Super Easy Supper

1 1/2 Cream, 3 cloves of garlic, crushed fresh black pepper

Farfalle Pasta and broccoli with parmesan cream sauce and fresh basil

Boil one pound of pasta, with one pound of broccoli according to pasta instructions. Pour cream in pan, simmer with garlic until reduced by half, remove garlic, stir in two tablespoons of butter. Season with salt and pepper, toss in pasta, two big handfuls of grated parm, and chopped basil.

Serve hot.

Restaurant tip: Warm the bowls you serve the pasta in, to keep dinner nice and hot till the last bite. I served this with leftover sausage for the kids to prevent a carnivorous uprising.

And check out dessert:

Pictures courtesy of MissTweenAngel. It appears EVERYONE in my home is better at taking pictures of my food than I am.

I wish you could smell my house right now....

I should finish reviewing my sample of Tropical Traditions Coconut Oil tonight. This afternoon I made a carrot, and ginger soup with coconut oil and maple, and there is a chocolate cake (Little kid in me dances in circles!!!! Cake for work!!! Cake for work!!! Fat girl want some cake!!!!) waiting to be frosted (Fat girl want some frosting!!!!) on the table.

Oh. My. Heavens.

The house smells like ginger, chocolate, and coconut.

This is what heaven smells like. Ginger, chocolate and coconut. Someone is going to make me six gallons of body wash that smells just like this. I just want to sit here and BREATHE.

MissAngelTween says that when I cook, it's like eating at a fancy restaurant. Pretty sure she's after some of that cake, but I'll bask in the glow of preteen approval for every second it's offered. In five minutes, I'll be the worst mom in the world again, you know.

Here's how I did the soup, it was kind of off the cuff (as usual) along with what I'd do differently:

2 small onions, small dice
2 inch knob of ginger, minced (I'd grate it over a plate next time).
2 lbs less a handful for snacking baby carrots. (I'd totally chop them up a bit, they took FOREVER to cook)
1 quart chicken stock
1 t powdered ginger
1 apple, peeled and diced
1 potato, peeled and diced (if I'd had a sweet potato that would have been better.)
2 C milk (I used whole. Cream would have been better but then I couldn't have cake)
2 T maple syrup. (Real, not pretend)
salt and pepper
3 T coconut oil

Heat 2 T coconut oil over medium heat and add the onion, cooking until translucent. Add everything but the milk and simmer, until VERY tender. We're talking mushy pot roast tender. The time will depend on the size of your chunks- mine took forty five minutes and probably could have gone a bit further, but the children were threatening to leave home if I didn't feed them. I think it was the smell of ginger in the air.

Pulse in batches in a blender or food processor until smooth. Return to heat and add milk. Just pour, don't measure, until the soup is a consistency you like. I eyeballed about two cups, it may have been a bit more. Stir the last tablespoon of coconut oil into the soup-taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary. The coconut oil works just like finishing it with butter and smells divine.

Garnish with sour cream and parsley. Chocolate cake recipe to follow.
Tropical Traditions Coconut Oil Available here Select refer a friend and enter my code, 7259861, to receive a free recipe book.

Coconut, Maple, and Cherry Granola

I love granola, and I haven't bought it for myself in years.

Why? Well, it's expensive, for one thing, plus it usually contains the dreaded tree nuts. I don't buy a lot of things with tree nuts in them, lest accidents occur and we get to have a nice visit from the friendly neighborhood paramedics.

No, thanks. When you tell me I GET to pay ten dollars a pound for something AND it could kill one or more of my children, I'm going to tell you to shove off, in the nicest possible way. If I'm going to pay ten dollars a pound for something, it had better be served medium rare with a nice Shiraz.

The funny thing about granola is, it is made up mostly of oats. You know, the kind that come in a tube with a picture of an old guy on the front. Or, the generic tube of the same. Those are super cheap, and you can get them practically free sometimes if you play the coupon game.

Ten bucks a pound. No, thank you very much, I do NOT want to wait on a party of four simply to enjoy one pound of garnished, toasted oats. *shakes head*

So for this recipe of granola you need

1/4 C Tropical Traditions Coconut oil
1/2 C Maple syrup
2 t Vanilla
1 C coconut
5 C oats, rolled
2 C garnishes- for this I used two fabulous cups of dried sour cherries, but if you don't have nut issues, I'd definitely replace half of that with some yummy almonds or walnuts.
Cinnamon and salt to taste.

