Slipknot's Slope

[Slipknot]

Every once in a while I make a meal that's perfect for that moment - simple flavors that I just happen to be in the mood for. That was dinner last night. It started out with inspiration from chefk's mouth-watering picture blog and took off from there. I stumbled into this corporate-sponsored recipe (http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/sausage-p ... etail.aspx) while just looking for the rough steps of when to brown the turkey sausage. The brand I bought does not respond to slicing very well, so I really just followed chefk's pictures and roughly the ingredients in the Ragu recipe. Just to get all Che Guevara on the corporate pigdogs, I used a jar of store brand marinara sauce and spiked it with extra basil. The revolution will not be televised!

For the first time in nearly two weeks, I let salad into my dinner - but because I wanted to, by golly. I like the taste of italian dressing and tomato sauce.

B: Scrambled eggs with red onion, red pepper, and Canadian bacon; refried pintos; 1% milk
S: Peanuts
L: Chicken broth; salad with ranch; sirloin patty with onions; steamed broccoli and squash; diet coke
S: Green Tea
S: String Cheese
D: Sausage, peppers, and onions; small salad with Italian; slice of ww bread; 1% milk

I used the mandolin to slice up an onion thin and it's not only way more efficient than me+knife, but it made for beautifully consistent slices. The box chopper made short work of the green pepper tops, so now I have diced peppers and onions for future egg scrambles.

DD hovered over my breakfast like a vulture and claimed several forkfuls of eggs and beans for herself. She noted that I put a lot of veggies in my eggs because of my diet, then she corrected herself. "Lifestyle," she said, complete with air quotes. Where did these kids get this sense of sarcasm from, I wonder?

[Slipknot]

My love of cheese is well-documented - if not here, then in the running monologue in my mind. It comes down to one of Slipknot's Cardinal Rules of Cooking: If possible, melt cheese on it (another Cardinal Rule is: Read the recipe, then double the amount of garlic as a starting point). So when I found a block of low-fat jalapeno cheddar at Giant yesterday, I tried to devise a way to add it to broccoli to embiggen both ingredients. Synergy on the dinner table.

The problem with making a good cheese sauce with a low-fat cheddar is two fold. First, the low-fattiness of low fat chesses makes them somewhat polymeric in nature and resistant to blending into low fat milk products. Cheddar only adds to this. My past attempts to make cheddar-jack cheese sauces have resulted in either adding grated cheese to a bechamel that always tastes floury/tacky to me and certainly is not beachy, OR trying to merge milk and cheese under low intensity mixing; this results in a sticky ball of cheese in the bottom of the saucepan with warm milk surrounding it. Good times.

So I just went for direct last night: grate jalapeno cheddar into a bowl, add still hot steamed broccoli, grate a little more cheese on top. It was...okay. I'm told Velveeta with 2% milk is beach-friendly, but it seems to cross some line I have about processed food. Will the lure of a spicy queso sauce lure me to the Dark Side of cheese? Stay tuned, intrepid readers.

B: Two egg scramble with green and red peppers, red onion, Canadian bacon and parsley; refried pintos with cilantro; 1% milk
S: Peanuts
L: Turkey sausage with peppers and onions; salad with Italian; diet coke
S: String Chesse
D: Beef and Bean stew (from the freezer from P1); broccoli with jalapeno cheddar; 1% milk

I found a recipe for sausage jalapeno poppers on a banner ad while looking for a ham and bean soup for DW to make this week. I'm going to track it down and see if I can beachify the darn thing. I know I can make a buffalo chicken salad, or buffalo chicken breast strips; I'm trying to find some good party foods to make a SB Souper Bowl menu for the big game/commercial fest.

[Chris55]

I use the 2% Velveeta to thicken my cheesy veggie soup. I would never sit down and eat a hunk of it or make a grilled cheese sandwich with it, but it's very useful for getting that smooth creamy cheesy texture when everything else fails. The ingredients are not that bad if you look closely. The worst things are the maltodextrin, sodium alginate (thickener, I believe possibly extracted from seaweed) and dried corn syrup, which are way down the list. Mostly it's milk by-products, a little coloring, and thickener. If you use just enough to hold your sauce together and then throw in some real cheese, you might be able to come up with a mix you can live with. I've also thought of using a little lf cream cheese instead, but haven't tried it.

[Slipknot]

Of course I asked DW to add a block of the stuff to her shopping list yesterday. I nuked a chunk of it, stirred in some pico de gallo, and made the kids happy with some mild queso dip. I ate a bit of raw broccoli with it for my afternoon snack. Looking at the nutrition information, it's no worse than part-skim mozzarella, and the ingredients are no worse than American cheese.

Sold! There's an SB Superbowl snack for sure! I just need to make sure I limit myself to small portion of the stuff.

