Best $15 investment, as advised by Ebert and Ashlie

I had heard Roger Ebert penned a cookbook for rice cookers. Even more intriguing-he can't eat. After following him on twitter, I realized this must be an ingenious and worthwhile device for such an intelligent and humorous man to devote his talents to it. Ever since, I've been curious.

It's not like rice was hard to cook. But it could be a pain. Too much water, too much time spent standing over the stove. Yes, color me a typical lazy American.

I can't remember where- maybe here- but I vaguely remember hearing that a rice cooker was great for cooking for 1-2 people. Also, you could cook just about anything in it. Since I'm newly cooking for one, I thought I'd look into getting one.

My parents came in for a weekend and we went shopping. I cruised the kitchen appliance isle to be utterly surprised-rice cookers are as cheap as $13.99!  Mom & Dad got me mine: a 6 cup Rival rice cooker. I've relied on it for my lunches (and sometimes dinner) every day since.

Now mine isn't this cute little red color- it's just white, but I love it just the same. I've gone through two big bags of brown rice, making it both economical and very healthy. I also think it's perfect for those of us who don't want to spend a lot of time preparing our lunches each day.

Here's what I do:
-On Sunday, I put in anywhere from two to three cups of rice. In 30 minutes or less, this will double into cooked rice. You just put in the rice and corresponding water and walk away. You can tell the rice is ready when your house starts to smell of cooked rice. Yum!
-I scoop the rice out into sandwich sized reusable containers. Sometimes I do exactly one cup per container, sometimes I don't. Either way, it always makes enough to put in at least four containers.
-Let these cool, then refrigerate.
-Make sure to have lots of frozen vegetables on hand. In the morning when you're preparing for work, toss some frozen vegetables on top of a container of rice. Spritz with Bragg's Liquid Aminos for salt and added protein.

Ta-da! Lunch is ready for the day in less than 3 minutes (unless you include the 30 minutes that the rice cooker cooked).  Plus, the lunch you made is most likely under 300 calories. Nifty!

And like Ebert suggests, you can cook almost anything in your rice cooker. The most daring I've been so far is to try a box of garlic & pine nut long grain & wild rice. It cooked up much quicker than if cooked on the stove, and tasted just as good. Plus, I didn't have to add all that butter as suggested on the box (I actually used a tiny drizzle of olive oil instead), so that's another bit of healthy savings.

Let us know if you have a rice cooker and what all you've cooked in it. They're such great little tools to have to help you cook healthy & cheaply!

Getting creative

Times have been tough on everyone of late, and I think we've all had to find creative ways to make it by. When Ian was still here with me in South Carolina, he was in charge of our day-to-day cooking. [I fully credit Ian with the weight we've lost due to his strict measurement and calorie counting. I subscribe to my Grandmother's school of measure nothing and add stuff in until it tastes good.] With Ian gone and financial hardships still present, I've had to get really creative in the kitchen.

Soon after Ian left, I did a pseudo-inventory of everything in the kitchen just to know what I was working with. One of my more fun finds in the pantry was a bottle of bacon salt that I'd gotten Ian a while back. This was exciting because if left to my own devices I'd probably never eat meat.

I tried a little of it in various dishes, but I have to say that the biggest success came from using it in grits. Here's what I did:

Ashlie's queso bacon grits
Bacon salt, any flavor
Yellow grits
Cheese, queso, or any similar cheesy substitute

For one serving, put one cup water and one teaspoon of bacon salt in a saucepan. Bring to boil. Stir in 1/4 cup of grits. Cover and turn down to low heat. Once cooked, stir in cheese of choice. (I found a half used jar of queso in the back of the fridge. I dipped my spoon in twice, mixed in with the grits, and it added a great flavor!)

If you've tried bacon salt, or have other great creative pantry ideas, let us know! I'm going to post more of my creative cooking adventures soon!

Meals back home

Well, we got some bad news about my Granddad, so we traveled to Tennessee to be with family. My Dad's Dad is in bad health, and knowing how much my Dad appreciates my cooking, I figured just being home and cooking some meals for my parents would be a nice thing to do. We took our EatingWell 500 Calorie Dinners cookbook and made a few meals out of it.

First up was the "Provençal style edamame saute." We served it with a side of quinoa. It was so good that we managed to eat it all before we could snap a picture of it. The recipe called for frozen artichokes, which we couldn't find. I bought two fresh ones instead, not thinking to look for canned ones. Let's just say that in cooking the recipe, we ALL learned a lot about how not to cook artichokes! We also learned that Tennessee grocery stores don't sell wine. That seems pretty idiotic to me, since more people cook with wine than beer, but I digress...

Next up was "charred tomato, chicken, and broccoli salad." I added a side of brown rice with a squeeze of lime. This recipe was a bigger hit with Mom and Dad. Thankfully Mom took over the charring of the tomatoes- I'm woefully inept at frying, apparently. And speaking of charring tomatoes, Mom and I were both shocked and the different aromas (and flavors) brought out by charring. At one point the charred tomatoes had the house smelling like baking sweet potatoes. It was incredible.