Melt the coconut oil and the maple syrup together over low heat until warm, add vanilla. Combine oats, coconut and nuts (if using) in a large bowl. Stir the oil mixture into the oat mixture, add salt and cinnamon to taste. (just steal a pinch, it's good even raw). Spread on to a cookie sheet and pop into a preheated oven at 325. Stir every fifteen minutes until its a nice golden brown. Toss the spread the dried fruit on top when you take it out, the heat and the oils from the granola will permeate the fruit, flavoring it nicely without hardening it up.

Let cool and put in a suitable container. I like these spaghetti sauce jars.

The whole recipe costs about three dollars, and makes double a bag of fancy granola.
P.S. If you click the linky above to order you coconut oil, choose refer a friend, and put in 7259861, they'll send you a free recipe book

P.P.S I wrote this recipe myself while playing with a huge jar of coconut oil sent to me for review by Tropical Traditions. I'm not being compensated in any other way, although I am having a blast playing with the oil. Review to follow.

Not Quite Carol's Ginger Chicken

I cannot follow a recipe. It's true.

I read through them, and almost inevitably, I change them promptly, sometimes, so indelibly in my brain that I will search for the recipe with the changes that I made in my head, which of course doesn't actually exist. This can lead to confusion and mass hysteria, especially if we're talking dinner for thirty and a grocery list I'm not actually making.

It's fun to be me.

So, my MIL made this chicken the other night, and it was SOOOO good, that the kids wanted to eat it again the next day. Her recipe was simple:

Take a couple chicken breasts, diced, saute in butter. Remove chicken, add cream, 2 T grated fresh ginger, apple cider to pan, simmer until reduced and thick, add the chicken back and simmer till cooked through.
Saute a couple of peeled, diced apples in a little butter till golden, and simmer some sliced carrots in a pot of salted, boiling water.
Cook rice.
Drain carrots and toss with the apples, chicken and sauce, serve over rice.
It was so good the kids wanted it again the next day, but I wanted to work on my coconut oil review, so Carol's ginger chicken became:
Melt two tablespoons of Tropical Traditions coconut oil over medium low heat. Add diced chicken, raise heat to medium-high, brown on all sides, remove to plate
Take two apples, peeled and diced, one red pepper, diced, and add to pan with juices and remaining coconut oil-saute until golden. Boil carrots separately. Now, add white grape peach juice, skim milk shaken with two tablespoons of cornstarch, and a good sized knob of grated ginger to the pan. Raise heat to high and stir constantly till thick, add the chicken back to the pan along with the drained carrots, taste sauce, season with salt and pepper.
Add 1/2 C of scallions to the dish, and serve with rice.

It was yummy! And I was so proud that I'd made my mother in laws chicken, except when I called her to tell her, she said, "That's not my chicken." And she's right. It's not. But I can't make Julia Child's Beef Stew and I can't make Carol's ginger chicken.

It's just not me.

Making healthy treats for your kids

My kids have very different taste buds.

As different as night and day. In fact, the middle one eats so little that I would swear she was switched at birth if I hadn't followed the nurses around neurotically every time they need to do her testing.

She eats nothing but chicken and sausage some days.

The other two eat a nice variety of foods, but I have a couple of pretty amazing Mom rules. #1 No food is off the table. No decadent sweet, no bit of chocolate, no snacks. We don't purchase foods with high fructose corn syrup (with the exception of girl scout cookies, grrrr.) #2- I don't make them eat if they aren't hungry. Ever. I know I've written that before, I don't care. I'm going to write it eight million times until the cows come home and the sun don't shine. Their natural body cues are accurate, they know what their body needs, and I don't want to teach them to ignore them. #3-there's a one bite rule at my house. This stems largely from the time my mom made me frozen blintzes for lunch-runny, undercooked on the inside, burnt on the outside, and served them with a large side of oreo cookies. This was 1985, people. Kids weren't fat, and chemical laden cookies reigned supreme. She went to watch her soaps, I ate the cookies and not the blintzes, after one gag inducing bite.

