MMMmmmexican Rice

Josh and I took a snow day yesterday and went to Whitetail to hit the slopes. It was the first time snowboarding in about a year, so we were both happily sore, exhausted and starving by the time we made it home. I'd been formulating the perfect "no fuss" dinner on the ride home, and I had the perfect tool for the job: my new rice cooker.

I'd been thinking about buying one of these gadgets for a while, and when I spotted one on sale the other day I decided now's the time. They are quite simple to use but I still managed to mess it up the first time around (but that's a story for another day). This would be my second attempt and I was determined to make it a good one. The plan was to get home, throw a bunch of stuff in the cooker, hop in the shower, then come downstairs where dinner would be waiting. And it worked!

I love the rice cooker, it is like a crockpot on steroids. I've never been patient enough to get a lot of use out of my crockpot; in theory it's great, but I'm not good enough at predicting what I will want to eat 8 hours in advance, or at having all my ingredients ready the day before in order to throw them all in the pot in the morning so they'll be ready when I get home from work. I'm more of an "in the moment" kind of cook. How Zen.

But the rice cooker - that only takes 30 minutes! Perfect for a last-minute "we're exhausted and starving" type of dinner. I'd already stocked up on rice earlier in the week, the better to make use of my new toy.

So with about 5 minutes of prep, and 30-ish minutes of cooking, we had a delicious, satisfying dinner at the end of a long, fun day!

Here's what I used:
1 carrot, sliced
4-5 sliced white mushrooms, broken into bits
1 small can corn (no salt)
1 small can black beans
2 c. brown rice
1 can Ro-Tel (diced tomatoes and chiles)
1 c. water
Some Butter (about 2 Tbsp? I'm not good with exact measurements ...)

Here's what I did: Threw it all in the rice cooker, stirred it up, turned it on and walked away!

Condiments:
Shredded cheddar cheese
Sour cream
Hot Mexican Chili Powder
Tomato basil wraps (we were out of normal flour tortillas - scandalous!)

It was a little bland right out of the pot, so if I made this again I would add the chili powder at the beginning ... but adding it at the end was just fine.

Ole!

Dinner. It's what's delicious.

I was all set to bake a casserole on Monday night, until smoke started pouring out of the pre-heating oven. Bacon grease and brown sugar, left over from Josh's bacon sticks. Whoops. Time for Plan B: Put my brand-new cast-iron skillet to the test.

The results were surprisingly delicious!

Ingredients/Method:

I started with half a Gimme Lean "sausage", chopped up into small bits (note for next time: smaller chunks work better than big ones ... and the browner the better). Then I added four artichoke hearts, chopped, and sauteed those with the sausage. Next I added half a bag of frozen spinach and let it heat a little (it might work better to add this later - the spinach basically "melted". Not bad, but I am curious what it would taste like if it wasn't cooked as much).

Once the spinach started to turn bright green, I added a can of vegetable stock and about a 1/2 cup of water, and brought this to a boil. Next came a box of Near East wild mushroom rice mix and a splash of olive oil. I covered the mix and let that simmer about a half an hour.

The mix seemed soupy so I whisked two eggs and stirred those in. Meanwhile I decided to risk using the oven; this needed to bake a little. I cranked it to 400 degrees. I arranged some sundried tomatoes (oil-packed) on top and crumbled feta cheese over the whole thing. Then I popped it in the oven for about 10 minutes, and voila - dinner is served.