Simple Chicken Stir Fry

Artist's rendition: me scavenging for food after refusing to
leave the house for a week

The dreaded Holiday Season has almost passed us by. You can see the signs of it everywhere. In the songs being played on the radio. In the fact that strangers on the street are giving up their smiles and kind words for the more traditional scowls and refusal to make eye contact. And of course in the increasingly unhinged advertisements bombarding us, begging us to take advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime deals from Target-mart & Beyond-Buy. Deals so insane that they're seriously considering slapping whoever printed them. With savings so unbelievable they'll make you completely forget about last week's unbeatable once-in-a-lifetime deals. It's truly a magical season. It's a perfect time to take stock of the year and assess the ways in which your various loved ones and major appliances have let you down. And to not leave the house because the stores are clogged with shoppers who have been lured in by advertisers' promises of savings and the return of their loved ones. So you'll have to make the most of what you've got around the house when it comes to sustenance. And nothing makes the most of random kitchen leavings like a stir-fry.


Ingredients:

3 Boneless Chicken Breasts
10 oz. Mushrooms (I used cremini, as that's what I had lying around. Whatever mushrooms you have will be fine, provided that you bought them, and didn't inadvertently grow them yourself.)
2 Carrots
2 Bell Peppers
1 standard-issue Onion
1 bunch Green Onions
1 can Baby Corn (It's funny how those animal rights activists who complain about veal never take issue with baby corn. I guess they're just hypocrites)
2 tsp grated Ginger
2 cloves Garlic
2 tsp Soy Sauce
2 tsp Rice Wine Vinegar
juice from 1/2 a Lime (As always, if you don't have half a lime lying around, find a whole lime, cut it in half, and maybe start wearing a helmet)
2 tsp Sriracha
2 cups Brown Rice
3 cups Water
Salt
Oil for sauteing 

Yes, I know, this recipe has somewhat of a longer ingredient list that what you may be used to cooking. Even more so once you realize that bread isn't really an ingredient of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich per se. But trust me, it's much easier to make than it looks. And what else are you gonna do? Go outside? I thought so. Now that you've come to grips with your fate, it's time to get started. Your rice is going to take a bit to cook, so get that started first. That way you can do everything else while you're waiting for rice to happen. Throw it in a pot along with your water and a pinch of salt, and bring it to a boil. Cover the pot and bring it down to medium heat for 20 minutes, or until all of the water is absorbed, and the rice is fluffy and delicious instead of sad and crunchy. Got it? Good. Now go choppity chop chop your  mushrooms, carrots, bell peppers, baby corn, regular onion, green onions, and chicken. You want each of these to be about bite size, and to be the same size as each other, like Tom Cruise's stunt doubles. Take a pan (I used a wok, because I'm apparently that cool. If you have one and know how to use it effectively, go nuts. Otherwise, any large saute pan should work fine), heat up some oil over medium-high heat, and then toss in your carrots and regular onion along with a gentleman's pinch of salt. Cook that down for about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally, before adding in your green peppers, mushrooms, and another pinch of salt. Let that mess cook down for another 2 minutes before adding in your garlic, ginger, and baby corn.

Not pictured: me comatose on the couch 20
minutes after eating this

Now it's time to test your skill and mettle. After about a minute of cooking, it's time to cook your chicken. If you have the will of the warrior, you can push your cooked vegetables up against the side of your pan, leaving exposed metal at the bottom to cook your chicken. Otherwise, you can take your vegetables out before adding your chicken in. You know, like a failure. No matter what horrible truths you discover about yourself, cook your pieces of chicken for about 3-5 minutes (depending on how large your cut your chicken pieces because I'm not legally recognized as psychic in the 48 contiguous United States), stirring occasionally, before adding your cooked vegetables back in to the mix along with your green onions, soy sauce, vinegar, and sriracha. Let the whole thing cook down for another couple of minutes while the flavors all blend together into deliciousness. Turn off the heat, and then stir in your lime juice. Then it's time to load up your plate with rice, smother it in your chicken and vegetable goodness, and enjoy a flavor so good that you might entirely forget the grim truth that you'll have to leave your house some day. You know, when you run out of peanut butter.

Chicken Dog Redemption

Prices subject to change

Some foods just suck. It's best that you learn this fact now and accept it, instead of living a lifetime of foolish optimism only to have your heart broken on the regular by white chocolate. And let's be honest: few things strike as much fear into the hearts of a family than the words "chicken dogs." There's something just kind of...off about them. They're doing their absolute best to convince you that they're totally hot dogs, but all it takes is one bite to remind you that they definitely aren't. Maybe it's something in the texture. They're also crazy cheap. I'm pretty sure that in some of the more sausage-heavy states in the union, it's illegal to charge somebody for chicken dogs. Ending up with chicken dogs is price enough. Which got me thinking that if there were some way to actually make these jellied chicken tubes tasty, it could be an absolute game changer. Fortunately for all of us, I apparently have the kind of free time necessary to make that absurd pipe-dream a reality.

Ingredients:

1 pkg Chicken Dogs
1 32 oz. can Crushed Tomatoes
1 standard issue Onion
1 Bell Pepper
2 cloves Garlic
3 cups Water
1.5 cups Green Lentils
1/2 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Oregano
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1/4 tsp Cardamom 
1 average-sized human's pinch of Saffron
Salt
Oil
Cilantro

This dish has layers, both literally and figuratively, but don't let that freak you out. There are pretty much three distinct parts: the lentils, the sauce, and the chicken dogs. It sounds overwhelming, but I cooked it in like 25 minutes, and I didn't even have this recipe to guide me. Also, I had to walk to the store to buy ingredients. In the cold. Uphill, both ways. So step one is to just slow your roll and calm yourself down using whatever combination of breathing, meditation, and opiates you like. Now It's time to make some lentils, and since lentils are pretty much just an uppity kind of split pea, that means we're gonna spend some time washing them. So rinse your lentils and pull out any weird things that may be in there like small stones or tiny tiny bears. Then throw them (the lentils) in a pot along with your water, saffron, and possibly a pinch of salt. Some people say that adding salt in to your lentils too early will make them mushy, and you should add salt in after they cook. I don't know if that's true or not, but I do know that it's a very small amount of extra work that I have no interest in. Follow your heart. Bring your pot of possibly doomed lentils to a boil, then cover them and cook on low for about 15-20 minutes.

It's been pointed out that a red plate wasn't the best aesthetic
choice, but I'm not made of plates, dag nabbit.

