Thanksgiving II

While we spent Thanksgiving with my parents and it was delicious, I missed having a turkey of my own! So, on Sunday, I roasted a 12-pounder and we had Thanksgiving II all on our own with mashed potatoes, leftover mashed rutabaga, parsley carrots, and gravy. It was delicious. As delicious as my mom's? Well ... that's not a fair comparison!

I didn't do anything fancy to the turkey -- no brining, no basting, no butter-injection. I just rubbed the turkey with a little olive oil, sprinkled it generously with Penzeys salt-free "Sunny Spain" blend and popped it into a 325°F oven for about 3½ hours. My little hen came out perfectly moist and tender and full of rich turkey flavor.

Honestly, I could have skipped making the fixings -- we would have been just as happy with two knives and the turkey between us.

Leftover Turkey Enchiladas Verde

When the world gives you too much turkey and you're sandwiched and souped out, make ... enchiladas verdes! This recipe is cobbled together from refrigerator and pantry staples so it is not very elegant, but it tastes good and goes together quickly. Can be made ahead, if you're organized.

Leftover Turkey Enchiladas Verde

Ingredients
1 cup light sour cream
1 jar salsa verde
1 small red onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, pressed
3 cups shredded leftover turkey
8 oz shredded Cabot Seriously Sharp cheddar
8 small flour tortillas
Sriracha, to taste

Directions
Preheat oven to 375°F. Combine sour cream, onion, garlic, turkey, and half the salsa verde and cheese in a large bowl. Season with a generous squeeze of sriracha (ymmv).

Spoon some of the mixture into a tortilla, roll up, and place seam-side down in a baker. Repeat until you run out of tortillas. If you have any remaining filling, spread it around top of tortillas. Top with remaining salsa verde and cheese. Bake for about 30 minutes, uncovered, or until edges of tortillas turn golden and cheese is bubbly.

Friday is Turkey Day

While the upstairs freezer overflows with food, the downstairs freezer is mostly empty. Aside from many quart bags of tomato sauce and random frostbitten vegetables, there isn't much of interest down there. Well, there was a turkey. A turkey that had been down there since last December. A turkey I kept forgetting about until Tuesday when I thought "Hey! I should really thaw that turkey in the downstairs freezer!" and actually acted on that thought.

I thought I had a hotel-style turkey breast, but it seemed inordinately large as I dragged it up the stairs. Figuring I'd just bought some kind of big-breasted FrankenTurkey, I wrestled it into the fridge and left it to thaw. When I took it out of the fridge today and removed the million layers of shopping bags it was swathed in, it was clear I had a 14 pound turkey on my hands.

There are only 2 people in my house. 2 people and 4 cats, yes, but that's still a lot of turkey. I know I bought it on the cheap a couple days after Christmas and, being me, I probably bought the biggest discounted turkey I could find regardless of the practicality of such a purchase.

Anyway, we had a lovely turkey supper tonight with buttery mashed potatoes, rich gravy, and fresh farm stand corn sauteed in butter. Tomorrow, we will have turkey sandwiches for lunch (and, possibly, breakfast). Sunday, I'm thinking turkey pot pie. Then ... turkey enchiladas with the last jar of salsa verde? And, of course, there's always soup.

Friday Night Delicious: Crunchy Turkey Cutlets w/ Sauteed Tomatoes

First proper meal we've eaten since we returned from England and, I must say, an excellent recipe for easing back into regular cooking habits. Don't like lemon? Use a salt-free Italian seasoning blend and fresh basil. A little crumbled fresh goat cheese might be also nice, mixed in with the sauteed tomatoes.

Crunchy Turkey Cutlets with Sauteed Tomatoes

Ingredients
2 cups small-fruited (currant) tomatoes
1 pound turkey breast cutlets
½ zested lemon
black pepper
salt
olive oil
egg white
squeeze of fresh lemon juice
salt-free lemon-pepper seasoning blend
cornmeal

Directions
Toss the tomatoes and lemon zest together with salt and pepper and set aside.

In a shallow dish (pie plate works well), whisk together the egg white and lemon juice. In another dish, combine cornmeal and salt-free lemon-pepper seasoning blend. Heat  a splash of olive oil in a large frying pan.

