Life. Is. Good. And this meatloaf variation is proof.
When regular meatloaf is done well, it is one of my absolute favorite foods on God’s green earth. Warm with a drizzle of ketchup across the sliced side is a little slice of heaven when life is overwhelming.
The problem is that on the days I’m most in need of comfort food, I am least inclined to put in the work to making it great. Continue reading Loaf-A-Roma (The Meatloaf Bakery Cookbook)
This week marks my entrance into Craving Ellie in my Belly – a new cooking experiment that a lot of the TWD bakers convinced me was a good idea. Ellie Kreiger’s cookbook aims to counteract the damage we all do baking with butter, eggs and white flour on Tuesdays. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
My first try was the Macaroni and Four Cheese recipe, which was chosen by Supplicious (she’ll post the recipe before Nov. 30). A word of warning: the orange hue that reminds us of the Blue Box actually comes from 20 oz. of pureed squash in Ellie’s version. Take that for what it’s worth.
The four cheese are ricotta, cheddar, Monterey jack and Parmesan, but in small enough quantities that I really felt like I had reheated the Pumpkin Pasta I’d made last week. I enjoyed both, I guess, but I was really looking forward to something comforting and cheesy for the cold nights before Thanksgiving. This was more of a vegetable dish. I think I would have liked it better if I had spent a long day at work anticipating a vegetable dinner and not a cheese-laden dinner. Ho hum.
Now, the comforting part of this dish is that it reheats well and is an excellent source of calcium, folate (to regulate sleep, appetite and mood), manganese (for digesting carbs), niacin (to draw energy from carbs), protein, selenium (to protect against heart disease and cancer), thiamin (for lots of stuff) and vitamin A (for better vision, teeth, bones and skin). It’s also a good source of fiber, iron, phosphorus (to draw energy from food) and riboflavin (to benefit red blood cells and draw energy from carbs). Finally, I can eat 2 cups for less than 400 calories. (Ellie lists all the nutritional in each recipe, which I love.) Good stuff all around, none of which applies to the Blue Box.
As the Dallas Morning News reports, someone is vandalizing local homes with jarred sauce.
Frisco police are investigating at least eight incidents in which jars of spaghetti sauce have been thrown at cars and homes, causing several hundred dollars worth of damage. In one incident, a jar of Great Value brand onions was thrown, along with a jar of garlic spaghetti sauce. “Maybe they were trying to make a good sauce,” Sgt. Meadors said.
Specifically, jars of spaghetti sauce – various flavors and brands, according to the police report – are breaking windows and landing on vehicles, costing owners $4,600 in damages and generally making a mess.
One poor guy has been hit twice:
Mr. Anglin said the first time, he came out to his porch and found a huge mess.
“The very next Saturday, I came outside and I looked up and noticed the sauce, and then I looked down and that’s when my child said, ‘Dad, we were hit again,'” he told KTVT-TV.
Long, long ago I watched some TV chefs boil pasta in a mixture of water and red wine. It seemed like a good idea, but varying Internet reviews reported that the wine only changed the color of the noodles, not really the taste.
So I moved on with my life, and continued to boil my pasta in clear, salty water, and serve the average pasta with a nice glass of wine on the side.
But I read more about how jarred pasta sauces contain weird things that drive up the calorie count, and my dread of firing up the stove to brown lots of meats and make my own sauce on a hot July afternoon grew exponentially, I went back to the pasta-in-wine concept. I had a half a bottle of red wine (purchased at Lemon Creek during last summer’s annual trip to Michigan wine country) left over from the previous weekend, I figured I had nothing to lose.
If it turned out really badly, I still had enough eggs in the house for omelets. And you can put ANYTHING in an omelet.
I used this recipe for from Real Simple magazine, and after a quick trip to Whole Foods for some cheese, I was in business (I did substitute lemon pepper for lemon zest and pepper, which seemed to work just fine, and I always use whole wheat pasta).
The pasta had a savory taste without being vinegar-y, and the lemon freshened the whole thing up considerably. The Romano cheese was a nice sharp taste to round the whole thing out.
A fine summer meal.
But if I had Olympic Fever, this would really excite me: Michael Phelps’ Record Setting Gold Medal Winning Breakfast:
(Double click to make the image bigger.)
It’s obvious to me that he’s lost his chance for an endorsement deal with Wheaties, but I’m thinking the marketing teams at the American Egg Board and Barilla Pasta are drafting proposals as we speak!
I’m sure I found this recipe for orzo salad because I was looking for something to do with all the fresh mint that grows from my window boxes (gotta love townhouse living), but it solved so many of my food problems this weekend:
Also, I served it with a yummy lime spritzer. 10 Cane white rum makes everything better.
So, only while vacationing in Hershey, PA, would I have found AND PURCHASED a bag of chocolate pasta, and only while in the perils of Hershey withdrawal would I have tried to make the Chicken Mole recipe on the back of the package. Healthy skinless, boneless breast of chicken in the chocolate-based sauce, served over chocolate pasta.
But I’m glad I did.
You can find the recipe here, and the pasta is available a lot of places, including Amazon. And actually, when you break the recipe down, there isn’t anything in there that’s whole-heartedly bad for you: no cream or butter, and only minimal sugar. No cheese. Lots of tomatoes.
The directions for the sauce weren’t great, and for that reason alone I wouldn’t call this a beginner recipe, but the outcome was pretty nice, for only 90 minutes of simmering. I’d certainly serve it over regular pasta next time – even whole wheat pasta, which seems to have become the only pasta I eat at home these days.
Much like the cooking instructions, the chocolate pasta was kind of underwhelming. I appreciated that it had a savory flavor for dinner (it also came with two dessert recipes on the package, so I was nervous), but I didn’t find it all that chocolately when I tried one to see if the noodles were ready.
Recipe: good, but don’t count on the instructions to carry you through
Noodles: stick to whole wheat