A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Chicken Chow Mein: Better For You Than Mom's--Sorry Mom!

Chicken Chow Mein (my Mom's) was my childhood favorite.  We each got to request our dinner and cake for our birthday and Chicken Chow Mein was always my menu. 

Now....there's a funny family story about our cake choices as kids.  My "cake" was always my Nannie's banana bread. My brother Kenneth's choice was always Angel Food Cake with NO frosting, dad's choice was pie, and at the moment it escapes me what my other siblings' (Suzanne and Carl) choices were. I'll have get them to comment to remind me.

Nothing funny, right?  Here's the punchline. Our Mom was a cake decorator.  After making cakes for every kid in town (and us getting all the mistakes and leftovers all the time), and even telling us she'd make us any kind/design we wanted no matter how involved, we were so burned out on cake we all denied our Mom the pleasure of making our birthday cakes. Were we brats, or what?  Yes!  (Laughing) What Mom on the planet has to put up with kids who cry "Please, Mom, please! Don't make us eat cake for our birthdays! Please!"  Brats. We were cake-spoiled brats!

My Mom's Chow Mein, was great and I asked for it every year. It was also healthy. Except...when I started making it as an adult I realized that for a dish with lots of vegetables there was very little color:  water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, baby corn, and bean sprouts, are all pretty boring looking.  To dress up the aesthetic and the vitamin content, I've included many more colorful vegetables in my version.

Copycat Ruby Tuesday's Ham & Pea Pasta Salad

 One of my favorite dishes on Ruby Tuesday's Garden Bar is the ham and pea pasta salad.   From talking with friends, I found that I'm not a lone.  Lots of people hit the salad bar for that pasta dish.  Some even confess to skipping the greens on the bar to save room for that pasta dish.  Tickled to have found a copycat home version for it, I ended up taking it as an entree salad for lunch at work two nights in a row.

Good & Good For You: Roasted Sweet Potatoes

 

Did anyone else see Shaun T on Dr. Oz yesterday talking about how great sweet potatoes are for us nutritionally?  I've always loved them and love that they're potatoes but they're kind of not really. They're more of a regular vegetable in the sense of do you count it as a bread or as a veggie? Packed with vitamins and fiber, they're only "bad" for me if I load it up with butter and brown sugar. Luckily, there are other ways to prepare them.

There's not even a recipe per se, just roast them.  I peeled and diced them into a bowl, poured over a few tablespoons of olive oil, and a teaspoon or two of Cavender's greek seasoning (salt-free) and a dash of salt and pepper. Any seasoning/seasoning salt will do.  A tsp of dried rosemary, thyme, or basil, or all of the above,  Italian seasoning, or go the simple route and stick with just salt and pepper. Toss the potatoes around with a spatula until they're all evening covered with the oil and spices.  Spread out into one layer on a foil-lined baking sheet and pop into a 425 degree pre-heated oven and bake for 30-45 minutes or until browned, crispy, and tender in the middle.

That night, Gene and I also ate tortilla-crusted Tilapia froms Schwan's which is a new add to our list. Delicious, and only 250 calories per huge filet.

East, fast, and delicious--I like it!

 

 

Better Than Mom's (Sorry Mom!) Lasagna

 

 

Sorry, Mom, even though you were a fabulous cook, I think in this one instance I beat you at your own game. 

I love lasagna but with only two of us it's something I only get to make when we're having company.  You just can't make a small lasagna!

So for New Year's Eve, that's what I did, although I stepped up a few of the ingredients my Mom used to use, switching out ricotta and cream cheese for the cottage cheese, and using a 50/50 mix of ground beef and country sausage for my Slow Cooker Meat Sauce. 

We were all pretty pleased, patting myself on the back. The result was rich without being overwhelming and not too wet, not to dry, perfect texture. Will be making these changes always from now on.

 

Chicken, Rice, & Vegetable Casserole the Old-Fashioned Way (No Campbell's Soup)

 

I've grown up as part of the Campbell's soup generation.  Mom used it a lot for things like "Stroganoff" made with ground beef and Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup over egg noodles, "Smothered Chicken" or "Smothered Pork Chops" with any of the "Cream of's":  Cream of Mushroom, Cream of Chicken, or Cream of Celery, "Chicken Enchiladas" or "Chicken Pot Pie" with it's mandatory Cream of Chicken soup as the base sauce/filler. I enjoyed those dishes so  I'm not going to go into a huge anti-Campbells rant here becuase it is a quick and easy fix and it does taste good in that very comforting country creamy Paula Deen way. That's not a slam.  I do like those types of casseroles and homey dinners.  What I am going to say is there is another way, a better way, a healthier and cleaner way to cook/eat that doesn't have as many chemicals and salt and, I promise!, is not labor intensive.  If you have a little flour in your pantry and milk in the fridge you can skip the "Cream of".  Have a can of chicken broth?  Even better!

 

Dexter Dinner: Aunti Miranda's Chicken Vindaloo

Auntie Miranda brought dinner to last week's Dexter Dinner and OMG it was wonderful. The even better part was that it was good for us too!  This is the perfect winter meal:  rich and soothing, deceptively simply looking but with complex flavors from the spices and pureed vegetable base. I'll be making this myself again and again.  Thanks Auntie!

Easter: More Than One Way to Eat a Peep

 

Where most people roast marshmallows, my niece Jordan and I love to roast Peeps.We love that extra crunch the outside layer of sugar of the Easter peep provides along with the perverse spectacle. So why not combine two of our favorite things:  Roasted Peeps and sweet potato casserole? Mmmm...

Feijoida is Good by itself but Better with a Friend

 

Invited to lunch yesterday by my friend Teril, I was served a Portuguese treat I'd never had or made before:  Feijoida, a thick multi-meat stew that her husband, Stan, had brought back a love for from his LDS mission to Brazil. Americanizing it slightly, Teril's version is very close to what he ate in Brazil. Originally, Feijoida was a stew created by the African slaves brought to Portugal and all of its colonies, including Brazil.  The stew primarily consisted of black, white, or pinto beans (depending on the country and region), simmered in large clay pots along with a mix of cast off meats available to the slaves:  beef tongue and pig ears, tails, and feet. Thankfully, the stew Teril fed me was made from beef chuck roast, smoked sausage, and bacon.  I hope. More modernly, the stew is served over rice and may be accompanied by additional smoked sausages, kale or collard greens, hot sauce, and sometimes deep fried bananas.

Sweet Potato Colcannon: St. Pat's Meets the Deep South

 
 

As much as I LOVE colcannon, mashed potatoes with Kale, or any of its "subsidiaries" mashed potatoes with cabbage or spinach or green onions or all of the above, I find this to be a colorful and tasty change of colcannon pace:  SWEET potatos mixed with cooked spinach and green onions. Good AND good for you!

Cheesy Vegetable & New Potato Soup

 

I had a scratchy throat last night, no big deal, just allergies I think, but I craved something soft and creamy for dinner like potato soup.  I wanted veggies in it but I was also feeling too cranky to chop to I ended up creating this little gem that I'll be making again and again.