Perfect Low Fat Baked Potatoes with veggies

I tried this baked potato recipe out last night and it's absolutely tasty and super easy to make. It's written for "crock pot" to be used for the baked potatoes, but I just cooked them in the oven. I made a few additions of my own, which you may not want to include (like bacon) due to calories and/or cost perspectives. I'll write this for 4 servings. I slightly under-cooked the broccoli so when it was re-heated they would finish cooking and not be a soggy gross mess.

4 baking potatoes

10 ounces of fresh crimini mushrooms

1-2 broccoli crowns, cut into small florets (discard the stems)

About 2 tblspoons of cooking oil

Salt and pepper

(optional red pepper flakes to spice it up)

¼ to ½ cup chicken broth

¾ cup plain greek yogurt ( used Fage)

Crock Pot method - rub some cooking oil (or add a pat of butter to the foil before wrapping)over the peel of 4 whole potatoes  If you skip this you will end up with a dry peel that will break apart and not taste as good.  Wrap the 4 baking potatoes (they are a little larger than the cheap Russet potatoes in a bag) in foil. Prick with a fork to allow the steam to come out instead of explode your potato.

NOTE on purchasing potatoes: I've taken to hand selecting my taters in the bulk area of the produce department because the bags are just getting lower quality all the time, so even though it seems like a savings, I end up throwing potatoes away. Hand picking nice, firm, no visible damage or green tinge means less waste and a higher quality potato. Place them on low for 8 hours, then proceed with the rest of the recipe.

Oven method – prepare the potatoes as described above, but instead bake them in the oven on 400 degrees for about an hour or until you can easily stick a fork in them.

Using a little bit of cooking oil, sauté 10 ounces of crimini mushrooms that have been quartered (or sliced is fine too) for about 2 minutes.

Add the broccoli florets to the pan and sauté until slightly “crisp yet tender” about 8 minutes. *Remember my note from above about under cooking if you want to save the topping for reheating later

Remove from heat and set aside

My broccoli topping (with bacon, onions, garlic)

Now, split your potatoes and carefully scoop out the insides into a medium bowl, leaving the peel to be your “shell” so-to-speak. Add the Greek yogurt and a bit of the chicken broth to the potato flesh and mash this up till it’s smooth like mashed potatoes. Add as much broth as you need to reach this consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add red pepper flakes to taste if desired. Scoop this stuff back into the potato and top with your broccoli, mushroom mixture. Eat and enjoy!

Changes I made: I cooked up a few slices of bacon till crispy, removed, cooled it and chopped into small bits. I used the bacon grease to sauté a 1/3 sweet onion, then added 3 fresh garlic cloves chopped for about 30 seconds…then I added the mushrooms and followed the steps above. Mind you, these additions kill the “low fat”ness of the dish but mmmmmmm, it’s good!

My daughter's favorite mushroom soup (and she hates mushrooms)

Page 47 of Haggen's Real Food Spring 2012 Magazine (Haggen's is a local grocery store in Washington)

Mushroom Soup with Sauteed Shiitake (followed by my Mom tips)

1/2 ounce dried Shiitake mushrooms or Porcini

2 cups water

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

10 ounces (about 2 1/2 cups) sliced Crimini mushrooms including stems

1 cup chopped onion

1 garlic clove chopped

1/2 teaspoon coarse salt or to taste

1/8 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

2 cups or beef, chicken or vegetable broth

1 tablespoon of reduced sodium Tamari or Soy Sauce

Garnish

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

4 large Shiitake fresh with stems discarded caps cut into 1/4 inch slices

pinch of coarse salt

pinch of fresh ground black pepper

1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

1/2 clove of garlic grated

1. combine Shiitake or Porcini and water in a small sauce pan. Heat to boiling. Remove from heat and let stand until soft, about 20 mins. Set a strainer over a bowl and strain the mushrooms, reserving the liquid. Coarsly chop mushrooms and set aside.

