New Year's Day Luncheon

We had my parents up for New Year's Day luncheon and it turned out deliciously, even if I do say so myself. There was only a tiny smidge of leftovers and they served as an almost-as-delicious light supper for me that evening. (The Husband filled himself up with cookies and chocolate at nuncheon and could only groan when I offered him leftovers later ... yay for me).

New Year's Day Luncheon

~ Tomato Dill Soup ~

with garlic croutons

~ Mediterranean Romaine Salad ~

~ Baked Chicken Parmesan ~

with whole wheat rotini

~ Wine ~

Layer Cake malbec &
Gato Negro cabernet sauvignon

~ S'mores ~

The Pepp from S'more Bakery

While I loved the soup and baked chicken Parmesan, it was Taste of Home's "Mediterranean Romaine Salad that really stole the show for me! It was simple to assemble, had great flavor -- very tangy and light -- and looked very elegant in the bowl. Really, this will be a regular item on my table from now on!

I roasted my own peppers for this recipe -- just halved and cored them, smooshed them kind-of flat on a jelly roll pan lined with foil, brushed them with a little olive oil and broiled them until they were all blistery and charred-looking. Then I folded the foil up around them and let them sit for about 15 minutes. I used a sharp knife to scrap the skin off, wrapped the "clean" peppers back up in the foil, and refrigerated them until I was ready to make the salad.

Taste of Home's recipe says to use cubed French bread for the croutons, but I used cubed roasted garlic ciabatta, because more garlic = better. I omitted the black olives, because The Husband detests olives and replaced them with a cup of halved cherry tomatoes. I also used Newman's Own light Italian dressing instead of balsamic, because I didn't think everyone would eat balsamic. And, anyway, Italian is Mediterranean, too!

Pheasant Pie ... Tastes A Lot Like Chicken

So, waylongtimeago, I bought a pair of pheasants. Why? Because I'd never cooked pheasant before, so why not? Of course, I panicked once they were actually in my kitchen and ended up stuffing them in the back of our chest freezer until I could figure out how to not wreck them.

Sunday, I did haphazarded kitchen purge and made Taste of Home's "Pheasant Potpie" with the thawed pheasants, whiskery carrots, limp celery, and pearl onions frozen last Thanksgiving.

I put the celery, onion, and garlic (4 whole cloves) at the bottom of the Dutch/French oven, then nestled the pheasants together on top. Rather than using just water, I replaced half the water with low-sodium chicken broth. I also chucked in a bay leaf for kicks.

Taste of Home's recipe was pretty simple to follow and made a really nice potpie! I did omit the pimientos and added a liberal shake of Bell's Seasoning so my potpie tasted a lot like Thanksgiving dinner. And that was okay with us, really!

(Lacking pheasant, I'm sure a Cornish game hen or small chicken would work just as well).

Too Much Cornbread? Make Salad!

The cornbread muffins I made early this week are quite tasty, but I only average one per day and with the recipe having made a dozen, I am suffering a surfeit of cornbread. What to do? What to do? Make salad?

Apparently, yes, you can make salad out of cornbread. It's a Southern thing, I guess, and while I was sorely tempted by Paula Deen's version with corn, kidney beans, and cheddar cheese I decided to go with Taste of Home's recipe for "Corn Bread Salad for Two" mostly because it meant I wouldn't be stuck eating it all week if I didn't like it much. I mean, I knew I liked eating all of its ingredients individually, but I wasn't sure what I'd think of them when thrown together, all higgledy-piggledy.

Well, it was delicious! Unbelievably delicious. I should have made a bigger bowl.

Pantry Challenge: Clean Out The Cupboards With Soup

Trying to stay on track with the Pantry Challenge, I made a couple soups. There's nothing as comforting or forgiving as soup, after all, and it's always an excellent way to use up odds and ends.

First I made a batch of Pillsbury's "Curried Pumpkin-Vegetable Soup." It was a really tasty, easy soup with lots of good curry flavor. I admit I used 1 tsp more curry than called for and I bloomed the spices with the sauteed onions before adding the remaining ingredients, because that's what I learned from Cook's Illustrated -- always bloom spice blends like curry powder to help develop their rich, complex flavors. I wanted a flavorful soup, so I bloomed.