Chop your onion into chunks and, using a deep pan, saute those chunks in oil and a pinch of salt over medium heat. Let them cook down for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, before adding in your chopped bell pepper along with your cumin, black pepper, cayenne, cardamom, oregano, and another pinch of salt. Stir that nonsense together and cook it down for another couple minutes before adding in your garlic, which you've totally minced by now. You can tell you're on the right track if your entire kitchen smells amazing at this point. Let your garlic join in the fun and mingle for about a minute before dousing everything with your crushed tomatoes. Now that your vegetable party has become a pool party, stir it together to get everyone mingling, and keep it on medium heat for about 5 minutes. During this time, take some oil and get it nice and hot in a pan. Then, carefully because the gods of grease fires and third degree burns owe you a smiting, add in your chicken dogs. Let them crisp up for about a minute and a half on each side. They'll bubble up a little bit. This is normal. Well, it's not normal, but it's normal for weird chicken pseudo-sausages. Now it's time to just stack everything together. Lay some lentils down on a plate, slather them with some of your sauce, and then top the whole thing with your crispy chicken dogs. Chop up a little cilantro, throw it on top, and call it a day. Or night, or whatever. I'm not judging.

Slow Cooker Pumpkin Beef Stew

Part headless horseman, part robot apocalypse. Somehow cute

So, Halloween has finally come and gone, which means that it's time for the time honored tradition of buying the discounted garbage pumpkins that grocery stores weren't able to sell to jack-o-lantern obsessed college students and soccer moms. It also means coming to the grim realization that you are the current owner of an estimated 53.7 pounds of pumpkins, and you need to figure out something to do with both of them. Fortunately, pumpkin is kind of super versatile. In this crazy world of pumpkin spiced everything that we live in, we usually only focus on the sweet uses for pumpkin. But pumpkin can go savory, and even spicy. The only limit is your imagination, and the very real possibility of losing all of your friends when you give them a "pumpkin spice latte'" with jalapenos in it.

Ingredients:

1 Pie Pumpkin (the type of pumpkin you use isn't actually of much concern to me. But average pumpkins are about twice the size of pie pumpkins, which are essentially Pomeranian pumpkins, so keep that in mind when deciding how much of your stolen jack-o-lantern you're using)

1 lb. Beef Shank

3 cups Chicken Stock

1 standard-issue Onion

3 ribs Celery

1 Parsnip

1 Chipotle Pepper

2 cloves Garlic

2 Bay Leaves

1/4 tsp Black Pepper

1/4 tsp Cinnamon

Salt

The first thing you're going to have to do is to have survived Halloween. Which, if sensationalist fear-mongering news stories are any indication, is no easy feat. You've got satanic cults, razor blades in your candy, neighborhood teens attacking your home and family to try and pry Smarties from your cold dead hands. It's a mess. Fortunately, like everything else you see on TV or read on the internet, that's pretty much a pile of lies (And yes, I'm aware that you read this on the internet. You sniffed out the hidden paradox. Congratulations! Have a pumpkin. They're lying around pretty much everywhere these days). Now that we've established that you're either still alive or too stubborn to let a pesky thing like dying keep you from making this stew, choppity chop up your chipotle pepper, onion and garlic. Rinse off your celery and chop it into chunks before adding it into the party. Then, using whatever vegetable torture device you have handy, remove the skin from your parsnip and pumpkin. Not so smiley now, are they? The parsnip holds its shape pretty well, so you can cut it as big or small as you want to really. The pumpkin, however, doesn't have that kind of structural integrity, so to make sure there's any visible pumpkin left in your stew when it's cooked, cut that thing into large chunks.

Bowl number 1 of the 3 eaten that night. By me.

Now it's time for the "just dump everything together in a slow cooker and walk the crap away from it" portion of the evening. So do that. Toss all of your chopped everything into your slow cooker along with your beef shank, chicken stock, bay leaves, pepper, cinnamon, and a healthy pinch of salt. If you're one of those ghosts we mentioned earlier, use 1.75 unhealthy pinches of salt. Set that sucker to low and find something to do for the next 10 hours or so, because that's how long we're going to let it cook. I recommend sleeping, or taking advantage of the fact that other people are sleeping to go into their homes and move everything two inches to the left. Whatever it is that you people do. Your patience will be rewarded with a delicious, hearty, slightly spicy stew with beef that's fall-apart tender. You can totally top it off with the roasted pumpkin seeds we made last week to double down on your pumpkin deliciousness if you choose. Regardless, this stew is the perfect thing to warm you up to brave the chilly rainy weather and go look at all of the Christmas ads outside. 

Lettuce Wraps

Not pictured: the 20+ boxes behind me

Food has a magical quality. A good home-cooked meal can help make you feel at home even when you're on some godforsaken rock somewhere waiting for your connecting flight to some garbage place like New Jersey. That's why it's a little disappointing that my kitchen at my new apartment isn't quite functional. You see, there was a mix up where the gas company actually wanted to read the meters, but the meters were hidden from passing meter bandits behind a locked door to which I don't have a key. Who could have guessed, right? At least those pesky meter marauders won't catch me with my metaphorical pants down. Or eating any food cooked in my kitchen. But times of hardship show us what we're really made of. Innovation, determination, and several other importation "ations" can let you have the comfort of a delicious home-cooked meal despite not having the ability to technically cook. Oh, and for those of you interested, it turns out I'm mostly made of oxygen and reruns of 90s sitcoms.

Ingredients:

1 Rotisserie Chicken (Yes, grocery store chicken is totally a thing. In dire circumstances it can be super useful, and if you take the time to doctor it up a bit it can be tasty and versatile as well. But if you're not careful you'll end up regularly eating grocery store chicken. And that's exactly what my hardy forebears left their turnip infested homeland to avoid)

1/3 cup Coconut Milk

3 TBSP Natural Peanut Butter (In general, you're looking for peanut butter with little-to-no added sugars. If you can't find it or don't want it, just leave out the honey. Oh, retroactive spoiler alert. There'll be honey)

1 tsp grated Ginger

1 tsp grated Garlic

1 tsp Rice Wine Vinegar

1/2 tsp Soy Sauce

1/2 tsp Honey

Lettuce (You're looking for any lettuce with leaves that are big and pliable enough to use as a food receptacle. I like a little bitterness and crunch, so I used radicchio and some bibb lettuce. You use what you like)

Green Onions

Since we're not, technically speaking, cooking anything here, the first step is to get a bowl. We're mixing a bunch of crap together, and you can't mix nonsense without some kind of bowl. Winston Churchill said that. So take your British bowl of freedom and unceremoniously dump in your peanut butter, coconut milk, ginger, garlic, vinegar, soy sauce, and honey. Pretty much everything except for the chicken, green onions, and lettuce. Stir all of that together until it forms a kind of beige homogenous goop. Set your bowl of beige aside for the moment and get cracking on your chicken. You're going to want to take the meat and get to shredding. If it's hot, you can totally do this with two forks, using an awkward jerking motion like you're a T-Rex trying to bust out some sweet dance moves. If your forks are lost somewhere in a sea of boxes that is your life right now, you can totally do this by hand. Maybe make sure to buy some soap and paper towels first, because if you don't know where your forks are, who knows what else is lost in the cardboard abyss?

