My Madison Bistro

We all have our favorite sports-foods. My top two would have to be pizza and nachos, though not in the same meal. But both are easy and quick, especially if you take advantage of your freezer: freeze pre-made crusts, marinara, and taco meat.

But sometimes, instead of going the pizza or nachos route, I really just want a sandwich. A weekend sandwich, not a brown-bag sandwich. Something fun, like a crazy version of grilled cheese, some sort of panini, or a steak sandwich (At pretty much all times, I have tenderloin in the freezer that I butchered – you can save a LOT of money by buying the entire loin).

And for a little extra fun, I made this version boozy. Why, you ask?

Continue reading “Boozy Steak Sandwiches”

Tags: beef, bell peppers, Cheese, Onions

One of the first things I made when I was little was banana bread. I could mash the bananas myself, measure the ingredients myself, stir everything with a wooden spoon, pour the batter in the pan, and then Mom would put the loaf in the oven.

In college, my roommates and I would often make banana bread, and my roommate’s mom would even come to visit with already-baked banana bread in hand, because she knew we liked it. We loved her for that. (Of course, I really loved her mom for the time she came to visit and made us apple dumplings, but that was because her daughter didn’t really like them – all mine!!!)

But I digress. This post is about banana bread, not apple dumplings. And I do love a buttery, moist banana bread, even though I really don’t like bananas. I sometimes force them on myself because they are convenient in lunches or as a snack, but to me, their purpose is to get overripe so I can bake with them.

Continue reading “Banana Bread”

Tags: banana, comfort food, quick bread

I’ve been fighting a cold for most of the week. It didn’t stop me from cooking, but I did welcome the opportunity to use a coupon for a rotisserie chicken. Two days later, I still had the majority of a chicken left (I’d eaten half of a breast on two different occasions), but not much energy to do anything with it.

Chicken soup sure did sound good, though. Unfortunately, I’d used the last of my chicken stock when I made this soup that I ended up not even liking. My refrigerator was rather short on supplies, and we were in the middle of a windstorm the experts likened to a Category 3 Hurricane. Now, for those of you who’ve dealt with hurricanes and typhoons, that may not sound like a big deal to you, because you deal with those winds on a somewhat regular basis.

We don’t. We get snowstorms, tornadoes, and the occasional mild earthquake that few of us actually feel. I’m in the middle of a continent! There are no oceans here, just a few (well, five really) rather large lakes. And a host of small lakes (14,000 in my state alone), but they don’t influence the weather here.

So did I really want to venture out in the wind, in my walking boot to get soup? Not so much.

Instead, I analyzed the contents of my refrigerator, freezer, pantry, and yes, even my garden still. Here’s what I had to work with:

Continue reading “Emergency Chicken Soup

Tags: chicken, comfort food

I’ve been eyeing this recipe for years. Finally, I mentally committed to making it this fall, but the weather never seemed to cooperate – it was always too warm. Eventually, I gave up waiting for the perfect day, and I started the preparations with the windows open wide, the temperature still in the 70’s with a warm overnight low predicted. (This was early this week, prior to the arrival of the Great Wind Storm of 2010.)

Of course I happened to pick a day where everything was already going wrong: an order I made appeared to be incorrect, I smacked my head on the bottom of the freezer, I had scheduling problems, I couldn’t find a business I was driving to…you get the idea.

And as I started making the lasagna, I forgot that I had originally intended on halving the recipe, but later changed my mind – after I purchased my mushrooms. In fact, it wasn’t until I assembled the lasagna that I realized my mistake with the mushrooms. Oh well.

Things continued to go wrong. For reasons I’m still not sure of, I decided to microwave the milk in a 4-cup liquid measure. Now, just two weeks ago I had problems with that measuring cup. Apparently, though it has enough room for 4 cups of liquid, if you add more than 1 to 1.5 cups of liquid, you cannot actually pour out any liquid without it spilling over and going everywhere. The spout just can’t do it – it’s too narrow and small. So, as I was making my béchamel, milk was spilling everywhere: on my counter, on the burner, on the cookbook (really not happy about that one). Pretty much everywhere except IN the saucepan.

“Continue reading “Mushroom Lasagna”

Tags: Barefoot Contessa, Cheese, comfort food, mushrooms