Last but not least, What's for dinner?? Do YOU cook or is the responsiblity shared with someone else [or if ya dined out, where did you go and what did you order??]154 responses total.
My wife cooks a gourmet dinner at least 5 nights per week. It's a miracle I don't weigh in as a heavyweight. Stupendo salads, Lots of Atlantic salmon, swordfish, etc. Great meat. Unbelievable desserts. Left to my own resources I end up eating a lot of peanut butter.
um.. last night's dinner was an experiment. it was an adaptaion of something i saw on pbs, 'the urban peasant'. it was basically the same, except i used chicken instead of tuna. it was a miserable failure. we went to burgerking for whoppers.
My wife's out of town, so my evening repast shall be a bag of stale oreo cookies and a 6-pack of Mountain Dew.
What are stale oreo cookies? And, how do they get that way? Last night I made some eggplant sort of thing with peppers, onions, bacon, lots of garlic, and served on toast.
Recipe for Stale Oreos: 1 bag oreos 1 humid day expose oreos to humid day. enjoy with Mountain Dew ;)
and i had sausage....:)
Tonight's dinner was going to be leftover chinese food but Geoff's roommate ate it... So we doctored up a pizza...
Hi everybody! This is my first time on grex. I just joined an hour ago. As a Dinning hall cook for Syracuse University (yes I admit it) I find I really don't feel like cooking when I get home at night. Lately the dinner menu at my house has been Doritos and Pepsi (no. thats not a dinning hall recipe) If my roommate stays home (not usually) I try to get her to cook exit to exit help
Welcome to Grex. It does get easier.
Hi Michael! Welcome to Grex! Hey, if you work as a dining hall cook, does that mean you can confirm lots of those urban legends about the ingredients in dorm food? For example, the dorm I lived in was reputed to use the lowest possible grade of meat that was considered fit for human consumption; the next lower grade was used only for animal food. Is that true?
(meg thinks that valerie was lucky to get such high-grade meat for a dorm! :)
There is only one kind of meat used in mass cooking: (That is, dorms, hospital cafes, government cafes...) MYSSTERY MEAT! I try to cook...I am a good cook but often too tired to get past that first hurdle: What do I make today?
I had herb slathered pork roast, baked potatoes, fresh snapped green beans, and dinner rolls (homemade).
what ever people show up with at the potluck will be dinner! :)
Homemade biscuits with homemade applebutter, pork chops slathered with raspberry/pear butter and grilled, yellow spanish rice, fresh green salad with that wonderful buttermilk dressing recipe from Valerie, and fresh snapped green beans. I also included a glass of Zinfandel. It was great!
<valerie faints that someone would use a recipe she posted> Cool!
re 15. drool.
Valerie, I've made a number of your recipes and they've been very good. Stop that. ;-)
Maybe I'm projecting my own thoughts onto other people... I'm not sure I've ever made a recipe I found here. I've gotten some of my favorites from Usenet, once upon a time, though, so it's not like I don't use on-line recipes.
Today is Thanksgiving and we ate at a friend's house. She served the lowest fat Turkey dinner I ever ate and it wasn't bad. Akmost everything you typically eat, only with reduced fat. The gravy was watery but filled with chopped fresh mushrooms. The stuffing was also filled with lots of fresh chopped verggies and almost no fat. Sweet potatoe caserole with cinammon apples on top. Great fresh salad with rasberry vinegrette dressing.
Tonight for dinner I am chopping deer meat and adding it to hamburger to make patties...we'll see if the kids notice the difference.
Tonight, I had tamales from La Gloria Bakery in Detroit. We bought a dozen a couple of weeks ago and froze them.
Last night I had some leftovers from lunch--a chicken 'folded' pizza from La Giorgio's, a fairly new Italian restaurant in Raleigh, NC. It was actually good and interesting! The 'crust' was tasty, as was the sliced chicken breast, tomatos, onion slices, a couple cheeses, and some seasonings. The cheese wasn't overwhelming which kept the fat content down and there was the right amount of seasonings to make it good.
Crock-pot chicken cacciatore, rice, and asparagus. It's cheap asparagus time again.
Yay cool -- the first sign of spring!
dinner is pizza...i haven't had anything else today...and i'm waiting for the pizza to show up...(sigh)
Since I found out after making 22 quarts of bean soup that my guest did not like beans, I ended up freezing it in dinner size portions. This worked out perfectly because tonight we are eating bean soup and homemade bread...one less dinner to cook...yeah!
that's the way that my mom does things...:) dinner tonight is spagetti....and it's on the stove as we speak...homemade! :)
I ate a peanutbutter sandwich for dinner tonight. Breadmaker rye bread, organic crunchy Deaf Smith peanut butter from the co-op, and organic blueberry preserves. I'm still getting used to the idea that I actually *like* jelly with my peanutbutter sandwiches. It's a recent discovery.
eeyore, have you tried my spaghetti recipe printed elsewhere in this conf?
Tonight, we are going "all out" and I am making noodles and "pot cheese". Second course, salmon salad sandwiches with lettuce and tomatoes. Dairy night at the Brickers.
