All the Ingredients

What's New: Yumnuts

Everyone is talking about nuts these days. Nuts help reduce your chances of having a heart attack. They help with fat loss, and help you build muscle. They boost brain power with their dose of omega-3 fatty acids, and are a great source of protein. I grew up in a house where we ate nuts a lot. My father loved cracking pecans and hazelnuts for us to eat out of hand. My mother served walnuts inside sliced dates. And there was always a bowl of mixed nuts on the table at cocktail parties, not to mention pecan pie at Thanksgiving--although maybe those last two aren't the most nutritious way to snack on nuts.

I have come to eat nuts--almonds--every day as my mid-morning snack with fruit. Right now I am enjoying clementines because they are plentiful and go well with almonds, as do apples. My husband snacks on walnuts and cashews every day. But the big thing right now is flavored nuts. Why eat plain almonds when you can eat flavored ones? I understand this--I love butter toffee peanuts and peanut brittle, but again those work against the "nuts are healthy" ideal. Enter Yumnuts.

Yumnuts is a company that flavor-roasts almonds and cashews in a variety of flavors. Most processed nuts are roasted at high temperatures that degrade the valuable oils in the nuts, making them less healthy. Yumnuts roasts nuts at a much lower temperature, making them flavorful AND healthy. 

Yumnuts sells 5.75 ounce bags in a four-pack. I ordered the version that let's you chose the flavors you want to try. I got: Touch of Honey Cashews, and three almond flavors--Dark Chocolate, Cinnamon, and Ginger Orange. I am not a big fan of cashews, but the Touch of Honey were fabulous. The additional honey really brought out the nuts inherent sweetness during the roasting process. My husband motored right through them.

I parcelled out the almonds into snack-size bags, and enjoyed them over the next several weeks. The Dark Chocolate had the flavor of a perfectly roasted almond with a chocolate finish--great with coffee. The Cinnamon were roasted with cinnamon and allspice to give them a wonderfully spicy flavor--these were my favorite of the three. I loved the Ginger Orange. These almonds were my favorite snack with clementines, but I have become a little bit obsessed with ginger lately, and I thought the nuts had great orange flavor, but needed more ginger.

The four-pack sells for $19.96 which is $4.99 a pouch for six servings. That is more than you pay for the flavored nuts you can find at your local grocery, but the flavor is so much better, Yumnuts are worth it. You can also return the pouches the nuts come in, and Yumnuts will recycle them and give you reward points to use toward Yumnuts gear. I love my reusable shopping bag!

So take a look at Yumnuts: http://yumnutsnaturals.com/products.html for Nature's perfect snack. I think I will have to try the Roasted Coconut Cashews next--don't tell my husband!

New in the Kitchen: Cuisinart Blend and Cook Soupmaker

I haven't had a blender I've liked since 1982. That's the year I moved into my first apartment. I was trying to furnish a tiny hallway kitchen (you walked through it to get to the bedroom from the living room) with finds from second-hand stores. The kitchen had a tiny white, Easy Bake Oven and stove--the electric burners on top were so close, if I used more than one pot at a time, their sides touched. The oven was large enough to slide in a frozen pizza. The counter tops were a deep, bright orange. Keep-you-awake-in-the-dark orange. 

I went to Goodwill, and found a chrome toaster. It popped the toast straight up into the air, making every breakfast a rousing game of catch. When I got married three years later, I convinced my husband that this toaster was more fun than his Sunbeam that simply toasted the bread and popped it up. We spent years catching the toast until one day my chrome beauty fell from the counter to its death. We advanced to buying Cadillac toasters after that. the one we have now takes up one end of the kitchen counter with its long wide double-slots that can toast bagels or baguette slices. We eat a lot of toast in our house because my husband considers it to be a food group. Like ice cream and pizza.

At Goodwill I also found a great blend blender for my apartment. It was a study Waring with a glass jar that had originally been a very expensive kitchen tool. I got it for $7, and was told by the nice lady behind the counter that they guaranteed it to work for seven days. There was just one problem with the blender. It was pink. The base was pink. The lid was pink. It looked lovely on my orange counter top. I took to sleeping with my bedroom door closed because otherwise I could hear the pink warring with the orange in the dark. 

What I loved about the Waring was that it had a six-horsepower motor, and could make a smoothie out of concrete. I perfected a recipe for frozen strawberry margaritas--the perfect summertime drink in my unairconditioned apartment. I loved that blender.

Then I got married, and we got a lovely blender for a wedding present. It was white, and had a plastic carafe and could muster just enough power to blend milkshakes out of partially defrosted ice cream and milk. The plastic carafe quickly got scratched and cloudy. The strawberry margaritas always had chunks of frozen strawberry in them. I hated it. My father-in-law, a man who knows his kitchen appliances, promised to buy me another glass-carafed blender. Instead, I got plastic blender #2 which had more blending force than the first plastic blender but not by much. I stopped using it when the bottom blade assembly fused to the carafe, and I could no longer get it apart to clean it thoroughly.

