Super-Simple Crockpot Asian Chicken

This is stupid simple.

I LOVE it.

An easy-to-put-together sauce/marinade that can be frozen with or without the accompanying chicken parts or put together night before or morning of Dinner Day.  And it makes the house smell delicious and tastes yum.

I serve with rice (prepped ahead in a rice cooker on a delay timer) with steamed broccoli.  Super fast, super easy.

The OR calls for chicken thighs, which I like especially in the crockpot. Use whatever you like (I get this since I'm still married to the Chicken Princess who usually prefers chicken breast over dark meat), but whatever cut you pick...bone-in, thigh, breast, whatever...I would remove the skin or buy skinless.  There's no browning in this recipe, which is usually a bummer in a crockpot recipe anyway, and chicken skin will just be gross and flabby without that (troublesome) step.

Adapted from Blue Hill Slow Cooker & Family Recipes.

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Crockpot Braised Chicken & Red Cabbage

It's been awhile since I've posted anything here, not because I haven't been cooking but because life has been busy, and I've mostly been retreading familiar recipes...the ones I've posted here!  I've said before that the main reason I started this blog was for my own personal reference, and I've gotten some good mileage on that front in the last few whiles.

The kidlets get bigger and bigger, and they're doing more and more sports/homework/etc. during what used to be my cooking/prep time.  I've been keeping up by using the crockpot, and I'm needing to expand our repertoire.

This is adapted from Blueberry Hill Slow Cooker & Family Recipes.  I prepped it ahead and kept it in the fridge about 3 days before I made it for dinner.  Freezing is always an option, though.  I would definitely saute the veg before freezing it, but not the chicken.  If you don't have a few minutes to brown the chicken before putting it in the crockpot, I think you'll be fine just putting it in unbrowned.  For ease of packaging, freeze extra wine in an ice cube tray and use the frozen cubes for a freezer kit.

If you don't know what else to try juniper berries in, try adding them to sauerbraten.  Or a gin martini.

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Pineapple Grilled Mahi

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The only real notes here are that 1 large pineapple, quartered, then carefully skinned yields 2 pairs of 6" x 3" "slabs".  So about 4 small servings' worth.  Buy accordingly.

I cut the fish to fit the "planks" (making 1" thick pieces of fish), and had to grill it about 5 minutes more than I would have otherwise (15 minutes total for 1" of mahi, turning once).

The fish tastes slightly of pineapple, but not overwhelmingly.  I made this in the morning to cook for dinner the same night; to prep ahead more in advance, I'd prep all the parts and assemble the fish-and-pineapple planks while the grill heated up.

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Mirepoix: Wild Rice Soup

Another way to use the Canned Mirepoix soup starter I posted about here.  If you don't want to put up mirepoix (and I totally respect that), saute a cup or so of chopped onions, carrots and celery before starting the recipe below.

This recipe was the actual OR I got the canned mirepoix base from in Julie Languille's Meals in a Jar.  I held off on trying it because I have a hard time finding wild rice in any but the tiniest of packages at my grocery stores.  You *could* substitute brown rice, barley or similar whole grain here (not white rice or any kind of quick-cooking grain), but for some reason, a creamy barley soup doesn't appeal to me.

Happily, I found wild rice in the bulk bins at my local natural foods store while shopping for nutritional yeast.  Not only was it bulk-stored, it was bulk-priced.  This makes it one of the 3 things I can get cheaper at the natural foods store than I can at the regular grocery (shelf-stable almond milk and yogurt-covered pretzels being the others) LOL

I have no pictures of the finished product because I made it one night when I was the solo-parent-on-duty with the 3 kiddos and also making dinner for my in-laws.  Not enough hands for picture-taking, and also no leftovers.

This soup will take some time to cook on Dinner Day because of the cooking time on the wild rice, but it requires virtually no attention.

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Crockpot Black Beans

I loves a good bean recipe.  I served this the first night as our main dish with salad and bread (cornbread would have been an excellent accompaniment, but alas was not meant to be that night).  I served the leftovers (and there will be a lot unless you're feeding a small army or a couple of teenage boys) as taco filling the next night.

