I have returned! Coming soon - BBQ Spare Ribs sauce from the Asian Store

I haven't posted in a while.  I had a surprise surgery, but I am back and feeling much better every day.  I can't wait until I get back to myself or better than before would be great.

I haven't been doing much cooking and what I have done, hasn't been very creative.  I also wasn't up to taking photos.  But that is changing and I will be posting some new stuff soon. (something this week)

To make a long story short, most of my posts will now be Heart/Diabetic friendly.  So feel free to suggest recipes to make or to try and make more healthy.  I have an enchilada recipe that is healthy and so good.

Where are the posts? Maybe with my voice...

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.  I've been sick and haven't cooked much.  And when I did, Mac n Cheese or Grits were not very exciting.  I also need to hit the store so that I can cook.  I'm better now, other than I have been also to talk very loud.  I keep loosing my voice.  I think some people have enjoyed it.

Today I did have a cupcake from Scratch.  They had them at work to promote the Principal Charity Golf Classic.  They had chocolate with white frosting and white with some other frosting.  I got chocolate.

It was really good.  I was good and only ate half.  The other half I shared with a friend.  So I felt better about eating it. Scratch has stores in Cedar Falls, Waterloo and West Des Moines.  And I have to day, I could eat them often.  The cake was most and the even with the frosting, not overly sweet.  Looking at the website, I want to try more flavors.  Sweet Potato, Tiramisu, Salty Dog, Fluffernutter and of course the Maple Bacon!

Pork and Cheese Papusa with slaw and hot sauce.

 A couple weeks ago, I finally got to try El Salvador Del Mundo.  I heard it was great.  Some of the reviews said it was good food, but a dive.  The food was great and the decor was nice.  It wasn't fancy, but it was nicely decorated that gave the feeling of El Salvador.  Many maps on the walls and pictures of sites.  The Papusa I had was great.  I've had them at the farmers market, but they can not compare to right there.  The pork and cheese was great.  Add the cabbage slaw and the HOT green sauce and I was in heaven.  I got one Papusa to try, but also had something else.  I wanted to try something I have never had.  So I tried the stuffed Pacaya.  I have NO idea what it was.  But it was with cheese and fried.  So how could I go wrong.  The pacaya is a palm type plant.  The cheese is stuffed in between the corn looking tentacles kind of what they looked like).  But it had a corn/asparagus taste.  Also very good with the hot green sauce.

The stuffed Pacaya.

Some cooking, reviews of gadgets and restaurants.

I need my CARBS!!!!! But low carb will do

I've have become a Cyborg.  I now have robotic parts.  Okay, one robotic part and don't be dirty.  I have an insulin pump.  It is my external pancreas.  With this, I need to count my carbohydrates aka carbs.  Since I know the body still needs carbs in small amounts, I need lower carb ideas.  So I will be testing some low carb recipes and products.  Feel free to let me know your ideas or finds.

I love pasta, pizza and bread.  Three pretty high carb foods.  So I decided to find alternatives   Let me tell you, ordering pizza sucks.  One slice of a large pepperoni pizza is 29 carbs, thanks to Pizza Hut's nutritional information on their website.

So I will start off with my low carb thin crust pizza.

I made 2 versions, Turkey Pepperoni Pizza and Greek Style Pizza.

 I found these at the store.  They are made by La Tortilla Factory and only 10g of carbs per tortilla.  And with 7g of fiber!

 In the carb calculations that I use, I can subtract and then they are only 3 carbs each!(something about fiber carbs don't get absorbed into the body).  So these made a great lunch for anything and hope to make a great thin crust for my pizza.

On the left, Tortilla shell, Roasted Red Pepper Hummus as the sauce, four slices of Budding Beef, and feta cheese.  I would also recommend added Kalamata olives, but I was out. On the right is a basic Turkey Pepperoni pizza.  I would also recommend onions and bell peppers for that one.  But again, I was out.

After about 15 minutes on 375, they are done

I know I should have used a different plate, but it was easy to grab. I of course ate both pizzas since they were low in just about everything.  

For the bread portion of my hunt, I looked online and found tons of low carb breads.  But I actually found one at Whole Foods and I liked it.  It is a pretty dense bread, but makes a yummy grilled cheese.  The bread is from Natural Ovens Bakery.  I got the Original Carb Conscious Bread.  80 calories, 1.5g of fat, and 10g of carbohydrates.  But only 4g of fiber.  If you are watching your carbs, I would recommend this.  It is a filling bread and as a PB&J, OMG I was stuffed.  It is a little pricey for bread, but with the low carb I can deal.


Now for the pasta, this is going to be hard.  I did find a pasta, but I haven't tried it yet.  It is from Food for Life Baking Company.  It is the Ezekiel 4:9.  I bough the Sprouted Whole Grain Penne Pasta.  For 2 oz of pasta, it is 210 calories, 2g of fat and 39g of carbs, but has 7g of fiber, so really only 32g of carbs for me.  Which is low for pasta.  I have not had a chance to try it yet, but when I do, I will pass it a long.  It is supposed to be Diabetic friendly, so here's hoping.

Some good low carb/no carb snacking ideas:
Hummus and carrot chips
Beef sticks
Cheese sticks/string cheese
Lunch meat
Lunch meat around cheese sticks


Again, PLEASE send me your low carb snack ideas!  And recipes!  I plan on making my own hummus soon.

Until next time...

