My younger NaNoWriMo days were filled with ramen soup, Diet Coke and fast food.  While there will still be an occasional Diet Coke, ramen soup and fast food do not a healthy lifestyle make.  And you know what?  Those things don’t make brains happy either.  So, while I could feasibly eat at Chipotle every night and still accomplish my weight loss goals, my bank account might not be super happy with that approach.

As I prepared my notes, outlines and character info for November, I also made an effort to stock my freezer and refrigerator with items that I knew would make good brain & body fuel whilst being as quick and effortless as possible to make ingestion-ready.  Here’s one of the things I came up with.

CHICKEN-CHEDDAR-CHIVE QUICHE TARTLETTES
Yield: Six individual tartlettes

Ingredients
base
1 pie crust
4 eggs
1/2 cup fat-free half & half
salt & pepper

for chicken-cheddar-chive quiche
1/2 cup chives
1/2 cup shredded 2% sharp cheddar cheese
6 oz. cooked chicken, chopped (Hormel’s all-natural line is good)

Special equipment
Tartlette pans (I used these, & they worked like a charm. If you don’t have tartlette pans, you can always make one big quiche & slice it into six individual pieces.)

Directions

1. Divide pie crust into six individual tart pans. I used a store-bought pie crust & cut out circles to fill the tart pans, filling any thin places with the scraps. Refrigerate.
2. Whisk together the eggs, half & half, and salt & pepper until frothy & smooth.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. Chop chives & chicken. Place in equal portions in tartlette shells. Top with cheddar.
5. Pour egg mixture in equal portions over chicken-chive-cheese mixture in shells. (FYI, I had exactly enough to fill all the shells. When in doubt, fill less, & then go back & add more accordingly.)
6. 6) Bake 25 to 35 minutes until puffed, set, and golden.
7. Let cool completely. Remove from pans & serve, or…
8. Freeze uncovered on trays.  When completely frozen, wrap in foil, sealing edges. Wrap again in parchment or place in an airtight container or ziplock bag(s). Label with content & date prepared.
9. To prepare from frozen, loosen foil & place in refrigerator to thaw for several hours.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit & bake 20-30 minutes ’til heated through.

Take note that I’ve subdivided the ingredients because you can hypothetically add anything you want.  For this version, you’re looking at 266 calories per quiche tartlette, which makes it a perfect option for adding a salad or even some soup to make a complete, low-cal meal.

The base ingredients come out to 207 calories per tartlette, so start there and add whatever you like.

Share cookies.

Like these ones.

The Way to a College Student's Heart

I’m sending my sister off to school with a batch of the Easiest Peanut Butter Cookies ever because I want people to like her.  And while I think she’s got the charm to pull it off on her own, having a little back-up never hurts.  This recipe is all over the internet, but I first saw it over at Joy the Baker’s blog, so props to her.  For the record, I added some Ghiradelli dark chocolate chips to half of these babies, and mixed in some dried cranberries to about a third, leaving [math nerds insert fraction here] of them the classical peanut butter.

EASIEST PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES EVER

Ingredients

1 cup all-natural peanut butter
1 cup sugar (you can mix brown & white if you like)
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
Any mix-ins or toppings your heart desires.

Directions

Mix the peanut butter & sugar in a mixer until well-combined.  Add the egg & the baking soda, and mix again.  Drop into walnut-sized balls (incorporating mix-ins if you like), and flatten slightly with a fork (hold onto the edges of the cookie as you do this so they don’t fall apart).  If you’d like to add chocolate chips to the top, now is the time to do it.  Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for about 10 minutes until lightly browned.  Cool for a couple of minutes on the cooking sheet, and then transfer to a cookie rack. Stack in a container and give them to your sister as she leaves for college, along with a promise of Chipotle when she comes home and a hug and/or a Peter Petrelli pound, depending on your own sisterly style.

Can end up looking as sweet and innocent as this:

LESSONS LEARNED WHILST MAKING & CONSUMING JOY THE BAKER’S FAVORITE RED VELVET CUPCAKES:

1) I’d be terrible at cleaning up a crime scene.

How did it get *there*?

Guess I'll have to burn this now, too.

2) Gruesome-looking desserts make me want to watch SWEENEY TODD and/or DORIAN GRAY, which probably makes me really weird.

Maybe I should have worn an apron.

Did you really just ask me to split the last cupcake?

