Chicken and olive crockpot stew

I have been cooking up a storm lately, i just haven't been posting about it.  Since that is sort of the whole point of a food blog i suppose i should start posting!

Last week i made something from my binder (my binder is a bunch of printed-out, scribbled-down, or torn-out pages of magazine recipe collection.  it is a mix of things i have made before and things i want to make) that was in my "want to make" section.  I modified it to fit our dietary needs right now but i have confidence that if i made it as originally directed it would still be fabulous and possibly even moreso!

You may have noticed i am on a crockpot kick lately?  Normally i do not break this thing out even once a year but i thought about all the times that i have been too lazy or stressed to cook a proper dinner and we've ended up with In N Out or Zpizza, or like ten days' worth of Big Chopsticks delivery.  So when i ordered a cookbook called The Everyday Low-Carb Slow Cooker Cookbook i was inspired to actually use my crockpot.  The funny thing is though that i while i have made maybe five things in my crockpot in the last month, none of it was a recipe from that book.  Someday, someday.

I don't even need to really post the recipe because here is what i did:  Sprayed the crockpot with nonstick spray.  Put several cut-in-half boneless skinless chicken breasts from my freezer in the bottom.  Dumped a regular sized can of fire roasted tomatoes (with garlic because i love extra garlic) on top.  Sprinkled onion powder, a teaspoon of ground cumin, a teaspoon of ground coriander, half a teaspoon of ancho chile powder, a little less than half a teaspoon of cayenne, some salt, and a few cloves of garlic-pressed garlic on top.  Then i dumped a drained jar of pimento stuffed manzanilla olives on top.  Covered the crockpot, set it on low, and checked back on it in 6 hours.  If you want the real recipe you can find it here. (Sunset Magazine)

I am not sure why this is sideways and I don't know how to fix it, but you can see this is a magazine page recipe from my binder.  It's originally known as Chicken, quinoa, and green-olive stew.  It even has a beer to pair with it.

I shredded it after it was cooked and the chicken sort of soaked up more of the tomato-olive juice.  This whole dish took me less than ten minutes to put together and it was excellent with cheddar cheese or manchego, and some sour cream, or just by itself.  It was the perfect amount of brininess and acidity and spice!

I also ended up making corned beef in the crockpot and while it came out fine i realized i don't like corned beef so now david has quite a bit to eat up.  I think i will make a hash for him with shredded brussel sprouts and onions or something because i feel bad he is just eating it straight up with mustard.

cheese and pie

Today was pretty eventful for david and myself, not just because we traipsed around the LA fabric and flower district but because we brought dairy back into our diet. We've been on a pretty restrictive allergy-reducing diet for the past month or so and we finally got to eat cheese again! A little cheese to start, but any at all was good enough for me.

We had a livingsocial deal for Vin Goat that we had to use by March 1st which was a week or two away from when we were allowed dairy again so we made the trip in and crossed our fingers that it would keep. I love Vin Goat. Their staff is friendly and helpful and while they have a good selection of cheeses to choose from it isn't overwhelmingly large. Plus if you don't know what you're looking for you can just ask and someone will recommend something. I think we usually get the owner when we go in, or at least he is the head cheese guy there. If you have never had Cowgirl Creamery's fresh cottage cheese then i suggest heading in here and getting about a quarter-pound which will only set you back about $3 and it is very very good.

I wanted to try something very different than what i probably would have picked for myself so i asked the gentleman helping us if he could get me a small slab of three cheeses of his choice: one creamy, one salty, one tangy, and i was up for anything so long as it wasn't blue/bleu cheese. He asked if i minded smelly cheese or not and i said i didn't have a preference, but i was suddenly worried just how smelly the cheese might be and if it would contaminate my nice, pretty, nonsmelly fridge. Thankfully none of the cheeses were so strongly scented that they permeated the special cheese paper they use to wrap your picks in, which actually does a very nice job of keeping everything fresh, in my opinion! I must buy some for when i make my own cheeses.

