Tales From The Cat Ranch

We're two ladies who live together, own cats, and cook things. Here's some of the stuff we cook.

[talesfromthecatranch]

A Big Fat Cat Ranch Announcement

Hey guys!  Tales From The Cat Ranch is back!

Well, we’re back and we’re on Wordpress now.  So please redirect your bookmarks or whatever, and come take a look at my shrimp and quinoa nightmare.

That’s talesfromthecatranch.wordpress.com!

[talesfromthecatranch]

A Brief Update

Quick update from the Cat Ranch:

Our washing machine flooded yesterday and soaked two-thirds of the apartment.  The only areas that escaped the water were the living room and my bedroom.  Luckily nothing was ruined, and everything that got wet is stuff that can get wet, like clothes.  But we were up til 3 in the morning dealing with it, which really sucked.  I had to go hold down the button on the carpet cleaning guy's machine, out by the truck, because otherwise it kept turning off.

The dining room is still wet, and so are parts of Kat's room.  Meanwhile Shira has to sleep in my room because she can't go in the bathroom, and that's a real pain in the ass because she keeps waking me up.  I adore her, but she doesn't know that night is sleepytime.  Kat is sleeping on the couch, and the dulcet tones of the drying fans lull her to dreamland.

Also, on Saturday we added a new resident to the Ranch.  Meet Longinus the bearded dragon!

This handsome fellow likes cuddling on your shirt, sleeping in funny positions, and drafting memos.

So yes, the Cat Ranch is still up and operational.  But this is just a fraction of the rough times we've been having here the last couple of weeks.  I won't go into detail because it's all pretty personal for us, but rest assured we'll be back soon with recipes and cat pictures.

[talesfromthecatranch]

Baked Chicken and Better Life Choices

Welcome back to the Cat Ranch, everyone!  We took a little unannounced break over the holidays.  I was pretty sick with my sinus infection and two ear infections, and then Kat went to Florida for ten days.  When she came back, we just ate like crap for the duration of the year.

But no longer!  Here at the Cat Ranch, we've decided to eat a healthier diet in 2015.  As such, our recipes may become a lot more health-conscious.  Does that mean we won't occasionally post things that are terrible and delicious?  No, because everyone needs a cheat day now and again.

We started off 2015 with a variation on a recipe that I remember my mother making when I was growing up.  Well.  Sorta.

But I remembered the way that my mother used to just bake chicken in the oven, every Friday.  And I do mean every Friday.  For a little while, after I moved out, I wouldn't even touch chicken.  But what I ended up making was surprisingly awesome.  Mom, I know you read this blog, so take note.

Our ingredients were:

Two boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 tsp garlic salt

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp Old Bay seasoning (or generic equivalent)

Olive oil

No, really, that's all you need!  The first thing that I did was preheat the oven to 400, following the cooking instructions from the oven-fried chicken I was originally going to make.  While I was doing that, I brushed some olive oil over a baking sheet so nothing stuck. Then I combined the seasonings in a small bowl, slapped the chicken on the baking sheet, and sprinkled the top side generously with the seasoning mixture.  Once the oven was preheated, I popped the chicken in for 20 minutes.

20 minutes later, when it came out, I flipped the chicken over on the sheet, sprinkled the other side with the seasoning mixture, and baked it for another 20.

Meanwhile, I got our side dishes going.  I am insanely picky about vegetables, possibly because I'm a strong PTC taster.  Getting me to eat my veggies has always been a struggle, but one thing I will usually eat without complaint is steamed broccoli.  We just got a bag that you could steam in the microwave.  For our other side, we selected a quinoa and rice blend, which cooked in roughly the same amount of time as it took to finish the chicken.

(A quick word about quinoa, because I know this website well: yes, I am aware of the sociopolitical difficulties caused by the mass production of quinoa.  This box is fair trade, and it's easy to find.  We bought it at Target and it was really good.)

Once everything was done, we plated it up, ate, and felt good about our life choices.  This was dinner on January 1, making it our first real meal of the year.  For reference, we spent New Year's Eve binging on nachos and snack food as a last hurrah.

Rating: 8.5/10.  If you don't like salt or you're trying to cut down on it, I'd advise switching around the proportions of the seasonings so you're using more garlic powder than garlic salt.  Either way, this was a great meal, and a great way to kick off 2015.

And I didn't screw anything up.

[talesfromthecatranch]

A Very Cat Ranch Christmukkah

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah.  Considering Kat is going to be out of town for Christmas, and considering the fact that I'm Jewish, we decided to do our gift exchange tonight.  I also decided I'd go ahead and make latkes.

Now, I decided this well in advance of tonight, and today I wound up in urgent care to deal with the absolutely delightful spells of vertigo I've been having lately.  Turns out there's a ton of fluid in my ears from some sort of infection.  But did I let this stop me from making latkes?  Hell no, I did not.

The final ingredients were:

2 cups potatoes, peeled and shredded

1/4 onion, diced

3 eggs, beaten

2 tbsp flour

1 1/2 tsp salt (I used 2 tsp, do not recommend, too salty)

The first step is to peel and grate those potatoes.  If you want to skip this step, you can buy frozen hash browns at the store, but we have a giant bag of potatoes and it seemed like it would be a crime to not use them.  So I painstakingly peeled and grated three medium-to-small potatoes, and didn't scrape my knuckles once.

Once you've peeled and grated, you need to remove as much moisture as possible from the potatoes.  Normally you do this with a cheesecloth, but if we have cheesecloth, I am unaware of it.  I used paper towels and squeezed out all the moisture I could.  The end result is slightly damp shredded potato mush that will form the base of your latkes.

(Yes, it's fuzzy.  I was using my tablet.  It didn't want to focus.  Whatever.)

Next I added about a quarter of a large onion, chopped up to about the same proportions as the potato shreds.  I dumped these in a bowl, then beat three eggs together and added them to the mixture.  In went the flour and the salt (too much salt), and voila!  Latke batter!

Then I grabbed a big skillet and got ready for the frying part.  But first, I had to have Kat come over and take the vegetable oil down for me.  The trouble with being 5'3" is that you spend your entire life in need of a step stool, but thankfully I have a tall friend to fill that role.  Then again, she did put the oil there in the first place.

