chicken + veggies

A bit boring tonight. I grilled some chicken and slathered on some of Stubb's barbecue sauce. it was overlooked. *slump*

The veggies were quite good though. I fried up some onion, purple cabbage, red peppers and garlic and topped it with fresh-from-my-garden parsley.

Apologies for my crappy picture.

post-conference junk

hotdog with mustard
two spanish olives
cocoa roast almonds by emerald nuts (oh yeah!)

Nutrition-wise, it sucked on all fronts, but I just got back from a Women of Faith conference and I was tired. Exhausted even. (Plus, my mom made it and I wasn't about to complain when I had no inkling or oomph to get off my tired tush-meister.)

yummy mcyummerson

Okay. Technically this isn't dinner in and of itself. I know. But we had it for dessert one night in the past and I HAD to share it with you.

We've recently reduced our carbohydrate intake and in seeking out new recipes, I discovered All Day I Dream About Food. The author, Carolyn, is diabetic and creates all sorts of delectable tasties.

Lots of people make low-carb recipes, but hers tend to be real food and not a lot of fakey-fake stuff. Yay! Of course this recipe I use to introduce you to her has sugar-free pudding. Not my idea of honest food, but it's so good, I'm willing to bend.

Behold! The Low-Carb Nanaimo Bar of Delicious Tastiness.

I'm telling you, this thing is awesome! I accidentally messed up the recipe the first time I made them. Correcting it on the second round, we found that we liked the 'mistake' better. After finishing the bottom chocolate layer and cooling it, I realized I forgot to put the coconut in. Instead I opted to throw in half the amount with the middle vanilla pudding layer. (I was afraid the entire amount would be too much for the pudding to handle.) Ultimately it ended up giving the coconut flavor more stage-time, rather than the chocolate overpowering it.
I couldn't recommend this recipe more. I would make it if we weren't eating low-carb. And that's high praise, buh-lieve me.

Original recipe here.

green beans and a casserole

This was aptly named "Sausage Casserole." Creative, huh? It was also from Extreme Lo-Carb Cuisine. Mainly an egg, sausage, cream cheese, cheesy cauliflower (yes, cauliflower, again) mixture. It was a good, comfort food-type dish.

I served it with my usual garlic green beans. (Green beans steamed and then finished off in a frying pan with garlic.)

grill night

I grilled pork chops and slices of zucchini. I love, love, love grilled zucchini. It is my most favoritist way to cook that vegetable.

I still need to work on my pork grilling skills. They are definitely lacking. I overcooked the beautiful little guys. They look just delicious, but taste-wise they were just okay.

good ol' steak

This was a super simple meal. No recipes. We ate grilled steak topped with sauteed mushrooms and onions, green salad and steamed cauliflower with cheese sauce. I made the cheese sauce with cream cheese, some heavy cream and cheddar cheese. It was delicious. In fact the whole meal was rather high on the flavor scale. Mmmm, makes me hungry writing about it.

Fake-a-what?

Okay, the name of this recipe was a little cheesy (pun intended). When you're eating low-carb, it seems like everyone makes the missing starch out of cauliflower. Need potatoes au gratin? Use sliced cauliflower. What if I need rice? Just put cauliflower in your food processor. And mashed potatoes? You guessed it. Pureed cauliflower. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

Tonight it worked. Pictured above is Fake-a-Roni and Cheese from the Extreme Lo-Carb Cuisine cookbook by Sharron Long. (I picked it up at this wonderful little local bookstore called BookWorms.) It's supposed to be a substitute for that southern favorite, homemade macaroni and cheese. And the recipe called for cauliflower. Now I wouldn't say it would fool anyone, but if you think of it as its own dish, like a cauliflower au gratin, it was very good. Cheddar, sour cream, cauliflower and hot dogs (Hebrew National, of course) work well together.

For dessert I made these little creme puffs from SugarFreeSheila.com. She calls them "Bottom-of-the-Ice-Cream-Cone Creme Puffs. Now nothing can compare to a true, authentic creme puff. BUUUT, if you can't have one, these are okay. Her recipe said to put the batter on a cookie sheet and that didn't work for me. (It was reeeeally runny.) But I put it into a mini-muffin pan and that worked well. Also she says 450 degrees for 40 minutes. Yeah, no. I took mine out around 18 or 20 minutes I think. They weren't the best, but they were a decent vehicle for the creme. The creme was super-delish.

All together, a very good meal.

meatloaf and salad

Okay, I'm writing this June 4th and we ate the pictured-at-right dinner April 19th.

This is what I remember:

1. The meatloaf was low-carb and topped with bacon.
2. The idea was great, the reality was not impressive.
3. The meatloaf was rather bland and the bacon wasn't able to help.
4. I got the recipe online.

