Healthy Chicken Parm

After a so-so chicken parmesan sandwich the other day, Ty was in the mood to try and make our own. Luckily we had meatball subs the other day (thawed from mom's cooking lesson) and had sauce and buns leftover. We also are stocked with chicken thanks to my BJs trip last week.

There was some debate about how to cook the chicken: grill it, bake it in the oven with or without breadcrumbs, cook it in the pan. We landed on bake it in the oven, no breadcrumbs because that was the easiest and the least labor intensive :)

We've had mixed results with baked chicken in the past, it always seems to be really bland. I searched through the seasoning cabinet and landed on Italian seasoning, seasoning salt and cayenne pepper (just to mix it up a little). I preheated the oven to 375 and while I waited for it to heat up, made a little bowl of avacado mash (not sure I'd classify it as guacamole exactly) for us to snack on. Basically I just mashed up 2 avacados and added some seasonings (garlic salt, pepper, basil - I didn't have cilantro so I threw caution to the wind in trying this out) and lime juice. It was very good if you like your gaucamole avacado-y (which we do) and the basil was actually a decent subsitute for the cilantro.

Once the chicken was done I put our sub rolls in the oven and let them toast up. All that was left was assembly and ingestion. We did stick them back in the over for a minute to let the cheese get melty.

The Verdict: Needs more sauce. I think any time you deal with plain grilled chicken your going to need a little more seasoning and a little more sauce than you think you would. Luckily sauce is easy to add so we were pretty impressed with these. And since we used whole wheat buns and reduced fat shredded cheese, each one came in around 450 calories. Ty also ended up with a really thick chicken breast that made it a little difficult to eat, next time we might try slicing it up.

What I've Learned From Bobby Flay

My name is Jessica, and I'm afraid of the grill.

Who wouldn't be? One false move and it can blow you up! I actually made my first attempt at grilling unsupervised a few months ago with fairly good results, so I decided to do it again this week with a pork tenderloin.

If you're a fan of meat and are trying to save money you should really have a membership to BJ's, Sam's, Costco, whatever is closest to you. Last week I went to BJs and bought chicken breasts, pork chops and 2 pre-marinated pork tenderloins, all for about $55. All of this went in the freezer portioned out into ziplocs (except the chicken which was conveniently pre-portioned). Now we have enough meat to last us well into November and I'll just have to find creative ways to cook it and sides to have with them.

The pre-marinated pork tenderloins are my favorite and a great deal. It was $12 for a pack of 2 (we went with the terriyaki flavor this time but the portobello mushroom is awesome too) and 1 tenderloin will easily feed 4 people (or in our case it will feed me and 2 big guys just home from the gym). So that's approximately $1.50 per serving for extremely tender, flavorful yumminess.

We've prepared this tenderloin a few ways but I really think it tastes best on the grill (I really like the crispy parts - I know they apparently cause cancer, but what doesn't these days? Moderation people.). So unsupervised - if you don't count the 3 kitties watching me intently from the window - I went out and lit the grill.

Our grill is pretty basic but the one thing I've learned that is very important in starting it is to keep the lid open. I once lit it with the top closed and had to hit the deck when the lid almost blew off. Lesson learned.

So I got the grill started with apprehension but no explosion THEN closed the lid and let it heat up. Another great thing about buying meat that is pre-marinated - no dishes to dirty. Just open the package and throw it on the grill.

