What's for Dinner? (1/31/06)

First, I have to say that I'm very excited by all the responses I'm seeing for the next Virtual Recipe Club coming up this weekend. Please bear with me as we try to figure out if this will be a weekly or monthly event. I also would like to clarify that recipes for gumbos, stews and such are more than welcome.

There was definitely some deja-vu going on in the kitchen tonight. When I made up the menu this week, I chose recipes based on the ingredients we already had on hand. One of the items in the fridge that I wanted to use was pancetta. Pancetta is not easy to find around here, so I wanted to make sure it actually got used and didn't just sit there until it went bad and had to be thrown out (been there, done that - way too many times). The dish I ended up choosing for the pancetta - Fusilli with Creamy Pancetta-and-Pea Sauce - is similar to the Chicken-Ham Lasagna in that it too has pork and pasta with a cheesey sauce.

Tonight's dinner had a lot more flavor and was prepared in the same way that I said I would prepare the lasagna if I ever made it again. I much preferred the sauce for this pasta dish over the sauce for the lasagna dish - the garlic, onion and cream cheese added a lot of flavor and texture to the sauce. I did used quite a bit more pancetta than the recipe called for, so I'm sure this added quite a bit of flavor. This dish was a cinch to throw together and was good comfort food - I'd definitely make this again (and not the lasagna).

Photo Courtesy of Cooking Light

Fusilli with Creamy Pancetta-and-Pea Sauce

VRC, Indian food blogs, and a great meal

First, I wanted to make sure that everyone noticed the addition to January Virtual Recipe Club (VRC) - Cyndi from cookin' with cyndi had emailed me her recipes earlier on, but then she changed her blog and the links no longer worked. Today we got it all straightened out. Good thing too - looks like she had some yummy contributions! Thanks Cyndi.

Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen has suggested sticking to the month-long format. I'm torn. I think I'll wait until the end of the week to see what the round-up looks like and then decide. A month seems too long, but perhaps a week isn't enough time. I'm not dead-set on either one, so let's just see what works best for everyone else.

Just a gentle reminder that if you do want me to post something from your archives (in other words, you're not creating a post just for this event), it would be very helpful if you could still include a quick reference and link to this event somewhere in your blog. The more exposure this gets, the more recipes we'll have to drool over! Thanks!

Now on to dinner....

I have been discovering some fantastic Indian blogs and am positively salivating not only over the food they write about, but also the gorgeous pictures. One example is Mahanandi. If you have not checked this blog out, you must - the pictures are just gorgeous. I truly envy all of you talented photographers out there - I can only dream of being able to take such beautiful photos.

I have also been chatting via email with Sailu from Sailu's Foods. She has been kind enough to answer some questions I had about curry and even recommended a spinach dish to go with something I was making for tonight. I didn't make it to the store to buy spinach, but I will certainly be filing the recipe away for later and will report back when I do get around to making it. Thanks Sailu!

Photo from Martha Stewart

Curried Shrimp

I don't know how the curry dish I made tonight compares with the recipes that these lovely ladies have on their blogs (I hope to find out soon by trying a few), but we thought it was very good. It was very easy to throw together and nutritious to boot. All the makings of a great meal. I have been "accused" by Alana over at A Veggie Venture of being a "sneaky mom" and tonight was no exception. Since I didn't make it to the store for spinach, I had to find a way to sneak in some vegetables. I added red bell pepper and frozen peas to the shrimp curry to bump up the nutrition. Both boys liked the dish quite well (DH raved), but the youngest filled up on his naan from Trader Joe's and didn't finish his. I will definitely make this dish again and again - it was so easy and delicious, without much fuss.

Virtual Recipe Club - A Weekly Event?

Despite the low turnout for the first VRC, I'd like to try this as a weekly event. Weekly events can be easier to remember and I have so many ideas for VRC that once a month just isn't enough! I thought I'd better get on and post this tonight so that everyone would have enough time to participate.

If a weekly event sounds like too much, don't be discouraged! With VRC, you can submit something you made that week or simply share a tried and true from your recipe files. How easy is that?

To kick this off as a weekly event, I'd like to make this week's theme SOUPS - a comforting winter weather food. If this works as a weekly event, I'd love to have guest hosts at least once a month, so start thinking up ideas for themes you'd like to see for VRC.

Submit a soup recipe that you try this week, or submit a tried and true favorite from your recipe archives. Please have your recipes in by Sunday morning and I will post the recipes Sunday evening, along with the theme for next week. I hope you'll join me - this can be a great way to challenge ourselves in the kitchen and to stay inspired.

Lasagna and a new spice blend

Photo from Cooking Light

Chicken-Ham Lasagna

Last night it was meatloaf and mashed potaotes and tonight it's more comfort food. In this month's issue of Cooking Light, there is a recipe for Chicken-Ham Lasagna. A few reviewers complained that this dish was bland. I don't always agree with reviewers who say dishes are bland - sometimes what is bland to some is just simple, uncomplicated comfort food to others. Still, I did notice that this sauce had no garlic - bland or not, I felt this sauce could use a good dose of garlic. I also used homemade chicken stock and Parmigiano-Reggiano. I'm sure that both of those ingredients helped to kick up the flavor a bit. I also used whole wheat lasagna noodles which I think go very well with an alfredo-type sauce.

We all thought it was very tasty. However, it did not hold together well for a lasagna. This could be because I used the full amount of sauce even though I was not using no-bake noodles. I also think it's because it did not have anything like ricotta cheese - ricotta helps to hold a lasagna together. If I made this again - and I probably would - I'd make it as a ziti-style bake instead of a layered lasagna.

Those of you who order from Penzeys know their little secret. I didn't know the secret when I first ordered from them and was puzzled. I thought they had made a mistake. Then I realized that it wasn't a mistake, it was a gift. A fun surprise to look forward to when you open the box. When you order from Penzeys, they throw in a random spice. This time it was Florida Seasoned Pepper.

