10 things I hate about food

Over the past few days, I had the flu. At one point my temperature reached 103* and I dreamed I was a member of the cast of “Footloose”. I was tired, coughing, and stayed in my pajamas from Thursday night – Sunday afternoon. No cooking was accomplished.

In my feverish, influenza-induced crankypants state, I compiled a list of food-related hates. Sometimes these things make me want to attack things with knives. Please enjoy.

1. I hate food mold. I would rather throw away perfectly good Tupperware than rinse the moldy food out of it.

2. I hate wasabi. No, not even on sushi, so don’t ask.

3. I hate lamb. Rather, I’ve never even eaten lamb because the smell of lamb makes me sick. During Easter one year at my aunt’s I had to duck out to the back porch for air while they were carving the lamb. I would probably like it, but I hate the smell too much.

4. I hate cutting squash. It hurts my hands and I won’t put up with it.

5. I hate celery. But we’ve already discussed this.

6. I hate orange juice with pulp. Under no circumstances will I drink pulpy orange juice. My mom used to buy 2 cartons of OJ for me and my brother. He likes extra pulp. He’s a butthead.

7. I used to hate mushrooms. They’re slowly growing on me (pun intended).

8. I hate stuffed meat. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: stuffing meat is not natural.

9. I hate marshmallows that aren’t burnt. If you don’t burn your marshmallows, I think you’re disgusting. (Just kidding. Kind of.)

10. I hate all flavors of Jell-O except green/lime. There’s no commentary to add here.

secret ingredient lasagna

I’m having dreams about Italian food these days. But all the ooey-gooey cheesy pasta with meatballs that I want isn’t the best for my girlish figure. I mean, it is delicious and I’m all about indulging… But if I was eating it as much as I am in my dreams, I’d be 250 lbs again.

As I was in the middle of an Italian day dream, my friend Trevor started talking about health and fitness, which he usually does, and how he wanted “healthy food that doesn’t taste like cardboard” (direct quote). Then I suggested to him that I healthify a lasagna recipe. He liked this idea because we both live alone and lasagna leftovers freeze really well.

I drew upon my family’s lasagna recipe, which calls for cottage cheese instead of ricotta and our top-secret ingredient…

Swiss cheese.

If you know me, you know that I don’t particularly care for Swiss cheese. In fact, as a child I believe I ran away from it screaming “No holey cheese! Ewwww!” as my dad stacked it high on his sandwiches. But, in my family’s lasagna, it just works. You’re going to have to trust me on this.

So I beefed up the vegetable intake, used crushed tomato instead of traditional pasta sauce (loaded with sugar), used whole wheat noodles, and chose ground turkey instead of beef. I’m not a nutrition expert, but it seems to me like a pretty good balance of lean protein, whole wheat carbohydrates, vegetables, and dairy.

And anytime pasta noodles are involved, I’m on board.

Swiss cheese is so purty when it melts.

Mushroom and Swiss Lasagna (serves 8 )
8 lasagna noodles, boiled
1 lb lean ground turkey, browned
3 T Worcestershire sauce
3 cups crushed tomato
1 cup onion, chopped
2 cups mushroom slices
1/2 T olive oil
salt & pepper
2 cups low-fat cottage cheese
1 egg
1 tsp garlic powder
1 T Italian seasoning
8 slices Swiss cheese
Boil the lasagna noodles in salted water, drain, and set aside. In a skillet, heat olive oil until it glistens and then sauté the onions and mushrooms. Once the onions are tender, set vegetables aside. In the same skillet, brown the ground turkey with the Worcestershire sauce. When the meat is browned through, add a pinch of salt and pepper, the vegetables, and the crushed tomatoes. Stir well and turn off heat. In a small mixing bowl, combine cottage cheese, egg, Italian seasoning, and garlic powder, stirring thoroughly. Using a deep lasagna dish, layer the following: 4 noodles, half of the meat and vegetable sauce, half of the cottage cheese mixture, and 4 slices of swiss cheese (torn into pieces). Repeat the second layer in the same order. Bake covered for 20 minutes on 375*, uncovering for the last 5 minutes. Let sit a few minutes before slicing and serving.

Single Gal Survival: How to Fix Your Dishwasher (sorta)

I’m getting pretty handy around here, y’all. In my singledom and having lived on my own away from my mommy since August, I’ve learned to inflate my tires, date myself, and I successfully refinished my kitchen table. Now I’m about to totally blow your minds.

