No bake peanut butter coconut fat bomb cookie things

I’ve been eating low carb/kinda keto for months now, but just recently have I gotten serious about tracking my macros, which is keto shorthand for “tracking your fat and protein and net carb intake.” “Macros” are why fat bombs exist, because getting enough fat in your diet without blowing past your carb goal can be tough. I’ve tried a few recipes for fat bombs, and they’re not bad, but so far all have contained artificial sweetener.

When you’re using large amounts of sweetener, you have to be VERY aware that some of them can cause unpleasant side effects. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say that eating too much sugar alcohol (like maltitol, which is used in a lot of sugar-free candy) can be a disaster. It’s not too bad for me, since I’m by myself most of the day, but I don’t let my family eat anything sweetened with the White time bomb, because no one needs those side effects when they’re trapped at school or in a meeting.

Even the erythritol based sweeteners “may cause discomfort,” and it seems like I’m one of the lucky saps who are sensitive to it. So I’m trying to find fat bomb recipes where I don’t need sweetener, but they’re few and far between, especially the ones that aren’t one step away from eating straight coconut oil.

Today, though, it occurred to me that no-bake cookies might be a good jumping off point for a fat bomb, and I was glad to find lots of people had done the recipe testing (and macro calculating) for me. I am pretty happy with how this recipe turned out, even if I did cheat by using regular peanut butter and leaving out the artificial sweetener. It’s got good flavor, it’s got something to chew (the creamy ones kind of squick me out), and there’s nothing in them my family can’t eat. Give them a try if you’ve got any low carb people on your holiday invite list - they’ll be glad to have something they can eat at dessert!

Trust me, eat this

You know how someone will tell you, "Less is more," and you're all, "Screw that, I'm throwing another 15 ingredients into this soup because I know that one of them will make it transcendently awesome?"  And then the soup sucks because really, who wants creamy chili cheddar chicken soup with rice and noodles and cabbage, for God's sake?

This is not one of those recipes.

This is a recipe that is so good, I'm staying up late to write a real post on my last day of vacation.  Behold the many facets of its awesomeness:

• It's got 10 ingredients, only two of which need to be chopped and one of which is optional
• It can be ready in 20 minutes flat
• It only gets two pots and a strainer dirty, yet it's not spaghetti
• It came off the back of a bag of Pennsylvania Dutch egg noodles about 20 years ago, back when men were men, chili beef noodles were chili beef noodles and nobody east of California thought about putting seitan in anything
• It's called "chili," yet contains none of those mealy little red beans that people insist on throwing into their otherwise perfectly decent recipes

Chili Beef Noodles

1 pound ground beef

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 clove garlic, minced

2 teaspoons chili powder

16 ounces canned tomatoes

15 ounces tomato sauce

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

hot pepper sauce (optional)

8 ounces egg noodles

In a large skillet, brown the ground beef, onion, and garlic.  Drain.  Stir in the chili powder; add tomatoes, tomato sauce, salt, and pepper.  Add hot pepper sauce to taste, if you like your food spicy.  Simmer 10 more minutes, stirring occasionally.  Meanwhile, cook a whole bag of wide egg noodles according to package directions.  Serve meat mixture over egg noodles.

Serves 6

Best sandwich I've made recently

Layer, in order:

• naan-like flatbread, heated for 15 seconds in the microwave to make it softer
• drizzle of parmesan ranch salad dressing
• three really thin slices of deli turkey
• three pieces of green head lettuce, stalky parts removed
• half a fistful of alfalfa sprouts
• about a tablespoon of sunflower seeds

... all squished down a bit and folded up into a sort of taco-like shape that dropped remarkably little stuff on my plate. Nom nom nom, indeed!

Virtual Christmas, part 3: Making Merry

It wouldn't be Christmas without some serious baking going on around here.

This year I decided to use up some leftover Halloween candy to make stained glass cookies. Basically, you crush up hard candy (in our case, Dum-Dum lollipops) and sprinkle them in cut-out holes in whatever sugar cookie recipe you usually use.

