Archive for January, 2008

What makes a healthful meal?

Published by Hal on January 30, 2008 in Wholesome Wednesday. 5 Comments

In response to my post about the Kroger pizza Sunday, my longtime friend Jewel pointed out that she didn’t believe one serving of said pizza was a reasonably healthful choice. This got me thinking, because I thought that dish was reasonably healthful–a little high on fat, but other wise good and filling.

Truthfully, one’s own caloric needs will vary, depending on sex, age, weight, and activity level. USDA uses 2000 calories, because it’s a round figure, but your mileage may vary. Using this as a target point, and assuming most people eat three meals a day and have no snacks, this leaves us at about 670 calories per meal. Which, to be honest, is absolutely shocking to me–I couldn’t imagine eating a breakfast of this size on a regular basis. This also assumes no snacks, which is usually unrealistic.

So, let’s start again. Two snacks at 150 calories each. That leaves 1700 calories for the rest of the day, or 570 calories per meal. It’s only 100 calories difference, but it’s closer to what I expected. Still, for me, this seems like an insanely large breakfast.

I usually have a granola bar and a diet soda (bad, bad me, I know) for breakfast. Or, if I’m feeling particularly healthful, then it’s a grapefruit and a low-fat, low-sugar yogurt. Still, we’re only talking about 150-200 calories for breakfast. Even if I had a bowl of oatmeal, with milk, we’re getting up to 250-300 calories. That still leaves me with 1400 calories for the rest of my meals (700 for lunch and dinner!).

So, to be honest, I don’t feel like 2000 calories is right for me. But, that’s because I’m currently in weight loss mode. And, I track my food intake a little differently–I use that crazy points system, so I’m only interested in calories, fat, and fiber. My current set up gets me about 1500 calories a day, more if I work out and/or have food high in fiber… So, I usually aim for my meals to be sitting around 500 calories, which isn’t scary for me at all. Of course, at the end of the day, that still means my pizza was a reasonably healthful choice :-\

The point is, it seems all subjective to me, and you have to make sensible choices when planning your meals. Therefore, it seems that healthful means something different to different people. I don’t know–following my plan worked for me before (and, it’s working for me now). Of course, it means I have to make smart choices and be accountable to those choices. But, it doesn’t shed much clarity on this issue.

What do you think? What makes a healthful meal, at least when it comes to fundamental food metrics (calories, fat, carbs, fiber…)?

As a final note, if you want to know what a 300 calorie meal looks like, I found this great post at Diet Blog. Check it out–it’s not as surprising as I thought it was. Of course, it’s all breakfast food, and I don’t think of large meals as breakfast anyway…

500 g by suckamc

Sauerbraten

Published by Hal on January 29, 2008 in Hal's Hint and recipes. 2 Comments

Like I said a few nights ago, my wife has very German heritage, and we rather like German food. My wife’s family came over three or four generations ago, and brought some very German recipes over–last Christmas, one of her aunts even compiled some of them into a family cookbook. This particular one come from Stacie’s aunt Peg, whose note with the recipe reminds us that Stacie’s grandfather, Peg’s dad, loved this recipe.

I’ve not had the opportunity to make many of these family recipes, but I hope to be able to now that I’ve begun writing. I, too, have a book of family recipes that my aunts gave Stacie and me as a wedding present several years ago. We find, often times, that food is central to our family histories and certain dishes usually mean something incredibly special because of a particular memory or event associated with it. As I share these recipes, I’d love to hear of your family traditions and recipes.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups of water
  • 2 cups of vinegar
  • 2 onions, sliced
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 10 whole cloves
  • 6 peppercorns
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 4 pound beef roast
  • 12-14 gingersnap cookies, crushed

Procedure

Combine the water, vinegar, onions, and spices/herbs in a big zip top bag. Shake to combine, then add the beef roast. Allow the roast to marinate for 2 to 5 days, turning daily.

After the roast has marinated, remove it from the bag. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Brown the roast in a shallow sauce pan, in a small amount of fat, over medium heat. If your roast has a layer of fat, place the roast fat side down first. If you are using a standard pan, do not move the roast for at least five minutes, otherwise it will stick and tear. After five minutes, turn and allow another side to brown.

Remove the roast from the pan and strain the marinade. Add the strained marinade to the pan, whisking up all the brown bits from the bottom. Bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes. Add the roast back to the pan, cover, and place in the oven for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until it reaches the desired done-ness (about 140 for medium, 150 for medium-well; the temperature will increase about 10-ish degrees as the roast sits). Allow the meat to rest for at least 15 minutes before proceeding.