Even though these beans cook all day in a crockpot, you still need to presoak them.  Depending on what kind of schedule you have, that might mean soaking overnight (to put in the crockpot in the morning), through a whole day (to prep in the evening for the next day's crockpotting) or doing the boil-two-minutes-then-cover-and-soak-one-hour thing.

Crockpots keep food very moist, so be sure not to add too much stock, otherwise you'll have bean soup instead of beans.  Add stock until just before the beans would be totally covered; you should still see little lumpy-bumps of beanage peeking through the surface of the liquid.

Crockpot Black Beans
Makes 8-10 servings

1 lb. black beans, soaked several hours or quick-soaked and drained
2 tbsp oil
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 mild pepper such as anaheim or poblano, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 tsp seasoning salt
1 bay leaf
1 14 oz can crushed tomatoes
2 tbsp lime juice
4-5 cups vegetable or chicken broth

Prepare beans.  Heat oil in a skillet and saute onions, garlic, peppers and seasonings 5-10 minutes until soft.  Stir in remaining ingredients, except for broth.  Fridge or freeze, if desired (as a scheduling note, you could do the sauteing the night before Crockpot Day and start soaking the beans at the same time; the next morning mix it all together in the crockpot).

On Crockpot Day, put the onion-bean-tomato mix in the crockpot (still frozen is OK).  Add stock to barely cover the beans.  Cook on low 8-10 hours.


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Chicken/Turkey Noodle/Rice Soup

Another one from Julie Languille's Meals in Jars.  Another one involving pressure canning.  Again, if you have the freezer space, you can absolutely package this up as a freezer kit using vacu-seal bags.  I really, really recommend vacu-seal bags instead of ziptop bags when dealing with cooked chicken to ward off freezer burn.

If you prefer not to use bouillon or soup base, omit it and plan to substitute broth for water in the same amount when you cook the kit.  You could freeze homemade broth, can homemade broth or keep shelf-stable store bought broth on hand to finish the meal prep.

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Advanced Prep-ahead: Beef Burgundy and a Cookbook Shout-out

Pressure canning/dehydrating is probably a step beyond what most people are willing to do to prepare and store meals in advance, so I'm going to keep this pretty short.  But I do highly recommend this book, as there are many complete prep-ahead meal recipes that do not involve pressure canning.

I tried a recipe out of a cookbook called Meals in a Jar by Julie Languille for Beef Burgundy.  I dehydrated my own mushrooms (although you can buy dried mushrooms at the store and skip this part) and did a scaled back version of the recipe (hers called for 16 lbs of stew meat and made 16 6-serving portions of finished beef burgundy), leaving out a meal's worth to have for dinner that night.  It was delicious and I'm awfully glad I've put up the 6 quarts I have along with pre-portioned cornmeal and rice for side dishes of polenta and pilaf.

There are LOADS of recipes in this book that are made entirely out of store-bought dry ingredients and can be assembled and stored in jars without canning at all, but there are also a lot of recipes for canning things that I don't think freeze very well (pulled pork and mushrooms being two of them).

I'm definitely going to hang onto a few recipes for things that would make great new baby/home from the hospital/get well type casserole gifts but that wouldn't require the recipient to make room in their freezer.

Also I gotta say, if I still lived in Florida (where our big natural disaster threat was hurricanes which will knock out power for days or weeks at a time and you'd lose a big freeze stash if one hit), I'd do more prepping ahead like this.

Some pictures...

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Cheddar Jelly Thumbprints

I've made several variations on this recipe, swapping in and out different cheeses and different jellies, over several years.  My personal favorites are the sharp-cheese/spicy-jelly combinations but a milder, sweeter colby-apple jam version won me a 2nd place ribbon (and 3 lbs of butter) at the State Fair last year.  Feel free to play with flavors here!

I've served these as appetizers and desserts, and they prep ahead (and even freeze) fabulously.  Roll the cookie balls, roll them in nuts and freeze them.  Thaw before baking so that you can make the little indentations for the jelly.  

I also <3 that you make the dough in the food processor...so fast, so easy.