Dip a cutlet in egg, then in cornmeal, and cook until golden brown on each side. Remove cooked cutlets to a warm oven. Add tomatoes to hot frying pan and cook for a few minutes, stirring often, until tomatoes begin to crack.

Serve tomatoes over cutlets.

A Little Taste of Autumn

Earlier this week I modified Beth Hensperger's recipe for "Turkey Pot Roast" from her Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Recipes for Two. The dish came out so well with tender, savory turkey and flavorful vegetables that hadn't gone to mush even though they were in the slow cooker for nearly ten hours. I think the trick there was to leave the potatoes and carrots on top of the turkey thighs so they were out of the juices and sort-of steam/roasted in the hot, moist air.

Ingredients: skinned & well trimmed turkey thighs, thyme, basil, dehydrated onion, turkey broth, salt, black pepper.

The Hensperger's recipe said to brown the turkey thighs well before adding them to the slow cooker, but at 8 am, I was not up to browning anything. Also, I worried that the crisped skin would just go soggy and gross after a few hours in the slow cooker. Therefore, I removed the skin from my turkey thighs, trimmed all the fat I could see and laid them at the bottom of my greased slow cooker insert. I seasoned them and sprinkled them with a  handful of crushed dehydrated onion slices. Then I poured a cup of turkey broth over them, arranged the chopped carrots and potatoes around the edge of the cooker, and let everything cook for nine hours on LOW.  They then sat for about an hour on WARM while I faffed reading the mail and, eventually, made gravy.

This was a tremendously easy and delicious supper and I look forward to making it again when I manage to buy more thighs. I have a hard time finding turkey thighs in my area and this recipe used the last pack in our freezer.

Freckled Turkey Patties With Relish

Betty Crocker's "California-Style Turkey Patties with Corn and Tomato Relish" from Low-Carb Lifestyle Cookbook.

Ingredients: lean ground turkey, fresh whole wheat bread crumbs, minced red onion, Penzeys salt-free Arizona Dreaming seasoning blend, low-sodium chicken broth, "fiesta" corn, sliced celery, quartered grape tomatoes, light Italian dressing.

Using whole wheat bread crumbs gave the patties an unfortunate freckled look, but they tasted just fine. I seasoned them with Penzey's salt-free Arizona Dreaming instead of salt and pepper, because I thought the use of "fiesta" corn called for a more Southwestern flavor.

I wasn't sure The Husband would like the relish with lemon, so I used light Italian dressing, instead, and he seemed to like it that way. I will be making it that way again when the weather warms up a bit more and the grilling bug bites.

O, Delicious Turkey Loaf

Over the weekend, I made "Turkey Loaf with Sun-dried Tomatoes" from Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade: The Complete Cookbook. I'd never cooked anything from Lee's cookbooks before, but I am  familiar with them as they tend to be pretty popular with my library patrons. I picked up Semi-Homemade on a whim (hundreds of library patrons cannot be wrong?) and immediately proceeded to cover the entire cookbook in sticky notes.

Oh, so many sticky notes!

Anyway, I made "Turkey Loaf with Sun-dried Tomatoes" and it was good. Not as good as "All-American Meatloaf" from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, no, but good enough I'd be happy to eat it again and I look forward to trying all the other recipes I've decked out with sticky notes.



Lee's recipe is really simple and it couldn't have taken more than fifteen minutes to assemble this loaf. I didn't have any frozen chopped bell peppers, so I just used chopped fresh and didn't notice any taste or textural weirdness in the finished loaf. Also, Lee says to bake the meatloaf in loaf pan, but I don't like to do that with a meatloaf as they seem to come out too greasy and I feel I can't glaze the meatloaf properly. Instead, I use the loaf pan as a mold for the meatloaf and then decant the shaped loaf into a rectangular baker and paste every visible part of the meatloaf with glaze. The glaze is probably less important if you're serving a meatloaf with gravy, but I prefer a good tomato-y, tangy-sweet glaze to gravy.

The loaf-pan-mold technique is also handy if I'm making the meatloaf ahead of time. I just line the pan with long lengths of cling wrap, fill it with meatloaf mix, and the wrap the extra cling wrap around the pan to seal it.  Keeps the meatloaf all fresh and tidy in the fridge while taking up less room than my rectangular baker.

