Mushroom Lasagna

The kiddo is quite fond of the book: Tales For Very Picky Eaters. One tale mentions mushroom lasagna. Kiddo asked if we could have mushroom lasagna. Sure, I said.
I haven’t made lasagna probably since the 90s. Which is funny, because it was my thing back in the day. I clearly remember making it in college and feeding it to the roommate at the end of some fasting Jewish high holiday. Spinach was the specialty.
More recently this recipe has gone on the wayside. Too much pasta, and seriously, who needs that much cheese? Also, the husband has never been fond of lasagna so why bother.
Until now! The challenge here was the mushrooms. I ended up going for a very mushroomy sauce. Browned ground turkey, threw it in the slow cooker with a shredded carrot, chopped onion, mushrooms (lots of them), a large can of whole tomatoes (would have preferred crushed but I made a mistake and bought the wrong can). Tomato paste, Italian herbs.
Whole wheat lasagna, and a 8×8 baking pan. Ditched the mozzarella and instead shredded parm reg into the ricotta mixture and shredded some more on top (and some crumbled Zola-Gouda).

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I used half the sauce for the lasagna. In addition I roasted a spaghetti squash for a low-carb option to pair with the rest of the sauce.

I did hear the kiddo say, “This. Is. Amazing.” But then she proceeded to only eat the pasta. Husband did eat it, hooray, and so we have less leftovers than expected. Was fun to have but I’m glad I made the squash, too. Not going to keep this in the repertoire. No one needs that much food, but it was fun to whip out an old recipe (from memory!) and lighten it up some.

Tofu stir fry

I’ve been vegetarian for approximately 36 hours.

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Ended tonight with a small piece of salmon. But, this is this month ‘s challenge … One vegetarian dinner a week. Harder than you think for this protein-packing gal. Need to start checking out some recipes.

Slow cooker diaries update

No pictures, but recently I’ve done a few reruns for dinner. Here is a tally, with notes.
Beef stroganoff. Last time it was a hit. This time I was off my game. Not enough wine, forgot the Worcestershire sauce, not as spectacular. I will win the next round.
Moroccan chicken thighs. I love this dish. A swirl of nut butter at the end of cooking creates a great final touch. I didn’t have enough chicken, and had too many chickpeas. Need to swap the ratios next time.
Chicken stew with biscuits. Except that I didn’t make the biscuits. Husband said no thanks. So it was just so so. Just dinner. Biscuits might have helped this one.

So there you go.

Easter Dinner

This was a last-minute decision. Saturday night I decided, why not a slow-cooker ham? So at like eight on Sunday morning we went to the store to gather the ingredients. It didn’t help that I was riffing off a recipe that used a different kind of ham. I cooked it on low for 8 hours and it ham (a fully cooked smoked ham) was just warmed through, not piping hot or anything. Still, it was a tasty ham, especially as it’s not something we do all that often. I also made this elaborate green bean casserole using cream cheese, bacon and sauteed onions, among other things. The green beans were not fully cooked, either, though I like them crunchy.

It was a decent meal, but i’ll have to figure out that ham thing. Next time I think I’ll go on high for the first hour and low for the next 7. Unfortunatley I wasn’t at home for the first hour so it wouldn’t have worked.

Happy Easter

Also, we ate ham pretty much for the next seven days. 2.5 lbs of ham is a LOT of ham.

Slow Cooker Diaries – St. Patrick’s Day Style

Scenes from a Chinese-Irish-Italian Kitchen. For St Pattys Day we go all out:

Final Meal: Corned Beef & Cabbage with vegetables, and a slice of Irish Soda Bread

Corned beef and cabbage and other root vegetables. Slow cooker goodness. The beef was a fancy sort that did not come with “seasonings” so I mixed up my own, a combination of mustard seed, fennel seeds, crushed bay leaves, cumin, etc etc. The Irish Soda Bread, baked the night before, is courtesy of a mix this time (Sticky Fingers Bakeries). It came with caraway seeds and raisins. Didn’t expect the raisins, which was ok by me, only not a big hit with the husband and child.

