The Tradition Checklist

I'll start right out and say that if you are looking for a recipe on this post, there isn't one. I encourage you to continue reading, but no recipe here. 

This time of year is about many things including food, which definitely is present in this post, but this is a post about me, my family and how I see our traditions carrying on and hopefully it inspires you to create your own or carry on those that have been passed down to you.

I thought of this post when, a few days ago, I took my son Julian and my photo equipment over to my Grandma's house so I could document a family tradition that has been going on around 50 years. As you can tell by the photo's, one of my families traditions is rolling homemade Kielbasa. 

I remember when I was a kid, my Dad would take my brother Josh and I over to my grandma's about a week or so before Christmas and assist all our uncles and cousins in this tradition. Usually it was a crank or two on the grinder, or throwing some meat in the grinder or maybe Dad teaching me how to feed the casing on the nozzle or rolling the Kielbasa as it came out, but mostly, it was a chance for all of us kids to get together and play. As the years moved along and the getting together for this tradition was a little more about rolling the Kielbasa and less about the playing, I began to appreciate that this is something that had been done for generations before me, yet I didn't fully comprehend until I had a family of my own just how much something like rolling the Kielbasa means to me. Once I had kids I really starting thinking about what I want to leave as my legacy when I'm gone. What things will I do to tell my children that what this life is about isn't the small material things like a house, car, laptop, or camera; life is about family, great friends, actions speaking louder than words, and the TRADITIONS we set forth for those we leave behind to continue and pass on? Creating things that can be passed on are how we know we will still matter once our time is up. 

This is also why I take such pride in my photography. I look at my photography different than many photographers. I love the feeling I get when I am taking a photo and I know I got it, THE shot. The shot that is going to make someone smile with joy when they look at it. My hope is that Joy is but one of many emotions that come to them while looking at all the photos I take. As a father, I know how emotional it can be to have a truly wonderful photo of your children. I have a History degree in Education and I love History, see it everywhere all around us all the time, but the most important History is our own family histories. When I am on a photo shoot I like to think of my time with those people as them letting me into their family's history for a short time to capture their life as it is right now. It is also my hope that someday, years from now, when they look over the course of their family's history, they can look at the photos I've captured for them and the pictures I've taken can bring up all these great emotions when looking at their child, children, or entire family. I like to think of what I do as "Capturing History with Every Press of the Shutter". 


So as you can see I always think about what I will leave behind and that is no different than my photography business itself. Right now it's not a huge, successful business, something I hope I grow it into, but when I was looking at a name for my business, I thought about J. Malec Photography, or Jeremy Malec Photography, but ended up with Malec Photography. I ended here for the simple fact that I won't always be here, but a Malec will (at least for the next generation). It's my hope one of my children learn photography so if they take over the business hopefully it would be a seamless transition in-so-far as the business is already in their name. 

Family traditions are a huge part of what life is about. Getting together with four generations; my Grandma, My Dad, Me, and My son, documenting for posterity the family Tradition of rolling Kilbasa is important to me. It is my hope that one day I will be standing where my Grandma is with my hand on one of, or all of my children's shoulder's while my Grandchild and great grandchild take part in the tradition. 

Trisha and I are creating our own Tradition Checklist with our family, a lot around the holiday's. Two such examples are that we roll out, cut and bake Christmas cookies together and every Christmas Eve we all get a new pair of Pajama's to wear for Christmas morning. We are constantly thinking of news one's and are even thinking when the kids get older of cutting down our own Christmas Tree. 

I hope by reading my post you tend to agree and look at your family in a whole new light. Maybe you want to take something we do, like the new PJ's (we took that as well), or you want to create your own traditions. I hope you just give a little thought to what your kids are going to remember and what things they will want to do when they start families of their own. Have a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

~Jeremy

Slow Cookin' Chicken Curry

"I hope this is good cause its freaking easy....". 

Those are the words I heard when I walked in from the cold one recent December evening. Of course, I know Trisha is talking about tonight's meal, yet I'm still curious as to what exactly is so easy to cook yet complex enough to make Trish wonder if its any good. So, my senses keenly aware, I notice the crockpot out and a jar of salsa next to it and what looks to be another one of her Pampered Chef spices to the right of that. Having been married almost six years, I know Trisha's flavor profile pretty well and when she says "I Hope its good", that tells me she's cooking with a relatively unknown ingredient. As we continue doing this blog, one of my goals is to increase my ability to differentiate food groups and spice profiles by smell and flavor and all the other things that encompass a well rounded and educated food blogger. On this occasion, my rookie senses get humbled pretty quickly. I walk up to the crockpot and gently remove the lid to have my face engulfed in a robust aroma of chicken cooking with something those rookie senses don't yet pick up. I keep my eyes closed trying to quiz my senses, coming up with many guesses. I smell the chicken and salsa, the obvious aroma's yet I can sense a little heat from somewhere yet can't place the spice. As I finally give up, realizing I have a long way to go in my culinary experiences, I grab the spice bottle and see "Thai Red Curry Rub". 