Did it work? I think so. Certainly, I was so interested in eating it that I never stopped to take a picture of the finished soup! This is one of the best recipes ever! Simple and healthy and yet also so rich and flavorful.

Ingredients: pumpkin, frozen mixed vegetables, broth, curry powder, paprika, onion, garlic, diced tomatoes, salt, black pepper.
Pantry challenge items used: 1 can pumpkin, 1 can diced tomatoes, 1 can turkey broth.

Emboldened by my success, I went on to make a big pot of Taste of Home's "Vegetable Bean Soup" which not only allowed me to use pantry challenge ingredients, but also some limp celery and ancient frozen chopped spinach.  Unfortunately, this soup was not quite as tasty as the pumpkin soup. Rich and hearty, yes, with lots of vegetable goodness and I'm sure I'll make it again, but ... the pumpkin soup was just the bomb, you know?

Ingredients: black beans, onion, garlic, celery, carrots, diced tomatoes, garlic powder, black pepper, salt, no-salt powdered beef bouillon, quick-cooking barley.
Pantry challenge items used: 1 can black beans, 2 cans diced tomatoes, partial box of quick-cooking oats.

Squash Season: Swiss Chard Bean Soup

Despite this week's to-ing and fro-ing I did manage to do a little cooking. Namely, I made soup. And such soup! I made a pot of Taste of Home's "Swiss Chard Bean Soup" with Swiss chard, crookneck squash, and herbs from my garden and it was delicious -- light, yet flavorful and filling, and so easy.

Ingredients: one pint diced cherry tomatoes (instead of drained canned diced), Swiss chard, zucchini, crookneck squash, carrots, red onion, garlic, organic low-sodium vegetable broth (instead of chicken), low-sodium cannellini beans, quick-cooking pearl barley (to thicken), fresh thyme, fresh oregano, salt, fresh ground black pepper.

Since I was using fresh tomatoes instead of canned, I cooked the tomatoes with the zucchini, crookneck squash, and onion then prepared the rest of the soup as directed and the whole thing was still ready to eat in less than thirty minutes!  While I wasn't planning on eating it the same day I made it, it was still really nice to have made a big pot of soup in a jiffy. I portioned the soup out into one-cup containers and took it to work (or ate it for breakfast) all week.  Wasn't the least bit sick of it by Friday!

While I did think the soup was a little both-y, I just threw a handful of quick-cooking barley in with the beans and it thickened up quite nicely. Next time, I might just doubled up on the beans and give half of them a bit of a mash before adding them to the pot. I might also try substituting low-sodium vegetable juice for half of the broth.

Would I make this soup again? Of course! And probably sooner rather than later as the garden is going mad producing squash and chard.

Lambilicious

Monday I made the easiest lamb dish in the world using Taste of Home's "Slow-Cooked Lamb" recipe. I halved the recipe as there are only two of us and I didn't want leftovers, but otherwise followed the recipe exactly. It's one of those recipes that is so simple and short that it's practically foolproof.

I rubbed four lamb loin chops with a mix of oregano, thyme, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Then I set them aside while I layered the bottom of my slow cooker with a thinly sliced onion. Topped the onion with lamb and let it cook on LOW for 6 hours. Served the lamb with "light" Caesar salad and it made for a tasty work night supper. Look forward to making "Slow-Cooked Lamb" again.

Almost Homemade is Good Enough

I brought Taste of Home's Almost Homemade: 374 Easy Home-Style Meals (Reiman Media Group, 2010) home from the library almost two weeks ago which means ... it's due back soon. I'd like to keep it out a bit longer, but have you seen the size of my "to be read pile?" It's ginormous and a good third of the pile is comprised of library cookbooks! Yes, it is time for Almost Homemade to go on to another kitchen.

