Corn Chowder

Don't think you can bump my post and not pay, Rosemary - eat this! Literally, this is a great dish. Super easy, too.

Corn Chowder

1/2 to 1 lb sausage (I prefer the sage kind, and usually use half a pound, but use more if you wish)
1/2 onion, chopped
2-4 potatoes, chopped (make it as potato-ey as you want)
1 can corn, drained
1 can creamed corn
1 can evaporated milk
Thyme or sage (1/2 tsp or so)
salt and pepper to taste

In large pot, brown sausage with onion, drain off any grease. Add potatoes and spices and just enough water (or broth) to cover them. Simmer until the potatoes are tender. Add the cans of corn and milk (I tossed in about 3/4 cup half and half 'cause I was trying to use it up) and heat it until it's all warm and yummy.

Butternut Squash Lasagna

Another great recipe find that resulted from me needing to use up random ingredients. I was suspicious that butternut squash and spaghetti sauce might not blend well. I was happily mistaken. We like this recipe very much and will certainly make it again.

P.S. my kid broke my camera, so that's why there haven't been pictures lately.

Butternut Squash Lasagna

1 lb butternut squash, peeled, cubed, steamed, and mashed
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion (or onion powder if you're last onion got moldy like mine did :(
2 cloves garlic, minced
crushed red pepper to taste
2 tsp honey
1 1/2 cups cottage or ricotta cheese
1-2 jars of spaghetti sauce
1/2 box lasagna noodles (use oven ready or else make up the regular kind according to the instructions)
2 cups shredded mozzarella
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, or less if you're using real Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese

1. Cook up lasagna noodles if you're using the regular kind.This is also a great time to cook your squash. You can throw it in a steamer. I used a microwave steamer and it worked beautifully and relatively quickly. My 1/2 inch cubes were done in about 12 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, saute onion and garlic in olive oil until just starting to brown.Throw in squash, crushed red pepper, and honey. Salt and pepper are optional too.

3. Throw a small amount (1/2 cup or so) of spaghetti sauce in the bottom of a 9x13" pan. Add a layer of noodles followed by 1/2 of the squash mixture, 1/2 of the cottage cheese, some more spaghetti sauce, and 1/2 of the mozzarella cheese. Do another layer of noodles, squash, cottage cheese, spaghetti sauce, noodles, a little more sauce, the rest of the mozzarella cheese, and the Parmesan cheese. If you don't want so much pasta or you didn't cook up quite enough, you can just put the cheeses on top of your last layer of sauce and skip the top layer of noodles. That works too.

4. Bake in a 350°F oven for 45 minutes or so until cheese on top is getting bubbly.

Rosemary

Creamy ham and green bean pasta

Since the arrival of bouncing baby boy number two a month ago, dinners around here have been both simple and quick (or in the slow cooker, which isn't quick but is convenient). Today I decided to use up some of the leftover Christmas ham we had in the freezer and turned to the handy-dandy "red" cookbook (this refers to the red cover on the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and not to anything of the communist ilk) and found a recipe for creamy pasta. It looked pretty simple and amazingly I had all of the ingredients. So I did something I very rarely do - I followed the recipe. Not perfectly, since I didn't really bother to measure, but the only thing I actually changed was that I substituted green beans for broccoli.

And oh boy, was that a mistake. Don't get me wrong - the recipe turned out great - very yummy, rich sauce, which just might make it into our meal rotation. It was more the fact that when I was busy assembling my ingredients my son decided to pour a shower of breadcrumbs on his stuffed polar bear. And then when I was busy precisely stirring the sauce in the pot in the correct order, he was busy mixing syrup and parsley in the back of his dump truck. The moral of the story that I came away with is to never follow the recipe - it's way too distracting.

Creamy Pasta with ham and green beans

1 tbs olive oil
4 oz neufchatel or cream cheese
1/2 cup low fat cottage cheese
1/3 cup finely grated parmesan
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbs dried basil (or 1/4 cup fresh)
3/4 cup milk
parsley

Cook garlic and basil in hot oil for about 30 seconds. Add cheeses and stir them while they melt. Slowly stir in milk and parsley, let it thicken up a bit. Toss in pre-cooked ham and green beans, let it all heat up. Serve over pasta of your choice.

Thyme

Bean Burgers

I my house, we're big fans of Black Bean Burgers. So this week when I had lots of left over great northern beans and some wasa crackers nobody was eating, I got creative. The results were delicious. Here are two recipes for you.