I wasn't sure how I'd use it and thought it would end up unopened and unused, languishing in the back of my spice cabinet. I couldn't have been more wrong - I used it tonight on our asparagus side dish and it was wonderful. I simply sauteed the asparagus with a little EVOO, coarse salt, crushed garlic, freshly ground pepper and a little of the Florida Seasoned Pepper. At the very end, I added just a touch of fresh-squeezed lemon. It was peppery and citrusy - full of flavor. Not only did DH and I like it, but the boys ate all of their asparagus without complaint - a major feat in this household. With a reception like that, Florida Seasoned Pepper is sure to become a regular in this household. Thanks Penzeys!

January VRC Round-Up!

It's time! I had hoped to get more participants, but the recipes I received look wonderful. Thank you to everyone who sent in recipes. Hopefully we'll have a few more for next month, stay tuned for the new theme.....

I'd be more than happy to add any late additions, so if you have a recipe you'd like to share, just send it to me and I'll add it. I'll put a link to each VRC in the sidebar so that it's easy to find any time.

January VRC - Whole Grain Breakfast Foods

From Michele of Chef Michele's Adventures...

...Whole Grain Raisin Muffins

From Cecil of English Patis...

...Morning Glory Muffins

From Patti at Adventures in Food and Wine...

...Peanut Butter Banana Nut Muffins

...and...

...Oatmeal Apple Muffins

From Sailu at Sailu's Food...

...Ragi Roti

From Cyndi at cookin' with cyndi ...

...Whole Wheat Banana Walnut Pancakes

No picture

...Whole Wheat Pecan Coffee Cake

...Apple Crisp Muffins

No Picture

...Raisin Bran Bread

and....

No Picture

... Whole Wheat Double Cranberry Bread

And lastly, from me....

...Whole Wheat, Oatmeal and Raisin Muffins

...Ginger Carrot Muffins

...Multi-Grain Lemon-Poppyseed Scones

...5-Grain Muffins with Fruit and Nuts

No Picture

...and Wholegrain Pumpkin Muffins/Bread

Again, tune in later this week for an announcement of February's theme.........

Saturday in the Kitchen

Ginger-Carrot Muffins

Catalogs have finally started to find me at the new house again. A good thing/bad thing kind of deal. One good catalog that came the other day was The Baker’s Catalogue from King Arthur Flour. As I thumbed through it over lunch, I found a recipe that I knew I had to try: Ginger-Carrot Muffins. With cardamom and crystallized ginger, they sounded interesting and delicious. I had to modify the recipe just a bit to fit the ingredients I had on hand, but I followed the recipe pretty closely. The result was tasty indeed. They didn’t have as much bite from the ginger as I expected, so I'd likely try a full 1/2 cup of crystallized ginger next time around.

Mini-Meatloves with Brown Sugar-Ketchup Glaze

For dinner, it was time to go back to the basics. Meatloaf. Or in this case, mini-meatloaves. As I said earlier this week, I’ve never made meatloaf before. It turned out to be a more trying ordeal than I expected. Lesson learned - don't try new recipes later in the evening when you're not feeling well (just a cold - but it makes me very tired). I was very tired and when I'm tired, I get frustrated by the tiniest of problems. There were several little problems, but nothing amounted to a disaster - just a bit of swearing, sighing and grumping. Long story short - the meatloaf came out well and the whole family enjoyed it, so it had a happy ending even if I didn't enjoy the process.

I'll be working on getting the recipes posted for January's VRC. I don't have as many participants as I was hoping, but the recipes they have sent in look wonderful! If you have a recipe you'd like to contribute, it's not too late. I'll put a link on the sidebar and keep adding recipes as they come in or as I try more myself.

7's Cooking Meme

Patti over at Adventures in Food and Wine has tagged me for the 7's Cooking Meme. Thanks - looks like fun!

Seven Culinary Things to do Before I Die
1. Make a great deep dish pizza.
2. Learn to make sushi.
3. Get some really good knives.
4. Create a great Vodka sauce.
5. Get another recipe published.
6. Learn more about making great sauces.
7.

Seven Things I Can't do in The Kitchen
1. Anything involving candy.
2. Cake from scratch is often a failure in this kitchen.
3. Chop quickly - I'm a slow chopper.
4. Toss a pizza crust - I'm a spreader, not a tosser - I'm just sure it would end up on the floor, covered with dog hair.
5.
6.
7.

Seven Things That Attract Me to Food Blogging
1. It is a great creative outlet.
2. Reading other blogs expands my horizons.
3. Keeps my mother up to date - she can come here and read when we haven't talked for a while. :)
4. It's a great way to put that HTML class I took online to good use.
5. It inspires me to cook and try new recipes more often - I just have to have something to write about!
6. It's a cheap hobby. ;)
7. It's fun to see my page rank and counter stats go up.

Seven Thing I Say Most Often While Cooking
1. I was JUST at the store. I can't believe I forgot ___________ .
2. Bailey - MOVE!
3. Honey, can you please make the salad?
4. What should we have for dinner?
5. I was SURE I had an extra ____________
6. Honey, do you feel like grilling?
7. Where's the vegetable peeler? (for some reason, this gets misplaced more than any other item in my kitchen)

Seven Cookbooks I Love - I think I have a problem here. I don't love cookbooks. Is that shocking? It's true. I love gathering recipes from LOTS of different sources and I rarely fall in love with a whole cookbook. So, I'm including my favorite sources in addition to a few cookbooks that tend to refer to pretty often.
1. Cook's Illustrated's New Best Recipe
2. Martha Stewart's Hors d'Hoevres Handbook
3. Everyday Food from Martha Stewart
4. Cooking Light magazine
5. Cook's Illustrated's Soups and Stews
6. Epicurious
7. Cook's Illustrated's website

Seven Cooking Shows I Can Watch Over and Over Again
1. Good Eats
2. 30 Minute Meals
3. Iron Chef America only, not the original
4. The Food Network challenge shows
5.
6.
7.

I'm posting this without it being entirely filled out. I'll try to finish tomorrrow!

It's not too late to join in the first Virtual Recipe Club round-up! I'll be posting this weekend, but probably not until Sunday. Stay tune for an announcement of next month's theme......