Recipes in Almost Homemade use a combination of convenience and fresh ingredients to create easy, stress-free meals that taste close to scratch. While I like the idea of convenience cookery, many convenience cookbooks freak me out with their dependency on super-processed ingredients. I was pleased to see that most of the convenience ingredients called for in Almost Homemade are items I already buy -- prepared polenta, pasta and pesto sauces, cooked shrimp, packaged rice blends, etc -- or are easily substituted with homemade ingredients -- leftover cooked chicken for ready-to-use cooked seasoned chicken bits, etc -- so was happy to give this cookbook a whirl.

I've made four recipes from Almost Homemade and was mostly pleased with them:

Gnocchi Chicken Skillet



(I substituted ground turkey for ground chicken and added in some finely chopped zucchini)

Asparagus Beef Lo Mein



(Next time, I would add mushrooms and onion)

Fiesta Chicken Chowder



(Next time I would just stir in quick-cooking barley instead of using instant brown rice as I'm just not keen on instant rice)

Penne Chicken With Sun-Dried Tomatoes



(My favorite recipe of the bunch! Blogged 25 Feb)

The recipes are pretty simple and straight forward -- a good thing if you've worked a long day and are too darn frazzled for fiddliness. While many of the recipes don't say it,  dishes like "Penne Chicken With Sun-Dried Tomatoes" can be assembled in advance and refrigerated until you are ready to cook them.

Delicious Garlicky Penne

Wednesday, I made a half recipe of "Penne Chicken with Sun-Dried Tomatoes" from Taste of Home Almost Homemade. It was the last recipe I made from this cookbook before returning it to the library and it was an excellent recipe to end on as it was a fine example of the cookbook at its best.



Ingredients: whole grain penne, mushrooms, garlic, oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, garlicky Alfredo sauce, cooked chicken, Parmesan.

This recipe was delicious and easy and also nice enough to serve any casual visitors. I did make a few substitutions -- fresh mushrooms for canned (and twice as many!), olive oil instead of butter, and "Italian" flavored ready-to-use cooked chicken strips instead of "Southwestern."   While I felt a bit dirty using ready-to-use cooked chicken strips, I did not have any cooked leftover chicken on hand and the chicken strips turned out to be pretty darn tasty, anyway (I'm guessing it's all the salt and corn syrup solids!).

I'm pretty sure, come next November, I will be making this recipe with leftover Thanksgiving turkey!

Menu Plan Monday, 14 February

Brought a new cookbook home from the library -- Taste of Home's Almost Homemade: 374 Easy Home-Style Favorites -- and have already bookmarked a bunch of promising recipes!

Monday

• Another yummy "Illinois Prairie Chowder" mix prepared in my slow cooker! Ingredients: soup mix, turkey stock, potatoes, cream, shredded Cabot Seriously Sharp cheddar, crab, fresh ground black pepper. (You're thinking corn chowder doesn't sound very special for Valentine's Day, but The Husband loves this stuff).
  

Tuesday

• Leftover chowder with sugar snap peas and guacamole for dipping.

Wednesday (Peapod PM)

• "Gnocchi Chicken Skillet" from Taste of Home Almost Homemade (using turkey instead of chicken) with roasted green beans. Ingredients: ground turkey, frozen gnocchi, tomato sauce, onion, oregano, Parmesan, green beans, olive oil, garlic, salt, black pepper.

Thursday

• Leftover chowder with cucumber and tomatoes in light Italian.

Friday

• "Asparagus Beef Lo Mein" from Taste of Home Almost Homemade (because I found a bottle of hoisin sauce in the back of a cupboard!) Ingredients: organic beef steak, asparagus, garlic, ramen noodles, hoisin sauce.

Saturday/Sunday

• "Fiesta Chicken Chowder" from Taste of Home Almost Homemade. Ingredient: organic boneless skinless chicken breasts, low-sodium fajita seasoning, low-sodium black beans, Muir Glen fire-roasted diced tomatoes, mexicorn, chilies, brown rice, cilantro, lime juice, condensed cheddar cheese soup. (Recipe calls for nacho cheese soup, but Peapod doesn't carry it so I'll doctor cheddar cheese soup w/ Penzey's "Bold" taco seasoning).

