Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
Sitemap ·
Our Recipe Book ·
Steven's Recipe Book ·
Ann's Recipe Book ·
Meal Ideas ·
Copied Recipes
Random ·
Random Links
Home > 347
KitchenKatalog: Blog 347
Wednesday, November 03, 2010, 08:08 AM
I do not really know what to call this but it was similar to the same thing last time except I used much more vegetables and used a mix of regular and sodium free chicken broth.
Basically, I sautéed onions, mushrooms, peppers, zucchini and eggplant (previously broiled) and finally some chicken pieces. I then added 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth and a 1/2 cup of white wine. I let that boil down for 30 minutes. The end result was a nice (however not overly visually appealing) mix of vegetable and chicken mush.
It was more flavorful last time but I was really trying to watch the sodium intake on this meal.
Very low in points since it was just chicken, and not much of it. Per person:
Chicken...4
Vegetables...0
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 636, 2010-11-03_080854
Monday, November 01, 2010, 09:00 PM
The Frutti Di Mare was basically the same as last time. I do not think it was as good, but it wasn't bad. A note for the future is that the water takes some time to cook away so plan for that. We put the same type of seasonings on and everything.
The artichokes were based off of any number of recipes. We used drained, canned artichokes with some bread crumbs, cheese, pepper, crushed red pepper, oregano, etc. They were very salty. We will try frozen ones next time to reduce the salt a bit.
Points (per person):
Pasta...5
Seafood...3
Artichokes (misc, bread crumbs, cheese)...2
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 632, 2010-11-01_210009
Monday, November 01, 2010, 12:53 PM
We made pizza with the normal dough recipe and homemade tomato sauce. We make two large and two small ones. I do not remember all of the toppings but I think both of the small ones were with BBQ sauce. I put some leftover chicken with some ham on mine and I think meredith used spinach.
Both larger ones were tomato sauce based. I did prosciutto, spinach and broccoli. It had provolone and cheddar cheese. I think Meredith's was prosciutto and zucchini but I do not remember for sure.
They were okay. Not great. The problem is that we try to use very little bit of dough to save the points and that severely impacts the quality because we really have to stretch it.
This was a rare TV-dinner so we had to set the ottoman :-)
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 629, 2010-11-01_125346
Friday, October 29, 2010, 10:40 PM
My grandparents were in town and offered to take us out to dinner. Well, we decided to cook instead. The menus we printed and put at each seat is above. It is probably easier to go course by course.
This was the first thing we planned too. We got the idea a while ago from here (local) but we did it with spinach, grated cheese and toasted pine nuts. Meredith made a really nice vinaigrette with the orange juice leftover from dessert (below). We also used the orange juice to stop the pear from turning brown.
First I sliced a small bit off the bottom to get it to be flat, then we sliced it into three slices. I cut the core out of the middles ones and then we assembled the salad. We used a toothpick between the layers to hold it together. We were sure to tell our guests to expect two toothpicks so they do not get it by accident.
It was good but you didn't get much salad. Still, you had a whole pear. The pears were locally grown and had been sitting in a brown bag for a week. They were perfect!
Vertical Pear Salad (from The Novice Chef)
Local Copy (U: guest, P: name of my dog, lower case)
The chicken saltimbocca (done previously) was very good. It was just flattened tenders, with a slice of prosciutto and then some sage leaved. After folding (not rolling), we dipped it in just flour and sautéed it. For this, we prepped it fully and then I excused myself during the appetizer and sautéed it. They were good.
The quinoa was very good. Meredith just kind of came up with it. It was quinoa, some chicken stock and then a lot of basil (the Genovese region of Italy is known for basil and pesto). Then she added some steamed broccoli and grape tomato halves. Plus a bit of pine nuts, garlic and Parmesan. It was very good.
The Brussels sprout were pretty good but a bit overdone. We had to push dinner back a bit so they got a tad crispy but not too bad.
We also served a rye gruyere bread from Trader Joes.
We had seen something about cooking cake in an orange on The Kitchn recently and liked the idea but wanted to change it to brownies. Then, I googled it and found a Today Show thing on it. Well, their thing had the author of Cooking for Geeks telling them about this. I own his book and found it as well.