In the oven they get all melty and gooey and bubbly, but once they come out and cool down, the sugar hardens into a pretty center.

Honestly, the pretty parts don't taste that great unless you're using expensive candies, but they sure look nice. We did some oversized ones like this to include with the cookies we're giving to neighbors and friends.

As you can see from the background in that picture, we got a bit of snow earlier this week. Not the 2 feet that are keeping my parents stuck on the east coast, but enough that we've had to go outside to play in it almost every day. There isn't enough for a proper snowman, and until recently it hasn't been the right consistency for snowballs, so we've been stuck with snow angels and tromping around aimlessly ... until now:

Of course, it's supposed to start raining soon, and continue through Christmas day, but it was nice to have snow on some days when we had nowhere we needed to go and nothing that had to be done.

Oh, hai. Are you still here? Here, have a cookie recipe, it will make you feel better.

Here's a new cookie recipe, courtesy of Liza pointing to a picture of a cookie and my tweaking of a recipe in my first edition copy of the Betty Crocker Cooky Book (published in 1963 and laboriously hunted down in an antique shop in Avon, Ohio, in 2000). Best. Cookbook. Ever.

And these cookies are pretty darn good - light, crispy, buttery, lots of orange flavor that's not overpowering, crunchy sugar on the outside, festive but still appropriate when it's not Christmas ... are you drooling yet? You should be.

adapted from Petticoat Tails/Kaleidoscope Cookies (makes 5 dozen)

1 cup butter

1 cup sifted confectioners' sugar

1 tsp orange extract

2 1/4 cups Gold Medal Flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp finely grated orange rind

food coloring

decorator sugar

red cinnamon candies

Mix butter, sugar, and extract thoroughly. Mix flour, salt, and orange rind; stir in. Mix with hands. Add food coloring to tint to desired color. Mold in rolls about 2" across. Wrap in waxed paper; chill several hours or overnight.

Heat oven to 400 F. Cut roll into slices about 1/8" thick. Roll the edge of each slice in decorator sugar. Place a little apart on ungreased baking sheet and press a red cinnamon candy into the center of each cookie. Bake 8 to 10 min., or until barely browned.

The original recipe was double this size, and it specified you could use vanilla, rose, wintergreen, or almond extract. The orange was my idea, as was the addition of the rind, which I got from two little tangerines I had in the fridge. The cinnamon candies were my idea, too, mainly because I know the rest of my family won't eat them, so the half of the recipe I baked with candies is safe from predation.

Cookbook review: The South Beach Diet Taste of Summer Cookbook

Yeah, so my doctor told me I needed to lose some weight.  Like, 12 pounds in the next three months.  Not too difficult, but I figured some healthy new recipes might help jumpstart things.

I didn't find many appealing "diet" cookbooks at our library, but one that stood out was The South Beach Diet Taste of Summer Cookbook.  I knew that cutting out the "bad" carbs was going to be part of my diet approach, so this seemed like a good way to find recipes that weren't so focused on pasta, tortillas, and toast.

I like the fact that the recipes don't seem like diet cooking ... there are no weird techniques you'd never use in regular cooking, and very few odd ingredients that you wouldn't normally use.  There are some artificial sweeteners in some of the recipes (mostly desserts and a few breakfast smoothie type things), but those would be easy to sub in a smaller amount of regular sugar if you wanted to avoid the chemicals.  I think the best thing is that lots of the recipes are self-contained, with veggies and protein all in one shot.  That means fewer things to think about when trying to get food on the table, and it also means I don't feel like I'm missing out on something by cutting back.

It's also nice that there are recipes for all three "phases" of the diet, which means there are very low carb recipes, moderate carb recipes, and some recipes that are for the "maintenance" side of the South Beach lifestyle.  There are also suggestions on how to take the phase 2 recipes and make them lower carb, for example, which makes things more flexible.