Then last fall I started to see commercials on the cooking channels for the Cuisinart Blend and Stir Soupmaker. I loved the idea of being able to cook in a blender--I love soup, but it tends to be something I don't make from scratch. I don't eat it out of cans either because of the high salt content. Canned soup just doesn't taste good to me. I watched and waited. Sure enough right after Thanksgiving Williams Sonoma had the soupmaker on sale, AND had four days where there was no shipping charge on orders. I sent an email hint to Santa at the North Pole, and sure enough, on Christmas morning there was the Soupmaker under the Christmas tree.

I have to confess, with all the joys of working retail during the holiday season, it was the end of January before I even got my new soupmaker out of the box. I managed to get it assembled and on the counter without too much trouble. It is big, and takes up a good chunk of counter space. And it matches all my other black counter top appliances. The soupmaker comes with a small recipe book, and I decided to try the recipe for cauliflower cheese soup first. 

I based this soup on the Lightened Broccoli and Potato Soup in the recipe booklet, using cauliflower because I didn't have any broccoli. I put the following in the blender jar:

• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 garlic clove, chopped
• 1/2 small onion, chopped
• dash of salt
• dash of pepper
• 1 medium potato, peeled and cubed
• 3/4 pound cauliflower, cut into roughly 3/4 inch pieces

Then I put the lid on the jar and set it to 10 minutes on High. Once the broth started to heat up, I saw that the cauliflower wasn't covered all the way, and I added about a half a cup more.

In a few minutes the broth inside the blender jar started to boil. Then I hit the "Stir" button for about 15 seconds to start to move the ingredients around in the broth. At the end of the 10 minutes, the liquid was at a rolling boil, and the glass of the blender jar was hot to the touch.

The blender timer went off after 10 minutes, and I reset it to 30 minutes on medium. Periodically during this time, I stirred the soup  ingredients around. The blades at the bottom of the blender are extremely sharp, but on "stir" the speed is low enough so that the mixture moves, but isn't pureed. 

When the timer went off at the end of the 30 minutes, I tasted the mixture. The cauliflower wasn't cooked all the way through yet, so I set it for another 10 minutes on Medium. Then I added 2 ounces of grated sharp cheddar, and blended the soup on Speed 1 until it was smooth and creamy. I poured the soup into bowls, and sprinkled it with some green and red pepper flakes that I had made from my own dehydrated garden peppers from last summer. My husband and I love these pepper flakes, and sprinkle them on everything short of ice cream.

 This recipe made four very generous servings of soup. We would have had two meals out of it, but we ate it all. With some crackers. It was a lot of soup. And it was delicious.

What I liked about this soup was that once I had chopped everything and put it in the blender, I could do things in other rooms of the house, stirring the soup periodically until it was done. I was very careful the first time to chop all the vegetables uniformly, but as the blender stirs, it continues to chop the pieces so now I am not as careful to have all the pieces small and uniform. I whack up the veggies, onion, and garlic, throw it in the blender, add broth to cover, and let it go. Sometimes I add sour cream wit the cheese at the end. Sometimes I don't add the cheese at all. This is so easy we have been eating soup twice a week, less than an hour from start to bowl.

I wanted some soup to freeze, so I made the recipe in the booklet for Carrot and Ginger Soup--delicious! (My husband doesn't like carrot soup.) And wonderful to take to work with a sandwich.

For most of these creamy vegetable soups, I have found that we like the consistency better when I add the potato. The soup is lighter because the potato makes the soup creamy without being cream. The best soup so far has been a potato cheddar with crispy bacon bits added right before serving. No leftovers again. For clean up, I fill the blender jar halfway, add a little dish soap, and blend it clean. The blender does come with a brush for cleaning which is very helpful for the blades--they are very sharp!

$199 is expensive for a blender. Not so expensive for a soupmaker that I am using twice a week. It makes great smoothies too. Next I will have to try and find that strawberry margarita recipe again!

What's New: Godiva Caramel Pecan Bark Coffee

There are coffee purists out there (you know who you are) who think that coffees should not have flavoring added to the beans. I used to be one of them. In a past life, I worked as a barista for a company that sold only different "roasts" of coffees--nothing flavored. But then when I was no making coffee for anyone other than myself, I began to shop around other coffee houses, and try brews that were flavored. Usually what I drink at home is a combination of one part plain roast to three parts flavored roast. I tend not to like quite as much flavoring in my coffee as other folks.

