The Married Guy Cook

The kids love pancakes, and they’re an inexpensive, easy meal, not driven out of line even by the addition of scrambled eggs with ham and cheese.

I bought a bag of corn flour a while back, and haven’t used it for anything except as a substitute for part of the white flour in a banana bread. That I won’t do again, as I thought it detracted, rather than added. Then again, the bit of the banana bread we made into French toast may have been enhanced by it.

A few days ago, pancakes it was, and for us that means Bisquick. I’d like to test making scratch pancakes sometime, but Bisquick is convenient and tasty.

The recipe calls for two cups of Bisquick. I used under two cups, but added an ambiguous somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 cup of the corn flour. The total was somewhere between an even two cups, and a little below.

The corn flour was not overt in the resulting pancakes, but the batter was thinner than normal, without adding extra milk as I usually have to do. It also seemed to affect in a subtle, positive way how they “tanned” in cooking. They were tasty, perhaps subtly less cakey.

I’d absolutely do that again. I also wouldn’t mind making my own corn pancakes, as opposed to using Jiffy corn muffin mix. I figure follow a recipe for scratch pancakes, which I could probably guess at edibly enough if I were stuck without access to a recipe, but use half or more corn flour mixed with white flour.

Anyway, I just thought to mention it. I have a backlog of stuff to post here, though I won’t generate much new until we are financially more stable. There’s only so much I could post about cooking on the cheap, before I start trying things I’ve not made and perhaps not wanted or been able to afford before, let alone now.

We love chicken Rice-a-Roni, and usually eat it as part of a periodic meat-free supper, which gives us variety and saves a little money. Well, until we’re so broke that Rice-a-Roni is a luxury versus, say, plain rice.

I’d realized recently that I could probably make something vaguely like Rice-a-Roni myself. I don’t know exactly what they use for flavorings, apart from obviously chicken, and I’m pretty sure there’s salt, saffron and sage in there. Chicken seasoning, generally. I may even be wrong about the saffron, and I certainly can’t replicate that as I have yet to spend the $21 required to buy some at Wal-Mart.

Most of the time I will search online for recipes to examine and, if not follow, source for ideas. I didn’t do that. Deb had suggested breaking up spaghetti into tiny pieces for the pasta component. We had some we were given that looked thinner than the store brand we usually buy, so I used that, ultimately cutting little bits off a few strands at a time with kitchen shears. Worked well, aiming them into a cup, with just a few jumpers.

I used almost a cup and a half of white rice. Someone in the family gave us a 10 lb bag of Goya brand. Usually we buy and use brown rice, but it’s nice to have both available, with white being better for this. To that I added a quarter cup or so of pasta bits. The proportion looked remarkably like Rice-a-Roni, so I figured I was on the right track.

In the meantime, I had put a cup of water in the microwave for a couple minutes, then dropped a bullion cube into it. In practice the dish needed two, so next time I would add the second one up front.

To the water I also added seasonings. Mainly I wanted any that would benefit from softening and releasing flavor in the water, like celery flakes, but for convenience I ended up putting all of in there. I was conservative with everything except the turmeric, and that wasn’t intentional. It was mainly for color, but the flavor worked, as long as it wasn’t all you could taste, which is why I ended up with the second bullion cube. Which was still a good idea, based on volume. I also added white pepper, rosemary, savory, poultry seasoning, lots of (powdered) sage, and tiny bits of crushed bay leaf, oregano, cumin, marjoram, and probably something I’m forgetting. Plus salt, which feels weird because I seldom use it, and at that I didn’t use much.

I followed the standard procedure, as if it were an oversized box of Rice-a-Roni. Three tablespoons of butter, melted in a frying pan that has a cover, then the rice and pasta tossed in and swished around to get coated with butter, stirring periodically until a lot of the pasta picked up a tan.

Then I poured in the cup of seasoned broth, and added about two more cups of water. It looked like it was going to run low later, so I added a quarter or so more. Rice cooking proportions, basically.