[Chris55]

I've also used it in a pinch on top of chili when I was out of lf cheddar and just wanted to nuke a bowlful for lunch. Like I said, it's useful but give me real cheese any day

[lakegran72]

I must weigh in as another closet veleeta fan just takes the surprise element out of cheese sauces for our good veggie dishes.. I usually stir a small amount of simple white sauce w/velveeta into cailiflower, ww macaroni , or whatever, then fold in 8 ounces of sharp cheddar, jalapeno, or swiss ( I usually grate myself) just before I pop it into the oven. ..but then easy=good for me

[Slipknot]

I love Kalyn's Kitchen because she has things like Spike seasoning and two kinds of curry powder and Hungarian paprika and Panco ww bread crumbs. In Slipknot manor, when we need ww bread crumbs, we do it old school - with high-speed rotating blades. Ah, rotating blades - is there anything you can't do?

After what seemed like an eternity of beef and sausage, but was in fact only a couple of days, it was time for a baked chicken recipe. I found this little gem over at Kalyn's (http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/2005/ ... icken.html) and it seemed to promise a bit of crispy texture which can be hard to come by without unbeachy vats of bubbling lard. I doubled the bread crumb/parmesan and used the extra to coat some yellow and green squash after adding a few dashes of Italian seasoning to it. Plus, one slice of ww bread in the food processor yielded about 1/2 a cup of crumbs, so it all worked out.

B: Two egg scramble with red and green peppers, red onion, and Canadian bacon; refried pintos with cilantro; 1% milk
S: Peanuts
L: Turkey sausage with peppers and onions, salad with Italian; diet coke
S: Broccoli florets with queso dip
D: Parmesan chicken; parmesan squash; 1% milk
S: Babybel and zinfandel

DW said she can see I'm losing weight just by my face. I didn't realize I was that expressive. The scale made little purring sounds, too. Life is good.

[Slipknot]

This was dinner tonight, and it's something I've made for years - a personal favorite adapted from the New York Times Cookbook. The original uses scallops (that DW doesn't like so much), butter, and way more salt. That's Craig Claiborne for you and pretty much how many of our parents were taught to cook. Anyhow:

1 lb shrimp, shelled and deveined (original has sea or bay scallops)
4 T Smart Balance (original has buttery butter)
1/8 t salt (original has 1/2 t, used 1/4 t tonight and it was SALTY)
1/8 t freshly ground pepper (I used ~1/4 t tonight because that's how I roll, yo)
1/4 t paprika
1 clove garlic, minced (if you've been following this blog, you know I used 2 huge cloves)
1 T minced parsley (I used 1 t dried)
3 T Lemon juice

In a large skillet, heat 2 T of Smart Balance and add the salt, pepper, paprika, and garlic

Add the shrimp. Cook quickly over high heat, stirring, until shrimp are opaque and cooked-shrimp-like, about 5 - 8 minutes. Transfer shrimp to a heated platter, or - if you're like me - just stick them in a bowl and try to keep the bowl warm.

In the same skillet, place the parsley, lemon juice, and the remaining Smart Balance. Heat until the butter melts, deglaze if you like, and pour over the shrimp.

I used to eat this with pasta. You can do a microscopic portion of ww pasta if you like - I've done that, too. It's simple, beachy, and is scampi-like enough to compliment veggies with Italian herbs. Provecho!

[Slipknot]

Thanks to the Velveeta fans out there for steering me back toward an SB-friendly cheese sauce. 1 oz of the stuff does not make a lot of sauce, but it was enough to provide dipping pleasure for a majority of the 2 cups of steamed veggies I had with dinner. It wasn't exactly the best fit to compliment shrimp sauteed with garlic, but it was a crucial experiment I had to work in.

The Velveeta itself locks up very quickly and is rather thick on its own, so I made two batches with variants on thinners. DW and the DKs got some mixed with chunky salsa and I melted mine along with a spoonful of peppercorn ranch dressing. Mine was delish and DD informed me that she now loves broccoli. Heh.

B: Two egg scramble with veggies and Canadian bacon; refried pintos; 1% milk
S: Peanuts
L: Grilled chicken salad with 1000 island; diet coke
S: Green Tea
D: Shrimp sautee; steamed broccoli with ranchy cheese sauce; ww bread; 1% milk
S: Babybel

Breakfast wasn't working for me for some reason - I think I've hit peppers and onions a bit too frequently of late. Time for some plainer eggs tomorrow to get the taste back for more veg. I left some egg on my plate (better than on my face, I suppose) and felt some hunger during the morning. I really wanted my snack instead of just dutifully eating it.

I meant to have an apple for my afternoon snack along with my string cheese, but I knew that more cheese was coming with dinner and elected to just push on through. My lunch salad was pretty big with lots of chicken and veggies so I never really felt super hungry. I need to get some hummus and veggies going for my night snack on days when I want a cheese helping with dinner.

DW came home from the grocery with a 9 lb spiral cut ham (no sugar added, glaze packet on the side), so I'll be looking around for a leftover ham recipe or two. She's going to make a ham and bean soup, and I've read that ham will freeze okay if you're going to caserole it later. Apparently the texture can get a little funky after cryogenic suspension. Mine probably would, too.

[Chris55]

I have been known to lop off part of a ham and pop it in the freezer. It does just fine, but I'm talking about one that wasn't sliced. Whole ones are just too big and provide too many leftovers for my family to tolerate, even with ham and eggs frequently on the menu.