As part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program, I received two bags of Godiva's Coffee latest seasonal flavors--Pumpkin Spice, and Caramel Pecan Bark. Every coffee house is featuring a pumpkin coffee drink right now, so I decided to experiment with the Caramel Pecan Bark. 

Brewed by itself at full strength, this medium roast coffee is a delight. The packaging describes it as "Rich, smooth caramel and toasted pecans with a creamy Godiva milk chocolate finish." Mixed with steamed milk, it is a perfect way to start the day. The caramel aroma floated out of my cup, and as I sipped the coffee, I noticed the slight hint of chocolate. I decided to enhance the caramel and the chocolate notes of this coffee.

Besides Godiva coffee, I am seriously addicted right now to Godiva tablet chocolate bars. My favorite is the Milk Chocolate Salted Caramel. I have a secret stash of them at home. Every day in my lunch, I pack one square. I can't have two squares or the whole bar lying around because I will sit down and eat it all. This tablet is a thin piece of Godiva milk chocolate with flecks of crisp caramel throughout and a dash of salt along the way. Salted caramel is a very trendy flavor right now in everything from cupcakes to hot drinks. I think the Godiva Milk Chocolate Salted Caramel tablet is the best of them all. So I decided that this tablet and this coffee needed to be blended.

First, I brewed the Godiva Pecan Bark Coffee. Then for a single cup of decadence, I chopped up a square of the Godiva Milk Chocolate Salted Caramel Bar. I put half of it in the bottom of the cup, and added the hot coffee. Then I quickly swirled on whipped cream and Smucker's Caramel Sauce, topping it all off with the rest of the square of chopped caramel bar. This drink was fabulous! And the best part of the gooey bits of caramel from the chocolate tablet at the bottom of the cup.

This is an easy drink to make. The Godiva Pecan Bark Coffee will make your kitchen smell wonderful, and will be a great start to your day. Mix it with the Salted Caramel Bar for a match made, well, in Godiva Heaven. Try it!

What's New: Marzetti Simply Dressed: Simply the Best!

My mother gave me her love of tea. My brother Michael gave me his love of peanut butter. And my sister Stephanie gave me her love of salad dressing.

Every time we went out to eat when I was a kid, my big sister would get french fries. And with her french fries, she always had to have a side order of blue cheese dressing. That was what she dipped fries in instead of ketchup. I didn't like blue cheese dressing at that point, and thought she was crazy. It was a habit she kept up all of her life.

But then along came Ranch Dressing to change my mind about salad dressings as condiments. I grew up in the fifties along side the packets of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing. In those days, if you wanted salad dressing, you mixed it up yourself. For Ranch, you had to buy the packet of Hidden Valley seasoning, and add it to mayonnaise and buttermilk. It was my job to set the table for dinner every night, and my job to make the dressing for whatever salad we were having. My mother saved old mayonnaise jars so that I could mix up the ranch dressing. Every night that we used it, we had to stir it all together again. It was rich and creamy.

Gradually, I followed in my sister's footsteps, and started using Ranch as my condiment of choice. I like Ranch Dressing on pizza, wings, burgers, fries--all sorts of foods that really don't need the extra fat calories, but are improved by the flavor. (Try sprinkling some Ranch Dressing powder on your potatoes before you roast them.) I have always remained true to the Hidden Valley brand. I don't think anyone else's Ranch tastes as good. 

And if I am going to spend those calories on dressing, I want it to taste good. I hate fat-free dressings. They have a weird viscosity that always reminds me of a science experiment gone wrong. I won't eat anyone's fat-free Ranch, but I do like the light version that Hidden Valley makes.

Today when you wander down the salad dressing aisle of your local grocery store, there are hundreds of salad dressings to chose from, already made up for you in an amazing assortments of flavors. There are also the bottled dressings that contain ingredients that are not shelf-stable, and that are sold in the produce section in a refrigerated case.

And that's where you find the Marzetti. I have been crazy about Marzetti Honey Dijon dressing for decades. My favorite dip for sweet potato fries or onion rings is that dressing with some Ranch swirled into it--heaven! I like the Marzetti Blue Cheese dressing as well (Stephanie was right all those years ago)--and both the lighter versions of these two are very good. Marzetti makes lots of different dressings, and periodically I like to bring something new home to try. Want a killer combo for your next tossed salad? Try mixing the Marzetti Ranch half and half with their Blue Cheese. 

So I was thrilled when as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker's Program, I received a coupon for a free bottle of the new Marzetti line: Simply Dressed. These salad dressings are different from others on the market because they don't contain polysorbate 60 or propylene glycol alginate or anything else you need a chemistry degree to understand. The Simply Dressed Ranch contains ingredients like canola oil, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, spices, and buttermilk. I also got the Simply Dressed Champagne made with extra virgin olive oil, olive oil, sea salt, spices, and champagne and white wine vinegar. These dressings are full fat, so you need to use them modestly. However, the Simply Dressed ranch contains 2 grams less fat per serving than Hidden Valley Ranch.

