Fried Rice With Beef

I love eating Chinese food but it’s not the friendliest food when you want to save on calories.  Fried rice is often very fattening and usually contains head ache inducing MSG, but I’ve come up with a flavorful way to make fried rice that is MSG free and contains only two tablespoons of butter per pot, instead of enough grease to float The Queen Mary.  I use the following ingredients:

• a pot of just about cooked rice (four or five cups when fully prepared)
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• a couple of Spring onions thinly sliced
• 2 tablespoons butter or olive oil
• one medium carrot sliced thinly using the carrot peeler (yes, that thin)
• a couple of ribs of bok choy roughly chopped
• 1 large fresh egg
• 2/3 cup cooked/smoked/even barbequed beef or pork rib meat in small dice
• a few dashes of black pepper and garlic powder or a fresh clove of minced garlic

In the pot of very hot, nearly cooked rice, add the onions and soy sauce.  These ingredients will seep into the rice and really deepen the flavor as it finishes cooking.  Stir it in and keep the lid on while you saute the vegetables in the butter or olive oil in a small non-stick skillet.  With one tablespoon of butter or oil, cook the carrot slices until they are tender, about 4 or 5 minutes. Scoot them off into the rice, onion, and soy sauce mixture and stir and again cover.  With the remaining butter or oil, cook the bok choy greens with their snappy peppery taste in that same skillet until they are nicely wilted but the chopped up pieces of stem are still firm.   Crack an egg right into the bok choy season with the pepper and garlic, and stir it vigorously until it is well scrambled and cooked throughout. Toss this too into the pot of rice and onion, stir everything together.

When ever the rice is done, shut off the heat and keep covered.  After cutting the meat away from the rib bone, cut it into tiny dice and stir it into the pot  as well.  As the rice and all its layers of flavor warm the meat, the smokey taste comes out of the meat and gives this dish a balance of flavor that really satisfies.

The best thing is that this meal  for three or four costs mere pennies!  Rice is about the cheapest food out there. The ribs were left over from an event where my husband works and with a few stray vegetables rolling around in the crisper that might be forgotten until they need to be thrown out, a hunk or two of butter, and an egg from our neighbor worth a few clucks… that’s pretty much all there is to this meal, but the fewer calories without sacrificing taste part, is what really turns this diva on!

Elegant Chicken Dish On A Strict Budget

There’s no doubt, chicken is quite an economical way to serve and enjoy good flavor, concentrated protein  and essential iron while giving your wallet a little relief.  There are so many ways to cook chicken as well.  I’ve probably blogged about over three dozen recipes myself.  This is one of my favorite ways because it always turns out so elegant and tasty without letting anyone know I’m a huge cheapskate.

Chicken thighs are the new chicken wing.  It  used to be that the wings were the cheapest cut of chicken because there was no real meat on them.  Then the Buffalo wing was born and wing prices went up.  I feel guilty for touting the economical benefit of the thigh because it’s one of those same stories where only we cooks know that the thigh is about the tastiest meat on the bird and when it costs five bucks for four pounds of it, most of it meat unlike the wing, we know what a good deal we’re getting…well, you will when you try this dish.

Four thighs was half the package and that is what I cooked for the family this evening.  A bit of prep work was in order so here are the steps in the process of making creamy spinach stuffed baked chicken:

• Four thighs with bone removed
• one can spinach well drained
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
• a dash each of black pepper, salt, garlic powder
• 1/2 cup finely diced onion.
• spices for the outer skin (I used a Cajun seasoning)

Preheat the oven to 375°.  Mix the spinach, mayo, cheese, and the dash of each seasoning, stir in onion and set aside.  Turn the chicken thighs skin side down on a cutting board and look for a vein of fat that runs parallel to the bone.  With a very sharp knife cut directly along that vein and the bone will be exposed.   cut around and even under that bone and remove it, slicing out each end careful not to remove too much meat but all of the joint and its connective matter.

With the bone out, cut a slit in the bigger half and unfold that portion (like a brochure) making a uniformly flat piece of chicken.  Spread an even amount of spinach mixture (about 1/3 cup) over the chicken meat and roll it up.  Place the roll seam side down in a 9″x 9″ casserole dish.  Use a larger casserole for more thighs.  The spinach mixture should be enough filling for six or seven thighs.  Now bake them for about 50 minutes to one hour, or until the internal temperature reaches 180°.

