Kale... Fail. Cauliflower? Better.

I'm a snacker.  I love little things to munch while I drive or watch TV.  In trying to keep unhealthy and/or extra carbs and fat in check, the options are limited, and I keep my eyes open for new ideas.

More veggies in my diet would always be a good idea, so vegetables that could also be snacks would be a double bonus.  A couple of years ago, I tried making kale chips.  You can read about that here... I just wasn't thrilled with the result.  But I was recently intrigued when I heard the term "Cauliflower Popcorn."  I am a cauliflower fan, and loooovvvve  popcorn, so it was worth a try.

A quick search in the internet turned up a 5-star rated recipe on Food.com.  The method is about the same as what I do to make roasted cauliflower, except for one thing.

For roasted cauliflower, I wash and pat dry a head of cauliflower, or pre-prepped cauliflower pieces and break them into approximately 1 1/2 inch pieces.  I place them in a large bowl, drizzle on a couple tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and sprinkle with salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, and garlic powder.  I also add parmesan cheese, but often hold it to sprinkle on in the last several minutes of baking. 

I spread the oiled and spiced cauliflower on a oil-sprayed baking sheet, one layer deep and spread out so that they aren't touching each other any more than necessary. 

After roasting for 20 minutes

I put the pan in a preheated 425 degree oven, and bake for about 20 to 30 minutes, until the cauliflower is tender and starts to brown.  

This is where the Cauliflower Popcorn recipe is different.  The 'popcorn' is supposed to bake for a full hour.  This is a long time for the impatient to wait for a snack! According the recipes and comments I read, the extra browning, or caramelization, though, should make the cauliflower sweeter, and some of the smaller pieces will get nice and crispy.

At 30 minutes

Unlike the kale, which I didn't like at all, I wouldn't consider this to be a fail.  I really like roasted cauliflower and this is so  similar.  So similar, in fact, I'm not sure it was worth the extra time for the trade offs.  Yes, the ultra-browned pieces were crispy.  

"Cauliflower Popcorn"... After one hour of roasting.
Actually, it was after 55 minutes, because this was brown enough!

But to us they didn't seem that sweet, just a little burnt.  --Not so much that we couldn't eat them, but not anything we'd consider much of a plus.  The pieces that weren't browned to crispiness were super soft.  When I roast cauliflower, my aim is to get some definite browning, but also to get it out of the oven while the cauliflower still has some crispness of its own left, and hasn't turned to mush.  In an hour, there isn't much hope of that.

My other concern is, when it's cooked this much, has all the good veggie nutrition been cooked out of it, too?  Raw or barely cooked cauliflower, according to the nutrition facts listed on sites, such as World's Healthiest Foods, is an awesome source of Vitamin C, and also a very good source of other vitamins, including K, B-6, and folate, and fulfills other nutritional needs, like manganese, fiber, and Omega-3s.  It might help prevent certain cancers and has anti-inflammatory effects.  It is low on the Glycemic Index, which means it won't cause problems by raising blood sugar levels too much or too rapidly.

According to this article, steaming loses approximately 15% of most of the vitamins in cauliflower, while boiling causes much more of a loss when the vitamins leech into the cooking water.  Nutrition charts on this site, show more than a 50% loss of potassium when boiling, but doesn't have other cooked cauliflower information.  I'd guess the loss in roasting might be equivalent to that of steaming, but I couldn't find more exact information to share.  I still believe that the quicker the cooking, and the more intact the vegetable, the better the retained vitamins.  I would also think over-cooking would make the sugars more readily available to the bloodstream, which is another negative.

I think I'll stick to the shorter roasting time from now on.  I'll have my snack and eat it, too... more quickly!

New Family Fave...SO Easy!

Thanks to Slow Cooker Root Beer Pulled Pork Sandwiches  posted on Six Sisters' Stuff, we have a new addition to the list of favorite meals around here.  The family has requested it be a weekly dinner-- with plenty of leftovers for impromptu meals and snacks at other times.

