What to do with Swiss Chard

If you belong to a vegetable CSA in Northern Virginia, you probably get a lot of swiss chard. I know we do! I am pretty sure we get chard all summer long, in fact.

So what to do with all of that chard? Well, first of all, know how it cooks up: unlike with some other greens, you can eat the stems. They have a similar texture to celery. If you get rainbow chard, you can end up with white, green, red, orange, and yellow stems, which can cook up really beautifully! The leaves are usually green but can be red as well. As with most greens, you can cook them up nicely with garlic & olive oil or butter.

But for something other than a side dish, you can try some Swiss Chard & Chicken Quesadillas for starters.

Or make some Swiss Chard pies! Here's a recipe:

Preheat oven to 350

Make your favorite pie crust. Or look online for a tasty crust and make it. Roll it out to 1/8" and cut into 6" rounds.  Or, go get a refrigerated pie crust (not frozen!) and cut that into smaller rounds. Set these aside.

For the filler, you'll need:
1 bunch swiss chard
1 garlic curl or 2 cloves garlic
some onion or spring onion or scallion tops
3 slices of bacon, cooked & crumbled
about 1T maple syrup
about 1T wine or apple cider vinegar
salt/pepper

Chop everything, keeping the chard stems separate from the leaves. Saute the chard stems, onion (or scallion), and garlic (or curls) in a little olive oil until they start to soften. Add the chard leaves, salt & pepper, and saute until everything is wilted. Remove from heat and add in the bacon, syrup, & vinegar.

Now, take your mini pie rounds. Add some of the mix, fold over, and crimp with a fork. Repeat for the rest of the rounds. If you have any leftover mix, refrigerate it for later use. You can always make more pie crust or use it in another recipe. Pierce tops of the pies to release steam. You may want to do an egg wash on these but it's not strictly necessary. Place on a baking stone or cookie sheet and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Delicious!

If you have leftovers, use them for breakfast! reheat them in a pan in the morning and add some eggs for a tasty omelette. You can use the same mix to go into a quiche or Egg Pie (just remove the squash/onion/garlic curl pesto from that recipe and replace with the mix from this one!)

You can generally use Swiss Chard in any recipe that calls for spinach, just remember that the chard will take a little longer to cook.

Do you have a favorite swiss chard recipe?

Sausage and Peppers Revisited, with Calzone leftovers!

Last summer, I made a delicious meal of Sausage and Peppers from ingredients from our farm share and farmer's market. This year, I did the same, with a few changes, and had left overs, since it was just my kids and me having the food.

I may even call this version better.

For Sausage and Peppers:
1 package of good sweet Italian sausage (we got this from the Pork Guy (Fertile Plains))
2 thin skinned sweet green peppers, sliced thinly
1 bulb of a spring red onion, sliced
1 bulb of a spring garlic (this looks like a garlic with a scallion-like top on it, but when you cut into the head, it has no "skins" separating the cloves), chopped
leaves from 2 stems of fresh oregano
salt/pepper
scant cup of water

Brown sausages on all sides, remove from pan, slice into bite-sized pieces, and return to pan. Add pepper, onions, garlic, salt & pepper (to taste) and oregano, and mix. Add a scant cup of water to the pan and scrape anything there is from the bottom of the pan. Cover tightly with a lid and continue cooking about 10 minutes more. Serve with pasta, or rice, or not :)

We had about half of the dish left over, and I was not sure what to do with it. Then I remembered something from my childhood: Sausage rolls! Of course, I had no idea how to make them. Mine came out more like a calzone but who cares? They were fantastic.

If you have one, go to Trader Joe's and get a pizza crust dough. It's in the refrigerated section near the cheese, and it costs .99. If you don't have a TJ's you'll have to make your own, or find another brand, but I have not had any as good as the TJ's ones. Also pick up a jar of TJ's marinara sauce (if you don't have any at home) and a bag of shredded mozzerella cheese (we used the lower fat version)

Let the dough sit at room temperature for 20 minutes. Break into 2 pieces and work each piece into a round. Place rounds on a pizza stone. working on a 1/2 round, layer sauce, sausage and peppers, more sauce, and cheese. Fold over and crimp the edge, and pierce with a knife or fork to make vents. Bake at 400 for about 20 minutes.

