Kielbasa, Peppers and Potatoes – a Fast Family Meal

This is one of my favorite quick tasty dinners.  Maybe I take too many shortcuts, but this one is good.  I can do this meal in under a half an hour, which is more time than my son gives me before he asks about dinner.  Seventeen year olds who run track are always looking for food; the quicker I get it into him, the less likely he is to fill it with junk or fillers. You can parboil the potatoes in a pot of water on the stove or a bowl of water in the microwave.  I do this because it will absorb less oil since it’s partly cooked already.  The kielbasa is turkey kielbasa, and it’s a little lower fat too.  The peppers – are mine.  We grew peppers last summer and froze them.  I haven’t run out of peppers yet, so I like to find  as many meals I can to use them in and the peppers though wilty are still delicious and full of flavor. I don’t put a dressing on it because my son isn’t a big fan, and we just use our preference of mustard or ketchup.  If I had my way I would pour on a mustard vinaigrette or dressing.

Ingredients:

• Kielbasa
• 2 peppers- seeded and sliced
• 1 onion – sliced
• 4 potatoes  – cut into cubes
• Olive Oil
• rosemary
• pepper
• salt
• parsley

Directions: 

Parboil potatoes in water then drain.  Sauté peppers and onions in  olive oil.  Slice kielbasa into 1 inch thick pieces, and throw in with peppers and onions and add in potatoes.  Toss in herbs and spices. 

 

That’s it, it’s all good. 

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Steak and Roasted Corn Salsa Stew(p)

I found a bag of roasted corn in the grocery store that inspired this stew/soup. Salsas always make me think of summertime, sitting on the deck reading a book and snacking on salsa and chips.  Well, the deck is being used to stain wood right now, and my husband’s hands got really cold while he worked, so a warm meal was in order.  I had some chuck roast that I diced and sautéed with onions and peppers, before cooking the rest of the way in a beef broth and adding the rest of the ingredients.  This is a quick soup to make, and was on the table in about an hour. If you double the ingredients, you can freeze a batch for another meal.  I dolloped sour cream on top to mix in, which my son thought was great – and oh by the way dear daughter, we do not have any avocados in the fridge like you promised – those are limes!  I would have chopped up some avocados to place on top with the sour cream if I had some – I was assured that I did. Even without the avocados this was a fantastic stew(p). Summer and Winter all rolled up into one delicious tasting pot of good for you food.

Ingredients

• 1 tbs Olive Oil
• 1 onion – diced
• 2 cloves garlic – diced
• 1 1/2 lbs chuck roast – diced
• 1 pint beef broth
• 2 cups roasted corn (frozen)
• hot peppers – seeded and diced
• 1 jar salsa (use your favorite brand – I used homemade)
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 can of black bean drained and rinsed
• 2 tbs tomato paste
• 1 lime
• salt
• pepper
• sour cream

Directions:

Heat up oil, sauté onions, garlic and beef in bottom of deep pot – add in a little salt and pepper to the beef.  When the onions are soft, pour in beef broth.  Simmer until the beef is about ready, then add the other ingredients one by one.  Let the temp come up and add the next ingredient. Squeeze Lime into soup. Salt and Pepper to taste.  Add more than one pepper if you like it really spicy.  We like the slightly spicy taste, but we’re weak stomached wimps when it comes to really spicy. Dollop sour cream on top of your soup when serving.  If you have some avocado, dice it up and add it too.  We ate them with chips instead of crackers – and that’s my suggestion for you too, because it turned out so great.

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Risotto Chips by New York Style – My Son Loves Them

Risotto Chips are an awesome treat, the whole family enjoyed them. They didn’t taste like risotto to me, they were delicious crispy (cracker-like) treats – that are gluten free.  We love the Parmesan and Garlic and the Sea Salt.  The Spicy Marinara wasn’t our first choice, but it was devoured too.

My son said that I have to let you know that these chips were so good he was willing to brush his teeth twice for them.  Here’s what I mean – he was ready for bed, and packing his lunch.  Instead of his usually pretzels, he grabbed the Sea Salt Risotto Chips.  He had brushed his teeth already, but said that even though he knew he’d have to brush his teeth again, he finished off the bag. He said it was worth it because they were so good.  I thought it was funny, but also, when he told me, I was disappointed, because there weren’t any left for me.  Then later my husband came looking to see if there were any left and he was disappointed that the bag was empty also.  I tried to hoard the Parmesan & Garlic but it was discovered and devoured. I loved the Parmesan and Garlic taste – one of my favorite combinations. The Marinara was delicious and a little spicy, but we liked the other two better.