After the meat has rested, remove the roast from the pan and place the gravy over medium heat. Bring the gravy up to a bowl, and whisk in the gingersnap cookies to thicken the gravy. If you desire, you can sweeten the gravy with some sugar, to taste.

Hal’s Hints: Really, don’t move the meat once you place it in the pan to get brown. Second, this recipe makes a ton of food–6 to 8 servings. I cut it in half–if you do that, I recommend you bake for 45 minutes to an hour depending on desired done-ness. I also used apple cider vinegar because of its sweetness. You can use what ever you like the taste of, but I would stay away from distilled (no flavor) and balsamic (strange flavor) for certain.

Next–do you see those black flecks in the sauce, in the picture? Those are bits of yummy goodness from the browning process. Use a regular (not non-stick) pan and a metal whisk to whisk them up when you first boil the marinade. I have a non-stick cook set, but I just bought a regular saucier over the weekend with just this purpose in mind and it’s quickly becoming my favorite pan in the kitchen!

Finally, I don’t keep ginger snaps on hand as a matter of course, so I thickened the gravy with some corn starch. Bring the gravy up to a boil as directed. Combine 1 tablespoon corn starch with 1 tablespoon water (twice as much for the normal recipe). Then, whisk into the gravy and reduce the heat to a simmer. Simmer for five minutes, then serve

Chicken & Corn Chowder

Published by Hal on January 29, 2008 in recipes and rotisserie chicken. 2 Comments

I went to a training today that made me realize that I really should have a privacy policy for this site. Initially, I didn’t because I didn’t think I collected any information about the visitors to the site, but then I realized that’s not so–I use Feedburner for my feed stats and Google Analytics for my site stats. These two programs tell me who is clicking on my material and how they got to this site. So, consider yourself disclosed :) I don’t know exactly who you are, I just know that someone from some where is coming here using some key words typed into Google.

So, the point of telling you all that wasn’t so much to give you notice as it was to share some really interesting things about how it seems you guys are coming by this site. Three of the most popular searches are for “how to chop basil,” “how to cook pin oats,” and “recipes with a rotisserie chicken.” Hating Paula Deen is up there, too, but since I actually like Paula Deen, I’m choosing to ignore that ;)

This tells me that I need to write more “How-to’s” (thinking about what to do next), find a recipe for pin oats besides oat meal (I’m working on it–it’ll probably be a cookie), and write some recipes with that crazy rotisserie bird. Who knew it would be so popular?

Well, I can satisfy one of these needs tonight. My wife and I picked up one of these little guys at the store yesterday for dinner last night, but we got side tracked and made something else instead (hopefully I’ll be able to tell you what in a few days). My wife is also not feeling too great, so I needed to come up with something with some nutrients and simple. Chicken soup came to mind–but, wait, I have all these root vegetables (including little potatoes), some whole milk I’ll probably never get to finish, and a shiny new saucier. Chowder-time!

Before tonight I was thinking that most chowders were potato based, but in doing a bit of research, that doesn’t seem to be the case–rather, it’s a thick soup, with heartily cut ingredients, made from whatever a cook had available. We associate it with clams and seafood in the US because of New England, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be so. In fact, I say this dish epitomizes the idea of chowder, since I took what ever I had on hand, threw it in a pot, and called it dinner!

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 1 carrot, diced
  • 1 celery rib, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 5 small potatoes (1 1/2″ diameter), halved, then quartered
  • 1 cup shredded chicken (from a rotisserie chicken)
  • 2 cups chicken stock
  • 1/2 cup frozen corn
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon fresh black pepper
  • 1/2 cup of whole milk

Procedure

Combine the oil and butter in the bottom of a 2 1/2 quart saucepan, over medium to medium-high heat. Once the butter has melted, add the onions, celery, and carrots. Cook until the onions are just starting to caramelize, then add the garlic and the potatoes. Cook until the potatoes begin to show color at the edges, stirring occasionally.

Add the chicken, chicken stock, corn, bay leaves, tarragon, salt, and pepper. Stir to combine and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and allow the chowder to simmer for about 30 minutes, until the potatoes are fork tender and begin to fall apart. Add the milk to the chowder, then stir to combine. Serve immediately.

Initially, I thought I was going to need to make a roux, but then I remember I was cooking with potatoes. Potatoes have enough starch in them to be a good thickening agent for whatever your cooking, especially if you cook them until about when they fall apart.