I'd suggest split pea or ham and bean soup or a quiche. Ham rolled around some asparagus is nice, too.

[chefk]

Wow, I missed a lot! Sounds yum. I got a ham too. It's on the bone but not spiraled or sugared. I chopped it all off and made a ham stock in the pressure cooker. It was a double stock day yesterday. I plan on doing a soup n sandwich night w ham in the sandwich and also a soup solo with ham in the soup. The rest will go in the freezer. I love budget multi use buys. Glad you got your Italian sausage on. I'm a die hard Italian food junky. Love it.

[Slipknot]

There's a place far to the north of our refrigerator that only the most intrepid adventurers dare to pass - the freezer, or as I like to call it, Ice Station Zebra. Actually, I like to call lots of things Ice Station Zebra, but that's a tale for another day. I don't know about the rest of ya'll, but my mom used to cook up a vegetable every night, and most of the time it was frozen. Steamed or otherwise boiled, the happy veg was served in a bowl with some butter and salt to compliment the important part of the meal - the meats and starches. My mom's a great cook, but she listened to what the food industry at the time was telling her and it went something like: "pull things out of your freezer and boil them, voila!" Apparently the food industry used French exclamations back then. I figure as long as I blame a host of stuff on my upbringing, I might as well toss my extreme indifference to vegetables up there on top of the heap.

So I decided to clear out some of the frozen veggies I had stashed away in Ice Station Zebra, but I refused to boil, lardify, and salt. Nope, I was gonna maximize the potential of that 1/2 bag of whole green beans and that 1/2 bag of petite green and wax beans. Next stop - the Hanover foods website to troll some corporate recipes; they made the stuff, they ought to know how to make it palatable. About a quarter way down this page (http://www.hanoverfoods.com/recipes) you'll see something called "{Corporate Name } Greek Green Beans", and they were tasty. I can't say for sure that Achilles was chomping on them outside of Troy's gates, but you never know. The recipe itself mentions adding olives, but doesn't list them in the ingredients; I dumped a small can of slice black olives in with the tomatoes and it added to the yum. This was like a twofold triumph of a veggie dish in that not only did I convert odds and ends into the world of delish, but I broke the cycle of boil, lardify, salt and serve.

B: Two egg scramble with parsley; refried pintos; 1% milk
S: Peanuts
L: A chicken wing; Chef salad with turkey, ham, cheese, and Russian; diet coke
S: Green Tea
D: Ham!; Greek Beans; ww bread; 1% milk
S: Babybel

I skipped my afternoon snack (and, thus, my apple-tunity) for a second day, so week two of P2 is looking a lot like week one of P2 for now. I've been hungry all day watching the snow fall - I think because I cut some veg out of breakfast - and I know I'll have a big appetite once I get out and shovel. Traffic was a mess all morning as the "light wintry mix" the weatherheads predicted turned out to be heavier and I chose to live to fight another day rather than attempt my potentially hellish commute. Besides, the schools are closed and I have veggies to chop for DW's ham and bean soup.

[Slipknot]

It was the perfect day for a hearty, warming soup - a Noreaster hit the Philadelphia area pretty hard with stage one dumping a lot more snow than was expected. Two of the neighbors had their husbands away on business and another is a single mother, so I made the rounds with a borrowed snow blower during the lull between fronts. DW loves to make her some soup, so that hambone came out along with some Northern beans and it really hit the spot after being out in the cold. With a fire in the fireplace and that soup tucked away, the evening was pleasantly cozy.

B: Two eggs sunny side with Canadian bacon; refried pinto beans; 1% milk
S: Peanuts
L: Turkey sausage with onions and green pepper; salad with Italian; diet coke
S: String cheese and an apple!
D: Ham and bean soup; extra ham on the side; salad with Goddess dressing
S: Babybel and zinfandel

Snow always falls better when I have a glass of wine in my hand. The soup recipe looked like this: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Basic-Ham- ... etail.aspx. We read the comments and DW soaked the beans overnight, simmered for 2 hrs, added no salt, and only 6.5 cups of water. It made a dense, stewlike soup that everyone liked and took DW back to her youth. Any food that takes you somewhere and is still beachy works in my book.

Oh, and that apple tasted like it came from the garden of Eden, if you know what I mean. Forbidden fruit no more!

[chefk]

Wow, quite the neighbor! We just got a few inches...stopping by?

Awesome sounding soup. The whole bean soup thing is really hitting the spot. I've been munching it for the last few days. My snowshoe plans for the night are falling apart so I may make another soup. Both girls are home sick and my friends we were going to snow shoe with also have kids home sick. I'm glad ours have whooping cough and not the stomach flu like theirs...it could always be worse. ~~~~~

We'll see later. Soup or I'll sneak out and go play if they're snuggled up on the couch and not hungry. It certainly is nice when they're older.

[Slipknot]

Aww! Sick kids are no fun. My substantially youngers ones wore themselves out yesterday sledding and playing in the 18" or so of snow that dumped on us in the last 48 hours. It's nice when they go to bed on their own!