So how did these dressings taste? 

For the Simply Dressed Champagne, I made a salad out of fresh garden veggies (soon to come to an end with a hard frost predicted this week): tomatoes, bell pepper, and cucumbers. To them I added celery, mushrooms, carrots, and romaine lettuce. And I threw in some Marzetti Whole Grain Croutons that I found in the produce section as well. I poured on a couple of tablespoons the dressing and tossed it all together. I thought the salad was very flavorful--the dried herbs in the dressing really helped jazz up the vegetables. My mother used to take flat
champagne left over after parties, and make champagne dressing with it. Her dressing had an alcoholic kick to it. The Marzetti version is much smoother in taste, and won't get you pulled over for eating a salad  and driving. My husband's verdict after eating the salad: "Not bad." (This is HIGH praise from him for a salad, believe me!) Next, I'd like to try this dressing as a marinade for chicken.

For the Simply Dressed Ranch, I tried it three ways. First, I dipped a carrot stick in it. Ranch dressing is my go-to dip to dress up raw veggies. It was wonderful. I like the flavor o buttermilk that the background. Next I put it on some deep dish pizza I had made. A lot of people eat
Ranch dressing on pizza. I've been doing it for a long time. Think about it. Most of the time I eat veggie pizza, no meat. So it's kinda like eating hot salad on a crust with some tomato sauce and cheese added. Ranch seems like a natural addition. Sometimes I even put cold lettuce on top of hot pizza with Ranch dressing. It works for me. The Simply Dressed Ranch on pizza is a winner. Finally, I also tried the Ranch on plain lettuce, the most simple salad. A little dressing went a long way,  and made the lettuce zesty.

I have a confession. I have been eating Hidden Valley Dressing for most of my life. The Marzetti Simply Dressed Ranch is better. Way better. I think that because it is made with buttermilk and other natural ingredients, it tastes fresher. Like you made it yourself instead of getting it out of a bottle. Marzetti Simply Dressed salad dressings are made with all natural ingredients, have to be kept refrigerated, and are more expensive than the others on the shelf in the salad dressing aisle, or in the refrigerated section of the produce section. They are worth it.

I think even my sister Stephanie would agree.

What's New: Birds Eye Steamfresh Chef's Favorites Helps Make Spinach Artichoke Dip

If you have walked through the frozen foods section of your grocery store lately, you have noticed a change in what's on the shelves in the veggie section. Besides the growth of single-serving frozen vegetable packets that I have mentioned before, there has been a rapid growth in packages of quick and easy, meal-ready blends of items. Gone are the days of potatoes displayed only as pucks, fries, and tots. Now you can buy bags of roasted potatoes mixed with carrots and herbs, ready to microwave and serve as a side-dish to pork chops or beef tenderloins. Or if you are of a veggie mindset, you can eat the bagged blend as your main dish.

As part of the Foodbuzz Tastemakers Program, I was lucky enough to receive a sample of the new Birds Eye Steamfresh Chef's Favorites. The first one out of the box was the Lightly Sauced Creamed Spinach. As a child, I hated spinach--especially straight out of the can, Popeye-style. But as an adult, I have learned the joys of spinach. I love it fresh in salads or on sandwiches, and I love fresh spinach cooked. But what to do with an entire bag of Creamed Spinach? Then it hit me--I would reinvent my Thanksgiving Day artichoke dip to include spinach.

My Thanksgiving Day menu doesn't vary. It did for the first few years we were married as my husband and I decided what dishes we like best. But then the menu became set in stone: roast turkey stuffed with cornbread dressing (yes, I know I am not supposed to stuff the turkey with the dressing anymore, but in twenty-six years no one has died, or even gotten sick as a result of my cornbread stuffing and it just tastes better that way), cranberry orange relish, sweet potato rolls, mashed potatoes with sour cream, Brussels sprouts with walnuts and orange, pickled beets, balsamic carrot salad with currants, and pecan and pumpkin pies with real whipped cream. And the appetizers are almost always bacon-wrapped dates and breadsticks, and artichoke dip. What if I added the creamed spinach to the artichoke dip?

I dug around in the cupboard and found the 9-inch casserole that I always make the Thanksgiving artichoke dip in, and got started:

• 1 can artichokes, in brine, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, diced small
• 2 wedges Laughing Cow Light Creamy Swiss (or 2 tablespoons cream cheese)
• 1 package Birds Eye Steamfresh Chef's Favorite Creamed Spinach, partially defrosted
• 2/3 oz grated parmesan cheese

I chopped the artichokes, diced the garlic, and stirred in the Laughing Cow Cheese. I like Laughing Cow in recipes like this because it is creamy already, and mixes into other ingredients much easier than cream cheese. I added half the grated parmesan cheese, and layered it into my casserole.

