Cookbook Review: Rachel Ray Express Lane Meals

As always, Rachael gives twists on staples such as hamburger, cheese and bacon in Rachael Ray Express Lane Meals.

Open Face Blue Moon Burgers sound wonderful, as does Cowboy Spaghetti, which is also rated five out of five stars on Food Network's website. I'll have to tweak it to include non-dairy cheese, but that shouldn't be too difficult. The Balsamic Chicken with White Beans and Wilted Spinach is one recipe I made. I highly recommend the chicken part. The wilted spinach is good, except that I added too much liquid and it turned into spinach soup (which was still good, but in a whole different way than I expected). If you use bottled minced garlic, make sure you use a bit less than the equivalent of four minced garlic cloves. It gets stronger as it sits in your frig!

I plan to make the Smoky Sweet Potato Chicken Stoup someday when it cools off a bit. I love the concept, although I'll have to buy chipotle peppers in adobo sauce just for this recipe.

Probably the absolute best part of this cookbook is at the beginning, where Rachel has a three to four-page section discussing her 70 "go-to" staples (and the quantities in which she keeps them). It's a very useful tool for new cooks unaccustomed to stocking a pantry/frig so it's not necessary to buy ingredients for every recipe you cook.

Knowing me, I probably won't need as much hot sauce as she does, but it's a guideline. 
If there's something you won't eat, don't buy it! (Personally for me, that would be anchovies, thanks to the job of my youth working in a pizza place.)

Product review: Sahale Snacks Nut Blends

I liked trail mix as a kid; however, many traditional mixes have something with corn syrup in them. Although they're still tasty, I'll pass on them these days. (In my opinion corn syrup is one of the more insidious additives to food ... pretty much ever. I don't want it, even in my soda pop, but some of the things it pops up in are surprising, such as clam chowder. Does that need to be sweet? OK, will stop ranting and get back to my post.)

I have tried out a few different kinds of Sahale Snacks, which are healthier, I think than your traditional trail mix with candies in it.

Valdosta (which has pecans in it) and Soccoro (featuring macadamia nuts) are my favorites, although I think they're all worth trying, as they are both healthful and tasty. Starbucks sells single-serve packs of these as part of its healthy snack entourage. Bon appetit!

Veggie pasta, with an emphasis on the veggies

One of the things I loved as a kid was spaghetti salad. I still do, but prefer to vary pasta shapes and the dressing a bit.
Last summer, quite by accident, I made a pasta salad with the things I had on hand. People kept requesting it when I went to parties. I made it with fresh veggies; I made it with frozen veggies. I made it with brown rice pasta, wheat pasta, even a mixture of the two once. It didn't seem to matter. The trick was the dressing.

On Sunday, I learned (in yet another serendipitous "mistake") that you can make pasta salad and vegetable soup at the same time in the same cooking pot; see my earlier post.  

I don't really measure the pasta, the veggies or the dressing, so I can't even call this a recipe. It's more of a suggestion to try for yourself. I know I'm probably driving some cooks crazy right now, though my favorite TV chef, Rachael Ray, will understand me if she ever sees this post. She's totally cool with the "dab of this, dash of that" school of cooking.

I use a base of approximately 1/4-cup Maple Grove Farms' sugar-free Bacon Vinaigrette, mixed with a few sprays of Bragg's Liquid Aminos (a soy product that I often use to substitute for salt-laden soy sauce), about 1 tsp. sesame seed oil, a dash of white balsamic vinegar, about 2 tsp. Maple Grove Farms' Vermont Sugar Free Syrup (or a tsp. of the real thing) and a pea-sized piece of Thai Kitchen's Green Curry Paste (just trust me when I say you want to thoroughly break it up and distribute it through the entire dressing). If you're not into sugar substitutes, use another brand of bacon vinaigrette (or make your own) and real maple syrup.

The dressing should taste like a vinaigrette with a touch of sweetness and a little smoky flavor. If it's too sweet to your taste, add either a little more Bacon Vinaigrette or a splash of white balsamic vinegar. You might want to add some of the cooked pasta water (a tablespoon or so); it helps make the dressing come together.

If you make the dressing more than a couple minutes before you drain the pasta and veggies and stir in it, you will need to beat the dressing again ... thoroughly. Toss the dressing with about 3-4 c. of your choice of a mixture of slightly cooked veggies and pasta. I suggest Oriental-style frozen veggies, which only require quick steaming (1-2 minutes, max), along with  the Tinkyáda brown rice pasta, which keeps its shape better than most pastas. Make this dish a meal: add chopped, cooked chicken.
 
My preferred ratio for veggies to pasta is between 1 1/2 and 2 times to 1; more dressing clings to pasta than veggies, which may be why I get away with less dressing than you would use for a bowl of pasta salad. 