I can't remember where I got the recipe specifically, but because it ended up being a culinarily-wasted night, I'm not sad except that I can't warn you from it should you stumble upon it. Definitely NOT a keeper.

biscuits and gravy

This is deliciousness personified. Well, personified isn't truly accurate is it? Howbout deliciousness incarnate? Nope, that's talking about something being given a human body as well. Sheesh. There goes my attempt at superlativeness.

Just know that my favorite breakfast in the world is sitting on that black plate to the left. Biscuits and gravy. For precision it must be homemade biscuits with homemade sausage gravy. In reality I could just eat a bowl of the gravy and be perfectly content.

I'm not too picky about the biscuits. Usually we eat the yogurt biscuit recipe from Nava Atlas' The Vegetarian Family Cookbook because you just mix the ingredients. (I hate cutting fat into flour aka traditional biscuits) But as far as I'm concerned, a biscuit is merely the vehicle bringing the heavenly ambrosia of sausage gravy to my lips.

Gravy for us is such:

1. Brown 1 lb of sausage in a soup pot. (I make a lot so I use my 6 qt soup pot. Also, we normally use turkey sausage, but any ol' type will do.)
2. Melt 1 stick of butter with the sausage.
3. Add the equivalent amount of flour to the amount of fat in your pot. With turkey sausage you only need to add a heaping 1/2 cupful. With pork sausage you would need to add a bit more since it has more fat. Just add enough flour so that all the fat is absorbed by the flour and the flour is all wet. (A picture would be nice here, wouldn't it? "Hey, Blog Author! Get your act together and get a 'in process' shot. Do you want to be a legitimate cooking blog or what?!")
4. Lower the temperature to med-low, add about 3 cups or so of milk and begin whisking. (Use a flat whisk that can get all the corners of the pot. A balloon whisk will work as will a spoon but a flat whisk will work best.) Keep in mind the ratio of flour to milk should be about 2 Tb to 1 cup.
5. After a lot of stirring, the gravy will begin to thicken. If it is too thick, add a smidge more milk. Make sure you don't add too much, though, because while you can always thin it, it's much more difficult to thicken a runny gravy.
6. Once it is at the desired consistency, salt and pepper to taste and throw in a little sage for good measure.

When the seasonings are perfected you will have your own personal transportation to Yummy Yummersville.

texas land & cattle

We were out picking up a birthday present for a little friend, dropping my oldest off for a boyscout campout and found ourselves come dinner-time, far from home and stomachs a-grumblin'. My thoughts turned to steak and we soon were pulling into Texas Land & Cattle Steak House.

I got myself a surf and turf, steak and bacon-wrapped scallops meal. It was good, but as the kids said, "Daddy, your steak at home is better." I had to agree. It's such a disappoingment to go to a restaurant, paying much more money than the food is worth and realizing that I could have made it better. (Well, not so with the scallops. I never make them at home, so it was worth it for them.) In instances such as these I think it's best to look at the situation as a wonderful break from dishes and a much needed chance to be waited upon.

We did learn an ultra-horrible thing you can do to your macaroni & cheese that makes it taste even better. (If that's even possible with macaroni & cheese.) The manager came over to chat us up and he snagged a little bowl of bacon bits for the kids to sprinkle on their mac & cheese.  It was sinfullly good. Thank you, Mr. Manager, sir. We are forever thankful.

another use for cabbage you hadn't thought of (nor had I)

Tonight was Beef Stroganoff over Cabbage "Noodles."

The picture looks more like a sloppy joe filling than stroganoff, but I can assure you that there was ample gravy. (If you click on the photo and see the larger version, you can see it pooled in the bottom of the dish.) I used this recipe, but substituted ground beef for the tenderloin. (It's what we had.)

I sliced up an entire head of cabbage into noodle-sized strips and then stir-fried them in a little olive oil. The ended up doing the job rather nicely.

Tonight the son's comment was, "Mom, this dinner looks like puke but it tastes awesome!"

He sure has a way with compliments, doesn't he?

let them eat steak!

It first started when I watched Fat Head while my husband was traveling. Then I checked out the books Tom Naughton used as resources. Those books led to other books and after a dietary/nutrition education binge, my husband and I decided that we were going to limit our carbohydrate intake. (I highly recommend The Great Cholesterol Con to get you started.) All this to let you know that the meals I post might be lookin' a little different. Now, on to the food...

We went to Costco and bought some thick NY strip steaks. Thick. We grilled them and then added a pat of butter. I can't even tell you how delicious and tender a correctly-made, high-quality steak can be. It's just not possible to convey the absolute deliciousness.

Onward...

Of the remaining plate, half was filled with lemon-butter steamed haricots verts. (It's a hotty-totty name for a tender, thinner and longer than usual French green bean.) My go-to bean preparation is slightly steamed then pan-fried with garlic. I decided to try full steam then toss in melted butter and the juice from half a lemon. So good. So very good. My youngest boy said, "Mom, I usually think your green beans are gross but these are actually good." Hmm...thank you?


