What to do with part of leftover crawfish!

I have a serious problem. I've mentioned it before, but it rears its head far too often for me to be able to pretend that it isn't chronic. It's avoidable. I have controlled it in the past, but right now it is a hard beast to battle.

I am very bad at letting recipes simply be. And that is if there is a recipe!

Saturday night, the gentleman and I had crawfish with some friends of ours. Not just a little. Oh no! We went ahead and ordered 20 lbs of the stuff because we weren't sure how much we would end up eating. Let me tell you, 20 lbs of crawfish is a lot. Even though the tales are tiny and a lot of work, they are also delicious. So, we gathered around the picnic table, a pile of brilliantly red crustaceans in front of us and dug in. Once we made it halfway through, we realized we would never be able to finish. So, we peeled the rest, divided the haul in half, and went our separate ways.

Sunday rolled around, and I woke up around 7:30, awake and feeling like I should do something. So I did. The gentleman sounded like he was about to die, so I let him sleep and decided to make breakfast using the various things we had floating in our fridge. By the end of the process, I had finished two loads of laundry, made coffee, cleaned the kitchen, and cooked one of the better breakfasts I've made. All in all, I was quite satisfied with the day. Now, without further ado, I give you my recipe for leftover omelets with potatoes, crawfish, and cheese sauce!

Leftover Omelets Featuring Cumin Potatoes and Crawfish

Omelet
1 handful of crawfish tails, halved or diced
1/2 c of leftover baked cumin potatoes (or pan-fried potato cubes)
4 eggs
1 tbsp milk
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic (or about 1 tsp minced garlic)
Salt and pepper to taste

Cheese Sauce
1 c milk
1/2 c cheese of choice, diced (I used a delicious comte, but can use any kind)
1 tbsp cream cheese
1 in ginger paste
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp chipotle chile powder
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, place biscuits on cookie sheet and cook as instructed. (I used Grands because I like how flaky they are.)
2. Start milk heating in a sauce pan, whisking frequently.
3. Once the milk is hot and starting to boil, add the cream cheese and whisk as it melts.
4. Keep an eye on the milk mixture and start heating your frying pan and olive oil. Once they are hot, add the leftover potatoes and garlic, stirring as needed to keep from burning.
5. Whisk together eggs and milk, set aside.
6. Add the diced cheese to the original milk mixture and continue mixing every few minutes to help the cheese melt smoothly.
7. Add the crawfish tails to the potato mixture, stir two or three times, and then evenly distribute the contents over the bottom of the frying pan. Make sure your burner is at medium or medium-low heat. Pour the egg mixture over the potatoes and swirl the pan around to make sure everything is coated. Allow the eggs to cook, as you would an omelet. I like to swirl the eggs every few minutes to coat the edges which have crisped.
8. Add the remaining ingredients to the cheese sauce (ginger paste, garlic powder, chili powder, cayenne powder, salt, and pepper) and whisk to combine. Allow the sauce to cook down until everything is finished. If the sauce becomes too thick, add a little more milk.
9. Once your egg mixture is mostly cooked, other than the top, you can decide how you want to flip your omelet. I folded mine like a burrito and then flipped it over. If you prefer a more traditional fold, then do that!
10. Once the omelet is done (no more egg oozing), cut it in half and plate it. I added some extra leftover potatoes and a biscuit, which we ate with butter and homemade cherry jam. Don't forget to drizzle liberally with the cheese sauce!
11. Have with a delicious cup of coffee or orange juice, and enjoy!

My Favorite Chicken EVER!

I teach high school esl, and sometimes I just do not want to have to spend a lot of time in the kitchen after dealing with children all day. On those days, my favorite thing to do is toss things in balsamic vinegar and minced garlic and then roast them in the oven for however long is needed. This recipe came from one of those days when nothing sounded particularly nice, but I wanted something fast and easy. At the end, I threw in a sprig of rosemary we had gotten from my gentleman's parents, and you wouldn't believe how amazing this smelled!

This recipe has become one of my go-tos for practically all of my chicken needs - quesadillas, salads, pizza, fried rice, and anything else you would put chicken on. My gentleman and I also love to eat this on its own with a delicious salad and some baked brussels sprouts or asparagus. This is also one of the easiest ways I have ever tried to make chicken as well.

If you use this recipe, please comment with what you did. I always love new ways to make dinner!


Garlic Ginger Crusted Balsamic Chicken

2 chicken breasts
~1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp minced garlic
2 inches ginger paste
1 long sprig fresh rosemary
a dash of olive oil

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Place both chicken breasts in a loaf pan and dash sparingly with olive oil. Put 1 tbsp garlic and an inch of ginger paste on each breast and rub in to create a coating. Pour balsamic over both breasts, place the sprig of rosemary over them, and put them into the oven. Bake the chicken for 30 minutes and serve with a couple of delicious vegetables!

Asian-Inspired Pork Meatloaf/Dumpling Filling

My name is Kylle, and I've been experimenting with food since I started cooking around age ten. My biggest failure was trying to create dessert mashed potato that included cinnamon and sugar. My family still likes to talk about how bad those potatoes were, and tease me about being worried for my next experiment.

I love cooking, though, and I can't stop experimenting more and more as time goes by. And, from what I hear from my gentleman, I shouldn't stop either!

My cooking is a strange combination of Chinese inspiration, random ingredients pieced together, and whatever I decide I want to try. I try to do a lot of fast, easy, and cheap meals, but that so often does not work out. I love complicated flavors and can almost never leave a recipe alone. I doubt this blog will be updated very regularly (I'm not great at habitual things), but I'm going to do my best to put up the best recipes I can come up with. Fair warning - most everything I do involves a lot of guesswork and estimated measurements, but I do my best.

Today, I made an Asian-inspired meatloaf from leftover dumpling pork with no recipe, and it ended up being DELICIOUS! You can either use the entire recipe for the meatloaf, or you can make some dumplings and then the meatloaf from the remains. Remember that the portions are easily altered to taste, and pretty much everything is estimated. Use your good judgement.

Asian-Inspired Pork Meatloaf (and/or Dumpling Filling)

2 lbs ground pork
1 bunch cilantro
6 green onions
3-5 cloves of garlic
1 inch of ginger paste (can use fresh shredded ginger)
~7 generous splashes of soy sauce
~3 generous splashes of sesame oil
~7 generous splashes of white (or rice) vinegar
~3 splashes of red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
5 grinds of fresh ground pepper

Spicy Sauce
~4 tbsp soy sauce
~2 tbsp white or rice vinegar
3 splashes red wine vinegar
2 tsp sriracha
1/2 tsp sesame oil
(Whisk all ingredients together to combine)

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Mix all ingredients together. Form the mixture into a loaf, or put into a normal loaf pan. Cover with the sauce and put into the oven for 20-30 minutes depending on size. (I used only about 1/3 to 1/2 the mixture since I had made dumplings and fried rice a few days earlier.) Make sure your meatloaf is cooked through, and then enjoy with the remaining sauce. I baked potatoes and poured a little of the extra sauce on top with some melted cream cheese and fresh ground pepper.

I hope you enjoy this, and I look forward to sharing more with you!