Adding insult to the injury of my not-quite kitchen is how
much better this kitchen is than my last one. 

Pretty much all that's left is the assembly. Take your vaguely cup-shaped leaf of lettuce and fill it up with your shredded chicken. You want to stuff as much in there as you can without risking it all falling out when you try to pick it up and eat it. Then liberally splorp on your peanut goop. Use a little bit more than you think you should. The top may look like it's got a bunch of sauce, but if you're anything like me then your pile of chicken runs deep. Also it's where most of the flavor is coming from, and why settle for less flavor? Finally, thinly slice some green onions and sprinkle them on top. All that's left is to settle on to your couch in front of your TV and eat while you pretend like you're totally going to unpack something during the commercial break. See you next week! You know, assuming I can find my computer.

Eggplant Parmesan

This is an unrelated picture of an
awesome cave I visited last week. Enjoy.

There's a strange pleasure in taking something that's inherently healthy and making it, at the same time, both delicious and decidedly unhealthy. And sure, eggplants aren't that healthy, modern health fads aside. They've got a fair number of nutrients and whatnot in them, but not in any significant amounts. Also, left to their own devices they have the texture and flavor of styrofoam, which isn't commonly associated with either health or deliciousness. But eggplant parmesan is tasty and unhealthy enough to totally bridge those gaps.

Ingredients:

2 Standard Issue Eggplants
4 Standard Issue Eggs
1 lb shredded Mozzarella Cheese
1.5 cups Grated Parmesan Cheese
3 Cups Seasoned Breadcrumbs
2 Cups Flour
2 tsp Smoked Paprika
1 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
Tomato Sauce (you can use whatever good reasonably hearty tomato sauce you like. I happen to have a pretty awesome recipe right here, but then again I'm more prepared than you.)

The first thing you're gonna need to do is deal with the fact that eggplants are super weird. I actually wasn't kidding before about them pretty much being made up of styrofoam. When you cut it, it's going to squeak like you're cutting through the industrial-strength packing supplies that are still holding your new TV hostage inside of its box. Don't get discouraged by how obviously unappetizing your eggplant is. That's to be expected. That's what we're here to fix. So chop the ends off of your eggplant, and then slice it lengthwise. Exact size doesn't matter, but shoot for each slice to be between 1/8 and 1/4 of an inch thick. Now it's time to get prepped. Find or steal 3 large bowls. Take one and fill it up with your flour, salt, pepper, and paprika, and mix them all together. Take another and fill it with your eggs, which you've taken the time to beat lightly in to submission. Fill your third bowl up with your breadcrumbs, and get ready to get gunk on your hands. Working on small batches, toss your eggplant slices in your flour mix, then in to your eggs, and finally in your breadcrumbs, before laying your finished slices on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Throw those suckers in to a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes, or until the eggplant gets tender and the breadcrumbs turn golden and look delicious.

Now with zero recognizable eggplant bits!

Now it's time to build something great.  Line a baking dish with a layer of your eggplant slices. (You may have noticed that this recipe requires a lot of extras. Bowls, baking sheets, baking dishes, etc. You may accuse me of having betrayed my principles and having made recipes for the borgeouise. Aside from the fact that you can buy versions of everything required for like $2, I'm a fairly certain that I never claimed to have any principles, so shut it) Slather your layer of eggplant with tomato sauce, and sprinkle on some mozzarella. Repeat until you're out of eggplant. Take your parmesan and gently pour it all over the top of that mess, like a caring mother bird, tenderly pouring parmesan cheese on its young. Unlike all but the most callous of mother birds, however, now you're gonna throw that in to a 375 degree oven for about 35 more minutes, or until the top gets bubbly and brown and you pretty much can't stand the thought of waiting any longer to eat it. Wait to eat it until it cools down. Unless you're a fan of mouth, hand, and face burns. Either way, it's no skin off my nose (because I waited until my food cooled down to eat it). Now guzzle it down and lie to yourself about how healthy you're being by eating eggplant. Enjoy!

Chicken Paprika

Sure, why wouldn't you walk
that distance for chicken?

This is a valued and cherished family recipe that the Polish contingent of my mom's ancestry almost certainly stole from a famous Hungarian dish called Chicken Paprikash. Why would these old-timey Polish beet farmers (I assume) steal (I assume) a recipe from a country that's like 150 miles away (I google)? Well, apparently the two countries have pretty good relations, and a polish general even became a Hungarian hero after he defended Transylvania in a war. I'm not kidding. To paraphrase, Hungarians and Polish people like each other and probably shared bits of culture and cuisine because a long time ago a Polish man helped defend Hungary's treasured natural supply of vampires. Apparently the Hungarians were so incredibly thankful that they entrusted to Poland the recipe for Chicken Paprikash, a dish which contains no garlic whatsoever. They probably also gave the Polish their advanced neck washing technology, and their relaxing method of self massage via meat tenderizer. My family's Chicken Paprika recipe is a little different than a traditional Chicken Paprikash, but it is similar in a number a key ways, such as its inability to protect you against the undead.

Ingredients:
2 lb. Chicken Breast (You're looking for boneless, skinless chicken cutlets here. You can butcher them yourselves, or buy them pre-butchered from a butcher, or the butcher shop of a supermarket. Butcher butcher butcher.)
2 cups Flour
3 standard-issue Onions
1 lb. Carrots
2 cups Vegetable Stock
1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
Paprika (Traditional chicken paprikash tends to use sweet paprika. My mom's recipe calls for whatever paprika you get at the store. I use smoked paprika because I like that flavor. And so the evolution of cuisine continues.)
Salt

So I'm going to get the religious jargon out of the way right off the bat. It's currently the Jewish holiday of Passover, where religious Jews eschew such fancy modern things as...the vast majority of all foodstuffs, and instead eat flavorless crackers called matzoh, because nothing says "festivity" like "flavorless crackers." This is a dish that my family traditionally has on Passover, but regular old flour isn't so much allowed. So if you're in the same religious boat as me, replace the flour with finely ground flavorless crackers, and be on your merry way. Regardless of what floury substance you're using, combine it with a gentleman's pinch of both salt and pepper, along with a teaspoon of paprika. Toss your chicken in the seasoned flour mixture to give it a loose coating and a false sense of security before you unceremoniously toss it in to a pot with your hot oil in it over medium heat. Cook it for a couple minutes on each side, without fussing too much with it, so that it develops some nice browning. Work in batches if you have to, because it's better to wait an extra 10 minutes for delicious food than to have your food come out like hot garbage. That's an ancient Polish-Hungarian saying. Well, the original saying was more about leaving your windows unlocked at night, and not keeping wooden stakes around the house, but I'm sure this is what they meant.