A neato-torpedo trick I picked up from Cooks Illustrated is to use a wine cork to make the "thumbprints"...very tidy, very precise.

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Rice-topped Shepherd's Pie (dialysis diet)

This one is mostly for me. I originally started this blog as an easy way to share the couple dozen recipes I recommended frequently to people who needed to prepare meals in advance, but it's also been useful for me to document how I've changed recipes that I want to make again.

So this is one of those recipes.  It's from a cookbook called Cooking for David that provides recipes for folks on dialysis.  I'm cooking for a loved one who has been experiencing worsening chronic kidney disease (CKD) and is now receiving dialysis treatments.  Side note...Boy, have I learned about food and the kidneys lately.  Lemme tell you, if you've been diagnosed with diabetes (and CKD is likely in your future if you have poorly managed diabetes) and think the diabetic diet is restrictive, that's NOTHING compared to the CKD/dialysis diet.  Keep your kidneys (and pancreas) healthy people...life is not fun when they don't work.

So back to the recipe...you don't futz with dialysis recipes.  This is so hard for me.  There's a pretty strict limit on potassium and phosphorus intake, in addition to sodium, protein and liquid limits and it's different for each patient.  Unfortunately, potassium and phosphorus are nutrients that aren't required to be listed on nutrition labels the way sodium, carbohydrates, protein and fat grams are so it's hard to know just how much you're getting unless you follow a tested recipe very closely or use a renal diet food analyzer like this one: http://www.davita.com/food-analyzer/

Also unfortunately, the foods that are high in potassium and phosphorus are healthy foods...whole grains, many fruits and veggies, nuts and beans, dairy products.  "Low sodium" products are also a minefield as most aren't simply made with less salt, but with a potassium salt substitute (not necessarily a bad thing for those of us with functioning kidneys...in fact here is a report of a study suggesting that more than high sodium intake alone, a combination of high sodium and low potassium puts you at higher risk for cardiac problems... but it's problematic for renal patients. Also a reminder that when buying packaged foods, "low" anything oftens means "substitute" rather than just "less" of whatever the reduced ingredient is).  So again, the takeaway is that you follow the recipe, don't add extra veggies (crazy, right?), don't substitute whole grain products and read labels.

Shepherd's Pie is a family fave here.  I was excited to see a kidney-friendly recipe that substituted low-potassium/phosphorus white rice for the usual high-potassium/phosphorus potato-cheese crust (did you know that a potato has more potassium than a banana...my dance teacher always said that, but I thought she was full of it).  It did use a lot of high-sodium sauce additions though..."no salt added" beef stock, additional beef bouillon granules, Worcestershire sauce, Kitchen Bouquet (who even has this any more anyway?).  I checked the labels on all my stock/bouillon/sauce options and settled on a vegetable base bouillon made without potassium salts and a healthy slug of red wine (which I also checked on the Davita food analyzer) instead of all that other stuff.  I made it with long grain white rice...I might try arborio rice next time for a creamier, more potato-y texture.

And so to bring it all back to where I started...my husband requested that I make a note of what I did so I can make this recipe again in the future...soon, preferably.  No pictures because I prepped it ahead for my family to cook on my late night at work.

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Risotto

I used shallots and celery for aromatics, tilapia for protein,
seafood stock, chopped fresh spinach for veggies, savory
for flavoring

I've worked with a delicious seafood risotto recipe for many years.  It's from a fundraiser cookbook called Dewey or Don't We published by the Dubuque Public Library.

I used to follow it to the T, and finally understood that really, it was more like guidelines (as so many recipes truly are).

And then I started being able to use the technique given in that recipe and substitute my own flavors and ingredients, depending on what was in season and available.

No matter what ingredients you use, this is definitely a prep-ahead-friendly recipe.  Chop and measure everything ahead of time, combining ingredients by category.  You can also freeze this as a meal kit...combine ingredients by category, put them in vacuseal bags or ziptop bags, and freeze.  Thaw before cooking.