My son had no idea that this was essentially the same dish that we had for dinner last night so YAY for hiding the leftovers!

Raspberry Pork Tenderloin and Chipotle Sweet Potatoes

About a week ago I posted to my facebook status that I had gotten a coupon from Bzz Agent for a free Alexia frozen food product, and that I had bought some Spicy Sweet Potato Fries. My friend Brian suggested I make it with something Pork-like, and it got the wheels spinning in my head. The "spice" in the potatoes was chipotle, and I had in the past made a chipotle raspberry pork tenderloin from Dinner Zen. What if I tried to recreate it, but left out the chipotle in the sauce, since it would be in the fries?

What followed was fantastic. Truly delicious. Here's the recipe:

Raspberry Pork Tenderloin
1 pork tenderloin
1/4 c raspberry jam
1 T apple cider vinegar
salt & pepper
thyme, tarragon, oregano (all dried)
1/2 a small onion, chopped
a little olive oil

Prepare pork tenderloin by rubbing with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, tarragon, thyme, and oregano. Place it in a baking dish and bake at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes, turning once.
While the pork is cooking, saute the chopped onion with a little bit of salt and pepper. When the onions are soft, add the jam and vinegar, and stir until the jam melts, Keep on low until the pork is done. Let pork rest for a few minutes and slice, then pour sauce over the slices.

If you choose to make the Alexia Spicy Sweet Potatoes, you'll want to put them in about 25 minutes before the pork is done. The recipe will say 20 minutes, but you're sharing oven space and you'll need the extra time to make sure they end up crispy like fries, and not soggy, like, um, soggy fries.

Now, for the verdict. The raspberry sauce was spectacular. The pork was delicious. And the seasoning on the fries made the whole dish more reminiscent of the original dish that I had (that had the chipotle peppers in the sauce). The kids loved the pork and the "dip." The three year old thought the fries were too spicy, but he cut the spice by eating a piece of pork dipped in the raspberry dip. The 9 month old actually loved the sweet potatoes as is, and kept screaming for more. The husband and I loved the fries but thought that by the time we got to the end of them, the taste off chipotle was overpowering everything. Still, as sweet potato fries go, they were pretty delicious and much easier than slicing sweet potatoes by myself! One thing that I will caution--the serving size says 3 oz or 30 fries. This is off. If you are measuring for weight-loss purposes, make sure to weigh the fries and don't count on 30 being a serving size, as it was closer to 20-25.

And as for the pork, if you have a BJ's near you, you should check there, because ours had a pack of 4 pork tenderloins for $14 (it looked like 2 in the package but it was really 4!). So I actually prepped two of this meal and stuck one in the freezer, and then prepped another 2 freezer meals with the other two. Great deal, and I'll have the recipe for the other one up here after we taste test it!  To prep this recipe for the freezer, do the seasoning and olive oil and stick in a ziploc bag, then saute the onions, and place the sauteed onions, jam, and vinegar in a separate bag, and store together in an outer bag. Defrost before baking.

Mushroom Soup

About a year ago, when I was pregnant with my baby girl, I was having a moment of feeling that meat was icky and soup was delicious. My friend Charlotte gave me this lovely recipe for a mushroom soup that feels creamy but has no cream in it. I changed it up a little bit, because I wanted to add onions and remove some of the fat. In all, it's delicious and about a point per serving (based on 6 servings)

cooking spray
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 boxes of mushrooms, chopped really well
salt, pepper, sage, thyme, parsley (or, as Charlotte says, "season with stuff you like")
1 box (4 cups) chicken or vegetable broth

Saute onions and garlic in cooking spray. When onions become soft, add mushrooms. Season with stuff you like (my seasonings above). Add one box of fat free chicken or vegetable broth. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer, and allow to simmer at least 1/2 hour. Blend with an immersion blender until mostly smooth.

I had some fresh parsley, so I served this garnished with a little chopped parsley. Delicious!

Lemon Caper Chicken

Years and years ago, back about 10 years ago, I was on an online diet program called eDiets. I ended up quitting because they went from this awesome diet that concentrated on healthy eating habits and a diet based on the American Heart Association's recommendations to a site that let you choose between "traditional eDiets," Atkins, and someone else's diet. I thought they were sellouts and I told them so. Looking at their site now, it looks like they still offer three choices, if not specifically two branded diets.