Crabby Cottage Cheese

Thursday, I made a half recipe of Taste of Home's "Cottage Cheese Crab Salad" for lunch and was surprised by just how much I liked it. I did omit the sour cream as I had none and that probably made the salad quite a bit drier than it would have been otherwise, but I didn't mind that as my greens didn't get soggy in the five hours between packing lunch and eating it!




Ingredients: salad greens, grape tomatoes, surimi, 2% cottage cheese, green onions, celery, Dijon mustard, garlic powder, pepper.

I served this salad on a bed of greens just I could just as easily see stuffing it in a whole wheat pita pocket.

Crunchy Cottage Cheese Salad

I made this based on Taste of Home's recipe for "Cottage Cheese Salad," but increased the amount and variety of vegetables as I wanted something really crunchy.

Crunchy Cottage Cheese Salad

1 4-oz container 2% cottage cheese
½ cup diced grape tomatoes
½ cup diced seeded cucumber
½ cup diced yellow pepper
2 radishes, diced fine
1 sliced green onion
2 Tbsp light mayonnaise
1 Tbsp Penzeys Buttermilk Ranch dressing mix
Fresh ground black pepper to taste

Combine all in bowl and allow to mellow over night. Serve over salad greens or with crunchy whole wheat pita chips.

15 Minute Supper

While I've made Taste of Home's "Creole Tuna" a couple times now, I still continue to be surprised by how tasty it is considering how little time it takes to make -- fifteen minutes, not counting the time it takes to cook the rice. If I used minute rice, then the whole thing really would only take 15 minutes, but I prefer to use my rice cooker.

Ingredients: red onion, red bell pepper, flour, salt, pepper, sugar, milk, low-sodium stewed tomatoes, low-sodium tuna, thyme, garlic powder, paprika, and cumin.

While the recipe calls for green bell pepper, I use red as that's what I always have on hand. I also saute a quarter cup of diced red onions with the peppers, because I think a little onion can't do any harm.

As I don't own any Creole seasoning and Penzeys doesn't sell anything similar, I substitute ½ teaspoon each Hungarian Sweet paprika and garlic powder and ¼ teaspoon each French thyme and cumin.

Butternut Squash & Apple Bake

I really enjoyed the butternut and apple mash I made at the end of October and have been looking for other (non-soup) butternut and apple recipes. Over the weekend, I picked up a copy of Taste of Home's Best Holiday Recipes 2009 which contained several butternut squash recipes, including this one for "Squash-Apple Bake."



It was a very easy dish to prepare and yielded quite tasty results even though it went a little awry at the end!

First, I sliced a peeled and seeded two pound butternut into quarter-inch pieces and placed them in greased 8-inch square baker. Then, I topped the squash with sliced, cored, peeled McCoun apples. Lastly, I combined brown sugar with melted butter, King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour, ground ginger, and Penzeys cinnamon blend and poured it over the apples before popping the dish in a 350°F oven for forty-five minutes.

(I should mention that the recipe did not call for ginger or cinnamon, but I don't own any mace and reckoned I should stick with flavors I knew I liked eating).

After the squash finished baking, I shut off the oven and forgot about it for two hours! Happily, the lengthy oven time seems to have done the dish no harm.

If I were to make this again, I might add in a cup of plumped dried cranberries.

Garlicky Potato Soup

I made a really awesome soup for Sunday's supper using the recipe "Hearty Garlic Potato Soup" from Taste of Home. Thick and creamy with potatoes, it was rich and yummy -- really excellent comfort food! Of course, I made a few tweaks to this recipe but that was more for my convenience than for taste.

The original recipe called for using three different pots! I don't know about you, but I like to do as little washing up as possible so I condensed it down to one. Yep, cooked the veg then set them aside and wiped down the pan, cooked the sausage and onion, set them to drain in a colander lined with paper towels, then wiped down the pan again, melted the butter and finished the soup. Still time consuming, but only one pan.