The use-what-you-have components are:

• fat for sauteing: use butter, olive oil, canola oil, lard, mojo de ajo
• aromatics: use onions, shallots, celery, carrots, leeks or any combo thereof
• stock: chicken, seafood, veggie (not so much beef here)
• protein: fish, chicken, shrimp, scallops, crab (again, not so much beef)
• veggies: chopped bell pepper, snow peas, chopped greens, broccoli, peas, corn kernels, pre-cooked squash cubes
• flavoring: citrus zest, minced herbs

Some favorite combinations are shallots with shrimp, green peas and thyme; celery/onion/carrot with chicken, pepper and savory; crab, leeks, spinach and lemon zest.

Chop, measure, and fridge everything in advance for next-day or same-day cooking.  You can also freeze the components ahead.  To save space with liquids, either freeze wine and stock in ice cube trays beforehand to include in the freezer kit or pour the liquid into a ziptop bag, carefully press air out of the bag, seal and lay flat on a tray to freeze.

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Beef Roast & Beef Manhattan

Beef Manhattan is one of those looked-down-upon dishes because you typically see it in cafeterias and hospitals.  Really, it shouldn't be overlooked.  It's a great way to repurpose leftover roasted beef.  The first day after we have roasted beef, there's an excited flurry of roast beef sandwiches for lunch, then...it sits.  Beef Manhattan revives and reinterests the dinner-time audience ;)

If you don't want to use Russian dressing (because, really, it is a bizarre form of salad dressing that's far better suited to marinades than dressing salad IMHO), use an equal amount of ketchup with liberal dashes of salt, pepper and garlic powder with a splash of red wine vinegar.  If you do use Russian dressing but wonder what else to do with it, I recommend this freeze-ahead chicken dish.

To make the gravy for Beef Manhattan, I used a red wine reduction to happy up the stock.  If you'd prefer to skip the wine, use 1 tbsp tomato paste and brown it very well (5-ish minutes over medium heat without oil) in the saucepan instead.

If you're planning well in advance, you can make the gravy without the cooking juices from the beef and freeze it.  When you're ready to serve the second-round Beef Manhattan, thaw the gravy, warm it to bubbling, add the reserved juices and chopped beef and simmer until it's a good consistency.

You can serve Beef Manhattan over bread (white or whole wheat) or over mashed potatoes.  If you're looking for a lower-carb version, serve over pureed cauliflower.

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Shakshuka

I've seen and made multiple versions of the eggs-poached-in-chunky-sauce meal...one with a bed of sauteed spinach and mushrooms, another with caramelized shallots and a marsala-beef consomme reduction, among others.  This one is a recipe from the cookbook Jerusalem by Ottolenghi that uses a stovetop-simmered pepper-tomato sauce as the poaching bed.  A similar sauce that would probably also work well for cooking eggs this way is this roasted red pepper sauce.

The original recipe calls for harissa, a super-spicy pepper paste, that I don't have on hand.  I used some minced jalapeno and ginger from my freezer stash to bring a little heat and depth of flavor to the sauce.  If you like things hotter, use more or hunt down some harissa.

To chop your pepper finely enough for this dish, I highly recommend using the food processor.  Pulse quickly and stop short of pureeing them.  If you use canned tomatoes instead of fresh, drain them very well to shorten the cooking time needed to thicken the sauce.

I like how quickly the sauce went together and how well this recipe lends itself well to prepping ahead and freezing ahead.  You can chop all the ingredients for the sauce ahead of time and fridge them, or make the sauce completely in advance.  If you're going to freeze the sauce, you can even freeze it in individual portions for a quick meal-for-one.  Just bring the sauce back up to a simmer (from its frozen state even!), crack an egg into the sauce, cover and simmer 8-10 minutes.  Probably this thaw-and-poach process could even be managed in microwave...I don't know offhand how long to zap an egg to poach it, but if you do, let me know!

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Faux-grilled Alabama Chicken

I love how food tastes when it's been grilled over charcoal.  I hate how much time and cleanup a charcoal grill takes though (not to mention what a PITA it is to control temperature for longer than 15 minutes' worth of cooking), and lately even thinking about it makes me want to order a pizza.

So I've been fiddling around with using a cast iron grill pan in the oven to get the same kind of char you get from grilling without the grill.  I've had some dud attempts and some successes, and I think I've found a method that makes me happy.

