Day 69 - Burgers & Sliders

Recipe from Jamie Oliver Online

This is going to be a perfect weekend, and since I'm a Jedi, I can tell. I can tell because I had a good day at school today, despite my tooth, because it doesn't really hurt anymore, minus the pressure because there's a little bit of pain when I eat. But it's still better. I have no homework. It is fall, officially. And it was all dark and gloomy today, which I like. It was rainy, which is good.

I'm not like a gloom-demon, I just like the rain and cool weather.

Even though I would not have chosen this particular dish to celebrate the weather, I thought it was good. I like hamburgers, but they're not my first choice.

My first choice is one of the following:

1. pizza
2. Asian food
3. Mexican.

Generally I like a lot of things in those categories. I'm not a huge fan of American food. So I would have chosen one of those genres of food, but before I could say that, my mom had already taken hamburger meat out.

My mom didn't didn't want to defrost a gluten free hamburger bun because we already had a GF hotdog bun out...

...so I cut it in half and made sliders for me using a little tool the Texas Beef Council mailed my mom as part of that luncheon she went to last week (she guest blogged here, remember?).

I thought using that tool was kind of an interesting tool because it makes, like, a perfect circle out of the meat.

What makes these burgers different from a regular hamburger is:

1. They're not processed, per our food philosophy (which is healthy and, like, make your own stuff)
2. You put sautéed red onions in it
3. You put an egg in it (which we bypassed because we didn't have any eggs--shocking!--or egg whites, and even though I went to the neighbors to borrow one, no one was home because they were at the high school football game which we were not at because it's an away game)
4. Cracker crumbs, but we used GF corn flake crumbs
5. Shredded parmesan cheese

I think these were good, but they weren't muy perfecto because:

1. They were too thick
2. I'm just not a huge fan of hamburgers

I give them 1 3/4 THUMBS UP. My dad would have liked more zing, but he still ate 2 of them, plus Caleb's 1/8 leftover.

Day 60 - Hardly Any Prep Shrimp Stir-Fry

Recipe from Jamie's Food Revolution

Whoooooooo!!!! It's day 60!!!

Which is pretty darn awesome!!!

Now, if you're like me, and if you're like me you're cool, and even if you're not like me, you're cool, you probably liked my Gandolf post from yesterday. I thoroughly enjoyed it because Gandolf is pretty cool, although Lord of the Rings is like my brother, Sam's, movie series since he watches it with all his friends.

The thing that I like to watch with my friends is Star Wars and Talladega Nights which I am watching with friends Saturday.

Anyway, I made Hardly Any Prep Shrimp Stir-Fry, which you can tell from the title. And in Star Wars they should eat shrimp stir-fry because Jedi's need to keep their energy up, you know, so they can use their minds and the force and their light sabors to fight Sith.

Back to the stir fry. As you might have guessed, there was not very much prep. You just cut up some cilantro stalks, 2 cloves of garlic, and ginger.

Chopping Ginger

You add it to a hot wok with oil. Along with it, you put some shrimp in. You let that cook then add a mixture of five spice powder, soy sauce (gluten free, of course), sesame oil, and let that cook. While that's cooking, you cook rice noodles.

When it's all done you drain the noodles, then put them in your bowl and top them with the shrimp stuff.

I'm thinking of some Gandolf type of thing for tomorrow's post. I do know what I'm going to write about but I'm disinclined to acquiesce to any requests about tomorrow's topic. That's from Pirates of the Caribbean, by the way.

1 5/9 THUMBS UP

Ask me a question on email or in the comments! We want to hear from you!!! Even if the questions are about dinosaurs.

Day 54 - Shrimp and Sweet Corn Chowder

Recipe from Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

Hi everyone! Caleb, thanks for cooking for us yesterday. Yesterday I had to go to the doctor, then we were only home for about 30 minutes, then we had to straight to piano lessons, and my parents had to go to back to school night, and so while Jared and I were gone at piano, my mom and Caleb made dinner.

I was glad. I was very glad. You probably saw the pictures of Caleb.

Tonight, dramatic pause, I was in the kitchen once again.

Last night I didn't get much sleep, and I was very tired, so I was going for an easy recipe. This chowder was quite easy, but my grammy's chowder is really good, too. But hers is clam chowder heaven. This had shrimp in it. Jared, my fellow cooker, cut the potatoes WAY TOO BIG. It took about 20 extra minutes to cook because of that than it was normally supposed to.

We used onion instead of leeks because we didn't have leeks, and we've never had leeks. I've never had leeks, which explains why I don't know what they are. Jamie Oliver has everything which is why he uses things like leeks.

It was very good with onions.