I can vouch for the yumminess of freida's spaghetti sauce. It's good.
nope....i just use my momma's tried amd true recipe....brown meat and onions, add tomatoes (or canned tomatoes), and whatever else you feel like adding this time 'round, and then simmer for several hours. it seems to work well for me. :)
I go to the store and buy lots of whatever veggies look good, slice them up, fry them in *spaghetti sauce* instead of in oil, and then add the rest of the spaghetti sauce and heat until warm. I like this a bunch. Veggies that work well in this include: carrots, corn, summer squashes, zucchini, eggplant, mushrooms, firm tofu cut into cubes, and most anything else.
And definitely onions and garlic!
Tonight we made Chelsea's lasagna, something that I had never tried, but had the recipe for on my computer. We didn't have enough sauce so Mom made her own, and we were a bit short on the ricotta mixture, but everything came out very well. It was killer! Hopefully this will be a regular dish instead of Tuna Helper (yuk!)
<abchan looks at all the responses with yummy-sounding food and sighs that she has to be content with meal plan>
Cooked chicken soup last night with an overflow of dried bean curd thrown in.
Tonight we did a new meatloaf recipe. It was the best I ever had, and to think I got the recipe from Cooking Live. Go figure.
This must have been a meatloaf weekend. I made a delicious meatloaf for dinner yesterday using no particular recipe and a friend who just left had just made a meatloaf for dinner tonight.
Wanna trade recipes, Audrey? Mine is billed as the "perfect" meatloaf. I had it for dinner again tonight, and it was just as tasty. That says a lot for it.
Sure, if I can remember it. . .I started with about 1 lb ground round. I sliced a Vidalia Onion and chopped it into small pieces. Then I sauteed the onions in light olive oil until they were golden. Cooled them down. Added two eggs to the meat, plus seasoned Progresso bread crumbs. Then added the onions and mixed well. Oh yes, salt and pepper. Formed into a loaf and then dusted it with left over onions and white wine Wosterschire sauce. Surround it in pan with large button mushrooms halved and dusted them with the Wosterchire sauce. Baked for a little under an hour. Was out of this world and not much muss because I sauteed the onions in the same pan I made the meatloaf (only had to clean it at the end of the meal.) Have enough left over for dinner tonight (cold meatloaf sandwiches on fresh bread.) Yum. I showed you mine, now you show yours. . .
I'll have it up today or tommorrow.
Bacon Wrapped Meatloaf With Glaze
aka the Perfect Meatloaf
Glaze:
1/4c ketchup or chili sauce
2 tbs light or dark brown sugar
2 tsp cider vinegar
Meatloaf:
2 tsp vegetable oil
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 large eggs
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black or white pepper
2 tsp dijon mustard
2 tsp worchestershire sauce
1/4 tsp hot pepper sauce
1/2 c milk, buttermilk or lowfat plain yogurt
2 pounds meatloaf mix in either of the following configurations:
(2 parts ground chuck, 1 part ground pork, 1 part ground veal) or
(2 parts ground chuck, 2 parts ground pork.)
2/3 c or 16 saltines crushed, or 2/3 c quick oatmeal, or 1 1/3 c fresh
bread crumbs
1/3 c chopped parsley
6 oz thinly sliced bacon (optional)
glaze
Preheat oven to 350. Heat oil in skillet, saute onions and garlic 5 mins
remove from heat set aside.
Mix eggs with thyme, salt, pepper, mustard, worchestershire sauce, pepper
sauce, and milk. Add mixture to meat in a large bowl, along with crackers,
parsley and cooked onions and garlic. Mix well with a fork until well blended.
If mixture sticks to the bowl, add more milk and resume mixing until mixture
does not stick to sides of bowl.
Turn mixture out onto a work surface. Wet hands, and shape into a 9 X 5
loaf. Cover wire rack with foil. Pierce foil in several places to allow
drainage. Place loaf on rack. Using all the glaze, brush liberally over the
loaf. Place bacon on top of the loaf, crosswise and slightly overlapping. Tuck
ends of the bacon under the loaf to prevent curling. Place wire rack in a foil
lined pan and bake for 1 hour or until internal temp is 160 degrees.
Cool for 20 minutes, and slice into 1" pieces. Serves 6 to 8.
Reprinted without permission of the Food television Network.
Worcestershire.
Today my boyfriend and I moved into our first house, worked up quite an appetite, did we? Alas, I did not. We had lunch at Harry Ramsden's (here in England, very popular fish n chips place among Brits cos they actually do it right and it's a fairly nice restaurant), I had a few chicken bites and of course the greasy chips, and an English toffee ice cream cone for dessert- a small meal for me! Still, classically British.. *yawn* I truly miss the wonderful dishes of America (or at least the ones we've co-opted): chili, meatloaf, normal applesauce, Burger King, oreos, even Kool Aid. We were in Amsterdam last month and saw a (closed) shop that sells such things, and I think there's one in London that does.. moral of the story, you have no idea what I'm missing. *sob* :)
Do you plan out your meals much in advance [vs staring into the 'fridge or pantry when its time to eat and then decide what you're having]? So do you know [yet] what's for dinner this evening? [I don't.]. Or what was for dinner last night? [a roast beef sandwich for me.]
