Deja Food

So, have you noticed a general lack in postings around here lately?  I sure have.  It’s funny how you miss it when you’re used to doing it so often.  Having the computer out of commission made it difficult to get back into a posting groove.  That, and  I’ve been busy prettying up my blog (the house is a different matter...) but I do have a few recipes I wanted to share from last Monday’s dinner extravaganza.  That’s really too strong a word... it was more like a dinner vaganza, nothing extra about it.  Anyway, I served yogurt chicken with mint garlic sauce which I found on recipezaar (of course) right here.  Sounds super yummy right?  That’s what I thought when I read the title and description.  

Here is a picture of my pick:

Look familiar?  Well, if not, refer to my post here, about the chicken calido.  Now does it look familiar?  Apparently I am attracted to the same exact dinner only with different titles and slightly different ingredients in the breading and sauce.  The lesson I learned here?  First of all, I really need to broaden my food horizons.  Secondly, maybe I should read the whole recipe before I start making it so I can avoid near repeats.  I’m not going to talk about the chicken part of this dinner, because for all intents and purposes I’ve already posted about it once and quite frankly, and I mean no offense to the poster of the yogurt chicken, the chicken calido was better.  If you haven’t tried it you really should.  But you can skip the yogurt chicken.  

However, my dad raved about this spinach salad I made (which is on recipezaar here, called Super Spinach Side.)  He said he could have made a dinner out of just this.  While I think that's going a little overboard, it was good - but I’m pretty sure I cooked it a bit too long, the spinach was the mushy consistency of canned spinach, which although Popeye advocates, I’ve never been a fan of.  So my tips for this side are a) don’t cook it too long.  If you think you have cooked it too long, get it off the stove FAST because you probably have.  There’s a very fine line between cooking just right and cooking way too long here.  And b) buy a huge tub of spinach if you intend to have this feed more than two people.  I followed the recipe tips and bought a bag of baby spinach, but what the lady who posted failed to iterate is that this one bag when cooked, reduces down to one serving.  (practically)  I really should have learned my lesson about disappearing food with the oyster broccoli side... Oh.  And when the recipe says to serve immediately?  It means it.  Do not let it sit.

But, my favorite part of this dinner was, you guessed it, dessert.  It was much more simple than the desserts I’ve made in the recent past, but I think it’s a really great quick, summery, let’s take it along to a picnic kind of dessert that’s very kid friendly.  It’s called Chocolate Eclair Dessert and I found it on none other than recipezaar.  I do not have a picture of MINE (because it was eaten too quickly) but this is pretty much what it looked like.  

I changed my recipe a bit by making a graham cracker crust by melting butter and mixing it up with graham crackers and popping it into the oven for a while instead of just laying down graham crackers.  I highly recommend doing this because it not only adds a bit of crunch, but also stabilizes the individual pieces so they aren’t oozing all over the place...  I also heated the frosting for a bit longer than the recipe recommends and this made it very easy to pour over the dessert.  But my biggest tip here?  This is definitely one of those dishes that is better as a leftover.  You know, like cold chicken lo mein.  I suggest making it the day before you plan on eating it.  After it sits in the fridge that long, it sets up much nicer and actually scoops out in pieces instead of just a big puddle of (albeit yummy) mushed up dessert.  That is, if you can keep everyone out of it for an entire day...

Usually I’m a dessert first kind of girl.  (Literally.  I think I got this from my mom who was known to be a dessert ONLY kind of girl - yes we had Dairy Queen blizzards for dinner every once in a blue moon).  But the moral of Monday’s "vaganza" is spinach first, dessert tomorrow.  And just like reading a good book, when picking a recipe, it's best to skip to the ending.  Then you know what you're in for.