A Mexican Afair

Mexican food is at or near the top of my "favorite kind of foods" list. I usually eat it at least once a week. I have developed a rather picky taste for my Mexican food, and tex-mex and grocery store convenient items just don't cut it anymore. I want authentic, fresh flavors with some serious heat (when heat is appropriate).

The hubs and I have gotten into a nice habit of cooking something new on the weekends. On Saturday morning before our usual shopping trip, we consulted the Healthy Family Cookbook again. Not really knowing what we were in a mood for, we flipped through the Poultry section to see if anything caught our eye. I was nearing the end when I flipped to a page with a nice picture of Chicken Enchiladas. We both paused and at the same time and made the same sound: "Ooooo!" A quick read of the recipe and we had our new weekend recipe to try out. We searched in the same book for some Mexican-Style rice. We found a Basmati Rice Pilaf recipe that had a "With Mexican Flavors" variation. To round out the meal, we cooked a pot of Anasazi Beans to last throughout the week.

What in the world are Anasazi Beans you ask?
A friend of our got us hooked on Anasazi Beans (yes, they really are the best beans in the world!). We had a gathering a few years ago where we made Indian Tacos and everyone brought an item to help with the meal. This particular friend brought beans. I don't recall if he made refried beans, or just simply cooked the beans and we ate them whole. What I do remember is how amazing they were. This was around the time the foodie in me was making a noticeable appearance. I knew what I was eating was not just any ordinary pinto bean. It was creamy, flavorful, and smooth. There was something unique about it, but I didn't know what. I'm forever happy that I questioned the hell out of my poor friend. I found out they are a type of bean specific to Colorado, and sadly, could not be bought here. He told me all about ways to cook them and why they were unique because you didn't have to soak them and they cause less gas than pinto beans (an added bonus!). Not long after this, he and his wife were on a road trip to CO when I called to see if they wanted to hang out. I was so in love with this new discovery that I talked him into bringing us back a 10lb bag! Over the next few months we experimented with the beans and we worked them into a regular part of our diet. We were just about to run out last October, but then he and his wife got us another 10lb bag of Anasazi Beans and a dutch oven to cook them in for our wedding! SCORE! The bag of beans were by far the oddest and funniest wedding gift we received, but completely practical and the perfect gift for this foodie couple!

Chicken Enchiladas:
I started by making their recipe for Green Enchilada Sauce. You first have to roast the poblano chiles and tomatillos.


Once the peppers have been roasted you remove the skin. Then you throw them into a food processor with the roasted tomatillos, chicken broth, a minced onion, garlic, a lot of cilantro, lime juice, extra-virgin olive oil, and a little sugar. We added a little salt to balance out the sugar, and it was perfect with just the right amount of bite with a subtle hotness!


Now it was time to make the Chicken Enchiladas. The chicken was cooked in a pot with the Green Enchilada Sauce and then shredded into bite-sized pieces. It was then mixed with some of the Green Enchilada Sauce, queso fresco cheese (I used reduced fat), green chiles, and cilantro.

Now it was time to assemble everything. The corn tortillas were sprayed with cooking spray and warmed up in the oven to make them more pliable. Then 1/3 cup of the chicken mixture (a generous portion) was spread down the center of the tortillas.


After everything was in the pan, more Green Enchilada Sauce was added on top, and then everything was covered with cheddar cheese (I used sharp, 2%). We baked it with foil over it to keep it from burning until everything was heated through and the cheese was melted, and then removed the foil and allowed the cheese to brown.



Basmati Rice Pilaf With Mexican Flavors:

The base of this recipe is just a little olive oil, a small minced onion, basmati rice, and water. We only eat brown rice now, so we substituted regular basmati rice for brown basmati rice. We forgot that you have to soak brown basmati rice before cooking with it in recipes like this, or that it takes longer to cook. Luckily we started early knowing the enchiladas were going to be involved and require both of us, and thinking the rice was fine to sit since it will stay warm. Instead of letting it sit, we just kept cooking it and it was done by the time we were ready to eat.

For the Mexican Flavors, jalapenos, garlic, tomato paste, cilantro, and a diced tomato were added. Luckily we bought 3 bunches of cilantro! At this point we had used more than 2 to get 1 1/4 cups of minced cilantro, and our other mexican recipe for later in the week to use up the beans and rice calls for another 1/4 cup. We LOVE cilantro!



