Painting Cabinets

This weeks ongoing project: painting the inside of these dark cabinets.  Outside was already painted, but inside was very dark and the wood was not consistent.  The cheap man's solution to under cabinet lighting?  Xmas lights!! And my solution to the dark cabinets was to paint the inside, the paint picks up the light when you open the doors, makes it look cleaner and newer for some reason.  Aaaand the paint that I used for my bedroom at my mom's house is almost an exact match to the exterior cabinet color.  Weird how things work out sometimes.  So I'm using this mini roller that I got from Ben Moore and slowly but surely 2 coats are going on.  Probably should have primed first but too late to turn back now.  The house looks a hot mess because the contents of cabinets are all over the counter.

Liz's Green Rocker

Bought this rocker at a yard sale for $2, Liz painted it and voila, looks like a million bucks!!!

Paint Stripes on a Table

Take an ordinary painted table, block out thin stripes with masking tape, paint stripes in complementary color, remove tape, voila!

Recovering a Foot Stool

Bought an old foot stool/bench at a yard sale.  Recover with new fabric using trusty staple gun, voila!!

Paint and Old Stool, or a Picture Frame

Paint the legs of an old stool a funky color, add some gold details.  Do the same with a picture frame.

Painted Dresser

Take an old dresser, remove a drawer, paint it a funky color, distress, change the drawer pulls.

Voila, instant TV stand.  

Reupholstering an Armchair

My friend Liz is so crafty.  She recently took an old armchair, stripped off the fabric and recovered it by herself.  She died the fabric herself and sewed the entire thing.  Now that it's done, I have a new place to sit when I watch Homeland.

Martha Stewart eat your heart out.  

The best muffins

This recipe is a good one.  Smells great, tastes great.  Cinnamon is a great thing.

Cinnamon Apple Muffins
Recipe adapted from Relish

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose unbleached flour
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 apple- shredded/ grated
• 1/2 cup shredded carrots
• 1/2 cup craisins
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut (optional)
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 whole eggs

Method:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line 12-cup muffin tin with papers.  Dry mix flours, sugar, b soda, cinnamon, salt in one bowl, set aside.  In a large bowl, grate apple and carrots, add coconut, oil, craisins, milk, vanilla, and eggs and mix to combine.  Add dry to wet and mix just til combined.  Pour into muffin cups and bake for about 20 minutes, til just cooked through.  

Cauliflower in all it's glory

Was at Pathmark in the snow storm, for some reason bought cauliflower.  Now usually I would just toss the sucker in olive oil, s and p, maybe some red pepper flakes and throw it in the oven to roast.  I've also been meaning to make a cauliflower mash, but for some reason I was thinking Indian.  So I bought some cumin seeds at Target today and got a little wild.  Hehe.

Sautee'd Spiced Cauliflower
Recipe adapted from Jeyshri's Kitchen

Ingredients:

• 1 head of cauliflower- chopped into small florets
• 1 large yellow onion- chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic- minced
• 1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp cumin seeds- chopped 
• salt to taste- maybe start with 1/4 tsp and go from there
• 1/2 tsp tumeric powder
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp garam masala powder
• 1/2 tsp ground corriander
• 1 T oil- olive or sesame

Method:

Over medium heat cook the chopped onion in the oil until it is translucent.  I kept the lid on for a bit to really get it to cook.  While that's cooking, mince your garlic and set aside.  Wash the cauliflower and chop it up, add to the onion and pour in a couple of T of water to get it cooking with the lid on.  Chop up the cumin seed.  After the cauli has been cooking for a few minutes over medium to med-high, add the seeds and all the other spices.  Add the garlic as well.  Add 2 more T of water and stir everything around.  Now just cover and let it cook, stir every few minutes until the cauli is soft and cooked through.

Chicken stew with soy sauce

I just found a new recipe staple.  Chicken stew.  So easy to make, takes about an hour so start it early.  Great with any combo of veggies, and makes good use of previously frozen chicken.  I bough this Pathmark brand chicken about a week ago and the dark meat was fine but the breast meat has a weird texture when we BBQ'ed it so I threw half of it back in the freezer and forgot about it.... until I saw this recipe and decided that the funky chicken would be perfect for it.