Enter the enemy, better known as my dishwasher.

Before I go any further, I’ll just let you know how happy I am that my tiny apartment even has a dishwasher, albeit a decrepit, noisy one the likes of which my parents probably had in their first apartment. But Saturday evening, I rounded up the straggler dishes around the apartment so I could run my dishwasher, something I seldom do since I enjoy hand-washing my dishes. (Don’t y’all stay home on Saturday nights and load your dishwasher?)

So, much to my distress, nothing happened when I turned the knob. Just a clicking, sad noise. The soap was released, but the water didn’t run. I turned the knob a million times and even tried running the water in the sink while starting the dishwasher (this seemed logical at the time).

Then I sat on the floor in front of the dishwasher, praying and kicking it. Percussive maintenance has always been my strong suit.

Then I gave up in a huff and went back to my room to Google search.

I found no answers to help me, shockingly. But I did see a key word in all the dishwasher mumbo-jumbo: “switch“. Apparently most dishwashers have switches somewhere in their vicinity that control master power. Dishwashers, incidentally, require electricity and don’t run on prayers or voodoo as I had assumed. Well reading about this switch jogged my memory and made me remember something that happened earlier this week.

Remember this picture from when I baked muffins a little while back?

And do you see that little light switch behind Oscar (my mixer)? Well I have lived in this apartment for 6 months and had never seen that switch before until I looked at the picture on my very own blog and on a separate occasion from the dishwasher episode. What the heck?! When this happened, I raced to the kitchen to play with the switch, only to be disappointed that it didn’t make a House Elf appear or a mystery pantry light turn on. I gave up and moved on, forgetting all about the switch until Saturday night.

But then, it hit me like a ton of bricks. When I played with that switch, I must have shut off the dishwasher.

The switch is now turned to “on” and the dishwasher is humming away in the kitchen. Problem solved.

Got anything you need me to fix? I’m a real Bob Vila these days.

2 ingredients, 1 kickin’ appetizer

This recipe is one of the easiest, quickest appetizer recipes that you can make almost last minute and they’re a huge crowd pleaser. I don’t know if it was my grandma or my Aunt Linda (hey y’all!) who came up with this first, but everyone loves them.

Book club? Take these. Pot luck? You’ll be popular. For your (in)significant other? He/She’ll put a ring on it.

Okay that last one was probably exaggerating. But if anyone does get engaged after making these, I need to know immediately so I can pass them out to all male suitors in a 5 mile radius.

But seriously. 2 ingredients.

And the leftovers taste really good cold for breakfast. Just sayin’.

Sausage Pinwheels (makes 30-35 pieces)
2 9” pie crusts (store bought or homemade)
1 tube pork sausage (I like sage-flavored, but maple would be great at brunch)
Roll the pie crust to as much of a rectangular shape as you possibly can. Spread half the tube of sausage onto one pie crust and roll up into a log. Cut into slices gently using a serrated knife. Reshape the pinwheels if necessary. Repeat with the second pie crust and the remaining sausage. Bake at 375* for 25 minutes or until the sausage is cooked and the crust is light brown.

Yeah, it really is that simple.

my newest obsession

Sooooo it has been a while since we talked about going to the gym and staying fit. In light of the macaroni I inhaled this week, I think talking about the gym would be appropriate right now.

I haven’t run in forever because my left leg is just not meant for running and I realized that I simply stopped enjoying it. I’ve been doing other fun things at the gym. I may not be built to run long races, but I’d rather concentrate on having fun while staying fit than trying to do something I just don’t enjoy.

Recently, I emailed some blogger friends of mine who are far more fit savvy than I (Leah and Heather) and they both suggested circuit workouts as a way to switch up my routine. Well, lo and behold my new gym has a built in circuit room!!

It has a timed system of lights and you just follow the order of the machines. Each station lasts a minute (the green light) with 20 second breaks in between (the red lights) where you switch stations and wipe the sweat dripping off your body. Every other station is a step box where you go at your own pace with aerobic steps and then the other stations are weight machines where you get a full body workout.

I’ve drawn you a picture in case you’re confused.

That thing in the middle would be me lying in a pool of sweat on the verge of death. That’s how effective this workout is.

In just 30 minutes, I get a better workout than I’ve ever gotten doing the usual cardio & weights routine. I go pretty fast on the step boxes to get my heart rate up, but that can be done at your own pace and to your own comfort. As for the weights, the instructions in the room suggest 12-15 reps so I lift pretty heavy to fatigue the muscle, but not so hard I hurt myself!

