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I've got a bone to pick with Lean Cuisine. They have an add campaign going on right now, where they talk about food myths and then impress upon us the idea that Lean Cuisine breaks those myths. That's great. But one of their most recent food myths is this: "Chopping and peeling can be kind of relaxing at the end of a long day." And then the announcer says, "For who?" I say: ME!!!! I love to come home after a long day at work, as long as my kid isn't screaming, and spend a few (I repeat, a FEW) minutes chopping and peeling. It doesn't take thought. Or skill. Or much of anything. Just a cutting board, a knife, and some veggies. This recipe was created on one of those days where I just wanted to make something simple and do a little bit of chopping therapy. Some women do "shopping therapy," I prefer "chopping therapy."
As I was searching in the fridge for something else to jazz up the concoction, I stumbled upon steak sauce. That's when the true inspiration hit. Now, steak sauce and sloppy joes might sound like an odd pairing. Let me explain. I love to make Rachael Ray's Caution Flag Chili. It gets it's flavor base from steak sauce and it's a huuuge hit every time I make it. So it only made sense to flavor the sloppy joes similarly.
And like the chili that went before it, the sloppy joes were out of this world. Savory. Deep. A hint of tang. Perfect! I've made the recipe two or three times since, and I make sure to follow my original recipe every time, so as to replicate the tastes exactly. It's that good. And if you know me, you know that I only reserve actual recipe following for those super dooper special recipes that are so amazing that I can't imagine doing it any other way. This is one of those recipes.
A quick note about veggies: The veggies in this recipe were ones that I had on hand in my fridge that day. I have made this since with other veggies. Don't make a special trip to the store for this recipe. That defeats the purpose. Just use what you have on hand.
My sister Julie spent a summer in Slovenia on a missions trip a while back. While she was there, she was introduced to a wonderful summer dish that her host family made. It was a simple cucumber, tomato, and corn salad with a vinegary dressing. The family would eat this vegetarian meal with a large loaf of crusty bread to soak up all the sharp juices. What a great summertime treat! A little bit like the tuna salad-stuffed tomatoes my mom used to make when I was a kid. Nothing to cook and delicious.
So, Julie brought home the idea and has replicated the recipe as best she could. She leaves out the corn, since it's a little bit higher in starch (and points) and she uses a bottled light balsamic vinaigrette for the dressing. Whenever I go to her house during the spring and summer, there's usually this salad in the fridge.
When I made it, I kept forgetting to buy the balsamic vinaigrette at the store. So I ended up making my own "dressing" with white wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. It was great. You can use store-bought vinaigrette to make the recipe even easier, or top with my version. Also, feel free to add any sort of fresh herb to the salad. Perhaps basil or flat leaf parsley.
Growing up, the rule in my house was that you ate everything that was put in front of you. "I don't like this food," was not an excuse. Except for one food. Each of us was allowed to have one food which we said we would never eat. For Julie, it was eggs. For Trish, it was tomatoes. For me, well, I begged for it to be chicken. My mother said no. Frankly, she couldn't afford for me to not eat chicken, since it was a staple of our menu and relatively cheap.
For as long as I can remember, I've had a dicey relationship with chicken. I am still not wild about chicken on the bone. Especially dark meat. Blech. I like chicken breasts, but the sight of them raw is enough to send me running the other way. There's something about raw chicken that grosses me out. But I've resolved to overcome this! So I bought a cookbook called The Big Book of Chicken. What better way to immerse myself in the world of chicken than with a gigantic cookbook dedicated to the ingredient?
The following recipe was the first on my journey to accept chicken as my culinary friend, and it was a resounding success. My family raved about it. And it was amazingly simple to create. Much to my delight, I didn't have to touch the raw chicken too much. Bonus! The creamy sauce is flavorful but subtle, and the Swiss cheese on top is buttery, gooey, and delicious.
The beauty of this recipe is that the sauce is 0 points, so the only thing that will cost you any points is the cheese. You can adjust the amount of Swiss cheese to the points you want to spend. If you're feeling decadent, use the entire 2 cups. If you're feeling a bit more austere, limit the cheese. It will still be a glorious dish.
When I served this dish, I knew that the cheese topping was a bit decadent, so I made some sauteed peppers and onions, and steamed broccoli to go alongside it, instead of a starch. I spooned a bit of the flavorful saucy-broth from the bottom of the baking dish on top of the veggies to serve it. Don't waste it. It's fantastic!
Recently my sister Tricia opened my eyes to the glories of muffin baking. In her quest to fill her and her son's belly with whole foods, she makes a batch of some sort of whole wheat muffin so that she always has a healthy snack within reach.