These chips hold up well to dip and also hummus.  They were absolutely great with hummus.  The only drawback?  Not enough in the bag because you just can’t stop eating them.  Well, maybe it’s a good thing after all. My recommendation – Risotto Chips – Overall A+, Parmesan & Garlic – A+, Sea Salt A+, Marinara B+. 

 

 

 

The Details – I was given New York Style Risotto Chips to review.  This was my honest opinion.  Gluten-free, 0 grams trans fat and 11 grams whole grains

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Upgrade Your Pizza

Pizza is a regular meal at our house for Fridays, but I don’t have time to make dough because I’m usually spending the day working.  Since you can’t throw a pizza in a crockpot and let it go, my favorite shortcut is to upgrade my pizza.  I get the fresh pizzas – not frozen, and then add ingredients to make it a little more scrumptious.  My husband likes grilled pineapple, I like onions, peppers and chicken.  I made two pizzas last Friday.  My husband and I were supposed to go out to dinner, but another snow squall and a daughter who needed to be met at a drop-off point made that impossible.  While my husband was on the road I put together two pizzas. The first I grilled chicken with peppers and onions.  Then I chopped up the chicken and spread it all out among the cheese.  The second pizza I cooked up some pancetta, grilled a little pineapple, then I caramelized onion in some pineapple juice.  That went on the second pizza.  Turns out my son likes the pineapple, and my daughter prefers the chicken with onions and peppers.  It was fun to relax around the table and enjoy each other’s company.  This week while my daughter is home on spring break we’ve been trying to make sure we sit down together every night.  I swear I won’t get empty nest when my son goes away to college next year, really I swear it won’t happen to me.

    

 

Here’s a Wordless Wednesday picture of some scrumptious Homemade Pizza’s at Robyn’s World. Let us know in the comments – What’s your favorite way to UPGRADE your PIZZA?

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WW – Birthday Dinner – Thanks Kids!

 

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Food News – Feb 28, 2010

• Congrats to Chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill and Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture was awarded the Second Annual USA Network “Character Approved” award  for his work in changing the face of American culture through food. Dan Barber is at the forefront of a new frontier in food. His philosophy-practiced at his Blue Hill restaurants-is that by combining old world farming wisdom with new agricultural technologies, we can create food that is at once delicious, innovative, healthy, and environmentally responsible.

 

• Denny’s is relaunching the Free Grand Slam birthday program, offering each and every American another free meal on their birthday.  Looking to help stretch the American Dollar  Denny’s is offering unlimited free refills of two of America’s favorites, French fries and pancakes at participating locations nationwide,through the end of March. Valid 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the offer applies to any order of French fries or pancakes served with an entrée, including both original buttermilk pancakes and Denny’s Hearty Wheat pancakes, for a limited time.

 

•   Arclinea,(a well known Italian kitchen company)- March 11, 2010 6-8 pm local time

“Italia in Cucina, Live Cooking Day” is Arclinea’s FIRST worldwide culinary marathon that will feature dynamic cooking demonstrations by well-known chefs in twenty-one Arclinea showrooms to support and celebrate artisanal Italian products. Selected by the Ministry for its international acclaim and innovative artistry, Arclinea will host this major event as an exciting extension of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture’s Made in Italy program, which serves to further promote local Italian products worldwide. The twenty-one showroom locations include: Auckland, Seoul, Beijing, Moscow, Padua, Vicenza, Rome, Milan, Turin, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Barcelona, New York, Washington D.C., Miami, Chicago, Mexico City, San Diego, San Francisco.

 

• Congrats to Wild Mountain Gourmet, their Sweet & Spicy Mustard has won a gold medal in the Sweet – Hot category at the 2010 Napa Valley World-Wide Mustard Competition. Their Key Lime & Pineapple Mustard also picked up a victory capturing the Bronze in the fruit category. The company makes a variety of products including a barbecue sauce, hot wing sauce, and several varieties of gourmet mustards. Wild Mountain Gourmet Inc products are sold to grocery and fine food retailers, and can also be found at many food shows and events in the Mid Atlantic region.

 

• Alaska Seafood – The 2010 wild Alaska halibut and black cod (sablefish) season opens March 6, 2010. Alaska halibut is the largest of the flatfish, some weighing over 300 pounds. Alaska black cod is high in omega-3 fatty acids, making it a preferred source of protein. Both whitefish selections pair naturally with a wide variety of flavor profiles and cooking applications such as: smoking, sautéing, poaching and roasting. Wild Alaska halibut and black cod are available fresh until mid-November, or frozen year-round.

 

• Delaware North would like a follow on Facebook and/or Twitter. Delaware North is the company that runs the food concessions at a lot of sports arenas, entertainment venues and the national parks, plus gaming destinations.

