My Urban Pantry

I have a head cold sort of thing going on and the idea of making dinner did not appeal in the slightest.  So, because I can’t remember the last time I bought/made chicken soup I opened up a box of Trader Joe’s Roasted Red Pepper Tomato soup and made grilled cheese sandwiches.  Dinner in five.  I make grilled cheese this way.  Slice up cheddar.  Throw some butter in a skillet.  Place bread on butter and lay on the cheese.  Top with second slice and heat until golden and crispy flipping mid-way adding more butter so other side is crispy too before you flip.  Do you butter the bread or butter the pan?

are you sick of this yet?  Another thing I have realized through working through this thirty days of dinners and sharing them all is that we do have a few favorites or at least we have a few things we have made a handful of times.  The real tried and true favorites haven’t really been blogged about because they are so low brow or because I probably think I already have.  People think that just because we eat well means we eat ‘gourmet’ all the time.  Definitely not true.  We eat well in that I take the time, usually on Sunday, to plan out a weeks worth of meals and then go shop for them.  I suppose it takes me two hours to put a list together and make it through the market and home.   I ask every week if there is anything Z wants.  If he has any input at all it is a standard litany of pasta, burgers, pork chops and mashed potatoes.  Mostly all things that he knows we both like.  He is quite a good cook but takes a long time because he is careful and studies the recipes and preps before he starts cooking.  I on the other hand, prep as I go and am not very careful if the quantities don’t quite come out.  This can lead to slightly better and slightly worse things and sometimes aggravation when I don’t remember how I made it better last time.  Tonight I planned to make pork chops but ended up making sloppy joe’s because I decided I had the wherewithal to work on dinner for an hour or so.  The sloppy joe’s were on the better end of the scale being sufficiently spicy.  The sides were pretty fun.  I made the new Alexia sweet potato waffle fries.  They were kind of good but went from limp to lightly charred in the blink of an eye.  We also had dilly beans.  I feel like an idiot typing and/or saying dilly.  I make dilly beans a few weeks back and we tried the first jar tonight.  They were crunchy and a tiny twinge of heat.     They are different and slightly scary-being canned beans.  The vinegar is what makes them ok though.

it’s kind of a challenge writing about dinner every night.  I wonder what I’ll learn from it.  I would say that so far, all I’ve learned is that I think eat eat too much bacon.  Tonight I made a throwback recipe that I posted about on January 11, 2011.  I actually did use four slices this time instead of 6.  So, cheers to that.  It looks somewhat more refined in a white low bowl too.   I can kind of see that my knife skills have gotten better in slicing green onions which is also interesting although I don’t look all that consistent.  Z chose this menu item for the week and it was delicious.  Looking forward to ‘school lunch’ leftovers too.

we went to the Magic Kingdom yesterday with 40 or 50 thousand other people.  I have no idea why it was so packed.  I’ve seen tweets that Epcot was similarly sardined out.  I had tried to get a dinner reservation for a table service restaurant and couldn’t so we took our chances and walked into quick services places for ‘eats.’  We have found sit down to be worth the money for the break from the crowds and elevated food.  As it was I had a pretty good spicy chicken waffle sandwich for lunch.  A $7.19 I would recommend it.  It is probably the best quick service item I’ve had at Magic Kingdom.  For value and taste it is good.  They make the waffle fresh and dunk a crispy chicken slab in a sweetly spicy syrup and serve with a bit of julienned vegetables (carrot and cabbage) and arugula.  It is served at Sleepy Hollow and there is always shady seating behind even on the busiest day.  I got this one for free because they had made an extra and I walked up just at the right moment.  I thought it was their sample and passed but they said no, it was just going to get thrown out, so I took it.  Along with a free cup of ice-water I was a happy camper.  For dinner though, I wasn’t so pleased.  We went to Columbia Harbor House and had to stand in the queue for about 15 minutes just to order.  As it was already around 7:30 or so this is pretty unheard of.  I ordered the fish and chips.  At $7.99 it’s pretty reasonable but honestly, it wasn’t that fresh and was pretty skimpy portion-wise.  Not as good as even getting a hot dog to me at Disney.   I asked one of the staff where to get tartar and she was woefully uninformed.  No management presence either.  It was a little bit of a low for Disney eating for me.  Z got the chicken and fries- average I guess as he didn’t really comment.  Our friend Karin got the salmon.  At $10 or so, this is definitely a better option.  It came with couscous and steamed brocoli.  I would do this next time if it came up.  As we made our way out of the park I picked up a richly chocolate cake pop at the Main Street Confectionery so at least left on a sweet note.

I must’ve gotten a reasonable nights sleep because I was going over the day today over dinner and I was no joke today.  Git ‘er done.  Is there any proper English for ‘git’?    I doubt it. I made chicken souvlaki and tzatziki and served it with greens and na’an.  This is definitely one of my favorite dinners and it is so easy.  I made it and posted about it for the first time way back in March of 2011.  It is out of the Epcot Food & Wine Cookbook and although I don’t follow their recipe exactly I still really like it.  I noticed they didn’t have it at this year’s Food and Wine Festival which I don’t think I’ve blogged about yet.  We are going to see/eat the Voltaggio brothers cook on October 25th so I’ll wait for that event.