What's for Dinner? (1/26/06)

Mexican Chicken Salad with Chipotle-Salsa Dressing

I decided to resurrect one of our summer favorites for dinner tonight - Mexican Chicken Salad with Chipotle Salsa Dressing. Too bad I didn't look back at my OWN recipe or I might have remembered the lime juice in the dressing and the avocado in the salad (I have 4 avocados and completely forgot them!). Ah well, it was still good.

However, I have to get DH used to grilling in this house. The grill is downstairs on the patio off the basement. He keeps coming upstairs to the kitchen and forgetting the food! In the old house, he was the master of perfectly grilled food, but in this house I've now had overcooked chicken and had a hamburger a few weeks ago that was so overdone I had to peel the burned parts off. Yes, I could grill it myself, but I would be daft to take over the one cooking chore that is DH's domain! My MIL made that mistake and her DH never grilled again!

Another reminder - I'll be working on getting the recipes posted for Virtual Recipe Club this weekend. But don't worry - if you don't make it in time, I'll still add your recipe. In fact, I can keep it on my side bar and continue to add recipes that I, or others, try at any time. After all, I hope to continue to try new wholegrain recipes. So far we have 5 participants, some with multiple entries. Hope we have many more by this weekend!

Soup Night (1/25/06)

The brain is functioning a bit better today. At the very least, I had the motivation to get to the grocery store and to get back into the kitchen. It's another rushed day, so this will be a rushed post so that I can get the kitchen cleand up and get into bed at a reasonable hour.

This tomato soup is very good. I could not bring myself to use the full amount of butter (I used about half) and did not use any cream (I substituted 2% because I needed to use some up, but it's great without any milk products). I served the soup with red grapes and whole grain bread spread with leftover pesto.

Creamy Tomato Soup

A different dessert

My brain is just not cooperating today. It was one of those days at work where I had a hard time getting anything accomplished. It doesn't help that interruptions are pretty much part of the job description for a school secretary - being constantly interrupted certainly doesn't help when you're feeling brain-dead.

I think it will be order-out pizza tonight. DH is out with the guys and tonight is American Idol night, so I'm thinking pizza sounds pretty good. I'll make it up tomorrow with a nice, nutritious dinner. I did eat well for breakfast and lunch, so it's not a total loss of a day.

I may not have a recipe on the stove tonight, but I will share a dessert recipe that my SIL made for us once. Never in a million years would I have tried this one myself - I thought it sounded very strange. However, since she was cooking, I was more than willing to sample! I'm much more willing to try something unusual if it's cooked for me - it's hard for me to commit to spending time in the kitchen if I'm not pretty sure I'll like it. Anyway, it turned out to be very, very good and both of my boys loved it too. Since then, I've tried to be more open about the things I'll try - you just never know.

Photo from Cooking Light

Indian Bread Pudding with Cardamom Sauce

Up to my elbows in...

...well, this is a polite blog, so I won't go there. Suffice it to say that Bailey is apparently experiencing intestinal distress and left us a present in our office that took me about 1 1/2 hours to clean up. Thank goodness for my Bissell carpet cleaner! While I tended to the carpet, DH tended to Bailey who was also up to his elbows, or tail, or something. Do dogs have elbows??? Poor Bailey got shut outside until DH got home, then he got sprayed with the hose out in the cold weather and then he got shut in our basement storage room to dry off. I'm sure he'll be thrilled when he finds out that he'll be spending some time there until we're sure he's better - much easier to clean up! Well, it was a mess, but I sure am thankful that he didn't do it in one of our bedrooms!



I'd love to talk about the great new recipe I tried tonight, but with all of the cleaning, it was grilled cheese on whole grain bread, baby carrots and apples for us. Not a nutritional failure, but not terribly exciting either. Instead, maybe I can talk about the plans for later this week. One item on the menu is meatloaf. I have never made meatloaf. When we first got married, I did not eat meat, so all of those things that new cooks often start out making - I didn't make a lot of it. That was probably a good thing - not eating meat forces you to be creative or suffer pasta every night.
(Picture from vickisander.com)

Other items on the menu are a new lasagna recipe from Cooking Light and the tomato soup recipe from Food Network that my mom made over Christmas. I will be going out one or two nights later this week, so I'm not sure what the plan is for those nights.

Tune in tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be up to my elbows in something good to eat.....

A Lazy Sunday

I had grand plans for getting tons done today - laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping and bill paying. Instead, I sat in front of the computer and made changes to my blog. It was fun, but now I'm feeling guilty. But I'll get over it.

I wasn't even sure I'd have time to cook anything, but I discovered a little pesto in the freezer and decided to make one of our favorite standbys, Pesto Salmon. I served it with a box of Near East Wild Mushroom and Herb Couscous and a spinach salad.

Photo from Cooking Light

Pesto Salmon

We served a new wine with dinner. It was an impulse buy at World Market, a place full of impulse buys. This month they were featuring Timbuktu Big Block Red for about $10. Apparently it is produced only for World Market. While I liked the wine very much, it did not pair well with the pesto salmon - too much interference - a lighter wine would have been better. The wine is flavorful and fruity, but a bit on the dry side.

WDB #18 - Bailey, the Great Protector

What would we do without our Great Protector? Here he his, ferociously barking and growling at something outside that is obviously a threat to us all.

What is it? A vicious neighborhood dog? A bold burglar, approaching our house in broad daylight? Something worse? It's, it's, it's..........

.......a bird. Can you see it? The little black form toward the top of the hill.

Well, we can ALL sleep a little better tonight, knowing that Bailey is here to keep us safe.

Check out the rest of the WDB #18 pups over at Sweetnicks.

2 Whole Grain Recipes

After a day of no cooking yesterday, I was definitely ready to get back into the kitchen this morning. I decided to try two recipes. One is a whole-grain scone recipe that I was a bit hesitant to try, but it sounded different and was outside of the box for me. The other is a recipe that I have tried before and really, really like, but I wanted to modify it to make it a bit healthier.