Please note I'm using small whole chickens, 3 to 4 lbs each.  If you've got a bigger bird, or chicken pieces, the cooking times will of course be different.

The trick seems to be preheating the cast iron pan in the oven to a screaming high heat, leaving the heat up for a part of the cooking time, turning it down to a regular roasting temperature for the bulk of the cooking, flipping the chicken halfway through and bumping the temperature back up (to make up for the heat lost by opening the oven door while you flip the bird) and finishing with a quick broil if desired.

It sounds fussy, but it's a kind of fussy that I prefer over the fussy of the grill.

This particular recipe is adapted from Cook's Illustrated.  I'm less and less a fan of sugary, dark barbecue sauces.  This subtly sweet-and-spicy mayonnaise-based sauce is a new one for me and I quite liked it.


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Creole Risotto and How Your Christmas Lights Help You Prep Ahead

Finished dish with chicken and peas

I have a new cookbook (my Mother's Day gift to myself)!  It's a vintage cookbook called Scientific Cooking with Scientific Methods by Sarah E. Woodworth Craig, published in 1911 by Ellis Publishing Co (Battle Creek, MI).

It's chock-full of adverts for Vonnegut Hardware in Indianapolis (yes, *that* Vonnegut, though Vonnegut grandpère rather than Vonnegut grand-fils) and "scientific" culinary gems like, "Brain workers want to take easily digested foods, such as eggs, fish, etc. The laborer needs quantity, and can eat of corned beef, cabbage, corn bread and brown bread, and not overtax his digestion..."

As always, I wonder what of our current "known scientific truths" will seem quaint and outmoded in a few decades.

Outmoded though their musings on digestion are, I LOVE recipes from the pre-processed foods era.  In this instance, I'm combining one of the recipes with a previous Mother's Day gift (my rice cooker) and streamlining the recipe.

Rice cooker in foreground,
Christmas lights timer in background

I've been really into using my rice cooker lately as a prep-ahead tool in combination with...wait for it...my Christmas light timer.  Most rice recipes (the vegetarian ones) can sit out at room temp for a few hours before cooking without ill effects, but really can't sit around on "warm" all day without getting burned.  Enter the timer...  Rice cookers will generally cook white rice in 15-20 minutes, plus a few minutes cool-down time or brown rice in about 45 minutes with the same cool-down period.  Count backwards from your preferred meal time, and set your timer to start at the appropriate time.  Don't forget to set the rice cooker itself to "cook" even though it won't be kicking on for awhile.

Now the recipe...the original recipe calls for making a sauce of onions, pepper, mushrooms, sherry and tomatoes separate from the rice.  I sauteed the veg, added a splash of wine and added all this to the rice cooking liquid.  I used all mushrooms rather than a mixture of onion/pepper/mushroom because that's what I had on hand.  Use more veggies, less veggies, whatever works for you.

Also, be sure to use all the liquid called for even if it doesn't seem to jive with the rice cooker's notion of appropriate rice-to-liquid ratio...the volume of the sauteed veggies throws things off.

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Pepperoni-spiced seitan & veg packets

This is one post that can be read for 2 distinct recipes...the first is a dinner-in-a-packet recipe that works for both vegetarian and carnivorous proteins, and the second is for a pretty darn tasty (and new to us) vegetarian protein called seitan.

Say what??  Seitan (it's pronounced say-tahn).  It's made from wheat gluten (which is wheat flour with most of the starch removed...I don't know how they do this, but you buy it in "specialty flours" part of your baking aisle) which is the proteiny part of the grain.  You combine it with some flavoring ingredients and liquid, then shape it and simmer it in broth or bake it to make a product that can be used as a vegetarian protein substitute in any number of ways.

I really like it for two reasons...1) the wheat gluten is a little pricey (about $7/lb.) but one bag makes several batches and it winds up being a very inexpensive vegetarian protein (only beans are cheaper), and 2) you can throw it together out of pantry and refrigerator staples (beans are also a good pantry staple, but I know a lot of folks don't care for beans...seitan is a toothy vegetarian protein in the vein of frozen tofu or tempeh).  It is also a soy-free vegetarian protein, if one wants to avoid soy.