This recipe would definitely be just fantastic in the dog days of summer. 

Ian make breakfast for dinner one night, but you probably guessed that from his prior post.

After all the visiting and such, we were all pretty tired and stressed, so I decided to make a humongous dessert. I don't feel too bad in saying that I'm known for my desserts, so when I found a yummy looking trifle recipe in a magazine given to me by my Mammaw (my Mom's Mom), I knew I had to make it! I'd never made a trifle before, and didn't even have a trifle bowl there. I substituted a large punch bowl, and it worked just as well!

The recipe comes from the April/May 2010 issue of Taste of Home magazine. Hope I don't get in too much trouble for posting it, but it's too good not to share! I made some edits to the recipe when I made it and it was still so sweet that it almost made us sick. I've included my edits and suggestions below.

Peanut Butter Brownie Trifle

Yields 20 one cup servings

1 fudge brownie mix (13" x 9" pan size) [I used two 8" x 8" brownie mixes that included peanut butter cups.]

1 pkg. (10 oz.) peanut butter chips [I did not include these because of the brownie mix I used.]

2 pkg. (13 oz. each) miniature peanut butter cups [I only used one bag, but it was probably more than 13 oz.]

4 cups cold 2% milk

2 pkg. (5.1 oz. each) instant vanilla pudding mix

1 cup creamy peanut butter

4 tsp. vanilla extract

3 cartons (8 oz. each) frozen whipped topping, thawed

Prepare brownies according to package directions; stir in chips. Bake in a greased 13" x 9" pan at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out with moist crumbs (do not overbake). Cool on a wire rack; cut into 3/4" pieces [I just ended up crumbling].

Cut peanut butter cups in half [I would do quarters instead]; set aside 1/3 cup for garnish. In a large bowl, whisk milk and pudding mixes for two minutes. Let stand for two minutes or until soft-set. Add peanut butter and vanilla; mix well. Fold in 1-1/2 cartons of whipped topping.

Place 1/3 of the brownies in your trifle [punch] bowl; top with 1/3 of the peanut butter cups. Spoon 1/3 of the pudding mixture over the top. Repeat twice [or until you run out of ingredients!]. Cover with remaining whipped topping; garnish with reserved peanut butter cups [but don't garnish with WHOLE peanut butter cups like I did- that seemed to irritate everyone]. Refrigerate until chilled [or in the case of my family, consume as soon as assembled].

If you try this recipe, I'd love to hear your comments on how you modified it.

Gnocchi and chard

We had a meal the other night that allowed me to try another vegetable! We had gnocchi with chard, pinto beans, tomatoes, and Parmesan cheese.

To me, chard had a slightly sweeter taste than spinach, but that was white chard. I'm not sure if red or Swiss chard would have a different flavor.

The recipe called for canned diced tomatoes, but we used fresh and it tasted fantastic. I honestly think using canned tomatoes would be too juicy. With this we had spinach salad (really just spinach) drizzled with olive oil, and topped with vegan Parmesan cheese topping.

We accompanied this with some of Ian's Double Dog Dare Cabernet sauvignon, which admittedly isn't the best pairing, but we're not sommeliers here.  (And why is it that in this paragraph alone I've had to add three words to the dictionary and let it automatically capitalize two. C'mon spell check! Get your act together!)

 Anyway, the dish and the company were fab and I can't wait to have them both again.

The new report

Lots of new stuff to report. Ian's going to report his part, so here's mine.
I've been wanting to explore vegan baking. I'm fascinated with the alternative ingredients used in vegan baking, and how they produce such amazing flavors. So Ian treated me to The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes. I like it because it's very straightforward, down-to-earth (doesn't use a lot of frou-frou ingredients), and explains the traditional baking ingredients and how vegan ingredients do the same thing.

I'm also very excited because we checked at Earth Fare, and the sweetners and flours used in the recipes are at really low prices. We even picked up some demarara to have in our coffee.

Because I'm fascinated with the raw eating lifestyle, Ian picked us up some Go Raw Spirulina Super Chips. Man are they good! The ones we got include banana, sesame seeds, coconut, dates, and spirulina. They taste of banana and sesame, but are just fantastic. If they tasted any better, I'd want to eat them in a bowl with soy milk for breakfast!

And because we're also (still? always?) counting calories, Ian also picked up EatingWell 500 Calorie Dinners. Hands down, it is one of the best recipe books I've seen in a very long time. It has caloric information for each dish, and suggests sides and dessert options (with caloric info, too) for them as well! We've already picked out two recipes from this book that will incorporate vegetables that we've been wanting to try. The first will be skillet gnocchi with chard and white beans (page 83). We've had about every shape of pasta except gnocchi, so we were happy to find whole wheat gnocchi at Earth Fare. We also picked up white chard, which is a vegetable we've never tried. The other recipe is provençal-style edamame sauté (page 96). It also incorporates a vegetable we've never tried- fennel. I'll report back once we make the recipes.

We picked up two more things, but I'm waiting to see how they work before reporting on them to you.
In the meantime, I hope you're well. Get out and get your hands dirty. Life's too short not to play in the dirt.
xoxo
akc