This week we tried four recipes from the book:  two chicken, one beef, and one vegetarian.  Three of them were great and I'll definitely be making again, and one was good, but probably won't show up again for us.  Here's what we tried:

Spicy Chicken and Black Bean Tacos:  This makes a ton of food, especially considering you're supposed to cram it all onto four tortillas.  We ended up serving it open-faced, and there was enough of the filling mixture to cover the tortillas about 1/2" thick all the way around.  The chicken/bean mixture is a bit dry, so we added a small bit of shredded cheese and some salsa at the table.  The chicken preparation was very easy, and yielded chicken that was still tender on the inside while being nice and crispy on the outside.  Definitely going to keep this recipe, although in the future I might tweak it with more tomatoes or something else to make it a little saucier.

Herb Marinated Sirloin with Roasted Asparagus and Tomatoes:  This is the stand-out recipe of all the ones we tried.  Put the rub on the steak, let it sit around for a while, then pan-fry it.  While the steak is resting after it's cooked, roast the asparagus and tomatoes in the oven for less than 10 minutes.  Perfectly done, perfectly complementary, and really, really tasty.  We'll definitely be making this one again, and I'll be using the asparagus/tomato technique a lot.  We love our asparagus around here!

Curried Chicken Salad with Peanuts: This was the only disappointment in the bunch.  It tasted fine, and the mix of textures in the salad was nice with the tender chicken and crunchy veggies and peanuts.  But the recipe makes an insane amount of dressing for the amounts of salad ingredients, and if you follow the recipe, you're making the dressing in the serving bowl before adding the veggies, so you don't know until it's too late that you're actually making soup.  Seriously, we saved half of this for leftovers the next day, and in the 7" tall plastic container we used, at least 3.5" at the bottom was sauce.  If I made this again (which I probably won't - curried chicken salad just doesn't do it for me), I'd make the dressing seperately and add it at the last minute in small increments.  You could always pass the extra at the table in case anyone wants theirs drowned in dressing like the original recipe suggests.

Vietnamese Style Vegetables with Rice Noodles:  This is the only one I can't find online already, and it's so good, I can't resist sharing the recipe with you.  Considering how few ingredients are in the sauce, this has a remarkable depth of flavor ... sweet/tangy/spicy/smoky.  Yum!  My only quibble is that the directions given in the recipe for cooking the rice noodles didn't match the ones on the package, and I should have followed the package instructions.  There was a little bit of last-minute panicked improvisational rice noodle cooking, but I think it turned out okay anyway.  

Vietnamese Style Vegetables with Rice Noodles 

The South Beach Diet Taste of Summer Cookbook 

2 ounces rice noodles

1 tablespoon chili paste (from a jar)

1 tablespoon Asian fish sauce

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 large head broccoli, cut into small florets (4 cups)

1 medium red bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 medium red onion, thinly sliced

1 medium zucchini, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced into half-moons

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro

4 lime wedges

Cook noodles according to package directions.  Drain and set aside.

While noodles are cooking, in a small bowl whisk together chili paste, fish sauce, lime juice, and vinegar.

In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium-high heat.  Add broccoli and toss to coat; cook, tossing gently, until tender, about 4 minutes.  Transfer broccoli to a plate.

Add remaining 1 tablespoon oil to the skillet and heat over medium-high heat.  Add pepper, onion, and zucchini; cook, stirring frequently, until vegetables are just beginning to soften, about 4 minutes.  Return broccoli to the skillet and cook, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes more.  Stir in chili paste mixture, cover, and cook 1 minute more.

Add noodles to the skillet and toss well.  Add cilantro and toss again.  Divide among 4 plates and serve warm with lime wedges.

Makes 4 servings.

31/365

1. Blowdrying my hair for the first time in months and having it look perfect.

2. Starting a hat and finishing it the same day, and having it turn out exactly the way it was supposed to.

3. Holly's cornbread recipe**. Oh. My. God.

4. "No, Daddy, the WHITE blood thingees are the part that fight off the germs, and the RED blood thingees are the part that take the food and air all over your body."