Whatever pasta and veggies you choose, regardless of the proportions, make sure they are cooked al dente; otherwise, you'll have goopy pasta salad that mushes together.

(Note: Brown rice and whole wheat pastas tend to be an acquired taste. The photo and link I included is for large amounts of this pasta; try a single package first. I buy it in Kroger's organic area or at Whole Foods Market.)

When life hands you a defrosted freezer, make soup

The recent meltdown of the kitchen refrigerator's freezer led to the urgent need to do something with all the vegetables that defrosted.

I tried my hand at a vegetable soup, containing:

-Pacific Natural Foods Organic Low Sodium Vegetable Broth (32 oz.)
-2 C. water
-one 28-oz can of chopped tomatoes
-1/2 package of Tinkyáda brown rice pasta shells (or similar whole wheat shells would work)
-1/2 package of peas and carrots
-1/2 package of peas
-8 oz. green beans
a whole package of California-style vegetables (carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower)
-a whole package of Oriental style vegetables (broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, red peppers and water chestnuts)
-Two kinds of Mrs. Dash: Original Blend and Tomato Basil Garlic (about a tsp. each or to taste)
-McCormick Perfect Pinch, Roasted Garlic and Bell Pepper flavor, approximately 1/4 tsp.

Start by boiling the broth/water mixture in a large soup pot or Dutch oven. When it comes to a boil, start to cook pasta per package directions. When it comes back up to a boil, put in vegetables and add the seasoning, stirring thoroughly. When cooked, if you wish, you may take about three cups of the pasta/vegetable mixture out to dress with your favorite pasta salad dressing. (I did this because I decided I wanted to add tomatoes to my vegetable soup.) Add tomatoes and simmer until warmed through.

I didn't calculate the number of servings, but it was made Sunday and we're still eating the soup. I've pretty much finished off the veggie pasta salad.

Blogging (and cooking) by the seat of my pants

My first blogs were very well planned. I wrote them in advance in Word and edited them extensively. Then I realized something: many blogs are more or less spontaneous, reacting to what life throws at you.

For example, I'm typing this blog at the library and have about 18 minutes left before it shuts off because the recent storm knocked our power out Thursday. I do three blogs a week and I'm not letting a minor detail, such as a lack of power or no clue what my topic is, stop me.

A good portion of what was in the frig are in coolers with ice at present. I don't think I appreciate sufficiently how wonderful it is to have all that food handy until something like this happens. We're trying not to open the frig as much as possible to keep the stuff good.

I'm used to convenience. It's easy to want to get something like Hot 'N Ready Pizza at Little Caesar's or McDonalds when you're in a situation like this, but that's really not the way my family does things.

The Coleman stove is perched on the inert grill outside and I had oatmeal with soy milk this morning. It was good to stick to healthy eating. Hopefully, the power will be on tonight. Hopefully, there will be something good at the graduation party I'm attending. Otherwise, it will be whatever we can cook on the Coleman stove or sandwiches for dinner: whatever's easy (and healthy) to fix.

P.S. It must be my lucky day: not only was the food at the graduation great (chocolate fountain with fruit and goodies, anyone?), but only one freezer (the side door one in the older refrigerator) had to be majorly purged. The other frig and basement freezer were intact. I'll also be cooking a lot of things that thawed but were still cold and improvising ingredients like crazy. How does a big breakfast fryup of chicken sausage and veggie soup sound?

Green Cleanup

Kitchen La Boheme, one of my followed blogs had a most excellent post on green products you can use in your kitchen. I thought it was an awesome post, and hope you read it!

It leads me to think of things we can do to make sure our cooking, eating and cleanup is greener:

A big one is to minimize the waste products we have by selecting items which use less packaging. 

Certain cereal boxes, for example, are packaged with less waste than others, such as Cascadian Farm organic cereals, making them better for our bodies and the environment.

Overpackaging comes in things like 100 calorie packs. Count out your own 5 Oreo Minis from a larger package, put it on a plate, put away the package and eat it at the table.

Buy fresh fruits and vegetables and recycle the plastic bags/boxes in which you carry them to the checkout.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. If you have any more green shopping, cooking or cleanup ideas, feel free to make suggestions in the comments area.

Melons and berries, oh my!

I am mad for melons and berries this time of year: cantelope, watermelon, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and the little blackberries in our treeline ... whatever's available.

It's truly amazing that I haven't turned some shade between red, purple and orange yet. If I do, I'll put a new, multicolored photo on the blog.

This is the best time of the year to get melons or berries, as far as I'm concerned. Check a grocery store, specialty market or local farmers' market near you. If you're not sure where to find a local farmers' market, see my prior post on the subject.