this little life of mine

Rainy Sunday in the Kitchen

It has been raining steadily since about 8:00 a.m. today - a perfect day to do some cooking! I made a delicious turkey meatloaf with mashed red potatoes and steamed green beans (from a recipe out of my all-time favourite cookbook,  Eating for Life by Bill Phillips) for our Monday and Tuesday night dinners, and used the leftover ground turkey with a Hamburger Helper to have with a couple salads on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and finally I hard-cooked some eggs for my breakfasts this week.  It was exhausting work and I usually dread spending nearly a whole day in the kitchen, but it's so worth it when I come home in the evening after a long day of working at my job and working out at The Club, and have a delicious and healthy meal waiting for me! And the extra protein first thing in the morning keeps me from feeling hungry until nearly lunchtime. It's a win-win!

OMG, I cannot wait to dig into this meatloaf!

And, yes that is The Perfect Meatloaf Pan as seen on TV, and yes it's fabulous!

I do still have tonight's dinner to cook, but that won't be too bad - baked salmon with roasted cauliflower and leftover rice from last night. Super fast and easy. So, now, it's time for a nap! Cheers!

Clean Eating: Roasted Cauliflower

In preparation for the upcoming Holidailies, I have decided to practice updating my blog more than once or twice a week. I think this is my third update, and I already have tomorrow's Friday Five list started. Holidailies should be a cinch this year, right?!?

Anyway, I recently decided to get my lazy ass back in the kitchen and try cooking some vegetables other than steamed broccoli and zucchini. I have tons of recipie books/magazines and pins on Pinterest, but, veggies are hard to cook ... well, really they're harder to prepare than to cook, but still. It's hard. (See "lazy ass" in the first sentence of this paragraph.) However, I kept seeing recipes on Pinterest for clean eating roasted cauliflower, and the photos looked SO good, I decided to give it a shot. And, yes the prep work was horrific (Have you ever tried chopping up cauliflower? Pain. In. The. Butt!), but in the end, the cauliflower turned out delicious and well worth the effort.

 It was quite simple (once the chopping was done!): I tossed the cauliflower in olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasted it at 400 for about 30 to 45 minutes. I didn't measure anything and didn't really time it; I just kept checking it as I was cooking other stuff, stirred it periodically, and pulled it out when I thought it looked perfect. I will definitely be making this again - despite the heinous prep work! - as well as trying other ways to use cauliflower and other veggies to add some variety to my dinners!

Cheers!

The 2012 Earthbox Garden is Planted!! #earthbox

Yesterday mom and I planted our Earthbox garden containers with tomatoes and bell peppers.  We stuck with our old, successful familiars and decided against trying anything else this year. In the past we've grown cantaloupe and honeydew melons (which I'm sure were cross pollinated as the honeydews were orange inside!), Japanese eggplant, summer squash, and zucchini. We've always had good luck with zucchini as well, but just didn't feel like dealing with them this year.

So in our first container we have the Bush Goliath Hybrid tomato:

And, rather than making our toms share a box this year, we put the Red Beefsteak tomato in its own container. We're hoping this will help the plants grow tomatoes that are actual BEEFSTEAK-size rather than cherry-tomato-size we've been getting the last few years. I mean, yes they're still sweet, juicy and delicious, but we're buying large tomatoes because we want LARGE tomatoes!

 

Because we've always had good luck getting good-sized bell peppers when the two plants have shared a box, we again put them together. They are both Bonnie Green Bells, although we've contemplated getting one we saw called a Red Bell, but if we just leave the green ones a week or so extra, they automatically turn red, so we decided against it. I suppose I should do some research and see if the ones called "red bell" are actually red to start with, or if they start out green, then turn red. Anyway, we've got two green bell peppers, which is fine because we like the green ones and if they turn red, awesome, if not, whatevs.

So there's our garden!

We also got our two mini roses put out front, and they look lovely:

I'm a bit concerned that each plant has only one blossom and no other buds on them, but I'm hopeful that they will continue to bloom this summer!

Day 6: Dinner #febphotoaday #instagram

My February Photo a Day for today is a shot of last night's dinner: baked salmon with dill and fresh squeezed lemon  (brought in by a coworker who's lucky enough to have a lemon tree in their yard!) and lightly steamed asparagus. It's not a recipe from my favourite magazine or anything, but it's still clean and it was also delicious!

Clean Eating: Ham, Cheese and Broccoli Casserole

This evening I whipped up the Ham, Cheese and Broccoli Casserole from the new Clean Eating magazine special Classic Comfort Foods. I picked it because on the surface it looked easy, had just a few ingredients, and sounded delicious. However, when I got down to actually making the casserole, it was a LOT of work! I really should know better than to believe the "hands-on" and "total time" numbers they put on these recipes - it always takes me twice as long to make the stuff!

My hands-on time was at least 1 hour - I mean I had to wash and chop up a head of cauliflower, a couple heads of broccoli and four carrots which had to be finely diced. Then with the cooking, the broccoli and cauliflower is roasted, and the carrots are simmered with evaporated milk then blended with the cheese, then everything is mixed together and baked. Whew! 