Multi-Grain Lemon-Poppyseed Scones

This is a recipe from Andrew Weil and Rosie Daley's cookbook The Healthy Kitchen. It was posted by a fellow Cooking Light participant on this whole grain thread. I have been meaning to try this recipe (along with many of the others on that thread) for quite a while now. It's a bit different than the typical recipe I am drawn to which made it even more intriguing. No reason for hesitation on this recipe - they are wonderful. The crumb is nicely tender and light and the scones have plenty of flavor and sweetness. In fact, they were sweet enough that I skipped the glaze (though it would have been pretty). According to the nutritional statistics, these have just over 5 grams of fiber - not bad for something that tastes like a sweet treat. I should add, however, that these are not like a typical scone. I've had scones of different textures, but I think of scones as flaky, melt-in-your mouth pastries. These have more of a muffin texture to them. Without butter, I doubt you can attain that flaky texture.

5-Grain Muffins with Fruit and Nuts

The second recipe has a bit of a story behind it. There is a health food store in a nearby town where I sometimes shop. One day I tried something that they baked on the premises called a Breakfast Cookie. The texture was more of a muffin in a cookie shape, but nonetheless, they were absolutely delicious. I was hooked and wanted more, more! Every time I went back to that store, they were out of these heavenly treats.

The next time they had them, I inspected the ingredients, determined to figure out how to make them at home. I turned first to my favorite recipe resource - the internet. I typed in Breakfast Cookie and came upon a few recipes and one stood out - this recipe from Bob's Red Mill. There were a few obvious problems. First, the batter was obviously too wet to place these "cookies" free-form on a cookie sheet. Since they were really the texture of a muffin anyway, I tried that first. The muffins had that great flavor that I was craving, but they did not rise much, not surprising given the copious amounts of butter in this recipe. And they were far too greasy. I didn't want the batter to go to waste, so I baked the rest in little mini-tart pans.

Clearly I needed to do some major tweaking, but I wasn't really used playing around with baked goods. Unlike regular cooking, there's a delicate chemistry in baking that isn't always forgiving. So, I turned to my favorite group of foodies/cooks over at the Cooking Light Bulletin Board and posted this thread. Val, a wonderful baker, quickly came up with a great adaptation for an actual cookie using these ingredients while I eventually came up with a working muffin recipe.

Today I tweaked the recipe a bit further. As much as I love, love, love the combination of brown sugar and butter, I am trying to eat as healthfully as possible. I'm not necessarily trying to go super low-fat, but I would like avoid saturated fats wherever possible. Therefore, I subbed canola oil for the butter today to see how things would turn out. The resulting muffins are very good, but not as flavorful and wonderful as the all-butter muffins. They are still a bit greasy too, so the fat could be cut back further. I will continue to tweak these - possibly trying a bit of whole wheat flour too - and see what I can come up with. Verdict - the oil version produces a more-than-acceptable muffin, but without the oohs and ahhs the all butter version inspires.

A Reminder....

...that the first Virtual Recipe Club is fast approaching. You have already seen some of my entries, or attempts at least, but I may have a surprise or two to throw in at the last minute....

I have a few entries already and look forward to many more!

Nothing doing in the kitchen today. DH's "surgery" went well and we were home by 9 a.m. I was looking forward to using my day off to do some cooking, but I got tangled up in trying to get our second computer networked to the our old computer and hooked up to the internet. After much swearing, grumbling and running back and forth between our local Staples, I finally met with success. It took quite a while and apparently zapped all my mental energy because I didn't even have enough left over to get creative in the kitchen. My mom said I must be patient, but I told her that it was dogged determination. When I work on a project like this, I get obsessed.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll feel renewed and ready to throw something together. What to make, what to make.....?

Easy Chicken Santa Fe and American Idol

That's what was on our menu/agenda for last evening, but I didn't get a chance to blog about it.

We didn't actually have Easy Chicken Santa Fe for dinner last night, but I did make some. We ended up going out to our local Mexican restaurant to celebrate our boys' excellent report cards - both received all A's. Or did we go because DH loves to go on Wednesdays for Margarita night?

It was a bit weird to go out to dinner and then come home and cook anyway, but it was for a good cause. I cooked the meal for a teacher at our school who is fighting cancer. He was diagnosed in 2003, the same year that my husband was diagnosed with colon cancer (long story, maybe for another time, but things are going very well now). We formed a bit of a kinship, trading war stories about chemo, radiation, etc. He's a young man, much too young (about 28?), and is having a very rough go of it. There has been very little time in the past 2.5 years where he hasn't been battling this disease - chemo, radiation, bone marrow transplant, stem cell transplant, you name it. Our staff at school help his family and him out (he has a wife and a 2-year-old daughter) with meals and babysitting. Sadly, they are having to face the possibility that this disease will not, in fact, go away and that he may not ever get better. Very sad. Their strength and positive outlook are very inspiring.

But back to the food......

Easy Chicken Santa Fe is a crockpot dish that I actually enjoy. I have nothing against crockpots, it's just that I don't often find things to cook in it that I think actually come out well. This dish, not surprisingly, is nothing fancy and actually doesn't even look all that pretty, but it's one of those dishes that almost everyone likes and it's so easy to put together. I have changed the original recipe, cutting back on the chicken, adding more salsa and sometimes doubling the beans. It's a flexible recipe, one that's easy to adjust to your own preferences. It can also easily be cooked on the stove (which is how I did it last night) and I'll include those instructions with the recipe.

Along with the chicken dish, I brought my co-worker a salad, tortillas and cheese (for the chicken dish) and Giant Chocolate Chunk Cookies.

It's becoming harder to blog these days. We got a second computer (though we're having trouble with our wireless network - too darn slow), but now the new seasons of 24 and American Idol are cutting way into my blogging time! :) But I'm totally addicted to both and will just have to find time to watch AND blog.

