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Well, you're just the healthiest healthatron in Health City now, aren't you?
Beep Boop Kale
I rarely use salad dressing, because I feel like I can't taste anything in the salad. Instead, I just toss a handful of blueberries on top.Well, you're just the healthiest healthatron in Health City now, aren't you?
Secretly I'm jealous of your resolve. Right now in my fridge/freezer are both a ranch and creamy Caesar dressing bottle, a 1lb block of cheddar cheese I'm going through way too fast, Buddig beef lunch meats, another bag of tater tots and 4 more lbs of 80% lean ground beef. Did I mention any vegetables? No because, except for onions and some fruit that the kids eat, there is no vegetable matter in my kitchen right now.
I need to get better at eating. For serious; the peas, carrots and onions in last night's dinner were the first vegetables passing through my system in days. So if it takes homemade mustard vinaigrette or a splash of ranch to get this matter into my body, that's the way I'll go.
I used to drown my salads in dressing (usually a Caesar), but I've cut it down to a half or third what I used to use. I'd rather train myself to accept less of the good stuff instead of resorting to reduced-fat/-calories versions which all seem to taste awful. And instead of a small knoll of shredded cheddar or mozzarella on my salad, now I content myself with a light moderate sprinkle of parmesan* or parm/romano* blend.
You're only getting my full-fat cheese away from me by strapping me to a hospital bed or prying it out of my cold, dead fingers.
* Edit: I'm usually a parm snob, but I do enjoy the pre-grated parm cheese in a shaker on my salad and on the buttered margarine-d outsides of my grilled (American) cheese sandwiches so it gets toasty-crunchy when toasted in the pan.
Last night was spaghetti (premium-ish sauce from a jar) & meatballs (from frozen, Aldi brand), 3-cheese garlic toast (from frozen, store brand), and basic salad. The spaghetti & sauce was missing something though. I've had this brand before and it was very good, but I don't know what I did/didn't do this time that affected the taste. I added fresh basil and a little olive oil while it was warming up, but it definitely tasted like it was missing something.
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Don't know what I'm making tonight for dinner. I really want to try making a curry dinner or fish pie (I've been watching James May's new Oh Cook! show), but I know Dad won't eat either of them.
Waiting on some szechuan peppercorns, and I'm going to try mapo tofu.
Last night was spaghetti (premium-ish sauce from a jar) & meatballs (from frozen, Aldi brand), 3-cheese garlic toast (from frozen, store brand), and basic salad. The spaghetti & sauce was missing something though. I've had this brand before and it was very good, but I don't know what I did/didn't do this time that affected the taste. I added fresh basil and a little olive oil while it was warming up, but it definitely tasted like it was missing something.
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Don't know what I'm making tonight for dinner. I really want to try making a curry dinner or fish pie (I've been watching James May's new Oh Cook! show), but I know Dad won't eat either of them.
I can send you some pics of a sneaky curry I made! But I dont have your phone number/snapchat.
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I can send you some pics of a sneaky curry I made! But I dont have your phone number/snapchat.
Wait... I want to try a seemingly delicious food that I'm denied, and you want me to let you send me pics of this yummy food? This sounds like a much more torturous version of Cat Facts.
So last night I made my pesto salmon. I took store bought salmon "filets," each about 3-4 OZ, and topped them with store bought salmon. I also took a mix of green and red peppers and onions that I had and mixed those with a drizzle of EV olive oil. 3 filets total, into tin foil packets on a bed of the veg, and roasted at 425 for about half an hour. I put these on the side of some bagged salad with a few drops of ranch dressing and a Roma tomato sliced up and added.
Nice.
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Feeling melancholy today, so I made Mom's pineapple-upside down cake and her deviled eggs for dinner to go with the reheated spaghetti & meatballs (and fresh garlic toast) for dinner tonight.
It was my first time making the cake, and I screwed up; I forgot to mix the vegetable oil into the cake batter until I'd already poured half of it into the pan. So I gently scooped as much of the batter as I could without disturbing the brown sugar + pineapple layer back into the bowl, added the oil, mixer-ed it together, then re-poured it back into the pan. Tried a little 1" square worth after it was done and it seems to taste fine.
It's too much cake for just me and Dad to eat, but my brother and sister will take chunks of it home to their families so it won't go to waste.
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I took store bought salmon "filets," each about 3-4 OZ, and topped them with store bought salmon.
Yo dawg, I heard you like salmon, so here's some on top of your salmon so that you can eat salmon while you eat salmon!
But that does sound good. I've never considered roasted bell peppers with salmon, but that feels like it would work.
I can send you some pics of a sneaky curry I made! But I dont have your phone number/snapchat.Wait... I want to try a seemingly delicious food that I'm denied, and you want me to let you send me pics of this yummy food? This sounds like a much more torturous version of Cat Facts.
I go over everything step by step like on gifrecipes though! Its fun! And delicious! And no calories because you're just watching!
