hold the cheese, please

It's no big secret, I love cheese. I put it on everything, most meals I cook include some form of cheese, and often times I'll just eat cheese slices as a snack. Totally delicious? yes. Healthy? no. My definition of a meal has morphed into "must include cheese" and I've made a conscious decision to try and change that back to something more normal.

The other night, an impromptu get-together to decorate my christmas tree resulted in our making dinner as well.  I had some veggies we needed to use and ry-guy had some chicken to bring, so we decided on a simple rainbow stir-fry.  It ended up being quite good.  I had some broccoli, a yellow squash, red pepper, and red onion (which really look purple).  We cut all of these up and put them in a big bowl with some marinade. Meanwhile, we attempted to thaw the frozen solid chicken breasts - first in a pan of water until mostly soft, and then some in the microwave. By the time the chicken was thawed enough to be cut up we were starving, so I tossed it in the bowl with the veggie marinade, and then threw the chicken only (yes, I had to pick through the bowl to find it all) into the frying pan. When it was mostly cooked I threw in the veggies, and started the rice (of the Jasmine variety). It was a deliciously colorful meal, without any cheese in sight.

This afternoon I was looking for something to eat, and I decided to make a pasta primevera. The same veggies (minus the yellow squash) plus some oregano, thyme, cracked black pepper, and a can of tomato sauce gave me another colorful cheeseless meal - just as tasty!!

The Tofu Chronicles, Part II -- Boston!

1:46pm - I'm waiting for my rice to come to a boil. My oil is heating up in the wok. Must run!

1:50pm - I'm cooking up the green curry paste and it smells amazing! I added the coconut milk (the rest of the can that I didn't use IN the paste) and then realized if it ends up too spicy I'm out of luck. . . no more coconut milk to cool it down! Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Oh, and I used two chilli peppers of the optional one to three.

1:54pm - I have ten minutes now, phew! The rice is cooking away. The tofu is cooking with the curry paste, coconut milk, and a medium pinch of shredded kaffir lime leaves. . . ?

2:01pm - I'm starving.

2:15 - I must rescue my frozen broccoli from the microwave and check on the already cooking yam, red bell pepper, carrots, and cauliflower!

2:19pm - Added the snow peas.

2:22pm - Pouring a glass of wine that's left over from Jenni's Chocolate and Red Wine Cupcake recipe that I whipped up this morning for a friend's party tonight. Adding the broccoli.

2:27pm - I tried the sauce and luckily it's not too spicy! I did add a little more soy sauce though because it was lacking saltiness -- just a bit.

2:59pm - I'm ready to eat when you are, Jenni!

3:18pm - Eating! Oh my. This is really quite delicious! I think it's still lacking in the saltiness department, but it's okay because it's so flavorful. I'm going to take my plate into the TV room and devour this yumminess while watching yesterday's Barefoot Contessa. More on her tomorrow. . . she's doing a book signing in Natick that I'm going to! :o

The Tofu Chronicles, Part II - Texas.

All times reported herein are in Central Standard Time!

12:02pm - I've begun draining the tofu, it's weird.  I've got it on some paper towels and sandwiched between two cutting boards with some cook books on top.  There is so much water coming out.  Is this what's supposed to happen?!  I might be ruining this before I even really begin.

12:08pm - mmm, lemongrass!  This is also my first experience with this, and wow - it smells amazing.  Almost as good as lemon pledge.  Who knew.  I'm sans food processor, so I've begun putting all my paste in

gredients into a bowl, and will cycle it through the hand-held chopper I

 do have.  

12:18pm - thanks to the gloves I "borrowed" from the whole foods spice section, I will not be having jalepeno hands!  In go the chillies (or chilli!)

12:20pm - "one small onion", mine was large.  I wanted to use only half, but even that seemed like too much.  I didn't use the whole half.  We'll see.

12:36pm  - so many firsts.  I've never used ginger either.  But lemongrass and ginger may be my two new favorite ingredients.  This smells good, and all I've done is chop so far.

12:37pm - my one loose cup of coriander leaves and stems is in, and it's what I call cilantro.

  The last thing to go in the paste...my interpretation of "kaffir lime leaves", which will include some zest and some juice from a kaffir lime.

12:53pm - the gre

en curry paste is made.  I managed to cycle it all through the hand chopper, and then get it all back in at one time for a final spin!  smells good.  I must pause now to run and get some rice (oops!) and make a few other arrangements for the study session happening promptly at 3pm.

