This meal came about because I had defrosted chicken but not really two servings worth on its own. Also I was craving soup. We didn’t do anything special with the soup. It was pretty normal. A lot of onions. I probably should have used a bit more broth base but it was fine.

The taquitos were very similar to the ones I described on 2011-04-27 except without habenro or bell peppers. The real trick I think is to keep adding leftover liquid from pressure cooking the chicken. I add it, let it cook down, and then do it again as needed. They were very good, as usual!

Finally, the brussel sprouts were pretty standard. THey were very large. Also  I cooked them at 375 instead of 400 and it was fine. Maybe even a bit better

The real highlight of this meal was the Pasole soup made from the recipe from the Homesick Texan cookbook, page 146. We basically followed the direction except we used a bit more poblanos. The soup was very good. It had a lot of hominy in it which I hadn’t had before. I liked it! I thought they tasted like little pieces of cornbread and gave the soup a dumpling like texture. The soup did have a kick from the poblanos. Since the soup also had tomatillos, I thought it tasted a bit like soupy salsa verde!

The shrimp were marinated in lime juice and then sprinkled with adobo seasoning, pepper, garlic and onion powder, some dried cilantro and oregano (by accident).We just grilled them on the griddler. They were very good and nicely flavorful. We intended to have shrimp tacos (hence the homemade guac), but forgot to bring in the tortillas until the last minute so we just had shrimp.

The tacos were filled with a simple egg, black beans, onions and cheese mixture. We put them into homemade tortillas done like we did here. I do not remember what we did last time, but for these, we split the recipe and then made 6 (instead of 4). We also used almond milk and olive oil

We made the chicken saltimbocca as we had here except we used black forrest ham instead of prosciutto to make it even healthier. It was pretty good but a bit overpowered by the sage. Less sage next time! I like dredging in flour and then sautéing. It gives the chicken a nice texture. We may make other “stuffed” chicken things like this.

The swiss chard was just sautéed with garlic.

We made chili using a bunch of different seasonings. We also ended up using a good amount of taco seasonings. In the end, we decided it tasted a bit like our much beloved taco stew. Not a bad thing but not really chili either.One of these days, we will perfect a chili recipe!

The mashed potatoes were made the healthy way. We used non-fat greek yogurt, Olivio (only a bit) and Molly Mc Butter. That, along with garlic and onion powders. They were a bit dry but pretty tasty.

We made a Pomegranate Pumpkin Oatmeal Brulee like we did last year except we were in a rush so I basically just made quick oats, added pumpkin, a bunch of seasonings, then I did the brulee thing. It was not as good so maybe next time I will follow the recipe better.

We made pizza using the standard dough except I also added a bit of vital wheat gluten. I do not really know if it made a difference. I made the dough the night before, let it rise once, refrigerated it overnight and then took it out in the morning. By the time I got home, it was nicely warmed up but it didn’t rise anywhere near as rapidly as before it went in. I do not know why that seems to happen to me but the pizza dough never rises as well after being in the fridge. I thought maybe the yeast was killed by the cold but everything I read says that shouldn’t happen.

Anyway, pretty standard otherwise. Normal toppings including

• sopressata
• LF cheese
• arugula
• goat cheese
• etc

This ended up being quite the meal. First, the enchilada casserole (first noted here). We did it the normal way except use 97% fat free cream of chicken instead of cream of celery. Also we added sauteed onions to the beef. I think it was better with the (97% FF) cream of celerey. We will know for next time.

Meredith made the fresh guacamole so I will let her comment on what she did. I have no idea. The chips were made by cutting whole wheat tortillas, spraying them with pam, putting them on a tray and broiling them until just crispy. Normally I would bake them but we were in a hurry and this was faster.

Finally, the artichokes were just boiled. Meredith made a dipping sauce with non-fat greek yogurt and hot salsa. We had to cook them a bit longer because they were so big.

Overall, it was a rather successful meal. Fairly easy too.