Pour in some oil, maybe a half cup or so, and once it's heated up, drop in heaping spoonfuls of batter.  Fry them until they're golden brown on both sides, then drain them on a paper towel.  The biggest problem that I noted with this recipe, though, was that there was way too much egg and not enough potato.  I ended up having a few that were basically slightly-potato-y scrambled egg fritters.

Well, okay, that was the second biggest problem.  The biggest problem was when I set off the smoke alarm and terrified poor Scarlett.  She started crying in Kat's room and let me pick her up, which she's never done before.

As for the latkes themselves, they weren't bad.  A little salty, but not bad at all.  I served them up with applesauce and sour cream in the traditional style, but I suppose you could also serve them with whatever sort of toppings you want.

I plated them up, we lit the menorah, and we exchanged our gifts!  Kat got me some awesome stuff, like two fabulous necklaces and some makeup wipes (considering I don't have any makeup remover and just walk around looking like a raccoon until I take my next shower).

Final rating on the latkes: 6.5/10.  I could've used one less egg and a lot less salt, but in the end, it was a delicious, fried experience.

Additional scoring:

Number of times I set off the smoke alarm: 1

Number of cats I have scarred for life: 1

Number of vertigo spells while cooking: 0

Happy holidays, from the Cat Ranch to your home.  May the season be joyful, festive, and full of light.

[talesfromthecatranch]

Broccoli Is Not A Stew Vegetable

Ah yes, it's that time of year again.  The weather chills, decorations go up over town, and the stress levels begin to skyrocket as you make lists and check them twice.

I'm talking, of course, about winter finals and the end of the first half of the school year.  And I don't know about you, but around this time of year, I want something to eat that's warm, nourishing, and that requires zero skill to make.  So I got it in my head to make beef stew on Friday, using Kat's amazing crock pot.

Friday morning, I got up and headed down to the store for my ingredients.  The recipe said to use "frozen stew veggies," but I didn't see those anywhere.  I saw a lot of frozen soup veggie mixes, but those had peas, and as far as I'm concerned the only thing peas are good for is demonstrating heritable traits.  So I figured, we love broccoli around here at the Cat Ranch, and went with a bag of frozen broccoli florets.

The final ingredient list was...

1 lb beef stew meat

1 bag frozen broccoli florets (THIS WAS AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT)

2 tbsp flour

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp rosemary

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 cup red cooking wine

1 bay leaf

1 can diced tomatoes

If that picture looks rushed to you, it's because it was.  It was 12:00 at this point, and I had to be at work at 12:30.  It was time to hustle.  Luckily this recipe was super easy.

The first step was to mix the flour, sugar, and spices in a bowl.  This was briefly stymied by the fact that I had to get the flour down from a high shelf, and had to get a stepladder because I'm 5'3".  Once I overcame my shortcomings (get it?), I was able to mix up the spices.

Then the next step was to layer everything in a crock pot.  Veggies first, then sprinkle the spices over them.  Dump in the meat, add your wine and tomatoes, and plop a bay leaf on top.  Cover, plug in, turn on, and walk away.  You'll want to set it on low if you'll be gone for 8 hours, but since I was aiming for a 6 PM dinner, I set it on high.  And then I left for work.

I only work a half day on Fridays, so when I came home from work around 5, the stew wasn't done yet, but the entire apartment smelled like warm, spicy, meaty heaven.  Kat remarked on it when she came home about twenty minutes later, and I felt really proud of myself.  It was crunch time for both of us, between finals and report cards, and I had made us a delicious and comforting dinner with practically no effort at all.  When 6 came around, I was eager to try out the result.

There was just one problem.

Broccoli is not a stew veggie.  It does not hold up well to six hours of slow cooking, and it had partially disintegrated into a veggie mush.

Taste-wise, it wasn't bad at all.  The meat was tender and fell apart on the fork, and the spices were a great combination, but a dash of garlic salt made it even better.  However, in the future, I need to use heartier veggies, even if I can't find "frozen stew veggies."

Rating: 5.5/10, due to my own error in judgment.

[talesfromthecatranch]

Fa La La La La, La La Oy Vey

While most of the posts here at Tales From The Cat Ranch revolve around food, this one does not.  Instead, this post is about the holidays, decorating, and what happens when a Jew helps to put up her first Christmas tree.

However, the truth is, there's still a lot about the holidays that I've always liked.  The thing I've always liked the most is the lights.  Kat and I have a long-standing tradition that we like to call the Tacky Light Tour, where we drive around town and try to find the gaudiest displays possible.  Lights are a part of almost every holiday that falls around this time of year, so they're like a universal joy.

This year, I live with Kat, who identifies religiously as "sorta-kinda Christian but non-denominational because Catholicism is scary and that's how I grew up."  (Direct quote.)  I identify as "Jewish in terms of ethnicity even though I haven't seen the inside of a synagogue since 2005," so that works well.  So when she wanted to decorate the Cat Ranch, I got an idea.  Why not do some multicultural holiday goodness?

For instance, did you know they make Hanukkah stockings?  Because I sure as hell didn't.  Stockings aren't really a Jewish thing, though I remember my parents used to set one out for me when I was very little, presumably so I wouldn't feel like Santa shafted me because of my religion (which I mean, isn't that kinda what Santa does?).  But apparently they're a thing.

The large stockings belong to, from left to right, Kat, myself, Riley, Scarlett, and Shira.  Yes, we have stockings for the cats.  Yes, we have a stocking for the Jewish cat.

As for the little stocking, that one's for Kat's son, Simon.  She miscarried last year and decided to honor him by giving him a little bitty stocking of his own.

The stockings were hung up yesterday afternoon, and last night we got started on the tree.  Now, I had never seen an artificial Christmas tree in a broken-apart, non-decorated state.  I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this.  A center pole, with a bunch of fake branches of varying lengths that you stick into the pole.

Again, I really don't know what I expected.  This was my first inkling that Christmas setup was infinitely more labor intensive than the movies made it seem.  I had thought the process was something like this:

Get tree

Put tree in home

Decorate tree

?????

