Ham and cheese divan

If you are a fan of brunch, you will LOVE this dish at any time of day.  Like Chicken Divan, it's a casserole of vegetables and protein layered with a creamy can-o-soup sauce.  I really didn't feel like making my sauce from scratch for this, so I used a can of cheddar cheese soup plus a little milk but you certainly can make your own.  It was ridiculously tasty. 

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to make the stuffed eggs just for this dish again (although it wasn't hard).  But this is absolutely going in my post-holiday meal rotation as a way to deal with leftover deviled eggs.  Plain halved hard-boiled eggs will work fine if you want to save a little work.

Original recipe from my mom's 1970-something Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.

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Easy-easier-easiest: Cauliflower

Cauliflower can be a messy vegetable to prep.  I find the least untidy way to deal with it is to break the green leaves off by hand, then cut the whole head in half down the center, then cut the core and stem out in a U-shape.  Break large florets into bite-size pieces. 

I'm not crazy about raw cauli, but my son adores it.  To each their own.  Here are my favorite ways to prepare it.  As always, roasting tops the list because the cauli simply turns into a different creature under the influence of the Maillard reaction.  You really do need fresh cauliflower for this one.

Pureed cauli is very hip among the low-carb crowd, but the addition of horseradish gives it an unexpected depth without wicked heat...my younger veggie-avoidant son loves this dish.  This one can be made with frozen or fresh cauliflower.

The cauli curry is a more complicated recipe with flavors that can become too competitive as a side dish, but is absolutely worth being on the radar.  Serve the curry with plain baked chicken or a simple roast, or throw in some cooked lentils for a complete vegetarian dish.  Make this with fresh or frozen cauli, or leftover roasted cauliflower (plan ahead and roast 2 heads of cauli).

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Popcorn Chicken

I love this!  We eat rather a lot of popcorn here and sometimes have leftovers.  I mean, I know it's *just* popcorn, but I hate to throw out the extra (which is why sometimes my kids get to eat popcorn for breakfast ::blush::).  I saw a recipe in one of those free parenting magazines that seem to come incessantly for using popcorn as a crumb coating on chicken...brilliant!  They had some particulars for seasoning, but I think the basics are good enough.

Kids liked it, husband liked it, I liked it...this one is a keeper!  The popcorn flavor is still there even after pan-frying, and it forms a really nicely crispy coating.  It's good to crunch into, and also makes the pieces a bit "stiffer" and easier to flip in the pan.

Note: this probably won't freeze well as a prep-ahead option...I think the popcorn would get soggy in the freezer.  But I did put some leftover popcorn in a ziptop bag, pressed the air out very well and fridged it for several days before using it for this recipe with good results.  You can prep ahead the dredging elements, but I wouldn't actually do the dip until right before cooking.

I made it with chicken tenderloins, but chunked up breasts or boneless skinless thighs would work too.

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San Francisco Pork Chops

Original recipe here.

These are just so good!  The finished reduction is a mite salty thanks to the soy sauce, so I strongly recommend using low-sodium soy sauce and maybe even going halfsies on the soy with some no-salt broth.

These are completely prep-ahead and freezer-friendly.  Just mix up all the sauce ingredients in a container to fridge or freeze, make sure you've got pork chops available and have cornstarch in your pantry. 

The sauce reduces as the pork chops cook on the stovetop, giving a thick, glossy, flavorful glaze that is just out of sight.


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Fez-Style Baked Fish

It's summer, which means on any given day, we're likely to be out playing right up until dinnertime.  So I try to get everything ready for dinner in the morning or the night before so that the most I have to do at dinnertime is stick a prepared casserole in the oven, dump a bunch of stuff into a skillet or even less if possible. 

This is a new twist (for me) on flavors for fish...I love the combination of tomatoes and olives, potatoes and saffron, garlic and cumin but I've never applied it to fish.  The original recipe calls for cilantro along with parsley, but I'm one of those people to whom cilantro tastes weird so I substituted garden mint (read: I can't remember what variety of mint it is anymore) for the cilantro.  I also didn't have cherry tomatoes on hand, so I used a 15 oz. can of cut-up, drained whole tomatoes instead. 