Remove to a plate and allow these to rest for about ten minutes and serve with a little salad or some rice.  Remember there are already two vegetables inside the chicken so they will also be good all by themselves. 

 

 

Fast times at the Diva’s house!  Big kids are moved out and we’ve had to replace some of the furnishings we bequeathed to them…lots of moving of big stuff after a fairly sedentary late winter.  The 10 year old is getting taller by the minute and needs new clothes and shoes about every six months as of late.   The weather can’t make up its mind and it’s hard to figure out what to wear or what to cook.  In a week we went from a foot of snow to temps in the upper 80′s.  Gas prices are going up again and all these changes have added up to Mom going out and getting a new job.   Having a second income again is a timely good thing with all that is going on.  College will be here again before we know it.

The biggest adjustment to working again has been my cooking style.  I’ve had to whip up some pretty fast suppers after getting home in the evening, and I now need only to make enough food for the three of us instead of five (lots of one skillet dinners).   Good thing it’s warm enough to grill and a nine by nine casserole dish replaces the nine by thirteen.  Recently, the produce has begun looking better as the season gets warmer so that’s another plus.   I haven’t broken out the crock pot yet but I used to love coming home to a sumptuous supper all ready made and smelling up the house nicely.

If these are the adjustments I have to make then I’d say I’ve got the world by its toe.  Weather the weather is cold or hot we still have time to enjoy the finer things in life.

Snow Storm And Living Off Stores

A great snow storm is headed our way so I thought having been a Girl Scout and a Scout Leader I would but those skills to work by being prepared…I earned my camping and cooking badges and have always taken the motto and the promise to heart.  I thought I might practice those skills tonight by living off of foods we’ve had in storage.  We have many dehydrated foods that can be re-constituted if need be.  Tonight I prepared some favorites of au-gratin potatoes, fresh baked bread and frozen pork chops.  This meal was delicious and we have plenty more put away to get us through the approaching storm.

I don’t want to be caught up in the grocery store frenzy either and by baking bread, we will have both good food and something fun to do.  I’ve stocked up on milk so that is covered, and also, since Easter is coming, I’ve purchased plenty of eggs already.  We now have no reason to go out among the frantic shoppers who must grapple for that last loaf or gallon, and check out in what I like to refer to as the “panic aisle”, because we were prepared long before the storm.

This evening I wanted to use some of my dehydrated ingredients to make potatoes au-gratin with other vegetables all of which have been stored since 2009.  The chops have been in the freezer for about a month, and the bread was made from flour with which we have rotated use from storage under a day bed set in a little nook in the basement that is the perfect height for five gallon buckets.  We’ve done this for years.  Quite a few fit under there and they are all full of things we might need if this storm gets really bad or maybe just if we run out of something in the kitchen pantry.  All we have to do is shop from under the bed.

So to make this meal, I put a good handful of potatoes in a pie plate, some dried tomatoes, onions and green peppers also were sprinkled in for added taste and nutrients,  I shredded some Co-Jack and Parmesan cheese, poured milk and a little cream over everything until they were completely submerged then dotted a bit of butter around, seasoned it with salt and pepper, and put it in a 350° oven.  The oven was already warm because I had baked some bread just before and it made the house smell lovely.  The potatoes took about 50 minutes to become bubbly and browned on top and in the last fifteen minutes I started the chops which were now completely thawed, bones removed, and in a skillet, I pan seared them with a little olive oil and spices on both sides.

For the last five minutes I turned off the fire, put a lid on them, and gave them a while to rest.  When the potatoes were ready, I removed the chops to a plate and let them rest a bit more under a foil tent while I made a little gravy with the drippings in the pan.  Flour, spices, salt, pepper and water is all I needed for that.  Suddenly everything came together and we found ourselves eating a beautiful meal together.

It was amazing how much flavor the potatoes had.  It was as if they were sliced just an hour before.  You could never tell that they had been hanging around the house for the past four years because they were stored well.  Same with the vegetables…the onions, tomatoes and peppers though they were very well cooked, tasted terrific!  If I could, I’d love to have a dairy cow because the milk, butter, cream, and cheese didn’t hurt the flavors in this dish a bit.  You can bet I’ll be looking into ways to store dairy products in the future because that is the only thing I haven’t figured out how to store.  It is so good when it’s fresh, I just never considered any other way to slice cheese or spread butter.  Maybe during this snow storm something will come to me.  I’m open to suggestions.  In the meantime, to all my Mid-West friends, get ready to put your scouting skills to work:  ”Be prepared” and take care.

