A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Happy Birthday to Me: Banana Walnut Baked Doughnuts with Cream Cheese Glaze

 

As a kid, I always asked for banana bread for my birthday, much to my cake decorating Mother's horror "But I'll decorate any kind of over the top cake you want, any theme!"  "Nah, we have cake all the time. I just want banana bread."

What an ungrateful child I was.  :-)

Most birthdays now I bake my own cakes and they're still never cake per se. Not that I don't like cake, I love store bought white cake and any kind of country-type cake, it's just that I learned cake decorating from my mom so a fancy decorated cake is fun for me to make for others but I still personally want to make myself banana bread or these doughnuts (was craving them yesterday)  or Almond Croissants  like three years ago.  Not that I'd turn down traditional birthday cake. Most people are intimidated to bake for me so I was genuinely thrilled and touched when my friend Barb, who will tell you up front she doesn't bake much, surprised me with a Home-made Carrot Cake for my birthday two years ago. 

Even though these are doughnuts, I did manage to sneak some health into them.  Seriously.  The flour is 50/50 white/wheat, honey instead of sugar, olive oil as the fat, walnuts and they're baked instead of fried.  And yet with all that, amazingly they're really yummy! Seriously.,

Marlena Spieler Onion Rolls by way of Cooking Schmooking

 

Melody, over at Cooking Schmooking participates in Sundays with Marlena Spieler blog-off of sorts and this last week the onion rolls caught my attention in a big way. I've made dinner rolls before with spring onions and parmesan cheese mixed into the dough that were divine so I was quite interested in trying this recipe too, especially after Melody noted that her husband "happily" made this recipe and that they loved them.  Man in the kitchen = must try this recipe!

I have to confess one thing though--I flinched.  When you make these--DON'T FLINCH, don't wimp, don't wuss, don't chicken!  Gene and I liked the texture of the rolls but I was thinking, while he said out loud, "These taste good but I sure thought they would have a stronger flavor."  They would have had I not chickened out at the end and only put in half the onions. It seemed like so much but you really need them all.  So what I came up with was a very pleasant, but bland, onion roll.  Note to self: next time just take the plunge and mix in ALL the onions! 

By the way, I served them with meatloaf and not only were they the perfect accompaniment bread, they made for awesome meatloaf sandwiches for lunch today!

Look For This: VitaTops

 
In my commitment for healthier, fresher eating, I've had to give up a lot of processed foods we take for granted, like cereals, granola bars, and other pre-packaged, pre-processed foods. Seriously, read the labels. I'm realizing there are a lot of edible products in the grocery store but not necessarily that much nutrition unless you stick to that sage piece of dieting advice to only grocery shop along the outer walls without venturing much into the aisles for boxed goods.

However, I have found one exception to that rule that I need to share with my fellow dieters and it's in the freezer section. At my Price Cutter, it's in the organice freezer section:  Vitalicious products.  Auntie Miranda and I didn't know you could even buy these in our local groceries for a while so our first introduction came by way of a splitting a mail order box.   The reason why you find them in the freezer section, and why online orders come with a packing slip that instructs you to freeze the muffins within a day or so, is because these muffins, muffin tops, brownies, etc don't have the normal laundry list of preservatives in them that most processed bars and treats do.  Each Vita Top is 100 calories, 4-5 grams protein, and 4-5 grams fiber made from whole wheat, nuts, and dried fruits (depending on the flavor, of course).  Since they're frozen, you can microwave them, toast them, or pop them into the toaster oven to warm up in just a couple of minutes.  Actually, because they only have a gram of fat, even if they're thawed to room temp, heating them up brings out their best side.  Not home-made but about as close as we're going to get inside a plastic wrapper.

At this point I'm addicted. I really love these nummies!  My personal favorites are the banana walnut, apple berry, and even though I'm not a big chocolate eater, I really like the deep chocolate flavor.  I'll be honest, I'm still committed to cooking from scratch including my own baking BUT these are a nice shortcut to have on hand that I can feel good about eating, knowing I'm sticking with my wholesome foods goal.  They're great to take to work, perfect for a quick breakfast, and a great choice for a late night snack attack that just will not go away. 

www.vitalicious.com

 

Honey Curry Roasted Turkey Thighs

At Thanksgiving when the butchers were cutting up Turkeys to accommodate everyone's needs, I snagged a few packages of turkey thighs to cook later for Gene. Last night I used the honey curry recipe from the chicken post and it was a huge hit, so give this a whirl! I separated the sauce I used for marinating form the sauce I used to serve on the side and it was very good and good for you!

Ina Garten's Turkey Meatloaf

Went over to Auntie Miranda's the other night, and in "exchange" for Gene hooking up her new Wii, she served this beautiful dinner of Ina Garten's Turkey Meatloaf, Loaded mashed potatoes, Green beans with slivered almonds, whole grained rolls, and an elegant salad of romaine, strawberries, feta, pecans, and vinaigrette.  It was as delicious as it was beautiful! Thanks so much Auntie. I think we got the better end of the deal!

I also loved how beautifully the purple dishes set off the food. Isn't that gorgeous?