This was really fun. I got a knife and corn cob and went zing zing zing and sliced the corn off the cob.

Although you could use frozen corn, but we didn't want to use frozen corn because we had fresh and didn't want to waste that, so we used it.

It also had shrimp in it. That's why it's called what it's called. You buy the shrimp at the store and then take off the shell of the shirmp.

You finely chop the potatoes and onions (which my brother did not do), and then you saute them in a pan and then you add the corn and shrimp, then the broth and cream.

You let that simmer, and then you crumble crackers, bacon (which we didn't have), so we used ham, which is really, really good also. We cooked the ham to make it crunchy like bacon.

1 1/2 THUMBS UP, and a special shout out to Grandpa! Sophie loves you, Grandpa! Happy Birthday. Jared says he loves you, too!

Day 53 - Chili Con Carne

Recipe from Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, and Jamie Oliver Online

Hello, it's me, Caleb, the one that wants to be a cameraman for this blog. Yeah, I'm seven and my mom is typing what I say.

Today I helped cook because...because my brother and sister were at their piano lessons and my other brothers had to go to band. Well me and my mom cooked together. This cooking should count in the kids cooking challenge because if it doesn't count, then my brother and sister would have to pick a different recipe. And they don't want to do that. Plus, we already made a recipe. And I'm a kid.

We made...Chili with lots of stuff in it and it does not look like chili.

It looks good to me, but it won't taste good to me. I did not taste even a little tiny bit. I didn't take a little bite because it wouldn't taste good because I don't like the stuff in it.

I had super fun making it. I got to stir, put stuff in it, I got to cut celery, and I got to cut cilantro. Cutting is really fun. But it wasn't that sharp of a knife. It was a kid's knife, though. My mom taught me to curl my fingers because it makes you safe. This way I won't chop off my fingers, which would be bad.

I cut the end of the celery off, the bottom of the tree part, and put the rest in. I put the last part, the leaf part of the celery in the red bucket, and when the bucket is full, we dump it in the trash, and when it gets full, we do it again, over and over again until it breaks, which my mom won't think will happen. Jamie Oliver calls this his rubbish, or something.

Well...my favorite part of cooking tonight was stirring...

and the weird part was that you put cinnamon in the chili.

And other stuff, but only the cinnamon was kind of weird.

My brother AJ thought it was good...

That's a crooked thumbs up

...but my brother Sam didn't even try it and he didn't think it would taste good, but he doesn't know since he didn't try it. I don't know if it tastes good. It looks good to me, but it doesn't look tasty. My dad thought it was the best thing in the world. He said to me and mom, "2 Thumbs Up!"

I had super fun cooking.

May the force be with you.

by Caleb and the whole blog...TO ME caleb!

Day 47 - Simple Tomato Sauce

Cookbook - Jamie's Dinners

Once upon a time, there was a year old boy named Sam that was part of a family (hint hint wink wink). The mother of this child trusted him not to eat any chocolate chips from an unopened bag laying on the counter.

It took much of this boy's willpower not to eat it, but sadly, his willpower crumbled when the wind caught the scent of the chocolate chips and blew right by his face. Checking where everyone was, he sneaked back into the kitchen, opened the chocolate chip bag, and gobbled some down.

During his snacking time, the younger brother, Jared, happened upon Sam and found him eating the chocolate chips. There was plain horror upon Jared's face. So now, to this day, this family is forced to hide the chocolate chips and cookie dough from the terror that is SAM.

Dun dun dun....

That happened today right before I started making my dish. There's never a dull moment in this household.

This sauce is kind of similar to the Classic Tomato Sauce. In this recipe, the only thing you do differently is you use plum tomatoes instead of diced tomatoes (in the can) and you use basil stalks. On the other recipe, the pasta kinds of absorbs the sauce, minus the tomatoes. This one is more of just a topping.

Anyway, you chop some basil stalks (no leaves), garlic, and put in a pan with olive oil.

Add some plum tomatoes straight from the can. Let that simmer for 30 minutes. There is stuff you can do with it from there, like tear up basil leaves, along with some balsamic vinegar and a bit of melted butter.

You can also add meatballs, and stuff.

So basically, this is a great, easy recipe.

PS: Jamie Oliver's assistant recommended we get this book. So we did. This is our second recipe from it.

Cookies to be hidden from Sam, the terror.

Day 38 - Fish Cakes

Recipe from Jamie Oliver Online

Today was the first day of school and it was okay. I have pretty good teachers and everything, but I'm sad because this school thing is really going to make it harder for us to cook because we have to balance our homework and stuff.

But I'm going to do my best. I found a couple of easy recipes for emergencies like when we don't have enough time to cook something big.