I sat at that table ALL afternoon, when I was finally sent to bed without supper and told that the starving kids in China would have appreciated the blintzes.

They were gross. I now have blintz trauma that gives me nightmares to this day. My husband is also very, very, very finicky, and has some texture aversions. I'm not going to battle my kids natural tastes, as long as they give it a shot.

But there's a reason I started writing before I got all ramble-y. Treats don't need to be verboten- in fact, I think that over-limiting the good stuff leads to control problems later in life.

That doesn't mean you can't make the good stuff better.

A couple of ideas:
Take your favorite chocolate chip recipe. Sub out one cup of white whole wheat flour for the all purpose flour, add a half a cup of oats. Change part of the butter for fruit puree, I use about half butter (no margarine with icky chemicals, please) and half of whatever I've got. That might be mashed banana, it might be applesauce, it might be prune puree, depending on the recipe, it may even be pumpkin.

For cakes and muffins, you can eliminate the fat all together. I find cookies to cake-y without a bit of actual fat.

Now, start reducing the sugar. I take one tablespoon away each time I bake a recipe, until I find something I'm comfortable with.

Now, that wasn't hard, right?

BTW, I was inspired to write by Dear Crissy's post today.

I love to cook. Love. Love. Love it.

Or maybe it's just that I love. Love. Love to eat. I'm not sure.

But my love of homemade food has triggered an even bigger love- the love of take out. Since SO MUCH of me goes into producing our sustenance, the simple act of purchasing a box of crackers at the store feels like a totally sinful decadence...the purchase of girl scout cookies (with their high fructose corn syrup) could well damn me straight to hell.

I find myself apologizing for buying Triscuits. As though I'd actually done something WRONG.

I like Triscuits. A lot. And MissAngelLittleGirl will eat an entire box in one sitting if I let her. A performance that's highly unusual, as I'm 80 percent sure that child is going to willfully starve to death one of these days.

I'll bet she's going to be a truly successful foodie one day.

This week I both ordered a pizza, (gasp)AND bought crackers. I'm feeling totally devilish and decadent.

And like I really, really, really need a life. In the worst possible way. So tonight, after another particularly LONG kind of day, the take out monster was REALLY beating about in my brain. I'd planned meatless tonight...I wanted meat...I'd REALLY been working hard all day...the kids were kind of being jerks...I'd just saved thirty dollars by cutting their hair myself, which is kind of like an epic steel cage match with the little one...surely I deserved a break.

It was a potato pancake kind of night. The logical mommy won. This time.

My potato pancakes aren't really my own- they're a Giada knock off-easy, pretty darn versatile as I've read the ingredients ONE TIME and made it my own. Which really means throwing mass amounts of ingredients into a bowl and hoping. Usually works out well!

So I do about 4 potatoes, grated, soaked, and dried thoroughly, 1 package of shredded Parmesan, 4 cloves of garlic and one onion, small diced and sauteed gently, two fistfuls of basil, (that's a measurement, right? I'll make it simple, more basil= yum.)

Salt and pepper to taste, and this is what you get:

Now, I like to put these on my well greased nonstick griddle, so I do it at 400, and I cover them with an upside down cookie sheet to help the potatoes cook through in the center.

They take about ten minutes per side, but you can peek if you want after the edges look nice and brown.

And yes, I serve them with applesauce and sour cream. Even though my oldest says that's weird.

Evil takeout monster crisis averted...for now.

Why don't you...

Plan leftovers for a fancy "gourmet" pizza or stromboli?

Some ideas:
Taco meat or chicken, or leftover chili +Cheddar+ lettuce+tomato+salsa= Mexican Pizza
Leftover pot roast or roast beef+ gravy + provolone+ peppers =french dip pizza
Sliced ham+ apples+ blue cheese, or Gruyere= something fancy, I don't know, but it's yummy.
Leftover cooked chicken+wings sauce or bbq+ jack (or pepper jack)= BBQ chicken pizza
Meatballs or sausage and Mozzarella
Leftover veggies and feta, or whatever floats your boat.

I love using Broa dough for this, but wegmans has LOVELY pizza dough if you haven't planned in advance.