Here's what I did this morning...I mixed up the marinade for the fish (which is still thawing a leetle), parboiled the potatoes and put them in my baking dish, and sliced/assembled the rest of the veggies.  I put the fish in the marinade (even if it's not totally thawed) later in the afternoon before we went out.  When we got home, I put the 3 components together in the baking dish while the oven preheated and baked 30 minutes while wrestling the kiddos into a dinner-appropriate state of cleanliness.  If I had been prepping the night before because I'd be gone all day, I'd go ahead and marinate the fish starting in the morning but not overnight due to the acid content of the marinade.


Another make-ahead thought...if you have leftover boiled potatoes from another meal, use those in this dish!  A single layer of pre-cooked taters in a square baking dish will do you.

One more note...my husband liked this very well as a fish dish, but also thought it would rock as a chicken dish.  Just bake 30-40 minutes for chicken breasts, until they're cooked through.
Adapted from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/dining/baked-fish-fez-style-recipe.html



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Phyllo Wrapped Salmon

A little pastry makes everything more delicious.  So does a little dijon mustard.  And butter.

The idea for this dish is not mine, but I've been making them for so many years that I no longer have the original recipe to attribute to.  It took me some time to work up the guts to try this recipe in the first place.  I was afraid of working with phyllo dough.  So many recipes that use it give caution after caution...handle it gently lest it break...work quickly lest it dry out...keep it covered at all times with a damp towel...brush lightly...fold carefully...it just seemed like a food product that was more trouble than it was worth.  Boy, was I wrong! 

First of all, phyllo is not hard to work with.  It may tear a bit...that's OK.  It may get a bit dry as you work...that's OK.  You don't really need to be working at super-speed or with damp towels or anything like that.  Most preparations using phyllo involve brushing oil or butter between the layers and as we  know, butter fixes everything.  It works as a glue to hold the phyllo sheets in place, it patches tears, it moisturizes dry dough.  You and your phyllo will be A-OK. 

Where to get phyllo?  If you're really bonkers, you can make it yourself (I most emphatically do not).  It comes frozen, usually in the area where frozen pies and Cool Whip live (usually next to the puff pastry).  You'll need to put it in the fridge overnight or on the counter for about 4 hours before it's workable.  The brand I buy comes in 1 lb. boxes which contain two plastic-sealed tubes of rolled phyllo sheets.  You'll only need one tube for this recipe.  You can use the 2nd tube to make more of this recipe or make some genuine Greek goodies like spanakopita (spinach and cheese pies), teropita (like spanakopita, but without the spinach) or baklava. 

If you make these ahead to freeze, you will need to be attentive to wrapping them very, very well in plastic wrap.  In prepping them to cook immediately, you don't need to worry so much about the phyllo drying out, but for longer storage, drying does become a problem.  I wrap each packet individually in plastic wrap before putting them in a larger ziptop bag to make very sure they're protected.  And then of course, when you bake them off, a healthy brush of oil or butter goes a long way toward correcting any freezer dehydration they may have suffered.


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Eclair Cake

This was one of my husband's grandma's specialities.  She made it annually for Easter dessert, so he starts getting jones-y for it about this time of year.  And I confess to jonesing for it myself lately. 

It's one of those back-of-the-box recipes that there are a million variations of on the interwebs, which form two of its obvious virtues...it's fast and easy to shop for and make, and it works for whatever flavor combinations you want.  You can use as many low-fat, sugar-free components as you like or as few.  You can go the vanilla pudding/chocolate frosting route, or play with flavor combinations like lemon-strawberry, double chocolate death, coconut-pecan, butterscotch-vanilla or pistachio-cream cheese. 

If you are the type of person who enjoys making buttercream frosting from scratch, go for it!  If you make pudding from scratch, go for it!  If you make graham crackers from scratch, get some help!  Btw, I think making a pudding out of this pie filling recipe but using 3 cups of milk instead of water and 1/3 cup strong espresso instead of lemon juice/zest would make O-U-T-S-T-A-N-D-I-N-G eclair cake.

