Sheet pan turkey sausage with vegetables. 1/15/21

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Beebamom

Sheet pan turkey sausage with onions, potatoes, and Brussels sprouts

What could be easier than a sheet pan dinner!? John and I pre-heated the oven with the sheet pan in it to 450F. After shaking the vegetables with olive oil and salt in a plastic bag, we dumped and spread them out on the hot sheet pan. After 15 minutes, we added the turkey sausage which was already pre-cooked and just needed heating through. In another 10 minutes everything was done. Clean-up consisted of balling up the aluminum foil covering the sheet pan and throwing it away.

Roasting meat and vegetables is a great way to impart lots of flavor with minimal fuss. I am trying to think up other dinners to make like this!

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Mushroom Bourguignon, mashed potatoes, mixed veg. 1/14/21

Posted on January 14, 2021 by Beebamom
Mushroom Bourguignon over mashed potatoes with mixed vegetables

Mushroom Bourguignon is a NYTimes Cooking site recipe. If you have a NYTimes Cooking subscription you can access it. Sometimes people post a recipe from the site on the internet so if you are interested in it and do not have a subscription you might try googling it.

This recipe has a lot of steps and ingredients. Since we did not want to spend hours making this, we opted for pre-sliced mushrooms and frozen pearl onions. I think fresh pearl onions would definitely improve the dish but they are a pain to peel.

Our version of Mushroom Bourguignon included less fat but it still came out great. The sauce was thick, dark, and tasty. We added a drop or two of red wine vinegar at the end to up the acid content. Having mashed potatoes is always a treat and they went perfectly with the mushrooms in their sauce. As far as the other vegetables are concerned I just cobbled three odds and ends and sautéed them to give color to the plate.

I think this recipe would be great with beef as well. I am thinking of getting some quick cooking tender beef and adding it to our leftovers for LFD (Leftovers For Dinner) on Saturday.

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Vietnamese sour soup with shrimp. 1/13/21

Posted on January 13, 2021 by Beebamom

Before COVID John and I used to do quite a bit of traveling and in November, 2019 we took a trip to Southeast Asia. We started a cruise in Hong Kong and made our way down Vietnam, then to Cambodia, and ended up in Thailand. One of the things we signed up for was a cooking class in Ho Chi Minh City. The chef in Vietnam took us to the Ben Thanh market and discussed ingredients and then we went back to the Saigon Cooking School and made a three course meal. Here are some pictures.

Our chef discussing different vegetables at the Ben Thanh market

The seafood section

Spices and coffee galore

At the Saigon Cooking School we each had a super hot and scary propane cook top and sharp knives. We needed to watch the chef and try to duplicate what she was doing. Most of us had trouble just turning on the cooktop. My towel caught on fire!

Chef cooking Sour Soup with Prawn with a student (not me) watching

What the soup looked like when we made it in Vietnam

Here at home our ingredients are not quite the same. After our okra slimed out yesterday we decided to use use what we had in the refrigerator which was some broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, and cilantro. Although John is skeptical about the non-traditional ingredients, the soup turned out great! The tart flavor of the tamarind coupled with fish sauce and brown sugar gave an authentic taste to everything. I think I would put more shrimp in it next time. I posted the original recipe from the Saigon Cooking School the first time we tried to make it at home.

This is the third time making the soup and it came out the best so far. I think we are figuring out the ratios of what tastes we like best.

Our homemade Vietnamese sour soup with shrimp

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What I eat for breakfast. 1/12/21

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Beebamom

We were supposed to make Vietnamese sweet and sour soup for dinner on Wednesday but discovered that the okra had turned entirely into slime and had to make an alternative plan for dinner. This plan was more like the old me. We ended up eating popcorn, tater tots, and potstickers.

So while I am a primo dieter most of the time, I do have my moments of unrestricted glee. But it is back on the straight and narrow today and I have started out with a hardy, nutritious breakfast. Yes, of course, I thought about eating nothing all day to make amends but that is just dumb. I would have ended up being hungry and tempted by more gleeful food.

This is the kind of breakfast I eat most days. It consists of an egg or eggs and toast. I find the eggs keep me satisfied until lunch time. Other breakfasts I eat are plain non-fat Greek yogurt and blueberries over some cereal or oatmeal with fruit. I know it is all the rage to be fasting through breakfast but missing a meal does not appeal to me at all. I have lost over 60 lbs. eating three meals plus some snacks every day.

Scrambled eggs on half a pita with kale

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Chilean sea bass, new potatoes, asparagus. 1/11/21

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Beebamom

Oven roasted Chilean sea bass, steamed new potatoes, and asparagus

What can I tell you about this dinner other than it is quick, easy, and delicious! We get frozen individually wrapped portions of Chilean sea bass at Costco so the fish is not quite so expensive but is excellent quality. These 5.5 oz. portions were expertly roasted by John in a 400F oven for 14 minutes. Perfection!