2. heat oil in a large, broad saucepan until hot enough to sizzle a piece of mushroom. add Crimini and onion and cook, stirring, until mushrooms are tender and onion is golden. Stir in garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper and cook, stirring 1 minute. 

3. Add reserved mushroom liquid, reserved mushrooms, broth, and Tamari, and heat to boiling. Reduce heat to low and cook, covered 10 minutes. Cool slightly. 

4. Ladle soup into blender, working in batches if needed, and puree until smooth. If preferred, puree with an immersion blender in sauce pan. Season to taste, keep warm over low heat. 

5. Garnish, heat oil in small skillet until hot enough to sizzle a sliced Shiitake. Sprinkle mushrooms lightly with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring, over medium/low heat until tender and golden (about 5 mins) add parsley and garlic, cook 1 minute. 

6. Ladle hot soup into bowls. Divide garnish evenly among bowls before serving. 

Mom's tips:

• I've never made this with the garnish and it's still amazing. 
• I discovered I could buy dried Shiitake mushrooms at the local Asian market for pennies compared to what the national grocery store chains were asking. I bought a 5 oz. bag for $3! Dried Shiitake goes a long way. Now I don't have to spend a fortune for great flavor. 
• I always add more garlic. Last night I added 3 nice sized cloves. You can never have too much garlic in my opinion. 
• I try to keep broth on hand (home made or in a box) however I always have "Better than Bouillon" chicken, beef, and veggie jars of bouillon on hand in case I run out. Last night I just used the veggie bouillon (per the package measurement)  and added 2 cups of water. 
• The magazine says to serve with beef patties. Last night I served it with turkey meatballs over rice. I also added a chopped Russet potato with the peel just to give it a little more density to be more filling. Makes GREAT left overs - you could easily freeze the extra for future use, but I eat it too fast for that.
• Mushrooms are good for you! Vitamin D - and this can be essentially a meatless dish if you use veggie broth. 
• According to the magazine....Per Serving: Calories 181 Fat 14 grams (gotta be from the olive oil) Cholesterol 0, Sodium 887 mg, Carb 12g, Fiber 2g, Protein 5 g

And one flew from the nest, to NYC!

It's official. My 20 year old daughter just moved out on her own - all the way from the Pacific Northwest to New York City. She's never lived on her own before though she did spend a month living in Portland with a brother of mine and supported herself, managed her own groceries, cooking and transportation, all the while earning a living with her free-lance modeling jobs she scheduled on her own. She's never even visited the city prior to today.

In her first foray to the city to find food (grocery store only as she is fiscally responsible to a fault) - she realized quickly there were many differences in the selection, prices, locations and types of grocery stores. The nearest "supermarket" like Safeway, is over 70 miles and she's reliant upon the public transportation system so - that kind of trip isn't practical.

I realized in a panic - I had so much more to impart!! There is a huge difference in teaching someone how to cook with food you've purchased with your two family middle class income house vs. teaching a budding young career woman how to SURVIVE on a tiny budget and still be able to eat healthy meals - in a HUGE city with prices twice what we are accustomed to in the Northwest.

I did some quick searches on Google Maps to see what stores were actually in the Bronx are where she is renting a room - viewed the street view to get a sense of the places, viewed the store websites and "sale prices" in order to try to give her a crash course (via email)  in her most economical choices based on my 21 years of experience from broke to making a decent living.

I found a store that advertized whole chickens on sale for $1.99 a pound. Mind you, whole chicken on sale in Washington state is .89 to .99 cents a pound...but everything I saw on "sale" in NYC looked to be nearly twice the price of what we are used to here - so I went with a whole chicken as her best bet to survive her first week.

She consistently eats old fashioned oat meal with some fruit for breakfast.  So, lunch and dinner were my primary focus. She's aiming for $25-$30 a week.

What follows us my mom crash course in "how to make a whole chicken last a week with limited cooking tools, experience, seasonings, money to spend, and still eat a healthy variety of dinners/lunch leftovers".

