Category Archives: Food

Last night’s dinner was choucroute, more or less, from (as usual) Cooking Light. Pork chops, (turkey) sausage, and an apple, cooked in sauerkraut and beer.

I hate sauerkraut, but for some reason every time I run across this recipe it sounds interesting, so when I found it while making a grocery list, I decided to try it. This was a quick version since it used pork chops instead of a big hunk of pork.

It was good. Not too sauerkrauty. I’ll have to revise my previous statement to “I hate sauerkraut when it’s all by itself”.

Added an actual recipe to my food page: Pseudo-Asian Chicken with Soba Noodles

Brown, on both sides, some boneless skinless breasts in olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Meanwhile, boil water and add soba noodles and green beans. Also meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix about 1 cup chicken stock, several tbsp soy sauce, minced garlic and ginger and black pepper to taste. When the chicken is browned, dump the sauce on it and partly cover the pan. Add some sliced bell peppers. Let it simmer until the chicken is done.

I’ve been totally neglecting that page since I got the first inspiration for it.

Well, Friday, I made the above recipe. Today, I made “Kamut Spirals with Chicken-Artichoke Wine Sauce” from the March 2006 Cooking Light (They should pay me for the free advertising. I love this magazine.). I used whole-wheat spirals, though, because I had those, and I don’t know where I’d find kamut. The recipe calls for a *lot* of artichoke, but it’s not too much, though it seemed like it at first. It was a little bland, but I forgot the salt. More basil would help, too.

Food: Beef stew/soup
Highly adapted from a recipe in this month’s Cooking Light. Forgot the 2 tbsp of dijon mustard. Made in the crockpot, so there was no browning of the beef or sauteeing of onion. Also no browned flour to thicken. Used less than a quarter of the liquid it called for and it was still soupy.

Tasted good though.

“Asian Beef”, the name of which tells you it’s Americanized. Turned out ok, despite including sesame oil. It probably helps that the instructions (mix 7-ingredient sauce, pour on flank steak, broil 5 min, flip, broil more) means that all the sauce falls off and burns to the broiler pan rather than cooking into the beef. Next time I think I’ll marinate it for a bit.

I do believe that’s the first time I’ve used the broiler for anything except nachos. The broiler scares me. All the flames make it seem like opening a little door into hell.

Cranberry pancakes turned out really well. Standard pancakes, with 1/3 whole wheat flour, an extra 1/2 TBSP of sugar, a bunch of cinnamon, and a lot of slightly microwaved and smushed up cranberries.

Oven-Braised Lentils with Sausage (Cooking Light, 11/05), with red wine instead of white. Good, fast (except for the baking). Made a lot (a pound of lentils and nearly a pound of turkey kielbasa), so it’ll be dinner all week.