Ok, we may have different definitions on what constitutes a
"bite-sized" chunk of carrot

While this is all going down, thinly slice your onions, peel your carrots, and chop them (The carrots) in to bite-sized chunks. Once your chicken is properly browned, take it out of the pot and toss your onions in to replace it along with another average-sized human's pinch of salt. Let that cook down for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. While they're cooking, combine your vegetable stock with...just a bunch of paprika. I think the actual recipe may call for something like 1.5 tablespoons, but when I've watched my mom make it she usually opens up the jar of paprika and just glops out about half the container. What's the worst that will happen? People will complain that your chicken paprika has too much paprika? Then knew what they were getting in to. Once your onions are soft and weak, like unsuspecting villagers, throw everybody in the pot. Your paprika stock, your chicken, your carrots. Everybody. Bring that whole mess up to a boil then cover it, reduce the heat to low, and simmer that sucker for 45 minutes. Once you're done, dump that pot of deliciousness into a pan and bake it, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. And that's it! Enjoy it on a picnic, at a passover seder, or while mourning the loss of another beloved neighbor or friend who mysteriously disappeared from the village last night. The choice is yours!

Crockpot Baked Potatoes

Look at them, all snug and cozy. They don't even know they're
about to get cooked to death for 9 hours.

Since the dawn of time, mankind has struggled with one thing above all else. But there's nothing I can do to help you with your taxes, so we're gonna talk about potatoes instead. Baked potatoes are absolutely delicious, a truth which few people ever get to know because they (the potatoes) take approximately a lifetime to cook, and by that time you've got better things to worry about than potatoes. Thing like trying to get the neighborhood kids to have less fun, and eating dinner at 4 PM. Fortunately, with the advent of crockpot technology, you can just leave your potatoes cooking in a corner somewhere, forget about them, accidentally trip over your crockpot, and just when you get super angry at a cruel universe that you never asked to be a part of in the first place, get rewarded with a trove of delicious potatoes spilling out like buried pirate treasure.

Ingredients

5-8 Russet Potatoes (I don't care what the mainstream media tells you, russet potatoes are the ideal potatoes for baked potatoes. Depending on their size and the size of your crockpot, you'll be using more or less of them)
Oil
Salt
Garlic Butter (You can make this by sautéing garlic in some butter, then letting it cool. If that's too much effort for you, you can totally just use regular butter. Just know that we're all judging you.)
Sour Cream
Chives
Aluminum Foil

The first thing you're gonna need to do, according to several experts who are my mother, is carefully wash and scrub your potatoes forever. She has a thing about dirt. You can often find her saying things like "Potatoes grow in the ground...the ground is full of dirt" to no one in particular. She's technically right, but I still feel that rinsing off your potatoes and removing any obvious dirt clumps is more than enough effort to put in. In any case, once your potatoes are sufficiently clean, it's time to rub them down with some oil. Any cooking oil will do, though I prefer Olive Oil for several culinary reasons including the fact that I had some lying around. Take your oily potatoes and rub them down with salt. This is an important step because potatoes and salt are like a desert and water. No matter how much salt you add, there never seems to be any around. But if you add even a drop too much, you've got a flood plain on your hand. Take your salty oily potatoes and individually wrap them in aluminum foil. Toss them in your crockpot and wait.

No matter what Pinterest and Food Network tell you, baked
potatoes are supposed to be rustic and hearty, not dainty and
fancy. Also, I wasn't lying about having work in 5 minutes

I should have clarified. Turn your crockpot on, to low specifically, and then wait. Or sleep, or whatever, because even with our advanced foil and crockpot technology, this is still gonna take about 9 hours to cook. So maybe do this overnight, or before you marathon an epic movie trilogy. In any case, once your time is up open up your crockpot, unwrap your potatoes, then split them open and add toppings. I went with garlic butter, sour cream, and chives. You're welcome to go with something completely different and probably inferior, because these are your potatoes and you can bend them to your will probably. If you want to put more effort in, you can top them with sautéed vegetables and cheese, and then throw them in the oven until the cheese is browned. That'll totally be delicious, but also kind of takes away from the point of making these things in a crockpot to begin with. But maybe you enjoy contradiction. Maybe you're a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a vest. Maybe I'm going to go eat some potatoes in the 5 minutes I have before work. See you next week!

Egg Salad

All of my bowls are garbage, so you can thank my parents for
the blue part around the egg salad.

I've seen a lot of people posting articles and recipes lately about how the summer isn't over yet. The main point of these seems to be that it's not too late to capture the spirit of the summer and have a great time, and you should totally make watermelon slushies while you still can, and also while you're at it click on some links and buy stuff. I don't know what these people are talking about, because nothing is more summery than going to a picnic or outdoor even of some kind, looking at the egg salad and doing some very frantic math about things like how hot it is outside and how long the food has probably been sitting out of the fridge. There's a reason for this. It's because egg salad is awesome. Or at least it can be. Think about it: if there was a pile of old gummy bears slathered in grape jelly and mayonnaise sitting out there you wouldn't think twice about just moving on to the pesto pasta salad and calling it a day. But egg salad we linger over, because it has the potential for greatness. The fact that it costs like 5 dollars to make a tub of it doesn't hurt either.