Out of One, Many

So, Monday I roasted the last freezer turkey and we had a little unThanksgiving feast with cornbread stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, and braised green beans. It was all delicious, but made for a huge amount of leftovers.

What to do with all those leftovers?

Salad! And such yummy one at that -- mixed greens, red cabbage, red onion, cucumber, celery, red bell pepper, yellow pear tomatoes, chopped leftover roast turkey, goat cheese crumbles, walnuts, and blueberries all drizzled with fig balsamic vinaigrette. I ate this salad for three days running and did not tire of it.

Soup! A modified version of "Chicken Tortilla Soup" from Better Homes & Gardens's Quick-Fix Family Favorites topped with sour cream and diced avocado. Used leftover roast turkey instead of chicken, Muir Glen fire-roasted diced tomatoes instead of stewed Mexican seasoned ones, three tablespoons Penzeys Bold Taco seasoning, and a whole bag of sliced frozen mixed peppers.

I served this soup with tube biscuits I coated with shredded Cabot Seriously Sharp cheddar before baking and they came out pretty well. If I made them again, I'd sprinkle them with a little garlic powder and maybe brush them with a little butter ...

Pot Pie! Filling is made of diced leftover turkey, gravy thinned with low-sodium chicken broth, thyme, black pepper, leftover braised green beans, mushrooms, onion, celery, and garlic.

And, of course, manymany sandwiches!

Delicious as it all was, I don't think I want to see another turkey before 25 November!

Slow Cooker 'Cue ... It's Heaven

I'd been craving a good pulled pork sandwich since I ate a not-very-good one at a local fair, but I don't know where to find a good one locally. I thought about making my own, in the oven, but was a little intimidated by the prospect. Then I found a recipe for "Georgia-Style Barbecued Turkey Sandwiches" in Pillsbury's Slow Cooker Recipes and I reckoned I could run the risk of ruining one supper this week. It helped that Pillsbury's recipe was simple, straightforward, and used a meat I really enjoy cooking, but see so few recipes for.

(Turkey thighs are delicious, you know, and hard to ruin by overcooking. I tend to roast mine with vegetables, but I bet the slow cooker cacciatore I made earlier in the week would be awesome with turkey thighs!)

Anyway, I thought this dish turned out really well -- just a little sweet with a nice bit of heat and the perfect amount of smokiness. I used Lazy Kettle's hickory liquid smoke and, oh my, does that stuff taste good! And the smell! I'm half-tempted to wear it as cologne.

I was so pleased with how this recipe turned out that I borrowed a copy of Merrell and Quinn's Cheater BBQ: Barbecue Anytime, Anywhere, in Any Weather (Clarkson Potter, 2008) from my library and I'm full of plans to make more barbecue in my slow cooker (and oven) as soon as possible.

Experiential Baking: Turkey Pot Pie

We had a bowl of "good" turkey meat which I held back from soup-making in case we wanted more sandwiches. Well, after a week of them, we were sandwiched out and I needed to do something with the meat (the cats vocalized some definite ideas) and thought of pot pie ...

Considering this pie was the first "scratch" pot pie I ever made, it came out really well! I even made the pie crust myself and I had never made a pie crust on my own, before. The last time I remember making one, I was nine or ten and "helping" my mother with her Thanksgiving pies. How did my crust come out? Really well considering the anxiety that surrounded its creation! I was sure it would fail -- be tough or dry or bland or ohmygodsoindescribablyawful and I was so wrong!

I made my crust using "King Arthur's Pie Crust" recipe. I used King Arthur 100% Organic White Whole Wheat Flour and butter because the recipe notes said "Whole wheat pastry flour produces a crust with a 'bite' and a hearty flavor" and that seemed like a good thing! Also, I didn't have any shortening on hand. (Someday, I'd like to try a lard crust -- a woman I went to college with swore by them and I would like to try one, just once).

I made the filling for this pot pie by combining a bunch of recipes I found on the Internets to make best use of the ingredients I had on hand -- no extra shopping for this recipe! (Adding mashed potato might seem a little odd, but you don't taste it and it thickens the pie filling up quite nicely).