For the meatloaf recipe, click below:

Baked Chicken & More Vegetables than Brown Rice Casserole

I have a food confession to make.  I've never been a big instant rice fan and I had an unreasonable belief, have no idea where it came from, that there was more than rice in the boxes of Uncle Ben's Boil in a Bag rice. I know. Sorta dumb.  I think it's a reflection of the prejudice I have that all things that come in a box are overprocessed and bled of all nutrition.  Maybe that is true for a lot of things but in this instance, I was wrong. The only two things inside the boil-in-bag brown rice from Uncle Ben's is "whole grain parboiled brown rice" and convenience.

I was having the kind of morning  where even though I'm dedicated to cooking only wholesome food, I really wanted everything and anything bad for me.  I was about to hijack my own diet until I thought of making baked chicken and brown rice and to put it together quickly so I could set it aside and just pop it in the oven at dinner time. 

I've found that to be one of the most useful pieces of advice any successful dieter has ever given me. One of the docs at work has dropped over 100 lbs and is very successfully keeping it off. She told me one time that when she has days that she knows that she cannot maintain the will power to not pantry dive for sugar, salt, and fat, she stays out of the kitchen and let's her husband do the cooking and cleaning up.  Since I do most of the cooking, that's not as feasible  at my house but making some cook- ahead meals for the freezer or for the fridge a couple of days out when I know I'll be vulnerable, like during a work stretch, is very workable for me.  This is one of those meals.  It was delicious and it was finished and sitting in the fridge by 12noon, just waiting to be baked.  Had I not prepped this ahead of time and had it not been so quick and easy to prepare, no telling what would have ended up as dinner, probably fast food or something diet hideous.  But instead we had this lovely chicken with brown rice, green beans, and dinner rolls, with a side of NO guilt!

Split Pea Soup with Ham to Warm You Through and Through

Mmmm.....nothing like soup in the winter to warm you up! This one from Whole Foods Market is easy to make and the house smells delicous all afternoon as the soup simmers in the crockpot.

Clementine (Orange) Olive Oil Cake

I've seen several recipes for olive oil cake and they've intrigued me.  There are many different recipes, some with only orange, some with a ctrus mix, some with nuts, some without, some with a few Tbsp of oil, some with a full cup....a full cup of olive oil in cake?  Usually for cakes and other baked goods, you'd switch over to expeller-pressed canola or maybe even walnut oil, something healthy but with a less persistent flavor but mixed with citrus it sort of made sense that the olive oil would work....  It does.  The cake is delicious.  Gene even made a point of saying he liked it, and that was with knowing it was good for him. 

Does this save you calories as far as diet? No.  The counts are similar to a regular piece of cake, although in this one, because of the olive oil, the fat content is higher. However, does this save your health?  You decide.  Here are the ingredients in a standard boxed cake mix: bleached flour, sugar, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonsee oil, corn syrup, modified corn starch, leavening, popylene glycol monoesters of fatty acids, corn starch, dextose, salt, distilled monoglycerides, dicalcium phosphate, maltodextrin, xantham gum, natural and artificial flavor, dye, nonfat milk.  Here are the ingredients in my cake:  whole wheat flour, honey, eggs, olive oil, orange zest, leavening, salt. It's not always all about calories. BUT if we want to look at those too, here they are side by side:

Boxed cake mix:  Cal: 170, Protein: 2, Carbs: 34, Fat: 3, Fiber: 0

Olive oil cake: Cal: 185, Protein: 3, Carbs: 21, Fat: 10, Fiber: 1

I'm still liking the all natural cake. I see a trade out between white sugar and olive oil, as far as calories.  Olive oil wins.

As far as flavor, we all know what an average cake tastes like. This one is more of what I call I country style cake. The crumb is coarsier and the heft weightier, more like a banana or zucchini bread, and the flavor is phenomenal. Nothing fake or artificial here.  The Tbsp of orange zest, I used Clementines, is powerfully enticing and the olive oil completely complements and enhances the citrus.

Lovely Whole Wheat Challah Knots

I love messing with Gene's head. I told him that for dinner we were going to have roasted chicken and challah bread. I love the funny look he gets on his face that says "Oh crap, she's experimenting on my food again!" But the truth is, once he tasted it, it was only a familiar egg bread that I've baked him a thousand times over the last 20 years. 

Which is another thing I love about food and cooking. There are so many names for the same foods that I find cooking a fun puzzle of a game.  The first time I actually read a recipe for and made polenta, I giggled because it sounds so exotic and looked so lush to watch Mario Batali make it, only to find out that polenta is merely my beloved corn meal mush from my child hood.  We ate it all the time as hot cereal in the winter and then my mother would cut the leftovers that had congealed with cold in the fridge into thick slabs, fry them in butter, and pour hot maple syrup on them for another breakfast treat the next day.

Challah is another of those things.  Here in the Bible Belt, challah sounds exotic until you make it and realize it's a delicious egg bread, like many other egg breads, although not usually as sweet as brioche or Sally Lunn bread.

I've made a few changes based on my new health guidelines:  butter/oil changed to olive oil and fine white flour changed to white whole wheat. The white whole wheat is heavier than processed white flour but lighter than the typical whole grain flour made from hard red wheat.  It's a nice compromise for lighter breads like this.

Comforting Roasted Chicken for Snowed in Evenings

I was asked to post a recipe for roasted chicken by a wonderful gal who said she was a bit intimidated by the idea of tackling this dish.  Have no fear. This can't be screwed up, I promise.  Just jump in with your chicken and few seasonings and do it, and you'll wonder why you ever hesitated. Really! (And never buy another rotisserie chicken from the grocery unless it's for convenience.)