A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Doctor's Kitchen Monday: Veggie Patty-licious

This is the story of how these ingredients:

became dinner:

It all started with the book "Skinny Bitch" by  Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman, a "diet" book with colorful language that cracked me up and inspired me.  The book basically advocates vegan eating.  I'll be honest. The book itself didn't give me any new info.  I've heard this all before. I read Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation and I lived in Eureka Springs, which is the Taos of the Ozarks. I've heard the whole cruelty to animals speech and I do not dispute it. I just freely admit that it never before kept me away from a tall glass of milk or a medium rare filet. 

Until Skinny Bitch. For some reason, the presentation whether it's simply the confrontational attitude or the multitudinous amount of swear words (which I loved, by the way) made me pay attention this time. Still, to be completely honest, it's not even the PETA speech that gets me, it's just that I suddenly thought "I've never really liked eating meat...so why am I doing it?"  I could get up on a big moral high horse and tell you that I've been enlighted and that the poor fish hurt from being hooked but that really isn't me or how I think.  We're people; they're animals. We're the top of the food chain.  I'm middle America all the way and I know it. I grew up in a family of hunters in a community of hunters.  My dad and his friends took vacation time to go out in the deer field every year.  My siblings and I all knew how to cast a fishing line practically before we could walk.  BUT, unlike a former acquaintance whose father goes to Africa twice a year to shoot big game just so he can hang heads and skins on his den walls, my family ate what dad brought down. We grew up poor and I admit my dad poached deer like crazy to put meat on our table. I still have no problem with that at all, nor do I have a problem with people who do eat meat.  On the flip side, I've known for a long time that as long as I eat a varied vegetarian diet I'll get plenty of protein and I'm very well aware that factory farms are not the same thing as hunting a deer or two out in their natural habitat for my family's personal use and to keep the deer populations from starving themselves out.  One is conservation; the other is a really poor process that's mostly about dollars not purity of food or compassion for animals. Of course, I don't like the idea of factory farming animals in cruel ways although I stop short at the argument that if we didn't eat cows the ozone  layer would be safe from cow farts. 

I know I'm simplifying but I'm doing it to keep things light not because I take these things lightly.

My point is, in a nutshell, I don't want to pretend to be something I'm not.  For me, this is all about how nice it would be to get off the protein guilt merry-go-round and not worry about it all the time. I can't tell you how many years I've spent preferring to eat a quinoa salad or a vegetable salad with a thick piece of whole-grained peasant bread but denying myself thinking I had to eat a hunk of meat. Well, no more. I'm not completely locking myself in because, quite frankly, I don't do well with ever telling myself "no" to anything without a rebellious back door to escape thorugh when I feel the need, but over the last few weeks the only animal flesh I've had is teeny amount of chicken in soup, part of a crab cake, and two bites of Gene's birthday steak.  I just don't crave meat so I'm getting off the guilt ride, South Beach and Atkins be damned.

Earlier in the year, I went on a 3 month diet with coworkers and lost 20 lbs.  Since then I've gained back 8 lbs followed by losing 4 lbs the first week I stopped eating meat, followed by I'm-not-sure-what-but-it-can't-be-good (I refuse to get on the scale) since this horrible past week where I've been ravenous at night and the voices in my head won't shut up until I feed them popcorn covered in butter and melted marshmallow at 2am.  Being inside my own head is like living out a Stephen King novel behind my eyes at times.

Home-made Noodles post Halloween

Mmmmm...fat, succulent home-made noodles just like Mom taught me.  Nothing better for these chilly fall evenings.  Now if those bums that call myself my family had saved me any on Halloween I wouldn't have had to cook a second batch! Kidding.  I did make a huge pot of chicken and home-made noodles for Halloween night but I'm nothing but flattered that they were all gone that evening.  Funny, and one of my brothers had even brought his own plastic to-go containers to scam leftovers with. Sorry, Kenneth!

So last night, Gene had home-made noodles AGAIN but this time I chose to make beef and noodles to give him a little different taste sensation.

What can I say? They hit the spot! 