The meal was amazing! We didn't like the rice all that much and felt it lacked flavor and didn't have much heat. However, it got better as it sat overnight. When we had the left overs, the flavors were better developed and the jalapeno heat was present where it wasn't the first night. I think it takes longer for brown rice to absorb flavors since it has the hard outer shell. I'm not sure we will be making it again though. A 3/4 cup serving was 5 WW points+ and neither of us felt it was worth the extra points.

The enchiladas were fantastic! They moved to the top of our recipe list and we will be making them often. They are 10 WW points+ for 2 enchiladas. A little heavy for WW, but so worth it, in our opinion. The flavors were authentic, fresh, and the Green Enchilada Sauce added just the right amount of subtle heat to the dish. The chicken was tender and very flavorful. And left overs were just as good. The texture of the corn tortillas was better the first night, but we both agreed that the flavors got better the 2nd night. They were delicious and so filling.

And of course the beans were awesome! :) I cook them in water with a little salt and canola oil. We found nutritional info for 1/4 cup dry beans and have noticed that the beans make about 2.5 times more cooked. Using that ratio, 1 cup of cooked beans is 5 WW points+, which is the same as what we normally do for our starch, 1 cup brown rice or 1 cup whole wheat pasta.

All in all, a VERY good weekend meal. I wouldn't have time to do this during the week, but it was a fun activity for hubby and I and we got 2 more nights of meals out of it. It was so worth the work and we will be doing it again soon!

A Relaxing Labor Day

Happy Labor Day!

Usually we have a cookout of sorts and either go to someone's house or have people over. Since things haven been so crazy lately and we are just now regaining control of time and still trying to catch our breaths, we decided to keep Labor Day quiet and relaxing.

A Much anticipated cold front came through yesterday dropping temperatures by about 15 degrees or more. We have had 60 days this summer where the temperature has been 100F or greater. It's been ridiculous. All kinds of records have been broken. The Norman Station at the Oklahoma Mesonet broke it's all time record high twice this summer, two days back to back. It ended up getting to 110F on August 2nd, 2011. Oklahoma broke the record for hottest July with an average temperature of 89.1F. Oklahoma ranked 2nd, only behind Texas, for the hottest summer on record. A bunch of cities broke records for number of days above 100F. It's been awful. So this cold front that came through dropping high temperatures into the 80's is very nice!

We are taking full advantage of this nice weather! We are dog sitting for the next week for a friend of ours, so we took our new doggie friend on a walk last night. It was gorgeous out and my husband enjoyed getting out of the house and just casually walking around our neighborhood talking. It was extremely relaxing and gave us a new way to connect. We came home and relaxed for a little while and it was so nice out we decided to sleep with the windows open. We got to sleep in this morning and woke up cuddling in a cool 70F room under our big down comforter. Newlywed bliss! It doesn't get much better than that!

To keep with our relaxing day, we decided to go see Our Idiot Brother mid afternoon since we were planning something new for dinner. This is going to sound weird, but before the movie started I was sent into a euphoric state because the big red curtains over the screen were illuminated with dark colors of orange, yellow and red, which were the colors of our wedding. Looking at the curtains for 20 minutes sitting next to my husband brought back so many great memories and feelings from our wedding. And with the cold front, it was like I was surrounded by fall, one of my favorite seasons! So the movie... it was good, not great, but a nice couple of hours out on a mid-afternoon date. We came home and started getting things ready for dinner!

Grilled Boneless Chicken Breasts with Lemon Vinaigrette:

This ended up being a really quick, easy, low point, and very good recipe! We have been buying the smaller chicken breasts at Sam's Club that are supposed to average 5oz so that it's easier to eat smaller portions than with the regular chicken breasts that can weight as much as a pound a piece! I'm also hoping that these smaller breasts have less hormones in them as well, but I can't seem to find an answer to that.

The recipe calls for 4-6oz breasts (1 1/2 lbs). We like having left overs, and I can easily fit 5oz of cooked chicken breast into my Weight Watchers plan, so we made 6 of our smaller breasts which came out to 2 lbs. They were each rubbed with some olive oil, and then seasoned with a mixture of coriander, sat, and pepper. Even though we added 33% more chicken, we didn't alter the recipe in any other way.

My husband who has become great at the grill threw these on a split fire where only one burner was on and the chicken was placed on the cooler side to cook slower. Right before the chicken was done it was moved to the hotter side of the grill to finish cooking and brown it. This resulted in ultra juicy chicken!