Nothing much is on tap for tonight. Once again we are overrun with leftovers and it's also Tae Kwon Do night for my oldest DS. Youngest DS and I will head to the YMCA for some much-needed exercise and then home for leftovers. Not sure what's on tap for tomorrow, but I have lots of time - I'm taking the day off to take DH to the hospital to get his chemo port removed. He hasn't had chemo since spring of 2004, but chose to keep the port in, just in case. Once that's over (it's an easy surgery, but I suppose that's easy for me to say), the day is mine, so of course my mind turns to cooking......

Coconut Curry

I had hoped to find a recipe for Sweetnick's ARF/5-A-Day Tuesdays, but it just didn't happen. I did have some of the leftover Dijon Chicken Stew with russett potatoes, but that was about it. I will, however, be making Chicken Santa Fe tomorrow - an easy, tasty crockpot dish which has black beans, which are on the ARF Top 20 list, in it.

I could not decide on anything for dinner up until the very last minute. Curry. Curry is such an easy dish to prepare and lends itself to so many different meats, seafood and vegetables. I don't really follow a recipe, I just use a few key ingredients and throw it all in as I go. It can be as complicated as you like, but even the just a few key ingredients are enough. The curry I prepare is not a traditional Indian curry, but more of a Thai curry, with coconut milk and lime juice.

I usually start out with a bit of crushed garlic, sliced red bell pepper, 1 can of light coconut milk, curry powder, some sort of heat (usually in the form of red chili paste) and lime juice. Beyond that, I add whatever vegetables, meats or seafoods we have on hand. Tonight I added zucchini, peas, and shrimp. Not only do I love the flavors, but it's a great way to get the kids to eat all kinds of vegetables. When I pair vegetables with a strong, spicy sauce like curry, they'll eat vegetables I'd never get them to eat otherwise. I served the curry over brown basmati rice for an extra nutritional boost.

It's a great weeknight stand-by - great flavor, great color, great nutrition but very little fuss. I will post a more organized recipe and hopefully a photo, sometime tomorrow.

Me in Fours Meme

But first, a review of last night's muffins.

They are very good. Not too sweet (I might like just a tad more sweetness, but since I'd like to avoid too much sugar, I might leave them as is), but maybe just a tad on the dry side. This may be due to the fact that I used regular skim milk instead of buttermilk. I will try them with buttermilk first and if that doesn't work, I might just try a bit more oil or maybe some fat-free yogurt. I will definitely be making these again. It's a nice base recipe that you can do just about anything with - adding any nuts, dried fruits or berries you'd like.

I've been tagged by Michele from Chef Michele's Adventures

Me in Fours Meme

4 Jobs I've Had

1.Dental Assistant/Receptionist
2. Pizza Hut Delivery - took orders over the phone - worst job
3. Retail Store Manager
4. School Secretary

4 Movies I Watch Over and Over

1. Top Gun
2. Steel Magnolias
3. Elf
4. Monty Python's The Holy Grail

4 Places I've Lived

1. Blauvelt, NY
2. Prince Frederick, MD
3. Bethlehem, PA
4. Temple, TX

4 Websites I Check Daily

1. Cooking Light Bulletin Boards
2. Sweetnicks
3. Culinary in the Desert
4. My mail

4 TV Shows I Love

1. 24
2. American Idol
3. Lost
4. House

4 of My Favorite Foods

A hard one......so much food, so little time

1. Pizza
2. Maryland Blue Crab
3. A nice, crusty bread
4. Any really good, chewy, buttery cookie

4 Albums I Can't Live Without

Another hard one - I don't tend to fall in love with whole albums....

1. The Rising by Bruce Springsteen
2. John Mellencamp by John Mellencamp
3. Stop Making Sense by Talking Heads
4. Come on, Come on by Mary Chapin Carpenter

4 Places I'd rather be

1. Any place warm, preferably with a beach
2. The East Coast
3. Closer to a bigger city
4. Europe, Asia - never been abroad

Fun! I'm tagging Sweetnicks and Culinary in the Desert - assuming they haven't already been tagged. Thanks Michele! :)

I need to start thinking about ARF/5-A-Day Tuesday (and event hosted by Sweetnicks) for tomorrow. Hmmmm.............tune in tomorrow..........

WDB #17 - Defiant Dog

Due to the game running past 8:00, I can sneak on here quickly before 24 and post this picture of Bailey being defiant. I told him to drop the sock and he came over and sat down, with his back to me, sock still in mouth.

A Sunny Sunday

We had unusually cold and snowy weather in December and now January has been quite mild - we've even reached the 50s a couple of times. However, we have not seen much of the sun. During the week, I get up at 5:30 and it's still dark by the time we leave for school at 7:15. This morning I got up at 7:30 (when did 7:30 become sleeping in????) and woke up to this glorious sight:

Not only was there sun, but it was beautiful. A nice start to the day! It was also dry enough to walk Bailey - it's been so cloudy and wet lately, that I try to grab any day that's dry to walk him (and me).

I have to talk up the Chewy Ginger Snaps. I always forget how much I love these cookies! This is coming from someone who used to think that if it didn't have chocolate in it, it wasn't worth eating. It has to be all that butter.....

Still on the lookout for good whole grain breakfast foods for our Virtual Recipe Club, I decided to make a recipe from this month's issue of Cooking Light. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to let you know exactly how they turned out, but they look very promising. I changed up the recipe a bit, mostly due to not having the right ingredients on hand, but nothing major. I'm looking forward to having one for breakfast tomorrow.

Whole Wheat, Oatmeal and Raisin Muffins

Photo from Cooking Light

Speaking of whole grains, I found some Kashi oatmeal at, of all places Walmart. I usually avoid Walmart like the plague because of the poorly designed parking lot and because I don't generally like their grocery section, but I happend to be there to get a birthday gift and was pleasantly surprised to see such a healthful choice in the cereal section. I bought the Heart to Heart Golden Brown Oatmeal and GoLean Creamy Truly Vanilla Hot Cereal. So far I have tried the oatmeal and liked it pretty well. The oat flakes did not seem to be whole, but rather in small bits - I prefer the texture of a whole flake that is a bit toothsome. Generally I try to make my own oatmeal in the rice cooker, but it's nice to have something that's easy to prepare at the last minute. I stopped buying the Quaker Oats brand when I read the ingredients and realized how much extra stuff they put in it!