I bake mine at 500 on a pizza stone- and dough is cooked at 200 degrees. So I use my probe thermometer.

Now, pat yourself on the back for saving 25 bucks on fancy pizza.

Pancaking

Despite my firm belief in NEVER using baby talk with your children, I still have a nasty habit of inventing words. Or turning nouns into verbs, depending on the situation.

"Let's go pancaking" used to mean a trip to the diner, but as each mouth in the house gets older, that bill gets higher and higher. Plus, now everyone knows my mother works there, so I'm afraid someone's going to spit in my food. Ok, not really, but they do stare at me a lot. It's uncomfortable to eat when people you don't know are looking at you funny. I'm hoping they think, "man, that apple fell FAR from that tree."

One can hope.

But anyway, any more when we pancake, (yes, it's a verb now) it involves a thick stack of homemade pancakes with whole wheat flour, eggs, a splash of oil and sugar, and a heavy dash of organic vanilla.

My recipe goes (something) like this...

1 C white lily flour
1 C white whole wheat flour
3 T sugar
1 t salt
2t baking powder
whisk together

add in

2 eggs
1 C milk
1 T vanilla
2 T fat (melted butter or veggie oil)

Mix. It's really thick, and here's when it gets iffy...I add milk until it's the consistency I like. I like pancake batter to be fairly thin, and if pushed, I'd say another 3/4 C to a full cup of milk.

Preheat an electric griddle to 350. If you don't have one of these, get one. Tomorrow. Easily one of the best presents I've ever received, you can cook anywhere from three to five pancakes at the same time, and you all eat together. It's truly amazing.

I add 2 T of oil to the griddle and then swirl a tablespoon of real butter across the top. The aroma of the butter melting into the oil is lovely, the oil helps the butter not burn and smoke.

ladle each pancake on to the griddle and allow to cook until there are bubbles all the way in the center of each cake, flip, and place a small pat of butter on the top of each. Cook another minute, allowing the butter to melt in...

Stack, and repeat with the rest of batter. Cook the whole batch of batter, pancakes are easy to reheat on hectic mornings. Just let them cool in a row and tuck them into a freezer bag.

Really Late Wordless Wednesday Post

You have to squeeze the sausage out of the cases. It's the grossest thing in the whole world. Like milking a cow for meat.

Break it up with a wooden spoon. This is not a job for plastic. Unless you like to eat plastic, and then, that's up to you.

Add flour and seasonings. I like a cajun blend, but I'm out. So I went with paprika, garlic powder, white pepper, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and oregano.

and this is what happens when you don't know how to take an "I'm cooking food shot."

You want the flour to kind of brown on the bottom of the pan and stick. There's a fancy French name for this. Means YUMMY. When flour is browned, pour in beer and once cup of water.

Stir until thick, add both stocks and hashbrowns O'brian, bring to a bubble. Simmer ten minutes. In hindsight, I will never put frozen hashbrowns into a bowl again, as they fused into any icy mass that required chiseling. Over a pot. Of steaming, boiling liquid. With Sausage grease. I may have scars.

Bring to a boil. This will thicken as it simmers. Just keep scraping the bottom of the pan as your stirring to get the yummy fancy french word stuff off the pan and into your soup.

If it's not thick enough, add some corn starch to one cup of milk and shake in a tupperware container. Don't ask me how much. About a heap. If you held a gun to my head, I'd say three tablespoons, but you just want the soup thick enough to hold the cheese.

Add the cheese in hand fulls. Again, it's not really a science. More of a taste.

I'd go with about 8 ounces...this time if pressed.

Serve with biscuits...

You can be real cute about that if you want.

And there's your soup. I used a ridiculously dark beer, and got dark soup. It happens. Also, I've written this recipe out on here before. It's good. It's also different every time I make it.

The bottom line is sausage+flour+beer+broth+potatoes+milk+cheese+seasoning= so freaking good. Now, go play with it. Make it your own.

My Children Hate Me.

My early afternoon snow day went something like this:

"Are you guys hungry?" "No mom, we just ate breakfast."

"Are you guys wanting something to eat?" "NO, MOM, WE JUST ATE!"

"Ok, well, how about you put your toys away, then!"

"We're hungry! Right NOW! We want snacks!"