The Lemon Vinaigrette was a simple mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, Dijon mustard and sugar. Alone we were not impressed as it had a very herb-y flavor. But when drizzled over the chicken, the flavor of the Dijon mustard came through in combination with the seasonings on the chicken. I had a generous portion of 5.25oz of chicken with 2 teaspoons (which was plenty!) of the Lemon Vinaigrette for only 7 WW points. We served it with steamed haricot vert (French green beans), and steamed red potatoes. It was a very filling and delicious dinner.

And for dessert? You guessed it... more Greek Yogurt!


Chobani Greek Yogurt - Strawberry:

This was much better than the Yoplait Strawberry Greek Yogurt I had on Saturday! Unlike the Yoplait brand, this one had real strawberry chunks in it, was not too sweet, and had a more natural consistency of the fruit. I do have to make a note though about the color as I wrote horrible things about the color of Yoplait's Strawberry Geek Yogurt. Chobani's Strawberries also had an off color. They too were darker and had a bit of a brown tint to them. It was not nearly as bad as Yoplait's, but after some reading, this is the normal color for strawberries when they are not in their whole fruit form anymore. This made sense after thinking about it more as you get the same problem with Strawberry cakes when you try and make them with fresh berries. So I guess I can't hold the color of the strawberries against Yoplait anymore. But it doesn't change the fact that appearance aside, Chobani's Strawberry was much better!

This flavor ranks 4th for me in the Chobani flavor lineup: Lemon, Peach/Blueberry, Strawberry, Chery, Vanilla. Fage's Blueberry falls between the Lemon and Peach flavors by Chobani. I will be sticking mostly to Chobani, but I do plan to try some of the other Fage flavors.

Off to the duck pond to take our doggie friend on a more eventful walk and an opportunity to feed the ducks and geese... something I love doing!

In Search of Delicious Asian Dishes

My husband and I love Thai! There was this little place we used to go to that I introduced him to shortly after we started dating. We hadn't been in a while, and about three years ago we started going again, and about a year later got hooked. It was so good! I tried making something similar at home, but I just couldn't recreate the flavors. I know how to build great flavors for Italian, Mexican, American, etc., but Asian flavors are a whole other type of cooking that I just was not used to. In general I'm not an Asian food fan, too many veggies, and I'm more of a country girl eater... and my eating habits are the only thing country about me!... but I can't seem to get enough of Thai. I think it's the sweet/spicy flavor that keeps me coming back for more. Anyway, so Thai is the one thing you can count on my husband and I eating out for. We cook a lot at home, but about once a week, we would go to our restaurant. One of my favorite memories of Thai Raja was that during our 15 months of wedding planning, even though we were on Weight Watchers, we ate Thai almost every Wedding Wednesday Night. The girls knew our order and when we strayed from our usual, they were confused. When we skipped a week, which was rare, they asked if we were OK. Sad, I know. It was one of the few things that got my husband through those long nights. Even after the wedding stress had ended and we came back from two weeks of Italian food, we went right back to our Thai food once a week. Sadly, our restaurant, the staple of our Wednesday nights for the last 2 years was closing. This forced us to finally learn the art of Asian cooking. I still don't have it, but with the help of great recipes, I'm leaning my way to building complex Asian flavors.

After my husband was able to get me to eat our last Stir-Fry creation, Stir-Fried Shrimp and Asparagus with Lemon Sauce, he talked me into making something new that had the word "spciy" in it. I was game.

Stir-Fried Chicken and Green Beans with Spicy Orange Sauce:

We did our usual grocery shopping on Saturday and were unable to find shiitake mushrooms and other good looking veggies at our usual source, so we went to the new Natural Grocers and picked up a whopping 12 oz of shiitake mushrooms, 12 oz of green beans, and some other veggies for my husband to snack on. I wasn't too excited about this recipe after looking at how much 12 oz of mushrooms were. I'm just now starting to come around on them, and this was a first for me with shiitake mushrooms.

We started by slicing the chicken thin and marinating it in a mixture of toasted sesame oil, cornstarch, flour, low-sodium soy sauce and Chinese rice cooking wine (we used dry sherry again instead since we still couldn't find Chinese rice cooking wine). Then we did the notorious vegetable prep of stir-fries and I played with my macro lens a bit.