The long-awaited tasting began at breakfast, which is another amazing creation i will show you:

These eggs are from the SoCo Farmer's market and they have the richest, orangest yolks ever. They are really good. On the right is a piece of peppered turkey bacon from Trader Joes that i am reheating.

Then I added a piece of the Black Pig Meat Co. pieces of bacon to reheat. I just wanted variety.

This is the resulting orangey goodness from those farm fresh free range eggs.

Below are the cheeses. I have no idea what was written on the top package but the other ones are Humboldt Fog and Landaff.

My breakfast plate. The cheese from top to bottomish is the Unknown one right below the eggs, then the wedge is the Landaff, and the crumbly white pile below it is the Humboldt Fog.

First i tasted the Landaff. It was ... interesting. A firm, slightly crumbly dry cheese like a manchego, and kind of dull green-yellow in color. It wasn't a cheese i'd had before and it had a flavor i couldn't quite put my finger on, despite it feeling like a very familiar flavor--one i'd tasted but not in cheese form. It was kind of earthy, and at one point i thought maybe a hint of celery came through? But overall i think the best thing i could liken it to was raw potato with skins attached. I even had david try it and he said similar: that it was earthy, maybe herby, and it was sort of like a root vegetable, with a familiar but can't-quite-discern taste. I will have to try this melted and see if the taste alters at all. Maybe it's really good in a frittata, but it's not something i'd snack on by itself again. Lucky me i have half a pound of it still. When I compare this to the other cheeses and my list of desires, i think this was supposed to be the salty cheese but it wasn't hardly salty at all in my opinion. ETA: the cheese definitely loses some of its earthiness while it is melted, but it comes back immediately upon hardening again. i actually really enjoyed it melted on the pork tenderloin!

Next I tried the Unknown one. It had a rind and gooeyness like Brie does (i don't eat the rinds of cheeses if i can help it). If you tried to chew it it sort of balled up in your mouth so i kind of sucked on it to get the flavor out instead. It was extremely mild--very faintly like brie, milky and buttery. Close to the rind was a more firm cheese compared to the middle, but not totally firm, so i ate it off the rind like watermelon because my fork had trouble cutting it without also catching the rind pieces. This for sure was the creamy cheese. Because the flavor was so delicate i had a hard time imagining what to eat it with/on instead of just by itself, so that it wouldn't be lost entirely.

Humboldt Fog. How I dream of thee. By far my favorite out of the three. This was the tangy cheese, i think it's goat's milk. It was not like regular thick chevre, it was downright silky and decadent and it just melted away in my mouth. There was a little bit of rind on either end with a tiny blue-grey vein just underneath as well as through the middle of the slice, horizontally. I peeled off the rind of course and most of that blue-grey stuff went with it. I thought it was maybe ash and i didn't taste anything different when i ate the slim little vein of blue-grey in the middle. But one end, unfortunately the very last bite end for me, had quite a bit of blue-grey under the rind and when i put it in my mouth i had to spit it out. It is blue cheese mold. Ugh, i was so enjoying it and then wham! i was assaulted with terrible, gross, moldy blue cheese flavor and even in its small amount just overwhelmed my tastebuds. I had to eat another nibble of the Landaff to rid my tongue of the taste. So now, i make sure the blue on both ends is cut off, even though the vein in the middle is alright. I will certainly buy again though.

Later in the day, after dinner, I was craving sweet, marzipany goodness. So i figured why not make a frangipane, something i'd never made before, but in my head had looked like a marzipan pie. I made it low carb too, since we're doing that as well. Normally it looks like it's made with a regular pastry crust but i really don't like those so i think the almond crust is better anyway. The recipe i used is adapted from theurbanpocketknife

Low carb sugar free Frangipane Tart - servings vary, if you are me it makes only one serving.