I love this recipe because even though my mother and I had a rocky relationship most of my life, we were a good team in the kitchen. As I've said before, my mother was a wonderful cook and an outstanding baker. She had a cake decorating business out of our home and I was drafted at an early age, as the oldest daughter of five kids, to be her sous chef and dishwasher. As I aged I graduated in my duties in Mom's kitchen to being her baker, assistant decorator, and the fill-in chef for family dinners. That's where the noodles come in. They're not hard at all but writing down the recipe is. You know how it is with recipes you've made for years, so long and so naturally that you no longer measure anything or think about what you're doing.  It's the same with this but Halloween afternoon when I made them, I did try to pay attention and write down the details: 

Leftover Tuesdays: A Roast become Beef Enchiladas

There's a blogging event that caught my eye because of its practicality.  Originated by David at Cooking Chat, the idea is to show something that we all do: refashion leftovers. I found that having the event in the back of my mind actually encouraged me to think along the lines of "Now if I make this, what can I do with the leftovers besides starving Gene out with nothing new until we finish it all?"

So along those lines of thinking, this roast, dry roasted in the crockpot and simply seasoned with salt, pepper, onion and celery flakes, and a bay leaf...

...became these beef enchiladas...

by simply cubing the beef, adding a few cubed potatoes, and seasoning with cumin and cilantro.  They were rolled up into corn tortillas, and covered with a nice jarred salsa, cheese, green onions, and sour cream.  The perfect leftover dinner that didn't feel leftover.

For more leftover ideas, check out the round up by this month's host, Mary at Ceres & Bacchus (love that blog name, don't you?) after the 23rd. 

Doctor's Kitchen Monday: Soluble Fiber

(My first Phad Thai--don't sneer at my soggy little broccolis, this way I can get my family to at least eat it--we'll work up to less and less cooked with time.)

Let's talk about fiber:

We all know that we should take in 25 grams of fiber a day according to the RDI, Referenced Daily Intake, formerly the RDA, Recommended Daily Allowance.  The recommended amount of each, soluble and insoluble fiber, is not spelled out in that recommendation, although both are necessary to the body but work in different ways. 

Insoluble fiber is the fiber that the body can't use and is moved through the intestines without change. This provides bulk to the stool.  Soluble fiber is not broken down by the body either, but is turned into a gel when coupled with water and has a few unique properties dieters can cash in on.  For one, it slows down emptying of the stomach making us feel full longer, and it adds softening properties to the stool that make the whole elimination process faster and easier to tolerate. On top of those physical properties we can easily see and feel, soluble fiber also improves glucose metabolism.

To break digestion down into a quick nutshell:  Food is broken down into tiny bits of sugar called glucose which the body's cells can use directly.  Insulin is the "key" that unlocks the door to allow glucose into the cells. 

As we age and/or gain weight or become obese, our bodies function less efficiently and become insulin resistant which is a risk for developing diabetes. The numbers are scary.  According to a 2006 study by Dr. Laurie Barclay and Dr. Desiree Lie, there's a 20% chance of insulin resistance with every 5% increase in weight over the age of 20.  (Basically, that means I'm screwed because that's how I put my weight on, 5-7 lbs a year, after the age of 20.)  The normal weight population has a 4% chance of developing diabetes.  The obese population has a 46% risk of developing diabetes. If your weight is in between those two groups, your risk is in between those two figures.

Soluble fiber has been shown to control blood sugar spikes. The object of the game is to eat, transform the food into glucose, and have a steady supply available to the cells, rather than a spike and drop amount of glucose supplied, with an efficiently working insulin key.  Soluble fiber helps attain those objectives.  Not only does that aid us in losing weight, which is in its most basic form all about not eating more fuel than our bodies need for energy and using up the stores we already do have, soluble fiber aids us in feeling better all the time because our bodies are producing energy more efficiently and lowering our diabetes risk.

So what foods have plenty of soluble fiber? Oatmeal and barley are excellent sources in cereals.  Apples, berries, prunes, and citrus are all packed. Apples in particular are loaded with pectin which is soluble fiber.  So that gives an interesting twist to the old saying "An apple a day..." All beans, but lima, black, and navy beans are the highest sources in that family.  And for vegetables:  broccoli, brussel sprouts, bean sprouts, and carrots are soluble dynamos.

Interesting that three of those vegetables are often found together in stir fries.  Guess what I'll be eating more of?  Little Debbie Carrot Cakes.  Just kidding.  Little Debbie may be a sweet girl but her cakes are all but poison on anyone's diet just from the transfats alone.  Viva la stir fry! Which, as I've said before, to me just seems like hot salad over rice or noodles.  It's a way to break up the salad routine.  So viva la vegetables in general.