They cleaned first, and once again I earned my title as the WORST. MOM. EVER. My middle child muttered, "I don't like my mom." The oldest screamed, with poorly feigned indignation, "That wasn't nice! Don't say you don't like your mom!" (Mainly so I would hear it, you know.)

So the fact that they went from not hungry to MUST EAT NOW, means I needed something quick...We call it a French lunch when my husband isn't around.

The kids go nuts over this. Basically, it's Vermont extra sharp cheddar, homemade Wheat thins (getting there in a minute, don't worry) and sliced seasonal fruit. Being January, that's just apples, but in the summer, this is a wonderful treat.

There are any number of GREAT copy cat recipes for wheat thins out there. I'm talking dozens. A couple are based off King Arthur Flour, and there are some others that only call for flour, oil, water, and salt.

After trying out a couple, I melded the two.

1/2 Cup rye flour
1/2 Cup whole wheat flour
3/4 Cup white whole wheat flour

1 1/2 Cup all purpose flour.
3 T Sugar

Whisk these together in a large bowl. Sprinkle in a bit of paprika or a bit of cayenne.

3/4 Teaspoon salt
1/3 C oil
1 C hot water
1/2 vanilla

Put this in a larger tupperware container and shake it until it's a cloudy emulsification. You want to actually close the lid. I didn't have it sealed last night, and the dog took an oil water bath as did my kitchen floor. But the crackers still turned out.

Mix this into the flour mixture. You will need to use your hands at the end.

Flour a work surface and a rolling pin, and divide the door into four sections. After you roll it out, really as thin as you can get it, fold it into fours and then unfold on a piece of parchment. Sprinkle with coarse salt, and roll one more time to press the salt into the dough lightly. Use a pizza cutter to cut 1 1/2 inch squares, and slide the parchment onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for roughly a half an hour, checking after about 20 minutes to remove crackers along the edges that are already crisp and brown.
Slide the parchment off the cookie sheet and let cool, before you put in an air tight container.

Repeat with the other three sections.

Be warned, they are addictive and ridiculously easy to make.
And right now, my kids like me again, until I tell them to take their naps.

Monday Morning, Start Your Week Off With A Giant, Fabulous Roast

It'll save you a gzillion dollars.

Or maybe ten, I'm not sure. But it will keep you sane for the week if it's big enough. This week, in honor of my little sister's birthday, it was a large, fresh, organic turkey, purchased on sale for $1.29 (!!!!!) a pound.

It was truly a thing of beauty. I brined it, overnight, cooked it upside down, and then flipped it for the last half hour so the top would brown.

It was, well, Good Eats. I only use the salt, pepper, and brown sugar in the brine, and I don't get all crazy with the "aromatics" because this is NOT a Thanksgiving turkey. It's an every day turkey, and we eat enough of it, because Turkey is CHEAP.

Then, I cleaned the carcass...that's got to be the nastiest thing I've ever put into print...as carefully as could be, getting every bit of leftover goodness tucked away for the rest of the week, much to the chagrin of my dog.

I think she's finally gotten over it, but I've never seen a more pathetic looking creature..staring at me with deep, sad eyes the color of melted chocolate, brown with gold flecks. It was highly distracting.

She wimpered quietly as I took the bones out the door. It was a sad minute...I would love to give them to her...but they will KILL THE STUPID DOG. I felt so guilty about denying the dog turkey bones that I was driven to distraction...and tripped over her while carrying the quart size bowl of gravy.

Gravy evidently flies with a pretty decent velocity. It hit the ceiling, it hit the floor, it hit the dog full on in the face and a good bit landed on my head.

Turkey gravy evidently trumps lost turkey bones, and the dog went effing ballistic..tail wagging, groaning with joy, licking the floor and all the surrounding furniture.

I figured I'd let her, and washed the gravy out of my hair. My kitchen now smells like dog breath. Do you like how I'm taking care of that right now?

I'm mad, because I wanted that gravy for a pot pie for tonight, which is pretty simple...you take a couple of cups of leftover turkey, a bag of frozen mixed veggies, and moisten it with some gravy, and bake it in a pie crust. I make a homemade pie crust, but you could just as easily grab a store bought. It bakes for about 45 min at 375. I like homemade because you can trim the extra crust into fancy shapes like hearts and stars, and fix them on with a bit of heavy cream or egg wash, and then the kids freak out and eat it up.

