Fried Apples

Sometimes despite our best intentions, we all end up with fruit and veggies sitting around at the end of the week.  The three main items that I find most often are apples, bananas, and lettuce.  Now that smoothies are a breakfast staple around here, I have finally won the war with the bananas, they are peeled, chunked, and frozen.  If I get a stockpile in the freezer, then it is simply time to make banana bread or muffins, and I can tell you that it never seems to bother anyone around here when that happens.  The lettuce/salad mix situation got much better after I tried the trick of putting a folded up paper towel in the container or bag of greens.  It is not a perfect solution, but that open bag stays fresh and crisp so much longer with that little towel in there to soak up the moisture.

That leave the apples.  Apples are more forgiving in their lifespan than the other two, but every once in a while, I look over at the end of the week and I find myself with a bag of apples getting wrinkly and sad looking.  This doesn't worry me, not even a little bit, because there are few things I love to more than fried apples.  They are heavenly, not only in taste, but in smell, that wonderful cinnamon smell that starts to waft through the house while they are cooking, you just can't beat it.  Those apples are an invitation, you can either go savory and have them alongside some quick fried pork chops and a salad, or go the breakfast for supper or "brupper" route as I did here, they are the perfect side along with sausages and french toast.  If you have any leftover, then toss them on top of some oatmeal the next morning.

I try to keep the sugar pretty light here, and don't skip the lemon juice, you need that little touch of brightness here.  I usually have galas or red delicious sitting around, so sometime they need  a little extra kick. You'll notice I didn't peel the apples, if peels don't appeal to you (get it, yeah, I know), go ahead and peel the apples, it shouldn't affect the recipe.   Just taste test as you go along here, and see where you are at with your sweetness, and adjust accordingly.

• 5-6 Apples Cored and Sliced, any variety
• 2Tbsp Butter (unsalted or salted, whatever you have on hand)
• 1Tbsp Brown Sugar
• 2 tsp Cinnamon
• 1 tsp Lemon Juice

In a non-stick skillet that can hold all of the apples, melt the butter over medium heat, being careful not to get it brown.

Once the butter is melted, add the apples, brown sugar, and cinnamon.  Cover and continue cooking the apples, stirring occasionally over medium heat for 5-7 minutes, until they are beginning to soften and carmelize.

Add the lemon juice, and continue to cook until the apples are cooked to your desired consistency, I like them really soft, so I usually go another 5 minutes or so.  Remove from heat and serve.

Roasted Tomato Baked Risotto

I doubt I'm alone when I say that very few of my recipes are true originals.  When we start to cook a meal, no matter what it is, we are often influenced by the food we have tasted and prepared over the course of our lives.  Recipes are like blueprints or floor plans to me, they need to be followed for the structure of the dish to work, but as I become more familiar with them, I can add my own flourishes and make the recipe my own.  As I look through my cookbooks and accumulated recipes, I will often borrow from one recipe to add to another, either adjusting it to be more to my taste, or to streamline it and make it easier to prepare. This dish is a perfect example of my scheming and tweaking working out perfectly.

The baked risotto is from one of my stacks of Cook's Country magazines.  It is perfection, it gives you the creamy risotto you want without the standing and stirring part.  I've combined it with Garlic Shrimp with Roasted Tomato and Basil Risotto, which is one of our house favorites. It was a meal that brought silence to the table as we ate, we were far too busy enjoying it to speak.  I have to say that I'm very pleased with this combination, and have been making it this way ever since I gave it a shot.  

This week, I left the shrimp out.  I am in the process of trying to clean out the stockpile that I have in my freezer, and there was a pork roast in there that was calling my name. **If you want to go the shrimp route, let me encourage you to poach the shrimp in the chicken stock that you will be adding to the rice.  It adds wonderful seafood flavor to the rice, so don't miss out on the opportunity.  Simply follow the directions for warming the stock, once it is simmering, but before you add the roasted tomatoes. drop in the uncooked shrimp and simmer gently until the shrimp are cooked through, but just barely, maybe 3-5 minutes.  Remove them from the stock, and set them aside in the fridge, until your risotto comes out of the oven. Once you've removed the shrimp from the chicken broth, proceed with the recipe.