I've heard the word curry many times while watching the food network and shows like Master Chef, but truthfully I had no idea what it was. Here is the description right off the back of the bottle. 

An exotic blend of lime, lemongrass and garlic bring out the true flavors of traditional Thai. Add it to meat, poultry, seafood and Asian-inspired soups, noodles and stir-fry.

Ingredients:

4 skinless boneless chicken breasts

3/4 cup thinly sliced onion

1 thinly sliced sweet red pepper

1 cup salsa

1 tbsp. curry powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

4 cloves garlic

2 cups fresh green beans trimmed

2 tbsp. cornstarch

1/2 cup cold water

2 cups chicken broth

2 cups uncooked instant rice

Cooking Instructions:

1.Place thawed chicken, onion, and red pepper in the slow cooker.  Combine salsa, curry powder, salt, pepper, and  garlic in a bowl.  Pour over top of the chicken mixture.

   

2.Cover and cook on low for 4-5 hours or until the chicken is tender.  Stir in green beans.  Combine cornstarch and water until smooth; gradually stir into slow cooker.  Cover and cook on high for about 30 minutes or until sauce has thickened and green beans are soft but crispy.

3.Bring chicken broth to a boil, in a large sauce[an; stir in rice.  Cover, remove from heat.  Let stand for 5 minutes or until liquid is absorbed and rice is tender.  Fluff with a fork.  Serve with chicken and sauce.

As for the meal itself, it was packed with tons of flavor and what made it so appealing is that besides being easy to make, this meal is a really healthy meal. Having that in mind, I decided to make it less healthy and go back for another half serving. What? You make this meal and if you can tell me you didn't go back for at least another bite or two after you were done with the first helping, I'll make sure a statue will be erected in your honor. Personally, I just don't have the will power to say no to a little bit more of an amazing dish, and sadly, that is plainly obvious. :) Try it out though, and I bet you can't resist the temptation for seconds.

I will tell you what I told Trisha after I was done, sitting and relaxing with a cup of coffee. I told her there was no need to "hope it was good" because it was simply amazing that something so delightful could come out of a crockpot. Until Trisha made shredded Chicken Tacos from the crockpot (A delicious future post), I just thought crockpots were used for meatballs, chicken wings, and baked beans. I didn't think a restaurant quality meal could come out of a slow cooker ready to serve over a simple bed of white rice. I was obviously wrong. This meal is so very simple and delicious you have to try it.  I just Hope you do it sooner rather than later because you will have a meal you will be cooking regularly all winter. Enjoy!

Unconventional & Easy Chicken Pot Pie

Well, I'll first start out saying that we are making blog history with this blog post in more ways than one. Although we haven't been doing this blog all that long, this is the first time we are blogging about a meal we enjoyed the night we created the blog post, and doing back to back nights of a blog post. I couldn't help posting this because I was so blown away by the taste, the look of this meal, and how easy this was to make. All these factors combined to form a truly perfect example of what we want this site to be, easy to understand and cook for yourself as well as really enjoy the food. 


When we think of food during the fall and winter months, we probably tend to think of heartier meals, like stews, roasts, soups,  etc. This pot pie fits right in the heartier group of foods because of its rich flavor of chicken mixed with the cream of chicken soup, the vegetables and the double layer of fluffy, yet crunchy on the outside biscuits. We love pot pies and for this go-around Trisha wanted to put a little bit of a spin on one's she's made before. She wanted homemade biscuits for the outside and I will tell you that's what makes this meal come alive; biscuits, biscuits, biscuits! 


That is the toughest part of the meal, the biscuits. We bought an almost brand new bread maker awhile back because we wanted to make better bread to enjoy. The biscuits we ate tonight came from that bread machine, yet it was just a simple biscuit mixture, nothing complex. So if you don't have a bread maker, I would recommend you buy something baked fresh the day you decide to make this as it will only make your eating experience that much better. 