I'm not sure what is for dinner tonight, but I keep some things stocked up so I don't have to think too far in advance. Last night it was sloppy joes (I have a great recipe that I make from scratch and with ground turkey) and I think tonight will be ravioli and some tomato sauce I made on Sunday, as I was trying to purge my veggie drawer a bit. It's weird - I love to cook elaborate meals, but during the week, it's all about ease and getting things done quickly. Plus, in the heat, I don't like to be over a stove for long.
Brooke- would you be willing to share your sloppy joe (with turkey) recipe?
Sure. Though it's not mine - it's Rachael Ray's. I'll see if I can find a link. http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_23182,00.ht ml?rsrc=search I modify a lot, so here are mine: I use ground turkey. I've made this with beef, morningstar farms "meat crumbles", ground turkey and ground turkey breast - oh, and ground elk. This recipe has some pretty strong flavors, but it still couldn't battle and win against the elk. I like ground turkey the best. Also, as Dave doesn't eat peppers, I took those out and added a can of diced tomatoes instead, cutting the tomato sauce by about half (I add water if they are looking dry at the end). Sure, you might have to pick up a few ingredients, but I pretty much guarantee that you'll make these again, as they are so good. The good news is that if it's just the two of you, you'll have *tons* of leftovers, so pack them in two serving sized containers and freeze. I do that a lot and it really saves me during the week.
Here's the tinyurl if people have problems: http://tinyurl.com/25e8oh
This time of year what we eat is based on what is in the garden. Last night was mainly stir-fried green tomato - something chewed pieces out of a large one that was too near the ground, so we cooked it. Jim thinks a slug.
resp:50 Eh, I just copied and pasted the URL in. ;) Thanks! Those do sound good. Though I'll have to substitute out the peppers too (they don't like me!) and yeah, looks yummy! Here's a question- anyone know where I can get a good chicken salad recipe (or have one?)
(and upon closer inspection of the linked site- I think I'll look around there for my recipe... ;) )
Hmm, I'll have to look around for some of the good chicken salad recipes that I've come across... I do like the tarragon chicken salad that Whole Foods has; I'll have to try and figure out how to make that at home.
This makes an interesting change from the celery and onion and mayo of the traditional chicken salad. Do use real Swiss cheese. The nuttiness is an important foil for the pineapple. Chicken Salad Chicken, cooked 1 C 1/4 C Swiss cheese 2 oz 1/2 oz Pineapple 1/2 C 2 Tbsp Celery 1/2 C 2 Tbsp Mayonnaise 1/4 C 1 Tbsp Cube chicken and swiss cheese, about 1/2 inch chunks. Cut pineapple into similar sized chunks (canned slices or chunks work just fine). Finely chop celery. Drop chopped things into a mixing bowl as you go. Gently stir in mayonnaise. Taste and season with salt and pepper.
I had dinner with my parents and some friends of theirs, in the main dining room of the retirement village where they all live. There are always multiple entree choices available, as well as various side dish and dessert options as well. And a salad bar... So, last night I ended up having some roast turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, stewed tomatoes, a dinner roll, and some iced tea. Oh, and a bit of ice cream, too [moosetracks!]. They have 2 different menus available based on size of the portions, so I had the smaller portions since there was a variety of stuff I liked.
Sounds like you made some good choices there.
Stewed tomatoes....that's so kicking it old school. ;-) It's funny - I have a love for certain things that I never would have tried had I not lived with my grandparents, parsnips and brussel sprouts, for example. And I now *love* them. Stewed tomatoes were an occasional side (especially around the time we were putting them up). I have to wonder what retirement communities will serve our generation in 50 years.
They'll be called Happy McSenior Meals, with both Regular and Super-Sized menus available.
Last night I made dinner for Dave and I (chicken parmesan) and chicken tikka masala for lunch for me and our managing partner at work. I've made chicken parmesan a hundred times, so that was no big deal. But cooking Indian food is *always* a big deal to me. I got the recipe from Cooks Illustrated and as their recipes go, this one was fairly easy, even if it did have a fair number of steps. If anyone is interested, I'll post the recipe. Oh, and it's soooo good!!! (Probably the most important part.)
I'm interested! Of late I've been trying to get more Indian food on the menu. Thanks for sharing it.
Actually, if you tell me where, I'll email it to you, as I can scan it in (it's an article as well, with a bit of the history) with the recipe included.
mremmers@mremmers.com Thanks!
Dinner tonight wasn't nearly as good as that indian cooking sounds! I had just heated up some frozen pizza.
