Chocolate!

I think I need to change the title of my blog to The Sweet Notebook. Or at the very least, The Sweet and Savory Notebook. Hmmmm........

Today's sweet treat was yet another recipe from my favorite new cookbook, KAF's Whole Grain Baking. I don't think I've ever made so many recipes from one book so quickly. Figures it would be a baking book!

Chocolate Pound Cake

I'm afraid that I can't yet give this recipe a proper review. I spaced and forgot to measure my whole wheat pastry flour. Argh! Since the too-dry Peanut Butter Muffins, I have been weighing my flour, but for some reason I forgot to do it this time and sure enough, this was not as moist as I would expect from something called a "pound cake". When I think of pound cake, I think of something a bit more decadent, something rich and moist. This was a tad crumbly - a bit like a cakey brownie - but it had great flavor and I did not detect a whole wheat flavor to the bread (which in the case of a bread like this is a definite plus for me). I added the suggested chocolate chips and dried cherries and would definitely do this again - they take this from good to something really special.

So, darn it all, I guess I'll just have to try these again. I'm sure my family will be terribly disappointed. If weighing the flour doesn't make these moist enough, I might consider adding a bit of fat-free sour cream. Nothing makes for a rich, dense cake like sour cream.

Bread and Soup

As yesterday's pictures showed, it was a cold and snowy day here in PA. The boys and dog got outside to play in the first measurable snow we've had all winter. All in all we got about 2 inches - not a lot, but enough to make a few snow balls and to give us a 2-hour delay for school this morning. While the snow fell, DH and I warmed up the house with homemade soup and bread, and a roaring fire in the fireplace.

French Onion Beef Bowl

The soup, from Cooking Light, is one we've tried before, but it's been ages. I forgot how delicious this one is! It's a cross between a beef and noodle bowl and French onion soup. The broth is very flavorful with the addition of beef consomme and worcestershire sauce. The balsamic from the marinade also comes through gently, adding a nice dimension and brightening the flavors. We used Barilla's Angel Hair Pasta Plus instead of soba noodles, just one pound of beef, and Asiago cheese to make use of what we had on hand. We skipped the croutons - in a regular French onion soup, croutons or bread are a welcome addition, but with me making homemade bread and with noodles in the soup, we figured that was plenty of carbs for one meal. They weren't missed at all. Delicious. The kids loved it too.

Since DH was taking care of dinner, I was free to do some baking. I really wanted more of a whole grain Artisan bread with a firmer crumb and a crusty outside, better suited for dipping in soup, but I couldn't settle on anything. Finally, running out of time, I decided to make this sandwich loaf from King Arthur Whole Grain Baking.

My attempts at this bread for only marginally successful. To be sure, it was tasty, but it was a bit fragile and crumbly for my tastes. However, I cannot confidently say that this was a flaw in the recipe itself and not a flaw in my bread making techniques! It's been quite while since I tried my hand at making bread and even then, I don't recall making but 1 or 2 sandwich loaves.

Micro-Brewery Honey-Wheat Bread

The KAF book calls for instant yeast for virtually all of their bread recipes. There has been some confusion on my part, and on the part of others, as to exactly what instant yeast really is. Is it the same as Rapid Rise and/or Bread Machine yeast? Some say yes, some say no. The majority of what I have read, however, claim it is the same. Well, no wonder I have not been able to find "instant" yeast on the stores! It's been there all along, just under a different name. I've used Rapid Rise before, but I'm quite certain that I've proofed it, though that's not necessary and one of the conveniences of using it in the first place. Next trip to the store, I'm going to buy the Bread Machine variety since it comes in a container instead of packets, making it easier to measure out the desired amount.

Back to the bread. When I made the bread yesterday, I used regular old Active Dry Yeast (ADY). Since you have to proof ADY first, I skipped the orange juice and proofed my yeast in an equivalent amount of water. Since ADY seems to do best with warm liquids, I also warmed up my very cold, straight-from-the-fridge beer. The bread rose nicely and within the time specified in the recipe.

My biggest problem with this bread was how it looked. It seemed too poofy and flopped on top and was irregularly shaped - mostly because I didn't review my notes about how to shape bread before you put it in a loaf pan and I was in a bit of a hurry.

I really like the taste of this bread - slightly sweet and a little buttery with only a very faint hint of "beeriness" - although I used a light beer, not an amber ale. I'm afraid that my particular loaf would not do well at all for sandwiches - it's far too crumbly - but it's hard to say whether this is the true nature of this bread or if the crumbly texture is due to the relative inexperience of the baker.

In any case, it was easy to put together and gave me very little trouble, so even if it did not turn out perfectly, it was an enjoyable baking and tasting experience and I look forward to my next attempt. Only next time with instant yeast. Whatever that is.

White Stuff and some Cauliflower Soup

First.....the white stuff. I looked outside this morning to find big, fat snowflakes falling, something we have not seen much of this year. We've had a few dustings, but that's about it.

Just a few minutes later, the ground was covered in a pretty dusting of snow. They're not falling for much, but a few heavy bands here or there could give us a pretty coating, even if it's not enough for sledding or snowmen.

I've not been posting much, but we've been cooking away here - just not much in the way of new recipes to blog about. This week's theme seemed to be cheese - a little too much cheese - lasagna, quesadillas, pizza and a new soup - a cheesey, creamy, cauliflower soup from King Arthur Flour.