Beginner's Turkey Pot Pie

1 packet turkey gravy mix
1 teaspoon French thyme
1 teaspoon ground sage
¼ cup dried parsley
1½ half-and-half
1 cup water
2 tablespoons butter
3 cups (approx) cubed or shredded cooked turkey
2 cups (approx) leftover garlic mashed potatoes
1 cup frozen sweetcorn
1 cup frozen peas
Pepper, to taste

1 recipe "King Arthur's Pie Crust"

Preheat oven to 425°F. In a large pot, whisk gravy packet, thyme, sage, parsley, half-and-half, and water together. Add butter and stir as it melts until mixture comes to boil. Stir in turkey, potatoes, and vegetables. Return to boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer 5 minutes. Season with pepper to taste.

Prepare pastry by lining an ungreased 9-inch pie pan with one crust. Pour turkey mixture into the crust-lined pan. Top with remaining crust. Crimp edges and notch top to vent. Bake in 425° oven until golden brown, about 35 min. Will keep fine in warm oven until serving-time (I left mine about thirty minutes and all was well).

When I was a child, my parents would sometimes take me out of school to visit Old Sturbridge Village and one of my favorite parts, aside from visiting Freeman Farm and the sawmill, was lunch at the Bullard tavern. Yes, lunch at the tavern with its nummy chicken pot pie and Indian pudding was teh awesomes for a nascent foodie child me.

Oh, that pot pie! Delicious, flaky, buttery, tender, rich chicken pot pie! You are still the pot pie I dream of!

Gobble-Gobble In My Pot

We'd pretty much picked the turkey carcass clean by Thursday so I decided to go ahead and make some soup right away rather than chucking the carcass in the freezer and doing it Sunday.

Each time I make turkey or chicken soup it comes out differently because I don't have a set recipe -- I always start the same way, but what goes in at the end varies as I tend to simply round up whatever open bags of frozen vegetables I can find and dump them in the pot with whatever slightly wrinkly potatoes or rice/barley/noodle bag ends I find in the pantry. Seasoning depends strongly on taste and mood -- sometimes, I make a spicy turkey soup but more often it is just very garlicky and redolent with thyme.
How I made this turkey soup:

• Removed all bits of skin/fat from the turkey carcass and then crushed it down a bit to fit in my big dutch oven.
• Surrounded the carcass with carrots, onion, shallots, bay, and peppercorns.
• Topped the whole thing off with cold water and let it simmer for about three hours or so (I took a long nap at this point).
• Eventually, drained pot contents through a cheesecloth lined colander into a big basin.
• Picked vegetable bits out and set aside.
• Separated edible turkey bits from inedible.
• Skimmed the fat off the top of the broth and poured back in the pot.
• Broke the veggies up a bit and put them back in the pot. Ditto the turkey, a bag-end of whole wheat egg noodles, some pearl barley, odds-and-ends of frozen corn and peas, fresh pressed garlic, thyme, salt, parsley, and the last of my sodium-free chicken bouillon granules.
• Let everything cook for about an hour and then taste-tested and then adjusted seasonings as whim took me.

Slow Cooker Turkey-Vegetable Soup

Come to the end up the week, the kitchen contained some odds and ends which wanted eating up. Feeling lazy, I chucked everything into my slow cooker and made a rather delicious soup.

Turkey-Vegetable Soup

1 lb lean ground turkey
1 small onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, pressed
2 carrots, sliced thin
2 celery stalks, sliced thin
4 oz mushrooms, sliced
½ cup pearl barley
10 oz frozen corn
14.5 oz no-salt-added diced tomatoes
19 oz Muir Glen Heart Tomato Soup
16 oz low-sodium vegetable broth
Lashings of dried thyme, basil, pepper, and parsley (to taste)

Sauté turkey, onion, and garlic until turkey is cooked through. Add to slow cooker with all other ingredients. Stir well. Cook on Low 8 hours.

Black Bean & Turkey Enchiladas

Saturday, I made Friday's "Turkey Enchiladas" from Ladies Home Journal (May 2009) with salad for supper and they were very good. So good, in fact, that The Husband took seconds on everything!