5. Realizing that my daughter will attempt to read an almost infinite number of new words, as long as they are on flashcards that can be turned into a game of go fish, memory, or "jump on the matching word on the poster on the floor and I'll make a funny noise if you're right."


** From a cooking forum post by "Holly" from years ago, which I attempted to find but couldn't. I consider that due diligence, so I don't feel at all bad about sharing the recipe now. This makes a sweet cornbread with a sticky/crunchy top, and I swear I have to be physically restrained from eating the entire pan by myself.

1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour
1 cup cornmeal

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Melt the butter in a 9x9 pan in the oven (this greases the pan and melts the butter for the recipe). Meanwhile, combine flour, cornmeal, salt and baking soda in a bowl.

Beat eggs, sugar, and buttermilk in a second bowl, then add melted butter.

Incorporate dry ingredients into the wet mix just until combined.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs on it.

According to my recipe software, 1/12th of this recipe has 210 calories (almost 40% of which come from fat), which could explain why they taste so very, very good.

Menu planning

Yeah, so I haven't been cooking much, what with the crappy weather coinciding with the blues and the total failure of the grocery pixies to come and drop off ingredients in my refrigerator. But I'm going to get it in gear this month, starting with an idea I read somewhere for how to save money on groceries - plan out menues for a whole month, so that you can minimize waste and maximize the usefulness of leftovers.

I'm not going overboard, but I did sit down this morning and come up with 20 of my favorite recipes that are going to be the backbone of this month's menues. I've got a vegetarian meal, a soup, and something that makes lots of leftovers each week, plus two days each week for using leftovers up or going out for a treat. I've got rough ideas for side dishes listed (which ones get a fresh vegetable, which a frozen, which a salad, which don't need anything extra). Should make grocery list preparation a bit easier for the next few weeks.

So, without further ado, here's the plan (minus the side dishes):

Week 1: Vegetable lasagna, California pot roast, roast chicken, Crock-Pot chili, and tomato gorgonzola soup.

Week 2: Broccoli mushroom spaghetti, pork roast, sloppy joes, chicken tetrazzini (with leftover roast chicken from week 1), pork salsa soup (with leftover pork from the roast this week)

Week 3: Vegetable fritatta, goulash, chili beef noodles, homemade pizza, lemon chicken rice soup

Week 4: Huevos Gretcheros*, beef Burgundy, pork tenderloin, Crock-Pot beef carnitas, pork wild rice soup (with leftover pork from the tenderloin)

It will be interesting to see how long I manage to stick with the plan (I give it two weeks until real life intervenes and I end up eating nothing but peanut butter for another week), and whether twenty recipes are sufficiently varied to keep from getting boring. I have a lot more recipes I'd like to include, so I figure I can swap out some of the heartier ones for more summer-friendly recipes when the weather starts to warm up. Because as much as I'd like to, I don't think we're going to be digging out the grill to make any yakiniku in February, and my grandmother's spaghetti sauce is a waste of time unless you use fresh tomatoes that are actually ripe.

So, what are your favorite standby recipes? How do you plan your meals each week/month/year? Talk amongst yourselves :)


* Basically, scrambled eggs with ham and cheese (and whatever else I feel like throwing in), wrapped up in tortillas, covered with salsa and baked until they're all heated through and the cheese is melted. Not quite huevos rancheros, not quite egg burritos, they're my own recipe, and they're never the same twice.

Another thing my parents would never have predicted I'd say ...

"I really need to stop eating these turnips, but they're just so good!"

The recipe that made me (and Jason, who ate even more than I did) a convert:

Turnips in Mustard Sauce, from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• about 3 pounds white turnips, rutabaga, or a combination, peeled and quartered
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 1 cup chicken, beef, or vegetable stock
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves for garnish

1. Place the oil in a large, deep skillet that can later be covered and turn the heat to medium. A minute later, add the turnips, salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until the turnips begin to brown, about 10 minutes.
2. Add the stock, cover, and simmer until the turnips are tender, 10 to 15 minutes.
3. Remove the turnips to a serving bowl with a slotted spoon; keep warm. Mix the cornstarch into the mustard and stir the mixture into the pan juices. Cook over low heat until lightly thickened, a minute or two longer. Pour the sauce over the turnips, garnish, and serve.