Anyway, the other reason I quit was that the support was in forums, and since not everyone was on the same plan anymore, the forums got weird and unhelpful. As it was I made a bunch of friends, which was pretty cool. And I got a recipe for Lemon Caper Chicken, which I have evolved over the last 10 years. Last night, about 1/2 hour before dinner time, I realized I had not planned anything, took a quick look in my fridge and freezer, and realized it was Lemon Caper Chicken time. Good thing my brain always makes sure I buy ingredients for it even when I'm not particularly thinking of making it.

2 small boneless skinless chicken breasts, butterflied and then cut into small pieces

2T whole wheat flour

salt/pepper/garlic/paprika

2T capers

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 c fat free chicken broth

cooking spray

Sprinkle spices into the flour and mix well. Spray a nonstick pan with cooking spray and set the heat to medium-high. Pat dry your pieces of chicken and lightly coat the pieces in the flour mixture, and add them to the pan. Cook for a few minutes and turn. Cook a few more minutes on the second side.

Add chicken broth, lemon, and capers to the pan with the chicken and turn heat down to medium-low. Continue cooking until the broth becomes thick and sticks to the chicken.

Serves 2. I ran this through WW's points builder and I cannot believe it but it's 3 points per serving! Serve with brown rice or pasta or whatever you want because it's 3 points!

Mango Curry Chicken Revisited

A while ago, I made Mango Curry Chicken. It was great, but we as a family felt that there was not enough liquid and the chicken dried out a bit. In revisiting, I made 3 bags of Mango Curry Chicken for the freezer, and each fed 2 adults and a child. Original recipe from Recipezarr but mine is different enough now that I'm rewriting the whole thing. Remember that this is a freezer recipe so you are intended to make it in a big batch. You'll need three freezer bags.

Spice mix:

2T sugar

2t curry powder

2t ground coriander

1/2t ground cinnamon

1/4t cayenne pepper

1t turmeric

1t salt

1/8t ground cloves

Combine all spices well and divide into the three freezer bags.

Now you'll need:

1 extra large sweet onion, chopped

5 or 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces

2 cans diced tomatoes

1 1/2 cups mango chutney (I use Trader Joe's brand but you can get other brands too)

Divide chicken pieces, chopped onions, tomatoes, and chutney into the three freezer bags that the spices already went into. Press out air and seal freezer bags, and mix everything well inside the bag so that chicken is well coated. Freeze.

To cook, defrost and then you can either put it in your crockpot for 4-6 hours or bake in a covered baker for an hour.

5 points per serving. Serve over brown basmati rice for 4 points per cup.

Chicken and Chickpea Stew

My husband is out of town today, so I got to cook with legumes! On the menu, Crockpot Chicken and Chickpeas, a recipe that I got from the internet here.

I, of course, rearranged the recipe to make it my own. It was fantastic, and enjoyed by both me and the small boy.

Chicken and Couscous Stew

3 four-oz boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed of any fat and cut into bite-sized pieces

2 carrots, sliced

1 large onion, sliced thinly

20 oz can of chick peas, rinsed and drained

15 oz can of diced tomatoes (with liquid)

4 cloves garlic, pressed through a garlic press

1t paprika (I used Hot Hungarian Paprika but you can use sweet if you object or can't get it)

1/2 t ground ginger

1/2 t cinnamon

1/2 t turmeric

1/2 t salt

Throw everything into the crock pot and mix well to distribute spices. Cook on high for 3 hours and low for 1 hour, then on warm until it's time to eat. If you have more time than that you can keep it on low for 6 hours.

I ran this through the weight watchers recipe builder. Based on 4 servings, this comes to a whopping 5 points per serving. One serving was plenty for a hearty dinner when served with whole wheat couscous (1 cup = 3 points) for an 8-point meal.

Although I hate when my husband is out of town, it was a nice chance to try a new recipe and eat something that we can't normally have when he is home! My house smelled amazing while it was cooking, and it was quite tasty, too.

Ham, Green Bean, and Potato Soup

It's COLD in Northern Virginia, especially for people who are not used to this kind of cold! My husband asked for SOUP, and how could I deny him? Since we had no soup fixin's in the house, I asked what kind of soup he wanted, and he said, "How about Ham, Green Bean, and Potato?"