Creamy Cauliflower-Cheddar Cheese Soup

This soup is good, but it needed a little something, so I added a touch of cayenne to give it some kick - I tend to like a little spiciness with creamy dishes. It's also a little heavy on the cheese - it tastes great, but it made me feel a bit guilty eating it. I'd love to tweak it and come up with a lighter version. It was the perfect opportunity to use up the 1-pound bag of frozen cauliflower I had in the freezer. I'm not a huge fan of frozen vegetables, but I've been keeping them on hand for nights when I don't have fresh vegetables on hand - it makes it easy to whip up a quick dinner that is not entirely devoid of nutrition. Frozen cauliflower works quite nicely for this dish since texture isn't a huge issue, but I'm sure it would be even better with fresh.

I'm playing around with the label function in the new Blogger and may have gone a little label crazy! My intention is to set this blog up so that you can search for recipes using specific ingredients or cookbooks or chefs. I got a little ahead of myself and started labeling the posts before deciding that labeling posts is too confusing since I often talk about more than one recipe in a post. Therefore, for the most part, I will be labeling the recipes themselves, linking back to the post where I review the recipe. I thought Blogger was linking back for me, but that doesn't appear to be the case, so I'll be going back through all of my recipes and adding a link myself. Sure would be nice of Blogger did it automatically, but it seems to be very hit or miss........

DH is taking over the cooking tonight - whipping up a french onion soup with beef - so I have decided to use my free time to make fresh bread to go with it.........now I just have to decide which bread! Back tomorrow with the reviews..........

Making Changes.......

PHEW!

I was finally able to switch over to the new Blogger and am relieved that it went off without a hitch. It was MUCH easier than I anticipated.

With the new Blogger you can use really neat things like labels to categorize your posts - this is something I very much want to utilize in order to make this site more user-friendly. They also have a drag and drop utility for your template that makes things like adding links and inserting HTML code into your blog very easy. No more sifting through lines and lines of template because you can add and edit template content in neat little chunks - it's very easy, with no need to republish. No more watching dashes swirling around in that yellow triangle! No fears, though - you can still go in and tweak your template just as you could before - changing column widths, colors, etc. The new Blogger seems every bit as customizable, thank goodness.

However, in order to take advantage of all that new Blogger has to offer, you have to change your template over the new format and that means losing any customizations you have done. Sigh. Seems that with every technological advance, you must go a little backwards in order to make it easier in the end. I'm very confident it will be worth it.

I have spent the day tweaking one of my test blogs and I have most of it figured out - I have my columns lined up correctly, my header back in order and most of my colors changed, but there's still some tweaking to do with adding back in all the sidebar content, along with HTML code for things like Flickr, etc. I'll slowly be doing this over the weekend, so the blog may be a bit of a mess until it is complete.

I'll try to catch up with my cooking posts once this is all done, but for now, I'm going to plow ahead and try to get this done..............

The Griddler, KAF Whole Grain Baking and more........

I feel the need to spruce up my blog coming on. I hate it when that happens. It's a lot of work!

Nothing really big in the plans this time, but you never know - ideas and changes seem to snowball and next thing you know you've gone from adding a few links to changing your entire template!

I've tried to switch over to the new blogger, but I think that my membership with Food Blog S'cool is making that impossible. What I'd really like to use in the new version is the ability to create labels.

For instance, I've made recipes from the KAF Whole Grain Baking cookbook and I've made several recipes using my Griddler. It would be nice to be able to quickly assign each of these posts a label and then have them automatically appear on my sidebar, making it convenient for visitors to search for different recipes or posts using more than the simple recipe categories I have in place now. There could be labels for whole grains, specific ingredients, etc. Infinite ways to organize and make things easy to find.

However, from what I've read, you need to use one of the new templates in order to use the sidebar widgets. So, in order to do what I want, I need to cancel my membership with Food Blog S'cool and possibly re-tool my whole site.

Sigh. Not sure that's going to happen any time soon, but I can still spruce up a bit.

In the meantime, keep an eye on my "What's in my Kitchen?" section on the sidebar. I have been posting different items I use in my kitchen and hope to make a lot more progress on it this weekend, adding more bakeware, cookbooks, appliances and add a category for specialty foods that I really like to use as well.

Until I can start using labels, I will try to post recipes that are relevant to the KAF cookbook, the Griddler and other items under the appropriate category. For instance, you can find links to Griddler recipes here and hopefully later on this weekend, all of the KAF recipes will be linked under a cookbook section too.

Who knows what this plan will lead to..........it could be a whole new blog by the time I'm done. :)

Nutty for Oats Cookies

Someone stop me! I can't stop baking from the KA Whole Grain Baking!

Today I tried one of the cookie recipes that had me intrigued. Two of the cookie recipes in the cookbook call for oats, but no flour. I was very curious to see how this kind of dough would turn out. They have one that is a bit more like a traditional oatmeal cookie with butter, cinnamon, and nuts. However, the other caught my eye because it included peanut butter and chocolate, two favorites.

Nutty for Oats Cookies

The batter is quite wet, but these cookies do not spread, but turn out somewhat puffed. But I wouldn't describe this as a cakey cookie - it still has a nice crispness on the outside and a bit of chew. Not sure if this will still be true after sitting in an airtight container, but we'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out.