And what made this recipe worth blogging about was the realization that you CAN FREEZE THIS!!!!  You could thaw it to serve, or serve frozen like ice cream cake.  Oh jah.  Perfection.

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Tuna Bean Salad

I don't like canned tuna.  It's one of those foods, like "potted meat" and pickled eggs, that just creep me out.  I do, however, LOVE a few recipes that use canned tuna.  This is one of them.

It's a shop-ahead recipe at heart...a can of corn, a can of beans, 2 cans of tuna, salad dressing and some cheese.  All live happily in the pantry or freezer for several months.  Fresh onions/scallions are optional if you're planning this as a "rescue" meal (you know those nights, when all other plans have fallen through and you just need *something* for dinner without going to the store or carrying in).  It's also a great meal to plan on nights when you don't know for sure that dinner at home will happen...if it doesn't, your ingredients will keep and not go to waste.

It's also a make-ahead recipe...in fact, it tastes better after blending overnight (and therefore is delicious as leftovers).  If you want to serve it immediately, you can do that too, and it takes about 5 minutes to put together.  This is also pretty inexpensive at less than $1 per serving for the filling when I buy the ingredients at normal grocery store prices and even cheaper when you strike good sales on canned goods or cheese.

I usually serve it as a sandwich, but you could also use it as a stuffed veggie filling...whole tomatoes, cucumber "boats", well-steamed eggplant halves, boiled whole onions or lightly steamed zucchini halves.  Hollow out the veggies (after cooking, if they need cooked) with a spoon and fill with the salad.  If you are low-carbing, you could substitute 1/2 cup of edamame (frozen, for shop-ahead planning) for the can of corn.  And thanks to the increasing availability of low-sodium or no-salt-added products, a meal made of canned goods doesn't need to carry a huge sodium tab.

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Coca-Cola BBQ Chicken

A little more than ten years ago, my then-boyfriend and I decided it was time to get married.  I was still a grad student, anticipating graduation.  I had little interest, less money and even less time to spend on cooking real food.  But I decided that I should do something very old-fashioned...learn to cook for my future husband.  And I started collecting recipes. 

This is one of the first recipes I harvested, scrawled down frantically in real time while watching a cooking demonstration on a Nashville talk show (did anybody else ever see Crook & Chase?)  It wasn't all that long ago, but informatically it seems like the Dark Ages, or at least the early Enlightment, when recipes featured on morning talk programs weren't available instantly on the show's website.

I can't say now how closely the recipe I still have in my 3-ring binder replicates the original recipe, but it's still a good 'un.  Use a low or zero calorie soda, if you prefer.  Even though we don't keep soda routinely in the pantry any more, I still make this occasionally with a single bottle bought from the impulse aisle at the grocery store. 

I think this recipe would also do well in the crockpot, but I've never *actually* tried it that way.  I'd probably skin the chicken and skip the browning...or maybe not LOL  I'm going to do up some freezer kits this weekend b/c, duh-duh-da-duh! I'm going back to work after 3 years of full-time SAHM-itude, and I'll try this one as a crockpot kit and post results.

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Roast turkey breast three ways

My grocery had those 3 lb. boneless turkey breast roasts on sale this week. We're far enough away from Thanksgiving that I can safely put turkey on the dinner rotation without protest LOL Turkey makes an interesting change-up from chicken, is leaner than beef and this week was cheaper than pork. A 3 lb. roast is a lot o' turkey for 4 people though, so I'm roasting it once and making 3 meals out of it. Observe and be amazed :D

1st: Roasted turkey with rosemary-orange sauce and mashed mixed root vegetables (both recipes adapted from the 28 Day Diabetic Meal Plan available from 28daymealplan.diabeticonnect.com...you have to register with them to get it, but it's worthwhile!  Lots of good recipes in this one!)