3) Red Velvet Cupcakes make excellent birthday cupcakes.

The Birthday Girl

Until I step on my dog because she likes to hover right underneath my feet.

Rikku: Sneaky, but not quick.

No matter how many times I tell her to vamoose, go away, move, or just plain get out, she always scurries off and then immediately sneaks back.  This ends badly about 80 percent of the time, with her yelping and/or growling at me for stepping on her, and me shouting an expletive at her for bringing it on herself.  Such is the way of things in Ditty’s Kitchen.

Despite the dangerous tango in which Rikku and I are often engaged, I did find myself transported to some French or Italian countryside while making Panzanella this past weekend.  (When I made it again on Monday morning, however, I was immediately brought back to reality by the feeling of a knife blade entering my index finger. Lesson: Do not attempt to cut stale Tomato Basil Bread in bleary-eyed, pre-6-a.m. state.) This recipe is super easy (assuming you’re not in bleary-eyed, pre-6-a.m. state), and it’s perfect for summer produce.

Before

PANZANELLA
(recipe adapted from Simply Recipes)
Serves One

Ingredients
1 slice stale bread
1 small tomato
1 small cucumber
Red onion, diced, to taste (I used about 1 tablespoon)
Fresh basil, torn, to taste (I used about 2 tablespoons)
1 t. olive oil (or whatever you have on hand; I used canola)
Salt & pepper to taste (I used about ½ a teaspoon salt)
Garlic, minced, to taste (I used three cloves because I love garlic & am anti-vampire bite at this point in my life)

Directions

1. Cut bread, tomato & cucumber into bite-sized pieces.  Dice onion.  Mince garlic.  Tear basil into small pieces.
2. Combine all ingredients.  Cover & let mariate at least 30 minutes and up to 12 hours at room temperature.  (The original recipe is adamant about not refrigerating, lest you ruin the texture of the tomatoes, but I’d be nervous about leaving all this out to sit for 12 hours.  Just my two cents.  The marination period between 6-a.m. bleariness & lunch was about 5 hours, though, and it did just fine — no soggy bread!)

After!

For those counting, this is a really healthy, filling, and delightfully tasty recipe.  Obviously, calories will vary depending on specific ingredients, but mine came out to about 174 calories total.

A girl should never hesitate to buy herself roses or flowers of any kind. There is no need for a middle man.

(This went into my notebook as, “Cut out the middle man! Who needs him?” but I think the reworked version sounds a little more divine.)

A rose by any other name still looks pretty sitting in my parlor.

And by that same logic, a girl should never hesitate to bake herself some Double Dark Chocolate Biscotti with Pecans if the mood strikes her, or, since it will keep for up to a week in an airtight container, if she thinks the mood will strike her at any point over the next seven days.

DOUBLE DARK CHOCOLATE BISCOTTI WITH PECANS

Ingredients
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 T. baking powder
1 t. salt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar (or 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup sweetener of your choice, or all sweetener of your choice)
1 t. vanilla
2 T. canola oil + 2 T. pumpkin (I think next time I will try all pumpkin & see what happens)
1/2 cup pecans
3 oz. dark chocolate, coarsely chopped (about half a cup)

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder & salt until well combined.  Set aside.
2. In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.  (It will turn a lovely pastel yellow. Think Easter.)  Beat in vanilla, pumpkin & oil until well-combined.
3. With mixer on low, beat in flour-cocoa mixture until combined.  Fold in pecans and chocolate chunks.
4. With moistened hands, shape dough into two logs, about 2½ inches wide, on a parchment-lined baking sheet. (The original recipe said they should be nine inches long, but after my heavy modifications, they turned out to be around seven, I think. Isn’t that the way of it?  Still, I found if you know what you’re doing with your logs, a shortfalling of a couple of inches really makes very little difference.)
5. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit ’til set on top, about 20 minutes.  Remove from oven and let cool 10 minutes in pan.  Meanwhile, reduce oven heat to 325 degrees.
6. Transfer logs to cutting board & slice into 3/4-inch slices (mine yielded 19).  Bake until crisp, about 20 minutes more, turning over midway through.  Cool 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely.
7. For those keeping track, here’s the calorie breakdown.  FYI, I was using some apparently pretty high-calorie (but high-quality!) cocoa powder, so, per usual, your totals will depend on the specific ingredients you use.

