Butter is Better

I made two dinners last week that had painful amounts of butter. First, I made Swedish Meatballs, which is unhealthy to begin with, and then the meatballs are cooked in a 1/2 inch of butter. Then after removing the cooked meatballs, I added chicken broth to the butter and crusty cooked bits to make the sauce. The next day, I made a creamy chicken and mushroom dish out of Julia Child's cookbook. She is the butter queen and this recipe was no different. This time I used butter and cream, as well as chicken stock to make the sauce. 

  Cooking the meatballs in straight up butter.

 Before I formed the meatballs I had to beat the meat mixture for ten minutes so it formed more of a smooth pasty ball and less of a lumpy hamburger ball.

The finished Swedish Meatball dinner

This is the sauce that I made for the creamy chicken dish. I added the green beans rght before I served the dish for some color and a bit of nutrients. The sauce tasted so wonderful. It was creamy and sweet and most of all, buttery!


I went to the gym a day or two later and I weighed about two pounds more! Maybe it's just from the slump of the winter time or the fact that I haven't been running since it's gotten so cold out, but I attribute it to the butter. So, from now on, I am determined to cook in a more healthy manner. Goodbye saturated fat. I will not see your ugly face again! (Until I made chocolate cake in a few weeks). I hope you're coping through these cold winter months. Who knows, maybe in the end, butter is the best way to make it through.

Thanks for reading my thoughts about food!

Great Food, Great People

We had a great New Year with our terrific friends, Mel and Dan. We went to our favorite sushi restaurant in Annapolis (Nano) for New Years Eve. We sat in the same booth that Melanie and Dan shared with us the night of our engagement Dec. 7, 2007.

New Years Eve 2011.

  

This was the picture taken on the night Greg and I got engaged, about three years ago .

 

Butternut Squash Soup

When I was a kid my mom had a tiny garden but still managed to grow several kinds of fruits and vegetables. That's where I learned to hate zucchini. They grew like weeds. We had them with every meal in the summertime and I hated it. She also had squash, my second most-hated vegetable. Ever since, I have been avoiding them, even though they might give a nice respite from  the monotony of green beans and broccoli. I recently had some butternut squash soup for the first time at a pot luck. I was reluctant at first, but with everyone else raving, I couldn't resist. It was delicious. (Thanks Brigid!) So I was inspired to try it for myself. I was surprised again, especially after seeing the ingredients (basically pureed squash and onion with vegetable or chicken broth/stock). I was sure it would taste horrible, but no! How did I ever become so traumatized as a child?

It smelled like sweetened pumpkin when I cut it. I almost wanted to lick it. Okay...I did lick it.

I cut the squash into 1" chunks and simmered them with a teaspoon of minced garlic and a chopped onion that had already been sauteed with a tablespoon of butter (or Canola oil for a healthier option). I used about 6 cups of chicken broth (again, vegetable broth would be a healthier and vegetarian option). Then I used a slatted spoon to take out all of the onion and squash chunks and puree them in my blender. Then I added the puree back to the stock and seasoned it with salt, pepper, and a dash of nutmeg. I used parsley just for dimension in the picture. I wanted to use a swirl of yogurt, like my cookbook shows, but mine was about a month expired. Hmmm...no thanks.

I ate it for 3 meals this week (although not consecutively) and didn't feel guilty at all. Low calories, and now I know I could eat for a whole day on just one butternut squash. Talk about a small carbon footprint! 

I'm looking forward to trying many more new things in 2011. I hope you enjoyed your holidays. Thanks for reading my thoughts about food!

Happy Holidays

One could say that I'm a it of an idealist.  The image I had about this holiday season was one of me bustling away in my little apron making homemade stuffing, boning ducks, and serving up hot figgy pudding, or any other idyllic meals one can imagine as our fireplace (which we do not own) roared and my husband, in the socks that I recently darned for him (that does mean cursed at, right?) sits in his arm chair petting the dog and reading some Charles Dickens.

Hmmm... well, now that I'm sick with a cold, absolutely frigid, and out of motivation/ideas for any reasonable recipes, I will go over what we've had for dinner in the Davis household recently. Mac and Cheese with ground beef, 2 Digiorno pizzas, 1 Bertoli frozen bag of pasta, Chicken Parmesan, and some other uninspired excuses for real dinners.

Do homemade gingerbread cookies redeem me?

How about ghetto-boy gingerbread cookies...do those redeem me?

Not in the Mood...

