Foolproof chicken pasta and cheesecake-brownie cupcake thingies

In an unprecedented event, I came back from work at 5 p.m. a couple of weeks ago. I was starving, and being home early, I actually had time to cook something better and more nutritious than Mac n' Cheese.

I had bought a box of Archer Farms Tuscan pasta salad at Target. The instructions are easy to follow: dump the pasta in boiling, slightly salted water (which I also flavored with some garlic powder). Mix olive oil with the pesto packet to make the dressing. If you want a creamier dressing, replace some of the olive oil with mayonnaise.

Now, this works as a side, not as the main dish - maybe for a starving college student like myself, but even I want more sometimes. To turn this into a generous entree and then leftovers (the gift that keeps on giving), grill or fry two or three chicken breasts. I marinated mine in the Chardonnay and Herb concoction I have referred to so lovingly in the past. I cut my chicken in cubes (or you can do strips) and mixed it with the pasta to make for a fuller meal, most of which ended up in Tupperware to feed me for another week. Cooking a large meal and storing it for sporadic consumption during the week is a good way to save money, and you can make another kind of pasta or meal and store it in Tupperware so you can mix it up during the week and not get bored on the same thing. Pasta is just practical and preserves well.

For handy snacks, how about making your own brownies? Or you know, how about Pillsbury puts the whole thing together and you take credit for it for sticking it in the oven? I tried the cheesecake swirl brownie mix - nothing crazy. You mix the brownie batter and separately you mix the cheesecake topping. I decided to make these as cupcakes and not brownies. The ending product looked like Pangaeas in their chocolate oceans. To my roommate, a cupcake's cheesecake topping looked like a duck. These things are like the inkblot test.

My roommate crazy.

This week's groceries

1. Archer Farms pasta salad - $3.99
2. Old Orchard apple juice - $1.00
3. Gold n' Plump chicken breasts (x6) - $11.49
4. Pillsbury cheesecake brownie mix - $1.37
5. Sparboe Farm eggs - $0.87
6. Market Pantry milk - $1.69

Total = $20.41

Shot-through-the-heart berry tarts

Happy Valentine's Day! Or not! It doesn't matter because the following recipe can have multiple connotations.

Have you ever been shot? Me neither. This blackberry tart is the closest thing I've seen to a gunshot wound. Like I said, this tart is appropriate for any circumstance. To your date on Valentine's Day it says, "I keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love." To your heart-broken self on Valentine's Day it says, "My heart got mugged and stabbed, run over by a truck and mangled by a bear." To your single self on Single Awareness Day it says, "You might as well. He's just not that into you."

I had seen the small graham cracker mini pie shells in Albertsons before, and I wondered when I would try to do something with those. They are no L'Madeleine fruit tart, which I crave all the time by the way, but they will do for a pastry. They also look fancy, even though they don't take much skill to make (just look at me.)

Ingredients
1 5.1 oz. JELL-O box of Cook n' Serve vanilla pudding
12 Keebler graham cracker tart shells
1 can of Oregon blackberry pie filling
1 10 oz. bottle Smuckers raspberry spread

Cook the pudding according to instructions. Fill the tart shells with pudding, and top with some raspberry spread. Place as many blackberries as you want on your tart. Make sure you don't take too much blackberry juice from the can or your tart may get too watery. Let pudding cool and then refrigerate. The tarts are better cold. Cover them with plastic wrap to preserve them better.

Sweet, eh?

This week's groceries

1. Oregon pie filling - $3.19
2. JELL-O pudding - $1.49
3. Smuckers spread - $3.79
4. 6 Keebler tart shells (x2) - $5.38

Total = $13.85

Banana cream pie, sans the bananas

This week I thought I'd experiment with a recipe I've used before for coconut cream pie, but make it banana instead. I tried another recipe in the past for banana cream pie, but the custard was too mushy, and the layer of banana slices at the bottom looked like Pikachu exploded on my pie.

The following is an Emeril Lagasse recipe. Yeah, I know. It's actually very Julieta-friendly, considering Emeril is into the fancy cooking and the coq-au-vin and a bunch of dishes with names I can't pronounce.