We served these with the pork roast (which is from the same cookbook), and they were really good together.

Just be warned - gaseous turnip eruptions can be deadly.

Smoky Baba Ghanouj

My god, this is soooo good. And it only took two grocery stores and half an hour of staring at the imported food section to find the tahini (hint: it was in the Kosher food section). Go forth and baba-fy the world while the eggplants are cheap at the farm markets!

From The Complete Cooking Light Cookbook, p. 24, not that they were nice enough to put this online with all the other recipes or anything.

Smoky Baba Ghanouj

Prep: 30 minutes, Chill: 2 hours

6 (6-inch) pitas
cooking spray
2 eggplants, cut in half lengthwise (about 2 pounds)
1 garlic clove
1/4 cup tahini
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
Dash of paprika

1. Preheat the oven to 400F
2. Split pitas; cut each half into 4 wedges. Place wedges in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake at 400F for 9 minutes or until crisp and browned. Set aside.
3. Coat a grill rack with cooking spray and place on grill over medium-hot coals (350 to 400F). Place eggplant halves, cut side up, on rack; grill, covered, 20 minutes or until very tender. Remove from grill and cool slightly. Peel eggplant and set aside.
4. Drop garlic through food chute with food processor on; process until minced. Add eggplant, tahini, lemon juice, and salt; process 45 seconds or until smooth, scraping sides of the bowl once. Transfer to a bowl; cover and chill.
5. Sprinkle with paprika; serve with toasted pita bread wedges.

Yield: 24 servings (serving size: 2 tablespoons dip and 2 pita chips)

Oh. My. God.

You must go try this recipe:

http://www.bhg.com/recipe/appetizers-snacks/farmers-tomato-pie/

I made this for dinner tonight, using homemade pie dough and tomatoes and basil from my garden, and it was so good I thought I was going to pass out. Seriously. I mean, tomatoes and cheese are pretty hard to screw up, but my god, this was awesome.

Must not eat it cold out of the refrigerator for dessert ...

I love being on the first page of google search results

"tomato gorgonzola soup"

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGIH_enUS260US261&q=tomato+gorgonzola+soup

#10 and rising, folks ... anybody want to go and click through a couple times to see if it raises me up a few notches? I will personally donate $100 to the ASPCA if we can get me to #1 by the end of the month. Who's with me on this?

Last week's recipes

After weeks of "I don't know, pick whatever you want to eat," Jason inexplicably requested that I cook Thai food last week, and I obliged by hauling out Step-By-Step Thai and cooking all of our meals from it. The winners:

Chicken and Noodle One-Pot, which is sort of a coconut/curry/lime soupy noodle dish. Yummmmmm!

Sesame Hot Noodles, which I served as a side dish to go along with the Roast Red Pork and some stir-fried snow peas. All of them were good on their own, but they were much better when we mixed them all together and called it Thai Lo Mein. The pork wasn't quite the same as the red pork you get in Chinese wonton soup or fried rice, but it was good - the allspice made it almost sweet, and while it didn't smell too appetizing, the taste was really good and it was really hard to stop nibbling pieces off while I carved the loin into slices.

Carrot and Cilantro Salad, which I served as a side dish with Sesame Skewered Chicken with Ginger Baste. I really liked the salad and couldn't stop snitching from it while we were waiting for the chicken to cook on the grill. Jason was less enthused, but I think I can convince him to eat it again. We both agreed that the chicken was excellent, and regretted having to share it with the friends we were cooking with that night (just kidding, guys! sort of...). I used some of the red Sriracha chile sauce (the stuff in the squirt bottles on the tables at Thai restaurants) as a dip for the chicken, and it perked things up nicely.

