Yay...

Anthony Bourdain has a new book out!!

Cupcakes....

I had to make some cupcakes for my daughters end of year Brownie party tomorrow, so I used my Vanilla Fairy Cupcakes recipe, and then did the pale green icing with the confectioners sugar/water mixture and made it a little bit runny and then dipped the tops of the cupcakes in that, let it set and then used Martha's Basic Butter cream frosting tinted pink to decorate with my very basic piping set.

I think they are really cute. I'm no crash-hot piper, but today I had good luck with the whole thing. Usually I mess it up and then just end up having cupcakes with blobs on it.  I also used some little pearls to decorate the top of the piping.

Yesterday I ran the Race for the Cure in DC and then promptly forgot to tape the special CBS showed last night, and then today my friend Hannah, who ran in the race with me, said that I was on TV running!!!  I have search and search the Internet but the show is not posted anywhere, so Hannah kindly didn't delete the show, so I can go over and have a look. I'm sure I'll be horrified. It was a big day for me because that was the first time I have run since my calf injury, and I managed the whole 5K with no incident and a nice time of 29:20 mins. It was also really hot at 8:30 in the morning, so that also slowed me down a bit.

So today I made two Banana Cakes,  the cupcakes, a Warm Lentil Salad for lunches during the week, and then dinner, which was lemon and thyme chicken breasts with roasted potatoes and carrots and brocolli for the girls and peas for the boys!

Made from scratch Chocolate Pudding

Yesterday in the Local Living section of the Washington Post they had a great article about a new book called Real Food Has Curves, about weaning ourselves off processed foods. And they shared a recipe from the book,  made from scratch chocolate pudding.  I had a quick look at it and had all the ingredients, so I whipped it up before the school bus arrived in the afternoon and we had it for dessert last night. It makes 4 huge serving, but it could easily be 6 regular servings or 8 nice small ones.  I served it with a dollop of whipped cream and some raspberries. The kids loved it, I loved it, and Marc thought that it could be a little sweeter. I'm really into the more bitter chocolates at the moment, so I was happy with the outcome.

Ingredients:


2 large eggs
2 cups low-fat milk
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup flour, preferably unbleached
1 ounce unsweetened or baking chocolate, finely chopped
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Have four 6-ounce ramekins or custard cups at hand.

Whisk the eggs in a large bowl until they are smooth and creamy, with no remaining floating bits of translucent egg white.

Combine the milk, brown sugar, cocoa powder, flour, chocolate, vanilla extract and salt in a large saucepan over medium heat; whisk until the chocolate melts and the mixture just begins to bubble. Cook for 30 seconds, whisking, while the mixture thickens considerably. Remove from the heat.
Whisk half of the warm chocolate mixture into the eggs in a slow, steady stream, until smooth and well incorporated. Then return the combined mixture to the remaining chocolate mixture in the saucepan and place over low heat. (If you're using an electric range, it may be helpful to have a second burner set on low.) Whisk constantly over low heat for 2 minutes, reaching into the edges of the pan and letting the pudding come to only the barest bubble. If the pudding starts to bubble, reduce the heat as needed or take the pan off the heat and keep whisking for a few seconds to cool it down. The consistency will be silky, with body.

Transfer to the individual ramekins or custard cups. Cover with plastic wrap directly on the surface to keep a skin from forming, if desired. Refrigerate for about 1 hour, or until well chilled and set.

Calories: 260,Total Fat: 9g, Saturated Fat: 5g , Cholesterol: 115mg, Sodium: 260mg, Total Carbohydrates: 36g , Dietary Fiber: 3g , Sugar: 18g ,Protein: 11g

Seriously....

Why would you want to do this? Isn't that why we have ovens?

Grass Fed Beef

We just bought 70lbs of grass fed beef from a local farmer in Virginia. In fact it's the farmer from the movie Food Inc.  His farm is Polyface Farms in the Shenandoah Valley.  If you haven't seen Food Inc I encourage you to watch it and you'll rethink your whole meat situation.  It was more expensive than buying our meat at Costco, but we wanted to give our money to a local farmer, eat good meat, and hopefully help the environment at the same time.

We picked it up yesterday, all nicely vacuumed sealed and labeled, and made burgers for dinner. The meat definitely smelled different while it was cooking and it was totally delicious.  We got about 30lbs of ground beef all in 1lb packages, some Chuck Roasts, Flank Steak, New York Strip, Fillets, Top Sirloin, Sirloins, Round Roasts and a Brisket and an Arm Roast, which I had to look up because I've never heard of it.

We have pledged to eat less meat but a better quality of meat when we do eat it. We are thrilled with this purchase so far and it should last us for a while.

