I’m loving my new Rachael Ray anodized aluminum grill pan. For lunch yesterday I made turmeric cinnamon jasmine rice and grilled zucchini and yellow squash in the grill pan. Maybe it was the grill marks distracting me, but it seemed to carmelize up quickly and taste better than simply sauteed. I sliced them into thin planks for maximum grilling surface. A spritz of olive oil onto the grill, then onto the planks themselves. Sprinkle crushed or dried rosemary, basil, tarragon, salt and pepper. Who knew a couple of squash could be so yummy and satisfying? Then I created the perfect dessert, also in the grill pan: I sliced a banana into planks and lightly grilled it, then tossed in a half handful of fresh raspberries and raisins. I added a little water to plump up the raisins. It was delicious, much better than a bowl of ice cream. And zero fat or added sugar.

Into 16 oz of low sodium chicken broth, drop a thumbsized piece of ginger sliced thin (will remove later), one stalk of lemongrass chopped into one inch pieces (will remove later), 2 keffir lime leaves chopped and a tsp of tamarind paste. Heat to a rolling simmer for 20 minutes, then drain the liquid into another pot to remove all the sticks and grasses.  It’s just the broth you’re making here. After straining you can add veggies and carcass.   Continue reading →

For Christmas, I prepared a turkey breast in an oven bag.  I first made a mixture of:

Two tablespoons of flour, two tablespoons each of fresh chopped rosemary, sage, thyme.

One tablespoon each tarragon, onion powder, garlic powder, curry powder.

A half teaspoon ground cinnamon and crushed mustard seed, salt and pepper.
I mixed it well, then placed 1/3 of the mixture in a roasting bag and shook it all around to coat the bag.  I cuffed the top of the roasting bag down to make it easy to put my turkey breast in there after I’d seasoned it.  To the flour and herb mixture, I added 3 tablespoons of olive oil and mixed it into a gooey paste,  I put on kitchen gloves and rinsed the bird off and dried it well.  I then rubbed it down with the oil and herb mixture , under the skin, too, and placed it in the cooking bag.  The 7 pound breast went into a 325 oven for 105 minutes.  It was flavorful and juicy and clean up was a snap.     Continue reading →

Relishes, chutneys and salsas, are all related, but they have different taste and textural characteristics.  They are made from basically the same ingredients and differ from each other primarily in the relative proportions of these ingredients.  By changing the proportions, each side dish gets its distinctive qualities.  For example, salsas are usually the hottest of the three, i.e., there is more emphasis on the hot peppers. Chutneys are usually the fruitiest and relishes generally emphasize vegetables more than chutneys do.  Chutneys tend to be a tad thicker than relishes and significantly less south of the USA border than salsas.  Continue reading →

I’m not a dessert eater but I do like a sweet element when I cook turkey, as I did at Thanksgiving.   I made a semi-homemade cranberry orange apricot chutney.  Here’s the recipe:
Continue reading →

My favorite holidays are the ones where I don’t have to be anywhere.  Planning on a quiet Thanksgiving, it was the midnight before when I decided to clean the house.  I moved furniture around as I steam cleaned my floors.  I took a stool, 2 chairs and a small table to the shed. I disassembled YinYang’s “kitty city” which is a few sizes of cardboard boxes with doors and windows cut out, side by side in the living room. I moved the table out into the middle of the living room and set it for dinner.  Already the room looked larger and brighter.  I decided to chop vegetables in preparation for Thanksgiving dinner the next day, so I began with cleaning the kitchen and then washing all the cleaning cloths.    Continue reading →

I’m having turkey this Thanksgiving. I don’t always. I enjoy the ritual cooking of it but not the preparing of a whole bird. Turkey breast alone isn’t an option as I prefer dark meat. This year for the first time, I ordered a small turkey from Publix that I picked up this morning. I plan on making green beans, mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy. I always keep it low fat. I’ll steam the green beans along with some red pepper strips and serve them simply with sea salt, coarse ground black pepper and a lemon squeeze, Earth Balance and gomasio.    I’ll mash the potatoes with salt and pepper, a little almond milk and coconut powder and some Earth Balance spread. The gravy I’ll make using mushrooms and an organic brown gravy mix. The stuffing will be bread crumbs, roasted mushrooms, onion, celery, apple, diced dried apricot with fresh rosemary, sage and thyme. I may add eggplant and I may stuff it into red peppers. Neither the man nor I are dessert eaters, so no pies, but the sweet/sour element will be an cranberry orange and apricot chutney made with onion, bell pepper, allspice, cayenne, cinnamon, cloves, cardamon, apple cider vinegar and fresh shaved ginger.  I usually spend holidays working but Thursday, I’m just going to relax and bask in how thankful I am for this life I’ve been blessed with.

Mix equal parts each of these dried spices:
dried ginger
marjoram
rosemary
oregano
nutmeg
thyme
sage

Add half as much black pepper.
For delicious and robust flavor on meats and in stuffing.

From http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/10/how-to-make-simple-salad-worth-eating-vinaigrette.html

I’m a great cook but do not have a flair for making salad dressings unless I follow a recipe to the letter.  But I’m a sucker for having a formula I can apply to tasks.  When I discovered the secret to the perfect dressing is a simple formula, my pointy little ears perked up.  I found this article by J. Kenji López-Alt, who writes: “The key to a perfect simple salad: knowing how to make a properly emulsified vinaigrette, applying just the right amount and washing and drying your greens thoroughly.  Among the techniques that take you down the path towards a perfect simple salad are an emulsified vinaigrette, dressing-to-green ratio, clean and dry leaves, and proper tossing technique. Let’s look at each of them.”  Continue reading →

Dig the texture of instant ramen noodles, but not the 17 grams of fat and 1,800 mg sodium? The instant noodles have an ingredient that, when eaten too often and built up in your tummy, will slow your digestion down to a crawl. A healthy alternative is chuka soba curly noodles. Only three minutes to cook and much better nutritionally than instant ramen. Sure, it’s 20-30 times more expensive than the instant but that’s just $2 to $3 a package. http://kame.com/japanese-curly-noodles/ I love the instant ramen noodle texture and bite but when I discovered they were pre-fried and almost plastic coated, I really dig having a healthy alternative. Once a couple of years ago, I had instant ramen for lunch and also for dinner the same day. I never used the spice packet, I always added my own sauce and spices. It was very slow to digest and felt very heavy moving through my system. I researched why and now am glad there’s a healthy alternative.

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