Almond Pie Crust
2 1/4 cups almond meal/flour
1/2 cup shortening
2/3 cup sugar or substitute
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Frangipane
1 cup almond meal/flour
1/2 cup sugar or substitue
pinch of salt
1 large egg
1 egg white
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp vanilla
6 tbsp room temp butter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease your pie/tart/cake dish. Mix the dry ingredients for the crust and then add the extract and cut in the shortening. If it's too dry to decently stick together you can add a teaspoon or two of water but it will appear more crumbly than it actually is so i'd test it by pinching some together and see if it at least just barely holds. Pat into the greased pan and bake 15-20 minutes or until just starting to get golden brown. (Splenda browns things pretty fast and plus the edges are going to be cooked yet again after you add the filling so depending on how dark you like crusts i'd keep this in mind) Cool pretty much completely.

For the filling, mix all the dry ingredients and then mix in the butter completely. Add the egg and egg white and the extracts and mix until totally incorporated. Pour into crust and then spread out evenly. Pop it into the oven for 25-35 mins or until set (doesn't jiggle) and lightly browned. Let cool and serve with whipped cream or whatever you want.

If you like fruit with almonds/marzipan then by all means top it with that. The original recipe adds pears before you bake it, but i just love almond paste/marzipan so much i didn't feel like adding anything today and just topped with some nonfat sugar-free whipped cream i get in a can from Whole Foods. It is nice when i am too lazy to whip up whipping cream each and every time i want some, which is sometimes several nights in a row and my homemade whipped cream doesn't stay whipped more than a couple of days.

I calculated the stats for mine but i don't count splenda cals or carbs so if you do just factor that in. Mine might vary from yours since my shortening said 110 per Tblsp (8 in half a cup) and i used Trader Joes almond meal for the crust and Bob's Red Mill almond meal/flour for the filling, just to mix things up, and they have different stats from each other. If I cut this into 10 slices, each slice would have 385 calories and 3 net carbs. That is what you get for eating a big pile of nuts and fats but boy is it delicious and worth it. I think next time i could even make less crust and underbake the center just a tad to keep it gooey.

In our greedy gluttonous desire for dessert I didn't let it cool entirely and i think that contributed to the crust sort of falling apart as i took the slice from the pan. It was still fabulous and the cinnamon in the crust plus the texture difference totally made the dish.

David didn't want any tart, just whipped cream lol.

ETA yes the crust stayed together better after it was cooled completely. i mean it's held together with just shortening so what did i expect? and the center was a little gooeier the next day too which was awesome. i have just kept it on the counter in the pan, covered with foil.

Crock Pot!

Today was another prep-day, this time with meats. We'll be in LA for a good part of the day tomorrow wandering the fashion district, trying to find a good material for the couch cover so i figured getting things done today would be good. Plus all we had left to eat was some fresh salmon i baked up the other night and eggs, so we needed some other foods. I decided to break out the crockpot so that i could use some cheaper meats and still run some errands during the day. The first thing that went in was a pork loin roast, which i seared on each side after seasoning with pink salt and pepper. I deglazed the pan with a little bit of madeira wine and added a cup of vegetable broth to the pot, along with a bag of frozen pearl onions and one and a half heads of garlic. I don't think i will cook pork loin in the crockpot anymore if this doesn't turn out moist because it's too easy to overcook in this thing, even on low. I turned it off when i checked and the temp was 185! too high for pork. I'll eat some tomorrow and see. When this was done i transferred the roast to a plate and sliced it really thin and put it in a tupperware. I used a slotted spoon to get the garlic and onions out and put those in a container to eat later.

Then i did something i don't normally do. I reused the liquid from the (fully cooked) pork to supplement the next dish that went in: chuck roast. To all my friends, i know this is advised against and i'd never serve it to other people but if david and i got food poisoning from one dish, we wouldn't be eating the other anyway since we'd be too sick and it just makes no sense that we even would get sick since everything is cooking and cooking and cooking, at decent temps. And i didn't want to waste that already garlicky, oniony flavor! Justifying my laziness, and all that.