Ah! Almost time for the start of the new season of 24. I was hoping to get my WDB post in for the week, but I guess I'll have to save my picture for next week.

Until tomorrow then.....

Me Want Cookie!

Yup, that's me.

Maybe it's all this healthful eating, but I'm in the mood for cookies. I was craving Chewy Ginger Snaps over the holidays, but then I hit a wall and experienced cookie overload. It's been at least a couple of weeks without a cookie, so it's time.

I posted this recipe on Cooking Light a while back. My friend shared this with me - she in turn got it from The Ginger People. The Ginger People sell crystallized ginger, but I bought mine from King Arthur Flour.

I'm not a huge ginger snap fan, but I love these. They have a great, chewy texture and I love the bite from the crystallized ginger. Yum!

Chewy Ginger Snaps

Our fridge is overloaded with this and that - a bit of Easy Layered Beans and Rice, a bit of A Very Veggie Soup, some leftover pizza, a cheeseburger and some green beans, so we'll be doing the leftover routine tonight. Maybe that will leave me with some cooking time for cookies AND muffins - we'll see.

Soup Night

Before I get started with what we had for dinner, I'd better talk about yesterday's post.

First, I must apologize. I didn't meant to imply I was making a recipe with this food item, I just thought it was pretty and unusual-looking. I have never seen one in this area, but I'll be on the look-out and I'll post if I get to try one.

So, for those of you who, like me, had not seen one before, it's a Dragon Fruit.

Now, on to the soup.

I was at work, eating my cold slice of pizza for lunch (it was supposed to be heated and accompanied by a salad, but it's a long story as to why THAT didn't happen), and I was reading my January/February issue of Cooking Light.

As I flipped through the recipes, I came upon the perfect recipe for tonight - Dijon Chicken Stew with Potatoes and Kale. Not only was it chilly and raining - perfect soup weather, but I had that kale leftover from Thursday night. I also needed to use up some potatoes from the big bag of organic potatoes I bought this week and I happened to have chicken thighs in the freezer. The only thing I didn't have was leeks - I substituted onion and shallots.

It was a tasty soup and my older son ate up every bite. I wasn't sure how he'd take to kale - it's quite different texture than spinach, the green we usually use in soups. DH liked it too - he's really come around in his vegetable/greens and is open to just about anything these days. This is very heartening for a veggie-lover among veggie-phobics. Perhaps soon, with more training and flavorful cooking, I'll be able to at least call them former veggie-phobes. :)

Dijon Chicken Stew with Potatoes and Kale

Photo from Cooking Light

Breadsticks

More fun with food.

Last night we cooked but didn't cook anything worth blogging about (though it was mighty tasty). Tonight we didn't cook at all, so it's time for another random post. I can't not post - I've been on a roll since just after Christmas.


The same week that someone posted the cashew picture over at Cooking Light, someone also asked what this was. I had never seen one! Perhaps it's pretty well known to many of you, but it was new to me! And I think it's pretty. Tune in tomorrow for more info.......

Have you ever seen...

....a cashew in its shell?

I was reading this thread on Cooking Light and came upon this picture of a cashew:

It is quite bizarre-looking and had someone shown it to me and asked me to guess what it was, I'm quite sure I'd never have guessed a cashew!

Later in the thread, someone else provided this information:

From www.uga.edu/fruit: Fruit The true botanical fruit is a nut, about 1" long, shaped like a small boxing glove, hanging below a fleshy, swollen peduncle called the cashew apple or pseudofruit. The cashew apple resembles a pear in shape and size, is juicy, fibrous, and astringent tasting. It has thin skin of either yellow or light red color, and yellow flesh. Fruit are borne singly or in small clusters, and mature in 60-90 days. The nut develops first, followed by the rapid swelling of the cashew apple in the last few weeks.The nut shell has an inner and outer wall, separated by a honeycomb tissue infused with caustic oil. Cracking the nuts fresh results in the oil contaminating the kernel, so nuts are roasted to drive off oils before they are shelled. The nuts are about 22-30% kernel by weight, and kernels are difficult to extract whole compared to other tree nuts.

If you would like to read more about the cashew, it is listed on the World's Healthiest Foods website.

That's it for tonight. I had plans fix a healthful kale recipe to go with our burgers tonight, but I'm just dead-tired. I did manage to get green beans and roasted potatoes on the table, but that's about it.

Time to go watch Lost and then head to bed!

ARF/5-A-Day Tuesdays (#2)

Pinto Beans

It is time once again for ARF Tuesdays over at Sweetnicks. If you just thought to yourself, "ARF-What?", check out this explanation.

Tonight's dinner was a regular for us and has been mentioned on the blog several times - Easy Layered Beans and Rice - but it just so happens to utilize one of the ingredients from the top 20 ARF list - pinto beans.

This dish is so versatile. It's a great way to use up leftover pieces of cheese - tonight I used up a small amount of fontina I had on hand, along with a little bit of pre-shredded mozzarella that I had leftover too. Tonight I added another small twist to the dish and added some cut up smoked turkey sausage - yummy! I served the casserole with Gala apples on the side to get it one more ARF for the day.

It was a good day for me as far as 5-A-Day goes too. I took some leftover A Very Veggie Soup to work - which had green beans, corn, peas, tomatoes, celery, onions and carrots. I would like to make this a weekly event where I make a large pot of soup or some other healthful meal on Sunday so that I can have plenty of leftovers to take to work (preferably storing them in the freezer so I don't have to eat the same thing all week long!).

Come to think of it, I also snuck in a very small amount of another ARF today with some cranberry muffins I had this morning. I was hoping to share that recipe with everyone today as well, but they did not come out as well as I had hoped, so I'm seeking out a better recipe. My hope is to emulate a muffin version of Panera's Cranberry-Walnut Bagels which I adore.

Tomorrow night we may throw some burgers on the grill (taking advantage of the milder weather), but I hope to try a new vegetable side to try to help make sure we get some vegetables in with our beef. Until then.......