Profit (festively)

Apparently, I was wrong.  Because after you put in all the branches, you have to sit down and pull them all apart so that they fluff out and look like a legit tree.  This was also the part of the night where I informed Kat that "fluffer" is a job on porn sets.  (I'm not going to explain it.  Google it if you must.)

In the end, though, the tree looked suitably tree-like.  And that was about when we decided to call it a night, and I learned that decorating was apparently a multi-day process.  Day one left us good for nothing but playing on the internet and binge-watching season four of Modern Family.

This morning, or rather this afternoon because we're lazy and slept in, we picked up right where we left off.  We started off with the tree skirt, which Riley claimed as his own before it was even properly arranged, and right after Kat spent about ten minutes lint-rolling the cat hair off it.

It was time to get the lights on the tree.  Now, I had experienced the process of detangling lights first hand.  In one of my old apartments, I had a string of white icicle lights (that I bought on December 26 for like $2) in my living room.  I'd tried to detangle them before, so I knew how much that sucked.  Today, I got to watch Kat do it several times, and discover that one of the strands had a big section of busted bulbs.

You know what that is?  That is what existential despair looks like.

We ended up making a run to the store for more lights.  That turned into a run for more lights, a cute peacock ornament, more shiny baubles, and cat food, because of course we got more cat food.  (The Littlest Cancer Patient has shown a distinct preference for canned food of late, and I decided to indulge her.)

Back at home, we got our ornaments ready, and we were finally able to put them up.  Some of my favorites included the peacock we just bought, a dinosaur, our matching K and C ornaments (we didn't put them together because otherwise it looked like we really loved Kansas City or Calvin Klein), and all the glittery purple baubles.

Happy holidays, everybody, from the Cat Ranch to your home.  Whatever you celebrate, may it be a good one, full of light, joy, and inexplicable cultural mashups.

[talesfromthecatranch]

Because I'm a New Mexican, That's Why.

So theperksofbeingalannister requested a very Thanksgiving version of TFTCR, but as neither of us actually cooked anything for Thanksgiving (thanks, awesome parents!), we had to wait until the day after to cook anything.

It's been a while since I last updated, and I apologize. As stellaphilia mentioned, I got sick, then she got sick, and then I was crazy busy with progress reports stress knots and all of that awesomely delicious things. I had made some potato things that I was going to write about, but there was nothing special, so I skipped over that to this fabulous recipe.

Now, if you've ever lived in New Mexico, you know very well what to do with your turkey leftovers from Thanksgiving. They go into enchiladas. There is no other option. ENCHILADAS OR NOTHING. I had a recipe from my ex husband, but he didn't like cheese, so it didn't have cheese, and that wasn't going to do at all, so I texted my dad for a list of ingredients. That was my first mistake.

I was not expecting the entire recipe while Black Friday shopping at Target, but hey! Thanks, Dad! Somewhere in the middle of the recipe is the list of ingredients, and I'm not sure if it was because it was sent out of order or because there was literally zero reception in the Christmas section of Target.

There's really not very many ingredients at all, but if you're outside of New Mexico, it might be difficult to find them all.

bag of dad's leftover turkey from Thanksgiving

2 cans Hatch green chile enchilada sauce

SUPER HEAPING tablespoon of minced garlic

small package of corn tortillas

green chile

shredded cheese

Here is where I am going to put my notes:

1. If you cannot find fresh green chile, your best bet is to find canned green chile. JALAPENOS ARE NOT GREEN CHILE. I REPEAT. JALAPENOS ARE NOT GREEN CHILE, DO NOT USE THEM, I SWEAR TO GOD.

2. I normally wouldn't EVER use Mission brand tortillas because they are SERIOUSLY AWFUL where tortilla quality is concerned, but they were the only ones who made a small package of 12. 

The very first thing that I had to do was to peel the green chile. If you're using canned or Bueno frozen, you clearly don't have to do that, but I snagged some from the Farmer's Market, and I needed to defrost it and peel it.

When peeling green chile, the thing to remember is to NEVER RUB YOUR EYES OR TOUCH ANY OTHER SOFT MEMBRANE IN DELICATE PLACES BECAUSE YOU WILL WANT TO DIE.

Once you're finished peeling, you'll be left with awful chile skins in the strainer and every New Mexican's wet dream on a plate. And no, that's not a red chile in there. That's still a green chile, even though it's orange -- it's called Autumn Roast and it's fabulous. No, I didn't use the entire plate of chile, either. I broke it into thirds and put two-thirds into the freezer, and used the remaining third for the enchiladas. 

Anyway! You chop it up, and dump it into a bowl with the two cans of enchilada sauce and the garlic, then stir it up. It will smell like heaven's angels are all abound in the glory of the enchilada sauce, but don't eat it -- not yet! You'll need every last drop for the layering.

Now, while you're working on this, preheat your oven to 350, but make sure you keep meltable things off of your stove. You would think I would have learned my lesson when I made cookies for an ex boyfriend a year ago and melted an entire bag of white chocolate in the bag sitting on top of the stove while the oven preheated. WELP, this time I left the cheese on the stove while I shredded the turkey.

Sorry, there is no picture of the melty cheese wad because I have some sort of shame after all these years. Ahem. Anyway, so what you want to do now is dip the tortillas in the green chile sauce and layer the bottom of a casserole dish with them, then add the turkey, then some of the sauce, then cheese. Repeat ad nauseum until you run out of stuff. It was two layers for me.

Carley: "Don't mess up the layering this time!" Me: "Shut up!"

Then, I promptly messed up the layering. THANKS FOR THE JINX, CARLEY. On my top layer, I forgot to put the turkey on before the sauce so it was dry on top. To fix this mistake, I massaged the turkey into the sauce like it was some sort of Swedish massage, then added the cheese and called it good.

SEE? ALL GOOD. YOU CAN TELL BECAUSE THERE'S A THUMBS UP.

Now put it in the oven for thirty minutes or until it's hot and the cheese is melted. I probably could have left it in for 40 minutes total, but I was hungry, and it was melty enough for me!

Cut. Serve. Enjoy.

Congratulations! You are now a New Mexican!