An EXCELLENT idea. I went shopping. No good green beans, but frozen ones were on sale. I decided that if I was going to make Ham, Green Bean, and Potato Soup, I was going to make a LOT of it. We had an excellent lunch, and still have a quart of soup in the fridge and 2 quarts in the freezer. Here's your recipe:

Ham, Green Bean, and Potato Soup

About 3 cups of ham--if you have leftovers then that's great, otherwise go buy one of those very small cooked hams and cut it up into about 1/2 inch cubes

3 large potatoes, also diced into 1/2 inch cubes

1 large onion, sliced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 large bag (32 oz) of frozen green beans

2 boxes of chicken broth (32 oz) (I used low sodium because we have the ham; see note on salt in directions)

pepper

salt

1T thyme

garlic powder

1 bay leaf

cooking spray

Saute onion and garlic in cooking spray on medium. When the onion is soft, add ham and green beans and stir until green beans defrost (you can skip that part if you are using fresh) Add potatoes and chicken broth, bay leaf, thyme, pepper to your taste (I like it peppery) and a little garlic powder (think a sprinkle). Wait on the salt! I repeat! Do NOT ADD SALT yet! Your salt addition will depend on how salty your ham was to start, and you can seriously oversalt it if you add too much.

Bring it all to a boil, cover, and reduce to medium. Take a taste of the broth and add some salt if you think it needs it. Continue cooking until potatoes are soft, or longer. Remove bay leaf if you can find it, or warn everyone that there's a bay leaf to not eat :)

Makes a hearty lunch for 2 people, plus 3 additional quarts for later. Serve it with a hearty artisan bread. Fall over yourself over how good it is!

I put this into WW's recipe builder and based on 8 servings (which are NICE sized servings) it is 5 points per serving. If you use lean ham, it is 4 points.

Multi-day Cooking: Beef

With the exception of making a chicken and having chicken, then chicken salad, enchiladas, and soup, I am not usually one to make one meal and turn it into many meals. I'm more of a "let's freeze the rest" person, or a "let's eat this for lunch" kind of girl.

Yesterday I made a pot roast in the crock pot, and it was delicious. It was from Dinner Zen and it was marinated in, of all things, cranberry sauce and beef broth. Delicious over noodles with broccoli on the side, but it was a whole order (which should feed 6) and we are 3 people, so it looked like it would be dinner again tonight.

Then I read my friend Maggie's Facebook status that said she was turning leftover pot roast into beef stew, and it sounded completely inspired. Here's mine:

1 onion, chopped coarsely

3 carrots, in nice-sized slices

2 potatoes, cut into bite-sized chunks

4 stalks celery, again sliced into nice sized chunks

1/2 a bag of frozen corn

1 boullion packet

2 cups water

left over pot roast, cut up as best you can, or not, because it will fall apart, together with remaining gravy that got made in the pot when you first made it

salt/pepper

your favorite seasoning (I used Pampered Chef Moroccan Seasoning)

splash of apple juice, or not (mine already had cranberry flavor so the apple went well)

1T corn starch in 1/2 c cold water

Spray your pot with cooking spray and start the onions, carrots, and celery. When the onions start to soften, add the rest of the ingredients with the exception of the seasonings. Bring to a boil, then reduce to low. Cook at least an hour. Taste and then season with your salt/pepper and favorite seasoning that will go with whatever you cooked your beef in. Serve with biscuits (I made Bisquik ones but whatever you'd like).

So now, we have enough STEW for another day's worth of eating. My plan is to get some Pillsbury pie crusts and additional frozen vegetables and make pot pie with it! But my plan is to throw it in the freezer and eat it another time. There's only so much beef you can eat in a week, and I've pretty much hit my limit.

So, to recap: Pot Roast -->Beef Stew --> Beef Pot Pie

I'm fairly certain that the Pot Pie will also leave us with left overs, but I'm also fairly certain that they will just get eaten for lunch and not repurposed. I mean, there's only so much repurposing you can do with a single pot roast, right?

Cranberry Madness

About a day and a half after filling my freezer with fabulous goodness from Dinner Zen, the compressor died on my refrigerator. I noticed because none of my new food was frozen yet, and other things were actively defrosting. After a panicked day, and $350 in repairs later, I have a working fridge and freezer again, but some things were defrosted beyond re-freezing, including a bag of cranberries.

