BBQ Stuffed Baked Potatoes

There is a place in my home town out in West Texas that sells the best BBQ stuffed baked potato. In fact, I am not sure that they really sell anything other than that. Sure they have the sides and all the other fixings of a great BBQ place, but no one actually buys that stuff. It is all about the BBQ baked potato. Here is my attempt at recreating it along with homemade BBQ sauce.

First we will start with the meat. This step should occur in the morning as it will cook in the crock pot all day.

Ingredients:

1-2 lb beef roast

2 garlic cloves

1 T coarse ground pepper

1 can of coca-cola

Begin my placing the beef roast in a crock pot. I promise this is a beef roast and not pork, I had my flash on. Don't worry, I corrected the issue for the next picture.

To the beef add the cloves of garlic and pepper. There is really no need to chop the garlic - it will basically disintegrate during the cooking process.

To the crock pot add one whole can of coca-cola. I know this might seem strange, but it actually serves as a great liquid cooking agent in the crock pot and leaves the meat with a slightly sweet flavor. It also pairs up nicely with the spicy BBQ sauce we are about to make.

Coca cola is composed of several chemicals. One of the chemicals in coca cola is food grade phosphoric acid. It gives coke the sour and tangy flavor and also is responsible for coke's ability to clean rust and corroded metal. Another chemical in coca cola is dissolved carbon dioxide. Once the can is opened the pressure that was built up in the can is decreased and also decreases the solubility of the carbon dioxide - resulting in the fizzy carbonation. Yummy! Check out this Mythbuster video of the 101 uses of cola (they don't really show that many uses) that I use to show in my Chemistry class.

Put the lid on the crock pot and allow to cook for 6-8 hours. My crock pot only has one setting so I am assuming that is medium heat but it might be high.

Here is what the beef roast looks like after about 5 hours. It is looking good, but not really breaking up as much as it should be - it needs a couple more hours. Which means it is also time to start the other components of the meal.

Place clean potatoes in a baking dish and pierce them a couple of times with a fork. Bake at 350 for 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until soft.

Now for the BBQ sauce. This sauce is a work in progress. Each time I make the sauce I adjust something to try to get the actual flavor of a BBQ sauce that one would get at an authentic BBQ smoke house.

Ingredients:

1 c. ketchup

1/2 c. water

2 T apple cider vinegar

3 T brown sugar

2 T honey

1 T Worcestershire sauce

1 T lemon juice (about 1/2 a lemon)

2 garlic cloves

1 t course ground black pepper

1 t onion powder

1 t ground mustard

1 t Franks' hot sauce

Combine all ingredients in a small sauce pan.

Bring liquid up to a boil and allow to boil for a couple of minutes.

Reduce heat to low and allow to simmer for 1 1/2 hours.

Ahhh, back to the beef. This is what the roast looks like after 7 hours. It looks pretty done to me. Plus I'm hungry.

Remove the beef from the crock pot and place into a bowl. My friends El Smokeador y Smokehopper have some interesting and yummy looking ideas with what to do with the cooking liquid - go over and check it out along with all of their other recipes!

After that quick advertisement, back to the BBQ potatoes! Shred the beef in the bowl. It should be pretty easy to do. Before shredding I finally removed that hunk of fat off of the roast.

If you have timed it out right, the sauce on the stove should be pretty much done simmering. Add about half of the sauce into the bowl and mix to combine.

Remove the potatoes from the oven and top with the beef mixture, cheddar cheese and BBQ sauce. Yummy! Any left over beef is also great in a sandwhich or tortilla.

Spinach Stuffed Zucchini

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Weekend! I love when Mr. T has long weekends because it also means that the next work week will be short! It is really nice to have the extra time with him. We spent a lot of time out in the sun this weekend with his family. The beach wasn't that big of a hit with LT, but we did find out that he really likes being in the swimming pool water.
In honor of last week's post of baby squash, here is a recipe for spinach stuffed zucchini. The zucchini didn't come from our garden, but I am hoping to make something similar to this with my own sometime this summer.
Ingredients:
2 zucchini
1 box frozen spinach
1/4c. Asiago cheese
1/4c. Italian bread crumbs
4 oz. cream cheese
1/8 t red pepper flakes
1/2 t garlic powder

Begin by preheating the oven to 400 degrees. Cook the spinach according to directions on the box. For my spinach it was just a couple of minutes in the microwave. Prepare the zucchini by cutting off the ends and then slicing down the zucchini length wise.

Discard the ends and place the zucchini slices on the baking dish. Lightly drizzle each with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.

Turn over and repeat. Place in the preheated oven to roast for 10-15 minutes.

Covering the vegetable in oil before cooking is an important step because it creates a better flavor. Scientifically, the oil coating the outside of the vegetable absorbs more of the heat from the oven than the vegetable does. Therefore, the surface of the vegetable gets hotter than it would without the oil and allows for browning and eventually a quicker cooking time.