Rating: 10/10

[talesfromthecatranch]

Butter Chicken, or Paula Dean's Fantasy Come to Life

It's been quite a couple of weeks here at the Cat Ranch.  First Kat got sick, then I got sick, then Kat's car battery died, then we had a surprisingly rough week leading up to Thanksgiving.  The recipe I'm posting today was actually from a few weeks ago.  It comes from our friend Amber, and let me tell you guys, it is not for the faint of heart or high of cholesterol.  However, assuming your triglycerides are in check, this is a fantastic combination of buttery and garlicky flavors.

One package chicken tenderloins (Amber specified not to use frozen ones)

One box Dreamfields pasta

1 lb butter (THIS WAS A HUGE MISTAKE)

5 (very) heaping tbsp minced garlic

1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

4 tbsp lemon juice

Parsley to taste

Start by preheating your oven to 400 degrees.  While your oven preheats, throw all but a quarter of the butter into a glass baking dish and let it melt.  Now, I thought I had purchased sticks of butter, which could be neatly divided up and estimated.

I was wrong.  I was so wrong.

That, my friends, is what a solid one-pound brick of butter looks like.  I carved off what I estimated to be a quarter of the stick, parked that back in the fridge, and melted the rest in the baking dish.  What could possibly go wrong?

In the meantime, I boiled up the pasta per package directions, then drained it.  Easy, no surprises there.  When the butter was fully melted, I yanked out the baking dish and stirred in the garlic, and marveled at the yellow soup that I had created.  Wow, I said to myself.  That's a lot of butter.  Then I proceeded to ignore my hunch that maybe I had messed this up somehow, made sure both sides of the chicken were covered in the buttery hell I had created, and put it in to bake for fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes later, I took it out of the oven, basted it with the buttery goodness, then added my lemon juice and parsley, before setting it back in the oven to cook for another fifteen minutes.  After the second fifteen minute run, I pulled out the chicken temporarily and set it on a cookie sheet so I could pour the pasta into the butter sauce.  Surely, I said to myself, this would absorb most of the butter, right?  I sprinkled the cheese on the pasta, then put the baking dish back in the oven for ten minutes to melt the cheese, leaving the chicken out for now.

While that was going on, I melted the remainder of the butter (YES MORE BUTTER) in the microwave with a little more minced garlic and a sprinkling of parsley.  After the ten minutes, I put the chicken back on top of the pasta, drizzled the butter mixture on top of the chicken, sprinkled it with a little more cheese, and baked it for a final ten minutes.

Rating: 6/10.  It was delicious, don't get me wrong.  But the major issue here was user error.  I would probably half the amount of butter if I made this again.  While it made for a delicious sauce, that delicious sauce later congealed on our dishes and made washing them kinda gross, not to mention it can't be good for you.  With a serious cut to the butter level, this would be phenomenal.

[talesfromthecatranch]

Winner Winner Chicken Alfredo Dinner

So on Tuesday at work, I had chicken fettuccine alfredo for lunch.

It was, as you can see, not particularly inspiring.  It was also, as you can see, eaten at my desk, in front of my computer with the absolutely magnificent wallpaper.  But I had been given a fettuccine alfredo recipe a few days prior, when I was wondering what the hell to do with the cream that was left over from the chicken tikka masala.

This recipe was provided by theperksofbeingalannister and hails from...well, it hails from a website that I can't seem to find anymore.  And it's been two days, so honestly I'm pretty much trying to remember this all off the top of my head.  It was an awesome, quick meal for a work night, and required very little effort. My ingredients were:

1 box Dreamfields rotini (you can use whatever type of pasta floats your boat, but I have the beetus and need special pasta)

One package (about 1.5 lbs) boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 14-oz can low-sodium chicken broth

1 cup heavy whipping cream

3 tbsps olive oil

2 cups fresh parmesan cheese

2 heaping tbsps minced garlic

Salt and pepper

Parsley for garnish

Your first step is cutting up your chicken.  Now, I was going to have the butcher do it for me, but the butcher turned out to actually be be kinda attractive and I can't talk to attractive people.  So instead I walked over to the pre-packaged chicken and got some tenders, which I cut up when I got home.  Once it's cut, brown it in the olive oil in a large skillet, over medium-high heat.

You don't need to make sure that it's well cooked, because it'll cook up later on.  Just brown it on all sides.  While it's browning, season it with a little salt and pepper. After it's cooked a little bit on all sides, add your garlic and saute for a minute or so.  Then pour in your broth, your cream, and your pasta.  Mix it all up, heat it until it boils, then put a lid on it and let it simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes, or until the chicken has cooked up and the pasta is tender.  It was at this point that Shira decided to emerge from her usual hiding place in my bedroom and ventured out to explore the kitchen.  When I say explore the kitchen, I mean cause problems.

Once the pasta and chicken have cooked, add two cups of parmesan cheese and stir it in.  How many cups?  Two.  Two cups.  I went very much overboard with it and ended up making the whole thing very gloopy.  Sprinkle some parsley on, and there you go!  You're done.  And with only one pot to wash later!

Rating: 7.5/10.  Needs less parmesan and more seasonings, but if you just want a chunk of cheesy, easy goodness, this is perfect.

[talesfromthecatranch]

Meat is delicious murder

stellaphilia has done the last two blog posts, so as the weekend rolled around, I knew that it was my turn to cook! And quite frankly, I get kinda stupidly excited to do so these days because it means that I get to write up these things and share my snarky experiences with you people.

I wasn't sure what to cook, though, but sweet potatoes sounded good. I went scrolling through the recipes tag on Tumblr, and while it didn't give me the sweet potato recipe I wanted, it did give me a potato lasagna recipe. It was vegan. I laughed. I knew it was my calling in life at that moment to make this recipe deliciously un-vegan.