In this instance I added a bullion cube to the pan while there was still substantial water, after I realized I needed more, and I sprinkled on more poultry seasoning, sage, and rosemary to help enhance and balance the expected flavor. Mostly, though, I simmered and stirred until done, exactly as if it were Rice-a-Roni. Our poor high-sided frying pan has seen better days, so I have to watch it or it sticks badly in the middle, closest to the heat, where the coating gets mosts stressed.

It was beautiful to look at, nice and fluffy. Everyone loved it, but it was extremely mild in flavor. You knew you weren’t eating Just Rice, but it could have stood up to a lot more herbification. Now I’m eager to experiment. I can picture how I would improve on it, modify it, even make completely alternate varieties, like beef.

We ate it with a giant butternut squash, which was tasty and added heft to the meal, and green beans, which the kids - well, Valerie - ate better than I’d expected. Excellent combo.

I roasted a little 4 pound chicken yesterday, and we ended up devouring the whole thing in one meal. Never saw the kids eat so much chicken or gravy. Bother were especially good, though.

That left me with a carcass that could still be used for stock and some meat for a smaller soup, but nothing as meaty as usual when I do that. That came together with my itch to try something different, like a lighter soup (usually I make more of a stew), or something with beans or lentils, and with my realization (duh) that I could cook some standalone chicken to add if I had a skimpy carcass, or wanted to make soup without having roasted a chicken. It’s just something that comes to mind with a whole chicken in the name of maximizing food value.

I decided to try inventing what amounted to a lentil soup in chicken stock. I hadn’t eaten lentils, as far as I can recall, since my mother made lentil soup from surplus food lentils when I was a teenager. I didn’t even consult recipes for inspiration, as I do most of the time. For instance, to see what people spice lentils with in soups or other dishes.

In an effort to get a bone-free cooking down of the carcass, I used the pasta insert in the stock pot, with maybe an inch of water up into the insert at its height, and the carcass simmering and steaming there. I turned it regularly to cook the chicken flavor and residual spices into the water, while softening up the remaining meat to shred off.

That worked well. Once I had the meat off the bones, I removed the insert and put the meat in the water, then added things like celery flakes, red pepper flakes, oregano, rosemary, bay leaf pieces, and I forget what else. It was completely unmeasured, but not huge amounts of any one thing.

I started thawing three boneless chicken breasts, one tiny and the other two maybe middling. While that happened, I cut up two modest cloves of garlic and a small onion, cooked them up lightly in butter in the frying pan I planned to used for the chicken, then put the majority into the pot, turning the heat off until I could cook the chicken.

When the chicken was thawed, I trimmed as needed and cut it into tiny pieces, not exactly cubes, but on that idea. That went in the frying pan and cooked through, with the residual onion and garlic, to the point of browning on one side. As it started cooking, I added a little red pepper, some sage, a lot of black pepper, some savory, a little more celery flakes, and probably something I’m forgetting.

When that was done, I added it to the broth, then immediately added some barley and close to half a bag of lentils. The lentils could have waited a little longer, as they cook fast, but they didn’t liquefy completely as peas seem to do. Or perhaps I didn’t cook it long enough to find out…

When the rest was essentially done, I added half a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, more for added color and interest than because there was any need. Where I didn’t add raw carrots as I usually do in a chicken soup, you could easily. I also tend to use frozen peas in a chicken soup, but lentils and peas would kind of overlap. Both of those were represented in the mix, at any rate.

I also spiced it a little more as it cooked and as I tasted. That included a little basil, as I thought it needed the sweetening effect that would bring, though the frozen veggies also help take out the kind of bite I wanted to counter.

In the course of it I used a tiny pinch of nutmeg, earlier, and a tiny amount of turmeric, which I have been using in, well, nothing really. It felt right. It’s a spice that I didn’t find I could match well to foods based on how it smelled. You know, smelling it and being able to say “that would go well in that dish” or “that would complement those other spices in this dish” almost intuitively.