Now I just have to figure out what to do about the chicken.  We eat a lot of chicken and it's really expensive to go organic free range, around $4.00 a pound.  I'm buying hormone free chicken at the moment, and staying away from Tysons chicken all together, but we are looking at getting better chicken in our diet.

Warm Lentil Salad with Goat Cheese

I absolutely love this dish. It's yummy, crunchy, filling and good for you. I usually make it on Sunday's and then I have it there ready for lunch all week, or as a side dish, or just a couple of spoonfuls if I need a quick snack to fill me up.  I found it on Martha's website, she uses lentils quite a lot and I have tried lots of the recipes, but this is one of the best ones.  I have changed a few things from her recipe, mainly I use onions instead of shallots, because it's much cheaper and basically tastes the same and I use a whole cup of lentils, and different coloured bell peppers.

1 cup green lentils
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 shallots/onions, thinly sliced crosswise and separated into rings
1 carrot, cut into 1/4-inch dice
1 stalk celery, cut into 1/4-inch dice
1/2 red bell pepper, ribs and seeds removed, cut into 1/4-inch dice
1/2 yellow bell pepper
2 teaspoons coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons balsamic or sherry vinegar
6 ounces spinach, stemmed and coarsely chopped (about 2 cups)
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 ounces fresh goat cheese

Directions

Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Add lentils, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large skillet over medium heat until hot but not smoking. Add shallots/onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until they begin to soften, about 2 minutes. Add carrot, celery, and bell pepper; continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes more. Stir in parsley, vinegar, and remaining tablespoon oil. Transfer to a large bowl.

Drain lentils, and add to bowl with vegetables. Stir in spinach, and season with salt and black pepper. Crumble goat cheese into bowl, and toss gently to combine.

Vegetable Lasagne Rollups

Tonight's dinner!!  Look good don't they? And very easy and great if you just want a single portion and not much cheese.  I'm trying to do at least two vegetarian dinners a week now, and it's working out well and there is not too much complaining from the kids.  I saw this recipe in In Style and changed it up the filling a little bit and did not use jarred sauce, I made the sauce myself, (although I did use canned tomatoes)

1 teaspoon olive oil
4 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
2 cups baby spinach, chopped
1 16oz container skim milk Ricotta cheese
1/4 cup Parmigiano/Reggiano Cheese
1 28oz can crushed tomatoes
1 onion
1 clove garlic or 1 teaspoon minced garlic
12 lasagna noodles, cooked, drained and layed flat to cool.

Preheat oven to 350F
In a skillet heat olive oil, and saute chopped carrots until  tender, and then let cool.
In a large bowl mix ricotta cheese, baby spinach, parmigiano/reggiano cheese and cooled carrots.

For Tomato Sauce:
Chop onion and saute with garlic until tender, add the can of crushed tomatoes and simmer for 5 mins.

Using a spoon, spread filling onto each lasagna noodle, leaving 1/2 inch at each end so roll-ups don't overflow, roll each one tightly. Spread half of tomato sauce on the bottom of a deep backing pan, place roll-up seam side down.  Cook in  oven for 45 minutes. Remove and top with remaining tomato sauce and any cheese that takes your fancy (cheese entirely optional), cook for 15 minutes more.

Calories:  Around 171 per roll, 4.5gs fat.  You have to take into account how much cheese you use on yours and also if you use skim or full milk ricotta, but this gives you an idea.

Whole Wheat Cranberry Choc Cookies

For my first baking experiment since I got my new oven I made these yummy and low calorie cookies. I adapted the recipe from Cooking Light, and that recipe used dried cherries, and as I would probably never have dried cherries lying around I threw in dried cranberries and they work just as well. I also used the Ghiradelli Bittersweet Choc Chips. The cookies also use a mixture of whole wheat flour and regualr flour and oats and only 89 calories per cookie!  What's not to love?

1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup dried cranberries
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
5 oz bittersweet chocolate (I used the Ghiradelli Bittersweet choc chips)

Pre-heat oven to 350F

Combine flours and next 3 ingredients (through salt) in a large bowl, stir with a whisk.

Melt butter in a samll saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat and whisk in brown sugar, stirring until smooth.  Add sugar mixture to flour mixture.  Beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended.

Add cranberries, vanilla and egg, beat until combined. Fold in Chocolate.

Drop dough by tablespoonful 2 inches apart onto baking sheets (I use parchment paper or silicone mats on my cookie trays).

Bake at 350F for 12 mins.

Cool on pans for 3 mins or until almost firm then cool on wire racks.