With prior fails, I am still wary of Crock-Pot recipes.  But recent successes have made me braver at trying new ones.  

No Crock-Pot?  No worries.  See note at the end of this post.

This recipe was just too intriguing --with "Root Beer" in the title (yum!)-- and too easy --with only 3 ingredients and relatively no prep-- to pass up.

I threw 2 pork sirloin tip roasts (from Costco @ $1.99/pound), totaling just over 4 pounds, into my Crock-Pot.  I then poured in 12 ounces of root beer, and turned the crockpot to low for 7 or 8 hours.





After that time, following the directions given by Six Sisters, I removed the pork (for the most part, in pieces, because it was so well cooked and tender), and discarded the root beer.  

I shredded the pork and returned it to the now empty Crock-Pot  then stirred in 18 ounces of our favorite (**no-high-fructose-corn-syrup) barbecue sauce, Stubb's Sweet Heat Bar-B-Q Sauce.   It seemed a little drier than I wanted, so I changed the original recipe here, by adding approximately 1/2 cup of water to the empty bottle to swirl out any remaining sauce, and adding all to the pork mixture.


Inspired by the new Beef Brisket Sandwich at Costco, I served this on a toasted (homemade) bun spread with mayo, plus shredded cabbage and carrot mixture. (Prepared cole slaw, as served on the Beef Brisket Sandwich, would work, too.)  This adds a fresh and crisp element to the sandwich, as well as being a good way to sneak in some healthy veggies.

I am not a huge pork fan, nor a big fan of barbecue sauce. I figured it would be OK for my barbecue-sauce-loving family, even if I chose to make it only for nights I wasn't going to be able to be home for dinner.  As it turns out, I don't have to save this for nights I'm away.  I love it, too!!  --Better yet, it makes for a decent meal to take my dad, and he, who rarely comments about what I serve him, said, "You sure make a dandy burger!"  :-D



*Note:
If you don't have a Crock-Pot, you can still make this recipe.  I had 4 roasts I needed to cook in one day, and wanted some pork mixture to freeze for quick meals when needed by athletes and those who work during dinner hours.  So I put 2 of the roasts in the Crock-Pot  and the remaining 2, with root beer, into my 6-quart porcelain lined cast iron pot, put on the lid, and did the slow cooking in the oven at 275 degrees for the same 7 to 8 hour span.  (Same method I used for Beer-Onion Soup Mix Pot Roast.)  At the 5 to 6-hour point, the roasts looked a little dry on top, so I turned them over.  After cooking, I discarded the root beer, shred the meat, and added the barbecue sauce, as above.

**Note to myself and to others concerned with this issue: 
I made the effort to find a barbecue sauce without high fructose corn syrup, but the root beer I used, and also, the ketchup I've always used to make my homemade barbecue sauce both have high fructose corn syrup.  Time to find new brands for both.

SuperBowling

Thought I'd better share the recipes to go with our Super Bowl feast pic...  You know, what we ate while the 

SEAHAWKS WON THE SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!

I promised the dip recipe and photos, anyway, a couple of weeks ago in Chicken Slop, Crockpot Style.

Hot Shrimp Dip

* I was out of sour cream this weekend,
so I used my mom's economical & healthy substitute:
2 c. cottage cheese, 1 Tbsp lemon juice, blended.

2 lbs (4  8-oz pkgs) cream cheese (Neufchatel is OK), sliced for quicker melting
16 oz sour cream (*see photo caption)
1 - 2 lbs precooked shrimp - tiny, salad shrimp, whole, or larger shrimp cut into 1/2 inch pieces
4 to 6 Roma tomatoes, seeds and juice removed, chopped coarse
1/2 sweet onion, or 2 - 3 bunches green onion, diced
8 -16 oz jar Peperoncini or Banana Pepper slices, chopped to 1/2 inch pieces
Garlic powder and cayenne pepper to taste, optional

Put all ingredients into a crockpot.  Stir occasionally over the next hour or two, until the cream cheese is melted and all is mixed evenly and heated through.  It's best to keep it warm (keep the crockpot on 'warm' and plugged in) when you serve it.  Serve with your choice of dippers: crackers, pita pieces, sliced French bread, celery, etc.