Oh, so the soup? Raves. The kids each got a taste ahead of time. One loved it, then didn’t touch hers to speak of. The other one wasn’t excited by it, but ate a significant portion, mainly the chunks of chicken I made sure were in her bowl plentifully. Deb and I could barely get enough of it. I had feared it being too onion flavored, but that didn’t stand out at all. In fact, nothing did. I’d say I could detect a hint of the turmeric, but the flavors blended nicely, and the textures and relative amounts of the barley, chicken and lentils were perfect.

I took some pictures, but I was enthusiastic enough that I thought I’d post rather than trying to remember after some delay.

I will definitely make something like it again. We served it with French bread on the side, which doubles as something the kids will fill up on, even if they aren’t keen on the main dish.

Simple yet tasty. At lunch yesterday I had the kids by myself, so I thought about giving them tuna, despite Sadie’s “no!” when asked. That made me think of tuna melts to be different, especially given the presence of a chunk of sharp cheddar - almost too sharp - that the kids seem to love.

Then I remembered a boneless chicken breast with sweet barbecue sauce I had leftover from the oven a couple days ago.

I sliced that thin, across the grain, and laid it out on two slices of bread in the toaster oven tray. I topped it with large crumbs of sharp cheddar, not covering it completely, as with slices or a coherent layer of shredded cheese, though YMMV.

In it went for a top brown cycle. With tuna I’d often do part of a second top brown cycle to make the cheese especially melty and bubbly, but for the chicken that was enough.

It was delicious. A shame the kids weren’t enthusiastic, distracted instead by the Terra vegetable chips I noticed we had and served with it. Speaking of unexpectedly tasty things that perhaps shouldn’t work, but do. Sadie wouldn’t eat hers but guarded it with her life. I ate half of Valerie’s, and she did eat most of the rest.

Anyway, it turned out to be a cool thing to do with leftover chicken.

A couple days ago I came up with an idea, inspired by plain old potato hash browns Deb made not long ago, and the zucchini fritters I tried. Why not something has brown/fritter/potato pancake-like with sweet potatoes?

So I risked one modest sweet potato on an experiment. I peeled and then shredded it into a bowl. I diced finely a couple slices of s small to medium onion, guessing correctly that it would go well. I added an egg, just a dab of oil, a couple heaping tablespoons of flour, a glop - probably a couple tablespoons - of maple syrup, and a handful - probably a quarter or third cup - of brown sugar. Also a dash of ginger and about half the size dash of nutmeg. Mixed it all thoroughly, which gave me something about the right texture.

I cooked flat round globs of the mix in some oil in a frying pan until they seemed to be done, which due to sugar caramelizing tended to mean they were unexpectedly dark. Flipped a couple times as needed and then put them on a plate.

I would love to say they were perfect, but they need further experimentation. However, I was on the right track. They were delicious, if too sweet and too caramelized, and got raves from Deb, who thought the onion was inspired and in perfect proportion. Since onion itself tends to fry up sweet, it’s not as weird as it might sound.

Doing them again, I would probably cut the syrup and/or brown sugar out almost completely, relying on native sweetness. I was thinking the sugar would also contribute to holding them together in patties, but it probably wasn’t enough of a factor to matter.

I’ll have to try it again soon, as I still have a few sweet potatoes that will need to be used. It does make a good sweet potato extender. One small to medium potato was enough for the four of us to have plenty. It’s also a taste sub, at least with so much sweetener, for candied sweet potatoes, but with less work. We had them with oven barbecued chicken (par cooked on the stoved, smothered in sauce of my off the cuff making, then baked at length, drumsticks for me and the kids and boneless breast for Deb), mashed, and corn.

I made an amazing chicken stew concoction based around the fairly meaty leftover carcass of a roast chicken. Part of the impetus was a confluence of remembering when my mother made us chicken and dumplings when I was a kid, looking for something different, and noting the dumpling recipe on the Bisquick box. Basically it was an excuse to try dumplings for the first time in decades and at the same time make efficient use of my 59 cent a pound roaster.

Essentially it was like making chicken soup, but I used potatoes and barley as I would in beef stew, not rice or noodles. I hope I can recreate it someday, because it was almost perfect.