Since I've been working on the patio all this week, I've fallen back on my tried and true recipes, including an asparagus frittata, the horribly named Zippy Beef Mac and Cheese, and Tomato Corn Chowder. Nothing inspiring, but I know how long the recipes take to fix, I know they turn out edible, and I know the leftovers freeze well (except the frittata ... but there's never any leftovers of that, anyway). Not exactly a glowing endoresement, I know, but hey, we can't cook gourmet every week, can we?

Cooking update

Chicken and Salsa Soup - really good for something so simple. We used the lime-flavored corn chips and about twice as much cheese as the recipe recommended, and I think we'll do both next time we make this.



Also from Better Homes and Gardens was a grilled vegetable sandwich recipe that isn't anything special ... except for the cumin mayo. We didn't do these as sandwiches, we grilled them at a friend's house and served them over spinach as a side dish salad, and boy, were they good. I'm going to be using that mayo recipe for other veggies ... or as a pasta salad dressing ... mmmmmm.



I'm switching cookbooks for a few weeks because I'm sick of looking at this one on the counter ... so we'll see if Cooking Light has anything worth sharing with you guys. Here's hoping so!

Even Jason thought this was really good

Usually I like my cooking a lot more than Jason does, or at least I'm more demonstrative about it, but last night's dinner was the exception. I thought it was pretty good, but he just raved about it. And he liked it even more when I told him the green stuff wasn't cabbage, it was broccoli. Liza even ate one of the pieces of chicken, and she nibbled a few of the vegetables while she waited for her quesadilla to heat up. If anything is worthy of a blog mention, I guess it's the recipe that scored the trifecta in our house.

Thai Chicken Wraps, from the Better Homes and Gardens Big Book of 30-Minute Dinners - kid-tested, husband-approved. And yes, if you push it you can actually have these done in 30 minutes, especially if you don't have a 3-year-old "helping."

****
In other cooking news, yesterday I tried a new variation of my mother's standard banana bread recipe, and boy, did it work well. The original recipe specifies to cook the batter in a small loaf pan, but usually by the time the center is cooked, the outside has gotten dark brown and borders on crusty. It's unfortunate - I'm forced to nibble around the outside edge of each slice first so that the last taste in my mouth is the yummy center.

Yesterday I tried cooking it in a 8x8" Pyrex pan, and it was SOOOOOOO much better. The whole thing cooked in about 45 minutes, it's a nice light brown, and there's none of that weird bitter chemical almost burnt taste to the outside. Liza actually prefers the outside part to the inside, nibbling off the top and sides and leaving the rest in a forlorn little pile of banana-y goodness that I'd totally devour if it wasn't covered in kid spit.

So here's the recipe:

Bohl* Babes' Banana Bread

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup Crisco
1 egg
3 whole bananas, mashed (the older and mushier, the better)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 pinch salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix ingredients in order in an electric mixer. Bake in a greased, floured loaf pan for 50 minutes (or a greased, floured 8x8" pan for about 45 minutes) or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean. Cool in the pan for a few minutes, then release from pan and cool completely on a wire rack. Store in airtight container or plastic bag.


*Bohl is my maternal grandmother's maiden name, and it's how I sometimes refer to the women on my mom's side of the family. Grandma is one of 10 or 11 kids, so there are plenty of Bohl ladies around, even if very few of us have "Bohl" in our actual names ... and we're all stunningly beautiful, of course. They're the family I visit when we go to reunions.

******
Edited to add: tried another recipe from the BHG cookbook tonight. I wasn't crazy about the chicken, but the veggies and sauce were nice, and they would make a great side dish on their own. Check it out: Thyme Chicken Marsala.

Yum

Spice-Rubbed Pork Skewers with Tomatoes, from Cooking Light magazine.

Not a bad way to stretch 1 lb of pork to feed four people, especially if you serve it with rice and the green beans I've raved about before.

