My go to meal courtesy of mom

One thing I've learned from this whole 'learning to cook' adventure is that cooking kind of stresses me out. Its getting better but I still get really worried that I don't have all the ingredients, that I'm over cooking it, that sage and grape jelly will mix together and taste like licorice...you get the idea.

I've researched easy, go to type of meals that you can make with things you usually keep on hand for the days when I get home and am tempted to toss a frozen pizza in the oven and curl up in my sweats to catch up on last week's Flash Forward and The Good Wife. Rachel Ray seems to be the queen of these recipes, I've watched her show and looked around on her website at her 'easy, go to meals' but unlike her, I don't keep parsnips, fennel or manchego cheese hanging around the house (let's be honest, I wouldn't even know where to buy those things). But I do usually have chicken or pork in the freezer, pasta, parmesan, garlic salt and EVOO (that's extra virgin olive oil if you've never seen Rachel's show), which is pretty much all I need to make my mom's yummy recipe. We usually just refer to it as chicken/pork with angel hair pasta but if you can think of a cuter name let me know :)

We went with chicken this go round b/c it was easier to thaw. Once it was thawed I used Ty's little trick of baking the chicken in the oven for a few minutes so that it's easier to cut up (I have a strong aversion to dealing with raw chicken). Put a little olive oil in a pan, medium-high heat, and toss in the cut up chicken, sprinkle it with garlic salt and cook it until until its browned. When that is almost done, cook up some angel hair pasta then all you have to do is toss the pasta with the EVOO and parmesan, put the chicken on top and there you go!

Another meal that I learned from my Cooking Light cookbook in the very beginning of this blog that has become my new favorite go to is the Tuscan Chicken & Beans. Since the first go round I've tried adding mushrooms and sprinkling it with parmesan cheese - both additions are awesome. I try to keep these ingredients (all of which are non-perishable, freezable or just last a long time in the fridge)

Football and Chili

Two or three Christmases ago, Ty and I asked for a crockpot. But like many things you think you need, we've used it a max of two times since then. Along with the crockpot came a few crockpot cook books so this weekend since it was a beautiful fall day and our only plans included a whole lot of football watching, we decided to try out our first batch of crockpot chili.

Everyone I mention the word "crockpot" to raves over how much they looove cooking in the crockpot, it's sooo easy...though the concept seems to support this, there is actually a lot of prep work that goes into cooking with a crockpot. I was prepared for this because one of the books I got when I got it was Slow Cookers for Dummies where they have extensive chapters on prep work.

I choose a recipe from Slow Cookers for Dummies because we wanted to use ground turkey in our chili and it was the only one that used ground meat, the rest used various words to describe some type of cubed beef. The only other problem was that the recipe was for a 6 quart crockpot and ours is a 4 quart, so it took a little math to get all the ingredients right.

Ingredients were simple enough (after the math): 2 lbs. ground beef (we used turkey), 2 large onions (finely chopped), 7-8 cloves of garlic (minced), 2 cans crushed tomatoes, 2 cans kidney beans, chili powder, ground cumin, salt & pepper.

I got started on the prep work around 9:45am right after my last group run with my half marathon training team (our race is this Saturday!). I learned 2 lessons while doing this: 1. I have no idea what the difference between finely chopped and minced are (seems like they both mean 'chop real small' - no need for the fancy words) and 2. even if I did know what they mean, I have no working knowledge of how to successfully chop an onion, finely or otherwise. This made for a very labor intensive 10-15 mins. of chopping (this was however another amusing opportunity for my cats to chase flying vegetables around our kitchen).

Once I got the onion 'fairly chopped,' and the garlic 'chopped enough' I heated up a big pan and put them in. The recipe said to do this for 7-8 minutes until they 'soften' so 7-8 minutes later they looked pretty soft and I threw in 2 lbs. of ground turkey. That's a lot of meat! Anyway, now all I had to do was break it up and wait for it to brown up. Since it is a lot of meat, this took a lot of flipping and breaking up but 20 or so minutes later I was done with my prep work.

The recipe said to spray the crockpot with cooking spray, dump in the meat/onion/garlic mixture and then mix in everything else. It also called for 3/4 a cup of chili powder for the full recipe which meant something a little more than a 1/4 a cup for my recipe (sorry Meg, fractions really aren't my thing) which just happens to be the exact amount in the little mini container of seasoning I'd bought because I didn't read the recipe that well :)

Cook on low for 8 hours and 8 hours later...you got some gooooood chili!