1:18pm - we're back.  Rice is on.  Frying pan is heating up.  I am also sans wok, so I'll be using a large frying pan.  I guess this is the Green Curry Tofu without all appropriate kitchen appliances version!!

1:32pm - I'm impressed really, it's an hour and a half (holy god) after I started and I am just not suffering my first cooking induced injury.  I mean, I've used so many knives, gloves, juggled bottles - this is a miracle.  When adding my "kaffir lime leaves" (aka, more zest and juice) to the frying pan I dropped the lime and grated my knuckle.  awesome!  

1:39pm - I heeded Mel's advice, and I stirred completely the paste and coconut milk before adding the tofu (so as 

not to have to stir it too much).  also, I cut my tofu a bit larger than bit sized, in case it began to fall apart it would still be big enough.  We'll see.  ten minutes on.

1:50pm - I've officially added too much stuff already.  I put in my red bell pepper (or one and a half, they were small) and I used eggplant instead of yams.  The frying pan is getting full.  I still have broccoli, snow peas, cauliflower, and baby corn to add.  Maybe I'll remove some of the larger eggplants chunks.  Ten more minutes!

2:01pm - broccoli (is for lovers), cauliflower, snow peas and baby corn added to the mix!  4 or so more minutes...

2:06pm - ten minutes until taste test!

2:18pm - Mmmmm!  This is pretty tasty, if I do say so myself.

Sometimes bland is good. . . ?

This was dinner the other night. I don't know. Sometimes bland is good. I started the rice first, because I learned that lesson recently. . . it's always going to take longer than the vegetables (at least for me it does). So the rice was just plain old jasmine, that I cooked in water and added just a little bit of salt to.

I took out my large saute pan (which by the way I LOVE and use all the time) for the vegetables. I used a combination of canola and toasted sesame oil. As I sauted the onion and multiple cloves of garlic with salt and pepper, I microwaved the broccoli and chopped spinach. It's just been easier for me to keep (and afford) frozen vegetables in the house than fresh. Don't get me wrong though, I d still buy fresh vegetables -- I guess I'm just using more of a mix lately. I accidentally let the onion and garlic go a little too long, but it ended up adding some good, sweet flavor to the otherwise ridiculously boring dish. I then added some chopped green bell pepper and celery. It was supposed to be red bell pepper, you know, so my whole dinner wasn't green and white, but I cut into that pepper and it just wasn't happening on the inside. I hate when that happens. It was from Whole Foods too! Whatever. So once the frozen vegetables were mostly warmed through, I added them to the pan, along with some frozen edamame (that I first ran under some hot water in a small mesh strainer).

Okay, I'm not going to lie. I tried to make my own sweet and sour sauce. . . with organic ketchup, soy sauce, brown sugar, and a little orange marmalade. Sounds gross? It was AWFUL. I luckily tasted it before adding it to all of the vegetables. Instead, I had just about a teaspoon maybe of soy sauce left, so I used that. It added just enough flavor. And that was my quick weeknight meal. I did it all in under thirty minutes, and you know who would be proud of that.

Pasta Salad. . . with BROCCOLI!

I've been making pasta salad the same old boring way for YEARS. It's the same way my sister Diane makes it, which is the same way my mom makes it, which is the same way that HER mom makes it. It's not even Armenian! Usually when all of us make the same thing the same way, it's because there's history. But this is pasta salad we're talking about. It's not rocket science.

So here's what the "old" recipe included: tri-colored rotini, tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, atrichoke hearts, black olives, cubed cheddar cheese, and Wish-Bone Italian Robusto dressing. There could be some slight variations, but that's pretty much it. Now I kept some of the old, but wanted to update it because it's not as healthy as it could be. . . plus, WHERE'S THE BROCCOLI?! So my new and improved version includes the following: Barilla Plus rotini, tomatoes, green pepper, celery, broccoli (frozen and thawed, because as much as I ADORE broccoli I kind of can't stand it raw. . . ), low fat cheddar cheese (yes, Michelle, I know. . . ), and Annie's Tuscany Italian Dressing. I used a whole bottle of the dressing, which actually didn't seem like enough (liquid or flavor), so I also added some EVOO, the juice from half a lemon, salt, and pepper. It's pretty good, as far as pasta salad goes anyway.