This recipe is really as simple as putting the ingredients in a pot and calling it dinner. What I loved about this is that it takes almost no effort, and the payoff is huge! This makes a delicious chowder, and feeds about four. Trust me when I say you don’t need anything else but a bowl of this for your dinner.

Food Reviews: Kroger Private Selection Woodfired Stone Baked Italian Garden Pizza

Published by Hal on January 27, 2008 in product reviews and recipes. 5 Comments

Edit: Hi, and welcome to the Common Culinarian! If you’ve come here as a result of a search for this particular kind of a pizza, special welcome! Don’t forget to check out the rest of what this site has to offer: http://commonculinarian.com

We can’t cook all the time, because some time we just want something that is tasty and we want it in a hurry. Often times, this means that we resort to convenience foods–you know the ones, those TV dinners, frozen pizzas, pastas-in-a-can, and so on. Sometimes you just stumble on a gem, and it can quickly become a standby for those days when you just don’t feel like cooking, you’re short on time, or you don’t want to think about what to throw together.

Private Selection Italian Garden PizzaStacie and I seem to have found such a gem. We love pizza–in fact, I thinking about experimenting with my own dough and coming up with some fun creations to write about. So, today, when trying to decide what to have for lunch we pulled out this pizza I picked up at the grocery store on a whim.

If you have a Kroger in your area, I would recommend checking this pizza out. It’s the “premium” store brand, Private Selection, Woodfired Stone Baked Italian Garden Pizza. Once you get past the rather long title, at it’s core this is a simple vegetable pizza; the pizza has sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach, pecarino Romano and feta cheese on top of a crispy, thin crust that has been lightly covered in just enough tomato sauce to hold the whole thing together.

The pizza also has very generous servings–one third of each pie is one serving. And, it’s reasonably healthy, making it that much more appetizing: 340 calories, 12 grams of fat, and 5 grams of fiber per serving. Since there are just two of us, we each had half the pie, giving us 540 calories, 18 grams of fat, and 7.5 grams of fiber. That’s a little on the heavy side, but still respectable for a decent amount of food and still much more healthful than, say, a Big Mac.

And, it only put us out about $5.25, much cheaper than most carry-out pizza joints.

Want to make this on your own, or don’t have a Kroger (Fred Meyers, Scoops, etc..) near-by? Here is my deconstructed version of this pizza:

Ingredients

  • 1-10 inch pre-made thin pizza crust (or, you could try my quick rising pizza crust)
  • 1/4 cup of pre-made pizza sauce
  • 1/4 cup of cooked, well-drained spinach
  • 1/4 cup of chopped sun-dried tomatoes
  • 1/4 cup of sliced mushrooms
  • 1/4 cup of Pecorino Romano cheese
  • 1/4 cup of crumbled Feta

Procedure

Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees (F). Spread the sauce over the crust. Then, layer the remaining ingredients, reserving the cheese for the top. Bake directly on the rack for about 6-8 minutes, until the crust is crispy and the cheese has melted and turned slightly golden.

Frugal Friday: Making Something From Nothing

Published by Hal on January 25, 2008 in Frugal Friday and recipes. 0 Comments

I came home from work and working out the other night and needed something dinner. Unfortunately, my wife had already eaten with some of her friends, so I was on my own. Rather than revert to a TV dinner, I decided to see what I had on hand. I was feeling something Asian inspired, but it needed to be healthful–so no General Tso’s chicken for me, though it’s actually really easy to make!

No, instead I settled on stir fried (from a skillet, if that’s even technically possible) chicken with a soy-sauce glaze and yellow rice. There’s no reason for me to have yellow rice, and it’s kind of a cheat on saffron rice (which is also yellow)–I just like the color and it’s different than standard rice. You can use saffron, though that’s expensive and probably not a good use of such a premium ingredient for something you’ll just whip up; I just used 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric–hardly any flavor, but lots of color.

To just whip something up, the first thing I needed to do was take an inventory of what ingredients I had. We had just gone to the grocery store the night before, so we had a pretty full refrigerator and pantry; but, some things were off limits because I had other plans for them. I did have plenty of root vegetables which make a good base for any dish. I couldn’t use any of the fresh meat we bought, but I did have some frozen chicken tenders in the freezer. So, chicken and vegetables it was going to be.