Yield 30 cookies.

I worked out the calories on the calorie calculator on Calorie Count, which is an extremely handy tool:
89 calories per cookie, 4.2g fat, 2.5 g sat. fat, 14mg cholesterol, 104mg Sodium, 11.7g Carbs.

Induction Cooking... I am, are you?

I just got a Samsung Range Induction yesterday. I love it already. It makes a weird buzzing noise when you cook, but that is something that you can definitely get used to.

Here's a brief description of Induction Cooking:

How Induction Cooking Works:


The element's electronics power a coil (the red lines) that produces a high-frequency electromagnetic field (represented by the orange lines).That field penetrates the metal of the ferrous (magnetic-material) cooking vessel and sets up a circulating electric current, which generates heat. The heat generated in the cooking vessel is transferred to the vessel's contents.Nothing outside the vessel is affected by the field--as soon as the vessel is removed from the element, or the element turned off, heat generation stops.

So only the elements are induction, the oven is convection, huge with 3 racks. I was set on a double oven, but I gave that up to have the induction burners.  You can only use stainless steel pots or cast iron, so I have had to get some new pots and pans and some saute pans, but other than that, it's been fantastic. I made a Seafood Risotto tonight for dinner, and the response on the burners is amazing. There is so much control!!  I'm very excited. So excited in fact that I totally forgot to take a photo of dinner, and now it's all gone.

I think induction is going to be the new wave of stoves. It's energy efficient, and just like cooking with gas, and you get a nice flat glass stove top, which looks sleek and fabulous.

I haven't tried the oven yet, and I'm dying to bake some cookies with the convection oven, but that won't be happening until I get full use of my calf back and I can do all the cardio and running that I want.

Walking for Hope

Today the whole family walked in the Race for Hope in Washington DC, for my husbands friend who died of Brain Cancer last year. We had a huge team and raised over $11,000 for brain cancer research and it was really fun.

I had planned to run in the event, but 4 weeks ago I tore my calf muscle.  We had just had a March Madness event at my gym (Golds!), in which you had to complete 25 classes in the month of March. Being insane I decided to complete the classes in 3 weeks, as well as keep up with my running. I only run about 12 miles a week, but considering that I ran zero miles a week for the 42 years before that, it's a lot. So for 4 weeks I didn't have a day off from the gym and then on 4/3 at 8:00am Body Step class, my calf muscle tore!! So the moral of the story is warm up your calf muscles properly.

Anyway, it's about a 6-8 week recovery, with lots of physical therapy and exercises and major inconvenience. You can't do any cardio at all for the first two weeks when you are on crutches, so when I could limp into the gym, I decided to use the hand bike or the "fluid ergometer", and it's surprisingly difficult!! You really break into a sweat. And then when I eventually could get my heel to the ground I started using the Stair Master (which I never would have jumped on before), very very slowly, to do about 30 minutes of cardio. During the whole thing I was still able to do pilates, because a lot of that is core, you you are not using your legs or putting weight on them.

I've still got about 4 weeks to go until I can start running again, and it will be work to get back into shape.
It really makes you think about what you have been doing or not doing when you get an injury like that, and it also makes you discover new ways that you can work out. I had to completely grind to a halt for two weeks and then rethink the whole thing for upper body work outs and limited cardio. It's also difficult when you have lost a lot of weight, you immediately think that you are going to balloon out in two days and then have to start your weight loss all over again - which I'm happy to say didn't happen, because I went back to counting calories, and that is the best way to make sure you are under control if you can't exercise.

30 pounds lighter... it's all in the three P's......

I can't believe how long it's been since I've blogged. However, I have a really good reason. I have been busy getting fit and losing 30lbs(me on the right at my first 5K), and totally changing the way I eat, cook and think about food. Of course I still make my banana cake and my chocolate chip cookies every now and again and for special occasions, but I'm also the proud owner of at least 15 new recipes for lentils. I haven't made them all yet, but my favourite is the Warm Lentil Salad, which I eat for lunch at least 3 times a week and I'll bring to you next post!!

So I'm all about the three P's right now, planning, portions and performance (or exercise!).

I have become and exerciser and a calorie counter and a nutrition junkie, and have discovered a lot of new food, new ways to cook and new ways to eat and enjoy life in the process. I have started to run, something I thought I would never do, let alone enjoy, and it has been great.

I have also suffered an injury in the last month, which has totaly ground me to a halt, and given me lots of time to think, which has been a good thing. I'll be discussing all these things in the days to come, and I'm really looking forward to it an also getting some feed back from everyone!!