In case you're curious, here's a link for a lot of healthy burger recipes. Some are vegetarian, some aren't.
http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes_menus/collections/healthy_burger_recipes

And here's a good recipe for buns
http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/whole_wheat_burger_buns.html

Black Bean Burgers

1 can black beans (DO NOT DRAIN)
1 egg
1 cup breadcrumbs, or more if needed (whole wheat if you can)
1 can chopped green chilies, the fresh roasted equivalent, or chili powder to your heat tolerance
1/4 cup or so corn meal
canola oil as needed
Cheese if desired
Buns/bread
Regular hamburger condiments

Using a stick blender or your food processor, mash up the beans a bit, but do not puree. Throw in one egg, slightly beaten, bread crumbs, and green chilies/chili powder, mixing well. Add enough crumbs so that it will hold together nicely and it's not too sticky.

Heat oil in skillet over medium high heat.

Place corn meal in a small plate. Put some water in a bowl or cup. Wet hands with water. (Re wet every time and the patties won't stick to your hands.) Scoop out about 1/2 cup of bean mixture and shape into a pattie. Place pattie on corn meal, turning over once to coat.

Once oil is hot, place a few patties in it. Cook each side for 4-5 minute. You can use more or less oil, it's up to you. I've even used cooking spray successfully, but the texture wasn't quite as good. I recommend canola since it's a good heart-healthy oil and it's more heat stable than olive oil.

Serve and eat just like a hamburger. It won't taste anything like beef because it's not supposed to any more than a chicken burger is. Enjoy it for what it is.

Great Northern Bean and Wasa burgers.

2 cups cooked great northern beans with liquid
1 egg
1/2 a package or so multigrain wasa, pulsed thoroughly in a food processor
1 can chopped green chilies, the fresh roasted equivalent, or chili powder to your heat tolerance
1/4 cup or so corn meal
canola oil as needed
Cheese if desired
Buns/bread
Regular hamburger condiments

Assemble just like the black bean burgers. Additional salt may be needed depending on whether or not you salted the beans as you cooked them. You can also use a can of great northern beans or any other bean.

I'm a fan of Food Network. Alton Brown is probably my favorite celebrity chef because he gives loads of great information on his show and he's silly to boot. But recently I discovered another Food Network personality that I have completely overlooked. She's a registered dietitian, so once I found that out, I had to check her out. She's Ellie Krieger and, while she uses the same catch phrases an awful lot, I really like her recipes. Here's one of my favorites so far. It's ever-so-yummy (as good as any pudding I've ever had) and also rich in antioxidants and the goodness of soy.

The original recipe can be found here:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/dark-chocolate-mousse-recipe/index.html

You can also find a video for it on the Food Network website "Fabulous tofu  chocolate mousse" and on Hulu. The amounts she gives on the video are a little different, so I'll have to try it that way next time and tell you if I like it that way better.

Dark Chocolate Mousse

• 1 (12.3-ounce) package silken tofu, drained
• 3 ounces high quality bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably Dutch-processed
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon brandy (I use water or juice)
  
• 1/2 cup plus 1/2 teaspoon superfine sugar
  
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 1/4 teaspoons shaved chocolate

Directions

In a blender or food processor, puree the tofu until it is smooth.

Put the chopped chocolate, cocoa powder, 1/4 cup water and brandy in a saucepan or heat-proof bowl fitted over a pot containing 1-inch barely simmering water. Stir frequently, until melted and smooth. Remove from heat. Mix in 1/2 cup of sugar, a little at a time, until smooth.

Add the chocolate mixture to the tofu and puree until smooth and well blended. Spoon the mousse into serving dishes, cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Whip the cream with a beater. When the cream is almost completely whipped, add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of sugar and finish whipping. Top each serving with a dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkle of chocolate shavings and serve.

Yield: 5 servings (serving size 1/2 cup of mousse, 1 tablespoon whipped cream and 1/4 teaspoon shaved chocolate)

Rosemary

Pumpkin Pancakes and Whole Wheat Pancakes

Nutmeg requested this recipe and I forgot to give it to her. So now I will share it with you all. It's one of my favorites. They're so tasty that they really don't need much adorning. My favorite way to have them is just with apple butter. My husband, we'll call him Basil, is a pancake "purist" and likes it with maple syrup. Nutmeg found they were also good with a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar. I found this on Recipezaar and slightly modified it.

