mango mania

Got a huge box of "champaign mangoes" at Sam's over the weekend. They are fabulous, and much easier to peel than the usual ones we find at the store. We've been eating mangoes like crazy ever since.

Tonight's dinner featured an easy mango chicken recipe. I didn't have fresh ginger, which would have made it really excellent, but it turned out nicely for how little prep was required. Never mind that it was positively Armageddon in the house while I was preparing this, for some reason. Just one of those nights.

Ginger Chicken with Mango

Mangoes, ginger, garlic, and soy sauce make a delightful sauce to spice up bland chicken breasts. Be sure to use ripe mangoes for best flavor. Serve with green veggies and rice for a full meal.

P

rep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil or vegetable oil
2 cloves fresh garlic, crushed
2 pounds chicken breast fillets, skinned
1 cup peeled and diced mangoes
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground cloves
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon soy sauce
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Preparation:
Heat the oil in a heavy frying pan. Add the garlic and saute for a few minutes. Then, add the chicken fillets. Cook for about 15 to 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through.

Meanwhile, in a medium-sized bowl, combine the mango with the sugar, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg. Pour the mixture over the cooked fillets and gently mix to cover the chicken pieces. Add soy sauce, salt, and pepper to taste. Cook for about 10 more minutes.

Yield: 4 servings

Recipe Source: Tropic Cooking by Joyce LaFray Young (Ten Speed Press)

Baking Soda Volcano

This "recipe" resulted in a very successful volcanic eruption in our sandbox today. Give it a try if you're in the mood for a backyard natural disaster.

Baking Soda Volcano
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1. Find a cup or soda bottle for your crater (we buried ours in sand to look volcano-ish).
2. Fill your cup or bottle most of the way full with warm water. Add a bit of food color if desired.
3. Add 6 drops of detergent to the bottle contents. The detergent helps trap the bubbles produced by the reaction so you get better lava.
4. Add 2 tablespoons baking soda to the liquid.
5. Slowly pour vinegar into the bottle. Watch out - eruption time!

10-minute dinner

Gotta share this recipe since I'm feeling slightly giddy that it's 8AM and dinner is nearly ready. It's the ideal recipe trifecta: quick prep, easy, good.


Au Jus French Dip
---
1 can onion soup
1 can beef broth
1 can beer
3 to 4lb beef roast

Place all in crock pot on low heat for 8 hours. Slice up meat when done and serve on hoagie buns with juice on the side.

Pureeland

You know there's a baby in the house when your freezer door looks like this!

I've been making simple applesauce lately. So good. Peel, core, boil in some water, put through a food mill. Done. I'm thinking I could leave the peels on. Might try that next time. I believe that's how my mom makes applesauce.

Feasty Fast Food

Caution: Infomercial.

Imagine a fast-food restaurant that a group of guys sitting around one sunny Saturday afternoon would create. That's Five Guys. We tried one out tonight in the U of M campus. Truly, a great hamburger. No trans fats. Beef and 'taters au naturale. They even posted on a chalkboard where their potatoes were from that day. Nice. The music was too loud and lights too bright, but I enjoyed my burger so much I didn't really mind. It's also the first hamburger our "selective" son fully consumed. I'm not sure his little body knows what to do what that many calories.

Peanut allergies? Run away! You can scoop yourself a handful of in-the-shell peanuts to munch while you wait for your burger. If you need a fast-food fix, but don't want to suffer fast-food regrets ("Why did I order this? It's so nasty.") they're worth a try.

Secrets to Quick Meals

I read this in the newspaper (which we received a free copy of a month ago and I'm still reading, if that gives you any sense for how unlikely I am to actually subscribe). Here are ones I liked:

— skip measuring spoons and practice eyeballing
— gather all ingredients before you begin (I love doing this. It's a close as I'll get to having a prep chef.)
— use quick-cooking proteins (chicken, fish, flank steaks)

 The biggest "duh" suggestion:

— multitask

Hello! If you're female this is instinct. Does anyone not multitask while waiting for the water to boil? Really? You just sit there and patiently wait, never mind chopping the onions or helping your kid find a piece of her Pinkie Pie Princess Pony Castle that's missing? Please.

I'm impressed

So far, the first two menu items of this week's newspaper plan have knocked my why-do-new-socks-only-last-two-wearings-before-they-look-permanently-grubby-from-my-floors-socks off.

The grilled pork, plums, and couscous was one of the best meals I've had in recent memory. Only took about an hour start-to-finish, complete w/kid-stractions. The pasta w/gruyere and egg is a new addition to my 15-minutes-or-less recipes. Three cheers! Easy, and extremely good. Don't bother asking about fat content. It was a rare dish in that it went over as well with the kids as with the parents.

I am too lazy to track down the online recipes for you, or to write them here. If you want them, they can likely be found online (St Paul Pioneer Press 9/9/10 issue "Eat" section) fairly readily.

At-Home Creamy Sweet Tastilicious Latte

Fill cup 1/2 way w/coffee
Top off with vanilla coconut milk (not the kind you cook with, but rather the kind you can now get at Target or maybe Whole Foods that's used for regular drinking)
Fantastic!

Dinner in Neverland

We did it. We officially had the most hedonistic dinner ever served tonight. Husband not at home. Freshly back home from a 5+ hour car trip from Grandma's house. It was basically bedtime. Menu? Lucky Charms.

The kids were utterly unphased and didn't even regard this as a particularly special treat. I expected wide eyes and giggles. They just sat down and ate. Interesting. Very interesting.

By the way, I did initially pick up a bag of frozen veggies and some cheese and bread. But I put them all back. Sometimes you just need to be bad.

Truly 15 Minutes to Dinner?

I've been thinking lately that I need to write a cookbook that is an honest-to-goodness 15-minutes-to-dinner cookbook. How often do you start a recipe that says "30 min to prep and cook" to find yourself shoving snacks at the kids to hold them off another 45 min until it's actually done?

The thing is, I know there must be dozens of these out there. The key is having the right ingredients on hand. So while many of those promised quick-recipes are out there, if you don't typically buy pre-shredded cheddar or you have to thaw and cook your chicken breast before chopping and tossing in, well, they might as well just be honest about it.

30 min to dinner if you're using a prep chef that has conveniently laid everything out in little bowls like a tv cooking show. 2 hours for the rest of you sad sacks.

In the meantime, if anyone does have REAL 15-minute start-to-finish recipes, share! I'm not talking box mixes for the most part, unless they're special somehow. I'm holding out hope that fast homemade cooking isn't an oxymoron.