Ingredients:

1 dozen Eggs (Preferably chicken eggs. Definitely not fish eggs)

1/2 a Red Onion

1/3 cup Mayonnaise

1 TBSP Dijon Mustard

Salt 

Black Pepper

So straight off we're going to need to boil our eggs. Overcooked eggs end up with hard and discolored yolks which bring shame upon your dojo, and it can be a fine balance cooking them just enough. If only there was someone who had posted egg-based recipes before that you could read and learn from (For those of you too proud or lazy to follow the link, bring them to a boil then turn off the heat and leave them in the water for about 14 minutes. You want more details, hilarity, and also a recipe for deviled eggs? Then follow the stupid link). Once your eggs are cooked and cooled down to a reasonable temperature, it's time to get peeling. Peeling eggs is an art-form inasmuch as it's confusing, frustrating, and everybody who claims to truly understand it is clearly using cocaine. Allegedly, if your eggs are older then the membrane between the shell and the egg becomes more detached, making peeling easier. But, if like me you don't have the time to be lovingly aging your eggs before use, you're just going to have to power through it, and probably yell and cry a lot in the process. Once you've recovered from this process (Physically, that is. The emotional scars will last a good long while) it's time to slice your eggs. And sure, you can get all hipstery and have your eggs "artisanally sliced according to ancient methods," which we all know just means badly cutting your eggs with a knife. Or you can use egg slicers. You know, those cheap and useful things that have been around for decades that make this process take like 2 minutes instead of 20. Slice your eggs, then turn them 90 degrees and slice them again. 

The sandwich jauntily displays itself on a diagonal
cross-section to try and attract a mate.

Now that your eggs are finally finished, all that's left is to choppity chop your onion into tiny bits, then splorp in your mayo and mustard along with an average sized human's pinch worth of salt and pepper, and stir that sucker. Gently. Because the idea is to have a light and fluffy finished product where you can distinguish between egg whites and yolks, not dense and homogenous egg goop. So gently stir until everything is combined, and you're technically done. For a little added color and flavor you can dust the top with some smoked paprika, but that part's totally optional (as opposed to all the other parts of this recipe which are mandatory, and I can totally verify whether you've done or not). Now go ahead and serve that delicious nonsense up plain, or slather it on to a sandwich, or do whatever other weird things you normally do with egg salad. Although personally I think that it tastes better after having a couple hours in the fridge to relax. But what do I know? I don't even artisanally slice my eggs according to ancient methods.

Vegan Chili

Say hello to my sister. This is all her fault. Unless it turns out
great, in which case this is all my fault.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. Then again, they also say that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, which is ludicrous because the relative value of a bird doesn't change just because it's in a bush. I mean, sure, maybe if it was in some super hard-to-reach bush on top of a mountain, but that was never specified. And there are pretty much bushes everywhere. But I digress. The point is that I had a great need, and thus needed to invent. Specifically, my sister is in town, and she doesn't eat a lot of the basic foods that make up deliciousness and joy. And sure, she claims that while she's here she'll eat whatever you give her and won't be picky, but she says it with the same look in her eyes that the animals have in those over the top ASPCA commercials with the ridiculous Sarah Mclachlan music. So I needed to make something without red meat, processed sugar, flour, and probably a bunch of other things that I'm forgetting. And somehow I needed to make it taste good. And by coincidence, lately it's been kind of chilly in Chicago. And so, just like every major marketing campaign ever, inspiration was born from a stupid pun.

Ingredients:

2 standard issue Onions
3 ribs of Celery
3 largish Carrots
1 lb. Crimini Mushrooms
5 cloves Garlic
32 oz. can of Diced Tomatoes
15 oz. Black Beans (Personally, I used canned beans because I didn't have the time to deal with dried beans and their endless drama this week. But if you do, soak your beans for 6-8 hours, then replace the water and boil them for another 45 minutes in salted water. Same thing you do with communists.)
15 oz. Kidney Beans (Ditto)
1 Green Pepper
1 Poblano Pepper
1 Jalapeño Pepper
6 oz. Tomato Paste
2 cups Vegetable Stock (That you totally had left if you made my empanadas from last week. And it turns out that I made the empanadas that I made last week, so that worked out for me.)
1.5 TBSP Cumin
1.5 TBSP Dried Oregano
2 tsp Smoked Paprika
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
2 Bay Leaves
Olive Oil
Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do is prepare yourself. Not in an overly dramatic, "prepare yourself for destruction" sort of way, although that couldn't hurt either. But there are a fair number of ingredients here, and it doesn't hurt to get them ready in advance so that you don't have to worry about preparing your next ingredient in time before the fire burns everything (especially your pride and insurance premiums) to a crisp. So, if you've got the wherewithal, spend some time now cleaning and dicing your vegetables and rinsing your beans. For the rest of you who thrive on the constant thrill of possibly burning your dinner and/or neighborhood, feel free to twiddle your thumbs while you wait for the rest of us to finish prepping. Alright, now coat a pan with oil, and sauté your diced onions and celery over medium-high heat along with a standard pinch of salt. Cook it until the onions start to get some color before adding in your mushrooms and another pinch of salt. When you sauté mushrooms, they release a whole bunch of liquid, shrink, and start smelling kind of nutty and awesome. When this happens, add in your assorted peppers and garlic. Cook for another minute or so before adding in your tomato paste, cumin, oregano, paprika, black pepper, and cayenne.

Pro-tip: For the best results put your reddish chili in a red
bowl, and then photograph it under orangish light.

Pretty much all forms of canned tomatoes that I've encountered suffer from the same problem that diet coke does. Namely, they taste like cans. But cooking them down with the rest of your ingredients helps soften that metallic taste a lot (I haven't checked to see if this also works for diet coke, but I feel like it probably does). So cook your vegetable-tomato sludge down for a couple minutes before adding in your diced tomatoes and another pinch of salt. Let it keep cooking for another minute or two, at which point your entire home should smell delicious [or possibly smoky and ashy, depending on how successful you were at chopping as you go. I didn't burn my house down (this time)]. Throw that whole mess into a slow cooker/crock pot along with your carrots, vegetable stock, beans, and bay leaves. Cook it on the high setting for 2 hours, and then on the low setting for another 2-4 hours. Then remove your bay leaves and eat it. Like, all of it. Because this sucker isn't just "good for being gluten free," or "good for being vegan," both of which are code phrases for "bad, but maybe it could have been worse." It's just good for being food.

Empanadas

My level of preparedness here is shockingly out of character

Mankind has, throughout its storied history of expelling gasses with varied effects on the immediate environment, struggled with one all-important goal. Delicious food that you can carry with you and eat on the go without getting your hands full of crap. Many different solutions to this eternal search have been tried. Burgers are too messy. Burritos had promise, but towards the end they can be even worse than burgers. Moms across the world put in a bid for fresh fruit, but most fruit leaves you carrying some form of garbage with you afterwards until you can find the nearest trash can (a problem made even more severe by the fact that throughout most of human history the trash can hadn't been invented yet). Fortunately, the great minds of a generation got together and decided it was a good idea to just stuff delicious meats and vegetables and whatnot inside some flaky pie dough and call it a day. It's in their crumb-littered footsteps that we follow.