Pumpkin Pancakes

1 cup flour (you can do all-purpose, half whole wheat half all purpose, or all whole wheat)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice (I don't actually have this so I make about half of this amount cinnamon and the rest I make up with whatever pumpkiny spices I have such as nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and ginger. They all give great flavor.)

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar

1 cup buttermilk (I almost never have this because I would never go through it, so I put 1 tbsp of lemon juice in a measuring cup and then fill it up to a cup with low fat or skim milk.)

1/2 cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)

2 eggs

1/4 cup canola oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

nonstick cooking spray

1. Whisk together your dry ingredients (first 5) in a bowl and set aside.

2. Whisk together wet ingredients (next 6, yes, in baking sugar is considered a "wet" ingredient).

3. Make a well in dry ingredients and pour in wet ingredients. Mix as little as possible, just until everything is wet. It will still be lumpy and that is OK! Just make sure you don't over mix it because then it will get tough.

4.  Using a 1/3 cup measuring cup, scoop batter and drop on griddle. Do not scrape out measuring cup for perfectly portioned, easy-to-flip pancakes. Cook on a griddle, if you have one, at about 250°F, using the nonstick spray as needed. Flip when pancakes are bubbly on top and puffy and dry around the edges. Only flip once!

Whole Wheat Pancakes

I've searched and searched for a good whole wheat pancake recipe that doesn't taste like warm whole wheat flour. I finally found one hiding in my handy-dandy Betty Crocker cookbook. Whodathunk? I adapted the instructions though so I'll go ahead and post it here. I think I improved on it. If you follow their instructions just to beat everything in after you've whipped up the egg, it's probably going to come out tough and then you'll run into the problem of it tasting like sawdust. Anyway, here's my adaptation of these delicious and filling pancakes:

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 large egg

3/4 cup milk (a little more for thinner pancakes, which I like so I added a couple tbsp more)

1 tbsp packed brown sugar

2 tbsp vegetable or canola oil

butter or nonstick spray

1. Whisk dry (first 3) ingredients together in one bowl, set aside.

2. Beat egg in another bowl. Add milk, sugar, and oil, mixing well.

3. Make a well in dry ingredients and pour in wet ingredients. Mix as little as possible, just until everything is wet. It will still be lumpy and that is OK! Just make sure you don't over mix it because then it will get tough. (I repeated these VERY IMPORTANT instructions in case you missed them the first time.)

4. Using a 1/3 cup measuring cup, scoop batter and drop on griddle. Do not scrape out measuring cup for perfectly portioned, easy-to-flip pancakes. Cook on a griddle, if you have one, at about 250°F, using the nonstick spray or butter as needed. Flip when pancakes are bubbly on top and puffy and dry around the edges. Only flip once! (Hey, I repeated this one too. This time because I'm lazy.)

Happy breakfast!

Rosemary

Sweet Potatoes: From moderate failure to triumphant success

So I, like most everyone, decided to make a sweet potato dish for my thanksgiving dinner last week. And, trying to be clever and make stuff up ahead of time, decided to peel, slice, coat in olive oil, and roast the sweet potatoes on Wednesday, toss it together into a casserole that night, and basically just have to heat it up on Thursday. Which I did. After slicing and roasting them for an hour or so, I tossed in some brown sugar and let them sit until I got around to them again. At which point, I added a bit of orange juice and nutmeg and tossed the potatoes again. I then made a topping with chopped walnuts, a bit of flour, some cinnamon and nutmeg, and poured some of the orange juice/olive oil liquid from the potatoes in with it, and then sprinkled all that on in a layer over the sweet potatoes. Put it in the oven with the turkey when there was about an hour or so left before lunch and then was served with dinner. Tasted great...except...the consistency of most of the sweet potatoes was a bit chewier than I would like. Only a few were actually soft, and I have no real words to describe how off they were. Everyone took a few polite bites, but they were not exactly the star of the meal.

Faced with a nearly full pan of sweet potato "casserole" I decided to get inventive with my leftovers. I tossed the potatoes (it was generally easy to separate out the nuts) into a food processor and pureed them as best I could. Then I used it to make sweet potato bread. I generally followed the recipe for pumpkin bread in the Betty Crocker cookbook, leaving out most of the spices (since the potatoes were already flavored), and trying to balance out the liquid to flour ratio. One loaf disappeared that very night and the other one made it to work but was gone by the end of the day. So I'd say that whether or not your sweet potatoes turn out right, it's pretty easy to turn your sweet potato casserole into sweet potato bread - nuts and all.

Thyme