When my sister first shared this recipe, it had definite amounts of each ingredient.  But I've found this to be a very forgiving recipe.  --A little more or a little less, according to taste or what you have on hand, will be fine.  Remember when cutting the ingredients, that you'll want it to fit nicely on a cracker or slice of baguette, and also fit easily into a bite.


















If you are in a hurry to have this melted and ready to serve, start it in the microwave and heat until the cream cheese is melted and can stir in, then transfer to a crockpot or other heated dish to keep warm.

I have never yet served this to people who haven't had it before without someone asking for the recipe.  We LOVE it.

Spicy Barbecue Chicken Legs

I don't mess with wings.  --So much waste, so little meat!

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

3+/- pounds of chicken legs, dried with a paper towel

Place the legs on a rack in a broiler pan, sprayed with Pam, for easier cleaning later.  

Spray the chicken with Pam, or brush with olive oil. Salt and pepper, to taste.

Roast for 15 minutes, turn, baste or spray with Pam, and salt and pepper the new upper side.

Roast 10 minutes, then baste generously with *barbecue sauce.

Cook an additional 5 to 8 minutes, turn and baste the other side with the barbecue sauce.  Return to the oven for 5 minutes.  The internal temperature of the thickest part of each leg should be 165 degrees.

Barbecue Sauce

I am not averse to buying barbecue sauce, although it's easy to make my own.  Like always, I carefully read the label, preferring real molasses, honey, and/or brown sugar to corn syrup, and sticking to as many ingredients I'd use at home as possible.  This week, Stubb's Sweet Heat Bar-B-Q Sauce was the my choice.  It was a good one... With just the perfect amount of heat for me.

In case you want to make your own...

1 1/2 cups ketchup (I now buy Simply Heinz or other option without high fructose corn syrup)
2 Tablespoons molasses
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 Tablespoon vinegar
1/2 - 1 teaspoon garlic powder
1- 2 teaspoons mustard powder
dash or two cayenne pepper
dash Liquid Smoke or other smokey flavoring, optional

This, again, is a forgiving recipe, and I've given you estimations here.  You can adjust according to your own taste.

Roast: You Choose the Pot

I have been trying to drive down to visit my dad 2 days a week.  The dining room has mediocre menus, at best, so one day I bring lunch, and one day I bring lunch and dinner, and we just enjoy a family meal in his little apartment.

This seems simple enough, but I really stress over it.  He has a limited diet for many reasons, including diabetes, heart and blood pressure concerns, and plain and simple pickiness.  ;-)  He doesn't like casseroles, salad as a main dish is difficult for him to maneuver and chew, and very few veggies meet his "acceptable list."  Now add that in his new digs he has only a microwave for cooking, and it gets even more difficult.

Meatloaf and meatballs work very well to meet his preferences, and keeps its texture reasonably when reheated in the microwave.  I have also taken the meatloaf raw, formed it into a doughnut shape inside a casserole dish, and cooked it in the microwave for 15 minutes with good results.  I don't know, though, if he was getting sick of meatloaf and meatballs, but I was.

I recently picked up a beef brisket sandwich, a new menu item at the Costco food court, which he really liked.  This reminded me that I might make a pot roast.  We bought half a beef last spring, and had roasts that should work.  I got out 2 arm roasts to defrost, and set out to find a recipe.  

I found Super Simple Crock Pot Roast, while my kitchen forum friend, JC, found me Slow-Cooked Beer-Braised Beef, which gave instructions for 2 options: putting the beef, raw, into the crockpot, or browning it on the stove in a Dutch oven, and then putting in pan and all, and slow roasting in the oven.  