Hiatus

I realised today after making 3 batches of these, that I need to take an official hiatus from my blog, probably until February. I just don't have the time at the moment to give it the attention it deserves. I'm sure I will be back with a vengeance in February! See you then!

Not Much Going on In My Kitchen

Since I last blogged I've been away for two weekends, one to Baltimore, and one to New York, so I've done more eating than cooking. Also, I have to be truthful, I just haven't made anything decent for ages, so I've been totally unmotivated to blog. With Thanksgiving days away, I'll be making a couple of new things so I'll be able to update.

Thanksgiving totally crept up on me this year. I can't believe it's on Thursday and then it will be December!!!

Cranberry Bread

The new Everyday Food arrived this week and thankfully there were lots of things in there to try. The first recipe that caught my eye was for Cranberry Bread, so I whipped some up this afternoon. It was really easy and it tastes great. The cranberries are really tart and it's delicious, with just enough sweetness from the cake part to counteract it.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus more for pan
2 cups flour
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon slat
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3/4 cup milk
1 bag (12oz) cranberries

Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter and flour a 9x 5 inch loaf pan, 8 cup capacity, and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside in a medium bowl, combine butter egg and milk. Add wet mixture to dry mixture and whisk to combine. Fold in cranberries.

Pour better into prepared pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted in centre of loaf comes out clean, about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Transfer pan to a wire rack; let bread cool 30 mins. Invert onto rack, then immediately turn right side up and let cool completely.

I also picked up a copy of Ina Garten's new book Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients, which Costco has for $18.89. Amazon has it for $21.00, so if you are near a Costco, it's a bargain!! I just had a quick look through and there are some lovely things in there.

Tomorrow of course is Halloween, so hopefully my kids will get lots of Milky Way's and I'll be able to help eat them!!

Black Bottom Cupcakes

I think it's important to talk about the tragedies as well as the triumphs, so I'm going to share my Black Bottom Cupcakes experience with you. This was the recipe that caught my eye more than once when I was thumbing through the Crazy About Cupcakes book, so I decided to try them today.

Firstly, I would like to mention that this is the strangest cake batter that I have ever made. Secondly, I would like to mention that they only turned out OK. Edible, but nothing to rave about. This could have something to do with the fact that I used Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers(I always have them on hand in case I need to whip up an ice box cake) which were too big for the cupcake , so I broke them up and lay them on the bottom of the cupcake paper. And I also used regular sized choc chips. Of course the bits of broken up cookie floated to the top when I put the batter in and didn't stay on the bottom like they were supposed to. I imagine that one of the cookie halves of an Oreo would have worked well for this recipe.

The batter was really runny. And in the recipe it calls it "chocolate batter" but there is no chocolate in it, except for the cookie. Weird. Oh, and I also used whipped cream cheese, because I didn't have a block of it.

Also the recipe calls for 24 cookies, so I thought it made 2 doz cupcakes. It doesn't. If you want to give these a try, just make 12 and use more batter in the 12, I think they would turn out better.

24 round chocolate cookies
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup water
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
One 8oz package cream cheese, at room temperature
1 large egg
1 cup mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325F. Insert liners into a medium cupcake pan, or grease the pan.Place a chocolate cookie in the bottom of each liner or pan.

In a large bowl, cream together 1 cup of the sugar, the oil, and the water until blended. Stir in the vinegar and vanilla.

In a separate medium bowl mix together flour, baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon of the salt.

Add all the dry mixture to the wet mixture and beat until incorporated. Set Aside.

In a medium bowl, beat together the cream cheese, egg, and the remaining sugar and salt. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Fill cupcake liners or pan half full with the chocolate batter. Top with a heaping tablespoon of the cream cheese mixture. Bake for 25-30 mins or until the edges of the cupcakes are puffed but the centers look moist. Cool cupcakes in the pan.

Foodbuzz Publisher Community Launches!!!

I'm a couple of days late, but better late than never! Foodbuzz Publisher Community has officially launched. Foodbuzz was nice enough to ask me in January to become one of their Featured Publishers, so I've had a really good time being part of that community and finding lots of new food blogs to read, and I've also put up a few restaurant reviews myself. So please, if you are not already familiar with FoodBuzz, check it out. You can just click on any of the three buttons on the right.

To celebrate the launch, I recieved a fantastic apron and a nice green spatula (my son took this photo)

 

I'm attempting a Butternut Squash, Rosemary and Ricotta Pizza tonight, so I'll let you know how that goes!

New Books!

I got a couple of new books this week (thank you Catherine)and one of them is Crazy About Cupcakes. I haven't made anything from it yet, but I will. It has really good ideas for every single occasion you could possibly think of and some really fantastic cupcake flavours. So I promise to try something from there soon.