I made seitan using the recipe in my dads book. It is basically 1 cup of vital wheat gluten and 3/4 cup of water. I used mostly water but added about a Tbsp or two of Franks Red Hot. I used the food processor with the dough blade. It came together a bit strangely and as a lot of pieces. Nothing like last time. But then again, last time it was a huge rubbery ball and this time it was more elastic. Anyway, I made a simmering liquid with mostly water, some white wine, and more Franks. After letting it simmer for 1:15, I cut it and topped it with a home-made buffalo sauce (that is, Franks red-hot and some melted Olivio). It definitely tasted like what you would expect for buffalo seitan however it was a bit salty. Still, quite tasty and I would say successful.

We also made sautéed dino kale.

Note that the seitan is about 6.5 Points Plus per person and it made a lot.

We made the standard taco stew but I don’t think we let it cook long enough. It was a bit watery and less flavorful. So, next time we need to let it cook a bit longer. We also made the standard roasted brussel sprouts. They were also not as good as usual. They were a bit old. Also, I think I overcrowded them on the tray.

So, this meal was good but not as much success as we have had with the same items.

We needed a really easy meal that was also rather light. This is about as light as you can get with homemade tomato sauce on butternut squash. Really nothing to it. Kinda bland but overall, it was pretty good.

We made Moussaka with the recipe from here (which I have updated). It was extremely good. We did the normal changes listed on the recipe page. It was so incredibly good. We always really like it but it was just really, really flavorful today. Perfect amount of saltiness with all of the other flavors showing through very nicely. As usual, it had lots of leftovers. It easily makes 6-8 servings…or 4 if they are very big. I calculated the PointsPlus here to be less than 38 for all of it. So good!

The intention of this meal was carb-loading before the Tour Du Port. We sautéed onions, added some frozen corn, peas and then fresh spinach. We then added whole wheat pasta and sprinkled some cheese on top (I forget the type of cheese).

We also had artichokes (not pictures). They were pretty old but good. I think it was my first time eating them not canned. We used a fat free ranch made with ranch powder a greek yogurt (beats the extra sweet bottled stuff) and a truffle-salt and garlic greek yogurt dip. The ranch was good. We didn’t love the other very much.

We made lentil soup following the same recipe as last time (in the comments). We did make a few changes including using three (instead of two) stalks of celery and carrots to make up for the fact that we were about 1/4 cup short on the lentils. Also we put a good amount of beef Better Than Boullion in to give it a beef base. We used chicken last time. Finally, we used apple cider vinegar instead of plain white. Becuase we had to be somewhere, we let it simmer on the stover for a very long time which probably increased all of the flavors.

it was very good though I think I liked it more the last time (but that was almost exactly a year ago so who knows). I don’t know why the color is so different from the two pictures. Note that we used regular brown lentils for both. The nutritional information is very different for different lentil types (at least that is what i remember last time I looked).

Other than the simmer time, this is an extremely easy meal. And it is enough for a meal without anything else! We will probably do this again soon!

Meredith basically made this meal so I do not know too many details, but we followed our standard shepherds pie. The mashed potatoes were with red-bliss potatoes and made with non-fat greek yogurt, fake butter, etc to make them rather healthy. This was our first time using a potato masher instead of a fork which worked very well. It certainly made it easier. The beef was 95% lean beef with some frozen corn and peas. Meredith put a lot of seasonings in, including garlic and onion powder and oregano.  We do not really know why but it came out rather wet today. It could be the different potatoes or that we cooked it covered for the first half. I do not really know but it was certainly delish.

We also had swiss chard sautéed with garlic.

We made Asian Lettuce Wraps following the same recipe from last time (in the comments) except we made a bit more. Also, we added a good amount of bean sprouts to give it crunch and more volume. Overall, it was fairly easy and pretty good. The cellophane noodles are strange but they worked fine for this. I wonder how it would be with some other noodle combination.

We also had steamed asparagus. I do not know why but the asparagus was extremely flavorful. We literally just steamed it. Must have just gotten lucky.

We needed something fast and fairly light so we grilled the really light hot-dogs and following my normal issue with crappy break, used whole grain baguettes. They were a bit large and it was a lot of bread but I guess not too bad. We filled them with a mixture of stuff including horseradish mustard and hot peppers