This was a very simple dish to put together -- leftover turkey, low-sodium can diced tomatoes, well rinsed and drained canned black beans, garlicky Green Mountain Gringo salsa, Cabot Hunter's Sharp cheddar, light Greek yoghurt, spring onions, cilantro, cumin, and pepper all mixed together then wrapped up in whole wheat tortillas and topped with more tomatoes, salsa, cheese, and spring onions -- so it made a perfect work night supper. It took no more than fifteen minutes to assemble and about 40 minutes to bake which gave me plenty of time to assemble a salad and read the paper, but not so much time I felt I needed some snackage to tide me over!

Pretty, Pretty Curtains

Pretty much ever since we moved in, I have been toying with the idea of quilted patchwork valances for my sewing room. I've daydreamed over many a pattern and fat quarter bundle, but never been able to commit. A lot has to do with the ugly bubbling red and white walls of my sewing room. It's hard to imagine anything looking pretty against them.

Last weekend, I had some kind of brainstorm while browsing Fabric.com in the middle of the night and ended up ordering a jelly roll of "Nouveau" by Sentimental Studios for Moda and two yards of Wilmington Prints's "Essentials Scroll" in light ivory. Alas, by the time the fabric arrived, I had forgotten my brilliant plan! What was I supposed to do with these fabrics? Why had I not jotted down notes? Oh noes!

Today, I unrolled the strips and held them up to the window and, against the bright light of the afternoon, they were beautiful. So beautiful that I decided to bite that darn bullet and piece some valances ...

Every time I started to panic (and I panicked quite a lot), I just held the strip set up to the windows, oooh-ed a bit at the play of light through them, and went back to my sewing machine. The tops are done now -- it took about three hours to cut and piece the two of them -- and now I have to wrap my head around quilting them. I want them to have a bit of body, but not be too stiff. The thin cotton batting I normally quilt with is, I think, too thick for this and so I wonder if felt might work ...

Probably, I am over-thinking a pair of valances.

Lest you think I spent all my time fretting over fabric, I also made turkey soup from the carcass of the one I roasted on Wednesday. The soup, while very basic (turkey with mixed vegetables and barley flakes), is quite flavorful from its afternoon adventure on the stove top and will probably not last long in this house.

I was also smart enough to keep some of the turkey meat back for "Turkey Enchiladas" and we will have the enchiladas for Saturday's supper with a bit of green salad and beer.

Meatloaf is for Sandwiches

Sunday night, a package of frozen turkey jumped out of the freezer and tried to assault The Husband while he was rummaging around for a frozen Snickers bar. The container broke on impact and I was faced with two options: repackage the frozen meat and pop it back in the freezer or just put the package in the refrigerator and let it thaw. Letting it thaw was the easiest option and who was I to eschew laziness?

So, a three-pound package of ground turkey thawing in my fridge ... what dish could I make which would use the whole thing and wouldn't require extra shopping? Turkey Loaf? "Incredibly Cheesy Turkey Meatloaf?" Or what about "Turkey and Cheddar Meatloaf?" Hmm. There wasn't a lot of difference between the two, but the second called for more seasonings. In the end, of course, I went my own way ...

Easy Cheesy Turkey Loaf

• ¾ cup milk
• 1 cup panko
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. Salt Free Garlic & Herb Seasoning.
• 1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 3 lbs. lean ground turkey
• 4 oz. Cabot Private Stock Cheddar, coarsely shredded
• ½ cup low-sodium ketchup, divided
• ¼ cup Dijon mustard

In a very large bowl, combine all ingredients (except ¼ cup Dijon & ¼ cup ketchup). Transfer to a 13x9 baking dish and pat into loaf shape. Cover and refrigerate overnight, if desired. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°, uncover loaf, combine ¼ cup Dijon & remaining ¼ cup ketchup and spread over top of loaf. Bake for about an hour. Remove from oven and let sit about 15 minutes before serving.

This loaf is pretty big (would feed 6-8 people), but that's fine as it will provide many sandwiches over the next few days.

I know, both turkey loaf recipes I looked at called for lots of cubed cheese. So why is there so little cheese in my loaf? Shockingly, for once I did not have lots of cheese on hand! I hoped a smaller amount of freshly shredded strong cheddar might provide a uniform cheesiness and it did -- this loaf tasted like giant turkey cheeseburger and that's no mean thing. Very moist and cheesy, but not falling apart or gooey. Excellent for sandwiches.