I seared the chuck the same way as the loin only i also rubbed roasted garlic dry rub from Napa Style on it. Then i put it in the crockpot with tomato paste, some Pepper Plant chipotle pepper sauce, another head and a half of garlic, and some beef broth. I set it on low again and waited.

I was home for this one while it was cooking and dear god crockpots torture me. I can't wait 8 hours for something to cook, especially when it smells so good.

Finally it was done (actually it just got done a few minutes ago, and now it's resting on a plate so i can shred it after it is cool and put it in a tupperware). I am thinking if the juices are any good on their own i'll use some soy flour or something to thicken it up as a gravy for david. I dislike gravy. I prefer mayo.

Meanwhile, earlier while the stuff was just beginning to cook, i fried up some bacon. We got this package from Vin Goat in Corona Del Mar (which is a fabulous cheese place and you should definitely go). It looks and smells little more sugared than i'd prefer it to so i hope it's not sweet because i hate sweet breakfast meats and we are low-carbing right now too. It's also supposedly from sustainably raised pigs, which probably explains the 14$ price tag. I always try to pick the meatiest slabs of bacon, it seems that nowadays it's all fat compared to what i remember as a kid and while some fat is good, i like my protein. The slices are the thickest i've ever seen.

My gross greasy splatterguard that saves my eyes and life most of the time. Sometimes stuff splashes through but mostly it stops it. I will hold it up as a shield in front of my face as i slip the tongs under to turn the bacon.

Extra-crispy bacon, always. and forever.

I have a metal sink rim and a ceramic sink so i will line a little aluminum foil in the drain in a cup form to catch the grease i dump between panfuls. If i plan to keep the grease for something else i will just pour it into a ceramic souffle cup to keep for later. I already have enough bacon grease though, and no bacon grease cookies in the near future.

And voila! Now we have salmon, pork loin, beef roast, bacon, and turkey bacon (not pictured), for the next few days of on-the-go eating, where we can just come home and grab some stuff to eat.

Spice Storage Makeover

Before

I've been busy basically this entire week working on this project so that is why there haven't been any new posts. Well, that might be an exaggeration since it hasn't taken up all my time but this thing has taken a week working on it bit by bit. I first saw a storage/organization idea on thekitchn.com and decided to put my twist on it--a lazier, cheaper twist of course.

The original person ordered some ungodly expensive sheet of metal online and a bunch of jars and magnets and stuck them all together to make a wall-mounted spice rack. I was certain i could find a cheaper sheet of metal and save on glass/costs by using the glass spice bottles i already own and just gluing magnets to those. It's a little on the eclectic side but it works for the purpose and it is sort of like art now.

It took a lot more effort to find a piece of metal than i had initially thought it would. My first idea was to use a magnetic white board so i went to target and bought one, only five dollars! I figured if it didn't work i'd just have a nice new magnetic white board and i'd only be out five dollars, but if it did work i had figured out a mega cheap way to do this. My concern was metal-strength, or whatever that is called, that the magnetic board wouldn't be strong enough. It wasn't. and then i left the board on the ground overnight and Orange Cat puked on it. It's fine now but you see how my life goes.

Then i visited both home depot and lowes but i neglected to think about it first (i just stopped in while nearby) and didn't bring a magneted spice jar with me to test the strength. The metal sheets looked really flimsy and overpriced for that so i decided to revisit and test if i couldn't find a better option first. I was sort of starting to panic at this point because the night before i had already glued a good amount of magnets to most of my spice jars and now they were hanging on the mini fridge in my home office, where it made no sense for them to stay if i failed to find a decent piece of metal to stick on the wall.

