What is IN the food you eat? (stop looking at numbers and start reading!)

My mother was kind enough to host my family on vacation (hence my lack of posts of late). I think she honestly was nervous after following my blog with respect to meal planning. You see, I don't recall a time in my life where diet soda was not in the fridge at my parents house and it's been AGES since actual sugar went into their coffee (they use that "other stuff" that honestly scares the crap out of me).

All that said, with 6 dinners LOOMING ahead of me I knew I had some harsh critics, 2 people who are VERY set in their ways, and I was likely just as nervous as my mom. It started with a grocery shopping trip with my mom. My mom has always checked nutrition labels for calories, fat, fiber, etc., but during our trip, we talked a lot about the other important stuff on the label...what's actually IN the food you're eating? Like preservatives, dyes, other chemicals...popular diets teach us to look for those magic numbers..."how many carbs/calories/fat grams are in it?" Ok, does it matter if you're not even eating FOOD anymore???

We did not eat food I prepared every night, though we did work hard at sticking to our eating habits and I anchored the trip with 2 successful dinners that my parents liked. I'm not expecting to change the world here, but I think I made some baby steps!

Shown above: Greek marinaded chicken, greens, and homemade tzatziki on flatbread.

Breakfast, how do I love thee...

At 3:15 PM  my first child was born after close to 23 hours of labor. At that point, the nurses kindly told me I could have anything I wanted from the hospital menu and handed me a piece of paper. BREAKFAST PLEASE, I begged.

I could, in fact, eat breakfast ANY time of day. When I was in college, I worked towards my English minor with a creative writing class. I did most of my writings at a place called Brandywine Diner in Schenectady, NY.  Eggs, Cheese, Toast, coffee, pleather booths, and a never empty miniature diner cup of coffee, because when you're 20 years old, at 2AM there are few things better than a never ending supply of caffeine and food. This may have started at an early age. When my mom was too sick to cook on any given night, my dad made us veggie omelets - egg, cheese, veggies, and toast...maybe a little bacon and he knew he'd done his job as a parent. Ok, kids, all the food groups...get to bed! Eggs, veggies, cheese and potatoes were often the dinner of choice when dad worked late, too, which leads to an entirely separate conversation around my mother's frugality when it came to feeding our family.

It's Thursday...so if I showed you a picture of my fridge/pantry, your response would be somewhere between "YOU FEED A FAMILY OF 4?!?!!" and "YOU ARE SCREWED IF IT SNOWS TOMORROW." I stare into my fridge...crap. I start pulling out ingredients that work together. Potato, egg, onion, spinach, tomato, and...cheese.  Ok, that covers nutritional needs...slicing the onion and potato as thin as paper, I cook them up in olive oil and butter. It smells so good at this point. After the potato is COOKED THROUGH I toss in the rest. Dinner was that giant mess in a bowl topped with some Franks Red Hot. Kind of like garbage pizza with just veggies...and egg instead of dough to hold the mess together.  Maybe he was just hungry, but Pete gave it a tie with the sushi we had the night before...ok, he MUST have been starving.  That said it was good and about 1/10th the cost of the sushi.

Dear Breakfast,

I love you.

Love,
Melissa

What's good with bacon?

...Everything. In all seriousness, no, not everything is better with bacon. I haven't tried bacon and chocolate, though I know some people swear it's amazing, but we have made bacon infused vodka - trust me, that's NOT a good idea.

In this case, broccoli rabe is amazing with bacon.  Inspired by a recipe I round for rabe with pancetta and pumpkin, I got to work. I had some leftover thick cut bacon from our trip to the farm, just a couple of pieces, but it was enough to crumble up and saute the rabe in.  Rabe is a very bitter green, so you'll need to squeeze some lemon and add a little salt to it to kill off that bitterness.  While the bacon got nice and crispy, I roasted some butternut squash and turnips. Not wasting a thing, I toasted the butternut squash seeds (to sprinkle on top of it all when it was done)! 