Second, I needed a plan. I took a few minutes to think about what I was going to do. I knew it needed to be quick, since it was already 8 p.m., so I opted to dice my vegetables and cut the chicken into bite sized chunks. But, I also needed to season the food somehow. There was some soy sauce, rice vinegar, and rice wine in the fridge from when I made General Tso’s chicken a while back, and I had some sugar on hand, so I thought I whip up a quick glaze from that.

Next, I set to work defrosting the chicken, dicing the vegetables, and sauteeing everything. While I let the vegetables work, I started the rice. Once everything was started and working, I prepared the glaze.

Finally, everything came together and I enjoyed my dinner. I made enough for two so I could have some at work the next day. Now, I’m sharing this recipe with you so you might be inspired to experiment in your own home.

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • 1/2 medium onion, diced
  • 1/4 green pepper, diced
  • 1 rib of celery, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped
  • 1 large (or 2 regular) chicken breast, cut into bite sized chunks
  • 1 tablespoon water
  • 1/2 tablespoon sugar
  • 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon rice vinegar

Procedure

  1. Heat the oil in a medium skillet, over medium heat.
  2. Add the onion and cook until soft.
  3. Add the green pepper, celery, and garlic and continue to cook until the onion begins to caramelize.
  4. Add the chicken and cook until all sides have turned brown.
  5. In the meantime, combine the water, sugar, soy sauce, and rice vinegar.
  6. Pour the glaze over the chicken-vegetable mixture and reduce by about 25%.
  7. Serve over warm rice!

Deutsche Nacht!

Published by Hal on January 24, 2008 in recipes. 1 Comment

My wife has very German heritage. That doesn’t really mean anything when it comes to food, but we like to pretend it does. We had the opportunity to travel to Germany and Austria this summer and discovered that some of the food that we liked to eat on a regular basis was actually traditional Münchener Gaststätten fare :)

What could I be talking about but Wurst mit Sauerkraut und Kartoffeln? I think that I had the absolute best sauerkraut ever when we were in Munich–very different from the sauerkraut that I’ve ever had (or made) here in the States–it was sweet, but not too, and complimented the Kleinewurst perfect. Paired with pillowy, cloud-like mashed potatoes, and we were in heaven! And, it was like a little taste of home.

We make variations of this at home all the time, so I thought I would share with you what I made the other night. It’s not terribly healthful, but I did lighten it up some with turkey smoked sausage, so remember that it could be worse!

Brown Sugar Pan Sausage

Ingredients:

  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon water
  • 8 ounce package of smoked turkey sausage, cut into 1 inch pieces and sliced on a bias

Procedure:

  1. Melt the butter in a medium skillet; add the onions.
  2. Cook the onions just until they begin to caramelize, stirring occasionally.
  3. Once the onions have caramelized, add the garlic and continue to stir.
  4. Add the brown sugar and the water.
  5. Add the sausage and cover the pan.
  6. Once the sausage has browned on one side, turn it over and allow it to brown on the other side.
  7. Serve warm, with your choice of side!

A taste of our German/Austrian trip, after the cut (warning, it’s picture heavy! AND, bonus points if you can translate my German–that, it’s not that hard, looking at the context): Continue reading ‘Deutsche Nacht!’

Wholesome Wednesday: Trick Your Mind Into Thinking “More Food”

Published by Hal on January 23, 2008 in Wholesome Wednesday. 2 Comments

That has to be the longest title ever! Actually, that’s not true, because I think Fiona Apple’s second album had a pretty loquacious title.

After writing about specific foods for five weeks, I thought I might take a different turn today and write about our relationship with food. I said at the beginning of this feature that I was on a mission to lose weight and become healthier; a big part of that is my relationship with food.

I love to eat; that’s part of the reason I have a food blog. I love all kinds of food: rich food, fatty food, rabbit food (vegetables), sweets, savory stuff… You name it, I like it. Sometimes, I like it a bit too much. One of the ways I’ve tricked myself into eating less is to use a smaller plate.

The thinking goes, if you see your food taking up more room on the plate, you’ll think there’s more there than there is and you’ll be more full. Conversely, if you eat from a larger plate, you’re more apt to fill it up and keep eating, even if you might otherwise be satiated.

To illustrate my point, I wanted a graphic, but I can’t find a free one to use, so just use your imagination. A cup of rice will look much larger on a small plate than it does on a larger plate–it’s the same amount of food, but your brain thinks you’re getting more from the smaller plate. Try it, it works!

I posted a few weeks about eating a cereal high in fiber–interestingly enough, I came across this post at Cheap Eats. Provide some information, get a free pouch of Fiber One. If you’re looking to implement one of my suggestions, this might be a way!

