As retired empty-nesters, Hubby and I didn't want to fall into the trap in which so many of our peers have fallen.
Eating out every night!
Sure, we eat out, but NOT every night of the week. In fact, I still like to cook and try new recipes, especially in the crockpot.
One of our "go-to" meals is stuffed baked potatoes.
I refer to them as Kitchen Sink Potatoes, because we literally use whatever we have in the frig that will work well with the potato.
You can easily copy and adapt this meal to your likes, so let's get started.
I get these Bakeables Russet Potatoes from Wal*Mart. They are already washed and wrapped.
To cook in the microwave you simply remove the label (leave the wrap on and DON'T poke it) and bake one at 8 minutes or 2 or more at 6 minutes each.
It takes 12 minutes to cook our 2.
This past week I had the following in my frig.
About half of white onion. One small green pepper. Garlic. Cherry tomatoes.
I chopped them in strips, half, and minced one garlic clove.
We had ham as well.
I took about 4 slices of the pre-sliced ham and chopped it up.
It made plenty of meat for our spuds.
Sometimes we don't have a meat portion, it really depends on what's in the frig.
I had about 2 servings of peas leftover from dinner the night before.
I took those out, knowing I could combine them with the ham and warm them up over the stovetop.
Of course, I grabbed our butter.
We keep our butter in a crock on our countertop. I love soft butter!
And yes, we only use real Irish butter.
Using my large fry pan I added some EVOO and let it heat up on a low temp.
EVOO should not be cooked at high heat.
I added the garlic first.
I wanted it to began to breakdown in the heat and infuse the oil with a nice garlic taste prior to adding the next bits.
After the garlic had started to brown up I dumped in the peppers and onions.
I moved them around the pan to fully coat with the garlic-infused oil and to allow them to settle out evenly at the bottom.
At this point, I remembered that I had a bit of white wine in the frig as well.
I grabbed it and added a nice spill of wine into the hot pan.
While the alcohol evaporates, the acid from the wine helps to further breakdown the veggies.
Next, I put the potatoes in the micro, set it for 12 minutes and pushed the button.
In a smaller pan, I added some EVOO and placed it on medium heat.
I immediately added the ham and peas and worked it around so that the heat would begin to warm both the ham and peas without overcooking them.
I continued to cook the veggies.
Once the ham and peas really started to cook, I covered them with the lid, turned off the stovetop and moved them to the back.
They continued to heat through under the lid and with the heat already captured in the pan elements.
When cooking, I tend to only add salt and pepper to season.
I sometimes add garlic powder if I don't have fresh garlic on hand.
I don't like to over season food, especially when there are this many flavors melding together.
Once the ham and peas were set aside, I went back to my veggies and added the tomatoes.
I wanted them to be warmed, but not totally cooked.
So, I popped on a top, turned the heat off, and let the hot, covered pan do the rest of the cooking.
I moved this pan to the back of the stovetop as well.
The potatoes were almost done so I set out our dishes, some cheese, salt and pepper, and of course the butter.
I took out the taters and hubby dressed his and I dressed mine (he doesn't like the tomatoes).
I slice and squeeze the ends of the potato so it opened like a big "mouth."
I threw in a bit of everything I prepared, some butter, and some feta cheese.
I had reheated some croissants from the night before and added one to my plate.
Dinner was served.
It took me about 20 minutes from start to finish, including the preparation of chopping the veggies.
In the past, we've dressed out potatoes with left-over steak from eating out, fresh salad fixings, taco meat, whatever we had in the frig.
I LOVE that we can use leftovers.
What's so great is this meal can easily be adapted to any size crowd. Having a dinner party with a baked potato bar would be so much fun.
Imagine all the cool toppings you could have.
So many rules to break, so little time.
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