Tonight we made fish cakes.

Now I know it sounds really kind of weird, but it looks pretty good. It's basically like a potato biscuit with fish in it. It was medium-ish to make in difficultly. We peeled and chopped potatoes and put them in salted, boiling water. Then when they're halfway cooked, you put the fish in a colander and steam it.

We used tilapia, but the recipe called for salmon.

Once they're both done, you mash them together, add egg, parsley, flour (we used gluten free, of course), and lemon zest. Jamie sure does like his lemon zest.

Then you make it into patty shapes.

Next you get a frying pan that's hot, put olive oil in it, and basically fry them. Ta da, you have successfully made some fish cakes.

Everyone LOVED these.

Jared said: "These are the best things EVER."

Sophie said, "Yummy!"

2 THUMBS UP!

PS: We also made Gluten Free biscuits to go with our fish cakes.

Day 23 - Fish Pie

Recipe from Jamie Online

I, Sophie Ramirez, was not in the mood to cook tonight. I felt like I wanted to lay down and take a nap instead.

But I had to cook because I'm doing a 6 month challenge and Jared, still, is not here.

I didn't really want to make the fish pie, but my mom picked it and helped me tonight. I didn't think it looked so great.

It was really easy to make, though. There was practically no chopping at all, just potatoes.

The rest was grated. You grate celery, the carrots, red peppers (which we used instead of chilis), lemon (plus the juice which you squeeze, not grate), and cheese.

Then just layer in the cooker with fish. We used white fish and shrimp.

I didn't love it all that much, but my mom and dad were crazy for it. They give it 2 THUMBS UP. My dad said it was a very filling meal. My mom said 2 THUMBS UP, too. She said it is like Shepherd's Pie, only with fish.

I give it 1/2 THUMB UP. I think I would like it with beef.

Day 20 -- Roasted Chicken Breast with Lemony Potatoes

Recipe -- Jamie Oliver Online

Hello my fellow foodies! Today is day 20 and we made a good chicken meal. It was Roasted Chicken Breasts with Lemony Potatoes. Today's recipe was a last minuto decision. The choices were fish, flounder to be exact, but we weren't in the mood for fish, shrimp, but we didn't have enough, or chicken kebobs but it called for a lot of avocado and we didn't have any.

So we (Jared and me together) used chicken recipe that we found at Jamie Oliver's website and that didn't call for avocados, which, phew, then we were able to make.

What we did to prepare it was to cut potatoes, red bell pepper, coriander (which we used powder and we threw in some cilantro), powdered cumin, lemon zest, lemon juice, and sliced ginger. We tossed that with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

We put into a baking dish then get your chicken and season it with the extra salt and pepper. Lay that on top of the potatoes and stuff and bake it for about 30 minutes.

We flipped the chicken at 20 minute mark because it wasn't ready.

I didn't like this potatoes all that much because I don't like cumin. So next time I would leave that out. You don't have to if you're cumin lovers. But I'm not a big a fan, so next time I will take it out.

I thought the chicken was really good. It didn't have cumin on it so it didn't have that strong flavor. Most of this dish was pretty good.

My parents, on the other hand, loved it (2 THUMBS UP FROM THEM).

I give this 1 THUMB UP (1 1/2 from Jared)

This was another day from the GF Kids Cooking Challenge!

~ Sophie

BTW: We just saw that Jamie Oliver commented on yesterday's blog! He was here and checked out our blog! Very, very cool.

Day 18 - Pan Fried Glazed Pork

Cookbook - Jamie's Food Revolution

Today is Tuesday, if you didn't notice, and I believe we made the most super yummy delicious thing ever. Let the record show that this is only the second time in my memory that I've had pork, aside from sausage and bacon. Pork tenderloins and pork chops are not part of our usual diet.

It was very, very fast and easy to make. You just get some pork chops, put them in a bowl with some olive oil and salt and mix it up. And then you cook it in a pan. After it's cooked you put some maple syrup or honey or apple sauce (or chutney, which we did not have available because it is also not part of our usual diet). We used honey for some and maple syrup for other. Then we squeezed lemon juice on them.

Lovely dark reddy-golden color

Jamie says in his cookbook, and I quote, "Have the confidence to cook them until almost a dark reddy-golden color." First I took it off too early and it didn't have the color or the glaze. So I put it back on and cooked it a little more.

Lovely presentation, right?

The verdict is a lot of thumbs up by me, my brother Alex, Sophie... by everyone. Sophie says, "It was supercalifragalisticexpeialidocious."

A little blurry, but still lovely, right?

We had it with white rice, which was good. 2 THUMBS UP

Until next time...

Jared