The last thing I want to tell that solidifies just how good this meal is, is something Julian, our three year old, said to me. Julian is quite a picky eater; or rather a non-eater. He doesn't really eat much when we sit down for dinner. However, this meal is so good that I made him a plate and when he saw I was so excited after my first bite, he actually got excited himself and was eager to try it. This tactic(fake, or in this case, real excitment) usually works for us to at least get him to take one bite of dinner each night, then he usually just kinda picks at the food or doesn't eat anymore the rest of the meal. Tonight, things went a bit different. He took that first bite, looks at me and says excitedly, "I like THIS food Dada!" So there it is. You don't believe me because I'm biased, but a three year old will tell it like it is, and this food is good! Enjoy!


Ingredients
- Three Large Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts
- 2 Cans of Cream of Chicken Soup
- One bag of Frozen Peas and Carrots Mix
- 1 tsp season salt
- 1 tsp Zehnders Chicken Seasoning (*ONLINE ONLY)
- 4 Garlic Cloves (minced)
                                         - 1 1/2 Cups Milk




Preparation


1. In skillet, cut up Chicken Breasts into cubes as pictured. Combine with Garlic and Seasoned Salt. Cook thoroughly.


2. Remove Cooked chicken, wash skillet, return Chicken to skillet with Cream of Chicken soup, Milk, Peas and Carrots, and Zehnders Chicken seasoning (*ONLINE ONLY) and cook on medium high heat until warmed through, stirring often. 


3. Take biscuit mix and place on bottom layer of casserole, creating little biscuits, not just one flat layer.


4. Pour heated up Chicken, Vegetable and Soup mix over top of bottom layer of biscuits, covering thoroughly.


5. Take the remaining biscuit mix and make biscuits on top of Chicken, Vegetable and Soup mix.


6. Place in oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. 


7. Remove from oven and spread a little heated up butter over top of the biscuits and ENJOY!

Mozzarella Stuffed Meatballs Over Penne Alfred Pesto

As parents of three children three years of age and younger, we really don't get out too much. When we are able to sucker the grandparents into watching the kids, we will try and spend time together talking over a meal at some restaurant as we enjoy a day off from decision making in the kitchen. On one particular occasion, we decided to go to a restaurant we don't frequent very often. When we sat down and received the menu, one of the pictured specials was something that looked really appetizing and something I've never seen before. As you can probably put together from the title of the post it was Mozzarella Stuffed Meatballs over Angel hair Alfredo. Sounds delicious right? The restaurant did a really excellent job with the photos because it looked delicious, yet it turned out to be a pretty dreadful meal. Its kind of like when you see an awesome Movie Trailer and makes you want to see the movie, yet when you see it all the best parts of the movie were what you watched in the Trailer. That is a pretty frustrating feeling. I'm not naive when it comes to how many national restaurant chains make money. I know most use quite a bit of frozen cuisine, and I've never been great at pinpointing things that began frozen, however I've never tasted a ball of meat that was as flavorless and uninspiring as what was layed before me that particular day. I was so displeased, I didn't finish the meal, and that is saying something for a guy with and appetite like mine.

So here is the gushy part about Trisha. A week after the Meatball disaster, as I like to call it, I walk in the door to an aroma that instantly makes me wonder what Trish has in store for us for dinner. Walking in the door at our house is an instantaneous wake up call. This day was no different. I didn't even get the chance to ask Trisha what it was she was cooking that smelled so great. As time ticked away to dinner time, I notice her boiling penne pasta with some Alfredo Pesto sauce cooking in the pan next to it. So I think to myself, "Sweet! Penne Alfredo sounds like a great dinner to me". Then after a few more minutes, I get the call for dinner, and when I approach the stove I am again reminded of how thoughtful Trisha is when I see the meatballs on the baking sheet with mozzarella cheese oozing out of the center. What you see before you is what I saw. Perfectly cooked meatballs with a generous amount of cheese in the middle over a bed of penne pasta topped with Alfredo Pesto sauce. Truthfully, I don't think I need to describe how unbelievable it tasted because you can tell by the pictures how amazingly Trisha cooked it. So here is a prime example of how love was yet again the main ingredient in this dish. Trisha saw how unhappy I was, then decided she could do it better than the restaurant, which she did ten times over, for no other reason than to make me happy. Now tell me I don't have the best wife in the world? Enjoy!

Ingredients: Meatballs

3 lbs ground turkey(or whatever you prefer)

1 cup onions - finely chopped

5 garlic cloves - minced

1/3 cup pesto sauce

1 cup Italian style bread crumbs

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese - grated

1 pound mozzarella or monterey cheese - cut into cubes(For inside Meatball)

1 teaspoon seasoned salt

1 tablespoon Italian seasoning

Extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees

2. In a bowl, mix together; ground turkey, chopped onion, minced garlic, bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, pesto, seasoned salt, Italian seasoning.