And for dessert. Hadn’t been here for a while, so figured we’d drop in for some Irish fun:

Pot o’ gold at the end of that rainbow

Guinness Stout, a special that shows up just a couple times a year

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. See, even the Chinese can make it sorta Irish-y

 

Slow Cooker Diaries: Paleo Coconut Curry Chicken

Coconut Curry Chicken

These pics have been in draft mode for a few weeks now. Just Just now reporting back. In my last post I mentioned I decided to end this Paleo Challenge with a bang. My last meal in this challenge was a slow cooker special. After a filling breakfast of Sweet Potato Hash and a lunch of salad, I did a slow cooker coconut curry chicken. I made rice for the family but did a cauliflower rice for myself. Kept the curry mild to keep the child happy. Filling and fun. A little watery. In a non-paleo world I would have thickened the sauce with some flour.

Super Bowl Super Food – Slow cooker diaries

shrimp and chicken jambalaya

 

 
I am a nervous nelly when it comes to watching my favorite teams play in big games. I fret. I groan. I yell. And I cheer, but sometime not too loud for fear of jinxing the next play. Husband hates this. So he didn’t watch the AFC championship game when my Pats were playing (pretty terribly). The Seahawks, too, when they were rockin’ the playoffs, but we did tune into the Super Bowl together. I was much more relaxed. Didn’t have much vested in the game, except to root against th 49ers. Division rivals! No way am I cheering for that team!

Enjoyed a cheat meal for Super Bowl. Paying homage to the New Orleans locale I made slow cooker shrimp & chicken jambalaya. The rice was not fully cooked at kick off, though the shrimp was just right. Of course, it being a slow cooker, by halftime the rice was just right, and the shrimp a bit overdone. Was pretty much full by then anyway. Next time I’ll either cook the rice separate, time the brown rice better, or go with traditional white rice.

Next time, Seahawks!

How’s it taste? I wouldn’t know…

Husband had leftover brown rice from earlier this week, probably because I haven’t been eating it, so he suggested making fried rice. I found some veggies and etc in the freezer and fridge and whipped this baby up. Amazing how easy FR is when the rice is cooked and cold. I didn’t have any, on account of my no-rice/no-soy phase, but the kid had some and the husband gave a nod of approval (apparently the corn was not the greatest and there was leftover pork in the fridge that I should have added but didn’t).

via chattycha on flickr

House Special Fried Rice made with Brown Rice

All in all, good? Yeah, sure.

slow cooker diaries: meat loaf!

I was a little nervous about this one. The recipe I was following called for saltine crackers (it was old-school), among other things. Plus, the husband does a wonderful meat loaf, so would mine pass the husband test? I combined ground beef with pork and lamb, and did away with the crackers, but did for some reason sprinkly in some coconut flour. I put in only a little because the combined scents of coconut and ground meat was not appealing. Adding in a saucy mixture of mustard/bbq sauce gave it a nice flavor. The beauty of this slow cooker recipe was that it called to place the loaf on top of a bed of potatoes and onions in the slow cooker. I changed that from several russet potatoes to one russet, plus parsnips, carrots & sweet potato (and threw the rest into a pan with olive oil and salt/pepper to roast just before dinner)

via chattycha on flickr

meat and potatoes, and stuff

Verdict was a positive (and fun and easy to prepare). Although no grains were in the loaf, it came out binded together (my concern) and moist. I enjoy having a ton of vegetables as the side to enjoy.

slow cooker diaries: curry chicken

My challenge these days are finding great recipes that I can do in the slow cooker, that are also paleo-friendly. Curry tends to do the trick. This one is tomato-based with cauliflower, peas and onions. I edited the recipe from my new favorite resource to avoid any flour/grains. Um, I think I did. It’s been a few weeks. But it tasted great and we had leftovers, which meant I’m getting the hang of portions for family cooking. No small feat for me, mind you. The family enjoyed it, that’s my litmus test right there.

curry chicken via flickr

curry chicken in the slow cooker

Growing up we didn’t do tomato-based curries. It was … what was the base?