Got some fresh baby yellow potatoes and corn-on-the-cob from the food pantry this morning. I've cut up the potatoes to roast with chicken breasts (also from the food pantry a few weeks back) and boil the corn (I'm not sure what happened to Mom's steamer) for dinner tonight. I've got a few frozen dough rolls defrosting too to bake up with it. I need to get a new-to-me used bread machine to knead bread and pizza dough.
Also got more canned tuna and canned chicken -- we already have way way too much of both -- and 2 1-lb. packages of ground turkey, which I'll need to find recipes to prepare flavorfully in some way Dad will still eat.
I go over everything step by step like on gifrecipes though! Its fun! And delicious! And no calories because you're just watching!I can send you some pics of a sneaky curry I made! But I dont have your phone number/snapchat.Wait... I want to try a seemingly delicious food that I'm denied, and you want me to let you send me pics of this yummy food? This sounds like a much more torturous version of Cat Facts.
If I start looking at food, I'm gonna get hungry, and most days my willpower isn't strong enough to keep me from emotional noshing on stuff.
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I made mapo tofu. It's delicious. It was my first time cooking with tofu though, and all the tofu fell apart and it looks more like bits of poached egg.
It wasn't too hard, but the dish is a little demanding on timing (do this, 30 seconds later do this, 1 min later do this. It's a good lesson in doing all the prep work first, so you can just go from step to step quickly. Otherwise, the actual cooking was very simple.
I love the combination of numbing and hot peppers. Adding baby spinach for some green and make it into a one-bowl meal.
I'll second turkey chili or taco soup, but I don't know Ambrosia Slaad's dad's tastes.
Incidentally, now I'm taking a person's suggestions and trying Intermittent Fasting.
I'd be interested in hearing your experience with it! I've considered the same.
Perversely, I think I'm going to season up 1 lb of that ground turkey and use it in the Thanksgiving stuffing.
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There's a lot of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban food ingredients available in this area (SW FL), but it's a food desert for pretty much any Asian groceries. So I had to order a jar of chili crisp online, and it arrived yesterday.
Wow! How am I only finding out about this now? It's amazing! It's not too hot, but it has a fantastic blend of onions, garlic, red chilis, and several spices I can't quite place. It hits the umami, savory, spicy, salty, and mildly sweet spots all at the same time.
Made a big pot of chili. Mixing with shells and cheese.
I was out of fish sauce, and it definitely feels like it's missing a certain depth of flavor.
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I was out of fish sauce, and it definitely feels like it's missing a certain depth of flavor.
I've started using fish sauce almost everywhere that I would previously have splashed some Worcestershire sauce. Most people can't identify it, but appreciate the umami kick.
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However, it was a buffet. A pizza buffet.Gosh, I miss the Pizza Hut salad bar, so much. I love being able to load up a couple of plates full of 'salad' like pickle spears and beets and olives and cottage cheese. :) (If only they didn't have the world's worst tomatoes...)
Pizza Hut buffet is a guilty pleasure of mine. I haven't eaten at one in forever - probably a few years before the pandemic, even.
I'm doing my household-famous burgers tonight, but tomorrow night I'm trying a new recipe I happened across while browsing my grocery store's website. It's basically tossing potato gnocchi and grape tomatoes in olive oil and herbs, putting them on a sheet pan, adding some italian sausage, and then baking. Looks quick, easy and delicious. However, odds are that my kids will hate it. *shrug*
Of course, coming off of my grocery store's website, the recipe intends that I use the grocery store's brand for all of the ingredients. I was a bit more choosy about the ingredients, so we'll see how it comes out.
in this area (SW FL)
Honest question: is there much difference between the east and west sides of Florida south of its panhandle?
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in this area (SW FL)Honest question: is there much difference between the east and west sides of Florida south of its panhandle?
I'm not all that familiar with SE FL, but my limited impressions are it's got a somewhat higher pan-Asian population (but not much), and it's got noticeably higher disparities between its working class/poor and its affluent communities. Both areas are rich with numerous Latin communities and their influences, but SE FL has much higher concentrations of Cubans and Venezuelans.
I dunno for certain. I need to get out more to explore and interact and absorb, but my anxiety levels limit what I can do without a Popemobile or set of Rescue/Ironheart armor.
Have a chuck roast braising in the dutch oven now, will have it for dinner tonight with mashed potatoes & gravy, green beans, and probably rolls. Nothing fancy, but it'll get us through two meals this week (tonight & a leftovers night) leading into the scaled-down but still cornucopia of turkey turkeys & fixings the later half of the week.
Need to go get another jug of milk (mashed potatoes, maybe peach cobbler), but ugh, getting motivated in the shadow of yesterday is proving pretty tough today.
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Yeah, my sister and her husband are doing all the cooking this year (I've offered repeatedly to help) and they're bringing the food to Dad's house to eat. So it's just their four plus Dad & me, so there will be leftovers for days.
Grilled chicken and salad today.
This is the 10th day of lockdown for me. Going to go see my parents in person, and I'm making butternut squash stuffed with venison sausage stuffing.
I am bringing extra containers with me, as I adore thanksgiving leftovers.