I still wasn't feeling it for this recipe after everything was prepped and ready. But cooking out of the Healthy Family Cookbook by America's Test Kitchen, I had hope. We cooked our wonderful organic green beans and they looked awesome! Now came time for the mushrooms. We added them to the pan, and it was full! I wasn't too sure about this. The recipe said they would cook down, then I began to worry about slimy mushrooms. I was entertained with the contrast in colors in the pan and played with my macro lens some more while the hubby cooked.

Sure enough a few minutes later the mushrooms had cooked down. I made the Spicy Orange Sauce as my husband added the scallions, garlic, and ginger to the stir-fry. The Spicy Orange Sauce was very simple with orange juice, Chinese rice cooking wine (we used dry sherry here too), low-sodium soy sauce, Asian chili-garlic sauce (and we added extra since we like things hot), sugar, cornstarch, toasted sesame oil, and orange zest. It was added to the pan, and now I was getting excited about dinner!

During our prep we had toasted some sesame seeds before hand. We served this over a bed of brown basmati rice and sprinkled the sesame seeds over it. The mushrooms were not too slimy, not too mushy, and were actually quite good. The dish wasn't too spicy, but I think it was just right. Any spicier and it would have overpowered the mild orange flavor. I would not, however, recommend serving this on brown basmati rice. It has an aromatic nutty flavor that competed with the toasted sesame oil in the dish. I think plain brown rice would be better, and definitely jasmin rice.

UPDATE: This keeps really well in the fridge. The mushrooms get a little "slimy", but I'm not a mushroom fan and I was able to handle it fine.

This is another stir-fry that we will be adding our our rotation of dishes!

Yet another fun Saturday evening in the kitchen with my husband! I'm really loving all the free time we have on the weekends lately to experiment with new recipes.

A Nice Weekend with Dear Husband

My husband and I had an entire weekend to ourselves. No major plans, nothing pressing to get done, just us doing our normal (or what used to be normal) routine on the weekend. We decided to use our new found time to create something new in the kitchen. We were sorta getting board with the usual recipes we had become comfortable making. It was nice being able to whip up a flavorful dish quickly after getting the prep work and cooking down to a T with our favorite recipes, but we needed something new!

I had wanted to make this Low-Fat Chicken Parmesan recipe I had seen in Cook's Country a couple years ago, but had not had much time lately. Based on past experiences, trying out a new recipe when you're on a strict time schedule was not a good idea.

Low-Fat Chicken Parmesan:
I started off by making a simple and quick tomato sauce that consisted of diced tomatoes ran through the food processor, and then garlic, tomato paste, oil, and a bit of red pepper flakes that had been allowed to bloom in the saucepan first. The sauce was reduced and then fresh basil was added. I made a double batch knowing my husband likes tomato sauce, and we had planned to have some whole wheat pasta as a side. I thought it would be good to toss some of this sauce in with the pasta!

Instead of frying the chicken breasts, chicken cutlets were lightly dredged in a flour and garlic powder mixture, then moistened with an egg-white wash, then "battered" with a toasted panko and parmesan mixture. They were set on a wire rack over a rimmed backing sheet and baked. Right before the chicken was done, we spooned some of the warmed sauce over each chicken breast and then topped it with part-skim milk mozzarella cheese and put it back in the oven. The chicken was done just as the cheese had melted and started to brown slightly and was then topped with fresh basil.



SO good!


Butter Pecan Ice Cream:
For dessert, my husband wanted to make Butter Peacan Ice Cream. We recently purchased the Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker with Extra Freezer Bowl from William-Sonoma as a sort of wedding gift. So far we are really happy with our purchase!


The Instructional booklet comes with some pretty good recipes. In our attempt to eat healthy and loose weight, my husband, knowing my love for ice cream, decided to make the Butter Peacan one because he knew I wouldn't eat it. We are following the Weight Watchers Points Plus plan, and he has about twice as many points as I do, so he can afford something like this, whereas I cannot.

He sauted the pecans in butter and salt, and then made the base of the ice cream. After dinner we poured it into the machine, and 20 minutes later we had fluffy, creamy ice cream. The base was too good to pass up, so I had some and just picked out the pecans. Very rich and creamy!




I don't know if we will be making the ice cream anytime soon since it was definitely not healthy, but we will definitely be making the Chicken Parmesan again and will be adding it to our rotation of meals.

Wonderful dinner and a fun time in the kitchen with the hubs on a Saturday night!