The first time I made this I used all the frozen dark meat chicken I had in the freezer.  It came out to about 2 lbs with the bones on there, so I threw in a couple of extra legs that I picked up on sale when I was buying the carrots etc.  So I would say I had at least 3 lbs of chicken including the bones to start with.  The second time I made this I used two huge monster frozen breasts that hadn't even thoroughly defrosted yet, but the forgiving thing about this recipe is you're basically steaming the the chicken first one its own so if it's still a little frozen it doesn't really matter.  In the end the dark meat was definitely tastier, but the white meat was also really nice, next time I would like to try a dark/white meat combo.  I think this would also be nice with turkey legs or something, I noticed that they are pretty inexpensive at the market.  The problem with using the dark meat was- well have you ever tried to get dark meat off the bone of a raw chicken leg?  It's just not coming off.  Try it.  It's a recipe for disaster that will end up with you covered in chicken juice, and if you were trying to use a knife you'd probably slip and cut yourself.  So after realizing that it wasn't going to come off I just threw all the meat in with the bone.  (This is for when I was making it the 1st time with the frozen legs/wings).  Once the meat was cooked through, it basically fell right off the bone, so I pulled out the bones and problem solved.  No fretting.

With the dark meat version there was no point in trying to cut off all of the fat that was on the meat, so I just let it all cook off and liquefy and then with a ladle skimmed it off later.  Again, I was trying to avoid cutting myself with the knife.

Chicken Vegetable Stew
Recipe adapted from Imagelicious

Ingredients:

• chicken- boneless and skinless, dark meat or white meat - (2-3 pounds)
• water - 3/4 cup
• carrots - 3/4 lb
• onions - 3 medium diced
• sweet red bell peppers- 3 diced
• soy sauce - 1/4 cup or more
• celery- 3 stalks diced
• garlic- 3 cloves chopped
• optional other veggies such as mushrooms, parsnips, tomatoes, potatoes- chopped
• herbs de provence- a few pinches
• freshly ground black pepper

Method:

Heat a large deep pan and add the water and chicken, cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes.  If you can cut the chicken into pieces (if you are using whit meat) then cut it into chunks and then add it to the pan.  If you are using partially thawed or dark meat chicken on the bone just put it in and cut it/remove the bones later.  Put a lid on the chicken so it thoroughly cooks.  While the chicken is cooking cut up all of your veggies and put them in a big bowl.  You can pretty much do whatever you want here as far as your choice of veggies.  The second time I made this I added fresh tomatoes and mushrooms towards the end of the cooking because they release so much water that I wanted everything else to cook first before adding them.  Also, the bigger the pot/pan you use the more veggies you can stuff in there, and since they end up cooking down to half the original raw size, i you like veggies, use a bigger pot.  When done cutting the veggies, add them to the chicken and continue cooking over medium heat, make sure you still have a bit of water in the bottom, you can add more or tip the pot and ladle some off to get just about 1/2 inch on the bottom, not too much, this isn't soup.  Add the herbs de provence and the black pepper and cover and cook for about 40 minutes over medium to medium low heat, stirring every so often and keeping your water at the right level.  I usually end up ladling off a bunch of the liquid into the sink when the veggies are cooking, if there's too much everything just boils into a big mess.  

During this 40 minutes, you are stirring, ladling out water or adding more water, and dealing with your chicken.  If you already cut it up then you really don't have to do anything.  But if you were using dark meat, you have to grab and knife and fork and pull it off the bone if it's ready to fall off.  If you used whole breasts, start pulling it apart with a couple of forks or pull it out onto a cutting board and quick chop it up and throw it back in.  Get creative with it, this is cooking people.

When your timer beeps that 40 mins is up, check out the situation.  At around 30 mins I would have added my mushrooms or other veggies that cook quickly like green beans etc.  So by 40 mins things should be cooked through, your chicken should be falling apart or close to it, and it should smell amazing.  You have ladled off all the liquefied fat and any excess liquid.  Now I would actually tip the pot on an angle and make sure you have the bare minimum of liquid.  Add your soy sauce, stir and taste.  When I made this with white meat I needed a bit extra soy sauce, the dark meat doesn't need as much. Cover and cook another 5 to 10 mins on medium low heat, just let the soy get in the chicken and you should be ready to go.  

I served this over a bed of roasted kale and raw spinach which melted under the heat of the stew.  Classically this would be great over egg noodles or polenta.  Brown rice would also be a nice option.  Or even mashed potatoes or mashed cauliflower.  This stew keeps well in the fridge and is awesome the next day cold or hot. 

Basically this stew is fool-proof.  You can use cheap poor-quality or previously frozen chicken, or any other meat for that matter, you can put in whatever veggie combination you want, a ton of garlic, other herbs and spices, it has a million possibilities.  It feeds a lot of people, especially if you serve it over a hearty grain of some sort.  You can start it right away by throwing the chicken in the pot and then begin cutting your veggies, working as you go.  You can definitely make it the night before and reheat it for dinner the next day.  It would probably be great with some red pepper flakes.  It's really good cold out of the fridge for those of us who like cold chicken.  It takes no fancy ingredients.  Do you have soy sauce?  Ok you're ready to go.  You could totally make it vegan by leaving the chicken out and just doing the veggies, and then adding a can of beans and a can of corn towards the end, then serving over brown rice for a complete protein.  Yeah, I like this stew.  It's a new fave.