Here are the things that you need in order to make regular-people potato lasagna:

3-4 russet potatoes

1.5 lbs ground turkey

2 green bell peppers

2 stalks celery

1/2 cup green chile

a large handful of spinach

1 yellow onion

2 heaping tbsp minced garlic

frozen corn

2 portabello mushroom caps

7-8 white mushrooms

1 box-ish chicken stock

1 package low-fat cream cheese

1 package shredded cheddar cheese

2 tbsp butter

3 tbsp flour

thyme

savory seasoning

garlic salt

I will say that this recipe originally called for "beefless crumbles" and "non-dairy cream cheese" which made me lol a lot. That wasn't going to happen in his house, so all of the ingredients that I listed are what I ended up using. I got a little overzealous with the potatoes and I bought, like, seven, but I only used three.

The first thing I did was cut up the potatoes into thin slices. Thankfully, I have a mandolin, so it was super helpful.

Carley: I don't know what you're doing in there, but it sounds funny. Me: I'm using the mandolin! As long as you don't hear screams, we're okay!

I would also like to say that I only half followed directions and there were a lot of "oh shit"s coming from the kitchen, so it's really a surprise that it came out as good as it did. ANYWAY, MOVING ON.

In retrospect (and if I had read the directions -cough-), I would have waited to cut the potatoes. Also I would have started with cooking the meat first, but hey! If you want to fuck around like I did, do it backwards!

1. Cut potatoes! 2. Cut all veggies and throw them into the large pot-pan hybrid all at once with the wrong amount of chicken stock 3. Cook mostly-frozen meat 4. ???? 5. PROFIT

So you're supposed to cut up the veggies and throw them into the pan with two tbsp of stock and then add them in a certain order, but reading directions is for suckers, so I just threw everything into the pan with like two cups of broth and called it good. Like ten minutes after everything is cooking, I threw in a handful of spinach, too, because I remembered I had it in the fridge. It was a last-minute addition that I was happy with.

So here I am, cooking all of these vegetables in this chicken stock like it's some really hearty chicken soup and trying to break apart a frozen meat log with a fork while praying to any and all gods that would listen that this didn't fuck up, and that's when I decided to actually, you know, read the directions. It was supposed to only be 2 tbsp of stock because you save the rest for the gravy.

Well, shit son.

SO HERE'S HOW I SOLVED THIS PROBLEM:

I got a really big glass bowl and put a calender, calendar, colender, colander, colander, strainer inside of it. I dumped the entire veggie chicken soup mixture into it until most of the juice (which was seriously the color of old restaurant sanitation water because of the mushrooms) was in the bowl and not in my pan. Then, I put the finally-cooked turkey crumbles into the pan, and we were finally banging on all cylinders.

So, while those things kinda hung out together and blended their tastes, it was time to make the gravy. It said to use a sautee pan, so I had the genius idea to use the same sautee pan I had just used to cook the meat in. I figured, "Hey, Thanksgiving gravy is made from drippings, and I am trying to make this thing as un-vegan as I can, so I am going to make this in ground turkey drippings." 

I threw the butter and flour into the dirty pan feeling pretty bad ass, but then that quickly turned south when I was supposed to whisk it together to form some sort of... smooth liquid base for my gravy. Instead, I got this:

Shit shit shit what the hell is this monstrosity it's stuck in the whisk and I'm sure this is karma from the vegan gods send help. 

Okay, I thought. It's mostly butter. It'll melt. It'll melt all nic-- it's not melting. Shit, what the hell am I going to do, I have reached the point of no return in this recipe. Okay. Okay... The next step is to carefully add the stock a little at a time and whisk it together. You know... The stock that looks like rag water because I already cooked it in things I wasn't supposed to cook it in! Well, why start doing things correctly now? I poured all of the stock into the pan and instead of whisking, I mushed it down and smooshed it with a spatula until it finally melted evenly in the dirty water stock. 

CRISIS AVERTED.

Add a little bit of the cream cheese at a time? Nah. I'm going whole hog with fucking this up today, so I plunked the whole thing in there. IT'LL MELT. 

AND YOU KNOW WHAT? IT DID MELT. And it looked like really yummy creamy gravy. Somehow, I lucked out and everything was going to be okay. I surely wasn't going to mess this up anymore. I skimmed the directions for what to do next (my verb of choice is important here; you really would think I would have learned by this point in the recipe).

The first sentence said to snag a large casserole dish and layer the ingredients starting with the meat & veggie mixture, then the gravy, then the potatoes until you run out. This is where I chose to stop reading and start layering.

Remember how I said I would have cut the potatoes, like, last? That's because they changed color like they were bleeding. Anyway. This somehow didn't look right, so I looked back at the recipe and the words I failed to read. "Ending with the gravy on top." 

BUT. HOW. YOU SAID MIXTURE, GRAVY, POTATOES. GRAVY IS IN THE MIDDLE, NOT ON TOP, ARGGHH. Okay. Okay, fine. Instead of gravy on top and then cover with cheddar cheese, I covered the potato layer with a little bit of cheddar cheese and then sprinkled some fresh chicken broth on top of it.

I'M GONNA PRETEND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DO, OKAY?

Anyway, on a wing and a prayer, I put that sucker in the oven at 350 for 50 minutes and hoped for the best. Fortunately, nearly an hour later, I opened the oven, and it looked DELICIOUS. Unfortunately, I still had to put it back in the oven for another 20 minutes after spreading the rest of the cheese on top (because I actually read the directions on that one!)

Seventy minutes of total oven time later:

LOOKS GOOD, HUH? That's because it was. It was DELICIOUS. For all of my recipe bungling, it came out amazing, and it was worth the, like, two hours it took to make it. Like any lasagna, it doesn't come out pretty on the plate, but it certainly did taste delicious. 

So, yes. Un-vegan vegan potato lasagna was a ragtag success story for the ages. Also, Carley had no idea any of these calamities went on in the kitchen until right now when she's reading it like you are. 