Today's dinner consisted of home-made chicken and rice soup, biscuits, and milk. This was the first time I've actually made chicken soup from scratch. Though it took hours for it to be done, I think it was worth it. I didn't follow a specific recipe-though I made it similar to the turkey soup that the family usually makes after a holiday meal. So I first roasted some chicken thighs that were on sale [doing it with some seasonings]. Then after they cooled enough, I cut off most of the meat and 'fridgerated that for awhile. Meanwhile, I made the broth, getting the flavor from the left-on pieces of meat, the skin, bones, and more seasoning and let that simmer for awhile. Later, after straining out the 'stuff', I added more water to the broth and then added the chopped up chicken, celery, and onions. After that simmered for awhile, I checked the taste and had to add a bit more seasoning. And towards the end, I added rice, then let that simmer for another half hour or so. So besides the bowl I had this evening and another approx. 2 cup container in the fridge for tomorrow, I have 3-4 more of that size and a larger one [4-5 cups maybe] that I'm going to bring to my parents when I go later in the week. So I'm feeling impressed with myself. :-)
very good!
I would suggest adding to your menu vegetables (for vitamins and fiber). Celery and onions don't have a lot of vitamin A. Maybe a little C. You could put carrots in the soup, green beans, cabbage, broccoli....
I know very well the importance of vegetables, thank you very much [I'm not iliterate or deaf, I've been heating about the benefits all my life]. And, though I'm very selective on which ones I consume, I do eat them--even though I didn't add them to the soup. And the ones I did add do have benefite-including fiber.
And I'm not going to let the 'lack of vegetables' in my soup keep me from feeling good about my soup that I made yesterday.
Sindi, would you quit telling people how to live their lives? While it is amusing to hear first-person stories about your life, it is bullying and harassment to continue to tell other people what to do. In this case, your ignorance is showing because it is clear that Denise was making chicken stock, not vegetable soup. Denise, I think the on-the-fly version of chicken stock, and then chicken-rice soup is spot on. I find that chicken bones have a deeper flavor when they are cooked. My sister in law actually roasts the bones for an hour in a very low oven before she uses them in stock
Denise, that sounds great! I generally skip the "pre-cooking the chicken" before I make the chicken stock - I cook the chicken in the water that will end up being the broth. Just a different road to the same end, I suspect! Side note: I hate vegetables in my chicken soup. :)
Re #71: Well, Sindi did say "I would suggest" in #68, not "I order you".
Your soup sounds wonderful, Denise. I really like full flavored soups. I've never been able to get enough flavor from making my own broth so I always start chicken noodle soup with canned chicken broth. I still use chicken on the bone, fresh herbs, carrots, celery and onion and lots of freshly ground pepper. But without the broth, it's bland to my taste. I know, I should be hung from the nearest tree, but it's true. Do we have a soup item here?
I did a fair bit of cooking/baking this weekend and figured I could report it here. Although we did have tacos last night for dinner (which I strangely rarely make...) Anyway, here's what I made and how it came out: Jewish Apple Cake - I got this from Dave Lieberman's cookbook (which I bought for $7 at Williams Sonoma) and it sounded so good I wanted to try. My only change was that I opted to make the cake in my teflon bundt pan (which I had never used before). My error was that I didn't grease the teflon pan - because I reasoned that it shouldn't stick anyway. Huge mistake. The cake stuck. Not horridly, but definitely noticeably. The other thing is that the cake didn't brown. But the cake has *great* flavor, and I'll make it again (it's incredibly easy), just using a regular bundt pan (and of course greasing it). So does anyone want a teflon bundt pan? Free to good home... Creamy Pesto Chicken with tortellini - I made this to celebrate Dave's other birthday. It's one of his favorite dishes. It's basically cooked chicked (you can always use roasted chicken from the store), pesto, cream and tortellini. My big "secret" is that I make my own pesto. As long as I have a food processor I'll make my own. I also brown my garlic (in the hulls) a little bit, so they soften and get a little sweeter, as well as toasting the pinenuts. It is (IMO) better than any I can get in the store. And a beautiful vibrant green too! Banoffee Pie - Strangely, the only place I have found this was in Ireland. It's graham cracker crust with bananas, caramel/toffee poured over and with whipped cream. A friend just got back from Ireland and said she had eaten too much banoffee, so I had to make some. The toffee is made by taking a can of sweetened condensed milk and boiling it for about an hour. Then you pour the concoction over the bananas and let it set up. Dave isn't crazy about it, so I brought it to work today for everyone to try out. I made it in a springform pan, which I wouldn't do again, as a pie pan is easier to deal with.
ohhhhhh, Banoffee sounds wonderful. I love everything with condensed milk in it: Thai iced tea, Cherry-O Cream Cheese pie, sometimes just boiled and caramelized. About browning cakes: I always grease and flour my cake pans. I believe the flour helps the browning as well as the release.
Re browning cakes: I know. I was just being (stupidly) lazy. The banoffee is wonderful. Even with slighly runny toffee it's still amazingly good.
'Today's dinner consisted of home-made chicken and rice soup, biscuits, and milk'. Where is the vegetable and where is the fiber in this dinner? It does not have to go into the soup, but this is NOT a balanced diet. We recently visited someone whose kids refuse to eat anything except fried chicken (a particular frozen brand) for supper. No starch, no vegetables. They also had chocolate cake. Their father is overweight. I don't know what he eats, but I think parents should make sure their kids learn to eat right.