So now I’m obsessed, totally hooked. I do this 2-3 times a week and I can definitely feel the results, both early the next morning when I cannot lift my arms to shampoo and later at the gym when I’m feeling stronger and fitter. If you’re getting bored in your workout routine, I highly suggest trying a circuit workout. You can easily create your own at your gym with a sport watch to keep time, some cardio equipment or step box, and weight machines.

I promise you’ll feel amazing. After you are able to peel yourself off the floor, of course.

this ain’t your mama’s mac n’ cheese

This ain’t your mama’s mac n’ cheese… Because this is my mama’s mac n’ cheese.

Rumors of this recipe have been floating around the Internet for weeks, maybe months. I mentioned it once in a Tweet or in a comment and since then everyone has been bugging me for it (hey, Sarah!). It is seriously one of my favorite memories from childhood. I used to help my mom grate all the cheese and always sneak bites of it when she wasn’t looking.

In the south, we bring food to people in times of sickness or sadness and this is a well-requested dish. It was always a special treat when my mom would put in the effort to make “real mac n’ cheese” as I referred to it. This is the mac n’ cheese I’ve been eating since I was in the womb. And the mac n’ cheese my mama’s been eating since she was a little girl. Life would be unbearable without it.

Well, fine. I will give up the secret because it is hard to imagine y’all living your lives without this recipe.

Sure, you can be fancy and add special cheese or bacon to this. But I believe it is just fine the way it is and I will never change it.

Mama’s Mac n’ Cheese (serves 6)
4 T butter
4 tsp all purpose flour
1 cup milk
1 cup half and half
salt & pepper to taste
8 ounces elbow macaroni noodles
2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
Boil macaroni to al dente, strain, and set aside. Be sure to salt the pasta water and don’t rinse the noodles! In a sauce pan, melt butter and whisk in the flour until a smooth paste-like consistency is reached. Add in the milk, half and half, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of black pepper. Stir constantly until the mixture comes to a boil, then remove from the heat and pour into the macaroni noodles that are sitting aside. Stir well and mix in almost all of the cheddar cheese. Transfer immediately to a baking dish and sprinkle remaining cheddar cheese on top. With the oven set to 350*, bake covered for 10 minutes then remove the cover and bake for another 15 minutes, setting the oven to broil for the last 5 minutes. Broil until the top is golden brown (watch carefully). Remove from oven and devour.

an excuse for candy

Happy Valentine’s Day!

My valentine this year is a repeat. We have a long, very serious history and deep-rooted love.

The name? Twizzlers.

Because if you don’t buy it for yourself, who else will?

my ultimate comfort food

Today is my dad’s birthday. He would have been 48 today. Since his death 2 years ago, February 10th has been a weird day for me. I literally cry every day, but today is a bit worse for obvious reasons. This year I decided to not purposely take the day off from life and I decided to keep going about business as usual… Classes, babysitting, homework, and making models of sea monsters with crescent rolls.

Instead, the copious tears and time alone happened last night (as did the sea monster, actually).

I was in need of serious comfort food. And then it hit me: I needed to make one of my dad’s favorite foods, which also happens to be one of my favorite foods. This was one of the dishes I remember him absolutely loving and I have very fond memories of him hiding the leftovers in the fridge so that he could eat them for breakfast lunch the next day.

So last night I whipped out a Chicken Broccoli Braid, a recipe so engrained in my memory that I don’t even have directions written down. I just know it. When I took the first bite, I felt myself sitting back at the kitchen table with my mom, dad, and brother and eating this same dish. I cried the whole time I ate it, but that is okay.

This is true comfort food for me.

Chicken Broccoli Braid (serves 4)
1 cup cooked chicken, shredded
1 cup broccoli, chopped
1 medium green pepper, chopped
1 clove garlic, pressed or minced
1/3 cup mayonnaise
heaping 1/2 cup shredded cheddar
1 tube crescent rolls (containing dough for 8 rolls)
salt & pepper to taste
In a mixing bowl, combine chicken, broccoli, green pepper, garlic, mayonnaise, cheese, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix thoroughly. On a cookie sheet, arrange crescent roll dough so that the long tips of the triangles are pointing away from the center and the thicker parts are overlapping. Place the filling in the center of the dough arrangement and begin to wrap the rolls around the filling (using any kind of design or arrangement as you wish). Sprinkle a pinch of salt on top if desired and bake at 375* for 20-25 minutes. Slice and serve hot!

nerd alert

If you were unsure before, the following information will be definitive proof of my true and very profound inner nerd. Let’s press on.