Rating: 9/10

[talesfromthecatranch]

Getting Ambitious with Chicken Tikka Masala

Your recipe begins with this stuff.  This is ghee, clarified butter.  Now, clarifying your own butter is pretty easy.  You just cook out the milk and the water, skim the foam off the top, and let it solidify.  Even I can't mess that up (probably), so why did I opt to buy a jar of it for $5 from Sprouts when I could've bought butter from the grocery store for $2?  Because making your own ghee means it won't last as long, and frankly, I'm not sure what else to do with it.  This jar is good until sometime in 2016, versus my own batch that would, according to what I read, go bad after a month or so.  So this means I can just make chicken tikka masala until the cows, if you will, come home.  (See what I did there?)  If you have any ideas for other recipes with ghee, please throw them in our ask box! The final ingredient list was more or less the same as the original recipe, with very little tweaked other than the garlic, because we're a lazy household that believes that it comes in jars for a reason.  I also used a 15 ounce can of tomato sauce rather than a 14 ounce can, because I didn't see a 14 ounce can and tomatoes are good for you, right?

2 tbsp ghee

1 onion, chopped

2 1/2 heaping tbsps minced garlic

1 tbsp ground cumin

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp red pepper

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground turmeric

1 15-oz can tomato sauce

1 c heavy whipping cream

2 tsp paprika

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp vegetable oil

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into chunks

1/2 tsp curry powder

I don't know what it is about all the recipes I've picked out lately, but they all involve onion-chopping, and they all involve doing so in a specific manner.  Finely chop the onion, the recipe says.  But, as with jullienning one for the pasta one-pot, I found that I generally am pretty lacking in the fine motor skills department.  I'm pretty sure that just ensuring you have onion chunks instead of one giant onion is sufficient for this recipe.

Melt the ghee in a large skillet and drop in the onion.  The recipe says to cook it until it turns translucent, but since I can't chop things properly due to having the motor skills of a three year old for some reason, I just cooked it for about five to eight minutes and figured that was good enough.  (I do a lot of "and figured that was good enough" in this recipe, actually.  Spoiler: it was.) Add the garlic, stir, and cook for another minute or so, until "fragrant."  Considering you're working with onions and garlic in clarified butter, it's going to be pretty damn fragrant.  You're looking at a minute or so here.  Add your cumin, salt, ginger, red pepper, cinnamon, and turmeric.  Stir it all together and cook for another two minutes, then dump in your tomato sauce.  Stir it up, bring it to a boil, then drop the heat to low and simmer for ten minutes.

Go put your feet up and scroll through Tumblr, champ.  You've earned it. After ten minutes, give it a stir, then add in one cup of heavy whipping cream, leaving yourself to wonder what the fresh hell you're going to do with the other half of the pint.  Add your paprika and sugar, and mix it up.  This will result in a sauce that is the same color as nuclear fallout (probably; we have never seen nuclear fallout here), or perhaps the cheerful hue of road cones.  Bring it back up to a simmer for ten to fifteen minutes, stirring on the regular.  The sauce will thicken up while you do so.

Meanwhile, get to the chicken.  Due to, once again, having apparent issues with fine motor skills, I decided to wise up after my incidents with chopping sausage and julienning onions and have the butcher cut up my chicken for me.  She also charged me for turkey and put it in a bag marked seafood, so that was an experience. Grab another skillet and warm up your vegetable oil over medium heat.  I used a wok, which proved to be a mistake--use a large skillet, people!  Apparently equipment specifics exist for a reason.  Who knew?  Anyway, once your oil is heated, drop in your chicken bits.  Give it a stir, sprinkle with curry powder, and sear it until it's a little browned but still pink inside.  This is where using a wok proved to be a stupid life choice, as it was hard to evenly sear the meat this way.

Once you've seared, or at least made a really good attempt at searing, the chicken, put it into the simmering sauce, drippings and all.  Stir it up, slap a lid on it, and finally, at long last, you can walk away from this meal for a while.  Leave it to simmer for thirty minutes.  This is a good time to clean up, then sit on the couch and have a conversation with your roommate about how Bad Lip Reading's "Gang Fight" is a better song than Rebecca Black's "Friday." After your thirty minutes are up, check a piece of chicken by cutting into it and seeing whether or not it's cooked through.  If it's done, dish it up.  You can serve this with naan, rice, or both.  We like bread in this household, so we chose naan.

Rating: 8.5/10.  While this is hardly an easy recipe to do on the regular, the author on Allrecipes notes that you can make a lot of the sauce at once and freeze it, then thaw it when you're ready to cook the chicken.  This may be something I do in the future, because Kat and I both really enjoyed it.  It's also worth noting that you may want to adjust the spices to suit your particular taste, so when I make this again, I intend to mess with that.

[talesfromthecatranch]

Election Day Tumblr One Pot Pasta

So that means that I can't have copious amounts of pasta.  Unless!  Unless I use this Dreamfields pasta, which has a low glycemic index so it won't spike my blood sugar. Another change to the recipe was that, well, I didn't have basil.  I could've sworn we did, but I was so very wrong.  So I just threw in some other seasonings that I found in the rack, because why not.  And we were supposed to use vegetable broth, but the only veggie broth I found in the store was organic and $3.59 a box, so I used chicken, which was infinitely cheaper. The final ingredient list was:

1 box Dreamfields rotini

1 can peeled, diced tomatoes

1 sweet onion, chopped

4 1/2 cups chicken broth

1 1/2 heaping tbsps minced garlic

1 tbsp parsley flakes

1 tsp Italian seasoning

1/2 tsp red pepper

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Shredded Parmesan cheese (lots)

So the hardest part of this was the onion.  The original recipe said to julienne it.  "Oh I hope you're documenting this," called Kat from the bedroom as she looked at Patrick Stump gifs on Tumblr. "Well, you're getting a chopped onion," I answered.

That's about as julienned as it gets with me and an onion. So what do you do with this?  Well, first you put the pasta in a big pot.  Add the tomatoes, the onion, and the garlic.  Pour in the broth.  Sprinkle on your seasoning, drizzle it with the olive oil, slap a lid on it, and let it boil.

Once it's boiling, turn down the heat and let it simmer for ten minutes, stirring every couple of minutes.  And that's it.  In theory, the starch is supposed to leach out and thicken the sauce, but well, I used low-carb pasta, so it was still pretty liquidy when it came out.  The best way to combat this?  Dump a ton of Parmesan cheese on it after you've dished it out, and stir it up so it melts and thickens the sauce.

Rating: 6.5/10.  Not bad, a good quick meal, but it's not the best thing we've made around here.  Maybe some regular pasta would have improved the situation.  I may try another one-pot pasta dish sometime, because I do appreciate the simplicity.