Seitan takes some time to make in the first place...you either have to simmer it for an hour or so or bake it (my preferred method) for 60-90 minutes, depending on the exact recipe.  But you can make several batches at once and freeze them for future use.  A good basic (i.e. seitan with a pretty plain, versatile flavor profile) recipe can be found here (there's also a recipe for using vital wheat gluten as an egg-replacement binder in bean burgers on this site...that recipe is good too!)

I've used seitan in stirfries, either just plain cut-up or "velveted".  I've grilled slices of it after basting with barbecue sauce.  And I've made these packets with it.  I've also made the packets with actual sausage and they're good both ways. For the purposes of these packets, I like the following seitan recipe which mashes up this seitan recipe with the seasonings called for in the pepperoni recipe in Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie.

Something that is obvious in hindsight is that wheat gluten is what gives bread its structure as it rises.  I prefer baking seitan to simmering it and you need to make sure to keep the seitan dough compressed by wrapping it very well in foil to keep it dense and chewy.  At least two full wraps around with the ends twisted or folded off.  If you wrap it so the ends of the foil overlap by just a little bit, the seitan will rise (like bread), bust out of the foil, make a mess and lose the dense, toothy texture you're after.  I screw up so you don't have to.

Last note...seitan is often a vegan recipe.  The recipes above call for something called nutritional yeast to provide a salty umami depth of flavor and a hit of vitamin B12 in the absence of all animal-derived products.  I'm not particularly invested in keeping my seitan 100% vegan, so I use parmesan cheese (the kind out of a can) instead of nutritional yeast.  It's been working for me.  Also note, if you are cooking for a vegan, the velveting process uses egg whites and will be not be suitable.

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Pepperoni Broccolini Pasta

Adapted from the most recent issue of Food and Wine (March 2013?).  The pepperoni/garlic mixture will freeze nicely and is easy enough to make in double or triple batches.  Once it's combined with breadcrumbs, I bet it would make an outstanding breading mix on chicken breasts, pork chops or eggplant slices too.

Topping pasta with breadcrumbs seems like carb overload and isn't generally how most folks think of the "right" way to serve pasta.  But the breadcrumb finish is common in a pasta dish that uses seafood (as parmesan and its ilk don't go so nicely with fish).  And if you think about the "traditional" mac and cheese baked casserole, there are breadcrumbs all over the top of that pasta!  So it's not as odd as it seems.

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Shrimp 'n' Grits

This is Valentine's Day dinner at my house :D

In honor of the date, I attempted to make the bacon look like little hearts, a la Pinterest.  Mine came out heartish-shaped rather than heart-shaped.  Here is the pin I worked from. I highly recommend NOT using center cut bacon as it's somewhat shorter than "regular" bacon and you need the length to make the shapes...I screw up so you don't have to.

Note: you do not have to make heartish-shaped bacon snouts to make this dish.

This does not take long to make, but it does help if you prep some elements ahead.  It all freezes pretty well too.  I chose to cook the shrimp in the oven to keep kiddo hands away from hot pans on the stovetop but you could do it on the stovetop (or grill) as well...it will take a pinch less time.

You can also cook your bacon in advance (even in heartish-shaped forms) and fridge it until needed.  Just be sure to save the bacon grease for cooking the shrimp.  If you fridge the cooked bacon, just reheat it lightly in the microwave or put it back in the oven for a few minutes to warm up.

One last note...how much bacon you use is up to you.  You can go with "bacon as seasoning" and use just a couple of slices or you can go with "bacon as major protein" and use a half pound or even a whole pound if you want.  I used a half pound to make 8 heartish-shaped bacon pieces in the oven.  If you're turning on the oven, you might as well make a lot of bacon IMHO.  If you're doing this on the stovetop, less bacon works better.

To make this super-delicious, cook the grits in chicken or seafood stock.  Water is just fine though.  Tips on dealing with stock/broth for freezer kits here.

If you make a freezer kit, you could measure out the dry grits and freeze them (be sure to get all the air out!) but really, grits keep for-eh-ver in the pantry.