No turkey pot pie. No turkey gravy. Sad face.

But that's okay...cooked turkey can be used in ANY recipe that calls for cooked chicken, so I'm feeling turkey and noodles, turkey and dumplings, turkey taquitos, turkey enchiladas, turkey divan... each assembled quickly and easily from a single night of cooking. It couldn't be simpler.

Homemade Drinking Chocolate Mix.

I'm FOREVER looking for ways to cheapen things up around here, while lessening the chemical lode in my kid's bodies.

Mixes are EXPENSIVE for what they are. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Tempting, but loaded with chemicals and all that.

I found a recipe for homemade hot cocoa mix, and I think it may be THE one. Although, this one needs to be taken DOWN a notch or two, being a foodie site. My kids don't know the difference between Vosges and Hershey's, so I'm not going to worry myself too much about it.

So, start with one empty cocoa mix tin. The tall cylinder.
Add 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of unsweetened cocoa, a teaspoon of salt, two teaspoons of cornstarch, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 cup of MINI chocolate chips. Put the lid back on and shake it to high heavens.

To serve, add 2 heaping teaspoons to empty mug, and add hot milk.  You will need to stir occasionally as the chocolate continues to melt...just like the Hershey's hugs hot cocoa packets, which were my favorite. If you don't like that effect, then go ahead and pulse the whole thing in the food processor a couple of times, so the chocolate morsels are broken up into even tinier pieces. I like the melting on the bottom of the cup thing, but that's just me.

Realistically, this is NOT any cheaper than a box of hot cocoa, but I can tell you everything that's in it, and MAN, is it good.

Related articles

• Make Your Own Better-Tasting Hot Cocoa Mix [Recipes] (lifehacker.com)

Ridiculously Decadent and Moderately Healthy Triple Chocolate Muffins for a sick little lady.

Last night was a small version of parenthood hell.

 MissAngelBaby was up, I swear, the ENTIRE night. She's got advanced mama-itis, which forces her to only be able to sleep on my head, apparently. When I last attempted to roll her off my nose and mouth in a desperate attempt to breathe, she sat straight up and started cackling like a loon. Wide awake, she decided to pound me with her pumpkin-head for several hours, whilst I negotiated her return to slumber to no avail. 

Eventually, when I could see the branches through the blinds, (that's my daily breaking point), I woke up my husband and sent them both downstairs, where he managed to get her to go back to sleep. (Of course.)

Less than three hours later, MissLittleGirlAngel woke up with a fit of coughing and tears. She's had a cold for five days, and I was letting it play itself out, but she woke up moaning in pain in her left ear. (Yes, she knew what to call it!!!! Yay, me!!!) 

A dose of tylenol and about twenty minutes of the three year old dozing on my head (is my head especially soft?) she woke again, and off to the doctor she went with her daddy, while I stayed home with my wild butted little nursling.

The verdict: an ear infection. Normal for us with colds. Ten days worth of amoxicillin and a cranky child to boot. On Thursday. Thursdays are ALREADY crazy.

Well, I wanted to get some nutrition in her when she got home, and with this kid that either means sausage, chicken, or chocolate. I don't have any sausage or chicken right now, because I'm working with turkey and ham leftovers.

So, chocolate it was. I took my trusty chocolate chip muffin recipe and kicked it up a notch or seven, adding some healthy alternatives, mostly so I didn't have guilt for feeding a sick kid cupcakes for breakfast. 

It's only okay for grown ups to eat cake for breakfast. True story.

So here's what I did...

The Original Recipe (courtesy of Mr.Breakfast.com) My changes bolded

Chocolate Chip Muffins

(12 servings)    Printable Version

• 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 Cup all purpose flour and 1 Cup whole wheat
• 1/3 cup light-brown sugar
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoon baking powder (round the teaspoons a bit)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup milk  3/4 C Skim milk
• 1/2 cup butter -- melted and cooled  1/2 C Mashed banana or other puree such as applesauce
• 2 eggs - beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 package (12 oz) chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup walnuts or pecans -- chopped  1/2 C Hershey's baking cocoa
• Chocolate glaze, recipe coming tomorrow. 

