63 new of 154 responses total.
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: