Toaster Oven Tuesday - Week 46, 2015

I obviously missed last week.  Building a new habit is hard.  I may have to write up my posts in advance and schedule them rather than waiting until Tuesday to write and post.  

This week's is an easy one.  I made these the night I made chili, and I guess that's not something I wrote about so you wouldn't know when that was.  That was on Tuesday the 27th of October.  I tend to forget how long things have sat in my pantry - you may recall I don't pay much attention to so-called expiration dates on most things, and these cornbreads are one I didn't, though I did have the thought that I should probably add some additional baking powder...but didn't...and should have.  I may need to buy fresh baking powder anyway, or at least test it to see if it still has some oomph.

 Of the different cornbread packages in my pantry, I chose this one.  At the time, I thought I was making cornbread not corn muffins...I hadn't looked really closely until I'd mixed it up and went to put it in the pan and it hardly didn't covered the bottom.  Oh well, it'll be rustic, right?

 This is how it looked after it was baked.  Um, maybe it qualifies as corn flat-bread?  I had melted butter over the top so that's the funny-looking 'glaze'.  It tasted OK, and since it was being served with chili, made a good crumble to mix in.

 Since the other one turned out as it did, I decided to make this one.  I initially didn't because Nick doesn't care for chili, spicy, Mexican, southwest flavors all that much.  But with the other one so flat, I thought this one would do better.  It's date must've been around the same time, because it didn't turn out much better.

It at least covered the pan, but was still more like flat-bread than thick corn bread.  Again, the taste was fine.

For both of these, I just followed the directions on the box for baking in a standard oven.  I didn't adjust the temperature or the time, and aside from the 'flat' problem, both were a good fit for the toaster oven.

As for the chili?  It wasn't done in the oven, but it was good too although quite mild.  I sauteed ground beef, onion, garlic, carrot, finely diced mushrooms along with a can of stewed tomatoes that I crushed up with my hand, canned chili flavored beans, a package of taco seasoning and a dash of sugar, and I'm probably forgetting something.  Mild chili but those beans did their thing...and at that, I'll now leave by adding a photo of the chili.