I've definitely been in semi-quarantine. I got sick March 4, and didn't touch another human until the second week of July. I do pretty much everything online. One of my gaming groups is starting back up in a week or two, and I'm not joining them since they're doing it in person (and I don't know them very well personally).
I've been in a little bit of a loose bubble with a few people. We never had "a bubble talk", but contact was pretty limited for everyone. The last 10 days I've gone into a complete lockdown though. I'm going to make one more store run tomorrow, masked of course. I tried doing hy-vee pick-up last week and it was a s$#& show, so going into the store, but I think grocery stores are fairly low risk.
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I had the fun conversation of asking my sister to quarantine before she hosted Thanksgiving. Really all I wanted her to do was not go to her weekly happy hours for the two weeks leading up to the holiday.
She agreed to it without complaint, but I also feel like I shouldn't have had to even ask.
Also, you could probably also use some chicken broth to sub in for milk or white wine on the pork dish.
You could, in theory- I never even do the white wine version, so I hesitate to say for sure.
Also, I have a kind of atavistic distaste for using chicken broth outside of soups thanks to a ten-year span where my sister kept the fridge full of little covered dishes of the crap that she never used and never labeled.
Do you season the meat at all?
I generally don't. You can rub it with rosemary if you take the mind to, or garlic, or more or less whatever you fancy. In my experience, it's not really required- the butter and olive oil you brown it in, and the process of browning all sides evenly both make it sort of counterproductive. What you season the finished product with is the sauce- you dribble it over the top of the sliced pork.
Do you season the sauce with anything besides the cheese?
Nope. It's full of salt (among other things) from the pork, milk fats from the milk and the cream, and, naturally, cheese. I've done a variation that included mushrooms, but that's not seasoning- it's almost anti-seasoning since mushrooms are friggin' sponges.
store bought salmon
And I don't even like salmon!
Last night was the leftover chuck roast and sides.
Tonight I just didn't want to make anything at all. Ugh. I'd already defrosted the pork breakfast sausage though, so I made sausage gravy & biscuits, scrambled eggs, and hashbrown patties as I'd planned. Only made 4 eggs and the 2 hashbrowns, so they all got eaten, but there's enough leftover sausage gravy and biscuits for Dad (or ninjaFreehold) to get a couple breakfasts or lunches out of them.
Sister and her husband are still supposed to do all the cooking, so hopefully I won't need to do too much. Just don't have any drive to cook or even eat much.
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I'd already defrosted the pork breakfast sausage though....
Something else you can do with pork breakfast sausage (or loose Italian sausage) when you have it--pork sausage & rice a la Milanesa. Fry up a pound of loose sausage with a cup or so of diced onion, and when it's about half-done add 1.5 c uncooked rice. Once the sausage is cooked through, add 3 c. chicken broth (bouillon works) and 2 T paprika. Stir, cover, and cook for ~15 minutes, or until the rice is done. Mix in a cup of grated Parmesan or other hard cheese. You can either serve it like that or bake it for 15-25 minutes at 350°F.
I'm definitely trying that.
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My sister uses her leftover ham by chopping it up, mixing it in to (extra-cheesy) au gratin potatoes with sauteed onions, and baking it like a casserole.
My mom's favorite method was to run the leftover ham chunks through her food processor and keep it frozen in resealable containers. Then on weeknights when time was short, she'd toast it briefly in a skillet with butter and then mix in scrambled eggs to cook together. We'd usually have it with buttered toast or ready-to-bake biscuits. It's really good and quick, especially if you top it with a bit of shredded cheddar and either salsa or chili crisp sauce.
I usually save leftover ham bones to make a pot of Dad's great northern beans, usually serve it with fresh-baked rolls or cornbread.
Last night's dinner was cheeseburger on the grill, steamed (on the stove) corn on the cob, and potato chips.
Tonight will be chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. It's just condensed soup from a can, but some extra spices and a can of canned chicken improves it quite a bit.
Tomorrow night will probably be sloppy joes and tater tots (from frozen). I'm going to try to use up one of the 1 lb of ground turkey. I've got little golden potatoes to make potato salad instead of the tots, but not sure I'll have the energy or time to make it.
So last night I sautéed celery, onions, green peppers and garlic in butter, then in the same pan made a packaged pasta side dish. As this was simmering (it involves milk and water to build the sauce for the pasta), I added roasted chicken and frozen, mixed veggies. I also added salt, pepper and a bit of dried thyme to pep up the flavor a bit. It was pretty decent.
Starting off with some form of either the classic trinity/mirepoix (celery, onions, carrots) or the Cajun trinity (celery, onions, green peppers) is usually a pretty good flavor foundation especially when building a faux roux (starch from pasta + butter). And I love garlic. Glad it went well.
If I could get my Dad to eat mixed veg or rice or more pasta-based dishes, I'd many more dinner options. Oh well.
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The ground turkey sloppy joes went well last night. I snuck in a teaspoon of beef bouillon base and that probably helped.
We had Nathan's hot dogs on the grill, baked beans, and potato chips tonight. Nothing fancy, but we hadn't had it in a while and Dad said it hit the spot on this cold (50°s F) day.