Making Meals, Sticking with It

It's hard to believe that at this time my kitchen is packed up, and well, it just doesn't even exist.  My things are all out of the house, and all we are left with are some suitcases and other things to get us by until we get to Japan in a few weeks.  As far as the kitchen is concerned, I am left with plastic forks, knives, spoons, and paper plates and bowls.  There is limited ways to cook food, and so for the most part, I don't.

But before all those things were packed, and after Italy, I did fit in a few last meals in our kitchen here.  Making at least 2 weekly meals is my goal, but I knew this move would come in the middle and there was just no way to prep a whole meal with nothing in a kitchen, so I am alright with taking a break until we are settled in Japan.  So, like I said, there were a few more meals made here.

First up is a pizza like stuffed roll.  Too bad it didn't quite go as planned.  Never fear, food does not have to look 100% as good as planned to taste 100% as good as planned.

My filling consisted of soy crumbles and zucchini.

 

I did use some prepackaged French loaf dough.

 

To my filling I added some tomato sauce.

 

After cutting the dough down the center, I rolled it out to make a place to "fill".  Then I topped with mozzarella.

 

I rolled them up and sealed them together at the seams.

 

Or so I thought!

Within seconds of starting to bake I realized I may not have sealed them as well as I thought and this would not do.  Oh well!  Looks like pizza and will probably taste like pizza, just not a pizza roll.  It was a success regardless of looks!

Next up was a pepper chickpea soup.  I love to make soups.  I love that I can add whatever I want and have a different creation every time.

 

I used a tomato base along with a can of veggie stock, and then added those to my sauteed veggies.  Near the end I tossed in the chickpeas so they would not get too mushy.  This was a huge success!

 

It seems I like chickpeas.  My third meal also contains them.  I made some spicy potatoes from some that my next door neighbor gave to us.  He had the biggest harvest he has ever seen and has no idea why, but he has tons and tons of potatoes this year.  We have been happily eating them, and will certainly miss them when we move.  To make these potatoes I just chop them in chunks and coat with Old Bay seasoning.  I don't add anything else.  Then I bake them in the over for 30-45 minutes.

 

The focus of this meal, however, was the chickpeas.  I sauteed up some peppers, onions and garlic.  Once these were getting soft, then I added the chickpeas.  Again, I waited so they did not completely turn to mush.

 

This made an awesome meal, and not to mention some awesome leftovers.

 

My final meal that I prepared in my kitchen was a salmon dish.  We had frozen salmon and I knew for sure this would have to get eaten or it was going to wind up in a friends freezer.  I marinated the salmon with pineapple juice, low sodium soy sauce, fresh grated ginger and red pepper flakes.

 

To go with this I made those same Old bay potatoes, and steamed up a side of green beans.

 

To top my fish I sauteed some garlic and olive oil, then tossed in some soy sauce to coat these cherry tomatoes.

 

Then the fish was ready to be plated up and served.

 

I think this dish turned out beautifully!

It is a little sad to know my "kitchen" is gone, but I am please to know that whenever I was here (except for a few times with visitors) I was able to cook dinner twice a week.  When I set this goal it was to make meals that required me to actually cook, not just heat things up.  I am always in a rush and running around, so I found I rarely had time to actually cook, and I have a very short attention span.  But I realized this is not a good enough excuse to not cook more often.  I needed to slow down and spend some time connecting in the kitchen with my true passion for food.  I wanted to get this skill down before we are parents because I want my kids to see me cook and feel comfortable in the kitchen.  It was important to me and so I made this a priority.  I have made many great meals and I am actually impressed with myself.

Thank you all for sharing in my adventure in the kitchen.  Next time you see me going at it, I will be in Japan!

Stay tuned for more posts of things that have happened since Italy, a month ago.  Still working at getting caught up.

QUESTIONS:  How often do you cook dinner?  What is your favorite dish to cook?

Weekly Meals, Today’s Dietitian Cookbook

When it came time to prepare dinner 2 weeks ago, I wanted to try out some different things.  I received this cookbook at FNCE last year when I purchased my subscription to Today’s Dietitian Magazine.