As I usually do, I reduced the chocolate chips - I really like the cookie flavor to come through - and 1 1/4 cups was more than enough for my tastes. The cookie is nice and tender on the inside, with a faint hint of peanut butter. Overall, a very nice cookie and a great choice for those who cannot tolerate wheat.

We have guests coming this weekend, so who knows what else I'll end up making this week - any excuse to bake some more. Maybe more cookies, some muffins and perhaps a yeast bread..............

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

Last night was Kids' Pick and they picked pizza. What toppings did they pick? Pepperoni? Sausage? Extra cheese? Nope. The youngest picked a caramelized onion pizza and the oldest requested a pizza topped with pesto, roasted red peppers, and fresh mozzarella. Yep, that's my boys!

I did put my own twist on the meal by trying out a new pizza crust from King Arthur Whole Grain Baking. You may well get sick of hearing me mention this book because I have only BEGUN to try the many, many recipes that catch my eye!

Herbed Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

This crust uses 100% white whole wheat flour, something I've never tried in pizza crust before. It was good, but the crust was a bit too soft and bready for me - I prefer a crisper, chewier crust. Still, it complemented the toppings we were using pretty well and had a nice flavor. I would not agree as the KA book claims, however, that you'd never guess it was made with whole wheat flour. For me, the whole wheat was quite prominent. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it was quite obvious that this was not a white flour crust.

I have to admit to messing up this recipe somewhat. My first error was to put the entire amount of flour into the first step when the recipe calls for just 2 of the 3 3/4 cups. My next error, or possible error, was using water that was most definitely several steps beyond "cool", it was downright cold. This probably factored into the fact that my dough rose quite slowly and I don't know that it quite doubled in size after 2 hours, but it was close. I don't know if any of these things would drastically effect the texture, but I'd like to follow the directions more exactly before making a final judgement on this crust.

Carmelized Onion Pizza with Fontina/Asiago Cheese

On the plus side, this crust was very nice to work with. It was a bit sticky during the kneading process, but my new silicone baking mat worked like a charm - I'm sure that it would have stuck like crazy to my old baking mat!

Pizza with pesto, roasted red peppers and fresh mozzarella.

Pizza making tip: I've been using parchment paper with my pizza crusts for quite a while now and was pleased to find this suggestion offered in the KA baking book. Maybe I'm on the right track after all! I pull off a large piece of parchment paper and spray it lightly with cooking spray. The oil makes it much easier for me to shape the crust because the dough moves easily over the slick parchment -without oil, the dough resists a bit. Once you shape your dough, it's then very easy to slide the parchment onto your pizza stone. You leave the parchment paper in place and use it to slide the pizza off the stone and out of the oven. One reason I really like this method is that I have no need to use cornmeal to keep the crust from sticking and I despise cornmeal on the bottom of my pizza (or bagels) and will do anything to avoid it!

Another reason my crust may not have turned out the way I'd like is that they recommend what looks like pre-baking the crust for 10 minutes at 375º. I really don't like pre-baking the crusts - the toppings tend to slide off so easily. However, prebaking would probably give me that crisper crust I was hoping for, so I'll give it a go next time.

I'll post if I make this again and achieve different or better results. I think at least one more attempt is in order before I decide if this recipe is a keeper or not.

More Whole Grains and a try at Falafel

Two new recipes came out of the kitchen yesterday.

First, another recipe from King Arthur's Whole Grain Baking, Maple-Walnut Bread. This bread calls for maple flavor, something I have not been successful in finding locally, so I had to order it from King Arthur. It would be silly to order a tiny 1-ounce bottle of flavoring and pay for the shipping, but I also needed their pre-cut parchment sheets and some mini-diced crystallized ginger. Side note: Their parchment sheets are great. They cost $18.50, but since I also use Silpats, these sheets last a long time in my house - I'd estimate that my first bunch lasted me over a year, but then again, I'm doing a lot more baking these days, so I'm not sure how long they'll last these days. Still, these are one convenience item that I think are worth every penny.

Maple Walnut Bread

But on to the bread. This bread has a subtle maple flavor that is pleasant, but not overly sweet. I would definitely recommend adding nuts for a nice textural interest - the walnuts are perfect with the maple flavoring, but pecans would be nice here too. I would also recommend using the maple flavor if at all possible - the flavor that comes through is fairly subtle and I think that leaving it out would result in fairly bland bread. The only change I made to the recipe was to use raw turbinado sugar - just another effort to step away from using refined ingredients. This kind of sugar is still too expensive for me to justify using on a regular basis, but I'd like to try to use it here and there and in this case, it seemed to work quite nicely.

Edited to add: I weighed my flour for this recipe and found that even though I was using King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour, the volume measurement was still almost a full 1/4 cup more than when I measured it by weight. Had I used the volume measurement, the bread most likely would have been too dry. This bread is just moist enough - could possibly a little more moist for my liking. I also cut back the walnuts to 1 cup and there seemed to be enough for my liking.

The next dish we tried is something I used to make way back in the days when I wasn't eating meat, but have not tried for a very long time. Originally I wanted to try the falafel recipe from the January issue of Cooking Light, but after reading the reviews, I decided that there were probably better recipes out there. I really wanted to try the recipe that Joe posted a while back, but I didn't have any dried garbanzo beans, so I decided on a different recipe, also from Cooking Light.