I've got to tell you that there is beauty and serenity in the art of muffin baking. Sounds crazy, I know. But consider this: you don't need any fancy equipment. Two bowls, a wooden spoon, and an ice cream scoop. That's as fancy as it gets. The repetitive but mindless activity of filling each well in the muffin tin with thick, fluffy batter is so gratifying! I LOVE MAKING MUFFINS!
Think you're too busy to make muffins? Not a baker? I tell you you're too busy NOT to make them! Why don't you stop for a moment and sample what life might be like if you were June Cleaver? Where else in your hectic life do you get the chance to have a Betty Crocker moment in a Lean Cuisine world? I'm telling you, freshly baked muffins are the ticket! Besides, after you've made them, your normal life will be waiting right where you left it, but you'll have fantastic muffins to eat for the next few days. Bonus!
Before I give you the recipe, I must say a few words about the ingredients. There are a few specialty items that are needed, but once you have them on-hand, the muffin possibilities are endless! Simply go to Pinch My Salt and search the recipes there for whole grain muffins. Make a new batch of muffins each week, trying out different recipes. You'll already have most of the hard-to-find ingredients. You'll be so glad you did.
- Bananas: These aren't exactly hard to find, but you do need to understand one important thing: the blacker the banana, the better the muffin. Trust me. You might be scared to let your bananas ripen to the point of blackness, but believe me, once you taste the muffins made from them, you will kiss my feet. I buy a bag of discounted, over-ripe bananas from my grocery store and I leave them out for a week or two extra, until they are black all over. If you want to help this process along, pop them in the fridge. Store unused bananas in the freezer in bags (just the flesh, not the peels). Thaw them in short bursts in the microwave for your baking delight.
- White Whole Wheat Flour: I found this in the baking section of my grocery store. Hyvee, to be exact. It is a special type of whole wheat flour that is supposed to be a little bit lighter than regular whole wheat flour.
- Low-Fat Buttermilk: Did you know that buttermilk is naturally low in fat? Cool, huh? I now keep a large container of buttermilk in my fridge and use it as needed, mostly for muffins. It lasts forever. My sister uses dried buttermilk, which she found next to the powdered milk in her grocery store.
- Wheat Bran: I found this in the health food section of Hyvee. It was approximately $2.
- Flax Seed Meal: Not called for in this recipe, but used in a lot of other Pinch My Salt muffin recipes. It is also called ground flax seed and is approximately $2. Store this in a freezer bag in the freezer, for optimum freshness.
I adapted this recipe from the banana muffin recipe on Pinch My Salt. My sister suggested that the muffins were too big for a snack, so she recommended dividing the batter to make smaller muffins. I also increased the quantity of banana, because I like a little more banana punch. The original recipe calls for pecan meal, which is essentially very finely ground pecans. Sounds fantastic, but it was so expensive, I decided not to try it. Instead, I use 1/2 cup of chopped pecans. Sometimes I just break them up roughly with my hands, or pop them in a bag and give 'em a good whack with something heavy. This time around I also added some miniature chocolate chips for a chocolate kick. Feel free to leave them out if you'd like. Finally, I added some vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the batter because I can't fathom a muffin without said ingredients. If you disagree, leave them out.
Last summer, my Dad created this dessert. He's always had a "thing" for pound cake covered in strawberries. In an effort to lighten that up, he traded the pound cake for angel food cake, added a few bells and whistles, and we've never looked back. This is our go-to dessert at spring and summer family gatherings.
This post is light on words and heavy on pictures because it was the easiest way to explain how to assemble this recipe. You'll note some very masculine-looking hands in the photos: they're my Dad's. I did a photo shoot with him as the star. He was in heaven! In case you were wondering, my Dad's nickname is Ace. Hence, the title of this recipe.
Enough chit chat. On with the recipe...
What you'll need:
- One 8 oz angel food cake loaf. (If you can't find a loaf, go with the regular ring-style cake) Pop the cake in the freezer for at least 12 hours before you are ready to make the dessert. The cake will be a bit more firm, which will help you slice through the cake more easily.
- 3 lbs of strawberries, hulled and sliced into quarters. Add 1 tablespoon of sugar to the sliced strawberries and stir them up. This will allow some "juice" to form. Set the berries aside while you assemble the cake.
- Optional: 1 small container of blueberries (sorry, I don't know the size). These add a bit of color.
- Lemon curd. You'll find this in the jelly aisle of the grocery store. If you've never tasted lemon curd before, it's a creamy and tart lemon custard. It's absolutely delicious. In this particular recipe, it enhances the brightness of the strawberries, rather than tasting overly lemony. This ingredient is the key to this recipe. DON'T SKIP IT.