 

Since it is not specifically a vegetarian cookbook, I looked through it and then put it with my other cookbooks.  Like I said, I was looking for something different and something that was not relying on plant proteins, since we (I should say I) do eat eggs, dairy and fish.  It is not so much a concern for me, but a concern for Ryan who has higher protein needs than me.  I selected a salmon recipe and then an egg recipe because those are different from what I usually cook, even though they are equally as easy to prepare.  It is nice to get the variety.

I went with a baked BBQ salmon recipe.  It started with marinating the fish in pineapple juice.

The recipe was just for the fish, and since that is not a balanced meal, I decided to cook this brown rice medley and a veggie.

I have a rice cooker that also has a veggie steamer.  The rice took just over 30 minutes to cook, so when it was nearing the end, with about 10 minutes to go, I added the veggie tray on top and steamed up some green beans.  It worked out perfectly!

 

Next I made the rub with some spices and brown sugar.  Put that on top of the fish and placed it in the oven.  Obviously I had this baking while everything else was steaming. 

The fish smelled wonderful, especially with the brown sugar mixed with cumin and chili powder.

  The timing was perfect and everything was done at the same time.  I love when it works out like that!

It was an awesome meal and I will definitely make this again.

I had some brown rice medley left over, and like I said it was so good, I decided to use some for lunch the next day.  I mixed it with soy crumbles and kalamata olives.  It was delicious!

The second dinner I made 2 weeks ago was a crustless quiche.  Yep, I am that behind on my own posts and reading everyone else’s.  I am sure I will get caught up soon…I hope!

I loved the looks of this recipe because of all the veggies and the use of some eggs, but mostly egg whites.

 

I bought the prepackaged egg whites because the recipe called for 6 egg whites and I felt like I was wasting food to crack open that many eggs and without a use for the yolks, they were going to be thrown away.

 

I mixed it all together, at which point I discovered our pie pan was completely rusted.

To save the project I took out a glass casserole dish and just baked it in there, which was good because I don’t think I could have fit all of it in the pie pan.

While that was baking I started on my hash browns.  The recipe was just the quiche, and I felt like it was missing something, so I added in a starch for my side.  The quiche had eggs, veggies and dairy (cheese), so potatoes would be perfect.  I had never made hash brown this way, but I discovered after reading about them online, I needed to dry off the potatoes, which I did, but I think not well enough.

Somehow or another, this bottle of wine was opened.  No complaints from me!

 

As my potatoes were cooking, and luckily Ryan had just gotten home, I realized dinner took longer than expected to prepare and I only had 5 minutes until a conference call.  Ryan took over in the kitchen and finished up and when the quiche was ready, he served me dinner while I was in my office on the phone.  Even though we did not get to eat together, it was yummy and I was glad Ryan liked this dish too.

 

I wish I had a picture of the finished meal, but I was on a call at the time it was finished.  I really thought there was one on my iPhone, but sadly I can't locate it from the upload I did to my computer.  Sometimes this Mac drives me nuts.

QUESTIONS:  Have you ever prepped something only to discover you don't have the right dish to cook it in?  What is your favorite whole grain?  Any tips for making hash browns with shredded potatoes?

Potato Chips, From Scratch

One of the many fine things you can do with a mandoline slicer is make thin slices of vegetables.  About 2 weeks ago I gave baked potato chips a try and they baked, and baked and baked and before I knew it they were burnt.  The chips may have been over, but I wasn’t done with the idea.  Ryan and I decided this made a great From Scratch Weekends experiment.

Ryan gets most of the physical credit for the work done on this attempt of the chips.  He sliced the potatoes.  We actually made a few batches and played around with the thickness of the potato slices.

This time we fried them in some canola oil.  Baked chips are on hold while we master the original process for the potato chip.  We also played around with the temperature for the oil.  It has to be really hot. 

You can see they are starting to brown.

Out came some nice looking potato chips.

They had a nice crunch to them, well, most of them.  The bonus to homemade potato chips was that we controlled the ingredients, and that means sodium too.  Instead of loading these up with sodium (salt) and other sodium containing flavorings, we used this Mrs. Dash onion and herb seasoning.

This will not be the end of the homemade chip!

QUESTIONS:  Have you ever made your own potato chips?  What is your favorite kind of potato chip?