Turkey Tequila Fettucine with broccoli rabe

2nd: Turkey Tequila Fettucine (adapted from Guy Fieri's recipe )

3rd: Turkey Royale sandwiches

Meals #1 and #2 are prep-aheadable (and #1 is freezer kit-able too!).  Meal #3 is a quick and easy no-prep meal.  Tequila is optional for meal #2...substitute white wine, vermouth, sherry, chicken stock or orange juice if you wish.  The flavors in Meal #3 seem weird but are Ah.May.Zing together...don't count this one out just because it looks unusual!

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Make ahead Wheat Berry Salad

This salad is one of my top 10 favorite recipes.  The whole wheat kernel base is layered with artichokes, bitter greens, peppers and olives and finished with the classically Greek lemon-olive oil-feta flavor party.  Once you've got the wheat berries prepared, it goes together quickly and only gets better over the course of a couple days in the fridge...read: it *likes* to be made ahead and the leftovers are delicious!  It can stand to be out of the fridge for awhile (and tastes better served at room temp anyway) so it's suitable for picnics or dinner at your kids' Little League games. 

It's also a recipe that I never quite make the same way twice...it depends on what I have on hand and how willing I am to have 1/2 a can of something hanging around after I finish the recipe.  It's not so much a recipe anymore as guidelines :D  Originally, it was a recipe from the Washington Post food section.  They recommended serving this as a side dish with grilled fish or chicken, but I serve it most often as a vegetarian main dish.

Wheat berries

Wheat berries are the whole kernel of wheat, what comes off the plant before it gets flattened into cereal or ground into flour.  When cooked, the  individual kernels are chewy and toothsome.  They pop between your teeth like caviar or grapes.  They have a nutty, grainy flavor and make a much more flavorful salad base than rice (the usual grain-and-vegetable salad suspect) in my opinion.

Top Row: Red bell pepper, black olives, radicchio
Middle Row: Feta, chickpeas, lemon
Bottom Row: Radicchio, cherry tomatoes, artichokes

Cooking the wheat berries is a lot like cooking dry beans.  Some folks say they can be cooked without soaking first, but I prefer the results from soaking then cooking.  You can do either the overnight soak, then cook them, or do a "quick soak"...just like for beans!  Here is how I put together this salad last night for dinner tonight...I put the wheat berries in a saucepan covered with 1" of water and brought it to a boil.  I boiled for 2 minutes, then turned off the heat and covered the pan.  I let them stand for 1 hour (this is the "quick soak" method) while we put the kids to bed.  Then I drained them, rinsed them, covered them again with water, brought to a boil, reduced the heat, covered and simmered for 50 minutes while I zoned out and watched TV.  Drain.  Ta-dah!  Cooked wheat berries!  I measured and chopped the remaining ingredients this morning, but I could have done that while the wheat berries were cooking for 100% Dinner Done Yesterday ;)

This recipe lends itself to tweaking...use regular black olives or the fancy marinated olive bar ones, use fresh red bell pepper or roasted red pepper, use radicchio or arugula or a handful of salad from a bag of spring mix, whatever you have on hand!

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Doomsday Chicken and Peppers

Doomsday Chicken n Peppers with rice and bok choy salad

I misread a blog post title here and I can't get the idea of Doomsday Peppers out of my mind now LOL  Red, orange and yellow peppers are on big sale at my grocery store this week, so I am taking advantage!

Actually, if you had to throw together dinner quickly b/c the world was about to end, this might the recipe for you ;)  I'm prepping it ahead b/c I am doing Big Things later today but the prep is so quick that you could easily do this at the last minute without turning a hair.  You could freeze this as a kit as well since you cook the peppers and onions into a soft, chunky, peperonata sauce anyway so the fact that they loose their crisp in the freezer isn't an issue.

The red-yellow family of peppers is certainly attractive and highly nutritious with all those colors, but if you'd prefer, you certainly can use green peppers.  If you do have an abundance of inexpensive colored bell peppers available, you can roast them and freeze them in bulk or incorporate some of these recipes into your weekly menu:

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Snow Cream

Kind of off-topic, but too much fun not to share. I heard about this from a mom on an online parenting forum I read, and it will definitely be a new family tradition for years to come!