Falafel with Cucumber-Yogurt Dressing

This recipe was just okay. I felt the falafel were fairly lacking in flavor - I've definitely had better. I used the arugula and the cucumber sauce from the January 2007 recipe. The cucumber sauce was pretty good, but I'd really like to try it with a tahini-based sauce. So, next time it will be the falafel recipe that Joe posted, along with this tahini sauce from Cooking Light. One good thing - the boys seemed pretty receptive to falafel, so I'm hoping this can become something on our regular rotation once we find a recipe we really like.

Panini and a New Cookie

So last night it was more panini for dinner. This time, cheesesteak panini. We had some steak leftover in the freezer from doing fondue on Christmas Eve – not enough to make a meal out of it alone, but definitely enough to make sandwiches. I used the Griddler to grill the steak – about 4 minutes using it as a contact grill. For the sandwiches I added provolone cheese, horseradish sauce, and sautéed mushrooms and onions. Easy and very good. DS commented that the steak wasn’t right for an authentic Philly Cheesesteak – I told him that’s because this was “real” steak – not the lower quality, though admittedly tasty, shaved steak they use for a real Philly variety.

I’m trying not to bake as many sweet treats, but I couldn’t resist this recipe that I found over at the CLBB. Val posted a recipe for whole wheat chocolate chip cookies and I was very intrigued. Val bakes a lot, so I really trust and respect her opinion, but I was still skeptical – I’m so picky about chocolate chip cookies. Skepticism aside, I had to give them a try. They were everything Val said they would be – delicious. This recipe is very much like the Toll House recipe, both in ingredients and in taste. The white flour is replaced by regular whole wheat and reduced to 2 cups, there is only 1 egg instead of 2 and the salt is reduced to ½ teaspoon.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

If I were doing a blind taste test between these and Toll House, I’m sure I would pick up on the texture differences – these are not quite as tender as a Toll House – the whole wheat definitely adds texture – and they are a little crisper. Other than that, though, the taste is amazingly similar – with that wonderful buttery dough that I love so much. I love this dough so much that I don’t even want chocolate to interfere with it, so I reduced the chocolate chips to 1 cup and it was just right for me.

As Val said, these cookies still can’t be considered exactly healthy with all the sugar and butter, but it does move a step in the right direction by using whole wheat flour instead of refined white flour. I might try these with raw, unrefined granulated sugar in an attempt to make an even more wholesome cookie. Unfortunately, for my tastes, there’s no cutting down on the butter – it’s what makes these cookies taste so darned good.

Easy Salmon Recipe

Whoops missed a day. Between cleaning up after the dog at 1:30 a.m. (Why oh why can he never have accidents on the hard surfaces, but must instead aim for the carpet??? And why the new carpet and not the old????), getting a call to sub, and watching 24 and American Idol, I just didn't get to it. I even had a couple of posts up and pretty much ready to go! Ah well.

When I sat down to think up a rough menu for this week, I realized that we had not had fish in a while. Fish here can be very expensive, so it's not fitting very well into our budget, but salmon is almost always affordable. It's not my favorite, but the rest of the family loves it.

Salmon with White Wine Mustard Sauce

This recipe is from Cooking Light - looked easy and delicious and it most certainly was both. The boys even fought over who liked it the most! The only major thing I did differently was to cook the salmon in the oven at 400º for 20 minutes. I do not like cooking fish on the stove top - it stinks up the house for days. I supposed if I had a good vent, it would be one thing, but we have a microwave above the stove, and they don't do a great job at venting.

Another successful salmon recipe to add to our list! I think salmon is really growing on me. More than just tolerating, I have actually enjoyed the last few salmon recipes we have prepared.

Move over Bisquick...

...I got a better pancake mix.

Actually, I've been slowly banishing Bisquick from my kitchen over the past several years. My mom worked in a mill where they sell pancake mix made from flour they grind themselves. They were so good, I never wanted another Bisquick pancake again and pretty much never ate one again, even when my DH would occasionally whip up a batch. I also turn my nose up at most restaurant pancakes - ho-hum, yawn, boring! Except Whole Foods Market - we once had AWESOME whole grain pancakes in their cafe above their store in Chicago's Lincoln Park area - complete with raspberry syrup - now that's a pancake!

Homemade Whole Grain Pancake Mix

This recipe from King Arthur Flour's Whole Grain Baking is actually a recipe for a homemade pancake mix. You make up a big batch with all of the dry ingredients and a little oil - all you need to do is add buttermilk, egg and orange juice and fresh, whole grain pancakes are just minutes away. Since the mix uses whole grains and oil, it needs to be stored in the freezer.

Pancakes are one baked good that I actually prefer whole grain. The white versions can be very good - like this recipe that I found recently - but for me, nothing beats a the hearty whole grain variety. These particular whole grain beauties bake up lighter and fluffier than a lot of whole grain pancakes I've tried in the past, making them a good one to try on reluctant eaters. So throw out that store-bought pancake mix and give these a try - I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I can't wait to try the other pancakes in this cookbook - the Banana-Oat, the Triple Ginger, and the Buckwheat all look sooooo good. Maybe we'll even get adventurous and try the Blueberry-Corn.........

2 New Recipes

This weekend has been a good one for staying indoors and cooking. We're not getting the bad weather the central and western parts of the country are getting, but it's cold and wet and not very inviting outdoors.

Gingerbread

Yesterday I whipped up a quick and easy gingerbread recipe from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook I got for Christmas. They placed this recipe under the "cake" section, but I'd be more inclined to list it with the quick breads and muffins. It's something I'd eat for breakfast or a snack rather than dessert.