You can do most of the prep in advance - I put the seasoning on the pork at least an hour before I cooked it, and the finished skewers sat around for half an hour or so while the rice got started cooking. Didn't seem to hurt anything, and it was nice to have dinner that only required 6 minutes of cooking at dinnertime.

My only note on this recipe is to try to get the pork strips as even in thickness as you can so there aren't thinner ones to dry out while you try to get the thicker ones done.

Cumin pork roast follow-up

Remember the cumin pork roast I raved about recently? When I made that I used a slightly larger cut of meat than the recipe called for, and we ended up with a freezer full of leftovers. I mean, we ate one of the "enough for two" dinners (and refroze the extra), fed my parents another of the "for two" dinners (and refroze the extra), and still had another "for two" package and some single meals left in the freezer. This was the roast that never ended ... and despite the fact that it tasted good, I was dreading trying to eat up all that pork.

Then yesterday I got the idea to just convert all of it into barbecue, thus using up the pork AND the leftover hamburger buns from last weekend. It was quick, easy, and darn tasty.

Basically, I thawed the frozen blocks of pork in gravy in the microwave for a few minutes to loosen them from the plastic containers and pry the slices apart. I used kitchen shears to cut the slices into bite-sized chunks, and I dumped the pork and the gravy into a skillet. I heated it to a simmer, then added enough ketchup to turn the sauce red enough that it looked like barbecue sauce (there's a specific measurement for you!), a couple glugs of apple cider vinegar, and a few tablespoons of stadium mustard. I think I threw in some salt, too, just for good measure, but the rest of the seasonings were already in the gravy. Tasted, adjusted seasonings, threw it on toasted hamburger buns with a slice of cheddar cheese on top - done.

It was really good - good enough that we both had seconds, and eating the leftovers will be more of an "I get to" rather than "I have to." Score!

Seriously.

Usually I'm all about the "let the kid eat with her own two hands so she can learn from her messy mistakes" approach to meals and snacks, but ...

... if that kid drops huge pieces of stupendously awesome fudgy brownie on my not-clean-enough-for-the-three-second-rule floor one more time, I'm going to backhand her clean over the dining room table. In this house there are some things you DO NOT WASTE - biscuits, brownies, and bacon being chief among them.

From now on, learning be damned - I HOLD THE BROWNIES.

***

Oh, and the brownie recipe can be found here, courtesy of Fine Cooking and Cindy Mitchell. It was yet another recipe that's been in my "to be tried" folder for years, and when Liza demanded at 7:30am that we had to bake "cookies," this was the only recipe for which I had all the ingredients. Happy accident, that.

I like this recipe - everything gets mixed in the top of the double boiler you use to melt the chocolate, so there's minimal cleanup. And the old "grease the pan and parchment paper the bottom" trick worked like a charm - the whole brownie flipped right out onto the rack when commanded to in a stern voice. Yummmm - 8" square of brownie goodness ... and six more hours until there's anyone here to prevent me from eating the whole thing myself - bwahahahahahaha!

Seriously, though, if you like your brownies dense and fudgy, these are really nice, if a bit greasy - I'm interested to see if that diminishes when they're stored overnight, but fat chance of that happening :) For the rest of you brownie lightweights, I'll report back on the "cakey" and "chewy" variations once I get more chocolate and eggs.

Mean Chef's Vietnamese Chicken Salad

Go.
Make.
Eat.
Enjoy.
Thank me (and Mean Chef) later.

http://forums.taunton.com/n/mb/discussionFrameset.asp?webtag=tp-cookstalk&ft=0&ctx=1&cacheTag=x10-44&ld=&gfc=1&msg=36929.16

PS - If you don't like spicy, omit the hot pepper in the salad, or the chili garlic sauce in the dressing ... I don't think you'd need to eliminate both.

