welcome to my refrigerator!

Welcome to my refrigerator!

The beauty of the internet is that you can pretend to be whoever you want to be, and, if you're a good enough writer, your readers will believe you. Now, I'm not sure I'm that good a writer (at least not about food – you probably all believe I'm an EXPERT in romance, though) so, to prove to you that I've been baking and cooking a lot lately, I'm here to give you a tour of my fridge, complete with recipes!

Tickets will be collected as you approach the fridge. Please keep your hands and feet to yourselves at all times.

Our first stop is the purple arrow. Yes, it looks like a yogurt container. It's not. Well, it is. But it doesn't have yogurt in it. It's full of Meatloaf, made from my mother's recipe. (One of my mother's recipes, rather) (and no, your mother's is not better):

5 pounds turkey (or beef, or a combo of beef and turkey, but I used turkey)

2 onions, chopped

2T olive oil

2t Salt

1t Pepper

1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce

¾ cup chicken stock

1½t tomato paste

1½ cups bread crumbs

3 large eggs

Sautee onions, olive oil, salt and pepper together about 15 minutes or until soft. Let cool.
Combine Worcestershire sauce, chicken stock, tomato paste, bread crumbs and eggs in a large bowl. Add turkey. Squash together wit your hands until fully mixed.

Put into two meatloaf pans. Bake in the over for 1½ hours at 325, with a pan of water in the oven, so they don't dry out.

Feel free to halve the recipe, like I did. Although, if you're going to do that, I recommend actually halving all the ingredients (including the eggs!) instead of just selectively halving them. (oops)
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The next stop is the white arrow: mass quantities of Spinach Pudding from a cookbook I took apart and can no longer remember the name of. (It's on page 446, in case you have it, though).

Yes, it looks like cottage cheese. No, it's not.

2 pounds fresh spinach (I used frozen, it works just fine if you squeeze out all that water!)

½ cup part-skim ricotta cheese (you can use cottage cheese, too, if you prefer)

1 egg

1 egg white

½ fresh bread crumbs (yeah, I used processed)

1 T chopped fresh dill or ¾ t dried

¼ cup chopped green onion (2 medium sized) (or you can just use onion, if you're lazy like me)

1 cup lowfat milk

½ t salt

¼ t pepper

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 375. Coat a 2 quart baking dish with spray. (I use a mini-loaf pan, you could probably make them as cupcakes, too.

Stem and wash spinach. Cook in a pot over high heat until spinach wilts (about 2 minutes). Drain and cool, then squeeze. (or, if you're me, thaw frozen spinach, poke holes in the bag and squeeze mercilessly as spinach juice squirts all over your kitchen)

Chop spinach (already done, if you're using frozen… just saying). Place in medium sized bowl with ricotta, whole egg, egg white, bread crumbs, dill, onion, milk, salt, pepper and ¼ cup Parmesan cheese. Stir well, or use a CUISINART (if you have one. Which I do now. Thanks Turning Thirty!) Pour into whatever baking dish you're using. Sprinkle top with the rest of the cheese.

Bake at 375 for 35 minutes (less if making cupcakes)
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At the pink arrow, we'll find Mashed Cauliflower, learned on New Year's Eve by watching Thea:
Two (or one) heads of cauliflowerButterSaltMilk, half and half or whatever milky goodness you have in the fridge

Steam your cauliflower.
Put it in the Cuisinart with butter, salt and whatever milk you want
Blend it to a nice, whipped mashed potato consistency.
Eat to your heart's content, but realize that it might not make you smell all that good. I'm just saying.

This is a "candid" picture of me cooking the cauliflower so a) you believe that I really did all this and b) you can see how LOVELY I look in my Sunday-morning apron! (and it's "candid" because I had to put the camera in the open freezer door and use the auto-timer to get this very casual picture of myself)
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The blue arrow gives us Tofu "muffins" (for those of you who would like more protein in your diet, but can't really be bothered to touch raw dead animals.)

Two packages of tofu (smoother is better, but you can do one of smooth and one of firm, if you want)
Three egg whites

Splenda to taste (for me, that's a lot)

Cinnamon, Ginger and Cloves to taste

Open tofu and drain. Remove all excess moisture.
Mix together (preferably with an electric mixer) all ingredients. If your mixture is particularly soupy, add a teaspoon of cornstarch.
Spray cupcake pan with oil and scoop mixture into individual "muffins." Bake for about 45-50 minutes, to get rid of extra moisture.
Cool and serve. Mostly to yourself. They're useful, but not the tastiest thing I've ever made. That said, I dig them.
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Other highlights? The red arrow leads you to bean soup that tastes pretty good, but for which I didn't cook the beans long enough, so it's a little crunchy. Not something I look for in a bean soup.

You'll notice there's no recipe for it. Probably better to skip it anyway.

The brown arrow points to the most disgusting thing in my fridge – milk that's been there since August. "Kate, that's appalling! Get rid of it!" I hear you gasp. No, I say defiantly! It's buttermilk now, and very good in Kentucky Buttermilk Raisin Cake, from the Cake Mix Doctor Cookbook that I made this morning for a Stupidbowl party later:

Cake:

Vegetable oil spray for misting the pan

Flour for dusting the pan

1 cup golden raisins

½ cup bourbon

1 T grated orange zest

1 package plain yellow cake mix

1 package vanilla instant pudding

1 cup buttermilk

8T (1 stick) butter, melted

4 large eggs

1 t vanilla

Hot Buttered Glaze:

4T (½ stick) butter

½ cup packed brown sugar

¼ cup bourbon

¼ cup water

Preheat oven to 350. Mist Bundt pan with spray and dust with flour.

Put raisins, bourbon and orange zest in saucepan and heat. Don't boil. Set it aside

Place cake mix, pudding mix, buttermilk, melted butter, eggs and vanilla in large mixing bowl. Blend on low for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and mix on medium for 2 minutes. Fold in the raisin/bourbon mixture and put in pan

Bake until it's golden brown (or your house smells too good to wait any longer!), 45-50 minutes. Cool for 20 minutes.

Prepare the glaze. Put butter, brown sugar and water in small saucepan and boil 3 minutes.
Poke holes in the top of the cake with a skewer. Spoon the glaze over the cake and watch it sink into the holes. Let cake cool completely before slicing.

YUM!