3. Form turkey mixture into meatballs.

4. Stuff a cheese cube into each meatball and seal the meat around the cheese.

5. Arrange the meatballs on a nonstick baking sheet and drizzle with EVOO.

6. Bake for approximately 30 minutes (until internal temperature of meat reaches 170 degrees)

Ingredients: Alfredo Pesto Penne

1 Box Penne Pasta

1 Jar Alfredo Sauce

1/3 Cup Pesto Sauce

2 Garlic Cloves

Directions:

1. Cook penne according to the box

2. Cook the alfredo sauce, pesto sauce and garlic on the stove until warm.

3. Place Penne on dish, drizzle with Alfredo Pesto, place meatballs on top, sprinkle some Parmesan over top and Enjoy!

Great Northern Chicken Chili

Our latest meal to share is Trisha's interpretation of a recipe she got out of this really cool recipe book that my cousin Bevin, who's an amazing artist and designer, put together for my Grandma Malec's 80th birthday. It was a recipe book of all Grandma's recipes for such things as baked chicken, goulosh, kilbasa and sauerkraut and many other delicious appetizers, main courses and desserts. Also in the book were many dishes by many other members of the family. I'm sure there will be many more of these recipes to come on this blog in the future since it is an eclectic resource that inspires both Trisha and I to step up our game to get near the level of a woman who is truly a magician in the kitchen. 


We both had Grandmother's who loved to cook and for both of them, as I stated before, the most important ingredient to cook with is love. With my Grandmother, as anyone who's eaten at my Grandma's house can attest, she not only cooks with love but forces you to keep eating with it as well. "Did you get enough?", "You should go get some more", and the ever belly filling "You barely ate anything!". Okay, she's never said that last one to me, but I've heard her tell other people becasue I've never barely ate anything. What is neat to me has been watching the passion for cooking take hold of Trisha because she is so creative and her willingness to please her family through food is second to none, just like her Grandmother before her and mine as well.


One of the recipe's Trisha found in my Grandma's cookbook was a recipe for Chicken Chili put in the book and perfected by my Aunt Monica. The pictures you see are a very close interpretation of that particular chili, but as we've stated now many times, Trisha loves to experiment and she did so with this chili, and the outcome was a bright, bold, and unbelievably flavorful chili that would be a hit on any menu in the area, seriously. Now, I have to be honest, I hate chili. Hate it. Kidney beans are simply the worst texture of food known to man, and I won't ever bend on that particular piece of food, it literally makes me cringe even looking at them. Trisha being the wonderful wife she is and knowing I hate Kidney (and most other types of) beans, and her being the coneseur of coming up with new things for me to try, included in this Chili Great Northern white beans. She loves chicken dishes the most of all the proteins and that lead her to want to try this recipe when she saw it. So she didn't have the easiest time convincing me to eat it, cause the word "chili" usually means I'll be making hot dogs and mac and cheese for dinner that night.  As most men can attest, when it comes to food, we are more willing to give up fighting something after a short amount of time because women can often times be relentless in their persuit of an argument, and also because, lets face it, happy wife, happy life and fighting over food just isn't worth it. Trish puts a lot of effort into these dishes, the least I can do is try a couple bites to make her happy. So her persuasive ways of trying to convince me to try this chili really paid off because it was simply the best chili I can ever remember eating.




Ingredients:

2 cans Northern Beans

3 Cups cooked chicken breast - diced

1 jar Chunky Medium Salsa

1 small can Campbell's cheddar cheese soup

24 oz. Chicken Broth

1 tsp cumin

3 cloves garlic - minced

1 tsp Zhenders chicken seasoning

1/8 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp seasoned salt

1/4 tsp Cajun seasoning

1 can whole kernal corn - drained

2 Cups Monterey Jack and/or Cheddar Cheese - shredded

Preparation:


1.It's Chili! Throw it all in a Dutch oven or large soup pot, mix thoroughly.  
2. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for at least one hour.  
3. Add 1 1/2 cups shredded cheese, continue to simmer at least 15 more minutes.  
4. Pour into bowls and top with remaining cheese.


This Chili was a huge success at our house and its also a great alternative to those who don't eat beef. I know it's not many of you, but Trisha is one of these people. She enjoys the occasional steak, but ground beef just isn't a element she enjoys so we use ground turkey as our beef substitute in many things such as regular chili and even meat loaf, as you will see in our next post. 


Another quick and easy meal that just takes very little attention to detail and one that anyone can make. Try it out and throw your own ingredients into the mix and let us know how it turned out. Enjoy!