The other book I have is The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook: Recipes from the Classic Cookie to Mocha Chip Meringue Cake,and I did make something from there this weekend.


These are called Chocolate-chip Filled Melting Moments. The Melting Moment is actually an Australian cookie, and this recipe has a nice twist to it with the creamy choc chip middle. I actually put too many choc chips in my filling and the cookies didn't stick together as much as I would have liked. The recipe also says to use about 1 tablespoon of dough and roll into a ball for each cookie. These cookies really spread, so I would use about 1 teaspoon of dough, and you will get a much better sized cookie to make the cookie sandwiches.

Here is the recipe over at Erin Cooks. Judging by her photos she did a much better job than me getting the size right for the cookies.

ps. They were delicious.

Raspberry Cream Cheese Muffins

My latest thing before buying new recipe books that look good on Amazon, is to borrow them from my library. Luckily I have a fantastic local library, so I'm able to do this for almost any cookbook. I recently borrowed "More from Magnolia" Recipes from the World-Famous Bakery. I'm sort of disappointed with the book because there are hardly any pictures in it!! I have to have pictures!! More often than not that is what inspires me to make the dish or the cake or cookies. I think that's why I love Ina so much, she has photos of 99% of her recipes. I thought most of the the stuff was sort of ordinary, and without pictures to inspire me I didn't think I was going to make anything, until the Raspberry Cream Cheese Breakfast Buns caught my eye.

I thought they turned out well. The original recipe is for 9 large muffins, but I just made them in the size of regular muffins, because I know no one would eat a whole large muffin. The recipe made 2 dozen regular muffins.

1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
8oz package cream cheese, softened
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping

1/2 cup raspberry preserves

Confectioner's sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and lightly flour 9 large muffin cups or 24 regular muffins. In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, beat together the cream cheese, butter and sugar until smooth, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs and beat well. Add the dry ingredients in two parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, filling them about two-thirds full. Drop 3 small dollops (about a teaspoonful each) of raspberry preserves onto the top of each bun and, using the tip of a sharp knife, swirl the preserves into the batter, forming a decorative pattern.

Bake for 25-30 minutes (regular muffins - 22 mins), or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the bun comes out clean.

Allow the buns to cool for about 30 minutes before sprinkling with confectioners sugar and serving.

I also think these would probably be delicious with a slight touch of lemon, and I'm going to add some next time I make them, to see how it turns out.

One Dish Dinners!

Hands up if you are happy with the new October Everyday Food. I am!! The Spicy Coconut Chicken Casserole looks fantastic, and I'm going to do that next Monday, and the Spinach and Prosciutto Lasagna also looks good. Martha doesn't have these recipes on-line, so I'll put them up when I've made them next week. There is also a nice section on slow cooker meals. I absolutely have to get a slow cooker and try some of these, which also look good for freezing.

I will be posting a menu plan for next week!!

Chicken, Asparagus Puree and Potato Rosti

As promised,I made my first dish from Donna Hay Modern Classics 1 on Sunday. It was actually a side dish, and simple, but it's a start!I made it to go with a chicken and asparagus dish that I found on the Sydney Morning Herald Cuisine Section. They have a lot of fabulous recipes, but you do have to do conversions from metric.

The recipe is chicken with pureed asparagus. The puree was absolutely delicious, and I used water in my recipe instead of chicken stock, so I can only imagine how much better it would be with chicken stock. I pan fried the chicken in a small amount of olive oil, and steamed the asparagus spears.

1lb green asparagus, woody ends snapped off
1 tblspn butter
1 medium brown onion, finely sliced
4 garlic cloves, finely sliced
salt
ground white pepper
3/4 cup water or stock
4 chicken breasts, trimmed and skin removed

Puree

Cut 4 cm long spears from asparagus top and reserve. Finely chop remaining stems. Melt butter in a small saucepan then add onion, 2 garlic cloves, season and cook gently until soft, about 15 minutes. Add asparagus stems and stock then simmer until asparagus is soft, about 10-15 minutes. Blend to a smooth puree with a stick or bar blender, keep warm.

Serves 4

Potato Rosti

4 roasting potatoes.
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
1 1/2 teaspoons thyme leaves
kosher salt and cracked pepper

Preheat the oven to 400F. Using a sharp vegetable peeler, but the potato into long, thin strips. Toss the potato strips with the oil, Parmesan, thyme, salt and pepper. Place the mixture in six piles on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden and cooked through.

I also threw in some carrot for good measure. I think it turned out well, and I'll definitely be making this whole meal again!