The last third of the plate was a botched attempt at garlic faux-tatoes. (On the website they are called "mock potatoes" but I think "faux-tatoes" is so much funner to say. Don't you?) Potatoes are starchy and very high in carbs so I made a pureed cauliflower version. Unfortunately I put in almost 6x the normal amount of garlic. This normally wouldn't be a problem since I usually overdose on garlic. (I love it!) In this instance, I forgot that the garlic would be raw. That's a big oops! They were so spicy that no one could eat them. I managed but only by eating each bite with an accompanying forkful of steak.

Nonetheless, this meal was so satisfying and contrary to popular belief, very healthy! Hooray!

Strom-bo-li!

 Stromboli night. One of the easiest dinners for me, both physically (super simple) and psychologically (the kids don't complain).

Layered and ready to roll.

1. Make a batch of bread dough and let it rise once. (I use my pizza-dough recipe.)
2. Roll it out as rectangle-ish as you can.
3. Layer whatever foods you wish. (After Thanksgiving I put stuffing, gravy and turkey. After Easter I use ham and whatever veggie I cooked. For this one we had leftover steak and cheddar cheese slices and shreds.)
4. Roll the baby up length-wise.
5. For pertiness you can cut slits in the top and give it a milk wash.
6. Bake for 20-25 minutes in a 375 degree oven.
7. Slice and eat.

Hot from the oven.

FYI - My five children and I polished this sucker off. If my husband was home I would have made two.

Teasing me with it's deliciousness, "Eat me, don't take a picture!"

chicken makhani + naan

One of our family's favorite dinners is this beauty: Chicken Makhani, Naan and Garlic Green Beans. (Which aren't really Indian, but it's good and goes well, so who cares?)

Years ago I found the recipe for Chicken Makhani on the internet. It was simple and very delicious. It's one of the few things I make often. My husband uses this recipe as the standard to which all Chicken Makhanis must be judged. I just found out last year that it is from Madhur Jaffrey.

To get Chicken Makhani, you must start with Tandoori Chicken. I can't find the recipe on the internet (which is where I found it). I'll post it here shortly. There are tons of recipes though, so you can be adventurous and try another one.

The Naan recipe that we use is from Allrecipes. Love, love, love it. We grill it with lots of butter and it is heavenly.

Garlic Green Beans are just green beans steamed for a few minutes and then finished off in a skillet with some olive oil, salt, pepper and chopped garlic, just until they have a few browned marks.

Writing about this meal makes me hungry for it. Very hungry.

Chicken Makhani recipe

a little food network love

This is the first spicy dish in the history of the world that my husband has ever said, "I don't care that it's spicy, it's so good." What? He always cares if it's spicy. What strange phenomenon has just taken place?

I'll tell you. It is the phenomenon of Peter Dunmire's Pork and Sweet Potato Empanadas. (recipe here)

I got the recipe from Guy Fieri's book, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, from his show of the same name. (Christmas present for my husband.) I made everything from scratch just like it told me to. And I even deep-fried them. The one thing we omitted was the salsa. The honey-chipotle glaze was so spicy that Mr. Husband felt the salsa was unnecessary. I was kinda tired so I agreed.

While the empanadas were good, the glaze was what pushed them to extraordinary super-stardom. You mix equal parts of honey and chipotle en adobo puree, that's it. This is a perfect example of less = more. It was so absolutely delicious. Spicy, smoky, sweet, salty...it had it all. In fact it was so good we made it again and swiped it over grilled steak a la Bobby Flay.

There was some leftover filling so I wrapped some tortillas around it and deep-fried them as well. Burritos delicioso!

green potatoes + carrots

My youngest son calls these potato bowls. He loves the fact that the potato has its own dish. They also happen to be pretty tasty. Cheesy, buttery, and mashed with broccoli, Green Potatoes are incredibly satisfying. I paired them with breaded carrots and this meal was a savory dream. Loved it.


Both recipes came from Laurel's Kitchen.

beans and clouds

This is one of my pantry standbys: Cuban Black Beans. I can make it when I have nothing else in my house. I forgot to picture the rice, but I'm sure you can imagine that on your own.

In my kids' devotion for the day, they were told to make "cloud cake." They were told to buy a pound cake, caramel sundae topping and whipped cream. While this devotional had a top notch idea, their proposed execution definitely could use improvement. Buy it? Who do they think they are talking to? We baked a pound cake, cooked up a batch of (delicious!) caramel topping and then whipped up some heavy cream. The conclusion? Oh yeah. Exquisite.

pad thai-ish

It was one of those nights where I needed to make dinner, did not want to run to the store (it's 30 minutes, just to drive there and back!), but had no dishes left on my weekly menu. What to do? Go to the pantry and stare. It's worked before.