Recipes: Focaccia

Published by Hal on January 22, 2008 in recipes. 3 Comments

I apologize for not posting much over the last several days–we had a wedding back home, so I spent the weekend traveling. Then, we went over to a friend’s house for dinner last night and didn’t get home until late.

However, it was the weekend of great food! The wedding was held at the Krohn Conservatory, overlooking downtown Cincinnati. The couple had the reception catered by Jeff Thomas Catering, who came up with an ingenious way to design a menu. The bulk of the party was in three rooms at the Krohn: the southwest room, the bonsai room, and the floral display house. In these three rooms was a tacos/fajitas bar, a Southeast Asian bar, and a pasta bar, respectively. Everything was amazing, especially the Southeast Asian bar. The chicken curry was delightful!

Then, last night, we went to our friend, Sonia’s, house (hi, Sonia!), where she treated us to an assortment of yummy food. First, she doctored up some canned cream of mushroom soup with chickpeas and rice (a good tip, if you’re in a rush). Then, we had some chicken in aromatic rice, biryani, lentils, and flatbread. Finally, she ended with a perfectly cooked, deliciously lemony cheesecake. What a nice!

Anyway, I’ve been getting into baking lately, at the suggestion of my friend, Charli (hi, Charli!). Last week, I found a delicious recipe for focaccia, here, and it’s been a hit the three times I’ve made it. Of course, I took my own spin (on the directions at least). So, without further ado:

Focaccia

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
  • 1 teaspoon white sugar
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1 pinch ground black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 cup mozzarella

Directions:

  1. Proof the yeast with the water and the sugar.
  2. Meanwhile, combine the remaining dry ingredients. Use a whisk to distribute the herbs throughout.
  3. After the yeast has proofed (you can tell because the head will have more than doubled), stir the yeast/water mixture and the vegetable oil into the dry ingredients.
  4. Using the dough hook on your mixer, or just a wooden spoon, stir the ingredients until they come together into a ball.
    • If you’re doing this by hand, you can also just use your hands once you’ve got all the ingredients combined.
  5. Knead the dough about 20 times and form into a ball.
  6. Cover with a kitchen towel and allow the dough to rise for 20-30 minutes. (Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 450 degrees)
  7. After the dough has risen, turn it out onto a greased baking sheet. Then, flatten it to about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.
    • You can make a rectangle, but the dough seems to want to be round. I just use a solid bottom pizza pan and make a round loaf.
    • I would not use one of those baking sheets that has two layers of metal with air between. You’ve seen them–they keep the bottom of cookies from browning too much. Problem is, they keep the bottom from browning, and you want a nice crust!
  8. Brush with the olive oil, then sprinkle the cheeses over the top.
    • The ingredients say mozzarella and parmesan, and you can use that, however it, would be like a pizza without cheese. The first time I made this, I used shredded (not grated) parmesan and romano cheese. My wife thinks this was much better.
    • Experiment with the toppings–I’ve been thinking of caramelized onion slices and sun-dried tomatoes.
  9. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the cheese is golden brown. Serve warm.

Frugal Friday: Preparing Your Own Skillet Meals in Advance

Published by Hal on January 19, 2008 in Frugal Friday. 0 Comments

This post is provided courtesy of the Simple Dollar. Trent doesn’t know it, but since all articles on his site are in the public domain, I’m yanking it for use here, while I’m traveling this weekend (which is also why this has been posted on Saturday–oops!). If you like this content, and you want to know more about personal finance from an everyman’s perspective, check out his site!  (Original source)

Many busy familes (even on occasion, our own busy family) often resort to prepackaged skillet meals in order to get a hot, prepared meal on the table quickly at dinnertime. With both parents getting home at five or later and a desire to get a meal on the table early enough so that there is some semblance of a family evening, it’s not surprising that the ease of preparation, the speed, and the relative healthiness of prepackaged skillet meals have become popular.

There are a few problems here, though:

Prepackaged skillet meals are often very expensive for what you get. Skillet meals are almost always at least $6 and often cost significantly more than that. Pick up five of them at once and you’re talking a bill of $35 or so. The food in the bag often adds up to less than a pound in total weight.

Such meals are often laden with preservatives and “industrial” ingredients. As a rule of thumb, if I don’t know what that ingredient is, I don’t like to eat it. Using that rule, pick up pretty much any prepackaged meal you can find and read that ingredient list. My stomach is flopping.