I quickly went to the Weight Watchers web site and looked up cranberry recipes. They had a 1-point recipe for cranberry meringues, and on closer inspection I learned that they were actually 4-for-1-point recipes, and who can really argue with that? It called for egg whites, cream of tartar, cranberry sauce, and dried cranberries. A quick lookup online showed that the cream of tartar could be replaced with some white vinegar in a meringue, and I was on my way.

First the cranberry sauce. Since this was for making cookies, I didn't do anything weird. Just plain cranberry sauce. If you don't know how, here it is:

Plain Cranberry Sauce

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

3 cups cranberries

Bring water and sugar to a boil. Add cranberries. Bring back to a boil. Reduce to low and simmer for 10-12 minutes. Remove from heat and chill. You won't use it all for the cookies, so plan on some turkey or chicken the next day.

I had about 2 cups of cranberries left, so I decided to dry them. I don't have a dehydrator, so I did it in the oven. Just sprinkle cranberries with sugar, place on a baking sheet (best to use parchment paper, which I didn't have, and now I have a mess of a baking sheet!) and bake at 200 degrees for 2 hours.

Once all that was done, I was ready to make my meringues! Here is my version of the recipe, which came out great and which did not change the points value at all:

Cranberry Meringue Kisses

3 egg whites

1/4 t white vinegar

3/4 c sugar

1/4 c cranberry sauce

about 80 dried cranberries (obviously this will work just as well with Craisins as with the homemade kind!)

Preheat oven to 200

Beat egg whites and vinegar until stiff peaks form. You really really really want to do this in a stand mixer. It will take a long time. Also, they transform faster if you start them at room temperature. Once stiff peaks form, add sugar, 1/4 cup at a time, and continue beating until the mix is glossy. Gently fold in cranberry sauce.

You will probably need 2 large cookie sheets. Either line them with parchment or spray with cooking spray. Drop Meringues in teaspoon sized "kisses" and top each one with a dried cranberry. You should have about 80-85 kisses. Bake them at 200 degrees for 2 hours, rotating the cookie sheets after an hour. Allow them to cool completely before removing from the pans, and store them in an airtight container. Try not to eat them all at once.

Orange Chicken with Singapore Seasoning

I've been branching out and trying my hand at mixing perhaps surprising ingredients. Today, it was a great success! I did use two specialty items, but I'm pretty sure you could replace them if you needed to (that is, I used the Pampered Chef Covered Baker and Penzey's Singapore Seasoning.

Orange Chicken with Singapore Seasoning (serves 2)

2 four-ounce boneless, skinless chicken breasts

one onion, sliced thinly

one navel orange, cleaned well, and sliced thinly

5 cloves garlic, sliced in half.

Penzey's Singapore Seasoning

salt

Pampered Chef Covered Baker

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Line the bottom of the Pampered Chef covered baker with oranges. Place chicken breasts on top of oranges, and sprinkle lightly with salt and liberally with Singapore Seasoning. Place remaining orange slices on top of chicken, top with onions garlic. Cover the baker, and bake for 45-50 minutes. (You can actually leave it in longer if you need to if you use the covered baker; we were in a conversation with a friend and it went over an hour and was still awesome).

Serve chicken breasts topped with oranges, onions, and garlic. We had this with some broccoli on the side and it was lovely.

Aaaaaand.... according to Weight Watchers' Recipe Builder, it's 5 points per serving!

Cranberry Cous-Cous fabulousness

WW has a recipe for Cranberry-Sage Cous Cous, and it is remarkably good. I was actually planning to make this for Thanksgiving but ended up making stuffing instead.

This is sweet and savory and tart all together, and it's 3 points per 1-cup serving, so I foresee making it again soon. We had it with cider-glazed pork chops and glazed apples. I changed a little bit from the original recipe and my changes are reflected here (they do not change the points values)

Cranberry Sage Couscous.

2 cups fresh cranberries

5 oz whole wheat couscous (Trader Joe's has this)

1 cup fat free chicken broth

3 sage leaves, chopped finely

1/2 an onion, chopped

2 ribs celery, chopped

salt & pepper

1T olive oil

Boil cranberries in water until several have popped, and drain. At the same time, boil the chicken broth and pour it over the couscous.