Easy Chicken Tacos

The chicken we had the other day was enough for six people, so today we used the leftovers to make chicken tacos.  It’s really easy when the meat is already cooked and removed from the bone.  I start by chopping up some onions and peppers, and browning them up in a skillet with a little olive oil.  The green pepper is a piece of poblano that has a mild heat and the orange one is a mini sweet pepper.  I toss the chicken cut up into small pieces into the skillet and add some nice tacoey spices…chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper…the first two spices in round teaspoons and the rest in 1/8 th teaspoons.  When this is heated through, and it doesn’t take long, I put little scoops of it into flour tortillas with cheese, shredded lettuce, and diced tomatoes.  Voila!  Dinner in five minutees!

Just A Good Old Fashioned Chicken Dinner

If you’ve got a couple hours some evening to wait for a good old fashioned supper to land on your plate try this easy roasted chicken dinner.  One pan is all you need to make it, and if you line it with foil ( I used a previously used and washed foil cake pan), you won’t have anything to clean afterward either.  I did splurge though at the last minute and whipped up some potatoes and gravy because, well, I could.

There is no recipe, just a method and you can add the seasonings you like and the vegetables you like too.  I used leeks, carrots, and celery to surround the chicken and with a few preps of the bird dinner was soon roasting away while we watched some TV.  After this crazy busy weekend, a good easy supper (and easy blog post) is what we needed.

Rinse and pat the chicken dry (Nice birdie!)Place a few knobs of butter up under the skin of the breasts and legs.  You could also add herbs you like.  I was just being lazy.It looks like this when finishedNow, because I’m feeling extra super lazy, I truss the legs together with a tooth pick instead of hunting down some string and tying them togetherJust before it goes into a 350° oven I spray everything with olive oil spray and season with salt and pepper and bake for almost two hoursI was aiming for a temp of about 185° but this will do.  It took about one hour and fifty minutes.  Time for the plate!That looks nice!  Now our chicken must rest 15 minutes.  Since I got an hour and fifty minutes rest, I can find it in me to scrape together some gravy with the drippings.I throw a handful of flour (about two round  tablespoons), stir it  until smooth, then add salt and pepper, a dash of garlic powder and a pinch of sage powder, then I add about two to two and a half cups water and get it all to a good bubbly boil to thicken itThat rest I took,  well I’m tired and lazy again, so I whip up the potatoes from a box of instant ones in the microwave.  There are worse things……but this gorgeous juicy chicken is not one of them!Come Lord Jesus, be our guest.  Let this food by you be blessed.

Save The Kales!

Jacques Pepin is one of my favorite chefs.  I was watching a PBS show where he made a most delicious snack out of kale.  I’ve always thought of kale as the garnish people never eat like the tons of cherry tomatoes, sprigs of parsley, and wedges of lemon that are wasted every day in the restaurant industry… and it makes me so melancholy because I hate seeing anything go to waste.  These are foods I love to use  in my cooking and It kills me a little that they just are scraped off of all those plates and tossed right into the trash bin more often than not.

Well, dear Jaques is out saving the kales by preparing it in a way that makes you feel as if you are eating something as salty and crunchy and decadent as a bag of potato chips .  But when kale is prepared this way it is just as good I think, as those greasy salty little devils (yet I relish a bag of them every so often), and kale is full of healthy nutrients without all the bad stuff.  It can’t replace those other starchy delights but considering the health of this leafy green food, I want to prepare it more often and resist caving in to those greasy junk foods of empty calories.  And this is how Jacques made it possible to keep my temptation in check.

To begin, preheat the oven to 250°.  Trim the ribs from the kale leaves and tear up bite size pieces.  Put these pieces in a colander and wash them in cold water.  They need to be dried thoroughly before they go in the oven.  I have a salad spinner that does the job very efficiently but you could also press them between two kitchen towels to drain off any water.  Once dry, lay them evenly on a cookie sheet and spray them with an olive oil cooking spray.  You could also toss them in a bowl with a touch of regular olive oil before laying them out as well. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and maybe garlic powder.  There is a Cajun seasoning blend I like.  The Diva needs her hot stuff!

