quite satisfying, this is a favorite soup of ours here at Flocks & Glocks central. You can put this soup together several hours before you plan to eat and let it simmer a while to really get those flavors melded together. Ingredients 1 pound ground beef (you could use sausage if you like instead) 1 tbsp. olive oil 1 medium…

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Grilled Beef Skewers and Spicy Garlic Sauce

The experience of eating a skewered piece of meat is very human and primal. Meat! On a stick! This meat-on-a-stick recipe features beef marinated in garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sriracha, and honey. Enjoy! Note: this recipe requires a marinating time of at least 30 minutes, and if you are using wooden skewers, at least 30 minutes to soak the skewers in water. Ingredients 1 pound beef sirloin,…

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Southwest Street Corn Cobb Salad

This salad is loosely based on a salad served at one of our favorite local cafes. We learned how to make it ourselves so we could have it whenever we want! The street corn salsa and creamy chili-lime dressing add a nice punch to this fresh, healthy, and flavorful salad. Enjoy! Southwestern Street Corn Cobb Salad! Ingredients Creamy Chili lime dressing 1/4 cup sour cream 1/4 cup…

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Why is there corn syrup in my half and half?

in which we discover An unpleasant surprise in our coffee I am something of a coffee hound. My fascination began in my late teens, as I experimented with heavily-sweetened coffee-like beverages. My tastes expanded as I went through technical school and became a respiratory therapist. As a chronic shift worker, I spent years drinking thoroughly mediocre coffee. Most of the hospitals I worked in…

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Super Chicken Bowl

This bowl is a healthy and delicious recipe, inspired by a recent dinner failure. Sometimes, when a recipe goes sideways, the best thing to do is to reinvent it and try again! So it is with the Super Chicken Bowl. Featuring classically prepared chicken, a bright avocado salad, spicy sweet potatoes, and a fresh avocado crema, this recipe is designed to deliver healthy and nutritious food in an…

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Dinner Failure

In the world of the home cook, failure is always an option. Having no formal training, mediocre resources, and a variety of palates to please can make home cooking quite challenging at times. This is especially true when you’re trying to lean in to healthier food. Tonight’s dinner, for which I had high hopes, was given a lukewarm reception by the family. But instead of hanging my head and…

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Grilled Chicken & Sweet Potato Bowls

This healthy and delicious meal is sure to satisfy your palate and your body. Chicken is a nice lean protein; we recommend organic, antibiotic-free chicken, or chicken from a local farmer’s market if you can get it. Sweet potatoes are full of vitamins and fiber, and they’re delicious. And finally, avocados are a source of many healthy fats and nutrients that your body needs to…

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Cooking Tip of the Day: Mise en Place

One of the biggest game-changers for me when I was learning to elevate my kitchen game was the idea of mise-en-place. Loosely translated, mise-en-place means “everything in its place,” and it’s a kitchen organizing strategy that makes cooking vastly easier. It helps you build an efficient workflow and clean up the kitchen as you go. It’s a simple, powerful way to bring your cooking skills to the…

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Tonight's Dinner: Homemade Pizza

I have always loved making homemade pizza. Pizza is probably my favorite food. You can prepare it in so many ways: thin crust, thicker crust, Chicago style. You can top it with anything. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of sauce options. There are hundreds of cheese combinations. You can add herbs and spices to the dough, sauce, or cheese. It’s really an endlessly variable food, and I love…

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Tonight’s Dinner: Chicken Alfredo a la Leftovers

Not every night can be fancy or gourmet and tonight is one of those nights. We didn’t plan well and didn’t have a lot of food on hand, and instead of shopping, we decided to make do. So we’re making a nice, easy chicken Alfredo with random stuff from the pantry. I had some chicken thighs in the freezer that I’d pre-seasoned with garlic salt and pepper, so I thawed those, diced them, and threw…

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Tonight’s Meal: Barbeque Chicken

We try to eat a varied diet, but often fall into a rut. Tonight we’re going to do something a little different: simple, easy, barbeque chicken drumsticks. Technically, this is more like “chicken with barbeque sauce.” We’re not using a smoker or a grill per se to cook these drumsticks, at least not on this round, but we’re calling it barbeque for simplicity’s sake. Anyway. A couple of hours…

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Chewy Lemon Cookies

These lemon cookies have a chewy texture and a soft lemon flavor. If you want a more intense lemon cookie, check out our Lemon Drop Cookies recipe. Ingredients 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar 3 tbsp lemon zest 2 tbsp lemon juice 1 large egg 3 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt Instructions In an electric mixer with the whisk…

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Addictive Chocolate-Chip-M&M Cookies

This recipe makes a small, but potent, batch of highly addictive chocolate-chip-M&M cookies. Be warned: these cookies will be devoured before you know it, so maybe plan to make a couple of batches. Ingredients 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1/2 cup brown sugar 1 large egg 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 1/3 cups flour 1/4 cup vanilla instant pudding mix 1/2…

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Spicy Sichuan Noodles

Exactly what the title says: spicy Sichuan noodles! Delicious, compulsively eatable, and pleasantly spicy, this dish is great with vegetables or your choice of protein — just cut it into cubes, season it, and cook it ahead to add to the wok. You can balance the heat more to your liking with more or less red pepper flakes. This dish is best made with a wok. Ingredients 4 ounces thick wheat…