Entire recipe: 2264 calories (with half Splenda, half sugar), or 120 calories per piece of delicious, decadent, wonderful biscotti

Biscotti & Frozen Yogurt

If you try the all-pumpkin route, you could cut the total down to 2036, and if you’re not averse to sweetener, you can cut it down even further to 1856.  I’ve no idea what either substitution would do to the texture, but my suspicion is it would still taste fantastic even if the texture suffered a little.  As it is, they’re a bit crumbly in an endearing sort of way.  And hey, you never know — it could improve!  So, if you try, please let me know how it goes.

This is here for no other reason than it is a pretty egg (& I used it in the bread).

I love to bake.  More accurately, I love to eat stuff I’ve baked. And that, my friends, is why I bake very rarely. But if I want to become a Domestic Goddess, I need to learn how to balance my love of eating delicious things and my love of appearing relatively fit (not to mention my continuing efforts to look fitter).

One part of this effort involves taking traditional recipes and “healthifying” them.  This would be a lot easier if I’d paid attention to the at-the-time-boring food science part of the cooking class I took in high school.  Luckily, there’s this wonderful thing called “the Internet,” which yielded this extremely helpful article from Mahalo.  In short, it tells you what various ingredients do, when you can sub them and when you really shouldn’t, and what you can use in their place.

So, with that article, I set out on an adventure I call, “Ditty Learns How to Make Whole Wheat Tomato Basil Bread.”  Now, one thing that’s helpful to know is that whole wheat flour doesn’t act like white flour.  Most baking recipes will tell you to go half and half OR ELSE.  But me?  I laugh in the face of danger.  And then when the recipe says “knead 10 times,” I go, “Um, have you seen the dough I’m working with?”  And then all those people who insisted on half white flour smirk smugly.  Some even dare to say, “I told you so.”  And I stare back defiantly, hands covered in sticky dough, and say, “Screw you and your kneading and your white flour!  I shall put this dough into loaf pans instead, and it will be GLORIOUS!”

And you know what?  It was.

WHOLE WHEAT TOMATO BASIL BREAD
(aka, Eff the Naysayers Bread)

Ingredients
2.5 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1 1/2 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
1/2 cup freshly chopped basil
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained, chopped
1 cup Greek yogurt (I used two 5.3-oz. containers of Oikos 0% plain)
1 egg
1/3 cup water (or enough to help dough come together)

Directions

1. In medium bowl, combine flour, parmesan, baking soda, salt & basil. Mix well.
2. Add yogurt, egg, tomatoes and water. Stir (a wooden spoon works well) ’til just moistened.
3. Turn onto floured surface and shape into two loaves.  Place in PAM’d loaf pans.
4. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit 30-35 minutes until lightly browned.  Remove from sheet and let cool completely.

Victory!

For anyone keeping track, the total calories in both loaves was about 1400 calories.  I sliced mine into 8 pieces each, which came out to 88 calories a slice.  Once it’s cooled, store it in an airtight container or a ziplock bag to keep it fresh for a few days.  (Or leave a couple of slices out, with which to make Panzanella — stay tuned for the recipe!)

Now, during said bitching, I declared that I was considering giving up the writing dream in favor of becoming a Domestic Goddess.  This is sort of laughable considering the state of my house.  Case in point, I found myself washing four wine glasses whilst transforming the Place Where Dirty Dishes Go To Die back into the Kitchen.  Also, I’m pretty sure I had about 98 percent of my silverware and 75 percent of my drinking glasses in the sink at one point. See?

Yikes.

But look! Art from the mess!  Kind of.

Bubbles!

About an hour and a half later, I had an extra large dish-drying rack (known to some as a dishwasher, but mine doesn’t work very well, so I handwash & use it as a drying rack, which perhaps partly explains the normal state of my kitchen) full of clean dishes and pruny fingers.

At this point, I was much too tired to worry about cooking, so I went to Chipotle, where I was given a double-free burrito bol.  How does something become double free, you ask?  Well, first you have to be given a free burrito card by the super nice manager because you frequent his restaurant a minimum of four times a week, and then you have to be told by the super awesome cashier to just save the card for later for no reason other than the super awesome cashier is awesome.  It was intense.  I’m not sure what it means.  But it was a double-free burrito bol all the way.  And it was so beautiful.

