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!