Welcome to being an adult and being able to pick and choose what you eat. Believe me, I know what is and isn't healthy. I don't eat healthily all the time.
You are not Denise's' parent; you have no business instructing any other adult about what and what not to eat. Do you think Denise is too dumb to know what to eat? Do you think she is simply ignorant and it is your job to make sure she learns to eat right? It's not your business whether "this is NOT a balanced diet" or not. We are all well educated adults. We know as much as you do about nutrition. We are capable of making our own choices. If you must hector and lecture, keep it within the confines of your own home.
resp:78 Keep in mind that one meal does not a diet make. So one meal didn't have a lot of vegetables- that doesn't mean Denise never eats ANY.
'Today's dinner consisted of home-made chicken and rice soup, biscuits, and milk'. <<Where is the vegetable and where is the fiber in this dinner? It does not have to go into the soup, but this is NOT a balanced diet. >> Umm, Sindi, if you go back and reread what I put into the soup, you'll see that I did add celery and onion. And you have already responded to that in an earlier post. And, I have also stated that I often do have vegetables separately. So, stop being rude. I'm starting to believe that you're deliberately provoking people to get some kind of reaction out of us. There have been multiple times where I've bitten my tongue and didn't take your bate [that you so often use]. But I'm getting tired of it and am going to start calling you on it. If YOU want to be treated with respect and as an adult, then you need to give the same courtesy to others. I won't continue to allow you to get away with this kind of childish and controlling behavior without saying something about it. I'd hate to have to sidetrack so many otherwise good threads with these kind of responses to yours, but when I do, I'll keep them short and sweet. :-) If that doesn't work, I'll start using a twit filter. I don't want to have to do that, though, since you do post some interesting responses from time to time. ::Soap box=off, for now, at least::
Back to my soup: --Mary, though the stock I made was made from scratch, after I added some water, it did seem to dilute it more than I had wanted; I forgot to mention that I did add a bit of the chicken boullion crystal-stuff. --Debbi, I roasted/baked the chicken first mainly because, for me, it just tastes better than boiling it. At the time, I figured that if I had any leftover chicken, then it'd be more flavorful if I decided to make some chicken salad or something. But, as it was, I used it all in the soup. Edina, you sure do come up with a lot of interesting things to cook up; everything you've mentioned above sounds delicious. Especially that pie. My grandparents were born and raised in Ireland but apparently, my grandmother never made it for us. With greasing and flouring cake pans and if you want a touch more flavor and ' browning', dust the pan with cocoa powder instead of flower. I hear that works well, though I haven't actually tried it myself.
And, with that Jewish Apple Cake that you made, Edina, what's in it that makes it Jewish [maybe it being kosher somehow? I don't know enough about those that follow the kosher way of cooking and eating. Or maybe some kind of seasoning?] I'm asking because I'd like to find a good apple cake [will be great for the fall as the apple trees are coming into season]. A few years back, I've made some apple cake from a mix [from someone I knew who was a 'Simply Tasteful' consultant] and only had to add the chopped apples and whatever liquid it called for. Everyone loved it and it was so easy to make.
I think what makes it Jewish is that the author's last name is Lieberman. ;-) It's just the name of the recipe. I'll bring it in and post it for you to try.
Cool, thanks!
For dinner this evening, I fixed a quesadia, heating it in the oven instead of doing it in the frying pan with a bit of oil that I sometimes do. So this dinner included the carbs, dairy, **2** kinds of vegetables, and a bit of protein. I had some milk with it as well.
I had a bowl of strawberry ice cream for dinner. I had a really good lunch though. I found out that LeDog has a little stand on Main Street near where I work. I got a really good Carrot-Ginger soup and a pretzel from Zingermans. I'll probably go there for a lunch a lot since they have a whole lot of different soups including their famous Lobster Bisque which I've heard about but havent yet tried.
Three kinds of garden tomatoes with olive oil, bread machine bread (Jim is testing out his large collection), and two slivers of cheese on the bread, plus our only butternut squash, which was only half ripe. The squashes only got sun half the day then the plants died of mildew. Denise, congrats on the asterisked vegetables ;=) School lunches used to count (and maybe still do) ketchup as a vegetable. Saturday the Food Coop is hosting a Project Grow tomato tasting from 11 am to 1 pm. Someone in the freecycle group offered to let us taste his 25 varieties when I gave him all our canning jars. It is tomato month. I have cooked tomatoes with zucchini, with eggplant, with green beans, with spaghetti....
There's a tomato month? Cool... I need to go look and see if I still have my tomato cookbook [and if so, I'll post some interesting recipes].
School lunches never counted ketchup as a vegetable. President Regan tried to get it counted, but it was shot down as being too stupid to take seriously.