Also interesting that two of those vegetables (broccoli and brussel sprouts) are in the cabbage family.  Just something to keep in the back of your mind. Other members of the family include: cauliflower, beet greens, as well as mustard, collard, and turnip greens, swiss chard, kale, bok choy, rutabagas, radishes, and turnips, all good sources of fiber of both varieties.

Phad Thai is easy to make at home,full of flavor, and hosts the soluble fiber of bean sprouts. The genesis of the dish is rice stick noodles, fish sauce, egg, and chopped peanuts. Served on street food carts all over Bangkok and maybe one of the most recognizable Thai dishes in the states, Phad Thai has as many variations as possible ingredients, including those with tofu, shrimp, chicken, or without added protein. I added broccoli to the recipe I chose to increase the soluble fiber count.  Gene, who loves his down home cooking, but isn't necessarily unadventurous, really liked this dish.  With a little practice on my part (this was my first attempt) I think this could become a regular part of our meal repetoire.

For more on my personal diet story and the recipe, click below:

Hamming it up with Mac & Cheese

I baked a five pound ham the other night. For most people with kids that would be no big deal but for Gene and I that means several days of leftovers plus a bag of "ham for beans" in the freezer.  Which is fine. We both love ham, grew up on it, and would rather have a week of overkill after baking a real bigger ham, than to suffer through all the smaller processed versions that to us all taste like Spam. 

My friend, Jennifer, and I were talking about ham and she mentioined that she loves to sprinkle ground cloves, brown sugar, and honey on her ham before she bakes/crockpots it.  Of course I've seen all the pics of clove and pineapple studded hams before but never actually done that.  I like Jennifer's method. It cuts to the chase.  So I did as she said, only added cardamom and a small can of apricot nectar.  The juices were so nice to spoon over and smelled delicious while baking. Yum!

The first night we ate the aromatic slices with mashed potatoes, the second day for lunch we had ham sandwiches, and last night we had a down home casserole of ham chunks covered with homemade macaroni and cheddar.

The inspiration for the ham, mac, & cheese night's dinner came from Ruth at Once Upon a Feast with her Presto Pasta Nights blogging event.  One night dedicated to pasta. I like that.  Pasta is so varied and versatile that I like being remineded that Gene can live without potatoes one night a week. Not that he's a jerk about it, he was just raised, like a lot of people, thinking that a meal wasn't a meal without a potato in it.

Check out Ruth's round up later this week by clicking HERE.

Doctor's Kitchen Monday: From Julia Child to Arkansas

THIS is one of my favorite recipes in the whole world. I first ate it at Dairy Hollow House in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in the 80's.  It's the same country inn I worked for owned by cookbook author Crescent Dragonwagon. This was a fairly common and very beloved appetizer served at the Inn's six course Prix Fixe dinner.  It's called a crepe torte and is designate by how you build it, be it "garden", "Italian", or "Mediterranean" in Crescent's The Dairy Hollow House cookbook, available from DragonZ books. 

Now, I have a bit of a funny story to tell.  I had no idea until Sher of What Did You Eat?  and I were talking about it and she mentioned that it sounded familiar, that this recipe was originally created by Julia Child. With a little research into her Julia cookbooks, Sher found the recipe as Julia created it, after enlisting the help of her assistants, including a young Sara Moulton. The dish was specifically to be vegetarian and Julia was always very generous with giving her assistants credit with its creation. 

Now, how to phrase this correctly?  I'm not saying Crescent didn't give credit where credit was due most times, but I had a good laugh over this one. Not once do I remember it being mentioned the whole time I worked at DHH that this recipe came from Julia Child.  AND, no where in the DHH cookbook is it mentioned that this came from Julia Child, even though the recipe, down to the layers of carrots, mushrooms, and okay, green pea/zucchini instead of Julia's broccoli, are the same.  Unlike Julia, Crescent made hers in a cast iron skillet. That's the one difference I can find. 

It's not a huge thing, but it amuses me. I always thought that Crescent made this up all by her little lonesome.  Hmmm...come to find out the inspiration for this recipe was remarkably well put together...and by someone much more famous than Crescent.  Maybe I should be embarrassed that I don't know every one of Julia's recipes by heart but c'est la vie.  I admit it bothers me a bit that this was not openly acknowledged to be a Julia Child recipe when Julia herself very openly gave credit to her assistants for helping her creat it.  But hey, just one more disappointment in life to find out one of my heroes was made of clay.  The story of my life. :-)

On with the show.