When we're expecting more than an inch of snow, I try to remember to put a big bowl out on the back porch. Wide and shallow is better than deep and narrow for catching enough snow, especially from a light snowfall (a 13x9 pan would work well too). The proportions are just guidelines...use less sugar if want, as much milk as is needed to make a nice texture and ofc how ever much flavoring you like. Depending on how light and fluffy your snow was, you might end up with a texture anywhere from melted milkshake to double-whipped sorbet.


I highly recommend having all your materials and ingredients, including serving bowls and utensils, measured and laid out before bringing your bowl o' snow in (especially if you're doing this with impatient toddlers).

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Walnut butter bar cookies

Sorry this post isn't timely any more.  Parenting intrudes on my blogging some days ;)

I love these guys.  Finely chopped nuts top a dense, rich, buttery shortbread cookie and the recipe goes together fast.  In the time it takes your oven to pre-heat, you'll have the batter put together.  The cookie batter is made rather like chou pastry, in the saucepan you melt the butter in (if you melt butter on the stovetop).  It's not especially freeze-able, but it comes together so fast you don't need to worry about prepping ahead.

Recipe is from Reader's Digest's A Family Christmas (as all my holiday cookie recipes were this year LOL) That book calls these "toffee cookies", but I don't perceive "toffee" in this cookie so I choose to rename them.


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Spinach burgers with green bean casserole

I have new toys :D  I was gifted a new cookbook for Christmas that I've already marked about 2 dozen recipes in called Fresh from the Farmers Market.  It's a nice mix of single-ingredient and convenience-food recipes and many include directions for freeze-ahead and prep-ahead cooking.  Keep tuned for a possible giveaway of this book and more recipes from it ;) 

Tonight's dinner consists of two recipes from this book...spinach-ified burgers and Emmitt Smith's Green Beans.  I'm tweaking (as usual) to suit ingredients on hand and to create less work (most notably the grilled turkey burgers are baked pork burgers tonight).  Both are prep-ahead friendly; the burgers are freezer-friendly.  Together, the recipes come in under 500 calories per serving (yes, we are counting calories as a New Year's resolution...sigh). 

My husband declared these burgers his "favorite ever", and the green beans could totally sub in for a lower-calorie (but still very rich tasting) version of the usual holiday green bean casserole.

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Wretched excess, grapefruit style

Sauteed Grapefruit Chicken with Salad and Grapefruit Honey Dressing

It's that season...big boxes of all manner of citrus fruit everywhere...in the grocery stores, being hawked by your local high school band members, in the mail from far-away relatives.  Tangelos, tangerines, big navel oranges, small blood oranges, and of course grapefruit.

Personally, after one grapefruit breakfast, I'm done for the year.  But I've still got plenty to use up in the pantry.  The obvious secondary use for excess grapefruit is cocktails, but one Greyhound (like a Screwdriver, but with grapefruit juice) is also enough for me. 

And so I start marinating stuff.  Shrimp, chicken, salad...grapefruit brings a surprisingly sparkly and probably novel flavor to the party.  Here is a recipe I've previously blogged about for grapefruit marinated shrimp.  Today I've zested and juiced 2 medium grapefruit and I plan to get 3 dishes out them for 2 meals. 

Juice and zest divided: 4 tbsp zest with salt and pepper
for Sauteed Chicken (bottom left), 1/2 tsp zest and
1/4 cup juice for salad dressing (top), 1 cup juice
for Un-Buffalo Chicken Tenders (bottom right)

The salad dressing is a variation of a recipe from the classic red gingham Better Homes & Gardens cookbook and makes enough for 8 servings, so you can serve it with 2 separate meals.  The Un-Buffalo Chicken Tenders is a variation of this recipe that I created for my husband's grandmother so that I could "split" the recipe between a spicy version and non-spicy version without needing to cook a totally separate meal for those who prefer to skip the heat.  An overnight marinade in any type of acid (like hot sauce, citrus juice or apple cider vinegar) makes for beautiful fork-tender sauteed chicken. 

Both meals can be prepped ahead, though only the zest-marinated chicken can be frozen for any significant length of time.  The dressing will keep several days in the fridge.  The dressing will also require an immersion blender, electric whisk, food processor or stand blender to properly combine the honey with the other ingredients.