The recipe did call for mashing only half the boiled veg, but the soup seemed too thin and chunky that way so I gave the whole pot a gentle mash at the end. Then I let everything simmer for about fifteen minutes -- the soup was much thicker and more lovely that way. I also whacked in some Garlic Garlic while the soup was simmering as a soup with "garlic" in its title can never be garlicky enough!

Unfortunately, I am now out of Garlic Garlic seasoning blend and don't know what to do. I'm loathe to contact my (too darn chirpy) local Tastefully Simple consultant and shell out nine dollars (plus shipping) for 4.5 ounces of dehydrated minced garlic, minced onion, salt, garlic powder, chives, and a proprietary blend of spices. Surely, I could make my own?

Penzeys will sell me dehydrated minced garlic, onion, and chives so that's no problem. The problem is -- what's in that seasoning blend? I can't find anyone else on the Internetz who has reverse-engineered Garlic Garlic seasoning blend so I can't use someone else's hack. No, I'm all on my own here ...

Let the experiments begin!

Quickie Clam Chowder

Was in the mood for chowder and had plenty of tinned clams on hand, but was feeling too lazy to make my favorite chowder -- "Light New England Clam Chowder" from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (also in The Best Light Recipe). Happily, Taste of Home had a recipe for "Creamy Clam Chowder" which looked like it would do in a pinch.

The recipe called for two cans of condensed cream of potato soup which I could not find a lighter version of so I settled for reducing the amount of fat in the soup by using three tablespoons of unsalted butter instead of the twelve called for. I could probably have omitted the butter altogether and used a little cooking spray instead, but I wanted to keep some of the richness butter brings. Otherwise, I made the recipe as directed.



How did it taste? Pretty good. Not as awesome as CI's, but much better than anything to ever come out of a can. This chowder is fast -- took about thirty minutes to make -- and very easy, which would make it an excellent last minute supper on those nights where I forget to plan ahead or am no longer thrilled by what I have planned.

Healthified(ish) Cheddar Chicken Elbows

Monday's supper can, at best, be called a close cousin of "Cheddar Chicken Spirals" from Taste of Home's The Busy Family Cookbook (Reiman Media, 2007) for, in using what was on hand, my ingredient list deviated from the official one pretty broadly. For example, I substituted a stir-fry blend for the mixed vegetables and elbow noodles for the rotini. I also healthified the recipe by halving the amount of cheese and using lighter dairy.

How did it taste? Pretty darn yummy! Much more so than I thought when I saw that the sauce was made of mayonnaise -- a mayonnaise-based sauce in something other than salad just seemed a bit weird. Happily, while the finished dish had a rich creamy taste, the mayonnaise doesn't stand out from the rest of the ingredients and you would never know it was in there.

Cheddar Chicken Elbows

8 oz (half box) Barilla elbows
8 oz (half bag) Birds Eye Sugar Snap Stir-Fry blend, thawed
1½ cups bits of leftover roasted chicken
1± cup (shredded) Cabot Hunter's Sharp Cheddar
½ cup light mayonnaise
1/3 cup 1% milk
1 teaspoon McCormick Salt Free Garlic & Herb Seasoning

Make the pasta as directed. Meanwhile, whisk mayonnaise, milk, and salt-free seasoning together. Mix in most of the shredded cheddar, drained stir-fry mix, and chicken. When pasta is ready, drain and stir into mayonnaise-chicken mixture. Pour into a greased 8x8-inch square baker, top with the remaining cheese, cover and microwave for about five minutes. Let rest for about five minutes. Eat.

Easy Work Night Supper: Golden Pork Chops

Made "Golden Pork Chops" from Taste of Home's The Busy Family Cookbook (Reiman Media, 2007) for supper with dilly carrots and shredded pickled beets and it was pretty darn good!

Used pork chops out of the freezer, that can of creamed corn I couldn't remember the reason for buying, and cornbread stuffing mix leftover from Thanksgiving. Yes, indeed, Thanksgiving. That's how often I make stuffing!

This was an easy dish to throw together and thus made an excellent work night supper. Yes, it did have to bake for forty minutes, but that just gave me plenty of time to reconstruct the kitchen, drink a little cider, and read a few more chapters from Elizabeth Moon's The Speed of Dark.