Chicken Turkey Bake

Sticking with my menu plan, I made a cheesy turkey casserole for Friday's dinner. Because I had worked two long days in a row and was just plain tired, I modified this recipe a lot to streamline assembly and use up what I had on hand ... the casserole still came out very well and I can imagine making many variations of it in the future.

Cheesy Chicken Turkey Casserole

• 15 oz. jar Classico Four Cheese Alfredo sauce
• 1¼ cups low-fat milk
• 1 cup light Greek yoghurt
• 3 cups uncooked Barilla Piccolini Mini Farfalle pasta
• 12 ounces finely diced cooked turkey meat
• 1 cup leftover cooked sweet corn
• 1½ cups quartered grape tomatoes
• 1 cup shredded Cabot Special Stock cheddar
• Generous shake of McCormick Salt Free Garlic & Herb Seasoning
• Handful of dried parsley

Combine all ingredients; mix well. Place in a 13x9 baking dish, cover, and refrigerate overnight hours.

The next day, preheat oven to 350°F. Bake casserole, covered, for 55 minutes. Remove from oven, stir, and let sit for about 10 minutes. Serves 4-6.

You might think that one cup of cheese isn't enough to label this casserole "cheesy" and you would be wrong. I promise you, a little Cabot Special Stock Cheddar goes a loooong way.

Fowl is Fair: Roasting Birds

We're averaging three roast fowl per month!

Another Roast Chicken
Preheat oven to 350° F.
Rinse and pat dry an 7-lb roasting chicken. Make a paste out of softened butter, parsley, garlic, and pepper. Smear under skin of breast. Rub skin with a little olive oil. Place on roasting rack in roasting pan. Roast, uncovered, for about 2½ hours.

Easy Roast Turkey Breast
Preheat oven to 325° F.
Rinse and pat dry an 8-lb bone-in turkey breast. Smear thoroughly with a little olive oil. Place on roasting rack in roasting pan. Liberally sprinkle with McCormick Lemon Pepper Salt-Free Seasoning. Roast, uncovered, for about 3 hours.

Thanksgiving, Abridged

We did end up having a mini-Thanksgiving of our own. Just the two of us, a fourteen-pound turkey, and four wide-eyed cats.


~ Roasted Turkey ~
(Southern Living's 2005 Annual Recipes)
with pan gravy

~ Pepperidge Farm's Moist & Savory Stuffing ~

~ Buttered Parsley Corn ~

~ Parsley-Mashed Potatoes ~

~ Whole-berry Cranberry Sauce ~


It was delicious and made for many leftovers. We ate many sandwiches and I made a couple casseroles, but now it is time for soup. Mmm ... turkey soup!

One of the casseroles I made, "Wild Rice and Turkey Casserole" from the Betty Crocker site was a definite repeater. Creamy and rich, it is an easy winter comfort food.

Of course, I tweaked the recipe to suit the contents of my kitchen and the rumblings of my tumbly! I used a 4.3 ounce box of Rice-A-Roni Long Grain & Wild Rice, added the optional sliced mushrooms, and substituted boiling turkey broth for the water as well as light cream for the milk. Because I used less rice, my casserole took a little longer than the recipe indicated -- I cooked it 45 minutes covered and 30 minutes uncovered before the liquid was sufficiently absorbed.

Obviously, this recipe could be healthified by using white meat, low-sodium low-fat cream of x, fat-free milk, and Bob's Red Mill 3 Grain Country Wild Rice or whathaveyou ...

But then I would probably have to faceplant in a cheesecake, afterwards.

Back on the Wagon: Cookery Catch-Up

So, yes, I was ill earlier this week and fell behind in the whole three-suppers-shtick. Yes, managed to bake cookies and a cake, but couldn’t make supper because I was too sick. Trust me; it made sense at the time.

This week, I'm back on the wagon. I've made three suppers, but we've only eaten two as the last one was made ahead for Saturday. The first two have been tolerably good, so I don't expect anyone will die from Saturday's.