It is not an official tomato month, just high season for tomatoes. Today Jim cooked macaroni and cheese with tomato pulp (left from scooping out the drying tomatoes) instead of water, to put on millet and kale. You can cook spaghetti in tomato juice instead of boiling down the juice to make sauce and then cooking the spaghetti in water.
The latest dinner adventure in my Kitchen:
I had a bunch of tomatoes given to me the other day-but forgot to bring
them in from the car that day--so the next day when I remembered, the
tomatoes were definitely ripe. Ripe enough [tastey as well as a bit
juicey, as well] where I needed to up right away. So... this afternoon
I made an almost-from-scratch pasta sauce:
I thawed and then browned a pound of ground turkey [from a sale
awhile back]... I then chopped up all of the tomatoes and added them to
the pot. And then poured in a jar of Prego [also on sale, was sitting in
the pantry just waiting for some doctoring up]. I also chopped up some
onion and added that in, along with some minced garlic. Added some
Italian seasoning and then let it all simmer for awhile.
When I was about ready for dinner, I cooked up some elbow macaroni
and added some of the sauce to aa bowlful; it ended up tasting fine. :-)
I now have a couple containers of the sauce in the freezer along with a
container of the macaroni and sauce in the freezer and one in the
'fridge, too.
I need to stop making big pots of stuff for awhile so I'll have room to
make some apple sauce and apple butter in the near future. :-)
[Currently in my freezer besides the above mentioned sauce and the pasta
include 3 containers of my chicken and rice soup and a couple
containers of the turkey and black bean chile. Plus a couple bags of
chicken breasts as well as some frozen vegetables. I forget what all
else. I haven't made this much home made stuff [from the past few
weeks] in the past 2-3 years combined, I don't think.
Tonight's dinner I lovingly titled "Screw You Seva!"*, or squash enchiladas. I also made chicken enchiladas - we have a vegetarian staying with us for a month, so I'm going to be mildy agonizing over meals for a bit. I also made a pot of beef stew that I divvied up into individual containers that will go in the freezer for Dave's lunches. *Thus titled because Seva refused to part with the recipe, even after I explained I was living out of town and was homesick for them. I created them on my own and they are easily as good, if not better, than Seva's.
Hey, last night I made chicken enchiladas. Did you know were were sisters in our previous life? ;-) I made a change to my tried and true recipe and substituted whole wheat tortillas. Didn't work. Some whole wheat products are subtle but these tended to make the tortilla the starring attraction. Congratulations on copy-catting Seva. That is their signature dish and it's mighty good.
That's really funny, because John wandered into party on m-net and I said that I thought I might be in love with you - culinarily speaking, of course. ;-) I'm not sure that he bought it.
I know some folks will consider this kinda weird but I like making muffins in the wee-hours, like, before dawn. The world seems quiet and the house is dark and cold. It takes about 10 minutes of prep to get 'em into the oven and then I settle back and sip coffee and wait for the aroma and warmth to arrive. And it does. I usually hear a soft voice asking what's in 'em. Then, when they'll be done. Sometimes, isn't it muffin time yet? So here's what I made this time around. The only change - I added 1/4 cup of dried cranberries to the batter. Total baking time was 25 minutes. They were moist and spicy and delish. http://bittersweetblog.wordpress.com/2007/09/17/muffin-mayhem/
Mary that is awesome. New question: Can I come to your house?
Anytime. And at 05:30 the traffic is pretty light. ;-)
I sometimes make muffins for breakfast on the weekends but that usually occurs much later than 5:30am and I almost always use a mix :) They still taste good though
It's been a long time since I've made some muffins [but did recently make some scones from a mix]. I really like muffins; once in awhile I've made them from scratch but more often, I'd get a mix and add my own personal touches to it. Hmm, now I want a muffin!
Tonight's dinner is going to be something I kind of invented, but going after the guidelines of a Weight Watchers recipe. I'm doing WW right now*, and rather than eating all packaged foods, I like to make my own stuff. So, I took a chicken I had in the freezer, thawed it, cut it into pieces and took the skin off. Put it into a crockpot on top of chopped up onions and celery and about a cup of spaghetti sauce (Muir Glen, my favorite), put some sauce on top and set it up to go for about 7 hours. I then pulled the chicken out and cooled it, pulled it off the bone, and put it back into the crock pot. I sauteed some mushrooms and hit them with a bit of balsamic and put them into it as well. I tasted it a little bit ago and it's so good! My plan is to eat it on top of whole wheat pasta with a bit of parmesan. *I went back on WW to get a bit of weight off that I'd put back on, plus it's good to have that reality check of how much calories/fat is in stuff and portion control.
We had something sort of similar - fried an onion, added a bunch of frozen chunks of pumpkin and some dried oyster mushrooms and dried celery leaves and chervil, and served over soy spaghetti. It did not take as long to cook. I did take the skin off the pumpkin before freezing it.
re 102 that sounds good. Do you ever use spaghetti squash? I love that stuff. I often use it in place of pasta.
I have in the past and I am really not a fan - I'd rather use my oh so valuable points for whole wheat pasta. ;-)
What is a 'point'? I forgot to mention the tomato puree. Our soy spaghetti was advertised as low carb. We got it for 40 cents/box because it did not sell well. Different taste and texture.