Cooking with Rachael Ray

Tonight's dinner is from a cookbook I checked out of the library - Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Get Real Meals. She has written it as a low-carb cookbook, but that's not why I checked it out - I checked it out for some ideas for quick and easy meals. One thing I noticed right away is that most of the meals do not look quick and easy, at least not at first glance. Still, there are several that interest me and I'm willing to give it a try. I've heard similar complaints from others who say that 30 minutes is pretty unrealistic for many of her recipes, especially considering we don't have everything so conveniently at hand like she does on her show.

We tried the Italian Fonduta with Roasted Red Pepper tonight and it was a hit. It's a very mild cheese fondue - perfect for the kids. I've tried other cheese fondues in the past but the flavors were just too intense for them - I think it must be the Kirsch used in many fondues.

We served the fondue with steamed broccoli, cut up red bell pepper, crusty bread, sweet Italian chicken sausage and gala apple. The wine in the fondue was Lindemans Chardonnay South Eastern Australia Bin 65 2004 (Wine Spectator Rating - 85). The wine in the glass was Chateau St. Michelle's Chardonnay Columbia Valley 2003 (Wine Spectator Rating - 87). Yum!

Italian Fonduta with Roasted Red Pepper

She has several other fondues in this cookbook that I look forward to trying, or at least variations thereof.

From colorless to colorful.

Last night's dinner may have been pale and boring to the eyes, but tonight's dinner had plenty of color.

Among my many other cooking aspirations, I would love to come up with the perfect vegetable soup. Preferably a vegetarian vegetable soup. The soups I've tried, including tonight's, all seem to be missing something. We like to joke that what it's missing is some meat, like sausage. Still, I'm determined to come up with, or find a recipe for, a more delicious vegetable soup.

Tonight I decided to just wing it. I started throwing things together and came up with something that is certainly tasty, but just not quite there. I have some ideas for how to improve it, but it will take more tweaking.

This recipe makes a huge pot of soup. I purposely cooked a bit batch so that I could have leftovers - hopefully there's enough to freeze for another dinner and enough for a few lunches this week as well.

In any case, it was a great way to get a ton of vegetables in one meal.

A Very Veggie Soup

A meal devoid of color....

....but fortunately, not devoid of nutrition.

Sometimes I put things together and at some point realize that our meal has no color at all! More often than not, I tend to just throw a meal together based on what I have around the house. I do at least try to make sure there are varied textures and colors, but sometimes it just doesn't happen. Like tonight. DH said he wanted salmon for dinner, so I decided to try a new recipe from Everyday Food. DH also wanted to have rice. Check. Now on to the vegetable. I pick the vegetables. The only fresh vegetable in the house was cauliflower. So let's see, we have a pale salmon color topped with a pale mustard sauce, pale brown rice, and palest of all, cauliflower.

On the bright side, it was, at least, a nutritious meal and well-received to boot. The boys and DH turned up their noses at the mention of pureed cauliflower but they all liked it quite well. It's amazing what a little cream and roasted garlic can do!

Mustard-Glazed Salmon

Roasted Garlic Mashed Cauliflower

Brown Rice

How do you fit it all in?

There are soooo many things I'd like to cook or try to cook, but how do you find the time? I loved my time off this past holiday - it was so much fun to spend time puttering in the kitchen. Sometimes I think I'd like to make a career out of it, but, questions about being good enough in the first place aside, I'm afraid that doing it for a living would take all the fun out of it. Notice how I said I had fun "puttering". With a food business, there is no puttering, of that I am fairly certain.

We just had dinner at a local Italian restaurant. Their food is quite good, if not terribly creative. I'd love to see them take it up a few notches, but I know what they probably also know - it wouldn't go over as well around here as the basics they currently keep on their menu. Still, a few creative dishes thrown in here and there couldn't hurt, could it?

Tonight I tried their vodka sauce and it was quite good. That's on my list of things to learn how to make. I suppose I should add it to my list. But there are so many other things....where to find the time??? Sure, I CAN find the time, but then nothing else would get done. Couldn't I find some way to get paid to putter in the kitchen all day, trying new things????

Speaking of cooking, none of that went on in this house yesterday or today, but something will certainly be on the menu for tomorrow. Not sure what yet. I was thinking of some kind of pasta or pizza, but we had that tonight. Baking is also part of the plan - a wholegrain cranberry muffin that would combine Sweetnicks ARF/5-a-day challenge and my theme for Virtual Recipe Club this month.

Gourmet Sleuth

You have to love the internet. The answer to just about any question can be found, almost instantly. I use it when the name of an actor in some movie is on the tip of my tongue but I can't remember it and it's driving me crazy. I use it when I want to know the lyrics to a song I can't decipher. I use it when I want a phone number from the yellow pages, but I can't figure out what category they've decided to put a certain business under. Cooking is no exception. Not only can you find more recipes than you can ever make in several lifetimes, but you can find many other cooking resources.


Although I have a scale to help me with recipes that are written in grams (like Joe's Decadent Peanut Butter Cups), I like to have an idea of what that means in terms of cups, tablespoons, and ounces. Not only do I feel more comfortable with the familiar, it also helps me figure out if I have enough on hand to make that particular recipe.

While searching for conversions online, I stumbled upon Gourmet Sleuth. I know nothing about how reliable they are for ordering, etc., but I loved their Conversion Calculator. If you want to be even more accurate, they let you specify the food for an even more accurate conversion with their Cooking Conversions Calculator. Very handy.

I also like their Cooking Dictionary. It's somewhat like the Cook's Thesaurus. You type in a food and it will bring up a picture (if available), a definition, a substitution (if possible), nutritional info (not for every item) and related recipes.

I am definitely looking forward to exploring this site some more....very detailed and very informative.

What's for Dinner? (1/04/06)

Tonight's main dish is an oldie but goodie that I have not made in a very long while. Not sure why either, because it's easy and very yummy. Usually I serve it with green beans since they go so nicely with the sauce (and add nice color), but the green beans around here have been looking very sad. So, it was salad instead. The polenta was at my son's request - he LOVES this dish.