[talesfromthecatranch]

Orange Chicken & Cat Shaming

All of the things you will need for this simple, simple orange chicken:

chicken (I used 6 tenderloins)

1/2 jar orange marmalade

brown sugar (to taste)

brown mustard (to taste)

powdered ginger

minced garlic

cayenne or red pepper flakes (optional)

bag of frozen broccoli

rice of any variety 

So, the very first thing I had to do was to pluck the chicken out of the freezer to thaw. Sounds easy enough, right? Things are slightly different in the Cat Ranch:

Make sure you choose the chicken, though rats are really good protein; mice are junk food. … In case you didn’t know / couldn’t figure it out / are freaking out, I have snakes, I’m not a freak.

While the chicken is thawing, I suggest finding something to keep you busy. Here at the Cat Ranch, we decided to dress the cats up in some jaunty Christmas attire because Riley deserved it. The other day, he looked directly at me while he took a crap on the bathroom rug, so this was my feline revenge. Doesn’t he look fabulous?

Okay, now that the chicken is thawed and the cat is sufficiently humiliated, take your chicken and chunk it up. Whatever size you want is just fine. I do about one inch cubes, nice and bite-sized. Once that is done, set it aside and mix up your glaze.

Your glaze consists of the marmalade, mustard, ginger, and brown sugar.

Put them into a big enough bowl so that it fits both your glaze and your chicken, because when you're done mixing it up (taste it and adjust ingredients as necessary; you can do that until you start to add the chicken, then I wouldn't recommend it), you're going to throw the chicken chunks in there, mix 'em up, and let 'em sit.

Not pictured: the giant spoonful of minced garlic I threw in after I took this picture because nothing is complete without garlic.

Let that sit in its goopy marinade while you start whatever rice you want to use. I've used brown rice before, and that's pretty good with it, but we've had some bad luck with our brown rice the last couple of recipes, so this time I went with some Rice A Roni Long Grain & Wild instead. Get the rice going, then throw the chicken goop into a pot or whatever you want to cook it in, then add in the broccoli.

Once the chicken starts to cook (it'll like... boil in the glaze, it's pretty awesome), cover it, put it on medium, and leave it to cook with the rice for about fifteen, twenty minutes. During this time, find something to amuse yourself. We decided to put the jaunty Christmas Collar on the rest of the cats to kill the time.

Scarlett was clearly not amused.

She realized the best way to get me to take it off of her was to try to eat it. She was right. Carley decided to dress Shira up as well.

The Littlest Cancer Patient rocked it and posed for the camera. 

Anyway.

Go and check on your dinner, and when the chicken is cooked all the way through, you're done and ready to eat! Serve it over rice, add a little garlic salt (duh), and you're ready to go.

It is the perfect blend of sweet and savory, and it doesn't leave you feeling like a total cow because nothing is fried or heavy. 

Rating: 10/10

[talesfromthecatranch]

Jambalaya? Paella? Whatever, it's delicious.

We also ended up taking a couple liberties with the ingredients.  For instance, the original recipe calls for shrimp, but shrimp was $10 a pound, so we went with another seafood option: fake crab.  I also used brown rice instead of whatever rice was in the recipe, because we happened to have brown rice at home, and swapped out garlic salt for regular salt, because regular salt is boring.  We omitted oregano because the Czarina hates it.  Also, no, recipe, garlic is not optional.  Garlic is never optional.  Garlic is mandatory at all times. The final ingredients were:

2 links of hot Italian sausage

2 links of sweet Italian sausage

5 chicken tenders

2 12-oz packages of fake crab

1 medium yellow onion

1 green bell pepper

1 large celery stalk

1.5 tsp minced garlic

1 cup uncooked brown rice

1 14.5-oz can peeled and diced tomatoes

1 bay leaf

1 tsp garlic salt

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 3/4 c chicken broth

(Czarina:  "Are you gonna put it all in pinch bowls before you take your picture?") So the first thing you're going to want to do here is slice your sausage into chunks.  Arguably, those should be one-inch chunks. However, you will note that I am hardly a whiz with the knife (and furthermore, I used the wrong knife).  So just consider yourself lucky if you can keep 90% of it in the casing. Next, chop the onion, celery, and pepper.  The original recipe called for half an onion, but Czarina, from the living room, shouted that I should just use the whole onion.  She bought the onion.  It was her damn onion.  Who was I to argue?

Grab the biggest wok-like item you own and dump in your sausage.  Brown it over medium-high heat.  Please be aware of two things during this process.  One, there will be smoke.  Two, there will be fat splattering all over the place.  Both of these should be taken into consideration.  Once you've browned the sausage, remove it from the pan, and fry your chicken strips in the sausage drippings.  Any recipe that involves that sentence has to be good, right?  When your chicken is browned, pull it out too.  Don't worry if it's a little undercooked, you'll be putting it back in later. Drop in your celery, onion, pepper, and garlic, and saute it all until it's tender.  Being lazy, we have minced garlic in a jar, but if you want to mince your own, feel free, champ. The next step is to add in your rice, turmeric, bay leaf, garlic salt, tomatoes, and chicken broth.  Arguably, you're supposed to drain and reserve the liquid from the tomatoes and add the tomatoes first, then the liquid, but I didn't read that part and just dumped in the whole can and said oops.  Stir it all up, put your chicken back in, cover it up, and simmer it for twenty minutes.  This is a great time to clean up your trash, then sit down with your roommate and watch Ancient Aliens for a while.  It also marks the end of the labor-intensive part of this meal, so feel free to put your feet up and chill.

After twenty minutes, put the sausage back in the mixture, stir it up, and then let simmer for fifteen minutes.  Then put in the fake crab, stir, and simmer for five.  And that's it.  You're done.  Put it in bowls and serve it up. The only issue I have here is that the rice didn't fully cook.  Maybe I needed to simmer it more, maybe I needed to add more liquid (I used a little more than a cup of rice to finish off the bag), maybe I ruined it when I didn't add the liquid and the tomatoes separately.  So the rice is kinda crunchy, but otherwise, it's pretty good.  This is a meaty, hearty dish that arguably makes five servings and is easily doubled or tripled if you're serving a small army or you want to freeze it for the week.  Whether you wanna call it jambalaya or paella or whatever, it's delicious.