Anyway, it's a moist, flavorful cake with delightful, spicy bits of crystallized ginger throughout. I used crystallized ginger I found in the bulk section at Wegmans, but I think I prefer the crystallized ginger from King Arthur. If you're having a hard time finding good crystallized ginger, I highly recommend it - and KA sells it already diced - and from experience, I can tell you that dicing crystallized ginger is a pain in the neck.

Chicken Tagine with Lemon and Olives

For dinner, it was yet another recipe off of my list of "to try" recipes from the January issue of Cooking Light and it was yet another winner. This recipe is a little fussy for me - as much as I like to cook, I don't generally have much interest in dredging meat in flour and things like that, but for a weekend meal, I was willing to spend the extra time. I cooked only 6 thighs and the full amount of sauce. The sauce is very flavorful with the lemon and the olives. The cinnamon gives a depth of flavor without competing too much or being overly noticeable. The thighs turned out moist and succulent. Serving the chicken with whole wheat couscous was the perfect opportunity to use up the leftover can of chicken broth since the recipe only calls for one cup of broth. We rounded out the meal with a tossed salad. Delicious and satisfying.

Tonight, DH is taking over in the kitchen and will be whomping up a beef and barley stew. Mmmm...I can't wait. For now, I'm off to the kitchen to go try some whole grain pancakes from the King Arthur cookbook and will report back tomorrow.............

Good Soup, Great Side

I might have to give lentils a rest. When I served dinner, my youngest asked me if this wasn't the 10th time I had served lentils in the last month or so. Definitely an exaggeration, but I did go from never fixing lentils, to trying 3 lentil soups in rapid succession.

Chunky Red Dal Soup

This lentil soup, from January's Cooking Light, is easy to put together and the chickpeas were a nice addition. While I did like the smoky flavor and the hint of heat, it was probably my least favorite of the three we've tried recently. Still, it's another easy and nutritious "pantry" kind of meal where you're likely to always have the ingredients on hand.

So, the soup was good, but the side dish was great. This is another recipe from Peter Berley's Fresh Food Fast. This cookbook also brought us my new favorite soup, the Lemon Lentil Soup with Spinach. My SIL fixed this cauliflower side dish along with that soup for us at Thanksgiving and I've been wanting to fix it ever since.

Cauliflower Gratin with Tomatoes and Feta

I liked it even better than I remember - the tartness of the capers and lemon go so well with the salty, savory feta. Sometimes vegetables dishes don't make good leftovers, but not so with this dish - I enthusiastically polished off all the leftovers for lunch over the last two days and wish there were more. It's rare that I actually crave a vegetable dish. But the best part? My oldest son piped up during dinner "Good cauliflower dish, Mom.". I hear that for my main dishes fairly frequently, but when such a thing is uttered for a vegetable side dish, it is high praise indeed.

More Comfort Food

Fettuccine Alfredo - yet another comfort food dish and yet another Cooking Light recipe to come out of our kitchen this week, also from the January issue.

Some people find Fettuccine Alfredo to be too rich. I wish I was one of those people. Me, I love the stuff and could eat a really big plate of it. Fortunately for my health, I don't do that very often. Knowing how much butter, cream and cheese is in most restaurant variety alfredos, I usually cannot bring myself to order it. An example - according to Calorie King a serving of Fettuccine Alfredo at Macaroni Grill is 1130 calories and 81 grams of fat. Now, part of the problem is that it's probably a huge portion - maybe 2-4 meals worth of food. But even so, if you look at percentages, you're still talking 65% of the total calories coming from fat which is way over the recommended 30% or less. What's worse, the fat in this dish is largely saturated, accounting for 51 grams of the total 81 grams. While I don't shy away so much from healthy fats like olive or canola oil, I do try to limit the saturated fats found in butter, cheese and such. Emphasis on the word "try".

Fettuccine Alfredo

While this lightened version certainly cannot be compared side-by-side with a full-fat alfredo, it is still a cheesey, creamy dish with a surprising amount of flavor. You'll get the best results if you use Parmiggiano Reggiano. I used a Parmesan cheese that was a little cheaper and while it was still good, it would have been much better with the real thing. I also used full-fat cream cheese because that's what we had on hand, but I'm quite confident that the less-fat cream cheese would work just as well. I also used skim milk instead of 1%. Cooking Light recipes tend to call for 1% or 2% milk quite a bit, but we only drink skim and since milk just doesn't keep well, I find it tiresome to run out and buy different kinds of milk every time a recipe calls for something other than skim. I will sometimes up the fat a little bit elsewhere by maybe adding a bit more butter or a little more cheese. Knowing that this dish would need flavor where it wasn't getting it from fat, I upped the garlic to 3 cloves.

One thing to note - this calls for 8 ounces of pasta for 4 servings, so the servings are on the small side (especially since there are no add-ins such as meat or vegetables). Still, if you're practicing portion control, it's plenty of pasta. We served it with a big bowl of spinach salad - eating a large salad is quite filling, making a large portion of pasta unnecessary. However, if you have a crowd that will want a big old plate of pasta, you might want to double the recipe.