...To cook! What did you think I was going to say?! I'm not getting that personal, this is just a food blog after all.  I haven't been in the mood to cook recently, for some reason.  I guess I've been adding up the fat content of some of my meals lately and....well, this may come as a shock, but it's pretty hard to cook a gourmet meal every night and stay thin. I'm just putting that out there. I've been running at least 3 times a week, but all it seems to do is barely balance out the pasta and homemade pies and cookies that I've eaten during the day. Who has the energy to run 10 miles just so you can eat chicken in butter sauce over linguine, which you have to spend another hour in the kitchen making anyhow?!!

While I try to get back my previous holiday inspiration, I'll show you some of the things that I have been dragging myself into the kitchen to make....

Tandori-Style Chicken 

The spices I used were: Cayenne Pepper, Nutmeg, Cinnamon, Ginger, and Curry Powder

Chicken Pot Pie

 

I made this with a bag of mixed veggies, a can of cream of mushroom soup, and Pillsbury crescent rolls. Is that cheating?

Sage Pork Chops with Apple Slaw and Yam Chips

I never made my Turkey Roulade for Thanksgiving, although it would have been twice as much turkey as anyone would have wanted, but I still feel disappointed. I couldn't find all of the ingredients, and I was in my downward spiral of decreasing motivation. Maybe I'll work on making it for Christmas, once I get my holiday cheer back in order. We'll see. For now, I'm just taking it one dinner at a time. I'm making spaghetti tonight and pot roast tomorrow. Thank goodness for crock pots!  Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and THANKS for reading my thoughts about food.

....And a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Ok, well I'm not practicing my Christmas carols yet, nor have I slaughtered any turtle doves, but I did cook some French Hens! To be honest they were Tyson's brand Cornish Hens, but that's pretty much the same, right? I'm getting into the Holiday spirit a little bit early this year because Greg and I are going to Florida for Christmas to see his family. I have never been away from home for Christmas, so I'm becoming a tad sad and a bit out-of-sorts with the thought of not hanging lights outside, or throwing a holiday party, or even putting up a tree!

Being in the holiday spirit, I decided to take on a little project, which of course for me ended up as an ordeal because, well...it's me.

The Birds.

I made some rice and stuffed the hens. It is an odd thing - to stuff a bird, if you haven't done it before..

I scattered the rest of the rice in the pan so it would soak up some of the flavor. Then I drizzled olive oil on the hens and seasoned them with salt and pepper. I took them out once to check the doneness and drizzled some more olive oil. It gave them a nice crispy skin.

 Here's the finished product! Nice and golden brown

 I steamed up some fresh green beans on the side, but I put 3 cloves of smashed garlic in when I steamed them. The flavor was just enough. It was really good.

It was somewhat awkward to have the whole Cornish Hen on the plate at the dinner table, especially since they were still stuffed. When I had to stick my fork in to get out the rice, I almost felt like I needed a little privacy curtain. Then, eating it was no less strange. I really had to dismember the thing at the table to get any meat. It was messy, sort of like eating lobster at the table. You need a bib, special tools, and a discard bowl for the non-edible stuff. I guess that's why people eat just the lobster tails (although the claws are my favorite part). It's a lot less messy. I had a heck of a time tugging and ripping (because that's what I did) the breast meat off. By the time I was done with that, I was too grossed out to even eat any of it. I saved it for left overs, which I enjoyed two days later when the trauma of the event wore off.

 They do make  pretty picture though.

So besides the indecency of picking rice out of the cavity of a stuffed bird, or breaking wings and legs off of the poor little carcass, I also didn't think about the fact that a whole hen per person would be a bit too much to eat. I felt guilty wasting so much and didn't want the bird's death to be in vain, so while Greg studied at the table, I sat across from him picking at every last morsel to save for the dogs as training treats. After fanatically picking, deeply lost in my thoughts, I looked up and saw Greg looking at me, almost green. Only then did I realize the intensity with which I was absorbed picking the bones of the poor little thing. I'll admit, it was straight up nasty. I was up to my wrists in oil and grossness. I'll spare you the rest of the details, but lets just say, I don't think Greg will ever look at me the same way again.

Chicken Parm

I made a Chicken Parmesan recipe from one of the cookbooks that I just borrowed from the library. It was so yummy and super easy. It was a great dinner.

 

Even though I've made this before, the recipe was slightly different than my own cookbook. It is fun to mix it up. My advice, to keep cooking interesting, go to the library and find some new books and recipes. Cookbooks are expensive and not worth it if you aren't going to like most of the recipes. Give some books a test drive by borrowing them for a week. If you don't like it, no problem, find something new! After the holidays I'm going back to the library to borrow and Indian cookbook. I'm looking forward to making some Tikka Masala!

Thanks for reading my thoughts about food!