The point of the post is to ask if anyone has thoughts on making dumplings without Bisquick, on optimally cooking them, and on storing them if any remain. We ate the majority of the stew and all nine dumplings. Well, two of us did. Sadie wouldn’t even taste hers, and Val only ate some because I spooned some into her and reminded her how much she’d loved the pre-meal tastes. We had an early supper so I can go do some stuff and everyone can just snack later.

I wasn’t sure if I should simply leave them in with the stew when I refrigerated it, or instead pull them out and store them apart.

I partially answered my own squash question, finding a ton of zucchini recipes online.

So when I turned off the computer in deference to thunderstorms yesterday afternoon, I started experimenting ahead of when I would otherwise have started making supper. I decided to try making zucchini fritters, using two of the five at the linked page.

I didn’t use any of these recipes, but I was intrigued by the pancakes, faux crab cakes, and Lucky Olive’s Zucchini ideas there. I don’t have any Old Bay seasoning, nor having I smelled or tasted it to my knowledge, so I’d have to wing it, combining the seasonings that are, in some proportion, a part of Old Bay. Which already sounds like something I’d come up with, except I seldom use the dry mustard in anything but Laurie’s Spicy Chicken (which I may as well repost here, if Google is going to have such an insanely hard time locating the post).

I also thought zucchini enchiladas sounded intriguing, though it intrigued me as much that it didn’t call for canned enchilada sauce, and could presumably be adapted to chicken, or a mix of chicken and veggie.

Anyway, I was mainly focused on the 4th fritter recipe, but I was intrigued by the 2nd one, as anything that calls for mint is so rare in my experience.

Here is the first recipe I used, as written, with points of concern in red:

3 cups of coarsely grated zucchini
2 large eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons of milk
2 teaspoons of all purpose flour
1 tablespoon of chopped fresh mint or
1 teaspoon of dried mint leaves

Place zucchini in colander; let drain 1 hour. In a large bowl, with a wire whisk, beat the eggs until they’re frothy. Add remaining ingredients; whisk until blended. Stir in the zucchini, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper. Preheat oven to 200ºF. In large skillet, over medium to high heat, heat 2 tablespoons salad oil. Spoon in fritters batter, using 1 tablespoon butter for each fritter, adding more oil as necessary. Cook 1 minute on each side, until golden brown. Keep warm, covered with aluminum foil, on platter in oven until ready to serve. Makes 6 servings.

First annotation, the flour; this seems to be too little. My proportions were off because I used one cup of zucchini but used a whole rather large egg, but if you compare to the later recipe, the minimalist amount of flour makes little sense. They came out almost custardy, with kind of a soggy texture. The mint flavor went poorly. It would be better simply to steam, boil, even roast or bake zucchini with mint.

I grated one zucchini, resulting in 3 1/3 cups to use. As noted, I decided to use a cup for the mint variant, interpreting 2+ cups as about right for the garlic, oregano and parm variant. Though in reality what I grated was little more than a medium zucchini, so you could interpret the second recipe as saying to use five or six cups.

The grated zucchini went into a collander that nested into a bowl so it could shed liquid, and I mixed in a fair amount of salt to aid that process, letting it sit quite a while.

Anyway, I beat an egg, added and beat in maybe a tablespoon of milk, a teaspoon of flour, a couple dashes of black pepper, and near half a teaspoon of dried mint. Flour by the teaspoon? Still sounds weird to me. Then I mixed in the zucchini thoroughly.

I used olive oil for frying; not very deep. One lesson is they could have used more oil. That second annotation I realized, after momentary confusion, that it was a typo of batter. It’s not saying to add a tablespoon of butter for each fritter.

The modified recipe made four, nice and neat. They were thinner and runnier than the later ones, and I was surprised while they were still cooking as they seemed hesitant to get crispy. Getting Deb to eat zucchini is mainly about texture. That they came out like custard was no help, given that she disliked custard due to its texture.

You could eat them and live, but they were weird. I snacked down about one and a half, including a small piece I gave Sadie that sadly made her uninterested in trying the other kind later. She made a face and discarded it.

Not recommended. But I’d still love some ideas on what to make using mint, since I have a jar of it on the spice rack.