- Strawberry preserves. My Dad prefers Smucker's Simply Fruit.
- Cool Whip Light. For dolloping on top.
- An electric knife. The electric knife will help you cut through the angel food cake without smooshing it. (That's a technical term. Smoosh.) If you don't have an electric knife, just go with a very sharp, serrated knife.
Yay! I'm officially back. The test is done. I've been celebrating my freedom from studying by trying out some new recipes and revisiting some old ones. There's tons to post about.
I'll start with my latest and greatest crock pot discovery: Tex-Mex Beef Sammies. This dish is essentially one of the best shredded beef sandwiches I've had: subtly spiced with smokey tex-mex flavors, and topped with an array of fresh garnishes, like guacamole, cheese, and red onion. Yum!
What caught my eye about this particular recipe was the use of...wait for it...cocoa powder. Keep reading now!! Cocoa powder and/or chocolate is actually an authentically Mexican ingredient. It adds to the depth of flavor, rather than tasting like meat-flavored hot chocolate. However, if you have any squeamish family members, I highly recommend that you keep the cocoa powder a secret until you are sure they like the dish.
I made this recipe for Father's Day. In fact, I cooked it overnight the night before and kept the crock pot on the warm setting for the rest of the morning. I figured, what could be better than celebrating the men in my life with a large crock pot full of meat? To my relief, the family agreed. This was definitely a winner. It seemed to suit everyone's taste, since the spice factor is subtle rather than powerful. If you desire a powerful kick, just chop up a chipotle pepper or two and add to the crock pot before cooking. It'll be beautiful.
A note about serving: Make sure you utilize the savory broth (as in beef "au jus") that the meat cooks in when constructing your sandwiches. In order to do that, I got hoagie rolls from my grocery store's bakery section that could stand up to being dipped into the juices without disintegrating, but weren't so hard that all the meat would gush out the other end of the sandwich with the first bite. I HIGHLY recommend that you do the same. Regular hamburger or hot dog rolls will not cut it. Go for high quality rolls that are slightly chewy on the outside and softer on the inside.
A final note about points: I had a bit of trouble calculating the points per serving with my normal on-line points calculator. When that happens I usually just make an educated guess. Just know that chuck roast is fattier than leaner cuts (that's why it practically melts in your mouth.) A 3 oz portion of cooked chuck roast is about 7 points. Hopefully that will help you gauge your "pointage" for the day.
I'm back. Sort of...
You may have noticed my absence from the blogosphere lately. Well, there's a reason. I've been on a self-imposed blog exile (a blogxile, if you will) while preparing for a teaching certification test I will take mid-June. I've been studying like crazy, and not doing much cooking. All my free time has gone to study. In order to stay focused, I have restricted my blogging so that I don't get caught up in the fun of posting recipes when I should really be studying. But in a few weeks, I'll be done with the test and I'll be back!
In the meantime, here's a recipe that I've been holding on to, but can't wait any longer to share...
I recently got a new cookbook by Robin Miller, who hosts Quick Fix Meals on the Food Network. In her section about pasta, she talks about how one of her children gets up at the crack of dawn, so that's when you will find her boiling up pasta to use for the week. "Eureka!" thought I. The reason why I don't make more pasta throughout the week: the big pot that I don't want to have to clean up mid-week. But if I were to do it when I had a little bit of extra time, and keep the pasta in the fridge for a few days until I'm ready to use it...well, that's just brilliant. So that's exactly what I did. The pasta was made during lunch one day, ahead of time, and waited in the fridge until I was ready to make the dish.
Robin also employs a strategy that says cook it once, use it twice. For example, if she's making chicken breasts for dinner one day, she will make a double batch and set the extra ones aside to use later on in the week in another recipe. "Genius!" said I. So the chicken breasts were extra that I made from a dinner earlier in the week. I love it when I'm ahead of the game.
When it came down to making the actual dish, the main components were ready and waiting for me. All I had to do was heat up a few things and assemble it all. Easy!
About this dish:
- It is delicious hot or cold. It would make a great pasta salad to take to a picnic (perhaps minus the chicken).
- Artichokes would also be an excellent addition to this. Just chop up a can of drained artichoke hearts (not marinated) and toss them in the pan before the pasta goes in.
- Finally, feta cheese was a great addition to the dish when I ate it cold. It really brightened up all the flavors.
- Oh and by the way...don't skip the salt in this recipe. I tasted the final dish and thought, "Eh. Not bad." Then I salted the dish, tasted again, and thought, "Yowsa! That's a great dish!" OK, perhaps I didn't say yowsa. But maybe I did think it. A little. Don't laugh!
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