Final rating: 8/10, would be 9/10 if the damn rice cooked.

[talesfromthecatranch]

Pickle Soup -- Please collect your wats from the floor before someone slips

I'd like to start this off by saying that I have never used tumblr before. Like. Seriously. I've ganked pictures from it before, but that's about it, so bear with me while I stumble my way through here.

On Facebook the other day, I saw a recipe that our friend Kellie posted for something called Dill Pickle Soup. Now, I freakin'love dill pickles. Like. A lot. And even more than dill pickles, I like things that taste like dill pickles. Dill Pickle Pringles? I will eat those until my mouth bleeds (and it will if you eat too much, because those suckers are acidic). I decided that I needed to take my love of Dill Pickle Pringles and put it into a soup after I saw the recipe, which I found here. 

Here's what I ended up using:

4 large russet potatoes

1 jar kosher dill pickles

a large handful of carrot slices

2 leaves (fronds? THINGS?) of kale

minced garlic to taste

2 boxes chicken broth

2(ish) cups of milk

1 cup(ish) flour

enough butter or margarine to cook potatoes (idk, like 3 tbsp? quarter cup? I DIDN'T MEASURE)

generic Old Bay seasoning

pepper

cayenne

garlic salt

So my first mistake was throwing the potatoes in the big ol'stock pot before they were all cut, because I ended up with a nice burnt layer on the bottom. It didn't affect anything, though, so we're okay. But I cubed up the potatoes and threw them into the stock pot with a knife-scoop of margarine. Cue burning. Cue panic. Cue moving the stock pot to the cold burner while I finish cubing up potatoes. Ahem.

Once that was ready and done, I poured in both boxes of chicken broth. I didn't believe the recipe when it said 6 cups, but uh. You need six cups. I'm glad I bought extra chicken broth.

I let that boil and do its thing with a big ol'spoonful of minced garlic and garlic salt because both of those are amazing things. I also threw in the kale, but in retrospect, I'd probably add kale towards the end so that it was still a little bit more firm. It was good, though. 

Dice up your carrots really tiny. I used those pre-cut carrots where they're all ruffly and ridged, and then I cut them into, like, confetti sized pieces and threw those into the pot. I let everything boil to try to make the potatoes tender, but I got impatient, so I started to add things in before the recipe said to.

I cut up my pickles, and thankfully took a picture because lol pickle soup.

  Anyway. I threw in the pickles (I cut up the whole jar of them), then dumped the pickle juice into the pot with an admittedly large "dash" (it was a "dump") of generic Old Bay and an actual dash of cayenne and black pepper (and more garlic salt because why not), and let it all boil and simmer, and I walked away for about five minutes because, like I said, I was impatient.

While it boiled, I got the creamy part ready. I poured like... A little less than two cups of warmed milk into a bowl and threw about a cup of flour into said bowl. I warmed the milk in the microwave so that it wouldn't curdle when added, but if you had the foresight beforehand, you could just let the milk sit out to room temperature. Then, I whisked it together, and grew even more impatient. It still looked a little thin, so I added about another quarter cup of flour, but I don't recommend that because it got too thick, and I had to add some more water to the soup after everything was added.

After the potato mixture had been boiling for an eternity about twenty minutes, I added in the flour milk mixture and whisked it into the soup. Promptly got potatoes and kale stuck in the whisk. Questioned life choices. Eventually, I got it all added in and mixed together, and even though I had to add a little more water because there was too much flour, it looked pretty much just like the picture from the first recipe, so that was positive.

I let the whole thing simmer for another half an hour or so to make sure the potatoes were completely tender, and then when I couldn't wait any longer (I was hungry, sue me), I decided that it was done. The first thing I did was burn my tongue, so I really suggest at least blowing on it before you put it in your mouth. This is a lesson that I have never learned despite burning myself on the regular, so it was just another Friday for me. 

Lo and behold... Dill Pickle Soup!

It was surprisingly good. Filling and heavy. It had that nice, sharp pickle taste, but with the comfort of potato soup. I had to add more garlic salt to my bowl of it, but that's just me. I live off of garlic salt, so it might just be salty enough for you without it. It makes a CRAP TON of soup. We each had two bowls, and there was enough for a large container in the fridge and another to go in the freezer.

Rating: 7.5/10

--The Czarina

[talesfromthecatranch]

Welcome to the Cat Ranch!

So before we start actually posting content here, let me tell you about this blog.

We're two ladies in our late twenties, and we've been friends since high school.  We also own three cats between the two of us, leading us to jokingly refer to our home on numerous occasions as "the Cat Ranch."  We have Scarlett (pictured at left pretending to be innocent), Riley (the only guy in this estrogen-filled household), and Shira (the prissy old woman who is unused to other cats). (A quick note about Shira:  She has a cancerous mass on her nose.  There's no way to hide it in photographs.  Surgery will likely only result in it coming back, so we have decided to just let her live out her days in comfort.  She is, at the time of writing, happy and fat.) As for the humans in the house, there is Kat (the Czarina), who teaches small children by day and procrastinates by night, and Carley (Stellaphilia), who is majoring in evolutionary anthropology and doesn't want to explain why there are still monkeys if we evolved from them.  This blog was originally going to chronicle Carley's journey of learning how to cook because she doesn't want to live off frozen dinners in her thirties, but as Kat began to cook again after a period of not doing so, we decided to make this a shared cooking blog, possibly with pictures of cats and personal anecdotes. When we're not cooking, we enjoy the following things: watching TV shows of questionable quality, driving around town, sleeping until noon on weekends, catering to our felines' relentless demands, and roleplaying online (don't hate). Our recipes come primarily from the internet, though we tend to tweak them due to things like curiosity, laziness, or budget constraints, because a teacher and a college student sure aren't made of money.  If there's a source for the original recipe, we'll include it; if not and you know where it came from, please don't hesitate to let us know. Welcome to the Cat Ranch.  Please wipe your paws.