It was colorful and tasty and for a moment, I thought...maybe everything IS better with bacon.

Traditional German food

Wiener schnitzel, spaetzle, and peas...this is NOT health food.  I mean, don't get me wrong, this was an all natural dinner with organic meats and veggies and without preservatives, but it was cooked in olive oil and butter.  Translation: DELICIOUS!

When I got my first apartment, I don't think I knew how to cook any food other than Italian food. 

I was raised in an Italian family. My maiden name is Infurna, as my ancestors in Sicily had the only brick oven in their village. My mother learned to cook from her mother, who learned from both her mother and mother-in-law who were from Abruzzi and Sicily.  I can assure you, there was no tofu in my house growing up.  In fact, I'm 99% sure my mother still hasn't cooked tofu. We didn't really eat anything other than Italian food.  My husband's background is German/Scottish/Welsh and though I know he's appreciated the variety of foods we have, sometimes I get the request for a traditional German dish. 

Wiener schnitzel is traditionally a veal or pork cutlet, breaded and fried, served with mushrooms and spaetzle (a little egg dumpling pasta). The cutlets were dipped in egg, then a flour/panko mixture and fried them in olive oil and butter - then topped them with mushrooms and onion cooked in butter and white wine.  

I'm not going to lie.  Though I HAVE made spaetzle from scratch before, I was going out to a show last night, so I used pre-made.  I HATE doing this, mostly because it's way cheaper to make myself, but it is time consuming. 

Here's a recipe for spaetzle that I've made before:

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 pinch freshly ground white pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 gallon hot water
• 2 tablespoons butter

Directions

1. Mix together flour, salt, and white pepper.. Beat eggs well, and add alternately with the milk to the dry ingredients. Mix until smooth.
2. Press dough through a large holed sieve or metal grater.
3. Drop a few at a time into simmering liquid. Cook 5 to 8 minutes. Drain well.
4. Saute cooked spaetzle in butter and sprinkle with nutmeg.

End result was very good even if I did feel a little guilty about indulging in some fried food.

Peace and love and hippie bowls

The hippie bowl "recipe" was built up when my husband and I first started living together at 22 yrs old and, well, living in a cheap basement apartment across the hall from the cheap basement apartment my own parents first lived in in 1973.  We were trying to save for our first place. 

Since then, the hippie bowl has been at least a weekly occurrence in the dinner rotation and is a regular request.  The hippie bowl is never the same. 

It's roughly translated to:
1 c cooked rice, barley, or couscous
1 can of beans (whatever is on hand)
1 onion
chili powder, salt, & frank's red hot

(Optional)
chopped tomato or salsa
skillet roasted corn
shredded cheese
Avocado or guacamole

At its base, this meal will feed 2 people for about $2.  It's yummy, comforting, high in protein and fiber, and low in fat.  Obviously, I jazzed this one up a bit from our $2 version. The corn was blackened in my cast iron skillet with toasted creole seasonings.  The end result was a perfect blend of sweet and savory.

Hot, exotic, a little spicy, and totally satisfying

...What are my weekends, Alex? Yes AND my dinner.  Remember, we're here for the food!  Tonight, I was determined to redeem myself after last night's takeout fail. 

Allow me to back up a smidge to earlier today.  Here's the scene...so, here I am working with my stomach audibly growling, likely over everyone's headphones and Rob turns his chair around. "Hey, I'm ordering Indian food.  You in?" Oh dear LORD did I want in on Indian food.  The restaurant near our office is incredible, but knowing my faux pas last night, I declined explaining my fail with the resolve to cook tonight. Rob goes on to tell me how he's been grinding his own spices of late...making curries.  Now I NEEDED curry.  It was no longer a want.

I put the kids to bed and started flipping thru a curry cookbook I had. Inspired by a lamb and apricot curry, I closed the book and got started. I had apricot, but no lamb...I still had some beef from the farm and I also had some prunes (which go quite well with beef). Perfect...now off to the spice cabinet with me.  Hmmm...no cardamom (right...it's Thursday, limited supplies here) time to make my "heat" from other spices.  I chose a few cloves and a few whole Allspice.