Saute onion, celery, sage, and salt/pepper in olive oil until onion softens. Add the cranberries and couscous, and mix well. Pour into a baker (spray with a little cooking spray first) and bake at 350 for 3o minutes.

WW says that a serving is a little more than a cup (think a heaping cupful!) It's a lot and it's filling and delicious!

Holidays and Weight Loss

I lost a pound the week of Thanksgiving, which is, frankly, amazing, as I went 18 points over my weekly allowance points, completely by accident, because I didn't go to a restaurant prepared beforehand.

That said, I did go to Thanksgiving dinners (both of them) prepared for just about anything, and I even offered to make the sweet potatoes and stuffing for the first one so that I could control the ingredients. The stuffing didn't come out so great (I mean, it still tasted great but I would do it differently next time) but here's the sweet potato recipe:

Maple Sweet Potatoes

3 sweet potatoes, scrubbed and cut into bite sized pieces (leave skin on)

1 large onion, sliced thinly

3 T maple syrup

2T olive oil

salt, pepper, and fresh thyme for seasoning

Mix all ingredients, place in a large baking dish, and bake for 1 hour, stirring around the potatoes at least once.

Serves 10 people, 2 points per serving (according to WW's recipe builder), and it's much more interesting than plain glazed sweet potatoes or ones with marshmallows on top!

There are, of course, more holidays coming, and I want to do a mix of enjoying myself while not gaining back all of the weight I lost up to now. We are going to my parents in Florida for Christmas, and that will also, of course, include Disney. Fortunately, there's a lot of walking there to help out on the eating front!

SO here's to the next month being as successful as the last one, and I'll be sharing food ideas as I have them!

WW Week 1 done! In which I eat a lot of food, but lose weight.

My weigh-in was great, and I was down 3.2 pounds the first week! That probably would have been more if I had not completely gorged myself at the Melting Pot last night. I saved up all 35 of my flex points and had a really light breakfast and no lunch in anticipation of the night out, too. But I did eat so much that I had weird dreams. Still, first night out without kids since the baby was born.

By the way, the Melting Pot is evil. Tasty Tasty Evil. I was trying to figure out WHICH course you could leave out, and Adam said "salad," but even the salad is so tasty that you wouldn't want to drop it out. Of course the least healthy is probably the cheese course. For pure price, you could leave out the main course and go for cheese fondue, salad, and chocolate fondue, but then you wouldn't have tasty tasty meats and sauces. Oh the Evil. Seriously.

Meanwhile, I saved up ALL of my flex points for that meal, and I was sure that I probably gained a ton, but I didn't! Most excellent.

I also found out this week that IHOP has a diet menu and it's pretty awesome if you're going to go out.

So anyway, I went to my meeting while Micah was in school today (since I have plans tonight). We talked about Thanksgiving. We all had to pick from a list of foods what we were planning to eat for Thanksgiving and then add up the points. Mine came to 35 so that sounds to me like just saving my flex points for Thursday next week, but other people talked about cutting back on stuff. I guess I could do that too. Also, I volunteered to make the stuffing so I can control what goes into it. Because I am clever. I shared this tip at the meeting too.

Liz (today's meeting leader) shared her recipe for Liz's Lazy Soup. This is what she does:

Saute onion and garlic in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil (it's for a whole pot and so each individual serving will have less than a point of oil). When it gets clear, throw in 2 bags of broccoli wokkoli. When they turn really green, throw in 2-3 boxes of mushrooms. Add 2 or 3 boxes of vegetable broth. Thow in a whole bag of frozen spinach. Bring to a boil and then reduce and cook for 30 minutes.

Now, you have a lazy 0 point soup. Store it in the fridge. Sometime after you do this, cook up some whole wheat pasta and refrigerate. When you are ready to eat, weigh out 2 points of pasta, scoop on some soup, and microwave it for a 2 point meal.

I think I'll probably do this :) It sounds lazy and easy!

Weight Loss Attempt + Acorn Squash

So I joined Weight Watchers. The baby is 3 months old, and even though I am still nursing, I get an extra 10 points per day while nursing, so it shouldn't be too bad. I suspect my husband won't start losing weight until I am cooking for far fewer points. I get to start with 34 per day! I had an 8 point breakfast and it's an hour later and I'm still full, so that's a really good thing.

