It was just me and my sister-in-law, sitting at her kitchen table in Indiana amid a stack of church-lady cookbooks and taking turns reading aloud grimace-inducing recipes involving cream cheese and grated carrots. Since I needed a Dumbass Gourmet and she needed something to feed her guests, we decided to grill steaks — despite neither one of us knowing how to turn on the grill — and were searching for a suitable side salad that didn’t make us want to hurl. Having grown up in a Baptist church that held potlucks every month, I didn’t think anything from a Presbyterian or Lutheran cookbook could faze me, but that was before I learned just how frequently lime Jell-O made an appearance on their respective pages. One by one I scanned and abandoned the collections of religious nibblies until all that was left was a cookbook sold as a drama-club fundraiser. There, nestled in the “salads” section, I found bacon-avocado potato salad with lime-mayo dressing — bacon! potatoes! avocado! — and the townspeople rejoiced.

This happy discovery was slightly overshadowed by the name of a neighboring recipe that caused us to dissolve into giggles — Sweet Yam Balls. Allow me just a moment here: BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Don’t people proofread these things? As a former newspaperperson, I know the importance of reading headlines with the filthiest gutter mind possible because if you don’t catch a potentially embarrassing headline, someone else will. Beyond that, how can you serve “sweet yam balls” to your guests with a straight face? That’s like the local store that always has a sign out front advertising “Boston butt” (which, by the way, was a very useful directional marker when guiding a lost person to my old apartment). Maybe I’m just a child (you bet your sweet yam balls, I am), but I can’t take seriously a recipe that makes me snort in fits of teenaged laughter.

Right — avocado potato salad. Off we went to the grocery store — they were handing out free Ben and Jerry’s! — and the meat market, then returned to their lovely little home for preparation. While SIL chopped potatoes and green onions, slicing them in huge chunks so I could easily pick them out, I rubbed the steaks with garlic, salt, pepper, and chili powder. Then it was time for one of my favorite things about cooking — peeling and removing the pit from avocados.

Thwack!

The awesomeness of bacon is canceled out by green onions. Sorry, bacon.

My brother-in-law hauled the grill out into the backyard and showed us how to light it, giving us the complete grilling experience by neglecting to clean the thing. (Love ya!) SIL took care of that part, complete with girly hand motions:

Not exactly the funnest job in the world.

She did a great job cooking the steaks, and then the photojournalist took over for our mealtime glamour shot:

Yes! Yes! Work with me! You’re a lemur!

We pulled the kitchen table out to the porch for what SIL called “Dumbass Gourmet al fresco,” which sounds a lot fancier than it actually was, what with all of us in bare feet and various neighbors traipsing around. It was a lovely little dinner, though, which we followed up with some good old-fashioned porch-sitting in white wicker rocking chairs. The boys read a bird book while the girls thumbed through decorating magazines and drooled over jewel-toned mosaic fireplaces (me) and wood floors painted bright pink (SIL). Dessert was some strawberries purchased from the farmer’s market that morning, the perfect end to a wonderful day.

You bet your sweet yam balls, it was.

Before we begin, we here at Dumbass Gourmet HQ would like to issue a heartfelt apology to our respective parents: We are very, very sorry for spending our childhoods balking at eating vegetables. I don’t know about The Husband, but I have very vivid memories of sitting alone at the kitchen table staring down a plate of cold lima beans while everyone else was in the living room watching M*A*S*H or whatever. Our palates have apparently matured, because not only do The Husband and I both love a wide variety of vegetables, we planned tonight’s menu around — of all things — the spinach we had in the freezer. (And, funny enough, I have come to be a big fan of edamame, which is like the lima bean’s high-falutin’ cousin who summered in Japan while lima bean was playing the banjo on the farm.)

We were discussing spinach in the first place because I’m going to give blood tomorrow, and I need to load up on iron. Two weeks ago I got turned away because my iron levels were too low, so along with starting a multivitamin …

L-R: Orange elephant, cherry bear, grape monkey, orange lion.

… I’m trying to give our regular menu a healthy overhaul. (Being unemployed gives you lots of time to think about these things.) The Husband was thinking about turkey burgers, mostly because he picked up a great tip on Lifehacker that suggested putting a pound of ground whatever into a freezer bag, pounding it flat, then using a pencil or chopstick to draw lines in the meat:

Frozen turkey in repose.