Raspberry-Balsamic Glazed Chicken

Gorgonzola Polenta

Salad

What's for Dinner? (1/3/06)

Mmmm...veggies, veggies and more veggies. Slowly but surely, I am finding more and more ways to get my veggie-phobic family to willingly eat more veggies. Even enjoy veggies. I have to admit that if you want to compare my boys to what is generally touted as the average American diet, they are probably way ahead of the curve. Only I don't want to compare our diet to the average American because from what I've read, the average American diet is pretty atrocious.

I have found that it's all in the wrapping. If I throw a bunch of veggies into a curry-based sauce - a sauce that we all love - they'll eat almost anything. If I just toss a veggie with some olive oil and garlic, maybe not so much. My husband will eat veggies because he knows they are good for them, but he's pretty phobic too. I'm the only one in the family who embraces veggies and even I have my ups and downs.

Soups have turned out to be another great way to get them to eat a miriad of things they might not otherwise tolerate. Tonight's soup was no exception. Whilst purusing the bulletin boards over at Cooking Light, I found a thread dedicated to soups. Although the Very Creamy Vegetable Chowder almost shouted at me (love cheese), I settled on the Tortellini, White Bean and Spinach Soup because it seemed more conducive to a quick, weeknight meal.

The soup was very good. It didn't knock my socks off, but it was a good, basic soup. Good, basic soups are always made more appealing if they are easy to put together, which this one was. We all agreed that a little smoked sausage (something low-fat like Healthy Choice) or other flavorful meat would boost the flavor quite nicely, but then it wouldn't be a vegetarian soup, and I would like to eat vegetarian more often. So, if I were going to kick up the flavor and keep this vegetarian, I might try some white wine or perhaps some vinegar. All in all, this one is a keeper. It's easy, it's a meal-in-one, it's good and my kids licked their bowls clean.

Tortellini, White Bean, and Spinach Soup

Picture from Cooking Light

Today's Recipes (1/2/06)

Photo from Martha Stewart

Lemon-Horseradish Sole

Gasp! A Martha Stewart recipe that uses the microwave? Is that legal over at MSO? I believe I read that Martha claims she doesn't even own a microwave, so I guess SHE'S not making this recipe at HER house. But I'm not Martha and this recipe looked too easy and too potentially yummy to not try. I was even able to find sole at the local grocery store. True, it was frozen, but it looked to be good quality and was in one of those vacuum sealed packages. Here in Indiana, most seafood comes previously frozen anyways. It was quite good, but I would add more horseradish and dijon next time. White wine added to the bottom of the dish before cooking would be nice too. Both the kids and the DH gobbled it up - always a plus.

I served this with brown basmati rice and broccoli (tossed with some of the sauce).

Chicken Stock

Although I wanted to do more baking today, I realized that I head back to work tomorrow and really needed to do something other than cook and blog. Darn. I did, however, manage to make some chicken stock. It's an easy thing to do, you just need to be around for a few hours to let it simmer. Our chicken carcass happened to be a storebought, roasted chicken with BBQ seasonings. I wasn't sure I should use a pre-seasoned carcass, but the stock turned out fine. I love having homemade chicken stock on hand, but one large pot of soup and you end up using most of what you just made. I guess I'll need to roast chickens more often or just by cheap parts used only for stock (like necks, etc.).

Virtual Recipe Club - More Details

Now that I've had more time to organize my thoughts, let's go into more detail about this.

1. We will pick a theme each month. If you have any suggestions for themes, please email me at lindrusso AT yahoo DOT com.

2. At the end of the month we will share our favorite recipe or recipes that fall under the theme for the month.

3. You do not need to have a blog to participate. Simply email me and I will post your recipe/write-up.

4. If you do have a blog, simply post your recipe or write-up to your own blog and send me a link. I will post the links toward the end of the month.

5. Please include photos wherever possible. Even if, like mine, they are not great photos. ;)

6. The recipe need not be original, but please credit your source wherever possible.

7. Wherever possible, especially when the theme is focusing on healthful recipes, please try to include nutritional information. If you do not have this information but would like to include it, I can run your recipe through Mastercook and send you the info to add to your post.

I have chosen to have us meet monthly because I would like to use this club as a motivation to try new recipes throughout the month, sharing my favorites at the end of the month. However, this is not required - you may simply show up at the end of the month and share your favorite tried and true recipe. If you choose to join me in trying out new recipes all month long (and I must admit, this may not happen all the time - I may choose to just show up too), you can post your favorites at the end of the month, along with a little write-up about what you tried, what worked and what didn't.

I may choose to change things up and sneak in extra "meetings" if a month seems too long, but we'll start it out this way and see how things go. If you have any suggestions or questions, please feel free to email me at lindrusso AT yahoo DOT com.

January's Theme - Whole Grain Breakfast Foods

Let's start off the New Year with an eye toward healthier eating. I get up at 5:30 a.m. on workdays, and I'm usually not very hungry and time is also a factor - trying to get the dog fed, kids up and fed, etc. I would love to have an aresnal of on-the-go or easy breakfast foods that would make the morning routine easier, but still healthful.

Here are the guidelines for January:

The breakfast food can be anything you like - muffin, bread, waffle, pancake, scone, granola bars - but it must contain whole grains of some sort, and preferably more than just whole wheat flour. Here's a list of just some of the possibilities (which I am limiting to those that are most commonly found in baked goods - any whole grain is fair game):

• whole wheat flour
• wheat bran
• oat bran
• wheat germ
• millet
• whole grain cornmeal
• oats
• buckwheat
• barley

Those are just a few. Here's a link to a great list of whole grains, each with a description and list of health benefits.

Along with whole grains, consider looking for recipes that have other healthful ingredients. Other ingredients that add a nutritional punch to breakfast foods:

• raisins
• carrots
• bananas
• zucchini
• nuts
• molasses
• berries
• apples
• flaxseed/meal

If you want more information on these or other foods, I found this website that offers VERY in-depth information on many different foods: The World's Healthiest Foods. Just look at this nutrient analysis and this write up on raisins alone!