Next I put the Creamed Spinach in its pouch in the microwave. The package was supposed to cook completely in 5 minutes, so I cooked it for 2 1/2 minutes. That partially defrosted the creamed spinach, but didn't cook it all the way. Then I opened the package and topped the artichoke mixture with the spinach and cream mixture. I stirred it together with the artichoke layer, and topped the dip with the rest of the grated parmesan cheese. I baked it for about 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven. It smelled wonderfully cheesy and garlicky.

For dinner that night, I had bought and cooked lovely pork chops, and had baked two large potatoes. I served the Spinach Artichoke Dip on top of the baked potatoes. It was wonderful! I also sampled some on crackers just to make sure it will be  perfect for Thanksgiving. It was so good, it was hard to stop eating the dip on the crackers. 

I also got a sample of the Birds Eye Steamfresh Chef's Favorites Roasted Red Potatoes & Green Beans which were delicious with my grilled pork back ribs, and a sample of the Mushroom and Green Bean Risotto which I steamed in the microwave, and then added to a skillet of chorizo suasages that I had  cooked and sliced. My husband, who is not a big fan of rice, thought this was delicious. All of these veggies and sauces are on the light side--the creamed spinach had the most fat with 5 grams a serving. These aren't available in your grocery until September, but from what I could guess, based on the other packages of like-minded items in the freezer section, they should be less than $3 a package.

So next month, when you are trolling through the frozen foods aisle dreaming up dinners, make sure you grab a couple of the happy blue Birds Eye Stemfresh Chef's Favorites to try!

Cooking from the Books: Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood

The first time I saw the word "quinoa," pronounced "keen-wa," I had to look it up. I had no clue what it was: a high-protein, whole grain grown mostly in South America. Okay. It sounded funky, and NOT like something I could serve at my dinner table.

Then I cam across the book Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood by Patricia Green and Carolyn Hemming. It explains the history and nutritive value of this "superfood." Quinoa is a South American grain, that I found in the health food section of my local grocery store. It's expensive at $3-$4 a pound, but a little goes a long way when cooked up, and it provides more protein and nutritive value than the same amount of pasta or meat. It's also a complex carbohydrate that digests slowly and has staying power, and is gluten-free.

You can buy quinoa in red, black, or golden colored "seeds." In my recipe trials, I found that the golden cooks the quickest, and that there is no noticeable taste difference among the colors. It is also available as quinoa flower and flakes, useful for baking. It cooks like rice--you put the quinoa in water, boil, and simmer until the quinoa puffs up slightly and has absorbed the water. Buy quinoa that has been rinsed during processing--this removes a bitter flavor from its natural coating. Cooked plain with a a little salt in the water, I think quinoa has a slightly nutty taste, milder than wild rice. It works well as a base for either sweet or savory recipes.

The first recipe I tried out of Quinoa 365 was "Apple Strudel Breakfast Cereal." I followed the recipe exactly as written the first two times, and then streamlined it slightly. My version calls for:

• 1 cup quinoa
• 3 cups water
• 1/2 cup dried apple slices, cut into 1/2-inch wide bits
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 6-oz carton vanilla greek yogurt
• 6 tablespoons sliced almonds

Combine the quinoa, water, apples, raisins, and cinnamon in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce to  simmer for 30 minutes. This is almost twice the cooking time recommended by the original recipe, but I found that I prefer the quinoa a little softer after it absorbs more water. I stir it occasinally since the dried apples tend to float, and the raisins tend to sink. Once the quinoa has finished cooking, take it off the heat and stir in the vanilla extract.

 

I then divide it among six small round Gladware containers and freeze it. To reheat it, I pop the lid and microwave the quinoa and fruit from 2-3 minutes, depending on the microwave. Then I top it with a tablespoon of the vanilla Greek yogurt and a tablespoon of the sliced almonds. The original recipe added a tablespoon of brown sugar when the vanilla is put in, but because I use vanilla Greek yogurt, that sweetens the quinoa enough for me.

If you don't freeze the quinoa after it is cooked, the book says that it will keep for a week in the refrigerator. I am all about make-ahead and freeze meals, and love to be able to have a power-packed breakfast ready to go that just needs a few minutes in the microwave. I can eat the "Apple Strudel Breakfast Cereal," and then go to my hour-long spin class and have energy to burn!