That way, the turkey thaws faster once it’s out of the freezer, and you can bend the package along those lines to break off only what you need. He cracked off four patties and set them to thaw while preparing a mixture of finely-diced onions, garlic, and spinach, and by the time he was finished chopping the veggies the meat had thawed. Meanwhile, I was using the non-garlicky side of the cutting board (we only have one) to cut strawberries and oranges for a little salad, topped with a citrus/balsamic vinegar/garlic vinaigrette of our own invention. Other than forgetting the french fries and having to stall dinner for a few minutes so they could bake, everything went off without a hitch.

The patties are suddenly round because The Husband had to mash up the turkey to mix in the veggies.

We decided to make double turkey burgers with fancy cheese — mine was havarti, his was pepperjack — and good, old-fashioned, eight-months-expired Kroger ketchup, and photograph them as if we were on the Food Network:

The picture with the fries wouldn’t upload, so just imagine them in that bare spot.

The texture was a little strange — ground beef makes a more solid burger, while these kind of mushed together as soon as you took the first bite. Still, the flavor was excellent. I mostly tasted the garlic and turkey, but there was definitely a hint of the spinach too. As it turns out, spinach is high in iron but also in an acid that blocks your body from absorbing iron, so you’re supposed to eat it with foods like strawberries and oranges that counteract the acid. Stupid contradictory spinach is lucky we just happened to pick those two fruits for the salad or there would have been hell to pay at the Red Cross tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I’m making scrambled eggs with leftover spinach, cheese, onions, and garlic, plus leftover ham and potatoes from a dinner we had last week. And speaking of eating healthier, I got on the scale this morning to find I’d lost five pounds. Whether that’s from the good-for-me food or the running I’ve been doing lately, who knows — but I’ll take it!

I’m a few days behind in posting this Dumbass Gourmet because its epicness was so unbelievable it took a few days to recover. Also, The Husband bought me a new Sims expansion pack for my birthday (they can go on vacation now!), so I’ve been fixing things for the witch doctor and digging for buried treasure on Twikkii Island. Being unemployed is fun!

What’s so excellent about this episode of DG? My very special guest, that’s what: The one and only The Father, who was visiting from Pennsylvania along with my older brother and best friend. The Husband’s youngest brother rounded out our guest list, so for the first time in my life I found myself making a three-pound meatloaf to accommodate all the mouths in my apartment. I figured Daddy was the go-to man for meatloaf since I keep making a mess out of it, so together we came up with a menu of mozzarella-stuffed meatloaf, roasted onion potatoes, and broccoli.

And now, the pictures:

My sister-in-law made me this apron! I call it my “Dumbass GourMetpron” because I’m witty like that.

Daddy dices the onions, keeping his fingertips intact.

Dig in!

I was a little taken aback by the amount of bread crumbs Daddy dumped into the mix.

Daddy forms a meat trough for the mozzarella cheese.

Fingertips are still intact, bravo!

Cheese trough!

I finish covering the meatloaf, carefully crimping the sides like a pie crust to keep the cheese in.

Olive oil plus potatoes plus onion soup mix equals the best thing ever.

They let me have a knife. Scary!

Bon appetit!

This is as much a shot of everyone enjoying dinner as it is photographic proof that the dinner table can be used for something other than mail storage.

Dinner was actually really good — apparently a little bit of fat on the hamburger really makes the meatloaf better, which is why my 92/8 sirloin just isn’t cutting it. I even got to separate the onions from the meatloaf with my fork, which would have gotten me in trouble at home, but since Daddy was under my roof, his ability to punish was rendered moot! BWA-HAHAHA! The world is mine!

Right. Anyway, it was an excellent experience even though Daddy’s cooking skillz don’t leave much room for dumbassery and/or hilarity. Added bonus: My brother and best friend cleaned up the kitchen afterward, including washing the dishes, and we capped off the evening by watching an old favorite, Tiny Toon Adventures’ “How I Spent My Vacation.” All in all, a fabulous weekend — I’m a Master of Arts! — which will be followed by another fabulous weekend as Courtney is gracing southcentral Kentucky with her presence! All of this is just too much awesome for one month, if you ask me, but I think I can handle it.

