Everything Lo Mein

Tonight we had "Everything Lo Mein" which was on "30 Minute Meals" last night. I had a bit of leftover angel hair pasta, and for the rest of the veggies I used what I had on hand (mushrooms, broccoli, snap peas, green onions, garlic), plus leftover pork chop, and Morningstar Farms Veggie Steak Strips. Don insisted I include the egg too. Instead of scrambling it, I make it like a crepe and then slice it into ribbons, and I didn’t use nearly as much oil as Rachael did. I also threw in a few frozen pot stickers.

For the sauce, I went by Rachael’s recipe & proportions, and used 1 tbsp. (since it was not a whole batch) of hoisin sauce, 1 tbsp. of soy sauce, 1 tbsp. Water, a liberal squirt of Sriracha (instead of Tabasco) plus a dash of sesame oil and about half a teaspoon of chopped ginger. The sesame oil and ginger are, to me, key ingredients and add that "authentic" flavor.

Don had not been too keen on the recipe when I told him what we were having for dinner, but in the end he pronounced it "pretty good." I get burned out on salad so I liked that this was an alternative way to get my veggies.

Banana Bread

Cooking with Rachael and Food Network Friends I can't stand throwing away ripe bananas ... such an excellent source of potassium. I remembered that Paula Deen has a banana bread recipe in her cookbook, so made that. It made a light, bright yellowish bread, really delicious. I tried to serve it with cream cheese, but that made it too sweet. Butter worked much better, although it was so rich that you didn't really even need to add that.

Coconut Macaroons

This is a Paula Deen recipe, it caught my eye on TV because the egg whites were beaten so that the cookie batter was fluffy. Her recipe calls for almond extract but I used vanilla, and I threw in some mini chocolate chips instead of having to deal with dipping them in melted chocolate. I baked them in the toaster oven. They browned on the bottom faster than on top, you can see the one I turned over in the photo, that looks like a latke. Mine didn’t turn out as fluffy as Paula’s did, when I folded in the egg whites the batter kind of got deflated. I think my coconut was too old and dry, not moist enough, so it required more mixing and handling. Still tasted good, though.

I watched Guy’s show on Sunday, and enjoyed it. I want to try his tater tot recipe, and his grilled romaine salad looked good too. I’m sure he was nervous, sometimes he would "talk to himself" too much (I noticed that because I catch myself doing the same thing) and said "OK" a lot, but he managed to get his personality through. I didn’t like how grey and blah-looking the background of his kitchen is. And I was wondering if it is some legal thing that all Food Network folks have to emphasize hand-washing after handling meat. I know it’s a good thing to know and practice, but it seems like they almost "showcase" it.

Strawberry Cream Shortcake

The other day, Walmart had strawberries on sale for $1.50, so I bought a box. When I got home, Don’s sister had given me some too. We’ve been eating them with our cereal and still have a bunch. One of Paula’s cookbooks has a recipe for Strawberry Cream Shortcake. I had frozen a small piece of Tiger Cake (chocolate and vanilla swirled poundcake), and I used that instead of the Sara Lee poundcake that the recipe called for. I used half a 3.4 ounce box of pudding, which is 1/3 the amount in the recipe, and adjusted the other ingredients accordingly. Instead of putting it in one big dish, I assembled everything into 4 individual-size dishes. Don thought it looked fancy, like it was an elaborate dessert.

The cream part is similar to the banana pudding mixture, except there is no cream cheese. The texture is really rich. Both of us liked it but thought the chocolate flavor of the cake I used overpowered things a little. On the other hand, the cake was not too sweet and it balanced out the sweetness of the filling. (I think if you used an overly sweet cake, the whole thing would be too sugary.)

Since I made 4, we have 2 leftover for tomorrow…yum.