Now to the teachings of Bobby Flay: once the meat is on the grill, DON'T MESS WITH IT! Don't poke at it or mash it down just to hear the sizzling noise. I left it alone for about 15 minutes then went out and flipped it then left it alone for another 15 minutes. In the meantime we'd decided on mashed potatoes as our side dish (also because I bought a huge bag at BJs). I haven't perfected my recipe for mashed potatoes yet but they go along with the ease of preparing this meal because all I do is cut them up, steam them and mash them. The mashing takes the longest, and I don't have a potato masher (just a big wooden spoon) so they could also be smoother. This go round I just put in a little milk, butter, shredded cheddar cheese and parmesan (I was trying to be a little creative). I'm a big fan of sour cream in my potatoes but we were all out :(


The Verdict: If your not in a hurry to cook but feeling kinda lazy, this is the meal for you. The only work you really have to do is cutting and then mashing the potatoes (oh and starting the grill without blowing yourself up). The terriyaki flavored tenderloin is great with mashed potatoes and since most of the ingredients were bought at BJs it only cost about $10 and fed 3 people with a little leftover. And for those of you counting calories, 4 oz.s of pork tenderloin and a cup of mashed potatoes is only about 400 calories (add a glass of wine and you've got a great, healthy meal!)

Sundays are for Baking - 1st Edition

One aspect of cooking I've always wanted to explore is baking so I'm going to try and dedicate 1 Sunday a month to trying it out. Baking isn't something we did much growing up (unless you count the ridiculous amount of Funfetti cupcakes I've made in my lifetime). My sister started baking a few years ago and I've pretty much left it up to her to provide desserts for family dinners & birthdays since then.

I love pretty much anything you can bake: muffins, cake (there is a special place in my heart for cupcakes), and most of all bread. I love the way those things smell while they're baking and love even more biting into them while they're still warm. I'm really interested in baking my own bread but after doing a little research I decided to start off a little easier this first time with muffins.

I found this recipe for Spiced Banana-Walnut muffins while flipping through O magazine on the treadmill the other day. It looked fairly easy and even better its healthy (I calculated about 160 calories per muffin)! So I made a list of the ingredients I didn't have (which was pretty much everything except the bananas & walnuts) and off I went. The only ingredient on the list that I was nervous about was cardamom because I haven't the slightest idea what that is. Luckily, it was very easy to find among the spices. Unluckily, it must be laced with gold because it was crazy expensive. I made the snap decision to leave it out and hope for the best.

Once I got home and assembled all the things I would need to bake these muffins (this recipe has a lot more ingredients than what I'm used to, so I did a little happy dance in the kitchen when I realized I had everything I needed - cardamom excluded), I went out a Googled cardamom to 1. find out what it is and 2. find out if not having it was going to cause my muffins to taste like cardboard or implode or something. I found out that cardamom is similar to ginger and that cinnamon & nutmeg are common subsitutes, which is convenient since they're already in the recipe.

I put all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and set it aside then started on the wet ingredients. I of course hadn't softened the butter so I stuck it in the microwave for 10 seconds or so and then added it to the brown sugar. I was thankful that I'd asked for cooking equipment a few Christmases ago when I read the part about needing an electric mixer (they should add the equipment to the list of ingredients). I got it out and went in to mix the butter & sugar and quickly got hit in the chest with a sugar coated butter ball. I don't think the butter was quite soft enough :) I'm not really sure how I expected these 2 ingredients to look like "well mixed" but it doesn't look much different that the brown sugar did originally. I added the rest of the wet ingredients to this and if you have kids (or just enjoy playing with your food) you should let them mash the bananas, because its fun (I felt like singing "asante sana squashed banana" like Rafiki in the Lion King - ok maybe I actually did. Oh and if you've ever wondered what that means, here you go.). It took about 1.5 bananas to make a cup mashed.


I followed the rest of the recipe to a tee and then spooned the batter into my silicone muffin pan (another present from the aforementioned Christmas) which makes 6 muffins. The recipe says it serves 6 but there was a little batter leftover after I filled the paper muffin cups I'd put in the pan.

350 degrees and 25 mins. later:

There were 6 but we ate 2 before I remembered to take the picture :)

Verdict: this recipe is awesome!