The recipe, whether from Julia or Crescent is fabulous. Fab-oh-lust!  This recipe is sooo good that when I took it into work, one of the gals looked at it and thought it was pretty. Then I told her it was all vegetables and her comment was that she hates most vegetables. Then she tasted it. She loved it.  I happened to have a few extra servings because I'd wanted to share with a couple of foodies at work and she ended up eating one of them. A whole serving. I was so proud of her. That's a big compliment for someone who normally doesn't eat/like many vegetarian or vegetable dishes.  Personally, I think I could eat it every day and never get tired of it, for the taste, the prettiness, and because there are so many fresh vegetables in it that it's got to be good for you, vitamin-wise, even if there is quite a bit of cheese (meaning fat) in it.

I've made this three times in the last week. The first time was basically (as much as I can follow a recipe without my inner Glenna tweaking) Crescent's Italian version. That was wonderful and the version I took to work to share. The second version was an experiment lumping all the veggies and binding cream together inside a top and bottom crust made of egg roll wrappers just to see if it would work. It was okay, but just barely average. I'll never make it that way again. The third time was the winner.  I still used mostly Julia/Crescent's layers and the idea of how the whole thing together, but I left out a good part of the cheese, subbing light tofu, and subbed skim milk for the whole milk or cream of Crescent's version. The results were very good.  The final nutrition counts are a little higher in protein and a lot lower in fat. The protein is important to me, being chronically anemic. I know I've mentioned it before but not being a huge meat eater it's something I constantly must keep on top of so I don't have to go back on the icky iron pills.

Replete with basil, oregano, parsley, and garlic, this is my week's entry in Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen's Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Kate of Thyme for Cooking.  Check in next weekend for her roundup of herbed cooking!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Our St. Paddy's feast consisted of broiled lamb chops with my FAVORITE: chimichurri sauce, and a sort of colcannon recipe by way of Louisiana.  It's an Emeril recipe with all the right ingedients but mixed up a little differently.  My husband likes potatoes, kale (cabbage), and bacon, but not all mixed together in his mashed potatoes.  That's sacriledge in the Church of Gene, who by the way is, like George Carlin, a frisbyterian. He believes that when he dies his soul will go sit on the roof and refuse to come down.  So I'll leave his mashed potatoes chaste and for another day but for tonight we're eating potatoes and cabbage. I found a great Emeril recipe that I will be making again and again, basically it's potato and cabbage quarters roasted with a topping of bacon and onion.  And yes, it is every bit as good as it sounds.  Pork fat does indeed rule, although I admit I just couldn't allow myself to cook a whole 12 oz of bacon for this dish and limited it to 6 slices which is still bad enough. But what the heck. It's a holiday.

The lamb chops are simply broiled to medium and topped with chimichurri sauce. Both the recipe for it and the Emeril recipe are after the jump.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Woohoo! No longer a Sushi virgin!

Remember when I posted the photo of my dining room set for sushi and I said the only things missing were friends and a platter of sushi?  Half of that is no longer true as of last night.  The husband was out of town for a while tonight so I had the kitchen to myself with no one expecting anything to come out of it at any certain time so I took this opportunity to break out all those sushi toys Aunt Miranda set me up with and leisurely play. 

I took tons of pics which is a lot harder than it seems when you've got one hand holding on to the bamboo mat and the other hand sliding around the camera trying to get a decent shot.  I had fun.  I think most people who've rolled/formed their own sushi would probably agree with me that it's not hard, exactly, just a little tricky, as in, takes a little practice to get the muscle memory and coordination to get the rolling down for uniformity, an eye for the right amount of rice and middle ingredients, and then a sharp thin-bladed knife and a deft hand.

My entry for Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen's Weekend Herb Blogging, my focus wasn't on a specific herb, but the plant Porphyra, known to us by its Japanese name "nori", the seaweed wraps encasing or wound up into our sushi rolls. It is also the "seaweed" you find small strips of in your miso, or other soup at a Japanese restaurant.  Nori is an edible species of red sea algae that is dried and formed into wraps the size of egg roll wraps in a process very much like papermaking.  Nutritionally, nori is a good source of magnesium, potassium, and iodine, and an even better source for thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, iron, copper, and manganese.
       Kalyn will be posting a round up later tonight at Kalyn's Kitchen with entries from all over.  Check her out!  (That sounds naughty.)