You might know that I’m in graduate school. What you might not know is that my degree will be in Hispanic Literature. Some people think that means I’m a nerd because I read books, poetry, and critical essays all the days of my life. Some people think I’m even more of a nerd because I read them in a language that is not my native tongue.

I’d like to discuss my favorite book of all time with y’all: Cien años de soledad (100 Years of Solitude) by Gabriel García Márquez.

Written by the winner of a Nobel Prize for Literature, this is the story of José Arcadio Buendía and his wife Úrsula who found a fictitious town (Macondo) which is a metaphor for Colombia. The town actually makes an appearance in several other works by García Márquez. It spans several generations and most editions come with a large family tree to keep readers from being totally confused. The characters are incredible. There’s war, sex, magic, ghosts, family, adventure, and love. I love the symbolism, metaphors, and major themes. I love the author’s ability to tell the story, even though the plot is non-linear. This novel is one of the best examples of magic realism, a style highly representative of modern Latin American literature. When I grow up and become the matriarch of a big family, I’m modeling myself on Úrsula Buendía. I can’t think of a single thing about this book that I don’t like.

Have you heard of Love in the Time of Cholera? Same author.

I certainly don’t think a single one of my readers is stupid, but people tend to avoid “real literature” or “heavy literature” because they think it is too hard to read or too deep. But please, if you are looking for something to read, go for this one. Trust me. And I promise you can find it in English.

What book brings out your inner nerd?

I can’t spell “parmesan”. but I can eat it.

Have we discussed my adoration for pepperoni? I don’t believe we have, but this is something that I think y’all should know about me. I love pepperoni in a bad way. Recently, I was reminded of the existence of turkey pepperoni which makes my pepperoni craving slightly healthier.

Also, I have this thing for parmesan cheese. I can’t actually spell “parmesan” without spell check. I love the cheese, hate the word. But it always makes me think of one of my favorite Italian restaurant guilty pleasures: chicken parmesan. Based on my adoration of both pepperoni and chicken parmsan parmesean parm, I should be Italian right?

Then, I saw Jenna make chicken parmesan with pepperoni on top and I knew I was done for.

I opted to make my version a little different and a bit healthier. Chicken parm typically has breaded chicken, so I omitted that part, used crushed tomato instead of pasta sauce that usually has a lot of sugar, and beefed up the vegetable intake. The whole country has apparently made a resolution to eat healthier, as we are constantly reminded by all the commercials on TV, so I figured I’d do my part. It turned out delicious!

This is a perfect, simple dinner for 2 that is easily amplified for more! Also, it is great for all you single guys & gals out there (like me) because it makes a perfect portion for leftovers.

And I ate mine with fettuccini instead of spaghetti. Because I’m a rebel.

Pepperoni Chicken Parm (serves 2)
2 chicken breasts, pounded a little thin or butterflied
1 T olive oil
salt & pepper
1 1/2 cups crushed tomato, divided
1 T Italian seasoning
1 T balsamic vinegar
1 cup mushrooms, sliced and divided
1 cup green pepper, sliced and divided
heaping 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella
turkey pepperoni to taste
Parmesan cheese
Heat olive oil in a cast iron skillet until the oil glistens. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the chicken breasts and place them in the hot skillet (medium-high). Let the chicken brown thoroughly on one side and flip it to brown on the other side. Chicken should be thin enough that it is almost cooked through after 3-4 minutes on each side, but if it is still a little uncooked that is okay because it will finish in the oven. Remove the chicken from heat and set aside. In an 8-inch baking dish, layer 1/2 cup crushed tomato, half of the sliced mushrooms and green peppers, half of the cheese, half the Italian seasoning, and balsamic vinegar. Place chicken on top. Cover with remaining tomato, vegetables, seasonings, and cheese. Top with pepperoni to taste. Bake covered for 20 minutes on 350*, then uncover and allow to cook 5 more minutes. Put the oven on broil and broil for a few minutes until the pepperoni is crisp and the cheese has begun to brown. Allow to cool for 5 minutes then serve with pasta, spooning extra sauce onto the noodles. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and devour!