Peter's Cooking Diary #22

So this was was a great week of cooking, I actually made 3 different things, A pizza, some mexican style brown rice, and some pinto beans. I think that these dished could easily be made vegetarian and are also great for someone on a budget. Beans and rice are both extremely cheap, and some of the things can be easily substituted to make the recipes even cheaper.

The cooking started with 2 onions and 2 heads of garlic. I decided it would be easier to just chop up the onions and mince the garlic all at once to save myself some prep time.

Chopped onion and garlic one I had finished with them.

This recipe called for coating the interior of the crock pot with cooking spray, which is easier said than done. I actually found it easier to do by lifting the insert out and holding it on its side and spraying the can inside.

After I was satisfied with the spraying, this is what it looked like.

On top of the spraying, this recipe called for adding some butter in to the crock pot to add some flavor and a little bit more fat.

Into the pot with the butter I added, 2 cups of brown rice, some Mexican style chile powder, and some salt to the pot.

The recipe called for bringing 3 cups of water to a boil, then whisking in 3 cloves of garlic and 3 tablespoons of tomato paste. Once the tomato paste was distributed in the water, I added the mixture to the crock pot and stirred to combine everything.

After cooking for 2 hours on high, the rice was perfectly cooked. I stirred in some lime juice and some cilantro. This was a great recipe and I plan to make it more in the future.

After cleaning out the crock pot it was time to start the second recipe and the food that would go along with the finished rice. To start I added one pound of pinto beans, a few bay leaves, and some ham hocks to the cooker. I actually added no salt to the beans, the hocks on their own will add plenty of salt to the dish on their own.

Once the beans are cooked through I turned the cooker off, and removed the ham hocks from the crock pot to cool. Once they were cooked I removed the meat from them.

I chopped the meat up into small pieces and set it aside.

I sauteed some onions and garlic in bacon grease, because why not add a little more pork fat to this dish right?

After the onions and garlic had some time to cook I added a large can of fire roasted mild green chiles, I love using these whenever I can because they add great flavor to anything. The recipe actually called for a bell pepper but I decided to use the canned peppers instead.

I added some oregano and cumin to the pan and let the veggies cook together a bit to kind of marry the flavors.

This is the onion, pepper, and garlic as well as a few scoops of the beans from the crock pot.

The combination was then mashed together to help the flavors all meld together.

Combined the rest of the beans, the meat, and the previous mixture together along with some cilantro and lime juice and stirred them together. By mashing the stuff up in the previous picture the final combination has a consistency of refried beans which kind of holds is all together instead of it being loose beans.

The final thing I made was a tuna pizza, but it start with more onion and garlic betting cooked down on bacon grease.

I cooked the onion and garlic down until they were soft and translucent.

I drained and flaked out a large can of tuna, once the onion and garlic was done cooking I added that combination to the tuna and mixed it all together.

I stretched out some store bought whole wheat crust on a pan that I had sprayed with some cooking spray. I then topped with with plain tomato sauce.

On top of the sauce I added some dried oregano and some fresh basil I really love the flavor of fresh basil in pizza, I think it is one of my favorite flavors in the world.

I topped the pizza with the tuna onion and garlic mixture, and added some parmesan cheese, and some shredded cheese to the top.

The finished cooked pizza, it was amazing! There was probably a little bit too much  onion on the pizza, but its hard to complain, I really liked it.