Ingredients:

3 Cups All-Purpose Flour
6 oz. Vegetable Shortening
1 Egg
Roughly 1/3 a Cup of Water
1 lb. Ground Beef
1 Green Pepper
1 Red Pepper
1 standard-issue Onion
4 oz. Crimini Mushrooms
4 Cloves Garlic
1 Cup Vegetable Stock (Sure, you could use store-bought stock that tastes like nothing. Or you can make an entire pot of vegetable stock even though you only need a cup of it, and freeze the rest. You know, like a winner)
1 TBSP Balsamic Vinegar
1 TBSP Ground Cumin
2 tsp Dried Oregano
1.5 tsp Smoked Paprika
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
Vegetable Oil
Salt

Yes, that's a lot of ingredients. I know that I usually try and make recipes without long and daunting lists of things you need to buy and/or prepare, and that the sight of this may be a bit of a shock to some of you. I can offer you this solemn advice, given to me by my grade school administrator in the aftermath of the debacle that ensued when a teacher tried to physically restrain me from getting an inhaler when I was having an asthma attack in class:

Get over it

And sure, from the mouth of that administrator it may have been criminally negligent, but here it's pretty appropriate. You're making two things, a dough and a filling. It's not like I'm asking you to make a dipping sauce, a side salad, and a vegetable puree to go with it. Now that I've sufficiently asserted my dominance, let's get started. Use a whisk or a fork to mix your flour and a large human's pinch of salt. Add in your vegetable shortening and mix it together with your hands, kind of squishing it as you go, until all the flour is incorporated, and everything is crumbly bits. Kind of like food sand. Mix in your egg and then stir in water slowly until a loose dough forms. Cover your dough with plastic wrap, and throw it in the fridge for 1/2 an hour. After 15 minutes it's traditional to suddenly remember that you forgot to add in an egg and then frantically grab the dough out of the fridge and add it in, hoping that it won't make too much of a difference. But that part is optional.

Told you. Whole damn pot of vegetable stock.

While your dough is relaxing in its chilled isolation chamber, start working on your filling. Start by chopping your onion, peppers, mushrooms, and garlic into tiny little bits. Remember, this is all going inside a handheld pastry, so you don't exactly want giant bits of anything making it hard to eat. Get a pan good and hot, then coat it in oil and throw in your ground beef (Being more Jewish than most people in the world, I use kosher meat, which already has a fair amount of salt in it. If you don't, because you're...you know...normal, add in a pinch of salt).  Brown it as best as you can, and remove it from the pan, preferably with a spoon or other hand-tool, but if need be with your bare hands. You know, like a man. Then add in your onions along with a pinch of salt. Cook the onions until they just start to get some color and then add in your mushrooms, peppers, and garlic, along with another pinch of salt. Cook everything down until the peppers start to soften and the mushrooms shrink down to the point that you wonder if you forgot to add them in the first place, but you check your fridge and there are definitely no mushrooms there so you start to wonder if the entire memory of buying mushrooms was a false memory your brain provided to cover up some trauma. Then add in your vegetable stock, vinegar, cumin, oregano, paprika and cayenne, stir that mess together, making sure to scrape up any brown crusty bits from the bottom of the pan to join the party, and keep cooking it until your meat mixture is nice and saucy, but when you take out a spoonful no liquid runs in to fill the gap. Turn off your fire, and let that whole mixture cool down to room temperature.

The hardest part of this recipe was not eating these long
enough to get a decent picture. 

 Now it's time for the fun part, and by "fun" I mean "mind-shatteringly frustrating." Roll out your dough until it's about 1/8 of an inch thick. It should be thin and easy to work with, but still sturdy. Cut out rounds using a cookie cutter, a drinking glass, or the perfectly round hole in your soul, and start stuffing them with your meat mixture. Add in too little and you'll end up just eating dough, but add into much and they'll break and explode everywhere, and all of your friends will laugh at you. Have fun! Basically, you want to dollop some of your mix into your dough disc, and then bend one end over to form a kind of dumpling with a meat pocket inside. Press down along the edge with a fork to seal it (Fun fact: pressing on it with a fork is also how the US government seals many things, most notably foreign trade agreement), and repeat until you run out of dough, run out of innards, or give up in a cloud of rage and inadequacy. In any case, grease a baking pan and throw your empanadas into a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes, or until they start getting golden brown and look incredible. Then just wait for them to cool, give up, eat them, and burn your mouth. Totally worth it.

Ginger Citrus Salmon

I like how they added insult to injury by posing the fish
as if they were swimming.

Lately, it's come to my attention that death is a looming specter from which escape is impossible. I say this because I seem to be aging at an alarming rate. It started off innocently enough. One day I was able to walk in to a bar and order a beer. Then, a couple years later, I was able to do the same thing even if they asked for ID. This seemed ok with me, and I didn't give it much thought. I was a fool. Because lately, this whole "aging" thing has started to affect me in uncomfortable ways. There are whiny kids everywhere with fidget spinners and bad music, and that's not even the worst of it. I've found that, on rare occasions, there are times when I don't actually crave delicious meat. Every so often I decide to eat something else entirely. This doesn't seem acceptable to me. And sure, some of you might be pointing out that I've often written recipes for things that don't contain meat. And that's true, though it's pretty rude of you to have pointed it out. But while I've certainly eaten other sorts of food before, in my heart I always knew that I was just doing it because I didn't have access to any salami at that specific moment in time. This is different. But, if I'm going to eat sad nonsense food like fish, it may as well be a delicious fish. Gandhi said that.

Ingredients:

4 Salmon Fillets

3 Green Onions

1 Grapefruit

1/2 a Lemon

2 TBSP Chopped Ginger

1 TBSP Honey

2 Large sized Human's pinches of Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do is go to a fishmonger and get yourself some fish. Sure, you could get some sort of pre-packaged frozen salmon from a giant store that only sells 56 packs. But it won't taste as good. The reason for this is that all regulation fishmongers have a giant pile (or "heap," if you want to use the technical term) of fish lying on way too little ice to effectively keep it cool. This is important, because it allows you to taunt the fish as you're buying it, thus causing it to experience some delicious rage. In any case, go get some fish, then squeeze all of the juice out of your lemon and grapefruit and dump it, along with all the rest of your ingredients, into a ziploc bag. Let that whole mess marinate in your fridge for at least 1/2 an hour. All of the flavors are gonna get to know each other, regardless of whether they want to or not. Confined spaces will do that, as you know if you've ever been stuck on an elevator with somebody.