After I refueled, I put away all the dishes and decided I needed to do something with the new potatoes that had been sitting on my counter amidst the dirty dishes (but not touching them!) for a few weeks.  The fact that they had not sprouted indicated to me that they were obviously Magical New Potatoes.  Here’s what I did.

Magical New Potato Oven Fries

1) Cut new potatoes into rectangular prisms (nerd alert!) about a centimeter on each side. Roughly. Don’t stress about it, or your bad vibes will make it into the new potatoes & squeeze out the magical vibes.

2) Put the prisms (they’re magical, so it’s OK to call them that) into a container of some sort that will allow you to shake it without splattering yourself with the liquid we’re about to add.  Four about four smallish new potatoes (188 grams of prisms, if you’re counting), I used 1 teaspoon canola oil (or whatever you have on hand), about a half a teaspoon of salt, some pepper, some garlic powder, and a few shakes of Chili Garlic Chalula hot sauce.  Just dump it all on top, then put the lid on the container, and shake your groove thang. (Yeah, I know I can’t pull that off. Had to try, though.)

3) Now here’s where things get a little tricky.  You need an oven-proof cooling rack of some sort.  I didn’t know if mine was oven-proof or not.  I took a risk.  It appears to have paid off.  You should probably try to find out before you put it in the oven, especially if your new potatoes are not magical.  Place the cooling rack on a rimmed baking sheet, and then PAM it up.  Then, place the prisms on the cooling rack so they’re not touching (and hopefully so they won’t fall through the spaces in the rack).

4) Lastly, place your new Magic New Potato Cooking Contraption in a 450-degrees-Fahrenheit oven & cook until crisp, about 10 minutes.

That’s it.  Take ‘em out, let ‘em cool, and eat ‘em.

My batch yielded a nice portion of fries, probably enough for two, though at a grand total of about 165 calories, I’ll probably just eat them all in one sitting.  I’m saving them for lunch tomorrow, when they’ll be less crisp, but the desire for cookies & cream frozen yogurt outweighed my desire for oven fries tonight.

I may have a long ways to go in my Domestic Goddess Training, and it’ll probably be derailed by my crazy desire to write again, but I figure I’ve got a good start.  At least I have clean silverware again.

But now that things have slowed down a bit, I’m trying to get my kitchen back in order.  I can’t post any of my own pictures for this recipe because you might get a glimpse of the state of my kitchen, and then you would call FEMA.  And that would really throw a wrench into my weekend plans.

So, that being said, I’ve recently discovered quinoa.  It’s pronounced keen-wa, as opposed to kee-noah, as I said when I asked the grocery store employee to help me find it.  Turns out he didn’t have any clue as to what it was anyway, so I was spared looking like an idiot to the general public.  Until now, I guess.  But hey, that’s what blogs are for, right?  If you are clueless like I was, quinoa’s a magical grain that has a chewy texture and a nutty flavor.  You can read all about its magical properties here.  Suffice to say, it’s super crazy healthy.  Here are a couple of concoctions I’ve enjoyed so far.

First, you start with quinoa.  I’ve been using Bob’s Mill Organic Whole-Grain quinoa, which comes pre-rinsed (e.g., it’s super easy to prepare).

Whatever brand you buy, just follow the directions on the package.  It’s handy to prepare several servings at once so you can have it pre-cooked and on hand throughout the week.

Once you’ve got that, take one serving (I never measured, but I’m guessing about 3/4 of a cup cooked), add a little kosher salt and ground black pepper.  From there, it’s sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure novel.

1. If you’re craving something salty and sassy and sort of Mexican, go to Adventure No. 1.
2. If you’re craving something crunchy and complex, a melding of tastes — and maybe worlds! — skip ahead to Adventure No. 2.

Adventure No. 1

You can really add these in any quantity for which you have room.  I went with half a medium avocado, one diced roma tomato, and 1 slice of pepperjack cheese cut up into bits for about 400 calories.

Adventure No. 2

This one consisted of one serving quinoa, about a third of a cup fresh broccoli florettes, a quarter cup of feta, and two tablespoons of raisins.  I heated the quinoa and broccoli in the microwave for a minute, added the feta and microwaved another minute, and then stirred in the raisins.  It was delicious, and only 295 calories.