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Food Contests – Feb 28, 2010

• Idaho Potatoes – Now through March 31, submit your original, healthful, affordable & easy-to-prepare Idaho® potato recipes in the Idaho Potato Commission’s “Watching Waistlines & Wallets” Recipe Contest for a chance to win more than $7,500 in cash & prizes, including a $5,000 grand prize! The IPC has compiled a continually growing resource of its best low-cost, low-cal recipes http://www.idahopotato.com/waistlines_wallets and is rewarding resourceful home cooks for contributing.

 

• SPAM! – Dish This! allows consumers to share their SPAM^® creations, try and rate recipes from others and  learn how merely adding SPAM^® products to some of their favorite and most-familiar foods is a surefire way to spice up mealtime.  Jan – Mar they’re looking for Egg recipes that include SPAM.  In April through June participants can upload their SPAMWICH™ inspired sandwich, try and rate others and receive a coupon for SPAM^® products. Five top-rated recipes will receive a year’s worth of SPAM^® products. During July through September, Consumers enter a contest by submitting an original recipe that combines SPAM^® with Mac & Cheese. One grand prize winner will walk away with $1,000 in cash or a gift certificate to a kitchen store of their choice.

 

• Apple & Eve Fruitables  (not a recipe contest, but is sponsored by something edible) – is proud to announce its support for the VH1 Save The Music Foundation.  To kick off this new partnership, Fruitables has begun the search for the best music mash-up in America, providing school vocal groups (K-8) with the opportunity to show off their talent and increase their school’s music program funding via the Fruitables Facebook fan page, along with a 100-word essay describing their school’s need for music program funding.  Entries must be received no later than April 30, 2010 and can be submitted via Facebook at www.Facebook.com/AppleandEve.

Beginning May 3, 2010, America will have the opportunity to view all of the finalists’ performances, chosen by an independent panel of judges, and vote for their favorite.  The winning school will then be announced the week of May 17th. The winning group will receive $10,000.

 

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Is Your Kitchen App Savvy?

If you have an Iphone or Droid or one of those other phones that are web capable, you may have a kitchen tool  or two at your fingertips – literally (I think that’s correctly used).  I have some Apps to suggest.  It’s really cool to find a recipe on your phone, to use for dinner.  There are organizational tools to help with shopping and dieting and even cool drink making apps – I think I’ll need that one while my daughter is home on spring break. Here are a few of my favorite apps, let me know in the comments what your best ones are.

• Bento- Cost 4.99 – If you are going to pay almost five dollars for an app, it had better be useful.  Bento is a very useful organizing tool based on different templates you can use.  I’ll talk about a few of them, that I’ve investigated. How it works – you get a template from those available and add it to your library.  For example – in the Diet Log, you add an entry based on their template and you can keep track of what you’ve eaten for the day, the number of calories eaten, put in some exercise notes and your weight. There are different templates available besides the Diet Log such as Recipes, and an Exercise log, an address book and quite a few others.  This app is definitely worth looking into and one of the few worth the 4.99.  I did get this one free, but I still recommend it as a one stop app to keep you organized.

 

• Strawberries – Cost free- Put out by the California Strawberry Commission – it has recipes and a page about nutrition and another page of how to find them on twitter and facebook.  My opinion that the app is good, but could be better because the number of recipes is a little limited.  To be a good recipe app, we should have more to choose from.  It is free though, so you won’t lose out by getting it.

 

• 8,500+ Drink & Cocktail Recipes Free – Cost Free – Pretty Cool App.  You can choose one particular ingredient and look through all the drinks using that ingredient, or you can just choose form the entire list.  Also, you can shake the app and come up with a whole new drink to try out – a random drink. 

 

• WW mobile – Cost Free – kinda – Weight Watchers Mobile – is a kind of free app.  If you belong to Weight Watchers, the whole app is free and it can be used to keep track of your points (or I think).  If you aren’t a member of Weight Watchers there are still daily recipes and articles you can view, plus a cheat sheet for pizza and cocktails.  Much more worth it if you are a member.

 

• Around Me – Cost Free – Good App for finding restaurants around you – as long as you have service and an exit.  I was checking to see what places were nearby when we were stuck last week, though there wasn’t anyway to get to them.  It’s a decent app to keep around.

 

• Eat This Not That –This was recommended to me, though at 4.99, I haven’t tried it yet.  It’s put out by Men’s health and is supposed to be similar to the book that was put out, giving suggestions of good choices at different places.  Has anyone tried it?  What do you think?