Recommended serving size: 1 school of fish 

Once your fish is desperate to free itself from the confines of your  bag-o-goodness, take it out and then immediately throw it on a baking sheet in a 350 degree oven. The key here is to move just slowly enough to give your salmon hope, and then immediately crush its dreams. Before making this recipe, chances are you weren't a sadist or a liar. That's some training you can't get in the public school system. Anyhow, leave your fish in the oven for about 15-20 minutes, then take it out and consume it. It'll taste awesome. Try not to think about the fact that you could have chosen to make a steak instead. The Irish had a deity back in the day who got turned into a salmon. That's something. So think of yourself as a devourer of gods, not an old man sadly eating fish and waiting to die. See you next week!

Matzah Pizza

Here we have Matzah, in its natural habitat. Notice how the
ridges camouflage it, helping the matzah to better elude flavor.

For the...less semitic of my readers, saddle up because this is gonna, without a doubt, be the most jewish-y post I've ever posted. Because, as you may-or-may-not be aware, we're currently deep within the bowels of the Jewish holiday known as "Passover." And, as you may-or-may-not-but-I'm-betting-on-not be aware, one of the key elements of this holiday is eschewing a vast array of foods, including leavened breads. Another is drinking large amounts of wine, which is pretty much the only way to get through a week without leavened bread. What does this all mean, practically? Well, for starters, it means that you should be nice to your Jewish co-workers this week, because they're cranky. It also means that for the more observant Jewish people out there, there's pretty much nothing to eat, so you have to make due with weird facsimiles of real food. Which brings us to Matzah Pizza.

Ingredients:

2 standard-issue Matzahs (A Matzah is an unleavened wheat cracker. Essentially, it's big cracker that has slightly less flavor and nutritional value than the box it comes in. Any supermarket with a kosher section likely has them.)
4 TBSP Marinara Sauce
4 oz. Cheese (What kind of cheese? That's a whole pit of nonsense and terror we'll get into later. But the short answer is, Mozzarella if you can get it)
1/4 tsp Red Pepper Flakes
1/4 tsp Dried Oregano
1/4 tsp Garlic Powder
1 average-sized human's pinch of Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do is abandon all hope of this thing you're making looking or tasting like pizza. Unless you live in California, in which case this will probably be the most authentic and delicious pizza you've ever had in your life. Take one of your matzahs and slather it up with half of your marinara. Fun fact: because of all of the dietary restrictions involved in Passover, many people won't eat any processed foods that haven't come from a factory specifically monitored to make sure that it's Passover compliant. Another fun fact is that pretty much all of the companies that make food specifically for Passover have absolutely no idea what they're doing when it comes to the making food part. Which is why you'll see a bottle that says something like "Spicy Tomato and Basil Marinara" and take it home, only to realize that it's essentially plain tomato juice with sugar added in for some reason. Anyway, back to our Matzah, which we just spread "marinara" on top of. Take half of your red pepper, oregano, and garlic, and add them on top of the marinara to help make up for its many flaws.

"Pizza cheese." Because who doesn't put a weird combination
of cheddar and mozzarella cheeses on their pizza?

Now we're up to cheese. Which often suffers from the same Passover-related maladies as things like marinara. If you're lucky, you'll be able to find actual cheese, with standard names like "mozzarella," "cheddar," or "whiz." But, often times you'll have to suffer through weird pseudo-cheese blends like "fancy shreds" or "pizza cheese." I prefer "pizza cheese" over the various shreds, because they're at least confident enough that they won't be sued for putting cheese in the name. Add 1 oz. of it on to your marinara. Next, add your second matzah on top of the cheese, and start repeating this process. Because matzah is horrible stuff, and if you want it to have enough sauce to be flavorful, it'll lose all structural integrity, so we need layers. Or pacts with your friendly neighborhood deity. Or both. Anyhow, slather up your second matzah with the rest of your garlic, oregano, and red pepper, along with your salt for good measure. Add on the rest of your cheese, and toss that sucker in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes. And that's it! Aren't you glad you got sucked into the terrifying world of Jewish cookery during Passover? Me neither

Broccoli Cheese Casserole

Oh, broccoli, cover up your shame. 

Broccoli is delicious. That's a simple fact. The problem is, that broccoli is also healthy. People go out of their way to tell you this. You'll just be out enjoying some broccoli at a meal, on a stroll in the park, or while taking in a spot of opium, and somebody will come at you running their mouths about antioxidants and vitamins and supplements. It's pretty much a nightmare from which the only escape is cutting off your own arm with a rusty knife. Clearly a solution was needed. So by cleverly adding butter, cream, and cheese, I've turned it into something that the roving bands of health nuts won't start an uncomfortable conversation with you about while you're in line at the bank. Sure, we could give up broccoli and just eat other things. But I vaguely remember saying like a minute ago that it's delicious. And besides, everybody knows that impulse control is for foppish dandies, suckers and communists.

Ingredients

20 oz. Broccoli (Usually I like working with fresh ingredients because they ususally taste better and have better texture, but in an application like this you could probably get away with using the frozen stuff and get pretty good results.)
1 cup Sour Cream
1 Standard-Issue Onion
2 cloves Garlic
1/2 cup Seasoned Breadcrumbs
3 TBSP Butter
8 oz. Cheddar Cheese
3 oz. Parmesan Cheese 
3 Eggs
Salt

If you're using fresh broccoli, you're gonna start slightly differently than if you're using the frozen stuff. If you're using fresh broccoli you're gonna need to cut it up and boil/steam it. (Don't worry, you can totally learn how to do that in this old post of mine! Now you can read even more. Hasn't today just been the best?) If you're using the frozen broccoli, forget to let it defrost before making this recipe, and then hastily defrost it in the microwave while you're (SPOILER ALERT) chopping and sautéing your onion. Next, you're gonna slice up your onion, melt your butter over some medium heat, and sauté that sucker for 5 minutes along with an average-sized human pinch of salt. During this time, chop your garlic into tiny little pieces of its former self. Once the onions are soft and have started to pick up a little color, add in your broccoli and garlic, along with another, smaller pinch of salt. Like the pinch that a child, or a dog that mutated a thumb might have. Cook that nonsense for about 2 minutes, until all your flavors start to meld, and it smells like happiness. Turn the heat off, and let that mess cool down to room temperature.

Here lies broccoli, killed by deliciousness. As we eat his tasty
corpse, let us think of the good times. He'd want it that way.

