Stacerella

Cubanella Rice

Note: The ratio of rice to water for cookin rice in general is 1:2, and it’s not any different when a rice cooker is involved. Some people think it should somehow different. It’s not.

Ingredients:
1/2 C Catalina dressing
1/2 C water
1/2 C brown rice
1/3 C onion (of your choice), diced
1/3 C cubanelle pepper, chopped
1 pinch of S&P, to taste

Place all the ingredients up to S&P into the rice cooker and let it cook up. When the cooker cycles down to “Warm,” add the salt and pepper to taste, and fluff the rice with the paddle or a fork before serving. (If you like your rice with more heat, leave the cubanella pepper out till the rice cooker has finished cooking the rice and then throw it in simply to heat it through, not cook it fully.)

I love to make this rice and when it’s cool enough, place it in whole wheat tortillas with some guacamole, refried beans, diced tomatoes, shredded cheese, sour cream and shredded lettuce. It’s my homemade version of Taco Smell’s 7 Layer Burrito. Can’t beat it, I tell ya!

A head of cauliflower has rolled around in the crisper for days, mocking me every time I went into the fridge. I swear, it dared me to cut it up with my best chef’s knife. How could I resist?

Planning to use half of the bucket tonight along with finely chopped onion, bacon and paper thin slices of potato with heavy cream, butter, flour, herbs and two kinds of shredded cheese in what’s commonly referred to as Cauliflower Au Gratin. The other half of the bucket will be used to make paprika coated Cauliflower Soup.

The sliced up cuts of cauliflower will be breaded and then either pan fried or dropped in hot oil. Not too sure which right now, but both will taste brilliantly delicious I’m sure. Joe doesn’t care for the smell of chopped cauliflower, but he does like the breaded slices a lot.

Now, if I could just come up with ideas for what to pair the au gratin and the breaded slices with, we’ll be all set! Ideas? I’m defrosting white fish right now, but I wanted to cook that tomorrow night. Mind you, I could use it tonight and bag on tomorrow’s dinner in favour of a bag of microwave popcorn… Hmm. What to do, what to do??

oe bought a huge-ass bag of pancake mix from Costco, so I have been having fun adding flavour to each batch to see which one sticks. This mix smelled just like muffins as they cooked up. Lovely. ‘Mmm…

Last night before heading to bed, I whipped up this morning’s batch using 3/4C of OJ (instead of the called for water), one full grated orange rind, a healthy splash of vanilla extract, and a pile of poppyseeds that would be the same size as the top section of my thumb, and then I put it in the fridge to rest.

This morning all I had to do was add another 1/4C of orange juice to the batter, give it a quick stir to incorporate the liquid and more air, and it was good to go!