For Tuesday, I made "Cheeseburger Casserole" from aimeesadventures. I've made a number of recipes from this site and they're generally pretty good. This casserole was no exception. While it was more like a turkey loaf than a casserole and did need a little something to boost the flavor, it still tasted pretty good and I'm always pleased to find non-tabbouleh bulgur recipes

Anyway, I readily admit that I tweaked the recipe a bit and any lack of flavor is probably my own fault. When I made this casserole, I omitted the powdered beef bouillon and used low sodium tomato sauce in order to reduce the amount of sodium in the finished dish. To compensate, I cooked the bulgur in (low sodium) vegetable broth to add more "taste" back in, but should probably have added some McCormick Salt Free Garlic & Herb Seasoning or Tabasco in, as well.

The serving sizes are pretty generous (4 servings from an 8-inch square baking dish) or realistic, depending on how you want to call it.

Tonight, I made "Parmesan Topped Salmon" and "One-pot Vegetable and Grain Medley" from The American Heart Association's No-Fad Diet (Clarkson Potter, 2005). I figured, if I'm going to go all low sodium and reduced fat with recipes then they might as well be that way to start with. I was surprisingly pleased with how both recipes turned out. Prior experience has shown AHA recipes to be hit-or-miss in the seasoning department, yet these two dishes came out quite tastily.

The salmon recipe reminded me of the "Magically Moist Salmon" recipe sometimes found on the back of the Hellmann's mayonnaise bottle. A recipe I had never tried, because slathering mayonnaise allover perfectly nice salmon seemed like an act of barbarism. And yet, here I was today, brushing my salmon with a mixture of light mayo, parmesan, garlic, and white pepper. All because the AHA said I could. And I was only using 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon mayonnaise (vs ¼ cup called for in the Hellmann's recipe). Anyway, it tasted quite nice -- the top of the mayonnaise/parmesan firmed up and browned quite nicely in the oven while leaving its under layer all moist and gooey atop the tender pink salmon. While I still prefer my usual method of salmon cookery, this made a nice change.

I made the barley to go with the salmon as it also had a little parmesan in it which I thought would link the two dishes together flavor-wise while the acidity of the tomatoes would compliment the creaminess of the fish. Also, I wanted to cook some barley. Overall, I was pleased with this dish. I did end up cooking it twenty minutes longer than directed, but that was my own choice. When I selected the recipe, I neglected to note that it was supposed to be served by in bowls as a stew or somesuch. By cooking it covered for forty minutes and then leaving it uncovered on the stove for another twenty (while the salmon baked), most of the liquid cooked away. When I stirred the grated parmesan in, the barley took on a risotto like consistency which was very pleasing. The red bell pepper, onion, parmesan, and Muir Glen fire-roasted diced tomatoes all blended together with the barley and gave it a creamy tangy-ness that went really well with the salmon. The Husband quite liked it and took seconds, which alone makes this recipe worth repeating.

For Saturday, I made "Baked Ziti with Beef & Green Beans" which is also from the American Heart Association's No-Fad Diet (Clarkson Potter, 2005). I substituted Hodgson Mill Organic Whole Wheat Penne with Milled Flax Seed for the ziti, because that's what I had on hand. Otherwise, I made this recipe exactly as directed. It looks pretty okay and was very easy to throw together, but it also seems a bit ... weirdly fussy. I don't know why as the casserole is just repeated layers of cooked pasta, sauce, green beans, and cheese in an 8x8 inch casserole and there's nothing to it that really sounds fussy. It's just ... why layer it? Why not mix the pasta, sauce, and beans together and then top them with cheese? Why be fussy? Especially with the pasta and sauce -- isn't the sauce just going to ooze down and mix with the pasta, anyway?

We shall see.

What do I think of the American Heart Association's No-Fad Diet (Clarkson Potter, 2005) now that I've made three recipes from it? Well, everything I've eaten has certainly tasted good, but the directions leave a little bit to be desired. The weird fussiness of the green bean casserole irks me a little, but not as much as the constant call for "½ medium x, chopped." How much is half a medium onion or two shallots when chopped? Why can I not have measurements in cups or ounces? And the barley recipe didn't even tell me how to prep the bell pepper! It just said "2 medium bell peppers (orange and green preferred)." I decided to chop one and a half red bell peppers (they were on the "large" side, but none of the peppers at the grocery store looked "medium," anyway) into small pieces, because I reckoned the chopped pepper should be the same shape and approximate size as the other ingredients.

I don't know if I'd buy this cookbook for myself and I recommend it with reservations, but that won't stop me copying down the recipes I've made and trying them again next month.

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."