Comfort Food without the Guilt

One Pan Whiskey Flavored Pork Chops

This dish is an old favorite that really hits the mark for those comfort-food cravings. To speed things up, I cook the pork chops completely on the stove, skipping the one-hour baking baking time in the oven as written in the original recipe. The flavors probably meld a bit better with a slow bake, but it works quite well on the stove and the added one hour cooking time just doesn't seem worth any small benefits that might come from it.

The only other thing I really change about this recipes is to use light sour cream instead of fat free. This does add a few fat calories, but fat free sour cream has no flavor and the only place I like to use it is occasionally in light baking. Even with the added fat of light sour cream, it's still a dish that goes easy on the added fat, instead of using gratuitous amounts of butter and/or full fat sour cream.

The flavor is reminiscent of a stroganoff, another comfort food favorite. Add a side of smashed potatoes and you're in comfort food heaven............

Genius!

That's what DH proclaimed the creator of the sauce in this dish to be - a genius.

Yet another recipe from January issue of Cooking Light and yet another winner. This time, it was chicken dish with a guacamole sauce. It was the guacamole sauce that got DH so enthused - and there was lots of it, a very generous amount for just 4 servings. While I thought it was very good, I don't think I flipped for it quite as much as DH. This sauce calls for sour cream - something I've never used in guacamole before. It gives the sauce a nice, light, creamy texture. If I were craving guacamole for chips, I might not want the sour cream in it - I don't like too much to interfere with the avocado - but for this dish, it worked very nicely. The scallions were just a tad too much, but the heat from the cayenne was just right. The spiciness of the guacamole and savory cumin flavors worked nicely with the sweetness from the brown sugar. The brown sugar was also responsible for the gorgeous browning of the chicken.

Cumin Dusted Chicken Breasts with Guacamole Sauce

I laugh when I see some of my photos - like this one. You can tell when we're having something that makes just enough for dinner, like these chicken breasts. If I have leftovers, I can spend as much time as I need taking photos after dinner, maybe even taking time to plate it up nicely. If I'm serving the whole thing right away, I only have a little bit of time to snap a few quick pictures, never really knowing if the shot is going to come out right or not. Sure, there's a viewfinder, but that thing is small - photos that look in focus on the viewfinder often look terrible when I get them on the computer. Ah well, in the end, the point of food is to EAT it really, not take pictures of it..........

Speaking of the January issue, check out what Jennifer from Musings is cooking up from this issue...........

Barley Risotto

Still trying to get caught up on recipes...........here's one from Friday night........

Barley Risotto with Roasted Winter Vegetables

This is one of the dishes from the new Cooking Light that caught my eye. It doesn't exactly come together quickly, but it's well worth the effort. I'm not a big fan of parsnip, but my DH loves it, so I knew this was a recipe that he would be more than willing to try - he loves barley too. Not to disappoint DH, but I'd be inclined to use only one parsnip next time and up the cauliflower - parsnip is so strong that it threatens to dominate the entire dish. The colors are lovely - I highly recommend using an orange bell pepper if possible - it really lends the dish an autumnal feel (even if the title does say winter vegetables). In fact, between the flavors and the colors, I think this dish would make a great Thanksgiving side.

The pecans add a nice crunch and the parsley adds a welcome splash of green. The only modification I made, other than cutting down a bit on the parsnip, was to use vegetable stock - it really seemed better to keep this dish strictly vegetarian by not using chicken stock. This risotto did not turn out as creamy as a rice risotto - I decided to keep it as is, but you could probably add a bit more stock if you want a creamier result, or try adding it a little bit at a time as they do in traditional risottos to see if that technique produces a creamier risotto .

This would be a great dish to keep in mind when you have a smattering of vegetables that you're not quite sure what to do with - if you can roast it, you could probably use it in this risotto.

Loving Lentils!

After trying and loving the Lemon Lentil Soup with Spinach recently, I was more than willing to try more new lentil recipes. A member posted a recipe for Spicy Red Lentil Soup on the CLBB recently and I knew I had to try it. This recipe is from Vegetarian Times - a site that I definitely need to spend a little time exploring.

Spicy Red Lentil Soup

Mmmm...it's very good. It uses a new-to-me ingredient called tamarind paste. I've seen it listed in several Indian recipes but had never tried it. (I must say *AGAIN* that I *ADORE* having a grocery store that has just about everything I ever need.) Actually, while the recipe called for tamarind paste, what I found was tamarind concentrate and apparently there is a difference. I would liken tamarind concentrate to sort of an acidic molasses. It's thick and dark, sour with a bit of sweet, providing a depth of flavor and color to the soup.

This soup is reminiscent of a coconut curry - very flavorful and very easy to throw together. The family loved it and even went back for seconds. I can see this soup easily fitting into our regular rotation since it's a cinch to throw together and very easy to keep the necessary ingredients on hand.

I didn't blog the last couple of days, so I'm still trying to get caught up on recipes. Next up, barley risotto..............

Help! My blog has dropped off the face of the internet.....

...or so it would seem.

I'm once again asking folks out there for a little help.

I noticed that sometime during or after the holidays, hits to my blog dropped off considerably. At first I thought maybe it was just people suffering from a post-holiday slump - maybe they weren't doing a whole lot of recipe searches. However, I noticed that I am now getting maybe 1 or 2 hits a day from Google searches and that's it! I used to get many, many hits from Google searches.