I decided to use the oven method, and do my own combination of the 2 recipes.

Beer-Onion Soup Mix Pot Roast

Preheat oven to 275 degrees


Dry 
Arm or other chuck roast, approx 3 lbs 
thoroughly with paper towels, and season with salt and pepper.


Heat heavy, oven-safe pot that has a tight-fitting lid (just barely the size of the roast) over medium-high heat, add:
1-2 Tablespoons oil
the roast
and brown well on both/all sides.  -The roast will lift easily off the pan (not stick) when its properly seared. 






Put on top of roast:
1 envelope dry onion soup mix
12 oz beer (next time I'll double the beer or add at least a cup of water)
Pepper, Garlic powder, or your choice of spices

Put lid on pot, and place in oven for 6 to 8 hours.  Peek in during the latter hours of cooking to make sure there is still enough liquid.  

I put mine the oven at midnight, so it would be ready in the morning... Part to take to Dad, and the rest to leave for the family's dinner at home.  When I checked at 7 AM, the larger, red pot was almost dry and the roast was very dry on top.  I added more liquid and, thankfully, neither had burned.  But this is why I'll add more liquid and be more careful about pan size next time.



Add 
Coarsely chopped or chunked veggies of your choice:  potatoes, onion, carrots, turnips, beets...
and cook for an additional 45 minutes.








I wasn't sure that would be enough time for the veggies to cook through at such a low temperature, but they were perfect.  Tender, but not mushy.  

Also, I thought I'd need to remove the roast and veggies to make gravy, but the amount of liquid was minimal... Just enough to keep everything moist, and not require thickening.

For crockpot (I haven't tried this yet, so am basing this on the recipes linked above):  Browning the roast is optional.  Put the roast, onion soup mix, and beer or beer/water mixture, in the crockpot all at once.  Cook on low for 7 hours, or on high for an hour, and low for 4 hours.  Add veggies 45 minutes before serving, and continue cooking on low.

I've been having a little trouble with the family not finishing leftovers lately.  I didn't have that problem with this pot roast!  It's a winner... for ease and for taste.

That's an Easy Meatball!

I'd always been afraid of making meatballs.  Maybe not afraid, like a meatball phobia, but that it seemed like way too much work.  I envisioned forming individual balls by hand, and, painstakingly, turning them over and over in a greasy skillet to try to get the spheres evenly browned all the way 'round.

I expressed that to my Bible study friend, Ch, who said she had a much easier recipe and method for me to try. (Ch was the one who also gave me the wonderful Apple Butter recipe I shared in October.)

These are great, and so simple and fast to make.  No more meatball fear for me.

Ch's Easy Peasy Meatballs 

(my name for them)

Preheat oven to 425.  Spray rimmed baking sheets with Pam or equivalent.

Place in large bowl:

1 lb ground beef

1 lb ground pork or Italian or other seasoned, bulk sausage

1 egg

1 cup bread crumbs (Ch suggested fresh or Panko.  I use rolled oats/oatmeal)

1 clove garlic, minced (I use garlic powder, 1 tsp)

1 tsp pepper

1 chopped onion or 1 Tbsp dried minced onion

Mix together (hands work best), but don't handle it too much.

  

Note #1: I watched a TV show called "My Family Recipe Rocks" on which a woman was aghast watching the host, Joey Fatone (formerly of 'N Sync fame), "Bologna ball" the meatballs he was forming for her.  She had told him not to handle them too much and form the balls loosely and quickly.  Instead, he was rolling them around in his hands as he talked, clearly overworking them.  I found out what she meant a couple weeks later, when I decided to mix spices and cheese into some hamburger by putting it in a ZipLoc bag and squishing it around.  "Bologna balling" results in a dense, strangely textured meat, similar in appearance to processed meats, like bologna, that cooks up pretty dry.

To prevent "Bologna balling" in the forming stage for this recipe, I used our cookie dough scoop, as suggested by Ch.  This makes meatballs about 1 1/2" in diameter.