I also started putting some of my recipes into WW's recipe builder online, and honestly it's not so bad. I made an acorn squash curry the other night and, without the rice, it was 4 points per serving. AND it was really filling.

Now I just have to stop making pies.

Here's the Acorn Squash Curry recipe:

1 Acorn Squash

1 large onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

2 large carrots, sliced

2 T sweet curry powder (I used Penzey's)

2T Crackpot Gourmet curry mix

small amount of beef, trimmed of fat, cubed very small

1c reduced fat sour cream

1 can chopped tomatoes

Microwave the whole squash for 5 minutes. Slice in half, scoop out seeds and discard, and scoop out flesh & chop. Set aside.

Saute onion & garlic in cooking spray until onion is clear. Add squash, carrots, tomatoes, and spices. Continue cooking on medium until carrots start to soften. Add meat and cook until meat looks cooked on the outside. Add sour cream and warm through. Serve with brown basmati rice.

Serves 4. (4 points per serving before rice)

Butternut squash and potato soup

I was going to make my other version of Butternut Squash soup, and then it morphed into something else entirely! Last week I bought this fabulous chutney-like tomatoey Indian spice mix from the Crackpot Gourmet, and to me it was screaming to be tossed in to something with butternut squash. I was intending to blend the final product but when I tasted it I really loved the texture and flavor as it was so I didn't.

1 roasted butternut squash, cut into small pieces

3 red potatoes, medium sized, diced

1 onion, diced

3 carrots, sliced

2-3 stalks celery, sliced

3 packs of Trader Joe's Condensed chicken broth packets

6 cups of water

1/3 of a container of the Crackpot Gourmet's tomatoey Indian spice mix

sprinkle of salt and pepper

A little bit of butter

Saute the onion, carrot, and celery with salt and pepper in butter until onion is soft. Add the rest of the ingredients, bring to a boil, and then simmer for about an hour. Eat.

I had intended to bring some to Smita at the farmer's market on Saturday but it was raining cats and dogs and I just couldn't bring the kids out to the market in that mess. I even packed it up and was going to have Adam bring it, and then Micah wanted to go with him and then M. fell asleep in the car and they didn't go and well you get the picture. Meanwhile, it was awesome. It fed my family plus a friend very well for dinner as a side dish to a pork roast from Dinner Zen, and I still have a quart of the stuff in the freezer. Fantastic.

Stuffed Peppers

Sometimes I think that my recipes are informed by my having looked at so many medieval recipes. You know, the ones that say "take thou a measure of meat and throw your spices thereon" and such. I should write down what I do when I do it.

That said, today I made stuffed peppers. I was trying to remember the last time I made them, and I think the answer is "never." I remember my dad making them when I was young, but I never made them myself.

So, I winged it. Here it is:

1 lb ground beef (we use Laura's Organic, which is 94% lean)

about a cup of cooked rice

dried oregano

dried basil

salt

pepper

sugar

1 onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

4 peppers

pasta sauce

Saute onion and garlic in cooking spray until onion starts to brown. Mix onion and garlic into rice and beef, and sprinkle on oregano, basil, salt, pepper, and sugar. (Yes, this is where I am being very medieval. I just sprinkled stuff on and didn't measure!) Mix it all in.

Cut off the tops of the peppers fairly close to the stem, and pull out the stem and seeds. Stuff peppers with meat mixture, place in a covered baker, and top with sauce. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes. Serve with pasta, or not, and extra sauce.

500 years from now some re-enactor is going to be cursing me and my inability to write down amounts of spices. Hey, at least I didn't, without listing any spices, write "and add all the spices and cook until it is done!"

Salsa Madness

I can't take credit for the recipe. My CSA had a bunch of Salsa Kits in our shares. All you do is put everything in a food processor, blend it all together, and add vinegar or lime juice and salt. I made up the first kit and it lasted WEEKS. I had 2 more kits in the fridge and just made them up. I'm just posting this so I remember what was in each of the kits:

Roma tomatoes

tomatillos

peppers (early ones had jalapenos, and others had other kinds of peppers)

garlic

onion

Really that was it. And it is fabulous. :-D

Adventures with Chinese Long Beans

They're purple!

No really, Chinese Long Beans are purple! This made me all kinds of happy. But what to do with them? Well, some internet searching and conversing with Smita (who is now my go-to woman for all spice-related questions) led me to doing an experiment last night. And the experiment was universally accepted, even by the toddler. Simplicity was the word of the day, and we had Side Dish Win!