Be sure when you season your dishes not to go overboard with salt.  Citrus hits the same points on the tongue as salt so even a moderate amount of salt will be intensified in combination with citrus zest.

A tip about juicing any citrus fruit...put the whole fruit in the microwave for 10 seconds before juicing, especially if you've taken it straight from the fridge.

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Sweet potato ravioli

A great way to use up leftover sweet potatoes.  You can freeze the baked sweet potatoes (especially if they're leftovers), the made-up filling or the made-up ravioli.  I use wonton skins because I don't want to fool around with rolling pasta dough for ravioli, but you can make your own pasta if you want.  You can also choose to oven-fry these for a crunchy finish or boil them, if you feel more confident that your ravioli are sealed well. 

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Pfefferneuse Cookies

I don't sprechen much Deutsch so while due diligence has been done on spelling and noun morphology, please forgive the errors that certainly remain.

When I told my husband that I planned to make pfeffernuse (pronounced feffer-noose), he looked alarmed.  I think he related the name to the famous German game meat stew hasenpfeffer and thought I was proposing he eat rabbit-meat cookies.

What the two recipes have in common is pfeffer, "pepper" (not rabbit, hasen).  These are little spice cookies that do indeed include pepper along with cinnamon, cloves and candied citrus peel.  This the traditional "peppernut" flavor combination, but you can use this recipe as a jumping-off point for several flavor variations which I'll include at the end of the recipe.  I've made some of these variations before, and some are notes for things to try in the future.  The original recipe is from Reader's Digest's "A Family Christmas".

They are the perfect make-ahead holiday cookie as they must be baked 2-3 weeks before eating.  They come out of the oven hard but soften with storage.  They are ideal if you want to make holiday cookies but don't want to be baking in the thick of December.

Today's I Screw Up So You Don't Have To...when you toss the cookies with confectioners sugar at the end, don't knock excess sugar off the cookies by throwing them on the floor.  Or by letting a 3yo help you with that step. 

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Filbertines

This recipe is from A Family Christmas, a hodge-podge sort of book from Reader's Digest that has Christmas stories, crafts, menus, recipes, poems, essays and other Christmas-related oddments in it.  The cookie section is hands-down the best bunch of Christmas cookie recipes I know of.  Lots of easy to make, shippable cookies that just sing "Winter!"  This cookie is very suitable for shipping as well as for prepping ahead and freezing.  Freeze the cookie dough balls after they've been rolled in chopped filberts, and thaw them while you preheat the oven when you're ready to bake.

Filberts, also known as hazelnuts, are delicious little guys.  They have a sweet, unusually spicy sort of aroma in the oven.  They're a pain to crack out of the shells, but I was pleased and surprised to find chopped hazelnuts in the baking aisle at my grocery store.  And for about the same price as walnuts and pecans!  If you have food allergies to work around, you can use another type of nut.

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Lemon Sweet Rolls

That sounds contradictory, doesn't it?  The lemon filling on these sweet yeast rolls is tartly sweet, and the yeast roll is just delicious.  Sort of like a grown-up cinnamon bun.  The recipe is originally from the Argo Cornstarch recipe book and calls for a gooey sweet cream cheese frosting which I left off, but feel free to make it as instructed or use a store-bought cream cheese frosting.

This recipe requires some planning as the dough is a yeast-leavened dough.  However, you can do all the raising over a period of several hours in the refrigerator if that works better.  You can also make this up to the point of slicing the rolled dough and freeze the slices!!  Just arrange them in a pan to freeze, take it out at night and put it in the fridge to thaw/raise overnight, then bake in the morning.  Or make them totally ahead the night before for instant yummy breakfast in the morning.

This is also a handy way to use up a bit more of your Thanksgiving leftovers...1 pan of the rolls needs 1/2 cup of spuds.  Just be sure to use pretty plain cream-and-butter mashed potatoes (or bake a medium potato in the microwave to mash) rather than a heavily herbed or garlicked version.

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