Meanwhile, ring out all of the extra liquid in the spinach. Combine in a bowl with cream cheese, asiago cheese, and bread crumbs. Parmesan cheese would also be yummy in this dish. All I had was the grated stuff in the green can so I went for the asiago cheese instead. It was left over from a previous recipe. These are the decisions of an at home cook/stay at home mom - life changing I'm telling you.

At this point, the zucchini should be soft and done roasting in the oven.

Scoop out the inside of the zucchini. Be sure to dig out most of the insides so that you can get a lot of filling in there, but not so much that you cut into the skin of the vegetable.

Here is a closer glimpse. Look at how the zucchini browned on the edge - yum!

Place the inside of the zucchini into the bowl with the other filling ingredients. Mix to combine.

Also add in the spices - adjusting to your likings. If you want it to have a bit more kick add in a 1/4t of the red pepper flakes.

Place the filling back into the zucchini and sprinkle with with a little more asiago cheese.

Reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees and bake for 15 minutes longer or until they are heated through. Serve.

This is a great summer side dish. It also reminds me of a twice baked potato which might be my all time favorite side dish. There are so many variations that you could make to this recipe just by switching out the type of cheese or possibly adding bacon. Hmmm... I think I will be adding bacon next time.

Have a great short week!

A Squash is Born!

Every morning around seven thirty LT wakes up and I hear him on the monitor. Along with him Maggy also arises from her sleeping location at the end of my bed - she gets up there after Mr. T leaves for work. And every morning Maggy decides that her needs come before anyone else's, even an 8 month old baby. So after going to get LT from his crib we walk out back and enjoy the fresh air while Maggy gobbles up her breakfast. This morning I checked on the garden and lookie there...




What is that? Let me get a better look.





Why it is a squash, a crooked neck squash to be exact. Isn't it cute and fun sized?

Here is a shot a little bit further away. This is an excellent example of how the vegetable of a plant grows out of the base of the flower.

There are both male and female flowers on summer squash plants, since there is a vegetable growing out of the base of this flower it is a female. The male flowers tend to have a skinnier stem leading up to the flower. Both are completely edible, however, the male flowers should not be picked because they are needed for pollination.

Next post will be a cooking one, I promise.

The Kitchen Can Be a Dangerous Place

Last week I had a bit of an accident in the kitchen - that landed me in the emergency room. Let me start by saying, I have two knives that I use most often out of my kitchen aide set. Unfortunately, they were both dirty when I was starting dinner. So instead of cleaning one of them, I reached for the nice big, heavy knife and went on my way. As I was cutting into the first red potato, I also cut into my thumb. I felt almost no pain and wasn't sure how bad the cut was. Upon further inspection, Mr. T had to meet me at the emergency room to take care of LT while I got my, count them, eight stitches in my thumb!

I was initially very embarrassed about my accident in the kitchen. I am, after all, a stay at home mom, I cook most nights of the week and oh yeah, host my own blog about cooking. It was a low moment. After my thumb began to "wake up" from the litocain and I laid awake at four in the morning, I thought about the first lesson I taught in Chemistry. Safety in the laboratory.

One of the key points of the first lesson is to be mindful in the lab. I always told my students, "The moment that you lose focus on what you are doing is when accidents happen." I think this was my downfall that day in the kitchen. I lost some respect for what I was doing and wasn't fully engaged in it. I also began to think about the similarities of a kitchen and a chemistry lab. There are measuring devices, gas burners, hot plates, glass ware, and sharp objects - I was wide awake for a while until the pain medication kicked in.

I am feeling much better now and getting more and more use of my thumb back every day. The stitches will come out soon and I should be back to my old self - Aggie and Green thumbing it again. So, to sum it up: remember to be mindful of what you are doing in the kitchen or you just might end up in the emergency room too. The kitchen can be a dangerous place after all.

My Garden

Here is the raised garden that Mr. T built for me. I have absolutely no experience with growing anything. In fact, I will openly admit that I do not have a green thumb! My first experience of trying a garden was in West Texas. The previous owner of the house that we bought had a little pepper garden. There were green bell peppers, jalapenos, and these little red "bombs" that we never found out the name of. I would say that the environment there is not the best for growing anything other than peppers and succulents. We did, however, grow some of the hottest peppers I have ever tasted.

Now that we live in an area of Texas that is more suitable for growing gardens, I decided to try my hand - or thumb - at it. It is still a bit early for my garden, since it hasn't really produced anything yet. But I thought I would share some of the progress that we have made.