Notes from the stove

Tuesday: Maida Heatter's East 62nd Street Lemon Cake, from Saveur magazine
Boy, has it been a looooong time since I've made a cake from scratch ... you know, butter, eggs, sifted flour, all that. For the most part, they don't seem to be worth it. But this one is, well, pretty close to being worth it. For one thing, with the exception of having to double-sift the flour and remember to soften the butter, it's not a difficult cake. Harder than a box mix, but not by much. For another, the texture ends up being different from a box mix (well, duh), but not in a heavy-as-a-brick-and-about-as-moist way that some scratch cakes do. This one was dense and moist, almost like a buttery cross between sponge cake and pound cake. And the glaze was REALLY nice. I let my cake get a little too done despite pulling it 15 minutes before the minimum time in the recipe (stupid nonstick Nordicware bundt pan burns every time), and the glaze totally saved it. It soaks into the surface, then it crystallizes as the cake cools, so there is this crunchy lemon sugar coating on the whole surface. Verrrrry good.
Verdict: I'm keeping the recipe, but for everyday use I'll probably still use the doctored mix recipe from the Cake Mix Doctor book. I know, I suck, but that's what I grew up on.

Friday: Mocha Truffle Cookies, originally from Better Homes and Gardens magazine
I printed this recipe years ago from the Fine Cooking discussion board, where it received good reviews. I made some this morning to take to my trunk show at Birds of a Feather tomorrow ... because quilters love chocolate, and I'm all about kissing up to potential customers. Anything that has three kinds of chocolate in it and isn't burnt can't be too bad - but I wouldn't say they're my favorite cookies of all time or anything. You can't really taste the coffee - the Fine Cooking poster said she uses instant espresso powder instead of coffee, and I think that would help bump it up a little. And I wasn't too fond of how the cookies didn't really melt or spread at all - you're supposed to drop them by teaspoonfuls onto the cookie sheets, which usually means that they'll spread and round out a little. These stayed where they were, so the finished cookies look a little shaggy around the edges. I think next time I might try chilling the (already pretty stiff) dough and rolling them into flattened balls or something. I also think I'll cook them for less time, since only a few ended up with the "soft trufflelike center" the original post described.
Verdict: I'm keeping the recipe, and will try monkeying around with espresso powder and/or different cocoa (I used the ultra-black Dutch processed cocoa from King Arthur, which has a different flavor from standard cocoa, and I generally don't like it as much as regular).

Friday: Curried Lentil Soup, photocopied from some cookbook a couple years ago
A few years ago, Jason and I had a not-so-great meal at an Indian restaurant. The next morning we woke up to find we still had it on our breath; Jason remarked that it tasted "like an Indian shat in my mouth." Well, after forgetting to take out the trash full of raw chicken trimmings last night, and making this soup today, my kitchen smells like the Indian not only shat there, but died there, too. Note to self: take out the raw-chicken trash, no matter how little else is in the bag.
If you don't mind your house smelling like curry for a few days, though, this stuff was surprisingly good. I'm not a huge lentil fan - I'll eat an occasional bowl of lentil soup when we're out, particularly with lots of extra lemon juice squeezed over it, but I don't make it at home. This is probably enough to change my mind, though. Absolutely nothing tricky, few weird ingredients, not overly spicy, it was done in about an hour, and it was really tasty. Jason and I agreed that it probably would benefit from having some meat thrown in at the end - I've got some spicy pot roast leftovers I'm eyeing for when we reheat this later on for dinner when I'm too lazy, er, busy to cook. And it needs some sort of bread to go with it - naan would be great, but even a nice homemade yeast bread would go well with it.
Verdict: We both really liked it, at least for the original meal. We'll see how well it reheats and whether we get sick of it as quickly as we did the cabbage soup back in January (gack ... I still have trouble considering eating more of that, even though it was good the first time around). I'm definitely keeping the recipe - this would be good to serve to a crowd, maybe with a salad and some homemade bread, for an impressive meal. Plus, it makes your house smell like curry :)

If anyone wants the curried lentil soup recipe, let me know and I'll send it to you. I couldn't find it after a reasonable amount of searching online, and I don't feel like being Ms. Copyright Infringer today.