Roasted Tomato & Garlic
adapted from jaymielo's Tasty Kitchen Garlic Shrimp with Roasted Tomato & Basil

• 6-8 Roma Tomatoes
• 1 pint of Cherry or Grape tomatoes 
• 2 heads of Garlic
• 2 Tbsp. Olive Oil
• 1 tsp. Kosher Salt
• 1 Tbsp. Italian Seasonings**
• Freshly ground black pepper

**If you are lucky enough to have some fresh basil or oregano around, please do substitute for the dried herbs, you will probably need about 1/2 cup of each, chopped.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Cut the tops off the Roma tomatoes and the garlic bulbs.  Place tomatoes cut side down in a 9x13 baking pan or dish, add the garlic bulbs, whole, and throw in the cherry tomatoes.  Sprinkle the herbs, salt, and pepper over the top of the dish, and then drizzle the olive oil over.  Bake for 1 hour, enjoy how wonderful your house smells.

Remove the tomatoes from the oven and let the contents of the pan cool, we'll come back to them in a little bit.



Baked Risotto
adapted from Cook's Country Creamy Baked Risotto

• 5 Cups Low-Sodium Chicken Broth
• 1/2 Cup Water
• 2 Bay leaves
• 4 Tbsp Butter, unsalted 
• 1 onion, minced
• 2 Cups Arborio Rice
• 1/2 Cup White wine, dry vermouth, or extra chicken broth (beer?)
• 1 1/2 Cup Parmesan Cheese

Dutch Oven
Aluminum Foil

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Also, make sure that you adjust your oven racks now so that you can fit the dutch oven, with it's lid into the oven.  I constantly forget to do this, only to realize it when I am trying to put a giant vat of boiling liquid into the oven and it will not fit.  

In a pot big enough to hold 7 or 8 cups of liquid, combine the broth, water, & bay leaves.  Bring up to a simmer.

Grab your roasted tomatoes and garlic.  Remove the skin from the Roma tomatoes, it should lift right off for the most part.  Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins and back into the dish with the tomatoes.  Now smash, squish, or crush the contents of the pan using your hands or a potato masher, whatever you would like.  I usually just go the hands route.





Add the crushed tomato mixture in with the chicken broth, and bring to a simmer, lower your heat and keep it at a low simmer.

While you are warming up the broth, melt the butter in a large dutch oven.  Once melted, add your onion, and cook for about 5-6 minutes until it is just starting to brown. Stir in the rice and continue cooking for 3 minutes or so.  You just want it to start to turn from the bright white of uncooked rice, to a little bit more of a translucent white.  Add the wine to the rice, and cook, stirring constantly, until the rice has absorbed most of the wine.

Pour the chicken broth mixture into the dutch oven.  Give everything a good stir.  Take a piece of aluminum foil and VERY CAREFULLY place it on top of the contents in the dutch oven, almost like a steamer basket.  You want it pressed against the broth, and going up the sides of the dutch oven.  Place the dutch oven lid on, securing the aluminum foil inside, and heave the thing into the oven.

Bake for 15 minutes.  Carefully remove from the oven, remove the foil, and stir in the Parmesan cheese. Remove and discard the bay leaves as you find them.  Check for seasoning, depending on how salty your broth was, you may need to add some more salt.**If you are adding the cooked shrimp, now is the time to do it,  Serve and Enjoy!

Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

We don't do a lot of sweets in our house. It's not just because of the eating healthy thing that we have going on now, but when it comes to snacking, we are more prone to eat the salty, instead of the sweet.  When I do get around to making something sweet, it's go big, or go home, especially when it comes to cookies.

This cookie philosophy carries over from my childhood.  I remember being at my babysitter's house and making cookies.  It was sometimes an all day affair, MANY dozens of cookies were made and some were left out to be eaten now, and several containers were put in the freezer to be pulled out when they were needed or wanted.  This just makes sense to me, if I'm going to make cookies, i.e. a mess, I'm going to at least double the recipe.  Who doesn't love having a stash of cookies in the freezer?

For this particular cookie session I doubled the recipe, but I will give you instructions as I found them, which will make you about 4 dozen cookies.  I use my handy dandy tablespoon ice cream scoop for these.  The blueprint here is from Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Parties Cookbook, and if you don't have it, I suggest you add it to you collection.  It is an older book, but it is so very good. These will seem a little under baked when you pull them out of the oven, and that is a good thing, go with it they will take care of themselves while they are cooling on the baking sheet for a few minutes. These cookies are wonderful with a glass of milk, or, and I promise not to tell on you, with your coffee in the morning.

Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Ina Garten's Chocolate White Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Makes about 48 cookies 

1/2  pound unsalted butter. softened
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa (I used good old Hersheys)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 8.5 ounce bag of Andes Candies (or any other mint-chocolate candy), unwrapped and chopped
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or by hand mixer or hand in a large bowl)  mix together the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar until fluffy.  I never knew what "until fluffy" meant, I finally saw somewhere that you should beat them together for about 3-5 minutes.  I do better with specifics!  With the mixer on low slowly add in one egg at time, and then your vanilla extract.  Keep it going until you can't see any runny or yellow parts of the egg.   Add the cocoa and continue to mix until combined.

Sift or whisk together you flour, baking soda, and salt.  With the mixer running on low, slowly add the dry ingredients into the mixer and continue until just combined.  Shut the mixer off, or shake out your arms to relieve your weary muscles.  Add in your chocolate chips & chunked up Andes Candies, and fold into the  cookie batter until evenly distributed.




I just spray my baking sheets with some baking spray and I start scooping out the cookies.  If you need to put down some parchment paper, or silpat, do so, and proceed with the scooping.  I do 12 cookies to a baking sheet, but they do some spreading so if you are using a smaller baking sheet, (mine is 17.25 in. by 11.5 in, and technically I think it is called a jelly roll pan) then just give them a little room.  



Once you have them on the baking sheet, use your hand or a spoon to give them just the gentlest of flattening so that they lose a little of their rounded top, this will help them bake more evenly, otherwise you end up with really crispy over cooked edges, and a much different texture in the center of the cookie.


Put the cookies in you oven and bake for 15 minutes.  When you take them out they will seem like they are not quite done, but this is what you want.  Remove them from the oven, and give them about 5 minutes to cool on the baking sheet.  Remove them from the baking sheet to a wire rack and let them finish cooling. . . if you can wait that long!

DeLightful Quiche

Until I was about 25 or so, I regularly committed the dietary sin of skipping breakfast. I would skip breakfast and then much later, I would ravenously consume whatever I could get my hands on.  At my old job, there were always cookies and donuts laying around, so as you can imagine, this didn't work out really well.  When I started eating better, this was one of my hardest areas to get into shape.

This is where eggs come in really handy.  They are the breakfast powerhouse.  I usually just boil up 10-12 of them on the weekend, peel them, and stick them in the fridge.   They are the ultimate portable breakfast, good afternoon snack, salad topper, etc.  They also come in handy if I have, say a random snow day and need to feed children who are stuck at home, thankfully my kids love egg salad sandwiches.

Every once in a while though, I need some variation in my life, and I will turn to omelettes, quiches, and maybe even baked egg in a ham cup.  I pulled this quiche from pinterest, and have done some tweaking.  Regardless of whether or not you use the low fat cheese (I don't) or low fat cottage cheese (sometimes I do, sometimes I don't) this recipe divided into 6 servings comes in under 200 calories per serving.  I also like to try and keep this as simple as possible with the clean up, and I oftentimes just mix it right in the baking dish.

4 large eggs
4 large egg whites, optional
1 Cup Shredded Cheese, I usually use Cheddar
1 Cup Cottage Cheese, Low Fat or Regular
1 tsp. Garlic Salt
1/2 tsp. Black Pepper
10 oz Frozen Spinach, thawed and squeezed as dry as you can get it
1 large (12-14oz) can of mushroom pieces
1/2 Cup Diced Onion

Optional:  Artichoke Hearts drained and cut up, diced bell pepper, diced jalapeno pepper, diced onion, diced ham or sausage, etc.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Spray a regular sized pie plate or 8 x 8 baking dish with cooking spray.

Combing your eggs, and egg whites, if using, in the baking dish and beat them a little just to get them mixed up.

Add all your other ingredients, and any other vegetables that you would like to add.  Stir with a spatula to combine them together.   Once combined, bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes until golden and set.

Remove from the oven and serve.

Now, this quiche is good in its own right, but it is pretty light, and I usually have to have some fruit on the side to help it out, because, and I'm just being honest here, sometimes it just isn't enough for me.  So one morning, as I peered at my little container of quiche, I spied some tostada shells sitting on the counter, and the angels sang!  Breakfast tostadas were born.  I simply place a slice of the quiche on a tostada, top with some salsa.

The option here are pretty endless really, tortillas, Flat Outs, toast, english muffins, etc.  You are really only limited by what you have on hand, and what calorie budget you are trying to hit.