Simple but Savory Chinese Long Beans

1 bunch Chinese Long beans, cut into 1 inch pieces

1 small onion, sliced thinly

1 clove garlic, coarsely chopped

large pinch of salt

Penzey's Singapore Seasoning

1/4 c water

1 T olive oil

In a pan that comes with a lid, heat the olive oil. Add the long beans and onions. Saute for about 4 minutes and add the garlic and a pinch of salt, and then season liberally with the singapore seasoning. Continue sauteing another 5 minutes. Add water and quickly add the lid to the pan, then turn heat down to low. This will steam the beans so that they are done all the way through. Allow to steam for about 10 minutes.

From my internet research, I've learned that Chinese Long Beans are in the same family as green beans, only they are purple, longer, and much more fibrous, which is why they have to steam after they are sauteed. We served this next to one of our gifted freezer meals of chicken and broccoli in a casserole, so it served to bring a little extra spice, kick, and interest to the plates. My toddler ate only this and left the chicken and broccoli on his plate. Next year I will not be so hesitant to make these! It seems we have found some more beans that my husband is not allergic to! (anything in the green bean family is fine for him, and these as well as pole beans are fine! Yay!)

Pasta Sauce Recipe--of sorts

In my last post I talked about making pasta sauce.

This isn't really so much a recipe as a "what I did and you can do something like it too." Really, pasta sauce isn't so specific a practice that you need to have a full-on recipe. Just a good sense of what you like.

We started with 25 lbs of tomato seconds from our farm share. The night before the Big Cook, we peeled, seeded, and either chopped or pureed the tomatoes. I chopped about a little less than 1/4 of the tomatoes, then refrigerated everything. (We really had to process them that night as they were very ripe and we didn't want anything to start spoiling.)

The next day (during nap time) I headed to the supermarket for more ingredients. We decided to NOT make meat sauce, as this was going to be our base pasta sauce for several months to come, and we might want to use it with some meatless or chicken dishes.

I came home and started on the cooking. I had a 3 gallon pot which turned out to not be big enough, so if you do this you might want to start with 2 pots and split everything (this may also let you do a meat and a meatless batch)

Chopped up 2 very large onions and minced a head of garlic. Started these in olive oil and added fresh chopped basil, oregano, and flat leaf parsley, as well as salt and pepper. When the onions were soft I added the tomatoes, at which point I realized I had forgotten the 4 boxes of mushrooms that I had purchased.

So I sauteed the mushrooms in olive oil and added them to the sauce. It was fine. But don't be like me. Do the mushrooms with the onions and garlic and you'll be less likely to get splattered with hot oil like I did (I'm ok).

From here I added sugar to the mix and also realized that we needed to split into 2 pots or else the mushrooms would displace enough sauce that we'd overflow. So I got my 2nd largest pot and transferred about 3 quarts of sauce. Note that the sauce in the smaller pot ended up getting thicker than the sauce in the big pot. Not a big deal either, but you might want to re-mix them back together if you want consistent packs of sauce.

From here we just let everything cook, then tasted and adjusted seasonings (I did end up adding a little garlic powder to the bigger pot but not to the smaller one). I also added 3 small cans of tomato paste to the big pot and 1 to the smaller pot, which gave it a bit of a richer flavor. These cooked for several hours, and we actually cooked the bigger pot for longer to get it to thicken more.

When all was done, we had dinner, then went to packaging. We do not do canning, but we do do freezing, so we split out the sauce into quart sized containers to cool. When they were cool enough to freeze, we transferred the sauce into quart sized ziploc bags, pressed out the extra air, and froze flat. We kept one quart in the refrigerator to use this week and had six quarts in the freezer.

All in all, it worked pretty well. The hardest part truly was the peeling/seeding/pureeing (would have been nicer to have a better food processor) and the rest I was able to do during baby naptimes. This is a nice basic sauce that can be adjusted when used to become spicier, sweeter, etc. for different recipes.

I like how much stuff came from our CSA--the tomatoes, onions, garlic, and basil were all from our CSA and the other herbs were fresh herbs from the supermarket. The mushrooms were from the supermarket too.

Now, do I freeze peaches next week?