I guess it is the combination of both pack-rat and shopaholic genes, that I tend to accumulate a bunch of ingredients and overload my pantry, yet sometimes I can’t find anything to cook. Not too long ago I cleared out a bunch of stuff, and now I find I need to do it all over again. I’ve started a list of things that I put in my freezer, on an index card that I keep in a drawer next to the refrigerator, so I know what’s in there without having to open it up and poke around. In my kitchen, I have some hot links, Canadian bacon, arborio rice, Jello, hot dogs, ham hocks, ricotta cheese, provolone cheese, pasta, Panko bread crumbs, a can of Coco Loco, and a foil pouch of Chicken of the Sea Crab Meat, for starters. I’m too embarrassed to put a picture of my pantry on here because it is such a mess!

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

Cooking with Rachael and Friends I've been trying to follow a low fat diet so bought one of the lower fat cuts of pork - a pork shoulder tenderloin. I put it in the crockpot all day with a sauce that came from one of those envelope mixes. You mixed the seasonings in the packet with apple cider vinegar, ketchup and brown sugar, all non-fat and let it cook on low for 8 hours. When I got home from work, I shredded it with two forks and sprinkled some flour on the meat, then put it back in the sauce. The sandwiches came out excellently, we had them for dinner two nights in a row. Today my doctor put me on a carbohydrate lowering diet, which he's sending me in the mail. I have no idea what to eat now, but am supposed to be avoiding sugar and salt and taking flax seed and/or fish oil capsules. Once I receive the diet, I think I'll make an appointment with a nutritionist and find out how to eat from now on.

Toaster Oven

I bought a toaster oven today, I had a coupon for Bed Bath & Beyond for 20% off, which made it only $25. It’s in the 90’s here and too hot to bake. I’m thinking with the toaster oven I can make things like English muffin pizzas, small batches of cookies and muffins and banana bread, etc. I made some no-bake desserts like a fancy pudding that was really good. I used a boxed Jello pudding mix, followed the ingredients for pudding pie, put about 2/3 of it into dessert dishes. Then mixed in some Cool Whip with the rest of the pudding and put it on top, with some crushed Oreos in between. It tasted and looked like a glorified pudding. Tomorrow I’m going to make 1-2-3 Jello, which is Jello and Cool Whip mixed in a blender, and when it gels, it separates into layers.

Tortellini Salad

Last night I made Laura's Tortellini Salad for dinner. It's a chilled pasta salad, which I served on lettuce with hot bread. Laura is a friend of my daughters who lived with us for a year or two. Her recipe is to cook any kind of tortellini as the package instructs and then chill it, which I did. Then I mixed up some Italian dressing, about a cupful, with about 1/4 a cup of orange juice. I added a small drained can of sliced black olives, some shredded carrot and put it back in the fridge. While I finished setting the table, the tortellini puffed up and soaked up most of the dressing. I served it on lettuce and added a couple spoonfuls of fresh Italian dressing which reawakened the flavors. Mmmmm. Everyone agreed that it was easy, light and delicious. I used low-fat Italian dressing and whole wheat tortellini, to keep it healthy.

Gorilla Bread

I’ve been wanting to try this Paula Deen recipe for awhile now. It’s just been way too hot to turn on the oven. Debbie reminded me about using a crockpot to cook with and not heat up the kitchen, and that in turn reminded me that I have a bread machine that has a "bake" function. Instead of baking the bread in the oven I put all the little balls in the bread machine. It cooked it fine, aside from the sauce being a little too chewy.

Don did not like the cream cheese in the middle…at all. He pronounced "YUCK!!!" for this one. I was really disappointed, I guess I take it too personally when something doesn’t turn out well, especially if it takes some effort to put the dish together. I didn’t think it was bad, if you ate around the cream cheese. I think it would be better if the cream cheese had the sugar mixed in, or if the filling was something like apple chunks or chocolate chips.

I saw a commercial for Guy’s show next Saturday (6/25), "Guy’s Big Bite." I’m glad they didn’t go with that "Off the Hook" theme. I’m anxious to see what kind of "vibe" his show has.

Cucumber Kim Chee

I’ve been watching Anthony Bourdain’s "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel. It’s similar to his "Cook’s Tour" on the Food Network, and it’s even better because it's an hour vs. half an hour. My favorite parts are when he has meals in people’s homes, "real" food, with "real" people. Last week he was in Korea. They showed how kim chee is made. I’ve never tried it but have always wanted to. It didn’t sound all that appetizing on the show, though, with fish sauce and oysters to help ferment it.