 

 Here’s a cool tool for your Iphone – it’s called an IDOX – a stand for your Iphone.  On the plus side, it will hold up your Iphone and make it easier to be hands free while you are cooking from the recipes you’ve stored there.  I did think it was useful and works well, and is very low tech.  On the negative side, you have to remove your case in order to fit the phone into the IDOX.  You can actually replace your case and just use the IDOX as a case, but it makes it a little clunky.  So I think it’s better to pull it out of it’s case and put it into the IDOX when you are cooking in the kitchen.  Other uses besides in the kitchen that are suggested, as an alarm when you are travelling, or also so you can watch movies without holding your Iphone the whole time.  It is more protection for your phone than regular a regular Iphone case.  As for the price – I’m a little hesitant tell you about it because 34.99 is a bit pricey, though it is a sturdy case.  I have a free review case and I do like it, so you’ll have to decide about the cost for yourself.

 

 

 

Disclosure -  I received a free copy of Bento, as well as a free IDOX, both reviews are my honest opinion.

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Roast Chicken

Life is unpredictable.  I’ve been busy and having a few health issues, which means Cookerati languished this last week, unfortunately.  I have some weird painful nerve things going on with my face, but I seem to be doing a little better on medication.  While at the same time, I snagged my brother in law, and talked him into working on my bedroom closet which meant clearing it out, and temporarily moving into my daughter’s bedroom.  She’s at college and knows that we’ve taken over.

This is a good comfort meal when you need to sit down for a family meal that anyone can prepare.  I do mean anyone.  I have a clay baker that I bake my chicken in, but you can use a roasting pan if you like.  I added some ginger and lemongrass to give it a zingy springy flavor along with garlic, cause I love garlic. I usually bake the chicken and about half way through throw the potatoes and spinach into the pan – use whatever fresh vegetables you like best.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole Chicken
• Olive Oil
• 3 cloves garlic sliced
• 1 onion
• ginger
• lemon grass
• thyme
• sage
• pepper
• salt

Directions:

Lightly spread Olive Oil over the chicken.  Place garlic under the skin – all over.  Grate ginger and lemon grass and sprinkle that under the skin of the chicken, plus throw a little in the cavity along with some of the garlic.  Sprinkle the other herbs and spices along with salt and pepper on top.  Place the chicken into the roasting pan, or clay baker, slice an onion and place around the chicken.  Cover with foil and bake at 325. 

In a bowl, places chopped up veggies and sliced potatoes, sprinkle with some herbs, salt and pepper and toss.  Twenty minutes before the chicken is done – add the potatoes and veggies to the baker and recover.  You can uncover about ten minutes before the end if you want a crispy skin, but we don’t eat the skin, so we don’t do that part. The chicken needs to be 165 deg F, but I’ll take it up to 155, and then let it sit for about ten minutes.  It will rest and go up to about 165.  A meat thermometer is one of my best friends.  I don’t cut apart the chicken to test like my mom used to, just poke it with the meat thermometer.

 

This chicken is delicious, easy and oh so good.  My husband sits and picks the bones clean, there’s never enough left for another meal.

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Is Your Car Prepared For An Emergency?

Today might sound more like a Public Service Announcement than a picnic in the park.  Last Monday’s experience really opened our eyes and made us think about being prepared. Usually during the winter, everyone thinks about getting ready for winter, but are you really ready?  What if you were stuck in a snowstorm between exits barely moving for 4 hours.  Do you have what you need?  What if it was longer?

We were prepared, more than the average person.  We travelled up to Edinboro, PA overnight for a college visit with my son.  We knew that we would be gone overnight and that we might be caught in a snowstorm, so we packed for that.  We had drinks in the cooler, snacks in the car, including trailmix and fruit.  We had blankets, and pillows, gloves, hats, coats, and extra clothing since we were going overnight.  We also had a flashlight and other things. 

Since we were travelling, we were prepared for a long trip with a little extra in case something happened along the way.  What if you were leaving work though, and got stuck right behind an accident when the highway was closed down.  We were moving about a few hundred feet at a time.  The radio kept repeating that one lane was open, so there was hope or at least we thought (they apologized for the false reports the next day).  They also said traffic was being diverted, but it wasn’t.  We finally got close enough to an exit after 4 hours and felt comfortable enough to take it.  From there we were able to slowly drive home.  What if you ate lunch at noon, left work at 3, ended up behind that accident and weren’t able to eat or drink for a long time, would you be prepared?

What I want you to get from this is that you should be a good Boy Scout – be prepared.  Carry a bottle of water to your car every time you leave.  Keep trailmix in your car, or some other snack that won’t go bad easily.  Maybe an emergency bag or cooler to take back and forth from the car.  The accident where you run off the road, it’s good to be prepared for that.  The emergency you don’t imagine is being stranded in the middle of the highway during a snowstorm behind 20 miles of backed up cars in perfect condition with no bruises or broken bones, just a bad case of claustrophobia. It happened to us, and we were lucky, we were prepared – what about you?  Are you a good Boy Scout?  What about just running to the store or to work, are you then?

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