Here’s the recipe as written for the other fritter variety I tried:

2 medium zucchini, unpeeled & shredded
1 cup of flour
2 beaten eggs
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
1 teaspoon of oregano
1 clove minced garlic
1/4 cup of water
1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese

Combine and mix all ingredients. Mixture will be the consistency of pancake batter. Drop by tablespoonfuls into hot oil and fry until golden brown. Drain on paper towels.

I had two cups and a fraction of shredded zucchini, as mentioned, and I decided to treat that as the quantity correct for the recipe. Who’s to say what “medium” means, after all.

The other ingredients followed along, except it was parmesan and romano, rather than straight parm, and I used a little extra, and the clove of garlic was fairly large. I also added a dribble of extra water when I couldn’t even mix the batter, it was so thick. I scoffed at the “consistency of pancake batter” part, but it was, for relatively thick values of pancake batter. The moisture in the zucchini saw to that.

I made the oil deeper for these, and they tended to be thicker. Used slightly higher heat and made sure they were cooked as crisp as could be expected.

Deb liked it.

Valerie ate three of the twelve the recipe made. Sadie didn’t try them.

I thought they were tasty, maybe a bit strong on the garlic, but strong as it was, the oregano flavor shone through too.

We ate all twelve before and during dinner, despite having chicken, rice, summer squash and lima beans too.

I cooked the chicken in the same oil, figuring the flavor infused from the fritters would be a good base. I added a touch of garlic powder, red pepper, generous paprika, dash of ginger, celery salt, pinch of oregano, and some Italian seasoning. It was one of the tastiest batches of random chicken I’ve ever made.

I keep forgetting; I have pictures.

Plate of food for one of the kids, including part of a fritter:

Shredded zucchini, ready for its closeup:

Mint zucchini fritters:

Garlic oregano parmesan zucchini fritters:

This is a repost of Laurie’s Chicken: Making It Measured from retired blog Accidental Verbosity. I’d have eventually reposted it anyway, but when I went searching for it today I found that Google had changed something about how AV is indexed or ranked that made traffic there plummet a couple weeks ago from just about 300 a day to under 100. Whatever that change was, it made this post not findable at all by title or most of the logical sets of keywords. I should probably start reposting systematically, but this is one of my favorites…

My stepsister used to make a hot red sauce baked on top of chicken breasts, usually as a treat for her less kitchen comfy cousin, and once for me when we were both at my father’s house in Vermont. It was so good, I always remembered it fondly and wanted the recipe.

My stepmother recently asked her about it, and here is the “recipe” as I received it:

1/3 cup ketchup, 1 TBLS W’shire Sauce, black and cayenne pepper to taste, dry mustard, Brown sugar (she said she sometimes used twin B. sugar) and a little apple cider vinegar. Says these are all the ingredients which as you can see its by taste. Cook until slightly reduced. I would think you could dble this as it does [not] make very much.

So I decided to attempt to measure and create a more detailed recipe, based on guesses and adjustments to quantities the first time I made it. Here is what I wrote up as a result, followed by pictures during and after. It is all quite adjustable, but if you like hot and don’t like lack of measurements to guide you, this works:

Laurie’s Chicken Recipe

This would work for 3 breasts, or heavy on 2 breasts. This is extremely hot as measured here, and could be done lighter on both kinds of pepper to soften the impact. Everything is somewhat flexible, beyond that, to taste.

1/2 cup ketchup
1.5 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon red cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons or so water, optional
boneless chicken breasts (2 or 3, adjust recipe to make more)
2 - 3 tablespoons butter, optional

Combine the spices, ketchup, worcestershire, brown sugar, and vinegar. I ended up using water to help flush as much as possible out of the measuring cup I mixed it all in, when transferring to a small saucepan. It gets cooked down either way. I was tasting as I went along, adding brown sugar after it was in the pan. Stir regularly while cooking over low heat.

Preheat oven. I would estimate 400 degrees throughout to be appropriate, though I started at 450. I put butter in an appropriately sized Pyrex pan and let it melt in the bottom before taking the pan back out. This was on the theory I needed something greasing the pan, and everything is better with butter. It would probably work fine with spray or even nothing.