Preheat oven to 400 F. and grease up twelve muffin cups.

In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugars, baking powder,cocoa, and salt. In another bowl, stir together milk, eggs, butter banana, and vanilla until blended. Make a well in center of dry ingredients; add milk mixture and stir just to combine. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.

Spoon batter into muffin cups; bake 15-20 minutes, or until a knife inserted in center of one muffin comes out clean. Remove muffin tin to wire rack; cool 5 minutes and remove from tins to finish cooling.



Drizzle with glaze.
Serve warm.



The glaze recipe has to wait because I'm irritated about another convenience product on the market, and it's just going to have to wait till tomorrow, because it's Thursday, and I have to force feed my monster chocolate muffins now and put her to bed in time to get ready for work and put laundry away.  If you absolutely MUST glaze before I get tomorrow's blog done, then melt equal parts chocolate and heavy cream in the microwave, stirring every thirty seconds or so, then do a Jackson Pollock on the tops of the hot muffins.

Yes. On the hot muffins.
They are fabulous.

Cream Soup Substitutes... a homemade, chemical free (and totally frugal!) substitute.

Everyone has fifty recipes that call for a can of cream-of-whatever-soup.

At least fifty recipes. That stuff kind of freaks me out. It manages to be both creamy and gelatinous, while having enough sodium to stop a beating heart in its tracks.

Tasty, though. And versatile.

 The good news is, there are a bunch of alternatives. You can google around and find one that works for you...I start with half milk and half chicken broth (or water with bullion powder, as a last resort), slightly more than a half cup of each, in a Tupperware container with a tight fitting lid. Add two heaping table spoons of cornstarch, and shake it till it's smooth. Bring to a boil, whisking constantly, until it's nice and thick. 

Flavor appropriately for whatever you need. If it's mushroom, dice up some mushrooms and saute them in a bit of butter. I would use mushroom or beef stock for this one if you have it. You can hit the mushrooms with a little Marsala wine or a bit of dry sherry if you happen to have it about.

About a cup of broccoli florets, steamed and pulse in a food processor, or chopped finely, will take it to cream of broccoli. You can do cauliflower as well. (Although I never would, dear, if you're reading.) For cheese, simply stir in some shredded cheddar, asiago, Parmesan, or another hard cheese.

Make sure to taste and adjust seasonings, both in the base and in your final dish. Since this recipe has SO much less sodium than the original, you will need to add a little more flavor to your final dish. It doesn't have to be salt, though, experiment with some herbs before you hit it with the salt shaker.
 
Good luck, and happy, healthy, eating!

Not your average Turkey Leftovers

In an effort to maximize my turkey consumption, I roasted a turkey the day after Thanksgiving. At $1.29 a pound for a fresh, all natural bird, it was a steal. It came out really great, too. I used Alton Brown's recipe for brining and roasting the bird, cut up the leftovers and tucked them away promptly.


Tonight we will be having the really totally expected and boring, but still yummy and comforting, turkey pot pie.
  
For lunch today, though, I got inventive. I've been craving Mexican for a couple of days, and I figured turkey had to be as good as chicken in taquito form.

It was BETTER.

What I did...

 I took about six ounces of turkey breast, chopped it, along with a red pepper and a green pepper, and sauteed it in about a tablespoon of olive oil. I then steamed ten taco size corn tortillas in the microwave, and hit the turkey mixture with a shot of tequila and a squeeze of fresh lime, and sprinkled on cumin, cayenne, paprika, and dried chipotles.  Hindsight being 20/20, I would have stirred in some leftover corn and cilantro, but hey, this is my first shot at this one. Also, a bit of salt. (I kind of figured the turkey would carry the dish, but I simply salted the finished product and it was fine).

Then, I sprayed a baking dish with olive oil and rolled a couple of tablespoons of the turkey mixture into each tortilla, placing them seam side down, packed tightly up against each other. Then lightly sprayed the rolls with olive oil again.

 I baked them for about twenty minutes, until crisp and golden, at 400 degrees, and served them with shredded cheese, sour cream, and salsa.

 The oldest child ate three. Let's just say, they were GOOD. And at 120 calories a piece, they are pretty guilt free.