Anyway, Carol gave me some cucumbers from her garden. Instead of the usual cucumber salad, I looked through a cookbook my aunt gave to me. It’s an Asian cookbook, the "community" style that Debbie had mentioned, put together by the Japanese American Services of the East Bay (JASEB). It's my favorite Asian cookbook. Whenever I want to put an Asian twist on something I'll see what goes into the dish, like teriyaki or wonton. Since it's by regular people (Asian-Americans living in America, cooking Asian food with what's available in the USA) and not chefs, there aren't too many complicated ingredients or procedures. There was a recipe for Cucumber Kim Chee in it, without any unappetizing ingredients.

I used the Benriner (it's an Asian mandolin slicer, my brother calls it the "finger slicer - I've always been intimidated by it) to slice the cucumber paper thin, salted it, poured hot water over the mess and let it sit 30 minutes, then drain. I put it all into a jar and covered it with a sauce of water, vinegar, sugar, sliced garlic, and chili powder. The next day, it looked like kim chee. It reminds me of tsukemono (the pickled cabbage you get at Japanese restaurants) with a kick. Yum. I think it’s an acquired taste, though. I’ve been missing California and good Japanese food, so this helped with the homesickness a little bit.

Coconut Pecan Bars

Cooking with Rachael and Friends I found an old cookbook at a thrift shop. It was one of those books put together by chuch ladies and published in 1968. That's the year I got married and started cooking. It's been a blast from the past - keeps requiring ingredients like oleo and Dream Whip. I made dessert from it tonight - Coconut Pecan Bars, as submitted by a Mrs. Jane Wilelms - because I happened to already have all the ingredients. Among other things, you add a cup of butter and 2 cups of brown sugar. It turned out really well - very moist and yummy. You were supposed to sprinkle powdered sugar on top but I didn't have any of that and it didn't really need it. I weighed in at Weight Watchers today - lost 3.6 lbs on my first week. Even with eating two of those PD Southern Sloppy Joes! Go figure!!!

Sloppy Joes

Cooking with Rachael and Friends This weekend I watched a burger episode of the Paula Deen show and she made the southern version of sloppy joes. I couldn't stop thinking about them, so ran out tonight and bought the ingredients. It was so quick & easy that I had dinner made by the time Kate finished putting the groceries away! I fried up some ground beef, added some flour, a can of french onion soup, spread some mustard on 4 slices of bread and put some cut up sweet onions on two of the slices. I scooped up the ground beef mixture on those pieces, put the other slices on top and * voila * two southern sloppy joe sandwiches! They were really good, we gobbled them right up, flirted briefly with the thought of having seconds, but decided to behave. Mmmm. Kate thought that the onion slices should have been fried up, but there are little bits of onion in the soup. I have to confess, the one item I thought we had for sure - mustard - we didn't. But we had dijon and it tasted mustardly enough. Very, very good for a quick, hearty dinner. Paula also made tuna burgers on that show and I bought the ingredients to make that too. I found the tuna burger recipe in one of her cookbooks but have only seen the sloppy joe recipe on TV. In another episode this weekend, she made fried doughnuts out of canned biscuits. I can't wait to try those!

Oatmeal with 'Nanas and PB

Once in awhile I like to "detox" and have things like salads, grains, drink lots of water, etc., especially after holiday weekends of ribs and banana pudding. For breakfast I tried Rachael’s recipe for "Oatmeal with ‘Nana’s and PB" from the June/July issue of "Every Day." Instead of instant oatmeal I cooked up a heart healthy portion size of Quaker Oats (3/4 cup oats). I had never thought about putting peanut butter into oatmeal but it was good. The only thing I didn’t like was that the raw bananas in the hot oatmeal kind of "cooked" and changed the flavor. Next time I’ll just put them on top.

This was an "Isaboo" recipe so I gave the taste-tester dogs a bite. It didn’t pass muster with them. They licked it and then looked around for something better on the plate, then walked away. I was kind of surprised because there isn’t much that they won’t eat. They’ve been spoiled lately with the bones from the ribs so maybe they are just being picky.