OMG! Really?

Ok so now that I am through catching up over the past week, tonight was my turn for a basket again. Dear spouse and children, Not funny! I get my basket today and the ingredients are as follows: A giant spiral sliced ham (one of my favorite things), Shiner Bock beer (another of my favorite things), Kale (WTF?) and ...Triple Berry Newtons (you know, like fig newtons but with berries instead of figs). I stared at the ingredients at a complete loss as to how to make any of them work together. First thought? Ham sandwich with kale chips and a glass of beer and Newtons for dessert. But, no, alas I will rack my brain and figure out some way to actually cook with these things. On the way out the door I am thinking breakfast for dinner, ham, eggs, some kind of berry newton french toast? Would that even work? We get to the store, and after a haircut for the wife and I (she said I got extra time to think, but I actually was not thinking about the basket at all) We begin the shopping. I am still at this point thinking breakfast and wandering aimlessly trying to figure out what to do when I find myself standing in front of sliced turkey breast when the clouds part and a ray of sunlight shines down and all things become clear to me. A few months ago a new restaurant opened in our town called Cheddar's and they serve a Monte Cristo sandwich, however instead of maple syrup on the side they serve theirs with raspberry preserves on the side. Inspired by this I made this sandwich at home a few months ago and it was a hit. I pick up the turkey, Swiss cheese from the deli counter, Sourdough bread from the bakery, some strawberry-blackberry preserves (thank you Smuckers), and I have a plan. I also grab potatoes, and red beets for a side dish that has also just dawned on me. I complete the shopping trip with some fresh blueberries, blackberries and raspberries. The menu played out like this:
Beer battered Monte Cristo
Homemade potato, beet and kale chips
Triple berry custard crisp
At 3:30 I begin prepping the kitchen for the challenge of cooking all of this in 1 hour. It is at this point that everything begins going wrong. Part of the food processor is missing. I go looking for it everywhere, and wouldn't you know it, it is in the last place that I look. Know why? Because once I found it I stopped looking. Then I pull out the deep fryer, excited to use it for only the second time in the 5 or 6 years we have owned it. It is filthy. It was never cleaned after the last time it was used, So i have to break it down into all of its components and scrub it down. Just as I finish that, I realize I have no idea where the cord for it is. I still don't. So, I have to deep fry the old fashioned way, in pots on the stove. Good times!
Finally at 4:41 I begin my cooking time which is supposed to be an hour. I will save you the nail biting and tell you now I did not finish in time. Not really even close. Not much went right in the kitchen today. Really it was all of the deep frying that did me in. Part of that may have been that i was using Canola oil which I do not think is real ideal for deep frying, and the other part I think is that the stove is just not as good as a deep fryer.
Anyway the first thing I did was begin the crisp, because I had to bake it, so it had to go in first. I got oil on the stove heating up then got my berries into the baking dish. 2 pints of raspberries, 1 pint of blueberries, and 1 pint of blackberries. I sprinkled one cup of Splenda sugar substitute (you may recall the wife is watching what she eats) 3 eggs, and 3/4 cups of milk. I mix it all thoroughly and throw it into the oven at 375, and set the timer for 20 minutes. 1 whole carton of newtons get obliterated in the food processor. Into a mixing bowl they go, and I add about 2 cups of oatmeal. My youngest son was "assisting" me today, playing Sous Chef, and I ask him to melt some butter for me, which he does, and then he dumps it all into my crumble/crisp. I am mixing it with my hands and I realize it is way to moist, so I add more oatmeal, some flour...time is ticking here. Eventually I just drop gobs of this oatmeal newton cement mixture onto the berries and hop for the best, throw it back in the oven thinking 15 more minutes and that will be done. I forgot to set the timer here though...
Between the berries going in and the crumble debacle, I slice beets on the mandolin, or at least on the little $10 mandolin gadget we picked up today that is like a mandolin and I am putting those into the first pot of oil to make my beet chips. A lot of color comes out of the beets into the oil and I realize I should have done the potatoes first because now the oil will discolor the potatoes. So I grab another pot and put oil in it and get it heating. After twenty minutes sitting in hot oil, the beets are still not crisp or even browning. At about 25 minutes I take them out anyway, thinking maybe they will crisp up while they drain, so I remove them from the oil onto paper towels to drain. I drop my first potatoes into the other pot at about the same time, then the second batch of beets go in. The oil erupts when they go in this time which I take to be a good sign. Then the crumble. You will recall, I still have to pull off a beer battered sandwich at some point here too.
I made my batter with 6 eggs, 2 cups of flour, and one bottle of beer whisked together. I then whisked in about 2 tablespoons of cinnamon. That may sound like an odd combination, but a traditional Monte Cristo is made with French Toast. I threw some butter into a large skillet, then took two slices of sourdough, put a slice of the ham, a slice of turkey, and two slices of baby swiss in between and then dipped the whole sandwich into the batter then onto the skillet. In a small saucepan I put some of the strawberry-blackberry preserves and heated that up, adding just enough water to melt the preserves into a berry syrup to dip the sandwich into.
The end result, the first meal was plated at about 6:05, and the last was closer to 6:30. The overall presentation looked nice as you will see in the picture. The sandwich was amazing, although very rich and heavy. The chips looked nice, although some of the kale chips got over done which is actually kind of interesting because once they turn brown they will just about disintegrate in your fingers, but the later batches I took out quicker while still green and the girls loved them. The beet chips never really crisped up, but the sweet of the beets with the sea salt ground over them was fantastic, and the potato chips were also wonderful, although varied in crispness from batch to batch. The most amazing part, the triple berry crisp that I forgot about did not burn, and was wonderfully tart, I just wish I had remembered to buy vanilla ice cream.