Pumping Protein into Dinners

Ah protein, another misunderstood nutrient.  Sometimes I feel like no matter how much education and research is out there, people are still more apt to believe things they hear from friends and in the lay press written by people with out any course work in nutrition.

The RDA for protein is 0.8 grams/kg, and I would say a decent range is 0.8-1.2 for most.  There are plenty of reasons why your needs might be different, but for the most part, this is a good goal.  The excess may not be harmful, but for some people can be and in reality, excess is excess and this means something is lacking somewhere or likely you have an excess of caloric intake for the day.  Not always the case, but if you really do not need all the extra protein, you are not getting much of a benefit from this.

Last week Ryan mentioned he thought he was not getting enough protein each day.  I stopped and thought about this.  Generally my first response is “Yes, you are getting enough”.  Most people overconsume protein, so especially with a meat eater, I am quick to claim the person is getting enough protein.  Then I asked him what he has been eating for lunch.  He usually eats salad and maybe some chips or something he can grab quickly, if we didn’t have leftovers for him to pack for lunch.  Then the light bulb went on in my head. 

Ryan probably isn’t getting enough protein.  We usually grab some cereal on the way out the door to work, and while he puts milk in there, I know it is not more than a glass.  Lunch I already mentioned, but it only has a true protein source if he adds chicken to the salad, buys a sandwich, or was leftovers.  Mostly, at least recently, it has just been a salad.  Dinner is always going to be a vegetarian source of protein, which in our house occasionally includes fish.

The real problem is that when I make the dinner, the protein is adequate for me.  I actually meet my protein needs.  Ryan is over a foot taller than me and also (obviously) weighs more than me.  So, 0.8 grams per kilogram of my weight is less protein than he would need for the day.  My dinners, provide us with good protein for the evening, but in the end I think this may not be enough for him on average given his other intake for the day.  It may help me meet my needs, but with higher needs, it is likely he falls short on some days. 

I also understand his feeling of lack of protein because he is a vegetarian by default so I makes sense that without the meat he just feels like he is lacking protein even though he is getting it from those non-meat sources I add to our meals. 

In honor of Ryan’s request (or quest) for more protein with dinner, I made two meals with traditional protein sources so that we can “see” the protein.

Starting with an apple.

 

I know you are thinking what I am doing starting a protein packed dinner with an apple, so let me show you.

Take a look at this…

 

This is local Azorean tuna.  My sister really does not eat canned tuna in the US because you can’t verify much about this.  This tuna, however, is clearly labeled and you know this is fished nearby.  I ship this to my sister because she actually is eating tuna again.  She is a vegetarian too but mostly sticks to vegan since she is lactose intolerant.  She swears by this tuna so I bought some too.

 

One variation on tuna salad that we like is a curried tuna with apples instead of celery. 

So now you see why I started with an apple?

Alright, pay attention…

 

plus

 

(with some mayo and curry powder) equals=

 

There you have a very simple, yet delicious variation on tuna salad.

I decided use the tuna in a wrap and I thought homemade backed potato chips would be perfect.

 

Boy do I love my mandoline.

 

I spread these out on a pan and used some olive oil and pepper.

 

Ok, lesson learned, the bottom rack in the oven mixed with a little too much time makes for a burnt mess, but I was able to salvage some from the top rack.  I need to revamp this recipe for the next time.

 

Ryan was very pleased with the tuna dinner. 

Later that week I was happy to provide him with another protein packed meal.  I made this dish with a side of potatoes too.

 

Protein #1: Black Beans

I added salsa too this for a black bean sort of chili.

I let that cook.

Then I used this as a filling for an omelet.

Protein #2: Egg

My favorite omelet of all time is one with chili.  Now, I have a confession to make.  I have never made a real omelet.  I mean I have never made it so I perfectly folded over one side and had a nice filling inside.

Too bad my first try was not more successful.  The filling busted through.

But, you can see by omelet number 2 that my skill had drastically improved.

Both meals were delicious and just what Ryan had in mind.

QUESTIONS:  What is your favorite protein packed dinner?  Have you ever made potato “chips”?  Any suggestions for the chip idea?  They make them here at restaurants but they are thicker.