I cut off a medium slice from the top to get a nice opening. I then used a paring knife and cut around the opening. After that, I used a spoon to hollow it out a lot. Note that I didn't cut the bottoms because I didn't want it to leak. This led some to fall over but that looked even cooler (see photo below).
We used this recipe without walnuts. Also, we added a good amount of orange rind (from the slices) and some orange juice to the batter. It was low in points (see below) and okay. Honestly, it still tasted a bit fake but that is to be expected. I, wanting to have my brownie and eat it too (hahaha), want to find a recipe with similar points that taste better. We also served decaf coffee with dessert.
The pear salad was 1 for the pear and next to nothing for the very little bit of dressing. There was cheese and pine nuts but not much. I am not really sure about the nuts but lets just say 3 total to be safe.
Dinner: The chicken was 6 per person (calculated previously). The quinoa was 1 cup dry total. That is four servings for four people. And we had a good amount leftover. Forget the leftover and say 3 per person, plus one for the other stuff. The Brussels sprouts were zero. If I recall correctly, the bread was 3/serving and 7 total servings. So that depends (but still not bad).
The brownies are below: (cal/fat/fiber)
- 3/4 cup flour ... 300/0/0
- cocoa...40/2/8
- Margarine ... 200/20/0
- egg beaters... (1 point)
- 1/2 cup apple sauce 50/0/2
- chips 140/8/0
----------------------
total 730/30/10 + 1
Since we can assume there will be more than 3 servings, we can count all the fiber
20 points for the whole thing.
We made five oranges and didn't eat the orange itself so say 4 points each.
The whole meal, with 5 points of bread, is therefore 3+6+4+5 (bread) + 4=20. A lot but not bad for such a nice big meal with company!
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 618, 2010-10-29_224055
Thursday, October 28, 2010, 10:27 PM
We made Moussaka from the same recipe (copied into KitchenKatalog) and with similar modifications as last time. When I created the recipe page, I included the changes as well (including extra seasoning).
It was very good as expected. With the extra red sauce, I just ate some and it was incredible. A nice but simple spice combination.
See last time for point tally, but around 30 for the entire thing. We made two dinner servings and two lunches and still have about 2/5 leftover.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 610, 2010-10-28_222750
Thursday, October 28, 2010, 09:19 PM
Originally from here but we made some changes.
Changes
Points (from 2010-09-10): 30 for the entire thing!
_2010-12-17 note: _We more than doubled the seasonings and it needed it!
2011-10-10 note: Updated the changes to most recent. See the post for 2011-10-10
(This recipe is now in my Recipe Book)
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 607, 2010-10-28_211943
Wednesday, October 27, 2010, 10:24 PM
The recipe basically came from Hungry Girl's "Chicken Enchilada Casserole" on page 66 of _Hungry Girl 1-2-3. _We used 8 oz extra lean ground beef instead. Also, instead of corn tortillas, we used one La Tortilla Factory tortilla with 13 grams on fiber. The use of 98% fat free cream of celery condensed soup was interesting. We used that but I think we could have also used the 98% FF cream of chicken instead. We also added our own seasonings and some peas and corn.
It was very good. A bit salty but good. We put too much cheese on top and because it is fat free, it hardened. We used a knife to cut it but after that is was good. It also made more than enough for two [large] dinners and two [medium/small] lunches.
She gets about 4 servings at 5/serving. I get lower largely due (I think) to using one flour tortilla with all that fibers (becomes free if split) over her six small corn tortillas.
Total points for 2 x 1/3 portions (dinner) and 2 x 1/6 (lunch):
beef...8
Tortilla...0 (when split later)
Soup...3
cheese...3 (and could have been less in the future)
Misc veggies...1
----------------------------------
=15. So dinner was ONLY five each. Lunch is 2.5
2013-12-05 Note: Added to "My Recipe Book"
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 605, 2010-10-27_222456
Tuesday, October 26, 2010, 09:48 PM
The soup was largely flavorless. I ended up throwing out most of it away. I really think the larger pumpkin has so much less flavor. Also, I was trying to go lower on the salt which shouldn't have mattered too much for a pureed soup but it was not very good.
I was earlier watching a thing on spicy foods and peppers and I wanted to make something fast so I put some sriracha garlic spread on pork chops and grilled them with a thermometer. The sriracha stuff tastes just like the bottled squirt stuff but has some more chuncks.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 602, 2010-10-26_214837