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Crockpot Green Pepper Pork

I'm working through the stash of garden veggies I froze this fall instead of canning or dehydrating.  Right now, it's bell peppers.  The frozen ones work well in this dish because they're meant to stew very soft anyway (and you lose the crunch when you freeze peppers).  You can of course make this with fresh peppers.

I served this dish over rice, but you can also put it in tortillas as a wrap or serve it with biscuits or cornbread.

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Pear Muffins

Pears are available year-round, but fall really is pear season.  My favorite way to eat pears is actually a no-recipe dish...a fully, juicy, tender ripe pear sliced thinly with thin slices of Havarti cheese.  I'll eat that for breakfast, dessert, snack, you name it. 

Pears are a valuable addition to one's diet for reasons other than their deliciousness though. 

WARNING: things are about to get a little gross. 

Pears contain sorbitol which is a natural osmotic laxative (the type of laxative that "just makes it easier to go", as the commercials say).  So do prunes and plums, but I know a lot of folks are anti-prune even though you shouldn't be...but that's another post.

If you're thinking about prepping some snacks and meals ahead in preparation for having a baby, pears should be on your list somehow.  If you've just ejected another human being from your body, whether via the baby chute or through the "sunroof", chances are there's gonna be some issues in the osmotic laxative department (personal experience speaking here).  If you're helping someone who is laid up after a surgery or long illness, chance are they're having some issues in the osmotic laxative department.  If you're caring for an elderly person, chances are...well, you get it.  Medication (particularly pain medication), surgeries, inactivity due to injury or bed rest, dehydration from illness, normal aging all tend to cause constipation, and pears will help.

OK, enough poop talk.  Pears are good for what ails you.

I've frozen batches of these muffins before just as is.  They are gooood, but get a little soggy on top in the freezer.  I've played with different ways to freezer-fortify them, and what I've come up with is a good solution I think that can be applied to any type of muffin.  A streusel topping that incorporates nuts or coconut will stand up to the freezer pretty well.  The nuts/coconut doesn't lose crunch and keeps the otherwise-soggy muffin tops covered up.

You can always make the batter and freeze it for later baking which totally side-steps the freezer-sog problem, but it does require back-end time to bake.  If you freeze before baking, spoon the batter into paper cupcake liners in a muffin pan.  Freeze the whole pan, then remove the filled liners to a ziptop bag for storage.  To thaw, put the liner-cups in the muffin pan while still frozen and let thaw in the fridge or at room temp.

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Turkey Burgers

Turkey burgers baked in a jumbo muffin pan
as mini-meatloaves (same bat time, same
bat temp) with a brush of garlic jelly as a glaze

I just adore Chris Kimball, America's Test Kitchen and their recipes.  They are almost uniformly a few steps more intensive than I'm willing to do on a regular basis, but I forgive them because they are always so, so right.  That said, I am willing to live in the place between Right and Easy, a little place I like to call Rational Compromise ;)

The July 2012 issue of Cooks Illustrated includes an egg-free, carb-free recipe for a moist, light turkey burger.  The one major departure I make from this recipe is that I do not grind my own meat by purchasing a bone-in hunk o' turkey, cutting the meat off the bone, partially freezing it and running it through the food processor for just enough pulses to produce the "perfect" grind.  Huh-unh.  Not gonna do it.  I used 1 1/2 lbs. ground turkey instead and got delicious results.

There are some surprising ingredients here...soy sauce, baking soda, gelatin.  I can't remember all the science but there's a reason for it.  Go to your local public library and check out this issue of CI for details.  A super-cool bonus of the science is this makes a nice tender burger without the usual carb-y additions or eggs for those with egg allergies.

Regarding the mushrooms...the mushrooms get very finely chopped and effectively disappear into the burger.  It's not like eating big chunks o' mushroom with your burger, in case you have some fungi-phobes at your dinner table.  I will say that you do need white button mushrooms here instead of something fancier for aesthetic reasons.  I made this recipe with brown cremini mushrooms, and they just come out looking very unappetizing in the final product.  With brown mushrooms, the burger is still PERFECTLY DELICIOUS but UGLY AS ALL HECK.

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