A little oil in the pan, a chopped onion, cinnamon stick, cloves and allspice and it was already smelling awesome.  Then 1 TBS curry powder along with 1 teas each of cumin & coriander. I added the beef and a handful of chopped prunes, some water and started the basmati rice.  After the curry simmered a bit, I decided I didn't like the color, so I added some turmeric for color and some salt and gave it a taste.  Mmm!  I served it over the basmati rice and topped it with cilantro, which is one of my favorite herbs. 

The tandoori roti was a fail, in my opinion.  It was not as airy as I would have liked, though I feel that this could (in part) have been due to the fact that my oven may have needed to be cranked up to 500, perhaps even putting the cookie sheet (or a pizza stone) in the oven to heat it first.  Once I perfect that one, I'll post it!

Love and warm bellies to you all!

Of Mice & Men...

"But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane 

In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy." - Robert Burns

The meaning behind this poem, later quoted in Steinbeck's novel, is basically, "sh*t happens." I'd like to thank my prep school English professor and my numerous English professors in college (I was only a credit away from an English minor), as without them, I may not have remembered the poem.
Now isn't the time to stumble. I'm about to go away on vacation someplace warm...where I'd LIKE very much to wear a swimsuit.  I'd lost 10 lbs eating healthy food and exercising regularly.  This is a particularly PAINFUL New England winter.  Growing up in New England my whole life, I can assure you, THIS is the worst since I was a toddler during the blizzard of '78.  I have good food in the house.  I planned to make empanadas tonight with shredded beef from the farm and red beans with rice, and fresh tomato...but I've been snow bound for 2 days, with 2 children CRAZY with cabin fever, a press release to write, and 2 feet of snow to shovel. I took a breather and baked a loaf of bread.

The FASTEST white bread recipe I know, adapted from The Joy of Cooking:
1 Tbs sugar
1 package (2 1/4 t) active dry or quick rise yeast
1 cup very warm water
(Let sit for 5 min) then add:

2 3/4 cups bread flour
1 1/2 teas salt
2 Tbs olive oil

                                                                                
Mix by hand for 1 min (hold back the last 3/4 c flour).  Knead for 10 min. Place dough in oiled bowl and turn dough over to coat with oil.  Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise in warm place until doubled in bulk, 40-45 minutes.  Grease 9X5 loaf pan.  Punch down the dough, form into a loaf, and place seam side down in pan.  Oil the surface of the dough, cover with a clean cloth,  and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk (25-40 minutes).  Preheat oven to 450.  Bake for 10 minutes.  Reduce heat to 350 and bake for another 30 minutes, or until crust is golden brown and the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.  Remove loaf from pan to cooling rack and let cool completely.

Long story short...I, realized I was missing an ingredient, and too lazy to substitute, I ordered out.  On a scale of 1-10 (1 being the best, healthiest, and most natural choice...I'm going to give it a 5).  I feel like garbage, but I'm not going to beat myself up.  We ALL need a break now and then.  Back on track tomorrow. Lost the battle...winning the war. 

Variety is the spice of life!

You can only have the same foods day in and day out for so long before they start to lose their appeal.  I'm always looking for new foods to try and new recipes to try.  When you add new foods into your diet periodically, your staples can become far more interesting!

I was getting pretty sick of rice and pasta, so I recently added barley into the rotation and I realized that I REALLY like it.  It's chewy, delicious, filling and SUPER good for you! (high fiber, full of vitamins, & antioxidants) 

Last night, I cooked up some of the beef we picked up at the farm along with some mushrooms (what's not to like about beef, mushrooms and barley...) I added some sliced carrots, onions, and baby spinach and served it all over the barley.  The flavors of the foods themselves were so amazing that it required nothing but a little salt. 

And, hey, since we're talking barley...the whole thing went pretty well with a local brew! ;)