Happy Birthday to Me

That's right. Today is my 42nd birthday.  I'm wondering what kind of day it will be.  Two years ago I spent my 40th birthday in the microbiology lab until 10pm.  Last year I was in the Respiratory lab all afternoon. Can't even remember what I did that evening.  No labs this year. No work.  Just a play day.  I'll be reporting in as the day unfolds just because it's a mystery to me too. The only plans I have right now are lunch with Aunt Miranda and Cousin Ann. 

I'm interested in seeing what life brings today because normally my birthday depresses the hell out of me and I hate celebrating. I'm usually in a bad mood until the sun goes down and then I perk up a bit.  It's not an age thing, it's a what have I accomplished with my life thing. I know I've done fine in my careers as far as hotels, cakes & catering, and now the hospital.  It's the one big one, the elusive one that gets me down. Each year, I think "But I haven't published a novel yet."  True again this year. I still don't have the first draft finished even, but it's halfway there and I can see the good in it.  I've published a recipe of my own in a national magazine this year. That's a step in the right direction.  I've published one of my best poems in an incredible medical literary journal.  I'm proud of that.  I didn't win but I got decent reviews for my best script so far in a well-respected screenwriting contest.  I published scientific research in national respiratory care journal, that's a major accomplishment and honor.  (Thanks to Aaron and Doug, the world's greatest program/clinical directors!)  All of that helps dull the edges this year.  It tells me that I can do this but I have to work incredibly hard this year to get that novel finished and marketed, to start writing new screenplays using all the skills I've learned from the first ones, and to keep plugging away at the small projects: articles, essays, and poems.  I have to keep sending projects out no matter how many rejection slips I collect because I have taste now for when they say "Yes."  I know I can do it.  I just have to keep plugging away every day.

So this year isn't as bad as the birthdays in the past.  I was even "up" enough last night that I made my own birthday dinner: Strip steaks with goat cheese and mushroom merlot sauce, spiced roasted fingerling potatoes with spiced yogurt dipping sauce, fresh steamed broccoli, and homemade bread.  I'm even making my own birthday cake, which I'll be posting later.  I'll be blogging about them all as I have time this week.  Today we'll start with the steaks...

Strip steaks with a dollop of goat cheese, and a thyme, mushroom, merlot sauce.

 

The steaks with its sauce using bay leaf and fresh thyme is my entry this week in Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen's Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Ulrike of Kuchenlatein. Swing by after Sunday to see the great round-up of herby deliciousness.

Chicken Stir Fry with Broccoli: Yep, It's that Easy

Cate, at Sweetnicks, hosts a blogging even every week called ARF/5-a-day, or Antioxidant Rich Foods.  I love this event because it keeps me thinking "What foods are good for me, really packed?"  Especially since I'm really trying to get some of my weight off, I'm very interested in meals that pack a lot of nutrition into the fewest number of calories as possible. (Aren't we all, right?)  Stir fry is a great choice. I've said before, and it's still true, that stir fry to me is liked cooked salad: lots of veggies, a little protein, and a great sauce/dressing.

Let's take a look at some of the ingredients:

Broccoli--high in vitamins C,K, and A.  Note that vitamin K is a catalyst for clotting factors in the blood so folks who are on Coumadin or other blood thinners should be aware that varying day to day consumption of foods high in vitamin K will affect your PTT/INR (blood regulation) tests. That doesn't mean don't eat broccoli, it just means try to eat about the same amount of leafy dark green vegetables each day.  Broccoli is also fairly high in potassium, vitamins B-6 & B-12, folate, soluble fiber, manganese, magnesium, and phosphorus.

Red bell Pepper-- also high vitamins C, A, and B-6, folate, soluble fiber, and also has a fair amount of manganese, copper, and potassium.

Mushrooms--high in selenium, vitamins B-6 and B-12, copper, niacin, potassium, phosphorus, zinc, and manganese.

Stir fry with these three ingredients alone provide the daily recommended amounts of vitamins C, K, B-6, B-12, and selenium. Much tastier than swallowing a pill!