While looking online for some airtight food storage containers (still haven't found any that i want) i thought to check the containerstore.com for magnet boards, thinking they wouldn't be flimsy if they had any. They did! and they had a neat-looking one that was on sale, even. From 39 to 29. So david and i went over there, magneted bottle in hand and SUCCESS!! Even he liked it and he is usually resistant to my crazy money spending projects. So the next day he helped me by mounting it to the wall and ensuring it wouldn't lift off when i took a bottle off. I'm still a little iffy on the location of the board but for now it will do and maybe it will grow on me.

It would have been awesome if that was the only battle i had to go through in order to complete this project but i failed to notice that there were a couple of particular spice jars that drifted their way down the side of the mini fridge. The magnets i used were just some 5 dollar pack from walmart that i hot glued to the back. I'm pretty impulsive when it comes to things i consider super simple so again i didn't think things through when i glued the magnets on and the night i was doing this, it took me a couple of bottles before i realized just because i am gluing to a flat-backed bottle the magnets weren't automatically flat as well. So a couple of them had contact issues before i thought to press a yardstick down on the magnets to keep them in line with each other. I thought this was the case with these but even the flush ones were having trouble. And still trouble after adding a third magnet. Note to self, get stronger magnets. I only had one oops where some Spice Hunter (the brand whose bottles were just too heavy) garam masala came crashing to the ground but it made the house smell nice for a while when i vacuumed it up. I have some thinner glass bottles i can transfer that brand to when i get more magnets.

After:

there will be more jars after i get more magnets

so clean clean

See the whiteboard is okay, i even put it to good use drawing up my next project: Making a slipcover for the sectional sofa.

Pow!

pic from seriouseats.com

If you've ever eaten at Agora or possibly another Brazilian steakhouse (which reminds me i need to put them on my recommended restaurants list) you should have had some of their cheesy bread balls called pão de queijo. These have all of my favorite bread textures: soft, chewy, doughy, salty (yes salty is not a texture but i like it nonetheless). They are small and warm (they need to be warm!) little gobs of joy. The first time I had them I was trying to figure out what the middle was made of, because the center and the very outside are different--the outside is kind of dry and seems a little tough while still malleable and the inside was like mozzarella cheese but not. I thought it was an oddly time consuming project for a restaurant to make a million and one dough-covered golf-ball sized bread balls to serve every day. Luckily this is not how they are made, and strangely they don't have that much cheese in them. And no mozzarella! And for those of you avoiding wheat, it's gluten-free.

They are gooey to make and gooey to eat so it all evens out, and if you make a bunch at once to freeze and bake later it is even more worth it. If you don't want to make them and you don't want to go to Agora just to try them out, i've heard you can buy them at brazilian markets and grocery stores but there don't seem to be any around me to confirm.

After scouring the web (or a few google results pages) i decided on the recipe i wanted to use, found here. It worked fantastically well for me, and i even tried one batch with two eggs and one with three (remember i use extra large eggs always, i will stop saying this though because i feel like rachel ray explaining evoo every damn time she mentions it) and unfortunately while my memory is a little foggy from the mega batches i created last year i am pretty sure i personally preferred the ones with three eggs but i know absolutely both the two and three egg batches came out great.

Now i went around to all the mexican grocery stores i could find around here (because i didn't know of any brazilian ones) searching for the manioc flour that someone somewhere on the internets said was far superior and very different than regular tapioca starch, and i wanted to get this thing right. That someone somewhere lied, because in desperation i just went to Marukai and picked up their (very inexpensive) tapioca starch/flour and used that. Okay, the texture of dry tapioca starch gives me shivers, and it might to you too if you're sensitive to that. It is kind of a weird chalky substance similar to cornstarch. I also could not find the "authentic cheese" that is traditionally used (says the internet once again) so i stayed with what the recipe called for: parmesan cheese. You can even add a little bit extra for some extra flavor and it won't damage anything. The end result of this recipe does smell like parmesan cheese, a little tangy and salty and aged, so expect that. There are other recipes with other ratios and ways of preparing like the seriouseats people use a food processor to pulse everything up. But i chose this recipe and did it this way, i like the extra elbow grease.