It's a WW measurement tool. You get X amount of points per day, based on your current weight and if you are maintaing/actively trying to lose. It's a calculation based on calories/fat content/fiber.
The soy stuff is high fiber. Tastes like it.
I have to say that I'd probably pass on your pasta.
resp:106 and resp:107 Yeah, the more fiber a food has, the fewer points. The more calories/fat a food has, the more points. The idea is that you can still eat whatever you want but if you choose to eat things like giant burgers with calorie laden special sauces, you dont get to eat much else. I have issues with WW as I do with all diets in that I think they make false promises, I think that WW is probably the best commercial diet out there and the most realistic. At the very least, it does promote healthy eating.
This isn't a diet for me - it's a reality check. I still eat foods that are fattening, just less of them and far less often. They have a new plan - the Core plan, where there are foods in "the core" that you can eat as much of as you want (lots of fruits/veggies/non-fat dairy) and you have a small bank of points to eat non-core foods. I tried it for a day and got incredibly frustrated and switched back to counting. But I think for those that don't want to count as much.
I just eat a treat, then run my ass off to work it off. ;)
I was impressed with a Weight Watchers' cookbook.
I have several. My favorite recipes of theirs is Greek pastitsio and there's a sweet and sour cabbage soup.
My famous cold spicy noodles started out as a WW recipe. I just replaced the cayenne and garlic salt with Lanchee Chili Paste with Garlic and a couple other minor flavorings. I may have increased the calorie count by 10 per batch. I like a lot of their recipes, but often alter them a bit especially in the spicing area.
Likewise, a few of my all-time favorite recipes are from WW. Mostly healthier versions of comfort foods like turkey goulash, Mexican meatloaf, and chicken enchiladas verde. Brooke, regarding that pastitsio recipe, does it look anything like this: http://www.weightwatchers.com/food/rcp/index.aspx?recipeid=107241
Mine is a bit different, in that they replace some of the beef with spinach, and it's lighter (I think 4 or 5 points) - but this looks BETTER. I'm changing recipes! But I'll probably still continue to put the spinach in, as I'm always looking for ways to eat veggies that I like.
that last two nights, I have made the same thing, because it is SO good, and for some reason I'm on a spinach kick. Sautee spinach with a tiny bit of olive oil & garlic. then I added Eqq whites and parm. cheese and made an omlette. YUM. It's gotta be pretty low on points.
I would assume so. I use a lot of egg beaters at my house (Costco rocks!). Last night I had Taco Bell. I can hear your collective gasps, but I did have the points for it.
I seem to remember from my WW guide to fast food that there are many lowish choices at Taco Bell including one of my favorites (Chicken Soft Taco).
For me it's a taco and pintos and cheese. I'm pretty minimalist at Taco Bell.
I got lots of spinach seed last year so I planted two rows of it this week. I may plant even more today.
Considering that this is the "what's for dinner" item and not the gardening item (although I presume that keesan is planning on eventually eating the spinach for dinner), resp:122 really reminds me of that one Carl Sagan quote: "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
For dinner we have some fresh garlic tops from down the street. The friends of the neighbor who moved to the nursing home planted it on the easement. I will add it to the pumpkin and fresh jerusalem artichoke stir-fry. We don't distinguish a lot between growing and eating food.
Dinner tonight was at Applebee's with my CASA kid - a couple of boneless wings, 3/4 of a chicken/veggie quesadilla off their Weight Watchers menu, and a couple of bites of Angelo's dessert. And because I was parsimonious during the day, I still stayed within points.
keesan, is spinach easy to grow? (Yes, I'm going to eat it for dinner, so I can ask!) ;)
Spinach has to be planted very early, thinned, and kept weeded, and given enough sun and rich soil, or you don't get much before it bolts. Last year is the first year I got a few meals' worth. This year I planted it on time but it is not up yet. Lettuce is more productive. Mustard greens far more productive and longer season. Ditto for even molokhia. Kale. Normally the various Chinese greens (ta tsoi, bok choy) would be more productive too but the bugs eat them to the ground. Spinach is probably a better crop in Europe where the summers are cooler and the winters warmer.
Ok, this isn't a "What's For Dinner Tonight" item, but more a "what I want to make for dinner when I come home to MI to serve my family. I'm doing a whole Indian meal, and I wondered if anyone knew where I could get paneer in A2? I'm going to make Saag Paneer and don't want to have to make my own cheese.
There is an Indian food store just north of Broadway Bridge, with a small restaurant in it.
Do you know its name?
No, it is not listed under Indian in the pink pages. Near Kana. These stores moved across Broadway when Kroger disappeared.
Our Whole Foods stocks paneer. I think the package is like 8 ounces and runs about $9 a pound. By the way, your family dinner sounds cool. Will you really be doing all the cooking? I'm slowly chipping away at Indian cuisine, one dish at a time. I think I'm up to two at this point. ;-)
Well, I'll buy my own paneer and get the frozen naan at Trader Joe's (it's so good!), but other than that, yes. Chicken tikka masala, saag paneer and channa masala.