Such meals are often not very healthy in terms of fat, sodium, etc. These meals are designed to be tasty, not to be healthy. Based on the nutrition facts on these items, I’d have to say that most of them don’t worry about healthy too much at all.

I generally like most of the prepackaged skillet meal offerings, I just wish they were healthier - and preferably cheaper. As a frugal parent, I’d like to find a better solution to this situation. I’d like to have a healthy and tasty meal that I could prepare quickly.

My solution? Make a whole bunch of them in advance.

All you have to do is find a good skillet meal recipe, quadruple the recipe, prepare all of the ingredients, then fill four freezer bags with the meal. Then, when you’re ready to eat them, get that bag out of the freezer, thaw it, and then cook it in the skillet until it’s nice and warm. Done!

You can find countless skillet recipes online. My usual technique is to cook the meat in advance, then add all of the needed ingredients to the ziploc bags. Here’s an example:

Trent’s Beef and Vegetable Skillet Meal

The normal recipe involves the following:

3/4 lb. lean ground beef
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped green pepper
3 1/2 cups diced tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1 cup peas (frozen ones are okay)
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup uncooked rice
1 1/2 cups water

I add everything but the ground beef to each bag. Then, I cook up three pounds of ground beef and drain it, then add a quarter of that beef to each ziploc bag. On the outside I write “beef and vegetable skillet - simmer 40 minutes” on masking tape (so I can reuse the bag for another meal later) and I toss the bags in the freezer.

When I come home, I get out a bag, run it under hot water for a bit so that I can easily get the contents out, then I put it in a skillet on high until it’s just barely boiling, then I drop the heat until it stays just barely boiling. I cook it for about forty minutes or so, then it’s ready to serve.

A similar philosophy applies for pretty much any skillet meal you might prepare. They all work pretty well.

Making skillet meals in advance actually makes for a great weekend afternoon project that saves money and helps you to eat healthier. The meal above is really healthy - it’s loaded with vegetables and, if you cook lean ground beef and properly drain it, it’s very low fat, too.

Plus, the ingredients all together cost only a bit more than one ordinary skillet meal. Compared to the cost of four typical skillet meals, the needed ingredients save about $15, and you can have the bags ready to go into the freezer in less than an hour. That’s $15 saved (compared to prepackaged skillet meals) even without considering the positive health effects - quite a bargain in my eyes.

The Second Best Food Ever

Published by Hal on January 17, 2008 in health. 1 Comment

I’ve been trying to work out at least twice a week, and I need to find time during the week to go a few more times. I’m by myself tonight, as my wife has returned to our hometown for a wedding this weekend. So when I finished my third (!) workout for the week, this evening, I had to figure out what I was going to eat.

We’ve been really bad this week, in that we’ve gone out to eat nearly every night. And I don’t mean to a local place, which we like to do, but to a chain. Otherwise, I’d probably write about it. So, that means we haven’t really gone to the grocery this week. Which also mean that we have not a lot to choose from in the pantry.

I saw a delicious looking pasta dish I wanted to try out, but my time was a little off (don’t you usually carb it up before you work out?). Plus, I was cooking for one, and we aren’t going to be able to eat at home for the next several days because of this wedding. One thing I knew we did have was a potato.

Yes, folks, a plain and humble potato. And do you know what I did with it? I poked it full of holes, wrapped it in plastic wrap, and nuked it for 7 minutes. Then I put some buttery spread on it (I should have used butter, since I had it), a tiny pinch of salt, some shredded cheddar, and some fresh ground pepper. Yum!

Of course, that’s not much of a dinner. So I did what any good guy bach’in’ it for the day would do–I also had some tortilla chips, some Frito’s, and some bread I made the other day (which I need to post about–Saturday maybe?). Oh, and some turkey sausage bites that I didn’t realize needed to be “refrigerate after opening”ed until after I had popped about 4 in my mouth. Hopefully I don’t get sick.

Anyway! The potato–it’s great, because, like a banana, you get all kinds of goodness in one package. There’s only something like 110 calories in an average sized russet, and it’s packed full of nutrients! Of course, I killed some of the low-calorie-ness by added spread and cheese, but it was more tasty that way!

In fact, I would add it to my “Top Ten Energy Boosting Foods.” Potatoes rock. And, they are ultra versatile. Eat one today :)

Do you have a food to add to the “Top Ten…” list? What’s your favorite way to prepare a potato?

Image provided courtesy of Spotrick.

« Older Entries