Now, place this in the oven and keep an eye on it after about 15 minutes or so, as there is a fine line between crispy and burnt to a crisp.  Also, all kales are not created equal.   Some might have thicker leaves and some thinner so it’s hard to give an exact baking time.

Since Spring is fast approaching, now is a good time to think about planting this easy to grow crop in the gardens.  It is in the Cole (cabbages) crop family and loves an early start.

There are a few caveats concerning this otherwise healthy super food though.  Being one of the cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, and cabbage, a certain amount of effluviance can be expected the next day, so I would advise not eating too much of it at once.   Also those who have experienced thrombophlebitis or blood clotting issues for which they are taking blood  thinning medication will be advised to steer clear of leafy green foods like this containing high amounts of vitamin K.  Most others can expect to enjoy this tasty treat and its abundance of vitamins A and C.  To your health!

A Lovely Lasagna

This is a dish I make much too infrequently.  Partly because of the amount of time it takes to prepare, and the calories per serving, but also because it wouldn’t be as special if I made it all the time.  Even so, it is one of those dishes that makes my family go wild.  Lasagna night is a night they love so much, that they’ll do the dishes and wipe down the kitchen to the floor while I enjoy the rest of the night upon my pedestal…like I said, much too infrequently.

In the following photos I will reveal the secret method to such honors.  First the list of ingredients:

• 9 pieces of lasagna pasta
• a large pot of boiling salted water
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 lb. lean ground beef
• 1 large carrot sliced very thinly
• 2 ribs of celery also sliced thinly
• 1 large onion finely diced
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1/4 cup each sliced black olives and mushrooms (optional)
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 & 1/2 tsp. dried Italian herbs (parsley, oregano, basil, thyme)
• a  6 oz can of tomato paste
• 1 &1/2 jars (24 oz) of traditional spaghetti sauce
• 1 lb. shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup low fat cottage cheese, or ricotta
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 350°.  Begin by boiling the noodles keeping them on edge to prevent them from sticking together and allowing them to cook evenly for ten minutes.  Drain and set aside, reserving a cup or so of the pasta liquid.  In the now empty pot saute the vegetables in olive oil, move them to the side when the onions are almost clear and put the ground beef directly on the metal of the cleared spot.  As the meat browns mix it in with the vegetables, add the diced tomatoes and dried herbs and stir together,  Now add the tomato paste and sauce.  Let this simmer a while to help marry the many different flavors.

In a 13″ x 9″ baking pan, ladle some of the sauce in to coat the bottom.  Place three lasagna noodles lengthwise to cover the sauce.  Use a bit of the pasta water to loosen the noodles without tearing if they are stuck together.   Now for the first layer.  Ladle enough sauce to cover the noodles, dollop the cottage/ricotta cheese around using only half.  The other half will go in the next layer.  sprinkle a generous layer of mozzerella, about a third of the Parmesan, and a pinch or two of parsley flakes all around.

Repeat these steps for the second layer, but for the top layer, ladle on sauce, omit the cottage/ricotta cheese, and only top with mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses.  Bake 45 minutes, or until the cheese on top is golden and bubbly.  Allow it to cool slightly before serving.  Makes 9 to 12 servings.

Now kick back and enjoy your night on the pedestal.  …And enjoy…And enjoy!

More Dehydrating

As I have posted before, dehydrating is a great way to store food.  When you dehydrate, you only take out the water…all of  the flavor and most of the nutrients stay in the food.  This week there was a great sale on green peppers, onions, and mushrooms.  These are things that I use a lot in my cooking…especially in cooking stews and soups.  Stews and soups are the foods that are really easy to make, and great to prepare when the weather is not the best.  In the summertime I hope to have food from the garden on hand that won’t need cooking.  Even so, the surplus from the garden with all its fresh flavors can be dried and stored as well.

We have a snow storm coming our way just now and besides stocking up last week, we have dehydrated several bags and trays of  mushrooms, onions and green peppers to use another day.  Dehydrated foods last far beyond the shelf life of regular canned items, decades beyond even.  To do this we have sterilized mason jars with lids,  and a special attachment that hooks to our Food Saver vacuum bagging system.  It cost about 25 dollars but is worth a lot more because we can seal up food that we purchase on sale that ten years from now will be maybe ten times the price.