Still, in the end, even with the weird carrot/milk/cheese puree-thing, this casserole is delicious!! And, there's plenty of it leftover for Monday as well! I definitely recommend it. I think, however, if I ever make this dish again, I will buy frozen vegetables rather than deal with fresh, to save myself a LOT of time. 

Cookies #31photosin31days #holidailies

Today I baked up some cookies for Christmas! Not from scratch, and not even from a box mix. Nope. These cookies came pre-made and pre-sliced, and were super easy!

 

 

I ordered these Red and White Cranberry Delight cookie dough from my co-worker's son who was participating in his school's fundraising program. I've ordered cookie dough from him before, a few years ago, but only got the frozen tubs of dough and it took me years to get round to dealing with them, and even then it was kind of a pain digging the dough out of the tub!

This year I really wasn't going to order any because of the pain-in-the -butt factor, but when I saw the pre-cut cookies in the catalouge I immediatly ordered them!  (I also ordered Double Chunk Chocolate cookie dough, but my dyslexia must've gotten in the way when I wrote out that order because I ended up with a tub, but whatever. I'll deal with that over New Year's!)

This pre-cut dought is awesome! Look at how easy and convenient this is; one layer of cookie dough fits perfectly on one parchment-paper-lined baking sheet, and since I have two baking sheets, I was able to get a lot of cookies baked at one time! It literally took me one hour to bake all 36 cookies!

 

 

And, yes, these cookies taste delicious, too! So, yeah, I'm a lazy bum and all, but I also have 36 freshly baked cookies to enjoy with a cold glass of milk (or some festive eggnog with nutmeg) and share with family for Christmas!

Clean Eating: Corriander-Rubbed Salmon #31photosin31days #hoildailies

The salmon for this dish was suppoed to have corriander seed rubbed on it, but I don't have corriander seed and was unable to find any corriander seed, so I just did a quick herb, salt and pepper rub instead. The Swiss chard was prepared according to the recipe in the November/December issue of Clean Eating magazine, though. The meals was delicious and really easy to prepare!

Clean Eating: Snow Peas with Sweet and Sour Dressing #31photosin31days #holidailies #cleaneating

It's no secret that my all-time favourite magazine out right now is Clean Eating. I love it more than Lucky, which is saying a LOT, believe me! I came across the premier issue back in the winter of 2008  when I was on one of my many diet and fitness kicks, and within a few days I mailed in the post card for a subscription. The recipes are yummy (with an exception or two, of course, but that might've been chef's error), and some of them are pretty easy, while others are difficult and most of them are time consuming. I mean, all that cleaning and chopping of fresh veggies takes forEVER! But, it's worth it in the end when you can serve a healthy, delicious meal!

Now normally I just make the main dishes (though I've done the occasinal side dish), and I usually just skim over the included bonus recipe cards, but for some reason the Snow Peas with Sweet and Sour Dressing caught my eye, and since I had everything in my cupboard except the snow peas, it was a quick and easy veggie side for my salmon dinner. 

Some day I hope to get truly organized and make more recipes from these magazines

Labour Day BBQ

I don't think I've grilled anything for five or six years. I used to grill a lot when we first moved into our house, but then it seemed like it was suddenly windier than usual, and fire and wind scare the crap out of me, so I stopped. Recently, however, I've really wanted to cook food outside over an open flame. My old BBQ is a rusted out mess, and all our supplies are old and useless, so I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't want to spend money I no longer have to buy all new gear and getup, so I thought all was lost until I saw this:

 
An all-in-one disposable grill! It comes complete with the grill pan and grill, charcoal and lighter sheets so all I had to do was buy food and light a match. So. Dang. Easy! And perfect timing since two of the bell pepper I've been waiting on finally turned red, and I've been dying to roast them, so I roasted them first, then did the corn.

 
 
 

Then I did the steaks: a bone-in New York for me and a nice, thick sirloin for my mom.

 

OMG, everything was delicious! The corn was so sweet and tender, and the steaks were a perfect medium rare. My roasted red peppers came out fabulous as well:

 

It was really great to be outdoors grilling food again. Yes, it was windy, which made me a little nervous, but it was still fun. Especially since the clean up was a snap! We just waited for the coals to die down, then threw the whole thing out. Probably not very eco-friendly, but for as often as I grill, I think it was worth it. 

Clean Eating: Smokey Pork Chops w/ Maque Choux-Style Vegetables #31photosin31days

I made this recipe from Clean Eating magazine before, but at that time I didn't have the smoked paprika nor did I have a jalapeno pepper.  (Okay, honestly, I chose NOT to use a jalapeno pepper because I was afraid it would make the dish too hot, and I'm a wimp when it comes to hot and spicy foods) This time, however, I had both items and used them!

 

I used some tomatoes from our garden instead of buying the grape tomatoes from the store - I think that might've improved the taste considerably! - the green bell pepper is ours as well, and the little jalapeno pepper was from the garden of a co-worker of mine.

 

The dish turned out beautiful and delicious, and I will definitely be making it again. The jalapeno was not hot at all (another of my co-workers who is an amazing cook told me to remove the seeds and wash the pepper off really well to remove the oils that cause the heat; I did and it seemed to work!), and the smoked paprika has a lot more flavour than the plain paprika does. Next time, however I will be doubling the vegetables, because it's supposed to serve 4, but there's no way there's enough veggies for 4 people!