Place the chicken in the baking pan. Cover top of each piece more or less evenly with sauce. Bake until done, perhaps 25 - 30 minutes at 400.

Here’s the sauce on the stove while cooking down:

Here’s the chicken after I put the sauce on, before baking:

Here’s a finished chicken breast:

I don’t know how, but Deb makes arguably the best mashed potatoes I have ever had. Normally I’m more of a baked guy. Some might even say I’m half-baked. Anyway, neither here nor there with respect to the recipe above, this is what Deb made to go perfectly with the hot chicken:

It was amazingly good; a bit on the hot side for Deb, perfect to bordering on excessive for me.

Last night I let Deb do the cooking; a particularly good batch of chicken broccoli alfrado. However, the two nights before that were particularly good ones for my “toss something together” experimentation that makes it impossible to convey recipes.

Two nights ago it was a barbecue shredded pork, but I had started it the night before, at the same time I worked on the chicken.

The first part was cooking it in the crockpot, with a twist. I used water, cider vinegar, a small handful of chopped onion, a generous sprinkle of red pepper flakes, and a wee bit of celery flakes. I forgot about the typical addition of brown sugar, then decided to pass when I remembered in time to have sweetened it up a little. Thing is, the sweet isn’t necessarily needed, and perhaps the onions added a subtle touch of sweetening.

That resulted in rather tasty boneless pork loin (there were four pieces, enough to exactly cover the bottom of a large crockpot without any being on top of the rest) with a distinct but not excessively strong peppery flavor. The pork from there would have been good any number of ways, including on a plain sandwich with some mustard.

It went in the fridge until the next evening, and tasted excellent cold.

Based on the flavor, I wanted whatever I did to lean sweeter rather than sharper or spicier. I considered a Chinese inspired sweet & sour type of sauce, shredding or chunking the meet as I would with barbecue, mixing it in and serving it over rice. I considered coming up with kind of a honey mustard sauce, which could presumably go on a sandwich or over rice. I considered coming up with a variant on what I’ve done for barbecue sauce before. That’s where I ended up, as it sounded easiest, tastiest, and fit the idea that for a change we’d just have sandwiches.

I made a concoction that included lots of brown suger (I believe it was 5 heaping tablespoons, and that was as close as I came to measuring anything), some vinegar, a packet of soy sauce (okay, that’s a measurement), more Worcestershire sauce than I normally use in anything, yellow mustard, ketchup, water, garlic powder, red pepper, and allspice. How good was it? I really, really wish I had a recipe. I whisked it smooth, simmered it, tasted and approved, and shredded the pork into it, stirring it in and letting the pork heat via the sauce.

I was shooting to have just enough sauce to coat the pork, with minimal extra to make it sloppy, and somehow succeeded, entirely by eye. There were no “good rolls” on hand, but we had some hot dog rolls in the freezer and employed them. The sauced pork went on the rolls with some cheddar cheese. On the side we ate chips, having an unusual, veggie-free meal.

Two nights ago I craved something along the lines of chicken in gravy over rice. Inspired by a comment by Jen, in which she described something akin to no peek chicken, but in a crockpot, I decided to use cream of mushroom soup in the gravy. I might have attempted something in the crockpot, faking out the onion soup part, but it was too late by the time I thought of that.

So I thawed three chicken breasts, of course, then cut them into small pieces. In the pan I melted some butter with various spices, emphasizing very heavily the crushed bay leaf. I also included amounts ranging from almost none to fairly substantial quantities of other things, including savory, thyme, poultry seasoning, garlic powder, ginger, red pepper, black pepper, celery flakes, oregano, and I believe both chives and parsley. Cooked the chicken until done and the extraneous liquid was largely cooked off, leaving just a bit of remaining butter/oil.

In the meantime, I had filled a Pyrex cup with water, heated it two minutes, then dropped two chicken boullion cubes in it to sit and dissolve.

Moved the chicken to one side of the pan, added a glop more butter, let it melt, whisked in a heaping tablespoon of flour, then another and some of the broth to smooth it out as it overthickens.