Hmm, what's paneer? And how did the Indian dinner that you cooked up go?
It's cheese and I haven't made the dinner yet - I'm making it when I go home to MI in June.
We had the spicy peanut noodles again tonight.
Yep, they are excellent. I found this recipe a few days ago for noodles with a spicy sweet sauce - not peanut butter based. I know I've had these before and liked the flavor so one of these days I'll give it a try. http://tinyurl.com/2fwznn
Tonight's dinner was a mish-mash of cuisines. A crab/corn/tomato salad with basil citrus dressing, a recipe I got from Cooking Light. VERY tasty. I tried my hand at Manchurian Cauliflower, which is a roasted cauliflower with a sweet/spicy/curried dish. Again, a Cooking Light recipe, but incredibly tasty. And then I made bangan bharta (I think I spelled it wrong) but it's the curried eggplant dish that you get at Indian recipes. It was pretty good, but you can definitely tell that I'm ramping back the fat when I cook Indian food. It's a dish that is worth me working on. Oh, and I made a homemade blueberry crisp for dessert.
I am thinking of cooking a little bit today. I saw a recipe online for mashed cauliflower and it sounded both really easy and very yummy. Basically, you boil up some cauliflower and then mash it in a bowl with a fork or a potato masher along with a little butter and garlic. I'll probably salt it too. Cauliflower is one of my favorite vegetables but I've never heard of mashing them before.
I was never a big cauliflower fan until I realized you could do more than just boil it and put cheese on it or eat it raw. Now I love to roast it - that's my favorite way to eat it.
I've been keeping this bookmark for a creamy cauliflower salad as I plan to give it a try for a 4th of July party. This recipe mixes cauliflower with romaine, apples and caraway. Different, for sure. http://eatingwell.com/recipes/chopped_cauliflower_salad.html
Wow...I haven't been talking about what I've been doing in the kitchen... For some reason, even in the middle of the heat of summer, I was craving beef stew yesterday - so I made some. I like to make big pots of stuff on Sunday so I don't have to cook too much during the week. I also made homemade southern biscuits to go with it (recipe from my baking class) that turned out amazing. I'm always surprised at how I can make something from those classes and it has such an emotional pull back to the class, as it tastes just like what I made. I've also been doing some baking - I made scones last week, as well as a modified blueberry muffin/coffeecake. I took a muffin recipe and baked it in a well greased bundt pan for about 2.5 times the amount of time - it turned out really well - my office loved it. I think the only thing I'll changes it to toss the blueberries in a bit of the flour first so that they don't all sink to the bottom. This week I have a couple of pies to make to ship out, as well as some cookies.
Leftovers from last nite,
Now about last nite.
I made pasties. You know those meat and potato things they eat in the UP?
I made mine with potatos, onions and instead of stew meat, I used hamburger.
I guess I should've took more time and actually made meatballs, instead of
putting the hamburger in clumps. Traditonally, you also need plum pudding and
rutabaga. I don't do rutabaga, and I'm fresh out of plum pudding.;)
I baked them at 350 for 30 minutes, and they were Ok, but nothing to write
home about.
usually these things work.
Tonight's dinner was semi-home made... I cooked up a package of black beans and rice and added a can of diced tomato and about 1 1/2 chopped up chicken breasts that was baked up while the rice was cooking. Some of the leftover rice will be eaten over the next couple days and some at a future time, yet to be determined [a container is now in the freezer]. I also have some leftover chicken; perhaps I'll use some of it to make some chicken salad tomorrow for lunch or dinner.
Rice and split peas cooked with carrots and kale from the garden, served with microwaved garden mustard greens and chard. It will be frozen-only starting in a week or so. The time consuming part was sorting out the yellowed leaves from the good ones.
Tonight it's turkey meatloaf, mashed sweet potatoes and steamed green beans. Comfort food.
Swiss steak, mashed potatoes and peas. It's cold here, so fall food it is.
Last night it was my mom's recipe meatloaf (very simple, but we think it's quite yummy), hubby's mashed potatoes (OMG!) and Italian cut green beans. No sweet potatoes for us- hubby doesn't like them. I will occasionally do a baked sweet potato when he's working though.
I like turkey meatloaf. One time, at ASH, I accidentally made the turkey meatloaf with two lbs of ground turkey and two lbs of ground turkey sausage (which was the accident, the packages look very similar). It was GREAT! The spices in the turkey sausage made the meatloaf much less bland than meatloaf usually is. I've made it that way a couple of times since with the same good results.
Aaaah....cooking at ASH. THAT brings back memories.
I have to admit, ASH was the only time in my life when I cooked regularly. I remember joking about making an ASH cookbook. It would be called 1001 different ways to cook chicken, turkey, and fish.
Hahahahahahah!! For me it was 1001 different ways to cook chicken, turkey, and fish and not kill a borderline in the process.
I'm likin' the idea of mixing two turkey meats.
You have several choices: