January 6th: Gourmet Grilled Cheese & Spinach Salad

This year, Monday night is dance night for Olivia and our busiest night of the week. She does two dance classes: 45 minutes of tap, 1 hour of ballet, with a 1 hour break in between. That's after a full day of school. Eep. Luckily, she is enjoying both. I try to plan simple meals for Monday nights that can be pulled together quickly in between chauffeuring Miss O around. Greg thinks my definition of simple meals might not be the same as others'.

Turns out tonight I could have done a more complicated meal, as Miss O has been running a fever for a few days and didn't go to school or dance today. However, I am not one to stray off my schedule, so I made our meal as planned, from January 2013's Chatelaine:

Gourmet Grilled Cheese & Spinach Salad

Instructions

Spread 1 tsp honey on a slice of multi-grain bread. Top with 1/4 cup grated aged Cheddar, thinly sliced red onion and thinly sliced apple. Top with another 1/4 cup grated Cheddar, then sandwich with another bread slice. Brush top and bottom with 1 tbsp melted butter. Repeat, making 4 sandwiches in total.

Heat a large non-stick frying pan over medium. Arrange sandwiches in pan. Cook, flipping halfway through, until bread is golden brown and cheese is melted, 6 minutes.

Divide 4 cups baby spinach amongst 4 bowls. Top with 1/2 cup coarsely chopped toasted hazelnuts and 1 apple, thinly sliced. Whisk 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar with 4 tsps each canola oil and honey. Drizzle over individual servings of salad.

Serves 4.

The original recipe called for parsley where I have used spinach. I wasn't sure my family would go for a parsley salad, and besides, I had to buy spinach for another meal for this week, so subbed it in. I also increased the vinaigrette amounts.

The sandwiches were okay but not repeatable. The salads were better but that recipe will be tossed also. Ah well.

January 5th: Sloppy Joes & Slaw

I have been planning meals a month in advance for almost 10 years. I started in 2004, stuck in hospital, mooning over a pretty food spread in Chatelaine and waxing poetic about the food I could be cooking and eating if not knocking on death's door, etc. With some ebbs and flows over the years, ebbs especially in the immediate post-baby timeframes, I have more or less been an avid meal planner ever since. In that 10-year timeframe, I have always used my Milk Calendar as my planning tool. Alas.

Normally I have two Milk Calendars delivered to my door in the fall: one with my Chatelaine subscription, and one with my Ottawa Citizen subscription. Well, either I missed them this past fall, or they weren't sent; I don't know which. What to do? I have switched allegiances. I don't remember where it came from, but I found a Foodland Ontario calendar kicking about my kitchen, so yesterday I made use of it and planned out my meals for January, with a few blanks here and there. Always best to allow for contingencies.

For tonight's meal, I put the Foodland Ontario recipe for January to use:

Turkey Joe with Kaleidoscope Slaw

Ingredients

Joes

2 tsp (10 mL) canola oil

1 lb (500 g) extra-lean ground turkey or chicken

2 cups (500 mL) diced sweet potato

1 onion, chopped

19 oz (540 mL) stewed tomatoes

1/4 cup (50 mL) barbecue sauce

1/2 cup (125 mL) shredded Cheddar cheese

4 onion buns or whole wheat Kaiser buns, toasted

Slaw

1 1/2 tbsp (37 mL) canola oil

2 tbsp (25 mL) cider vinegar

1 tbsp (15 mL) maple syrup

1 1/2 tsp (7 mL) Dijon mustard

1/4 tsp (1 mL) each salt and pepper

2 cups (500 mL) each shredded green and red cabbage

1 cup (250 mL) grated carrot

Preparation

In a large nonstick skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add turkey, sweet potato and onion; cook, breaking up meat with wooden spoon, for 5 minutes or until browned.

Stir in tomatoes; bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally, for  7 minutes or until sweet potatoes are tender-crisp and half of the liquid has evaporated.

Stir in barbecue sauce; simmer for 1 minute or until heated through. Remove from heat. Stir in half of the cheese. Spoon turkey mixture over buns; sprinkle with remaining cheese. Serve Kaleidoscope Slaw on the side.

Kaleidoscope Slaw: In serving bowl, whisk together oil, vinegar, maple syrup, mustard, salt and pepper. Add green and red cabbage and carrot; toss to coat. Set aside.

Tips: Omit the buns and serve the turkey mixture over baked potatoes. If the stewed tomatoes are large, crush with a fork. Kick up the heat and add hot sauce or use a spicy barbecue sauce.

I served the sloppy joes with baked potatoes, as suggested. Mine were a bit on the runny side because I used a can of whole tomatoes, which is larger than the can of stewed tomatoes called for. We ate it like chill, with cheese, sour cream and green onions on top. It was yummy; I likely won't make it again. The slaw was pretty and good but unlikely to happen again either.

January 4th: Pork and Mushroom Alfredo

This is a cheater post, as I'm repeating a recipe from 2011: Mushroom Alfredo. The teeny difference is that this time I added meat. I have a bunch of pork chops in the freezer and have been looking for ways to use them up. I thought this would work well, and it did. Chicken and shrimp would also be good, I think. And since I haven't gotten around to blogging in 7 months, I'm easing in...

Pork & Mushroom Alfredo

350 g fresh fettuccine

1 tbsp each unsalted butter and olive oil
1 lb boneless pork chops, chopped*

1 lb assorted mushrooms, sliced

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

¾ cup half and half (10%) cream

6 tbsps unsalted butter

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for topping

salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook fettuccine according to package directions, approximately 5 minutes. Reserve ½ cup cooking water, then drain pasta.

Meanwhile, heat butter and olive oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Once hot, add pork and mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, until starting to brown, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and cook for another minute. Add cream and butter and heat through, simmering gently. Stir in ¼ cup reserved cooking water, cooked pasta, and Parmesan cheese. Thin with more water if necessary.

Serve and season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Top with more Parmesan cheese if desired.

Makes 4 servings.

*Can substitute 1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, or 1 lb raw peeled deveined large shrimp. If using shrimp, add to pan at same time as garlic.

Served with (gasp) store-bought pre-packaged Caesar salad. I never.

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...

April 30th: slow-cooker baked potatoes

I received a big slow cooker for Christmas. I already own one, but it is a teeny tiny one that I bought in university when I was cooking for one. I've gotten a tonne of use out of the new slow cooker over the past few months, especially throughout the winter when Olivia had skating lessons at an awkward time on Wednesday nights. I used the slow cooker almost every Wednesday, and we would come home, famished, to a supper ready to eat.

I came across this recipe for baked potatoes in a slow cooker, which I thought sounded interesting. Baked potatoes in the oven aren't hard, but the slow cooker provides that advantage of cooking in the morning and being done for the day. Also the advantage of not turning on the oven, which is a bonus this time of year as it is getting warmer every day. The recipe is simple enough: clean and oil potatoes, prick with a fork, wrap in foil, 8 hours on low, done. They were delicious.

From The Yummy Life: Slow Cooker Baked Potatoes.

In the morning, ready to cook.

In the evening, ready to eat.

Unwrapped.

Slathered.

April 28th: pumpkin curry soup

Greg upgraded to a new iPhone. I took over his old iPhone, upgrading from my out of date, slidey-keyboard style cell phone, whose slidey-keyboard keys stopped working 18 months ago. All of which to say is, I've been lazy about taking pictures with our camera and have instead been using my new-to-me-iPhone. That's my up front excuse about the bad picture below.

The recipe, though, is delish! I bought a can of pumpkin last week to make pumpkin muffins, and made this soup recipe to use up the rest of the pumpkin. It is chowdery-tasting, and I heaped in the sour cream at eating time, yum yum yum. From December 2010's Today's Parent: Pantry Pumpkin Soup. If anything, next time, I would add more veggies or some chicken, or both.

April 27th: Pepita Snacks

Ah, lunches. The best part of any parent's day, I am sure, is packing their children's lunches, fingers crossed they will eat everything, or at least enough they are not starving and cranky by the end of the day. I've been trying for months to put together nut-free trail mixes that Olivia will eat, to no avail. She always eats the yogurt-covered raisins and chocolate-covered cranberries, but never the dry cereals or seeds. I've tried many different varieties.

This past weekend, I tried out a recipe from Today's Parent for oven-toasted pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds) in a honey, egg white, salt mixture. She liked them fresh from the oven, but after two days in her lunch, she was done. Ah, well. They're not bad, if you want to try them for your child, or yourself.

From November 2009's Today's Parent: Snack Clusters.