Place them on the baking sheets so that there is 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch in between.  (You don't need to space them like cookies, like I did the first time, since, duh, they don't spread.)  Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until cooked through. (Internal temperature about 165 to 170 degrees)




Drain and cool on paper towels and/or cooling racks.  Unless you're eating them right away, of course!

The 6 + 6 pound batch I stirred in front
of the football game.

Of course, in our house, I do not mess around making meatballs with only 1 or 2 pounds of meat!  ;-)  The last time I made these I sextupled the recipe, using 6+ pounds each of ground beef and Italian sausage.  It was a huge amount to stir, so I might stick to 4 to 5 pounds of each, as I did the first time I tried, which worked more easily.

Note #2:  It is important, as I was taught in a class in college about the science of foods, not to multiply the spices at the same rate as you do the rest of the ingredients.  Our professor advised to use only 1 1/2 times the spices when doubling a recipe.  So for 4 times the amount of meat, for example, I'd used only about 3 times the amount of each spice.  This can be varied to your taste on each spice.

6 pounds each of the 2 meats made hundreds of meatballs... at least 550.  

I placed 45 to 50 each in gallon-size ZipLoc bags and spread them flat in the freezer.  They are so easy to grab, a bag at a time or a few at a time, to warm up for a quick spaghetti and meatballs dinner, or a quick meal or snack for a family constantly on the go.  

The biggest problem I have with this recipe is that the kids pick them out of the spaghetti, then no one wants the leftover noodles and sauce!  

Since that's now happened twice, I asked if I should just serve meatballs and sauce from now on.  Prince Inventive said he wants "meatballs, sauce, and about 2 spaghetti noodles, just so we can say we're having 'spaghetti and meatballs.'"

Chicken Slop, Crockpot Style

3 years ago, I wrote about a weekly dinner staple here at RHome410 (Our Home for Ten), Mexican Chicken Slop... We have Prince Stoic to thank for the dish's lovely title.  :-)

It's fairly easy to make, but not as easy as this latest recipe, a variation of something I found posted on Facebook.  

I have never had much luck with crockpot recipes (dry meat, bland taste, lots of hassle), so use mine mostly as a warmer for the Hot Shrimp Dip we love.  (Recipe here)

But now our crockpot has new life, doing what it was intended... Making dinner slowly, all day, allowing me the freedom to accomplish other things, relieved in the knowledge that there will be no last minute panic about what to serve for dinner.  It's quite helpful on the nights when I'm off with Prince Go-for-It at baseball practice and the family comes home to an empty house, but happy to find a hot dinner, ready and waiting.

Crockpot Chicken Slop

Place into the crockpot:

2 1/2 to 3 pounds frozen chicken tenders (or breasts, sliced in 3 pieces, lengthwise)...Yes, FROZEN!
8 oz cream cheese
1 1/2 cups prepared salsa + 1/2 cup water (or 1 can Rotel seasoned tomatoes, undrained)
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can whole kernel corn, drained

Nope...This is not a photo of the Crockpot Chicken Slop,
or, even, the Shrimp Dip.  But it is a glimpse
of a post to come (in front of the TV
 showing our SuperBowl-bound Seahawks--YAY!).
It's one of my favorite "quick-and-easy,
fill-the-freezer, then-fix-fast-dinners" solutions yet.

Cook for 6 to 8 hours in the crockpot.  

About 45 minutes before serving, prepare rice or quinoa, according to package directions, optionally cooking it in chicken broth instead of water.   -This can also be cooked ahead of time, and reheated for dinner. 

Immediately before serving, use 2 forks to shred chicken pieces before spooning the chicken and its sauce over the rice or quinoa.  May be served with your choice of accompaniments, such as thinly sliced lettuce, shredded cheese, black olives, refried beans, sour cream, and/or additional salsa.

Pictures of food will have to wait, while I can
spend my time doing things like this!