I decided to check for myself and sure enough, where my blog used to be on the first page of search results for certain things (like gorgonzola polenta or other specific recipes), I am now not showing up until farther down the line or not at all. When I do show up, I'm shown as a "supplemental result" which means that I'm no longer in the main index. Not really sure what that means except that it's not good and I definitely need to be in the main index.......

I am currently reading Google and trying to find out what, if anything, I can do to correct this, but I thought I'd ask you all if this has happened to anyone else. Any advice at all????????

My blog doesn't have a very large readership and it's only a hobby for me, but if it's going to show up in searches any longer, it makes my efforts seem somewhat in vain. Sniff. Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer..............

First new recipe of 2007!

The first new recipe of 2007 comes from my new King Arthur Whole Grain Baking. As much as I loved baking over the holidays, I've decided that my baking needs to turn away from cookies and all that saturated fat, to something more healthful like whole grain breads and muffins and such.

Thumbing through this cookbook, I saw that it called for quite a few types of flour that I don't keep on hand, so on my last trip to Wegmans, I stocked up on a few that seemed to pop up in quite a few yummy-sounding recipes. I don't generally like to get a lot of specialty ingredients that end up being used for just one recipe and then sit around, but there were enough recipes calling for barley flour, oat flour, whole wheat pastry flour and buckwheat flour, that I felt comfortable buying them, at least as a start.

Peanut Butter Muffins

So many recipes caught my eye that it was hard to decide what to try first, but I settled on peanut butter muffins. I tried a PB muffin a while back and while it was a beautiful muffin with a nice crown and light, delicate crumb, it just didn't have much flavor. I was hopeful that this recipe would turn out better - to keep it healthier, I skipped the chocolate chips and the glaze.

The muffin rose beautifully, but unfortunately, it turned out a tad dry, but I think there is still hope. The recipe describes this as a very moist muffin, which mine as not, so I decided to weigh the flour. KA gives both cup and ounce measurements for flour and I remember reading that flours can vary greatly among between brands. Sure enough, I reached 7.5 ounces at 1 3/4 cups instead of 2 1/4 cups. So, I'm not giving up on this recipe yet - I'll try it again with less flour - and I will weigh my flour from now on - at least when a recipe provides a weight measurement.

Last night we used the Griddler to grill up some more panini. I made a sandwich version of a Caprese Salad with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, fresh basil and a bit of olive oil and balsamic vingar. DH and the boys loved them (me too!) and were looking for more. They wanted me to make them again tonight! Sorry, the sandwich was calling my name, so there was no time to check photo quality, so I was stuck with what I got and it wasn't great. What can I say? Sometimes you have to sacrifice a good photo to actually get a chance to enjoy the food...........well worth the price.............

Cooking Light - Jan/Feb 2007

The latest issue of Cooking Light arrived last week, and here's what caught my eye:

Main Course:
Escarole with Bacon and White Beans
Smoked Cheese Pasta Bake My Review!
Chicken Tagine with Lemon and Olives My Review!
Rosemary-Scented Lentils and Sausage
Pork and Vegetable Stir-Fry with Cashew Rice
Fig and Blue Cheese-Stuffed Pork Tenderloin
Beef with Spicy Cocoa Gravy
Falafel Pitas My Review!
Smothered Pork Chops with Thyme
Cumin-Dusted Chicken Breasts with Guacamole Sauce My Review!
Barley Risotto with Roasted Winter Vegetables My Review!
Fettuccini Alfredo (I may have made this back when it originally came out....can't remember) My Review!

Soups/Stews:
Chunky Red Dal Soup My Review!
Smokey Barbecue Chili
Dal with Ghee, Cumin and Mustard Seeds

Sweets:
Mudslide Cookies

Well, that's it. I have the Cumin-Dusted Chicken Breasts and the Barley Risotto planned for this week and I will post as soon as we try them.

I only made 3 recipes from last month's issue so far, but I don't try to cook my way through an issue the way I did at one time, I cook based on whatever sounds good at the moment, what fits with what we already have on hand, and what fits our budget. Things that looked great at the time I made my list, may not grab my interest until sometime much later on, or I may never make it, no matter how good it sounds. What can I say, I'm fickle..........

Any other CL fans want to share what they'd like to cook from this current issue? Just send me and email or leave a comment and I'll include a link here.

The Hits from 2006

Before moving onto 2007, I thought it might be fun to look back at 2006. A member over at the CLBB asked how many new recipes we tried in 2006. I never did religiously track every recipe I tried until I started blogging, so if not for this blog, I'd have no idea. I know that a few recipes fell through the cracks and did not get blogged about, but I think this total is close to accurate. Intrigued by her question, I went back and looked through my archives, month by month. What I found was very interesting:

January - 16
February - 15
March - 11
April - 1
May - 1
June - 1
July - 4
August - 3
September - 13
October - 25
November - 10
December - 19

Can you tell when our lives turned to chaos by the number of new recipes I tried?? I was still doing some cooking April through August, but I relied heavily on quick, easy and tried and true. I was also shocked at how little I posted to my blog during those months - I almost stopped blogging entirely.

Though it was chaos around here, it is also true that I simply don't cook as much during the summer months, at least not from new recipes - I tend to just throw stuff on the grill a lot, using whatever happens to be hanging around - I prefer a much more casual approach to cooking when the weather is nice. I also don't bake much in summer and new baking recipes probably accounted for quite a large percentage of my new recipes. Another factor in my overall total is that I do a lot more cooking by just winging it and I don't always write down what I do - I'm still cooking and trying something new, just not necessarily following a specific recipe.