Here is the recipe:

Pão de Queijo - makes about 70 rounded Tblsp sized

1 cup water (if i recall correctly i tried all milk in this recipe and it was great)

1 cup milk

1/2 cup oil (you can also use butter)

1 teaspoon salt

450 grams tapioca flour (here i have a note that chowhound says up to 500g, so if you're using 3 eggs it's not that big of a deal to not be totally exact and go a bit over. even if the package of product says "450g" i still weigh it out)

2 to 3 eggs

200g grated parmesan cheese

Brink the water, milk, salt, and oil to a boil in a saucepan. Remove from heat and add the tapioca starch. Mix well, transfer to a bowl, and let cool until you can work with the dough.

Add the eggs and knead well. Add the cheese and knead until the dough is smooth.

Roll into Tablespoon-sized balls. (to make it a little easier grease your hands before rolling so that it's not just all sticking to your hands. you may have to do this over and over.) Place the balls on a greased or parchment-lined cookie sheet. (if you plan to freeze these, place them on a parchment-lined sheet that will be able to fit in your freezer until they are solid enough to transfer to a freezer container)

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 mins or until golden brown. (if straight from the freezer baking may take a little longer but will be okay.) Serve warm.

pic from seriouseats.com

Getting ready for the week

I just switched blogs and now i am trying to figure out a good blog design so bear with me. I also got a twitter account (@foodgoblin) that i am trying to figure out too. I'm resistant to change and technology, and my sister once said if nobody stops me i'll probably revert back to chisel and stone. I don't think that is entirely true since i am not sure stone chiseling is eco-friendlier than pencil and paper and i rather like paper so i would probably stop at that regression.

Anyway today after workout david and i went to the SoCo Farmer's Market (soco is their name, not mine) and got a few things for the rest of the week so i thought to practice some picture taking i'd go through the process of prepping things for the week. We got some apples, a couple of grapefruits, some free-range eggs, spinach, cilantro, and lettuce. I also had some salmon that i got on sale at Fresh & Easy that i wanted to portion out and freeze for another time.

pretty pretty eggs

First i put the lettuce in a container of water since it was all still attached to the roots. The farmer said that it works with his hardier lettuces, indicating this was not one of them, but i wanted to try it anyway. If by tonight or tomorrow morning i feel it's starting to wilt i will ice water it and then prep it like i did the spinach.

After the lettuce in a jar, i started to smell cilantro pretty strongly. I hate cilantro, this was purely david's purchase. This stuff was so fresh though that it emanated a stench from out of the bag it was contained in so in effort to avoid puking i decided to prep this first, and as fast as possible. I chopped it and put it in the salad spinner, then dumped it out on some folded paper towels to dry a little. Dear god the kitchen smelled like cilantro so much i was gagging the whole time. For those of you who don't know this already i feel like cilantro tastes/smells like i imagine soapy green baby spit to taste/smell like and i think you're lucky if you like it because it is in practically everything vietnamese and mexican which is cause for a lot of disappointment in my case. After most of the remaining water was sopped up by the paper towel (and there wasn't much), i folded it up in the paper towels and stuffed it into a plastic ziplock. I have several reserved for this purpose that i reuse. The kitchen still smelled terribly so i threw a plink in the garbage disposal to try and refresh it with lemony goodness.

I prepared the spinach in the very same fashion. Chop, rinse and spin, paper towel, fold, ziplock, fridge.

supposedly organic spinach

in the ziplock. i think greens stay fresher this way, but i should probably brush up on my produce-keeping skills by revisiting this link just to make sure there isn't a better way. eta nevermind, i can't find the link. i will just consider my way the right way then.