I think your cheapest option for meat will really be whole chickens. Looks like that store Key Food has whole fryers for 1.99 a pound. That means probably $8-10 for a decent sized chicken. There are lots of recipes you can make with this even though it's not "easy" like cut up chicken - it's really going to give you the best "meat" value. 

******************************************************************

Dear Daughter, 

A few very easy things you can do with a whole chicken that aren't too "gross". Boneless, skinless anything chicken is going to cost triple or more and lacks so much of the flavor. In my opinion, chicken can be both tasty, affordable and healthy.

1. You gotta take those "gizzards" out of the inside cavity and throw those away first no matter what you do with it. Yes, it's gross. I have no idea why the chicken places still keep putting them in there. Some people make fried "gizzards" or gravy with this stuff, but I've never done anything but throw these things out. I don't even want to know what they are...mushy and gross. Don't look. Just scoop, and throw away. Rinse out the inner cavity with water and drain the water out by turning the chicken upside down over the sink or on a plate.

2. You could learn how to chop one up by finding a video online I'm sure, but you'll need a nice sharp meat knife to do it. If your roommate has one, you may want to try that. If you chop it up, you can freeze to bake, fry or boil later (you'll need zip lock bags or reusable "storage" type containers - those will cost more up front, but you can use them again and again). To freeze them, don't buy the generic bags...if they break it'll be icky. Squeeze as much air out as possible and mark it with the contents and the date you freeze it. Since you are just one person, you could probably freeze like this for baking or frying later: 

• 1 breast
• 1 breast
• 1 thigh, leg and wing
• 1 thigh, leg and wing

That means really dinner meat for 4 different meals and maybe enough on each of the breasts that you'd have left overs the next day for lunch depending on how you cook it. 

3. An easy way to get all the meat off it and use it (or freeze it) as cooked meat is just place an unfrozen whole chicken into a very large pot. Place enough water in to cover all the meat. The very simple version is to just lightly salt the water and boil it at a medium high heat for an hour or so till you can see the skin is starting to pull away from the meat. Keep an eye on the water. If it gets too low, add a little more till you know the whole chicken is still covered with water. Remove the chicken from the water (carefully cause it's hot!) and put it in a bowl to cool down enough that you don't burn your fingers when you pull the meat off. Once it's cooled, you'll just pull all the meat off the bones - you'll discard the skin and bones and just keep the chunks of meat. At that point you have cooked chicken meat that's suitable for a lot of different meals. 

You can get more creative with the left over water from boiling the chicken and make your own chicken stock, but you'll probably want to keep it simple at this point. 

4. With all that boiled chicken meat, you can separate into 1-2 person sized servings and freeze it for future use. 

5. Some ideas on what to do with the meat - add it to a nice simple green salad, add it to a simple pasta dish either lightly seasoned with something easy like salt and pepper or served with a spaghetti sauce or white sauce like Alfredo. You could chop some up and mix it with some mayo and mustard and have an easy chicken sandwich meat filling. You could simply saute some chopped onion in butter or veggie oil and add some bell pepper or whatever veggies are on sale (think thinly sliced carrots, celery, other root veggies like turnip or parsnips,  broccoli). Simple ways to have nice flavor without a lot of expensive seasonings are salt, pepper, red pepper flakes. You then would have a nice protein/veggie meal with a lot of natural flavor. 

So for the boiling method you'd need:

• One large pot for boiling
• One whole chicken (anything under $1.50 a pound is usually a great deal, though I saw chicken for $1.99 a pound on sale at the store near you which isn't bad either)
• One bowl to let it cool
• A bowl to place the meat as you pull it off the chicken
• Salt (iodized table salt is inexpensive, but not as nice as cooking with "Kosher" salt or Sea Salt if you can afford it or can find a good sale) 
• Storage containers for the extra meat (cooked meat will keep longer than raw meat in the fridge so if you were going to eat it all week you could just keep it in the fridge. If you don't think you'll eat it all in one week, then freeze it)
• A black marker to write the date on the freezer bag (if you use a reusable storage container, you'll need freezer tape to stick on the lid to write the date on it and you'll probably want to wrap it in plastic wrap if there is a lot of "air space" in the container. Freezer burn will set in and make your frozen meat taste icky if you don't keep the air away). 

