Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Nowheymama is Not Lisa Kudrow

While the rest of you have been getting Fit on your Wiis, I've been trying out my own Nintendo Personal Trainer. Personal Trainer: Cooking for the Nintendo DS, that is. I'm sure Santa put it in my stocking thinking it would be a nice project for Katherine and me. And it is--it's been fun to find recipes using the world map, to talk about geography and the foods of different countries. But it makes me nervous to have her DS in the kitchen with us while we're measuring and stirring and cooking and spilling, and the game isn't intuitive for me yet, so I have to keep back-clicking, like, twenty times after each step. Luckily, K. chose Apple Crumble for our first recipe, which is probably the easiest one out of all of them. Whew.

Nowheymama is not Catherine Newman, Either

Have you been reading Catherine Newman's food column on Wondertime? It is excellent. It's not just a good read; she has a gift for writing recipes that use what you have in your fridge at the exact moment you are reading. Recently, she posted recipes for Dinner Beans and Corn Chowder. We have two similar recipes in our repertoire, so I thought I'd share them just for fun.

Black Beans and Corn from my friend Beth

1 can black beans
an equal amount of frozen corn kernels
1 jar of salsa

Mix together and heat.

Serve:
  • over rice
  • with chips
  • as a side dish
  • with chicken
Sometimes Beth puts chicken breasts in the mixture and poaches them in the oven and then serves it all over rice. If you use a mild salsa to make it kid friendly, you might want to serve it with some hot sauce for the adults.

Corn Chowder adapted from Guerrilla Cooking : The Survival Manual for People Who Don't Like to Cook or Don't Have Time to Cook by Mel Walsh

1 cup water
1 cup plain soymilk
1 pound frozen hash brown shreds (about 4 cups)
17 ounce can of creamed corn
1/2 cup onions, green or white, chopped
4 slices of Canadian bacon, or bacon, or leftover Christmas ham, chopped
salt and white pepper*

Put the water and milk in a large saucepan and heat just to a boil. Meanwhile, chop the onions and bacon/ham and open the creamed corn. When the water/soymilk mixture comes to a boil, add the potatoes, breaking up any large chunks. Stir for a minute, then add the rest of the ingredients and stir. Cover and simmer for about eight minutes.

* You can use black pepper, but it sure is visible floating around in the pale broth.

6 comments:

  1. Oh the black beans, corn, and salsa ideas sounds great. I might try that sometime....not today, I'm still sick.

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  2. I like reading Catherine's recipes and want to try some of them...I just haven't yet. Go figure.

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  3. I just made almost that exact black bean, corn, salsa dish with rice. I cooked the rice 10 minutes, stirred those 3 things in, then finished cooking 10 minutes. It's yummy to then top w/ all your usual taco toppings and chips! And you're right - it's things you have right at the moment! Easy peasy.

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  4. I have had trouble getting Wondertime to work with Google reader. It's probably a sign of my consummate laziness, but I don't ever get around to reading her because I have to actually remember to go to the website.

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  5. I HEART Catherine Newman. And I printed out the corn chowder recipe to hopefully try sometime in the next week or so (unfortunately, I did NOT have enough corn in the house to do it on the fly. *sigh*).

    Your recipe looks scrumptious, too!

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  6. That recipe looks delicious and easy. Heavy on the easy, which exactly what I need.

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