And now for the salmon prep. First i set everything up, with plastic wrap over my scale so no germs get into the crevices, and a few top-folded-over freezer ziplocks ready. I fold the tops over before i start because when you are tying to finagle raw stuff into a bag you don't want gross remnants and liquid to get all over the outside and the seal, so folding it back helps the meat just touch the inside. Then i rinsed the salmon off and set it upside down on some paper towels to drain out any extra water and so now i could cut the skin off. David likes crispy salmon skin but i don't and i also don't like the dark brown weird meat that touches the skin so i decided today i will just chop it off.

I started to slice away at the stuff that holds the skin on and below is a pic of what it started to look like.

And below is the skinless salmon. I know professionals will laugh at the chop job i did but i forgot to use a smaller knife (as i had learned before to use) and then eventually got impatient and just hacked away. With the lighting it doesn't look so bad.

Below you see i portioned it out. First i cut a chunk and weighed it. It turned out to be about 5oz so i deemed it david's piece. Then i cut another chunk, smaller, and it was about 3oz so i named it my piece. The next piece also ended up 5oz and the remaining chunk was 6oz so i cut that in half. Now i get three pieces and david only two! bwahahah. I will probably use the third for a salad protein since i usually eat lunch at home.

And finally i baggied them and labeled them with oz size and the date. This picture makes me aware that my z looks too similar to a 3 but at least i know what i am trying to say.

i thought i'd also snap a pic of my precious sprouted sweet potato. I am amazed it isn't dead after five months, and only a day or so ago i thought to put it in a cup of water. I don't think the water is doing anything. i think today is when i'll cross off the "plant this" on my to-do list. i found how here.

here is other sweet potato's friend. also pictured: the farmers' market organic apples and sweet grapefruit

So now you guys have a basic idea of how i will take a few hours once or twice a week and prep the food for the rest of the week. If i have onions i will usually chop them (unless i know i won't be using them until the very end of the week), if i have a huge package of meat/seafood i will freeze what i don't think i'll use and keep the rest in the fridge, shred a block of cheese, sometimes i will even cook bacon on my prep day so that i have just one day of total-kitchen-cleanup. And now it's easy to grab a handful of spinach to add to an omelette in the morning so i'm more likely to eat my greens. We just got a new fridge but it is smaller than the old one so i will actually do prep work twice a week now most likely, so that i don't overstuff the fridge all at once. It still beats have to chop onions and fry bacon every single time you need it over the course of the next week though.

fyi my next gadget is totally going to be a foodsaver so that there is even less chance of freezerburn and to keep all my food superfresh. if you have one already i am jealous.

Breakfast on the Go

Since I already had my The Wine and Food Lover's Diet book out (i really wish this guy'd write another one of these, his recipes are superb and you'd never know it was low glycemic) i figured i'd post one of my favorite breakfast-on-the-run recipes of his, along with a few others. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, next to dinner, and i usually go to bed dreaming about it so i have quite a few dishes i can share with everyone, and these are some prepare-ahead ones i like.

Shrimp and Pea Omelet Cups with Summer Herbs - serves 6

Shrimp and pea filling:

1 Tablespoon unsalted butter

1 clove garlic, very finely chopped

12 large shrimp (about 12 oz), peeled and deveined

1/2 cup baby green peas

3 Tablespoons finely chopped fresh basil

2 Tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint

Omelet base:

12 eggs (i always use extra large but regular large would work)

1/2 cup shredded Gruyere or Jarlsberg cheese

1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (kosher salt is the big stuff)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

To make the filling: In a skillet over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until softened, about 1 minute. Add the shrimp and cook, turning occasionally, until bright pink and opaque, about 1 minute. Stir in the peas, basil, and mint. Let cool.

To make the omelet base: Place the eggs, cheese, pepper, and salt in a blender and process until smooth. Divide among six 1-cup nonstick jumbo muffin cups (or among 12 regular sized ones and you'll only add one shrimp to each). Add the shrimp mixture, making sure that each jumbo cup has 2 shrimp.

Bake until lightly browned and puffed, 15 to 25 minutes. The omelets will puff up like a souffle and then deflate a bit when removed from the oven. Serve hot.