I have to say, though, when I was a kid I went through a Food Network-watching phase with my parents, and we always laughed at Emeril's signature "BAM!" whenever he dumped spices or garnish on his dishes. It was around that time my dad, who usually has a good taste in gifts, gave my mom a wooden salt and pepper grinder for Christmas. I know he meant well, but my mom did not look too happy.

Anyway, courtesy of the Food Network, this is the recipe, with a few tweaks to suit my purposes.

Ingredients
1 graham cracker crust
3/4 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of corn starch
3 cups of milk
4 egg yolks
1 tbsp. butter
1 tspn. vanilla extract
1 tspn. imitation banana extract
1 tube of Cool Whip

Mix 2 3/4 cups of milk and the sugar in a saucer pan and heat it up. In a bowl, combine the yolks, the corn starch and the leftover milk and mix well. When the milk is boiling, pour the egg mix into the saucepan and stir for three minutes until mixture thickens (it's cool how it goes from
liquid to pudding in seconds!) Turn off the heat.

Stir the butter, the vanilla and banana extracts into the custard. It looks and tastes a thousand times better than instant Jell-O pudding. Pour the custard on the graham cracker crust and move it to the fridge. I tried a regular flour pie shell when I first made this, and cookie is better.

Let it cool for two or three hours so it's solid enough for consumption. Spread Cool Whip on top.

There's nothing better than bananas than fake banana flavor. No dead Pokemon on my pie this time.

This week's groceries

1. Pepperidge Farm cookies - $3.39
2. Albertsons strawberry lemonade $1.19
3. Schepps milk - $2.09
4. McCormick's banana extract - $4.19
5. Graham pie shell - $3.19

Total= $14.15

P.S.: I had a lot of the ingredients lying around in my kitchen, so I didn't spend that much in groceries this week.

Drunken chicken and instant mashed potatoes

With my nonexistent cooking skills, the only thing I'd venture to make at the moment is fried chicken. Last time I made some, I rubbed the chicken breast with mustard and garlic powder and let it fry in olive oil sprinkled with minced onions. The chicken has a good taste, but it is a bit dry after it's done frying. I thought I would branch out this time and try a marinade.

Do I look like I'm smart enough to make a marinade? Of course not. So I went to the Happiest Place on Earth for college students - Target.

As I pushed my cart down one of the grocery aisles, I stopped to look at the Archer Farms marinades and dipping sauces. Unlike other store brands that offer cheap products that taste like rubber slippers, Target's home brands actually taste good. Archer Farms products also come in different flavors and are reasonably priced. No, they're not paying me to say all that, though I could use the extra cash.

Anyway, I picked the Chardonnay & Herb marinade, partly because it would make my chicken, and by extension me, seem sophisticated, and partly because Mustard & Beer was out. The 12 oz. bottle was $3.99, which I thought was a good price considering I have at least seven chicken breasts sitting in my freezer. However, whatever class I thought I had acquired by picking the Chardonnay & Herb marinade went out the window when I told my roommate about the awesome "char-don-ey" marinade I had found.

I also thought about what side to have with my chicken. I arrived at the starch aisle, and I picked up a box of Market Pantry four-cheese instant mashed potatoes for less than a dollar. Another Target brand, Market Pantry is not as fancy or diverse as Archer Farms, but it still tastes good, and with a tight budget, I'm not picky. The box alleges that it uses real potatoes! It must be true.

I thawed two chicken breasts yesterday and let them marinade overnight in Ziploc bags. I made the mashed potatoes today, following instructions, except I added some garlic powder to give it some flavor. I fried the chicken in olive oil. Perhaps too much, because the chicken was a little dry again, and though it tasted good, the flavor was faint. I really need to work on that.

My drink was a glass of Old Orchard apple raspberry juice. The can made two quarts of juice. I was hesitant to get it because the label said "no sugar added," and I think sugar makes the work go 'round, but it was sweet enough.

I'll pass on the Char-don-ey, thank you very much.


This week's groceries

1. Archer Farms marinade - $3.99
2. Market Pantry potatoes - $0.94
3. Betty Crocker chicken alfredo meal - $2.99
4. Del Monte Fruit Chillers - $2.00
5. Old Orchard apple juice - $1.19
6. Market Pantry milk - $2.49

Total = $13.60