In taste tests that I did with family and friends, my husband didn't care for the breakfast cereal version of quinoa, but he is not really a grains person unless it's oatmeal in a cookie. My more adventurous friends liked it, and thought it was a nice change from steel-cut oats cooked with dried fruit. I also tried the "Pumpkin Pancakes" where cooked quinoa is added to a pumpkin and spice pancake batter, cooked, and served with pecans and maple syrup. This was NOT a low-calorie breakfast option, but the pancakes were moist and yummy--the perfect breakfast for a snowy morning. And they also froze and reheated well. This book has other recipes for main dishes, cold salads, and soups. Now that I have found quinoa flour at the grocery store, I plan to jump from the breakfasts in the front of Quinoa 365 to the cookie and dessert recipes at the back! 

Cooking from the Books: Pretty Delicious: Lean and Lovely Recipes for a Healthy, Happy New You

So. The new year started off full of promise. Plenty of cookbooks and time to cook from them. Then February and March happened. Plagues and pestilence hit our house. Okay, everyone really just had the same cold over and over. But when family members are sick and their tastebuds are out of commission, no one wants to try that new cabbage a la orange recipe I found in a cookbook on my shelf. April was taxes (Bad!) and a long-awaited foodie trip to Vegas that my husband and I were long overdue for (Very good!). May was my daughter's high school graduation, and the visit of her gluten-free grandma. By now I have recipes from great cookbooks stacking up like airplanes in a fog and no time to write about them. Son moves home briefly between dorm and summer housing plans. House looks like Filene's Basement after a big sale--sweaty boy-clothes everywhere. He moved out yesterday, the washer is churning in the basement, and, at long last, I am here!

I work in a bookstore. Every fifteen minutes a new book comes out: "How to Eat Right and Lose Weight Without Trying!" "The Fast Food Diet" "The Carb-Lovers Diet" "The Carb-Haters Diet" "The Raw Diet" "The Eat Cardboard and Thrive Diet." Seriously, they make my head spin. Some of the changes I have made slowly in my life over the last three years are that I no longer eat fast food (except Orange Flavored Chicken and Chow Mien once a month), I have cut way back on the processed food I buy and eat (I am not yet to the point of making my own crackers), and I gave up Boxed Healthy Cuisine microwave meals for my lunches at work. Prepackaged microwave meals are expensive, and have too much salt and not enough food to keep me going. I do still buy frozen vegetables because there is such a fabulous variety now, and since I am the only person in my house eating four-to-five servings of fruit and veggies a day, it's just easier. I LOVE the Green Giant Veggies for one. They are already portioned and seasoned and play well with others.

I always look through these new diet books because I have to know them to sell  them. One of the problems I find is that a number of these diet cookbooks require you to have box mixes that you use 1/18th of for a single-serving cake. Or the recipe will begin: "Take a container of Cool Whip Free and add...." Now I am not above using box cake mixes or Cool Whip (although I prefer the Cool Whip Lite because it doesn't taste like patent leather). But I use them to supplement what I am making, not basing my entire food plan on boxes, mixes, and tubs of stuff.

And this is why I really like Candice Kumai's newish cookbook, Pretty Delicious: Lean and Lovely Recipes for a Healthy, Happy New You. Kumai is a professionally trained chef who is an alumni of Top Chef and was one of the co-hosts for Cook Yourself Thin. She is a cheerleader for what she calls "Foods With Benefits" (FWBs). Since we are what we eat, she recommends going old-school and cooking your own food--thinking outside the mac & cheese box. The first part of the books explains her code of eating, and gives list of FWBs, and what they can do for you. Then she divides the rest of her book up into meals like breakfast and lunch, and food types like seafood and sweets.

At one brief point between winter illnesses, I tried her "Creamy" Tomato Soup. This  is a very simple tomato soup to make using garlic, onions, dried herbs, canned diced tomatoes, chicken broth, and tomato paste. The "creamy" part comes from the addition of almond milk and greek yogurt--two foods that have become staples in my diet over the last year. Served with grilled cheese sandwiches, this soup packs a fresh tomato flavor. And during the February plagues, it made a nice break from chicken noodle soup. We also loved her Hollywood Burger which is a turkey burger with carmelized onions and sauteed mushrooms added to the meat with other seasonings before the burgers are grilled--excellent! Both of these meals used ingredients I had on hand. Starting with canned organic tomatoes and canned organic broths makes a soup that tastes much better than the tomato soup in a can that I was served as a kid.

So take a look at this book! It also changed the way I look at won ton wrappers...

 

 

Greek Yogurt--What's for Breakfast

I was standing in the dairy section at grocery store the other day, and was astounded by how much space is now devoted to yogurt. There's full-fat, light, and non-fat, plus yogurt with an entire day's worth of fiber added. There is yogurt with added probiotics that will cure all intestinal ails. (Isn't that ALL yogurt?) My small-town local grocery store has  just started carrying a yogurt made locally with milk from happy, grass-fed cows. I was excited to try it. At over a dollar a little tub, it's more than twice the price of its competitors, but it comes in natural fruit flavors like strawberry, peach, and blueberry.