Here is our first strawberry! Please excuse the rock next to it. We bought dirt with compost in it, which secretly means that there is a bunch of crap along with the dirt. Mr. T teases that this is a $100 strawberry because that is about how much it cost to start the garden. It was a great tasting strawberry, but it was on the plant in a smaller and much greener form at the nursery so it might not really count as "home grown" in this garden.

Here are some more strawberries on the other plant. These are definitely home grown! You might have noticed that we have a fence around our garden. Let me explain.

Her name is Maggy. She is a six year old, blond, slightly over weight Labrador Retriever. She has a huge appetite and will basically eat anything that she can. One Valentine's Day I made two dozen chocolate covered strawberries for Mr. T and I to enjoy. I left them on the counter to set and not only did Maggy eat every strawberry but also the wax paper they were resting on. Needless to say, we needed a fence for our garden.

Yeah, I am talking about you.

Back to the garden. Here is the beginnings of a jalapeno. I like to call it my Barbie sized jalapeno. It is actually a Mammoth Jalapeno so it should be interesting to see how big they get compared to the basic jalapeno that is growing next to it and the ones that you can buy at the grocery store.

Here is a cayenne pepper. Again, it is Barbie sized. I can just imagine her cooking it in some great meal for her and Ken to enjoy. Ahh, the perfect world of Barbi. Life in plastic, its fantastic!

These little babies will be bell peppers. They aren't looking so great right now, but I have hope for them.

On to the tomatoes. I have two rows devoted just to tomatoes. These are Roma tomatoes. You can kind of see how they already have the shape of a Roma tomato.

These are Husky Cherry Tomatoes. They do look a bit beefier than your typical cherry tomato. I just went outside to double check the name of them. The bottom tomatoes have turned an orange color. It looks like we might be having husky cherry tomatoes on our salad one night this week!

And finally, pictures of the zucchini and squash plants. Both are considered summer squash so it is no surprise that the plants look very similar to each other. I haven't been able to find the beginnings of any vegetables on these plants, but I suspect they will be coming soon. By the number of flowers it also seems that these little plants will be producing a lot of vegetables.

Here is a closer look at the flowers. Aren't they beautiful? They only open when the sun is directly on them. They are also completely edible and can be stuffed or fried, niether of which I have actually tried.

So there it is, the beginnings of my first real garden. I will update you when more is produced - that is if anything else is produced.

Italian Margarita

It is hot and humid out there! Nothing better to fight off the weather than with a nice cold margarita. I really enjoy any type of margarita. In fact, I am pretty sure I haven't meet a margarita I didn't like - swirl, traditional, watermelon, mango. But, when I am making them at home I prefer to have a sweet flavor instead of the tart taste of a traditional lime and tequila margarita. This is called an Italian Margarita because of the addition of the amaretto and the use of lemon instead of lime.

Ingredients:

Lemons - to garnish

Sugar - to garnish

3 shots tequila

1 shot triple sec

heaping 1/4 c. frozen lemonade concentrate

3 c. crushed ice

1 shot amaretto

First, cut the lemon. I know you can get lemons for like 5 for a dollar but, to get the most use out of your lemon, start by cutting it in half. Cut one half into slices. Cut the other half into wedges.

Next, we are going to rim the glass with sugar. Begin by wetting the rim of the glass with the lemon wedge. Then invert the glass into a dish - ahem, salad plate - filled with sugar.

And there you go! Sugar on the rim of your glass. Salt could also be a great substitute to rim the glass with, but I have a major sugar tooth so I am sticking with sugar!

By the way, isn't that a great glass! My sister, baby maker turned baby doctor, gave me a set of these glasses as a birthday present on my 21st birthday. Wasn't that such a thoughtful gift? I love them!

Now its time to get serious. Combine the crushed ice and tequila in the blender.

Everyone, well at least everyone in Texas, knows that Tequila is made from the agave plant, which is a succulent. But, did you know that mezcal is also made from the agave plant? I saw this as a question on "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" and didn't know the answer.

Tequila, as well as mezcal, doesn't need to age. The alcohol is fermented from the agave heart that is rich in the sugar inulin. Humans do not have an enzyme for inulin so it cannot be digested. Because of this, the heart of the agave plant must be cooked down for several hours in order to break the inulin sugar down into fructose. After cooking the mixture is fermented and then goes through the distillation process.

Add the triple sec - this is a sweet margarita, remember?

Also add one heaping 1/4c of frozen lemonade concentrate.

Puree in the blender until nice and slushy. It will be a mixture somewhere between and frozen and on the rocks margarita.

Pour the mixture into a glass and pour the shot of amaretto over the top. My glasses are on the smaller side so I had enough of the mixture to pour into two glasses. I didn't split the shot of amaretto.

Garnish with a lemon slice and serve! This drink is really nice, sweet and refreshing. It works great to battle the heat and humidity, to serve along side a Mexican dish, or to share with your husband after a long week at work.