It took me about an hour total to mix and bake them and it was totally worth it. I had to put them away so Ty wouldn't eat them all before dinner (we're revisiting the beef stir-fry recipe tonight!). I looked up the best way to store homemade muffins and it looks like if you're going to eat them in 2-3 days they'll do fine in the fridge in either a plastic bag or tupperware (a few people recommended putting a paper towel in with them so they don't get soggy - I'm trying it out so I'll let you know if it works). If you make a bigger batch and don't think you'll eat them in a few days most people I read recommended freezing them in a plastic bag and taking them out the night before to thaw then toasting them in the morning. Seeing how popular these have been in their the first 10 minutes out of the oven, I have a feeling I'll try making a dozen next time and freezing them.

This was too easy

What is it about the fair that makes you forget about clogged arteries and the hygiene of the people who are serving your food? Full disclosure to those who remember part of the premise for this blog was to eat healthier: I ate a corn dog, split a chocolate milkshake, had a few bites of pizza and had my first, second and third fried oreo at the Virginia State Fair last night. FRIED OREO. These people will seriously fry anything. I saw signs for fried twinkies and fried candy bars too, but I thought fried oreos would be the lesser of these evils. And they are evil. In the most delicious way. If you've never had one and are as curious as I was how they do this, its very simple actually: dunk oreo in funnel cake batter (!), deep fry and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Life may never be the same for me.

So after all that deep fried goodness, we thought we should make a healthier dinner tonight. There was pork in the fridge that we needed to cook and I had been craving potatoes since I went to a running nutrition clinic a few weeks ago and was told they are a great food for runners (apparently so is chocolate milk - this running thing's not so bad). Ty picked up a pound of red skin potatoes from the store and took a turn as my sous chef (thank you Iron Chef America for that bit of culinary lingo) and washed & cut the potatoes for me.

We decided to try steaming them so while that was doing its thing, I got started on the pork. I've had mixed results cooking pork, the majority of the time its because the pan is too hot and the outside starts to burn before the inside is done. This time I decided to do a little experiment and I think I may have had a major breakthrough: I believe I've discovered Medium-High heat.

This breakthrough started when I turned the stove to 4ish instead of 6ish to heat the pan. On my stove the heat scale goes from 1 to 10, so it would seem obvious that medium heat would be 5 and medium-high would be somewhere between 6 and 8. Obviously the engineer of this stove disagrees, so I now know that 4ish is the mysterious medium-high heat. I knew this when I put the pork in and got a soft sizzle instead of the snap, crackle, pop I was used to. (I've decided the serious sizzle you hear on the Food Network is sound effect trickery) The other problem I've had with pork in the past is that is was dry. To solve this I put a lid on the pan to keep in the moisture and hopefully help the pork cook a little quicker before the outside had a chance to burn.

Why these little tricks have never entered my mind before is beyond me. A lot of tears and a few expletives could've been avoided. I flipped the pork after a few minutes to find a lovely golden brown crust had formed. There is a recipe in my cook book that has a yummy looking dijon sauce in it that you make in the pan once you've removed the pork by adding chicken broth, dijon mustard and half & half. I didn't feel like buying half & half for this recipe because I probably wouldn't find anything else to do with it and it would go bad. I HATE buying things and having them go bad, which happens fairly often when you are convinced you can cook but you really can't. So instead I improvised by making my own honey dijon sauce by taking the pork out of the pan (done to perfection might I add), deglazing the pan with chicken broth (there's that fancy word again) and adding dijon mustard and a little honey. I probably should've measured these but I was feeling dangerous and we ended up almost not having enough.

Verdict: awesome & easy!

Total cost: around $8 (with plenty of leftover potatoes). I seasoned the steamed potatoes with spray butter, salt, pepper and italian seasoning and they were great! We have a good amount leftover and Ty had the brilliant idea that he's going to sautee them a little in the morning for our breakfast mmmmm. The pan sauce was also really good, but we needed more of it.

End of the meal treat: Ty brought me a chocolate covered strawberry from a work party he had today, he knows the way to my heart is anything dipped in chocolate (or fried in funnel cake batter).