To make these chops, you first mix creamed corn, stuffing mix, paprika, minced onion and celery together. Dump the corn-stuffing mix into a greased bake and pat flat (don't smoosh). Top with thickly cut boneless pork chops. Brush the chops with a mixture of brown sugar and spicy mustard. Bake uncovered for about forty minutes. Nom.

Now, I did goof up a bit with the mustard-sugar mix. My brown sugar was rock hard so I chiseled a chunk off and microwaved it in a bowl covered with a damp paper towel until the sugar was softened. Or that was the idea, anyway. My damp towel was too wet and I ended up with brown sugar soup. I mixed the spicy mustard in, anyway, and basted the pork with it. Happily, my mistake worked out just fine -- the chops had a delicious honey-mustard type tang to them.

I imagine I could just has easily have substituted maple syrup for the brown sugar (or just used honey mustard from the start).

We both quite liked this dish -- the pork was deliciously tender and tangy and the stuffing was rather nice, too (and I am not big on stuffing). I will be making this recipe again and recommend you try it, too!

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Rice ...

This week, I've been trying out my rice cooker and have been pleased with the results. Haven't been brave enough to set the timer and just walk away so have been running the rice cooker while I prepped and made the rest of supper. This has worked out well and, on the one occasion supper took longer to make than expected, the rice cooker kept the rice perfectly until it was needed.

Being a reluctant learner, this week has been long grain white all the way, but I intend to work my way up to oatmeal and barley fairly soon. I purchased some basmati rice earlier this week and will probably give that (and the timer) a try on Sunday so that we may enjoy deliciously fragrant rice with deliciously fragrant roast chicken.

Yum!

Some repeatable stuff we ate with rice:

Recipezaar "Ground Beef and Rice" (modified)

Browned one pound of ground turkey with one smallish onion, chopped, and eight ounces of sliced mushrooms. Stirred in the last of a wax carton of low-sodium vegetable broth, one tablespoon of chili powder, one can of low-fat low-sodium cream of chicken, one undrained can of low-sodium diced tomatoes, and a handful of frozen corn. Let everything cook for about ten minutes. Garnished with chopped fresh parsley and served on rice.

Taste of Home The Busy Family Cookbook "Sausage Stroganoff" (Reiman Media, 2007)

For this, I removed a pound of hot Italian turkey sausage links from their casings and browned the loose meat with one chopped onion and 8 ounces of sliced mushrooms. I then drained the pan and stirred in chicken broth, Worcestershire, and ground pepper. Let it come to a boil and then simmered, covered, for about five minutes. Stirred in a paste made from flour and broth and brought the pan back to boil until the dish started to thicken. Reduced the heat, stirred in some fat free yoghurt and let everything heat through. Garnished with chopped fresh parsley and served on rice.

Both meals looked suspiciously like SOS, but tasted much better than that.

(I ♥ that my rice cooker sings "twinkle, twinkle, little star" when it starts cooking).

Make Room for Turkey!

Have been trying to make some room in the freezer compartment for Thanksgiving dinner ingredients (and future Thanksgiving leftovers). Also, this close to a holiday, I try to limit my grocery shopping experiences. So far we've eaten a lot of soup, some roasted chicken parts, an indifferent casserole, and the most delicious steaks ever to come out of my kitchen.

This summer, we visited the Coventry Farmer's Market and bought, among other tasty things, some lovely grass-fed beef tenderloin steaks. We brought them home, oooohed over them and then stuck them in the coldest part of the freezer until we could think of the most fool-proof way to prepare them.

Earlier this week, tired of worrying about screwing up and creating chunks of shoe leather, I thawed the beef and made "Steak Diane." Used the recipe from Taste of Home's The Busy Family Cookbook (Reiman Media, 2007) as my base, but had to make some alterations to suite the ingredients on hand ...