Now it's time for the fun part, and by "fun" I mean "fattening." Which is usually pretty fun. So it all works out. The point is, take your eggs, breadcrumbs, sour cream, and cheddar cheese, and add them in to your broccoli mix, to form a cheesy broccoli goop. Or "ooze", if you want to be scientific. Spread that gunk out into a pan, and form an even layer. Top it of with your parmesan cheese, and then shove that sucker in a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes. Then turn the heat up to 400 degrees and cook it for another 10 minutes to make sure you burn away all of the healthiness, leaving a bubbly layer of deliciousness. Wait for it to cool slightly before shoving your face in the entire pan and gobbling the goodness down. If you're a fancyboy or a communist (This link just leads right back here, because that was a callback to the first paragraph of THIS post. Enjoy). The rest of you, enjoy your pretty serious burns all up in your face and throat. Totally worth it.

Sloppy Joe

So, according to the internet, another name for a Sloppy Joe
is a "Wimpie." So this happened. Because I'm a child.

Legend has it that back in Sioux City, Iowa (The "Tallahassee" of Iowa) a chef named Joe invented what he called "The loose meat sandwich." And it was awesome. But the only thing known to man that sounds less appealing than "Loose Meat Sandwich" is "Fishguts Ice Cream," so it's no surprise that the name didn't stick. The awesomeness did though. As little as 10 years later, cookbooks were printing recipes for "Sloppy Joe" sandwiches, which sounds like a super backhanded compliment to me. They're down for naming the sandwich after him, but they still have to get a dig in at Joe's expense. Because cookbook writers are jerks. Then again, apparently the term "Sloppy Joe" used to refer to any cheap diner food, or even to cheap clothing. So maybe they weren't insulting Joe himself, just his job, cooking, clientele, and clothes.

Ingredients:

1 lb. Ground Beef
1 standard-issue Onion
1 Bell Pepper
1 clove Garlic
8 oz. Tomato Sauce
2 TBSP Chili Powder
1 TBSP Tomato Paste
1 tsp Ground Cumin
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
1/2 tsp Ground Mustard 
1/2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce (Nobody can ever agree on how to pronounce this name, but it's named after an actual place, so that should make it simple. It's pronounced "Glasgow.")
1/2 tsp Balsamic Vinegar
1/4 tsp Hot Sauce
Oil
Salt 

The first thing you're gonna need to do is brown your meat so you can set it aside like a neglectful parent who has better things to do than pick you up from soccer practice, thank you very much. So coat a pan with oil, heat it over medium heat, throw your beef in there, and let it sizzle for a bit (Oxford comma added for reasons of logic and awesome). Flip it and repeat, and then break up your ground beef into little beeflets using a wooden spoon. Drain any excess liquid, and set your beef aside so it can learn the hard way how to use the bus system. 

Buns sold separately. Sense of deep emotional fulfillment
may not apply in your region.

Choppity chop your onions, bell pepper, and garlic into tiny bits. Sauté your onion in a pan coated with oil along with an average-sized human's pinch 'o salt. Coom for about 3 minutes before adding in your belle pepper, garlic, and another AHSP of salt. Cook for another 2 minutes, then add in your chili powder, black pepper, mustard, tomato paste, and hot sauce. If your beef has managed to find its way back home, this is a good time to add it back in to the party as well. Let that whole nonsense cook down for a minute or so and then add in your tomato sauce, worcestershire, and balsamic. Cook for another 2 minutes, or until it smells so good that you literally can't stop yourself from reaching your hand in and shoving that goodness in your food hole, forks, propriety, and severe burns be-damned. And there you have it! Sloppy Joes! Throw that sucker down on a bun and enjoy. Or get creative and put it in an egg roll, or on mashed potatoes, or just eat it straight. Or don't. More for me. 

Stuffed Mushrooms

10 Smurfs were killed in the making of this recipe

It is in the great American spirit of stuffing things into other things, and then eating all of those things together, that I bring you this recipe for Stuffed Mushrooms. First we conquered some basic concepts like scooping eggs out of other bits of eggs, mixing it with other junk, and mashing it all back together into deliciousness. Then we did almost the exact same thing with potatoes, but we cooked the food more afterwards and it was awesome. Now we're taking mushrooms, filling them up with other mushrooms plus a whole bunch of other awesomeness, and cooking it all together. That's right, it's mushroom-ception. It's pretty much the mushroom equivalent of a turducken, or some equivalent yuppie nonsense. Why stuff vegetarian things like mushrooms, instead of stuffing delicious animals into some unholy Russian nesting doll of meat? Well, aside from the fact that no words in the English language sound more disturbing than "Russian nesting doll of meat," I ran out of turkeys.

Ingredients:

4 Portobello Mushroom Caps 
8 oz. Crimini Mushrooms 
1 Onion
1 Fennel Bulb (Note for the unamerican: in foreign lands, Fennel is sometimes referred to as "anise." This also sometimes happens domestically, but we try not to talk about it. You've been advised)
1 Green Pepper
1 Clove of Garlic
6 oz. Cream Cheese
3 oz. Parmesan Cheese
2 TBSP Butter
2 pinches o' Salt
1 pinch o' Black Pepper

Sure, that's a lot of ingredients, but try not to let it freak you out. First of all, because this really isn't all that many ingredients, and secondly because this recipe is ridiculously easy. Take your crimini mushrooms, onion, fennel, green pepper, and garlic, and choppity chop-chop them down into vaguely recognizable bits of their former glory. That's step one: The choppification. Then melt half your butter over medium heat, toss in your onions, fennel, and criminis, and sauté all of that nonsense along with your Black Pepper, and 1 pinch of Salt. After about 5 minutes add in your green pepper, garlic, and the rest of your salt, and cook it for another 3 minutes or so. Turn off the heat, and stir in your cream cheese to form a delicious creamy ooze of vegetables that's somehow enticing and repulsive at the same time.

Yeah, these are awesome. They're also mine. Make your own. 

Melt the rest of your butter, and rub down your portobellos with it until they're good and lubed. Now it's time to for the fun part, and by "fun," I mean "violating the laws of nature and common decency." Turn your portobellos upside down, take your vegetable sludge -consisting largely of mushrooms- and squidge it all up inside the hollow of the portobello caps (That's the bit that would be the attic of a Smurf's house) until they're full and you feel...just kind of wrong. Grate your parmesan cheese all up on top of those mushrooms, and throw them in a 400 degree oven for about 1/2 an hour, or until they get golden brown and smell awesome enough to almost make you forget about what you just did to poor unsuspecting mushrooms. Take them out of the oven and immediately eat them to assuage your guilty conscience. And also because they're awesome. And also, now your mouth is burned. Maybe your throat too. Totally worth it.