A month of skinnytaste

If I remember correctly, I first heard about the blog skinnytaste from my former coworker Brittany, a couple of years ago, although I didn't try any recipes from the the website at that time. I recently came across it again, and in need of kitchen inspiration - and with my trusty new/old iPhone in hand - I spent some time trolling the website and came up with a list of recipes to try out. We've been eating skinnytaste almost exclusively in the month of May; happily, we have had a number of hits and only a few near misses. Super excited to have a new bank of inspiration upon which to draw.

I'm only going to talk about the hits...


May 5th: Cheesy Jalapeño Popper Baked Stuffed Chicken and Fiesta Lime Rice

The title pretty much says it all. Create a stuffing of bacon, cream cheese, Cheddar cheese, jalapeño, and green onion, and roll it into flattened chicken breasts. Bread and bake. Cheesy, spicy, gooey goodness.

We ate this accompanied by Fiesta Lime Rice, a delicious and super healthy side dish of rice, beans, corn, tomatoes and green onions. Greg found it bland, but of course, I made his without cilantro, which added tonnes of flavour. His loss. I loved it. I doubled the corn in my version.

Mmm. I want to go make, and eat, this again right now.

On the left side of the plate are the cheesy bits that melted out of the chicken onto the pan. Mmm.
To the right of the plate is my current reading material.

May 7th: Spicy Black Bean Burgers with Chipotle Mayonnaise

Again, with the apt title. Need I say more? Yes. These are probably the best homemade bean burgers I have made to date. The recipe says it makes 4, but I was working with small buns, so I made 6 out of the mixture. I cooked 3: one each for me and Greg, one to split between O and S. I then froze the other 3, and happily ate them in later days as a quick, cook-from-frozen lunch (I found I had to cook them a little longer than suggested). Delicious every time. The burgers are a little spicy, and the mayo is spicier. I left the mayo off O's and S's, and although O said she didn't like the burger, she ate it, which makes me doubt her word. S ate hers; she loves beans.

The recipe calls for 1 jumbo egg; I used 2 large. If you decide to make these, read through all the instructions; there are some good tips there.

May 10th: Broccoli and Cheese Twice Baked Potatoes

Maybe not quite as good as bacon- and cheese-laden baked potatoes, but still good tasting and infinitely better for you. All your veggies in one spot.

May 12th: Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins

I left off the part of the title describing these as "insanely good." They were good, but I don't know if they were that good. We did, however, make short order of them in our house; they were gone in 2 days.

Olivia and I spent Mother's Day morning making these. We haven't done much baking together recently; it was good to do so again.

My girlies and my Mother's Day flowers:

Must Stop Using IPhone To Take Pictures

May 13th: Chicken and Orecchiette Soup

Delicious warm chicken soup after a couple of cold days. I found these fun-coloured carrots at the grocery store:

...but didn't realize the purple carrot would colour the soup an unappealing grey colour:

Luckily, the taste was good. I couldn't find the cavatelli pasta called for in the recipe, so instead bought orecchiette, which Olivia was excited about, because they stick to the tongue. She and Sadie both ate the soup right up.


Looking for cooking inspiration? Check out skinnytaste. More to come...

June 9th: the best burger and spring salad

I've got lots of old reliables planned for this month and I can't wait to share them! My June milk calendar is getting booked up, so some of the recipes are being pushed to July as well, so exciting. Tonight we had simple but oh so good favourites: from June 2004's Chatelaine: The Perfect Burger and from April 2007's Chatelaine: Green Spring Salad (AKA asparagus and sugar snap pea salad with toasty pine nuts). For the burgers, I add a dollop of hoisin to the mixture. For the salad, I leave out the radicchio. Local asparagus are plentiful right now and we are eating them, oh, almost every day. Making hay while the sun shines and all that jazz. Happy weekend!

May 1st: Salisbury Steak with Mushrooms

I’m going to give this one a quick mention because Greg loved it. I’m super tempted to toss the recipe, but instead I’m going to make some modifications and give it another go. From March 2011’s Chatelaine: Salisbury Steak with Mushrooms. This is essentially fancified fried hamburgers. The meat is super tender and flavourful. The modifications I am suggesting are to double up on the sauce recipe, that being the butter/mushroom/flour/beef broth combo. We loved the sauce and can never have too many mushrooms. Plus, if you are serving with egg noodles and green beans, as the recipe suggests, and as we did, the more sauce the better to pour over the noodles. This one came together fairly quickly and would be fine for a relaxed weeknight.

October 26th: Red Bean Veggie Burgers

Verdict:
Try Again: veggie bean burgers

Have you heard about this Meat Free Monday thing Paul McCartney is promoting? Well, I say, good on you, P, but you're years behind David Suzuki. I took on the David Suzuki Nature Challenge sometime between 2002 and 2004 (I just remember I was living on Dundee Avenue), and one of my goals has always been to eat 1-2 vegetarian meals and 1 fish meal per week. Okay, so I don't always meet the goal, as this blog clearly demonstrates, but the intent is there and the follow through is occasional. (Side note: my lunches are very often vegetarian. Just sayin.)

Tonight, we ate, in Greg's words, "the best vegetarian meal ever." High praise. From October 2010's Today's Parent: Red Bean Veggie Burgers, which, blast it, they don't have online. Okay, here goes:

Red Bean Veggie Burgers

1 1/2 cups (375 mL) red kidney beans,* mashed smooth
1 cup (250 mL) grated sweet potato
1 cup (250 mL) grated sharp Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup (125 mL) quick oats**
1/4 cup (50 mL) chopped red onion
1/4 cup (50 mL) chopped fresh cilantro***
1 tsp (5 mL) each salt, cumin and chili powder
1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp (15 mL) olive oil

In a large bowl, combine beans, potato, cheese, oats, red onion, cilantro, salt, cumin and chili powder. Add the egg, mix and form 6 patties. Heat oil in a large frying pan, cooking patties 5 minutes per side, or until heated through and golden brown.

*Beans: I used dried beans, soaked for a day, boiled for two hours, and then mashed. If you use canned, you may want to rinse them to remove the salt, as you are adding salt in the recipe.
**Oats: I used large flake (15-20) minute oats, turned out fine.
***Cilantro: added to half the burgers only. See October 19th post for commentary on Greg's hate for cilantro.

The recipe didn't say what to do with the burgers once they were cooked. Based on the spices involved, I opted for a bun-free assembly (ie, no assembly), topped with salsa and sour cream. Delicious! Two burgers and a small salad and I was stuffed.

September 15th: Curried burgers with peach salsa and olive-oil smashed potatoes

I write this at 10:15 p.m., with Olivia in bed beside me, wide awake and playing with the camera. Sometimes, that's just how it goes.

Tonight's supper was a second try of a recipe that impressed us last year; from September 2009's Chatelaine: Curried burgers with peach salsa. I made them last year using ground pork; Greg made them today using ground beef. In both cases they were surprisingly good. I'm generally not a burger fan, in part because I don't like buns, and also because burgers tend to be boring. This recipe solves both problems: lots of flavour, and I skip the bun.

The recipe also provides a vegetarian version.

With the burgers tonight, Greg made, from September 2010's Chatelaine: Smashed potatoes with olive oil and salt (no parsley). All of which was delicious when I yet again returned home from the gym, this time after six days in a row of teaching. Thank goodness for tomorrow's day off.

Tomorrow! Which reminds me, there will likely be no post tomorrow, as I'm going out for supper with friends. OUT! FOR SUPPER! WITH FRIENDS! Such a rare occurrence, it merits shouting.