I sprinkled the steaks with fresh ground pepper and salt and then let them sit while I cooked two chopped spring onions with 1/2 teaspoon Gulden's Spicy Brown Mustard in two tablespoons of butter until the onions where wilted. I pushed the onions to the edge of the skillet, added the steaks and cooked them about 5 minutes each side (until they where crusty brown on the outside, but medium rare inside). I removed the steaks to a warmed plate which I put in the warmed oven and let them sit while I added generous tablespoon of lemon juice, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, two tablespoons butter, and fresh chopped parsley to the skillet. Stirred the sauce round until it started to thicken. Added the juices from the steak plate, stirred it a bit more, poured it over the steaks, and ate it all up with parsley-mashed potatoes and peas.

How did it taste? Tenderest, sweetest, most delicious steak I have ever cooked. Gives me hope that I don't need to go to a restaurant for good steak. Come June, we will be at the Coventry Farmer's Market with an ice chest and a fat wallet.

Casserole Happiness

Just before Christmas, I tapped my old 13x9 baker against the kitchen counter and it snapped in half. Stoneware should not snap. Happily, it was empty when it snapped. (I broke a full one once -- put it cold into a hot oven and it cracked in half. Was that ever fun!)

After New Year's, I replaced it with a nice handled CorningWare "Creations" 3 quart oblong baking dish and have been very pleased with how well this new dish is working out. It's much squarer at the corners than my old one was and also much deeper at the (tapered) sides. Suddenly, I have no problem dishing out corner servings and there's never any oven overflow.

Beautiful!

So, yes, I've been making a lot of casseroles. I like casseroles -- I get quite a lot of satisfaction of pulling a well-baked casserole from the oven and knowing it is everything that is tasty, pretty, and nutritious all in one pan.

This week started with "Vegetables & Noodles with Good Creamy Sauce" from the lower fat chapter of Maryana Vollstedt's The Big Book of Casseroles. It's a very basic recipe -- mushrooms, zucchini, and bell peppers combined with cooked egg noodles in a white sauce -- which depends pretty heavily on the strength of the sauce. Alas, the sauce was not all that. The sauce (pureed low fat cottage cheese, reduced fat cream cheese, fresh parsley, seasonings, and a splash of milk) was very thick (think Spackle) and tasted very strongly of cream cheese. I will try adding more than a splash of milk next time, but I don't know how to reduce the strong cream cheese flavor. More parsley? More seasoning? More cottage cheese and less cream cheese?

Mind you, The Husband liked this casserole because of the strong cream cheese flavor. Replace the zucchini with chicken and he thinks this could be "really good."

Next, I made "Tex-Mex Pork Chops" with "Chile Cheddar Penne" from Taste of Home Annual Recipes, 2008. This made a nice supper on a cold, rainy, winter evening. The penne (jazzed up mac & cheese with chilis and corn) had a nice kick and paired well with the chops. I went mild this time as I wasn't sure how zippy the penne would be, but might use hotter peppers in the future. Also, where the recipe called for shredded cheddar and taco powder I used a reduced fat cheese blend and McCormick 30% Less Sodium Taco Seasoning Mix.

The chops came out pretty well, too. Basically, you cook boneless pork loins chops with sauted onions then pour salsa, cumin, and black pepper over them and heat through. The chops come out moist and spicy and pair well with the penne.

Lastly, I made "Turkey-Zucchini Casserole" from the lower fat chapter of Maryana Vollstedt's The Big Book of Casseroles (I really like this book). This dish came out much more like a soft meatloaf than what I think I of a casserole. It's made of browned turkey crumbles (I imagine soy crumbles would work fine), Muir Glen Organic diced tomatoes, zucchini and other veggies, fresh basil and parsley, a little vegetable broth, and lots of dried bread crumbs. It's a weird little dish to look at, but it tastes really good. It's easily the most delicious dish I have prepared this week.

(The Husband, when asked his opinion, said it was "interesting" and promised he would happily eat it again, despite the copious amounts of zucchini).

And what did The Husband make on Thursday? He made hot dogs and ... cake. Yes. It was quite obvious the hot dogs were merely there to legitimize the cake.

Let it be understood that I have married the perfect man.

For next week: "Humble Crumble Shepherd's Pie," oven roasted salmon (from the Shoprite flier), and "Spanish Rice Casserole."