The mushrooms we dehydrated cost us 69 cents per container, and the onions were on sale for 79 cents per bag (7 medium onions in each).  We use a lot of onions so roughly a dime an onion is a great deal.  Having them ten years from now because we dehydrated and stored them at that price seems even better.

So you might see that purchasing vegetables and even some meat when there is a really good sale makes for some super savings in the future.  It also takes up so much less space  storing these foods when you take out the water.   We  love to store food this way and store lots of vegetables from the garden this way, food on sale from the store, and food that our relatives have hunted and shared like deer meat.  I’ve posted on how to dry deer meat and beef before, also how to store vegetables like broccoli, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, corn, apples, also herbs like parsley, cilantro, and basil.

In this photo you will see four containers of mushrooms in one Mason jar, also a bag of onions in one jar as well.  You could fit at  least three pounds of dehydrated meat in one jar, and a whole two bags of  frozen broccoli in one as well.  Ten green peppers chopped and with the stems and pith removed can fit into an 8 oz jar…yes, this is ten chopped green peppers we can preserve up to 25 years!  At any time we might toss a portion of these jars into a soup or stew and enjoy all the flavor it had on the day we dried it.  People all over the world have been doing this for thousands of years!

If you ever try to dehydrate apples, good luck getting them in storage.  They are so delicious that we can hardly help ourselves from eating the whole batch.  I think that they are  the best treat of all from the dehydrator.  A close second is corn and the tomatoes are third I think.  Corn makes a great crunchy snack and tomatoes are great when baked into bread and bagels.  We’ll have a tons of snack food some day if  stores can’t provide fresh veggies for what ever reason…snow storm, power outage, or the proverbial “Zombie Apocalypse” .  We’ll be OK by having prepared  just a little beforehand.  Anyone can do this if they put their mind to it.

Meatloaf That’s More Veggie Than Meat

My husband LOVES meatloaf and it is an easy dish to make especially when it is his birthday.  Heck, I’ll even throw in some mashed potatoes and gravy to celebrate.  If that is all he asks, then I’m off of a big hook…I hate to shop and he is really hard to shop for.  That is to say, I don’t know what the latest is in Ham radio equipment, linears, and antennae, plus that stuff is really expensive.  So meatloaf it is.  (whew!)

With the following ingredients I start chopping and dicing and preheating the oven to 350°:

• 1 small Yukon Gold potato in tiny cubes
• 1 rib of celery thinly sliced
• 1 good size carrot in tiny cubes
• 1/4 of a leek thinly sliced (about 1/3 cup
• 1 onion finely diced
• 1 clove garlic, pulverized to paste
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup each of rolled oats and bread crumbs
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon steak sauce (A1)
• 1 lb lean ground beef
• salt and pepper to taste
• a mixture of 1 can tomato paste and a splash of tomato juice

Once the vegetables are chopped and diced, I put them in a skillet with the olive oil and let them cook until the onions are clear and everything is beginning to soften.  I remove this from the stove, put the mixture in a pie plate to cool about 15 minutes, then add the oats and bread crumbs and all the rest of the ingredients except the tomato paste mixture.  Then comes the fun part…squishing it all together with your bare hands.  This must be done until everything sticks together and can be transferred to a loaf pan.  I smooth out the top with a spoon taking care to squeeze it into the corners and make it as level as possible.

I bake the meatloaf about an hour, then take it out, spread on the tomato paste mixture, and bake it another 15 minutes.  When done, this must rest for a good 15 minutes before slicing.  With a plastic bag over my hand, I am able to transfer the loaf from the pan to a platter without messing up the topping but I have to do this quickly, carefully,  and right over the platter.  Having this flexible non-stick silicone loaf pan really helps.

The mashed potatoes are quickly made with precooked potatoes, milk, butter and salt in a saucepan and mashed with a potato masher.  I used a packet of brown gravy mix to make the gravy.  I know it’s cheating a little but not too badly.  I think using 5 raw vegetables in the meatloaf balances out the whole food equation.  I’d rather make my own but there are no pan drippings available.

None the less, the meal is quite enjoyable.  Each time I look up at Jeff, he is looking back at me with starry eyes.  I think he’s liking the meal a bit.  Earlier in the day Julia (enjoying her second snow day in a row) and I baked a chocolate cake for him.  After dinner we sing him a happy birthday and  enjoy yet another slice of the good life.