I’m sure quinoa and I have many more adventures ahead of us.  If you’ve been hesitant about trying out this new grain, which is all over the health blogs these days, don’t fret.  I can’t vouch for other brands, but Bob’s Mill makes it super easy to jump right in.  (The bag even has the pronunciation guide on it, which is how I learned to say it the right way!) Good luck, and happy exploring.

P.S.
If any of you out there have your own favorite quinoa concoctions, please share them with me in the comments!  I’m always looking for new, easy and nutritious recipes to try out.

To my horror, I discovered that there is apparently a canned pumpkin shortage. My local grocery store has ZERO cans of pumpkin, and they won’t until who knows when.  But I am intrepid, people.  I may not have left the store with a can of pumpkin, but I did leave the store with an actual sugar pumpkin, determined to figure out how to turn it into Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies.

Turns out it’s not too hard.  I used the microwave method, because it was the quickest.  Here’s how.

1. Split your pumpkin in half.
2. Remove the seeds and stringy gunk.
3. Weigh your pumpkin.
4. Microwave your pumpkin one minute per pound.
5. Remove skin, purée in a food processor or blender.

And voilà! Your very own fresh pumpkin purée.  It’ll keep two or three days in an airtight container in your fridge or a couple of months in your freezer.

Now, here’s where things get yummy.

Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies
makes approximately 24 cookies
adapted from She’s in the Kitchen

Ingredients
12 T. unsalted butter
½ cup sugar
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
2 T. water
½ T. vanilla
2/3 cup flour
1 t. cinnamon
1/8 t. nutmeg
1 t. salt
½ t. baking soda
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup fresh pumpkin purée (from half a pumpkin)
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Cream the butter and sugars.  Beat in the egg.  Add the water and vanilla.  Sift together the dry ingredients and mix in.  Add the oats and mix well.  Mix in the pecans.  Drop into approximately 2-inch-sized lumps and flatten slightly.  Bake at 350º F until golden brown, about 15-17 minutes.  Let cool on cookie sheet for a few minutes, and then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

These cookies turn out sort of cakey due to the addition of the pumpkin, but I think the texture works pretty well.  And apparently so did everyone else because they were distributed Saturday and gone Sunday.

Now here’s the bonus.  Remember those pumpkin seeds you have since you had to make your own pumpkin purée because of the dastardly pumpkin shortage?  Well, when life hands you pumpkin seeds, you make Martha Stewart’s Sweet and Spicy Pumpkin Seeds, of course.  I cheated and only baked them 20 minutes instead of the recommended hour because I had to get the cookies in the oven, but they turned out all right anyway.  After this weekend, I’m thinking this canned pumpkin shortage may not turn out to be such a bad thing after all.

]]> http://dittycooks.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/pumpkin-oatmeal-cookies-sweetspicysalty-seeds/feed/ 1 ditty1013 IMG_4642 IMG_4645 IMG_4646 http://dittycooks.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/faux-bananas-foster/ http://dittycooks.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/faux-bananas-foster/#comments Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:16:57 +0000 Elizabeth Ditty http://dittycooks.wordpress.com/?p=151 ]]> Sometimes you just need something quick and sweet that will not completely blow your diet.  Last night I had one of those moments.  I also had a couple of bananas that were only going to last a couple more days.  So I turned to Faux Bananas Foster.  Now, the reason it’s faux is because it only has three ingredients, and the main ones missing are rum and ice cream.  Now, you could certainly add those, of course, and it would still be easy, but the it wouldn’t fit that annoying third criterion I mentioned above.

Slice up a couple of bananas, toss them into a nonstick skillet with a tablespoon (or less) of some form of butter or margarine (I like Smart Balance, as it’s got a nicer taste than your average margarine, in my opinion), and a couple of tablespoons (or more) of brown sugar.  Let it cook down, stirring occasionally, until it resembles a brownish, gooey sludge (hence no pictures), probably about 10 minutes.  That’s all it takes.

My version had about 300 calories and served as my dinner, in case you’re keeping track of those sorts of things.  You could take it down even further if you wanted to use Splenda Brown Sugar Blend (which I’ve used in the past, and it works just fine).  Enjoy.

STATS
Prep time: 0 minutes
Cook time: 10 minutes
Eaten whilst: Watching Community.*

*If you did not watch Community on NBC last night, I highly recommend that you do so.  I thought it was just fantastic.  Any show that starts off with a tribute to The Breakfast Club is on the right track, don’t you think?