I can't eat the other, oddly-flavored yogurts that are all the rage now. If I want something that tastes like a slice of key lime pie, I want an actual slice of pie--not a synthetically sweetened and flavored tub of yogurt that is reminiscent of a bad slice of key lime pie that I had on vacation in Texas once. If I want cherry cheesecake, then I am going to spring for a real, full-fat slice of New York cheesecake with cherries on top, not a carton of yogurt with a weird faux cherry taste. And all of these probiotic, fiber-laced yogurts are sweetened with chemicals that leave a bad aftertaste in my mouth.

I excitedly bought three little tubs of the local yogurt, made by a dairy that also is selling it's antibiotic-free, organic milk in glass bottles. It was awful. The yogurt had a lumpy texture that was just short of being cottage cheese. Even after I stirred the fruit puree up from the bottom, it didn't get any smoother. And although it should have tasted creamy, it was acidic. I couldn't eat them, so my husband eventually finished them all. (My husband has earned his place in heaven, I think, because he cheerfully finishes off the food that the children--and occasionally his wife--buy, eat once, and then won't finish. And the man will try almost anything I cook, and enjoys leftovers.)

Then I came across Greek yogurt. My favorite is Oikos Organic Greek Yogurt made by Stonyfield. It is sweet and creamy and sweetened with real sugar. And it's fat free with 22 grams of protein per cup. I buy the 16 oz tubs of vanilla at $3.31 a carton at the JumboMart and stir in my own Vietnamese cinnamon for zip. It is delicious--smooth and creamy with no unpleasant aftertaste. It's more expensive than the other yogurts at about .83 a serving, but it's worth it. It also comes in individual tubs flavored with honey or blueberries. I have never tried those because I am an add-your-own-fruit kinda girl.

For my favorite breakfast, I slice up one small banana and top it with 3/4 of a cup of strawberries, and about 1/4 cup each of blueberries and blackberries. (Raspberries would work well too.) Then I top that with 1/2 a cup of the Greek yogurt with cinnamon, and a 1/4 cup of whatever crunchy granola is currently in the house. If I am taking breakfast to go, I put the fruit and yogurt in one container and take the granola in a smaller one; then when I get to work, I add the granola so it's still crunchy. If I don't have time to sit down to breakfast, I add a small tub of plain Greek yogurt to a cup of frozen mixed berries in the blender. With a little pomegranate juice and almond milk, I have a great fruit smoothie to drink in the car. Both of these breakfasts will carry me through till lunchtime.

So the next time you are staring at the yogurt display trying to choose between mango chiffon cake or tiramisu, try the Greek yogurt!

Bacon Jam

A friend who knows how much bacon is revered in my household sent me the link for the Homesick Texan's recipe for Bacon Jam. Bacon in jam form? Hmm. The recipe seems pretty simple, although the preparation steps leave out how to add several ingredients. I wasn't bothered by the fact that the recipe didn't seem complete. I have reached a stage in my cooking life where I often read a recipe and drastically change it in my head before I even start to prepare it. This is one of those recipes.

The original recipe called for lots of garlic and a little onion. Since my husband is not a huge garlic fan, I flipped those quantities. I also like the way onion and bacon compliment each other in recipes, so I wanted about an equal amount of each. One of the liquid ingredients in the original recipe was coffee. I am the only person in our household who drinks coffee, so I substituted something else that I thought would work: root beer. I think you could use coffee or cola with success.

So the ingredients as I reshaped the recipe became:

• 1 medium sweet yellow onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 lb bacon, sliced

Now I am sure you can make bacon jam quite nicely with the bacon you can find in your local grocery store. However, if I was going to go to this much trouble, I was going to shell out $6 for a pound of meaty local bacon from the farmer's market, made from pigs who wore crowns of flowers and gamboled in green meadows. Okay, so these pigs were raised on Iowa farm in a barnyard. But they were antibiotic free, and actually saw the light of day until they became a jam ingredient.

• 2 chipotles en adobe (found in a can on the grocer's shelf) 
• 2 teaspoons adobo sauce (from the can)
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1 cup root beer
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

Dice the bacon into 1/2 inch pieces and cook in a heavy pot or skillet over a medium-high heat until the pieces start to crisp. Remove the bacon pieces and drain on a paper towel. Pour out all but 1 tablespoon of the bacon fat. Chop the onions into medium pieces, and mince the garlic. Add to the bacon fat and saute until the onions are clear and soft. Remove the chipotles from the can and chop as fine as you can (they are smooshy and slippery). Add them and the rest of the ingredients to the pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and stir periodically. You want the mixture to thicken to the consistency of a nice jam. Cool and put into a jar and refrigerate.