Anyway, my total was somewhere around 119. If you average that out over weeks, it's about 2 per week. I remember a time when I was trying closer to 3-5 per week. However, trying so many new recipes every week is not only time-consuming, but it tends to bust the grocery budget. Cooking from what's on hand can save time and money.

It would be kind of fun to list all the recipes we tried this year, but I think we'll just highlight our favorites (I have starred my picks for top 10):

Creamy Pea Soup

***Whole Wheat, Oatmeal and Raisin Muffins***

Ginger Carrot Muffins


***Very Creamy Vegetable Chowder***


Shrimp Florentine with Caramelized Garlic


Spinach Salad with Egg, Bacon and Goat Cheese



***Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake with
Cream Cheese and Butterfinger Frosting***


Salmon Packets

***Asian Barbecue Chicken***

Spinach Lasagna


Crispy Mozzarella Sticks


Black Bean and Chorizo Chili


Fig and Goat Cheese Crostini


***Prosciutto Rolls with Arugula and Figs***


***Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies***


Peanut Butter Brownies

***Butternut Squash Risotto***

Ginger-Glazed Salmon

Sesame Roasted Green Beans

***Italian Sausage Soup***

***Lemon Lentil Soup with Spinach***


Chicken Tikka Masala


Peela Gobi


Pumpkin Cinnamon Streusel Buns



Grammy's Chocolate Cookies


Dark Chocolate Cookies


***Farfalle with Creamy Wild Mushroom Sauce***


Russian Tea Cakes


Rocky Ledge Bars


Onion and Fontina Beer Batter Bread

Well, that about does it. I'm happy to say that looking back, most of the recipes we made were good with very few actual out and out duds, but some are definitely better than others. I don't tend to go back and make the so-so ones again, unless they are very quick and easy and I'm running out of options. The list above are recipes that I either have made more than once or would happily make again.

Now, on to 2007. This recap has inspired me to keep a better list of what we try in 2007. What were your favorites of 2006?

Happy New Year!

Happy 2007!

I do have a few resolutions - like getting back to an exercise and healthy eating program and maybe even my fitness blog - but I hate to think of them as resolutions, it sounds so cliché. It IS cliché, but also somehow appropriate to think of the New Year as a vehicle for starting over. More than a resolution, however, I have a New Year's wish. A wish for no change of address, job stability and financial security! We've had enough upheaval the last 3 years or so, I'm definitely ready for a little hum-drum.

I have several appetizer recipes to share from last night. When we don't go out for New Year's Eve - meaning we don't get a party invite of some sort - we like to cook up a bunch of appetizers and just hang out playing games with the kids. And in the case of DH And DS, watching football.

As with our Christmas Cookies, I let each of the boys pick a favorite appetizer they would like me to make and then I threw in a few new ones to try.

DS#1 requested an old favorite, Mushroom Crescents. These are a little bit time-consuming, but they are sooooooo good and well worth the effort. I had him help me to speed things up - he did all of the dicing and sauteeing and then helped assemble the crescents.

Next up from DS#2 is one of those low-brow appetizers (or what's a nicer word - unrefined?) that makes you want to turn up your foodie nose - what my SIL calls Polish Surprises, but I will rename Cheese and Sausage Toasts. The things is everyone loves them and then you try one and against your better judgement, you reach for another and so on. I think it's the only time I ever buy Velveeta! These are a great kid-friendly recipe that are super easy to throw together and easy to keep on hand in the freezer. They'd make a great Super Bowl appetizer too. If you like things spicy, try them with hot pork sausage or a combo of sweet and hot. They may taste good, but I have to admit, they look kinda gross and do NOT photograph very well.........

DH's request is one I reviewed here recently, Cajun-Buffalo Chicken Wing Dip. This time, however, I did not layer it, I mixed the chicken and cream cheese - when I layered it last time, I found that I was not getting even bites of chicken and cream cheese and found that I really wanted them to be blended together.

One of the new recipes I picked to try did not go over all that well - Parmesan Stuffed Dates Wrapped in Bacon. Although this idea of bacon-wrapped dates was new to me, I found through reading the reviews that this has been an appetizer favorite for years and years, kind of like deviled eggs or pigs in a blanket. Still, it was new to us, so we gave it a shot. The combo of flavors works pretty well together, but it simply did not wow us. I can't really put my finger on it, but something just did not work for us and I suspect it was the the texture and/or flavors of the dates that we did not find particularly appealing. Still, it was very easy and fun to try.

Lasty, I chose this super-easy puff pastry appetizer - Red Pepper and Boursin Tarts - mostly because it would make use of some Boursin cheese we had leftover from our holiday noshing. The recipe calls for cutting a circle out of the puff pastry, but that seemed an unecessary waste of perfectly good and perfectly delicious puff pastry, so we opted for a rectangular tart. I used bottled roasted red peppers in place of sauteeing fresh and this worked great and made it even easier to throw together. The simple flavors work very nicely together and the ease of preparation makes this a great appetizer when you're in a hurry or need to balance out the more difficult recipes with a few easy ones.

Next year, I will remember to get a little nutrition in by making a dip to serve with a bunch of raw veggies. Definitely time to get back into the exercise routine after all of the cookies, appetizers and other holiday fare. But it was worth it.....

Wishing everyone out there a wonderful and joyous New Year!