I noticed some onions and some rice noodles. It's a stretch, but...pad thai? Pulling open lil' Miss Vegan With a Vengeance (I knew she had a recipe for it) and checked ingredients. Well, no bean sprouts, and no green onions, but I have a red onion. No seitan, but I do have chicken. (Shhh, don't tell the vegan lady that I used her recipe with such apparent sacrilege.) Dang! I'm out of rice vinegar...um...apple cider? Sure, why not? And yes, I do have limes!

It wasn't the best pad thai ever, granted. But it was food and it wasn't gross and it was good enough to have seconds. (But to be honest, it had got to be pretty yucky for me to not eat seconds, and that just doesn't happen too often.)

My husband, who has the most sensitive-to-spicy mouths in existence, always orders pad thai at thai establishments. It's tried, it's true and not spicy. (If it wasn't for his ruts, he'd fall over, but I love him that way.) He asked that I not make this recipe again. "It wasn't my favorite," he says. I agree. "It's too vinegar-y," he says. I agree again and add that I had to sub AC vinegar for the rice. "Ahh, that would do it, " he says. I nod.

In the end, I cannot tell you how Isa's recipe is because we didn't taste it. I had too many omissions and substitutions. It's like those reviewers on Allrecipes that say, "This recipe was great. All I did was add this and this and that and that and baked it instead of fried it and ended up throwing in some meatloaf I needed to use up. I'm going to be using this recipe for years to come."

Really? Okay, I promise I won't go into a tirade about reviewers that alter recipes and review their alterations like it was the original. No matter how much I want to.

Whew. That was a close one.

memory fails me.

Okay, I'm trying to remember what this was. I know that the drink was Peach-Mango V8 Fusion cut with water. (Isn't it a lovely color?) I made the dish just for myself. Hubsters must have been gone and the kids probably had something that I didn't want to partake. Cereal, maybe? So I made a conglomo-egg thing. Leftover sweet potato, maybe steak and probably some sauteed onion were all cooked together with a couple beaten eggs. I remember I liked it. (I like most cooked egg things.) But beyond that I'm not sure. Sorry.

great indian dishes and the national fruit of bangladesh

Originally this meal was going to be a variety of veggie dishes, but my parents came and brought steak with them. Of this I'm thankful because the three dishes were not enough for everyone...and the steak was really good. (I could be a vegetarian if it wasn't for steak. I just get an unquenchable craving for it periodically. I think it's my body's "you need more iron" alarm. Anway...)

We had this really yummy and simple rice with peas (can't remember the name), beets simply simmered in indian spices (no name recollection here, either) and a seared cauliflower of which the name escapes me.  All three were really, really good, with the winner being the cauliflower. And all three can be found in Madhur Jaffrey's Quick & Easy Indian Cooking or Simple Indian Cookery.

We also picked up a 15lb jackfruit from the Asian grocery a few days prior. A jackfruit is the largest tree-born fruit in the world. (Growing up to 80 lbs on trees that can be 100 feet tall...you don't want to spend a lot of time under one.) After a little youtube research, we decided to face the spiky gargatu-fruit head on.

First, we sliced it in half. (In the picture, below, my knife is pointing to the fruit.) All those sliced seeds are surrounded by large fruits of deliciousness. The center is inedible, but the strange, strand-like things surrounding the fruits are used as a vegetable. (We didn't use it, though.) The jackfruit is like a fig in that the flower is on the inside. Strange, huh?

After an hour of chopping and ripping and popping and making a whole lot of mess, we ended up with five pounds of fruit. Not bad. We were planning on roasting the seeds, but that didn't happen. (We forgot about them and they went bad.) They are supposed to taste like a bland chestnut. I'm still upset we didn't do it. Maybe next time.

The fruit was very, very good. It tasted like a mango and a pineapple had a kid. That mangapple kid got together with a banana and they had a kid. And that banamangapple kid would be the delicious jackfruit.

The fruits of our labor (he he): seeds, fruits and debris.

Warning: Jackfruit can emit a very sticky, milky, sap stuff. To clean it off, use oil. Soap won't touch it. Oil before you cut and to clean off everything at the end.

moghlai eggs

It's been so long since I made these, I honestly can't remember if they were from Madhur Jaffrey's Quick & Easy Indian Cooking or Simple Indian Cookery. Whichever it was these eggs were delicious.

You make a rich and creamy Indian-spiced sauce and let the hard-boiled eggs simmer in it for a bit. That's it. Serve over rice and oh.my.goodness. (When I say 'rich and creamy' I'm not joking. This baby is made with heavy cream. But such joy it brought to my taste buds. Such joy.)

Check out her books from the library and make this. It's in your best interest.