In keeping with my new effort to use everything in the fridge before it goes bad, I found myself digging through the refrigerator the other night for something to go with the chicken breasts thawing in the sink. (Apparently you’re not supposed to thaw meat in the sink; rather, you’re supposed to put it in the refrigerator. My mother thawed meat in the sink all the time and I’m still alive, so I’ll take my chances.) I located a head of broccoli slowly turning slimy in the crisper drawer — why can’t we have clear crispers? I lose more produce that way … — and the leftover spinach from the floor soup of a few weeks ago, so I decided to mix it all together with some fresh garlic and mozzarella we had on hand and make stuffed chicken.

The goods, waiting to be crammed into unsuspecting poultry.

The Husband ventured into the kitchen to help, which is appreciated but rather difficult when one’s kitchen is the size of a closet. Between the two of us bumping into each other and someone absentmindedly turning off the oven in the chaos, it’s a wonder we came up with anything, but the chicken actually turned out pretty well! I made some rotini pasta with butter and garlic and topped it with the leftover broccoli, and The Husband heated some of the rosemary and olive oil bread from the floor soup. It was wonderful:

The plate looks horribly bare, but I promise no one starved.

Next week is a very exciting week — in addition to graduation (Friday) and my 28th birthday (Saturday), I’m very much looking forward to the first-ever father/daughter Dumbass Gourmet. We haven’t chosen a recipe yet, but rest assured there will be much wine involved, if not in the food then definitely in the preparation of the food. If you’re lucky, I’ll write it up while I’m still loopy.

It’s getting to be about time for my thesis defense, so a few weeks ago I decided to pull a page from Courtney‘s book and bring refreshments for my committee. Once my thesis advisor got wind of this plan, he very helpfully suggested I make a test batch — that he could sample, of course — to make sure the muffins are perfect. To be honest, I was planning to do a test run anyway since I’ve only made this recipe once before, so this afternoon I put on my iRiver and made quick work of my mother’s raspberry streusel muffins.

The recipe I have is in my mom’s familiar handwriting.

It’s not as though I don’t make an effort when I’m cooking for my own family, but something about making muffins for Dr. T. spurred me to step up my game. Of course, in true DG style, nothing went the way I planned. After disintegrating a napkin in the muffin cups trying to grease them with butter, having to fish an egg shell shard out of the mixing bowl, and liberally splattering everything in the kitchen with batter, I was ready to go. It was a lot thicker than I remembered, but I’m glad I resisted the urge to water it down because these babies turned out perfect. A little sprinkle of oatmeal streusel on top and here we are:

My mother made them with fresh black raspberries, but I had to settle for red raspberries from Kroger.

The Husband and I shared one, heated in the microwave and spread with margarine, and it was heavenly. It was — dare I say — just as good as the muffins Mom made back in the day. My goal in being the Dumbass Gourmet is to make things that taste like the things she made, and this success certainly bodes well for me being able to make a meatloaf that tastes like it came from my childhood. How about I pass my thesis defense first and then start working on childhood Sunday dinners?

The Husband and I are embarking on a weekendlong cleaning frenzy to make up for the fact that I’ve been a bit lackadaisical in my housekeeping these past few months. Just last week we played “What’s that Smell?” in the refrigerator, and between that experience and all this house cleaning, I’m beginning to realize just how much we waste around here. In the spirit of not letting any of our leftovers go to that Big Mold Colony in the Sky, this is what I made The Husband for dinner tonight:

Here we have scrambled eggs cooked with leftover ham and a baked potato from Thursday night. I diced those along with half a tomato (the other half is salted and sliced on the side) and some onions left over from the floor soup I made for the last installment of DG. Top it all off with some cayenne pepper and pepperjack cheese, and you have a “garbage plate” currently being wolfed down like there’s no tomorrow. As for me, I’ll be nibbling on some leftover asparagus spears and perhaps some pierogies we discovered at Kroger last week.

It really hasn’t been too hard so far to cut down on our wastefulness — I just make a little extra effort to remember what’s in the fridge and use it before it goes bad. The Husband is notorious for buying fruit or veggies that he wants and then forgetting they exist, so I’ve been trying to keep an eye on everything and remind him it’s there (or incorporate it into dinner). When we bought bread the other day, I put half the loaf into a bag and shoved it into the freezer so it wouldn’t languish in the fridge, and when I made the asparagus a few nights ago, I put half the bunch into the freezer for later. I know frozen bread thaws just fine — my mother used to freeze whole loaves of it — but I’m not sure about the asparagus. It’ll be a learning experience, that’s for sure.

How do you cut down on food waste? Repurposing leftovers and freezing surplus food are my best tactics right now, but I’m always open to suggestions!