My contribution in addition to steaming both the potatoes and the asparagus (notice the stem end is peeled) was a butter, lemon, tarragon sauce. Now that I have finished the losing portion of my diet, I think I can add a few extras. I melted a tablespoon of butter and cooked it very slowly with chopped tarragon, garlic, and fresh lemon juice. I gave the lion’s share to John but the spoonful that I had was really nice with everything on the plate.

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BFD Asian influenced Breakfast For Dinner. 1/10/21

Posted on January 10, 2021 by Beebamom

Shredded omelet with vegetables and cauliflower rice with soy sauce, fish sauce, and oyster sauce

I realize that this does not look much like a traditional American breakfast. However, the eggs on a Breakfast For Dinner meal are really just a jumping off point for dinner creations. For my BFD I made a rolled omelet that I had flavored with soy sauce. I took that out of the pan and sauteed my vegetables in some soy sauce, fish sauce, and oyster sauce with just a sprinkling of sugar to help them brown. I microwaved some cauliflower rice dressed with soy. Then I combined the egg into the vegetables and served myself dinner. My BFD looked colorful, plentiful, but could probably have used a little more texture. From a diet point of view, it was a bunch of vegetables and two eggs. That is a pretty lo-cal, lo-carb dinner.

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Weekly Menu. January 11 – January 17, 2021

Posted on January 10, 2021 by Beebamom

Since our menu got all muddled up last week, I am carrying over a couple of dinners from last week on Monday and Tuesday. Then I have got three! new dinner ideas for the rest of the week.  There are two vegan/vegetarian dishes that I am very excited about and an easy, hearty sheet pan meal. Hopefully they will be as delicious as I am imagining.

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Vegan orecchiette, mushrooms and broccoli. 1/9/21

Posted on January 9, 2021 by Beebamom

Orecchiette with mushrooms and broccoli

Saturday night is usually a night for LFD, leftovers for dinner. However, John opined that the broth from our Mediterranean seafood stew was too fennel-y to be transformed into Vietnamese sweet and sour soup as planned. So we needed to come up with an easy dinner that we could make out of existing ingredients in our pantry and refrigerator. Orecchiette with mushrooms and broccoli definitely filled the bill!

While the water for the pasta heated,  John and I teamed up to get the mushrooms, onions, garlic, and broccoli cut up for the sauce. While the pasta cooked for 10 minutes, I sautéed the mushrooms, onions, and garlic and then added the broccoli florets with about three minutes to go on the pasta. John drained the pasta and added it to my vegetables. I swirled the whole thing around in the pan and added a couple of teaspoons of olive oil and a cup of pasta water which made a really yummy, rich, dark sauce. Some nights you just have to improvise!

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Mediterranean fish stew. 1/8/21

Posted on January 8, 2021 by Beebamom

This is an adaptation of a recipe by British chef, Rick Stein. It is from his cookbook, Fruits of the Sea. We have made this before and have had trouble not getting the various seafoods over cooked so we decided to just use scallops and shrimp cooked at the last minute. The original recipe is very fancy with a lot of discussion about how you have to cut everything just so, lots of different kinds of fish and shellfish, and using white wine and Pernod. We tried to make our simpler by merely cutting things so they would cook evenly. John did go to the bother of making a fish stock with the shrimp shells we have been saving in the freezer.

Mediterranean fish stew with pita

The stew is laborious to make with lots of chopping of fennel, celery, fennel fronds, tomatoes, onions, leeks, garlic, thyme, and potatoes. In fact, it is too much work for the result. Even though we did not overcook the seafood, I found the licorice flavor of the fennel and Pernod overtook everything. I suggested if we make it again that we not include those two items but John likes the licorice taste so I guess we just won’t be making it again.

On Saturday we are supposed to be taking the broth and making a Vietnamese sweet and sour shrimp soup but I really do not see how we are going to be able to get around the anise flavor. Maybe I will just make a sandwich for me.

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Lentil curry with vegetables. 1/7/21

Posted on January 7, 2021 by Beebamom

Sorry to skip a day but much like most of the people in the U.S. I was watching the horrific events taking place in our nation’s capital on Wednesday. While John and I stayed glued to the TV we just grabbed a quick sandwich and called it dinner. So our week’s menu has really flown out the window.

On Thursday we got back on a track with a lentil curry with kale, carrots, and snow peas. Although we followed a somewhat elaborate recipe really all it boiled down to was bloom some curry-type spices, sauté shallot, garlic, and ginger, add stock and lentils, add carrots and snow peas near the end of cooking, and serve over kale. We completed our dinner with a piece of pita.

Curried lentils with vegetables over kale

As usual when we have one of the dinners where it is vegan or vegetarian and it is a stew and there is a lot of it, I ate too much. I just could not resist a second bowlful. Portion control remains one of the most difficult parts of eating like a normal person for me. I guess I would rather overeat one night and then undereat the next two days. Maybe I will get the hang of this maintenance stuff but it looks like I will be up and down during the week. Sigh.

Posted in Easy, Healthy tips, Indian, Legumes, stew, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian | Tagged | Leave a comment