The Verdict: Delicious and PLENTY of leftovers! I was a little worried around hour 5 when I tasted it that it was going to need a little more spice, but once I tried a bowl (and remembered I don't like chili that's on fire) I decided it was just right. I think I might add more beans next time but we will definitely be repeating this recipe during the winter - I see a snow day in our future.

South Beach Inspired

Tonight's menu was inspired by the 4 days I was on the South Beach Diet. The only recipe that I liked from that diet is the one for cauliflower "mashed potatoes" (the ricotta cream - not so much) - you'd be surprised how similar it actually tastes, although the texture is a little different. We'd also thawed a few boneless pork chops so I looked to my Cooking Light cookbook to spice it up and decided on the Glazed Pork Chop recipe. To round off this (sort of) South Beach friendly meal I decided to steam some asparagus (regretting that now, more on that later).

Cauliflower takes a while to steam so that its soft enough to mash (about 20 mins.) so I got started on that first. I'm a big fan of cauliflower, it's one of the few vegetables that you can pretty much make taste like anything and it doesn't have a gross texture. I've made it in various forms a few times and learned 2 things: 1. if you go with fresh cauliflower, the easiest way to break it up is to cut the whole thing in half and go at it with your hands. 2. I prefer to use frozen cauliflower because the hand method (or any method really) of breaking up fresh cauliflower is messy. I forgot lesson 2 when I bought fresh cauliflower yesterday. My cats were very entertained as they chased cauliflower bits all over my kitchen, I think they thought it was snowing.

While the cauliflower steamed I seasoned the pork with salt, pepper and ground sage and got it cooking on medium-heat (still the best discovery of this culinary experiment). Ground sage is very green and has a very strong smell. One of the pieces of pork got doused a little too much and ended up looking moldy, I just had to pray it would taste ok. I read the recipe for the glaze again while it cooked which called for chopped onions, currant jelly and dijon mustard. I had to substitute grape jam for the currant jelly (I actually do know what a currant is, but in case you don't its a berry). A little tid-bit I read a few weeks ago: you can chop onions and freeze them if you don't need to use the whole thing right away. So I have 3/4 an onion chopped in my freezer - I'll let you know if they turn brown or taste funny next time I use them.

I was a little nervous about the mix of flavors happening in this recipe: I'm not even sure what sage tastes like, jelly, mustard, onions?? Then Ty reminded me that the jelly/mustard combo is what his mom uses on her Swedish meatballs which eased my mind a little.

The cauliflower finished steaming while the pork was cooking (I'm getting the hang of this timing thing) so I drained it well so it wouldn't be mushy and started mashing it up with a big wooden spoon. The texture of this would probably be more like actual mashed potatoes if you used a potato masher or electric mixer, but I'm attempting to make less mess during my cooking endeavors to I stuck with the trusty spoon. The South Beach version calls for a little fat free half & half and spray butter, but I don't keep half & half around so I used a dash of milk and I figure cauliflower is virtually calorie free so some real butter won't hurt. I also mixed in a handful of shredded cheddar (I like my food cheesy). Once that was all mixed I put it in the oven on 350 and let the cheese melt while I finished up the rest.

I don't like a wide variety of vegetables but I'm a big fan of asparagus for some reasons (and brussel sprouts actually...). I usually roast the asparagus but since the steamer was already steaming away I thought I'd stick with my less mess philosophy and just toss them in there. Big mistake. I'm guessing I over steamed them or something because they came out all water-logged looking and kinda mushy. I think next time I'll just dirty a pan and stick with roasting.

The pork was done so I took it out the pan and covered it with aluminum while I made the sauce. I tossed in the diced onions and let them soften up a little then put in 1 cup of grape jam (this was a little more than what it called for but last time I tried a pan sauce we didn't have enough) and the dijon mustard. I debated briefly before I added the jam whether I should toss in a little chicken broth or something to deglaze the pan. I wasn't sure if jam would do that, but I stuck to the recipe and guess what: jam does deglaze the pan. In Cooking Light we trust.

The Verdict: besides the mushy asparagus (yuck), we have a winner!
Ty took some pork & cauliflower to lunch the next day and said the jam sauce got a little funky overnight so we wouldn't recommend it for leftovers. The ground sage on the other hand was fabulous, even the piece that I over-seasoned tasted great (and the moldy look went away as it cooked). I'll definitely me looking for more recipes to use sage in! You really can't go wrong with the cauliflower "mashed potatoes" either. I think next time we're going to mix it with actual mashed potatoes and see how that goes - sounds like an easy way to sneak in some veggies and cut a few calories.