Not-real Person #1: When’s he gonna do that thing where he writes about what he ate last week?
Not-real Person #2: Right now!
It’s Food in Review!
Sunday: Chili
As usual, the best plan for the start of the week is a Big Pot o’ Beef Jazz. Like last week, i combined the ingredients from the Wendy’s Make-alike recipe with the spice blend from the AllRecipes. A couple of jalapenos give it a very mild heat. i skipped the bacon, because i don’t like the texture of it in leftovers. The Instant Pot turns a 4-hour cook into a 1-hour breeze.
UPDATE: This recipe shows up on my “Keepers” list of the Best Instant Pot Recipes (that i’ve tried).
Monday: Honey Bourbon Chicken
This was the recipe that made Cheryl finally decide against sweet meat meals. If anything was gonna do it, it was this one: you dump a CUP of honey on a couple of chicken breasts, essentially. The saccharine result is enough to make you want to pull out your sweet tooth. None of us enjoyed it.
UPDATE: This recipe has the dubious distinction of appearing on my “Never Again” list of Instant Pot meals.
Tuesday: Cashew Chicken
This is a fantastic meal that Cheryl likes to make. The cashews come out brown and chewy, and the hoisin sauce supplies a different flavour from your usual AllRecipes.com soya-sauce-and-corn-starch trope. i always get excited when she says she’s making this one.
And it’s not an Instant Pot recipe, so if you haven’t taken the plunge and purchased the Greatest Kitchen Gizmo Ever, you can put this one on your own meal list for the week.
Wednesday: Mac and Cheese
While it’s far from healthy, and even though gluten gives me the supertoots, it’s hard NOT to make this dish, which is ready so fast in the Instant Pot, you might as well be time-travelling backwards.
It calls for bacon, but as i mentioned above, i don’t enjoy bacon in leftover casserole-type dishes. This time out, i uncased a package of mild Italian sausages and added the browned crumble to the pot. It wasn’t great either, and the sausage crumble was weirdly firm, which i chalk up to using the store brand instead of my preferred Marc Angelo links.
The recipe also calls for scallions on top, which looks great in photos, but in practice, you’re just chewing on raw onions. i skipped them this time. The buttery, toasted panko dusting is a crucial aspect of the recipe. Definitely do this.
UPDATE: This one’s also on my “Keepers” list of the Best Instant Pot Recipes.
Thursday: Leftovers
On Cheryl’s night to cook, she was running out of steam, but we had a fridge full of high-yield stuff from days gone by, so we made out okay.
Friday: Mary Brown’s Famous Chicken & Taters
Holy shit i love this motherfucking fried chicken so goddamn much.
Cheryl had promised to make beef stew to atone for slacking the night before, but a problem on the TTC (which resulted in a detour to the tea and board games stores) brought her home later than expected. My youngest was across the street having dinner with a friend, so we three remaining family members headed to those hallowed halls of chickendom and ate like kings. Like flabby, chub-rubbin’ kings.
Saturday: Beef Stew
At last, Cheryl made good on her beef stew covenant, and we served our friends Michael and Jessica our hearty standby. Jess supplied dessert and brie for the bread (because why use butter when you can slowly, deliciously kill yourself?) MT Hammer supplied three nearly-broken ribs after he attempted to ride from Toronto to Oshawa on a beater bike along well-trafficked highways. He made it to the east end of Whitby before the gear cartridge broke, but he says it was the earlier episode in which his tire spontaneously flew off that really put a damper on the trip, and his ribage. We’re just happy he’s mostly alive.
UPDATE: This beef stew is so good, it features on my “Keepers” list of the Best Instant Pot Recipes.