I know to some people shrimp for breakfast sounds weird (and it did to me too until i tried this) but it really works well with the peas and the herbs! I've yet to try a crab breakfast dish though because that still weirds me out, but i will someday and i'll probably have to make it myself. Two of these regular cups or one jumbo one is either a good protein source with breakfast (like pair it with some fruit or yogurt) or a good snack on its own, and they are great and healthy whether or not you low carb.

You can basically make any frittata into muffin cups or you can make a traditional one and then pre slice it and put it into tupperware containers to grab-and-go. Here's a frittata that is reminiscent of pizza from George Stella's Livin' Low Carb by George Stella, called Frittata Italiana. It looks like a lot of ingredients and a lot of work but if you are like me and have red peppers in jars on hand, and have stuff like onions pre-chopped (if i use part of an onion in something i will chop the rest up and save in a tupperware container so i don't have to chop onions more than once a week) and cheese pre shredded (when i buy a block of cheese i will take the time to shred all of it at once and save in a tupperware container for later) then it's not so bad. You will need a saute pan that is oven-proof, meaning no plastic handle. You could probably transfer the frittata to a baking dish when the time comes to put it in the oven but you'll probably need a longer bake time.

Frittata Italiana - serves 8

6 oz fresh Italian sausage, crumbled out of the casing

1/4 cup diced red onion

2 Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced

1/2 teaspoon minced fresh garlic

2 Tablespoons butter

1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese

3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

2 Tablespoons diced roasted red bell peppers

2 Tablespoons sliced black olives

2 Tablespoons chopped fresh basil

Egg mixture:

10 large eggs

1/4 cup heavy cream (you can sub any milk you like)

1/4 cup water (if using regular milk for the cream then replace this water with milk too)

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg (he suggests freshly ground)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

In a saute pan over medium high heat, brown the crumbled Italian sausage with the onion, tomatoes, and garlic. Drain off the excess fat using a spoon or a turkey baster.

Please all the ingredients for the egg mixture in a bowl and whisk well.

Melt the butter in a large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. (i usually use the same pan i sauteed the first ingredients in to save on dish washing. just remove and set aside the sausage mix first)

Pour the egg mixture into the pan. Using a rubber spatula, slowly push the cooked egg fro mone side of the pan to the other to allow all of the raw egg to reach the bottom of the pan (this creates height and keeps the bottom from burning).

When the frittata is cooked on the bottom but the top is still runny, spoon the cooked sausage mixture, the cheeses, and red pepper over the top.

Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake for 12 to 15 minutes. (Remove the foil for the last few minutes of cooking for a nicely browned top.) The frittata is done when firm and a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean.

Cut into 8 servings and serve hot, garnished with the black olives and basil.

Some other variations would be just tomato, mozzarella, and basil, or maybe a southwest kick with shredded chicken, black beans, salsa, and cheddar. The possibilities with frittatas are endless.

If you're not an egg person you are probably not my friend but i will help you out anyway. Each of these are also good as an accompaniment to the above dishes (except for the first link, unless you really REALLY like eggs for breakfast), and you prepare them ahead of time and portion them out just the same. Fyi, jam jars are pretty amazing for take-along breakfast/snack containers:

Baked egg in an avocado half

Oatmeal in jars

Homemade fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt parfaits (and you can bring along a baggie of nuts/granola to top it off if you're into that) (and if you don't like yogurt, a friend of mine subs cottage cheese for it and drizzles a a little honey on top)

Oatmeal Clafoutis bars

Strawberry Nutella poptarts, for the ambitious

4-ingredient banana oat bars

Blueberry buttermilk scones (or any scones, for that matter, even savory ones)

Muffins, like spiced pumpkin muffins with fig honey butter

Fruit salad put into jars

Cook up bacon or sausage links and baggie them up

Protein shakes in in freezable plastic water bottles to unfreeze later

I could really go on and on!