Then you'll just need to decide what meals you'll want to make with it and add to your ingredients accordingly. 

For example:

A small box of any kind of pasta (really any kind will work, just the shapes add texture and hold on to "sauces" differently). Buy what's on sale and you like! Over here you can find pasta on sale for about a dollar a box or like a 12 oz package of noodles, but it'll probably be more over there. 

Pepper (ground pepper is the least expensive, but look at the signs to find the best value - you can add a lot to a meal with pepper for flavor, red pepper flakes (a little goes a long way), onions (Yellow onions are less expensive usually, but they have more onion flavor and aren't as soft and sweet when cooked like the sweet onion varieties), veggies on sale, spaghetti sauce on sale (usually the cheap stuff in a can instead of a jar doesn't taste as wonderful, but you can improve the flavor with some chopped garlic lightly sauteed with butter or veggie oil) on low heat and/or a sauteed onion added to it), bread, mayo and mustard, salad greens. 

Without knowing the exact prices - I think this would cost you about $25 depending mostly on the veggies. The salt, pepper, and other seasonings you buy - will last you for more than a week of course. If you did something like this each week, plus stick with water, oatmeal with sugar for breakfast you'd have healthy meals with a nice variety (other than the fact it's all chicken) for 7 days easily. It's a nice balance of carb, protein, fiber and healthy veggies. From what I see on the prices in NYC - I think you'll probably end up needing to stay away from fruit as much - because even the sale prices looked pretty high (double what they are here) but the veggies on sale were comparable. Potatoes are cheap and filling and you can add them to a lot of different meals (mashed, roasted, etc.)

If eggs are a good price, that's a nice easy source of protein - you can easily add that to a salad or make an egg sandwich and they last a long time. 

If you want to chop it up (vs. boiling) and save it that way - just lightly season the chicken skin when you want to cook it (salt, pepper is fine or you can do something like sage or even once I did a taco seasoning mix on the whole thing) then just bake it in a glass or stone type baking dish on 350 for about 25-35 mins till the juice is clear when you poke it or about 165 on a meat thermometer (if your roommate has one since I know you don't). 

Chicken Pot Pie

When Fall arrives, I happily return to cooking my favorite comfort foods. Fall weekends at our house mean, long, slow, lovingly cooked meals. 

Today I decided to make chicken pot pie. Chicken, when purchased with skin and bones, whole or by legs and thighs can be very economical. Boneless, skinless chicken these days cost as much as nice cuts of beef, so I find ways to use less expensive chicken. 

I boiled 8 chicken legs purchased for under a dollar a pound on sale. I placed the chicken legs in a pot of water (just enough to cover the meat) with half an onion, a couple of garlic cloves, some celery, salt, and Old Bay seasonings and boiled it for about 2 hours. I then removed the chicken and placed in a bowl to cool. I strained the resulting broth, and placed it back into the pot. I added the other half of the onion, sliced carrots, left over (meaning parts of bags, not the whole bag) frozen corn, cut green beans, and peeled, cubed potatoes to the pot. I simmered the veggies for about 15 minutes. I added parsley, pepper, a little salt and a bit of "Better than Bullion" seasoning. I don't often measure my seasonings. I just "season to taste" most of the time. 

Once the chicken cooled a bit, I took the meat off the bones in as large chunks as possible. I threw away the bones, skins and icky parts. 

I chunked the larger pieces of meat with a big knife and added it to the veggies in the pot. 

I added about a 1/4 cup of baking mix (like Bisquick) to the pot to thicken the mixture. 

I added all that yummy goodness to a lightly greased, big, glass baking dish. 

I mixed equal parts baking mix with milk to create the crust. I added a bit of garlic powder, onion powder, and Old Bay seasoning to the batter and poured it over the mixture in the dish. 