There are numerous on-line postings to tell you where to put your bacon jam: on egg breakfast biscuits, on BLTs, in baked beans and so on. So far, we haven't got past burgers. The jam was fabulous on bacon-cheeseburgers. It was also quite tasty on patty melts made with marble rye and swiss cheese. My husband thinks the jam is a little too spicy; my son, not an adventurous eater, thinks it is just right. You can certainly only use one chipotle or add more depending on your heat tolerance. I liked the bacon jam exactly as I made it. You taste the onion and the bacon, and then finish with a slight sear across the tongue that makes you want another bite. And another.

Cooking with Julia Child

  It's Sunday. I didn't work today so I cooked breakfast: cinnamon rolls (not from scratch, sorry), and bacon. On the end of my kitchen counter is a TV with a DVD player, and on Sunday mornings, I treat myself and cook with Julia Child. Christmas before last, my husband gave me the two DVD sets that are available with episodes from her series, The French Chef. I love these DVDs because I enjoy watching Julia make recipes I would never try (terrines) and some I would try, like today's crepes. I also hate the DVDs because they are divided up by type of recipe--Starters, Main Courses, Desserts--and not arranged chronologically. You can go from watching a black and white early episode, to a later episode in color, and then back to balck and white. There were originally 134 episodes of this show, the first 13 of which were lost. So I only have 36 out of the remaining 121 on these two DVD sets. I would quickly fork out bundles of money for a complete, chronological set of The French Chef, but for now I make due with what there is. I love the fact that Julia is messy, drops things, and doesn't always worry about the final presentation of a dish.

Because I work in a bookstore, it's easy for me to see how media exposure drives book sales. As soon as the movie Julie & Julia came out, sales of Julia Child's books increased dramatically. We couldn't keep copies of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in stock because everyone wanted. Julie Powell made cooking from it seem so attractive. I sold it to one woman who bought it simply so she could learn to make a bechemal sauce. There are cheaper and quicker ways to get your hands on the recipe and technique of making bechemal sauce, but I certainly understand the attraction of having Julia teach you how. When I was a child  back in the 1960s, I learn to cook from my mother--and from watching Julia Child.

I own both hardcover volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (I paid $2.50 for each at a sidewalk sale outside a cooking store a long time ago), but I confess I never use them to cook with. They certainly are the foundation of the way Julia Child built her approach to cooking, but I prefer the more Americanized versions of her recipes: Julia in later life.

When my daughter Emily, was a toddler, she loved watching cooking shows. She was fascinating with what the hands were stirring and making. She loved to watch Julia and Jacques Pepin when their show, Cooking at Home, was on the air: "Mommy! The people who talk funny are on!" She thought Julia Child was from France too. Two of our favorite recipes for Sunday dinner come from that book: Roast Chicken (Jacques's version) and Scalloped Potatoes (Julia's Pommes des Terre Dauphinoise). I have never made scalloped potatoes as good as my mother-in-law's, but Julia's recipe fixed the mistakes I was making, and produced a recipe my husband found to be different than his mother's but "Very good!" The book is laid out with Julia and Jacques's recipes for the same basic dish side-by-side, and I often end up somewhere in the middle. But I have never made a bad recipe from this book.

The other book I use is Baking with Julia, based on a TV series Julia did baking with famous chefs such as Lora Brody, Martha Stewart, Marion Cunningham, and Nancy Silverton. Some of the recipes in this collection are completely over the top such as Martha Stewart's for a three-tiered almond wedding cake with meringue and apricot glaze between the layers, frosted with rum buttercream, and decorated with marzipan fruit. Other recipes are fabulous such as the Danish Braid (I made it with the apricot filling), or the White Loaves. This latter recipe produces two magnificent loaves of bread that toast  beautifully. That probably has  something to do with the half a stick of softened butter that is beaten in as the last step of making the dough. The recipe says that the "mountainous loaves" are four and half inches high. The two I made this week topped out at six inches!

And when I want an older, basic recipe, I tend to go back to The French Chef Cookbook, that has the recipes, chronologically, from the original series. My mother and I watched Julia make Beef Bourguignon with its Onion and Mushroom Garniture (Episode 96), and we bought the ingredients and made it soon afterwards. For years it was my requested birthday dinner. These recipes teach basic techniques and are aimed more towards how America cooked (at least in the 1960s) than the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

So if you are inspired to cook with Julia, take a look at all the different books she has on the shelf in the bookstore, and don't automatically head for the bright blue cover of her original gem. Take time to find the one that's right for you. And if you want a good look at how cooking television used to be before being FoodNetworkicized, I highly recommend the DVD sets.