Rapidly add the rest of the broth and whisk it in. So far so good. At this point, depending on the dish and consistency, I might add more water, more flour, some sour cream, some milk, or even some flavoring if I tasted and it was lacking. I added a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup. It happened to be Wal-Mart’s store brand, which tasted a little different from Campbell’s, but seemed perfectly good. Mixed that in, along with enough more water for appropriate consistency and volume, and stirred the chicken in with the gravy.

The chicken itself had kind of a strong flavor, very oriented to the bay leaf, which I would probably reduce in the future. The gravy was fantastic, with plenty of chicken flavor, yet different, and with little bits of mushroom in it. The peas I served on the side could have gone in it.

I make a meal that size and we always have leftovers. If not of the rice or peas, at least of the meat dish. Not this time.

The kids devoured the chicken. Even Valerie, who eats meat minimally compared to her love of veggies. I gave them each about six piece of chicken, in gravy beside and over a small pile of rice. They each had seconds of probably as much again, Sadie had thirds, and they did a good job on the rice and peas too. The two of us ate heartily, and I finished it when I saw how little would be left. It was particularly good.

It helps that the kids seem to have gotten more in tune with meals, eating more at meal times and snacking less. It also helps to give them an advance taste. That’s a great trick, if you want your kids to be more enthusiastic about what you’re serving. Valerie had an intrigued look I’ve never seen before when I gave her a taste of the gravy when it was almost done. She got a second taste that included chicken, and Sadie got a couple tastes as well. They both liked it enough to be primed for it to appear on the table.

Another trick that can work well to get them to eat well is sort of a “dessert first” serving of a small sweet, or a small snack, shortly before the meal. An M&M or spice drop before dinner tends to make them devour the “real food.”

Yesterday at lunch time Sadie happened to see me heft the big Bisquick box by way of reminding myself that, yep, it was almost empty and we’d forgotten to buy more. It was one of the things I forgot on the BJ’s run.

That resulted in a chorus of “pancakes! pancakes! daddy make pancakes!”

I looked in the fridge and confirmed we were out of blueberries, which I pictured finishing in a half batch of pancakes for the kids.

Aha! I had an idea.

We have a big bag of BJ’s own brand of trail mix, a particularly fruity variety. It has some almonds and soy beans, and pretends to have a walnut piece here and there, but mainly it has apricot bits, raisins, cranberries, blueberries and cherries. It’s almost too sweet.

I heated a half cup or so of water in a Pyrex cup for 99 seconds in the microwave.

Into the hot water I put a large amount of dried fruit to soften and rehydrate a bit. Never thought of this before, but it’s a great trick for making fruit pancakes without requiring a relevant kind of fresh fruit in the house. Then again, even though they can be made with other kinds, to me the fruit for pancakes is blueberries or bananas. Thus having apples and nectarines on hand was beside the point.

The fruit soaked several minutes. I found there was around a cup and a third or so left in the box, so I finished it, using the Bisquick pancake recipe as if it were the full two cups. Figured the fruit would bulk it up, and a high proportion of egg would help it rise around the fruit as it cooked.

I scooped in the fruit, sans most of the water, and added a handful of sunflower seeds to make it more interesting.

I poured out larger pancakes than usual, doing two on the pan at a time, rather than four. The fruit was heavy and wanted to cluster enough that it was basically a matter of pouring out some batter and then scooping fruit onto it, trying to keep the amount in each appropriate. Otherwise it was just like cooking any old pancakes.

They were fantastic, able to be eaten without syrup, or with minimal syrup. It was a little like having a fruitcake flavored pancake, but not exactly.

Sadie devoured a full two good-sized pancakes. Valerie ate most of one avidly, and overall might have eaten as much as one and a half. They didn’t eat this much when we had blueberry pancakes. I ate the other six.

Definitely a keeper idea, and brilliant given our tendency to have trail mix or raisins in the house. We actually prefer Wal-Mart’s house brand large bags of tropical trail mix to the fruity one from BJ’s, but the fruity one was probably better for this.