As a finishing touch, I sprinkled parsley flakes on the top. I then baked it at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes till the crust was golden brown. 

It was delicious!! 

You can experiment with your seasonings as well as the veggies to find your perfect chicken pot pie. 

It's an easy, economical and wholesome meal. We'll be having left overs tomorrow too! 

"Take out" free zone!

Asian food has always been a mystery of flavors and textures that I love! I am slowly unlocking the mysteries in my very own kitchen.

One of my favorite Asian soups has always been hot and sour soup. I was sure the creation of such a complex mix of flavors and textures must be something so complicated I wouldn't be able to make it at home. I was so sure of this, I had never even looked up any recipes - instead just enjoying the flavors when we went out to eat Chinese food at overpriced local eateries. 

Just before I added the egg drop

I finally found this hot and sour soup recipe and decided to try it myself. 

The clerk at the store had no idea what "wood ears" was. Since it wasn't with the Asian food and the clerk couldn't help me - I gave up and went for canned Shitake mushroom slices instead. This was also my first time purchasing tofu of any kind. 

The finished soup

I already had some home made (regular, not Chinese as this recipe describes.) chicken stock so I used that in this recipe. I also didn't have pork, nor have I ever tasted hot and sour soup with pork - so I decided to use cubed turkey breast I already had. Other than that, I followed the recipe and I was not disappointed. It tasted almost exactly like what I eat at my favorite restaurant. 

my secret family chicken stir fry recipe

I'm sure with some additional practice, and maybe these "wood ears" and Chinese chicken stock - it would be even more authentic. 

I served it with my favorite chicken stir fry recipe - which is mostly improvised with ginger, soy, brown sugar, sesame and chili paste thickened with cornstarch. 

Since I only used 1/2 of the tofu I bought, I'm excited to try another "first" with that this week! 

Stuffed Bell Peppers

diabetic friendly stuffed bell peppers with rice

My daughter's new friend was supposed to come join her in preparing dinner for my husband and I so we could officially "meet" him. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it. Fortunately, my daughter stuck to the plan and made the diabetic friendly bell peppers and rice for us anyway and they were piping hot and ready the moment we walked in the door from our 1.5 hour long commute from Seattle.

Ahhhh.....so this is what the rich and privileged feel like....you know, the ones with personal cooks!

The recipe came from the first website that helped me help my husband manage his out of control type 2 diabetes.  You need to create an account to view the meal planning and its not the easiest to navigate BUT it literally saved my butt when it came to helping him control his diabetes. His doctor says the best way to prevent type 2 diabetes is to eat like you already have it - so everyone should go check it out. It gave us the tools we needed to take his A1C from 13% down to 7% in just 90 days.

So, here's to daughters making dinner for tired Moms and step-dads. AND the bell peppers were delicious. You must know that we always add a meat - this recipe is supposed to be vegetarian but we add hot Italian sausage. We were even able to use the fancy imported Parmesan cheese from the Italian grocer!

ahhh, Italy...how I love thee...

I discovered a legitimate Italian grocery store just steps away from my office today. My husband is part Italian and loves Italian recipes. I thought this would be a perfect way to treat him to a nice treat.

I found this nice recipe for Involtini of Beef with a red wine sauce for inspiration and hit the store on my break. I was immediately overwhelmed with the choices and knew I would HAVE to return for a closer, longer look later. 

From Big Johns PFI in Seattle

For today, I just purchased the items I needed for tonight's dinner:

1. Pasta imported from Italy
2. Imported fresh Parmesan cheese
3. Imported Prosciutto
4. Italian Pomi diced tomatos

Involtini of Beef with a red wine sauce

It was a hit! Flavorful, yet simple. I served it over Italian pasta and with a side of steamed broccoli. I have a tendency to over complicate things I create or make - so I stuck with the recipe on this one and was so pleased with the result.

I'm confident I can create a similar result with less expensive ingredients as well.

I'm excited to see what other Italian culinary experiences I can discover in the upcoming weeks!