Lettuce wraps with Hot and Sour Soup was a hit!

First off, now that I think I am over my computer issues (video card died, new chip and motherboard and new hard drive) I think I can get things back to normal.  And the best part, I lost no data!  YAY!

As promised, here is my review of Chinese Turkey Lettuce Wraps requested by Sherry.  And I added Hot n Sour Soup.  Both were great.  I love Hot n Sour Soup.  My favorite was from House of Thai, but they have closed.  So far I have not found anything close.  So I tried to make my own.  I know understand why I can't find a good soup.  This was a very long process, but worth it.  The lettuce wraps were great also.

I'll start with the Hot and Sour Soup from Silk Road Gourmet.  I found this on a random search for food blogs and after trying this soup, I'm glad I did.  Check out the recipe, and I hope you are not disappointed.  I sure wasn't.


 I like to chop my ingredients all at one time if possible.


I made this on my day off.  At lunch time, I made the Soup Base.  Which is basically a rich and flavorful stock. What I found interesting was that it had both chicken and beef broth.  Not to mention you have pork in there.  So it is almost like having 3 stocks in one.  I also started the its marinade.

 Thinly sliced pork in a bath of soy sauce.  My mouth is watering as I recap this recipe.  Dang I want some soup...

I did not add any mushrooms to the soup at all. I also didn't add any lily buds.  From what I could tell on my research of lily buds is that they don't change the taste much.  And since I wasn't up to a special trip to an Asian store to find them, I left them out.  Since I liked it, I'm okay with omitting them.  I will look for them and make this again with them and see if the make a difference.




I also loved the lettuce wraps.  And I made the with mushrooms!  I know, you can't believe it if you know me well.  But I used about half the amount and I chopped them.  Okay, I minced the heck out of them.  But I did notice they add an earthy taste.  I made a couple changes to the Chinese Turkey Lettuce Wraps, such as the mushrooms.  In stead of button mushrooms, I used baby portabella and I used 1/2 a can of water chestnuts.  I also am not a fan of iceberg lettuce, so I used roman heart leaves.  They are a bit sturdier and I feel have more flavor.

I chopped all this up earlier in the day also.  That way at dinner time it was a little faster to prepare.

Looked, proof I added mushrooms!

This looks way better when finished.

Together, they make a GREAT dinner and pretty low in carbs.  Doesn't this look tasty.   And they are both good as left overs.  I was even nice and took some of the lettuce wraps to Sherry so she could try them.  Since she is the one to suggest that I make.

Up next, LOW CARB snacks, lunch and products.  Send in your low carb ideas for me to try! 

Post coming soon

Up next, product review of low carb bread, two recipe reviews of hot n sour soup and lettuce wraps and ideas for snacks.

I'll be posting all this tomorrow.

Stir Fry Night

I forgot to post my Stir-fry night.  Sorry about that.  This was from a couple nights ago, and it was pretty good.  I tried something new.  I'll keep this one kind of short, since it isn't really a recipe and a semi homemade type recipe.

It's pretty simple:

Onions, garlic, bell peppers, carrots, snap peas, cabbage mix, chicken, jasmine rice and sauce.  The sauce I got from Gateway Market.  It is Thai Sweet Chili Sauce and Dip.

Just chopped the onions, sliced up the carrots, sliced the bell peppers and diagonally sliced the peas.  And got a slaw mix for the cabbage

I saute the onions and garlic first for a couple minutes, added the carrots and bell peppers next. I cooked them until they were soft.  

Then added the peas and cabbage and cooked them until soft.

While the veggies cooked, I made the rice and it worked great in the microwave.  Turned out nice and fluffy.

Then I added the sauce and heated it up.  Served over 1/2 cup of rice. 

Up next, Hot n Sour Soup and Lettuce Wraps.

The Superdome! From Gusto Pizza

Since I needed to spice up my day, I went to Gusto Pizza. I needed to try something new, so I got the Superdome. It was the special. It consisted of a jambalaya sauce, Graziano Andouille sausage, bell peppers, shrimp, celery, and cheese.  Mark had the Mona Lisa Pizza.  It was pretty good also.  Even with Mushrooms.  Yes, I'm trying to eat mushrooms and in SMALL amounts I can eat them.  Too many and they taste like dirt to me.

  SuperDome Pizza                                        Mona Lisa Pizza

Pasta Puttanesca, Potato Soup and some Golden Beets

I've gotten a little behind in my post, so I'm combining them.  Today's post will include 2 dinners and a side dish.




The Pasta Puttanesca is the first dish to discuss.  It was pretty good, but since there was no protein, I added steak to the dinner.








I marinated the steak in some balsamic vinaigrette and served the pasta as a side.  Chicken would have also been good to go with the pasta, but I didn't have any ready, so steak won out be default.  Not to mention, I needed some iron I'm sure.

The recipe I once again got from Budget Bytes and didn't change much.  It was good, it just was missing something for me.  I will make it again, just next time I need to add something.  Maybe an Italian dressing marinated chicken breasts.  This was an easy recipe and pretty good.



Don't let the anchovies scare you off.  They don't add a fishy taste, instead they actually add a salty taste without the salt and I feel act as a flavor enhancer.

Overall it was a pretty good dinner.  Maybe a side salad would have been nice to go with it.

The next dish was Potato Soup.  I started out with a couple different recipes, then I decided to just wing it.  and made my own version of potato soup, and it wasn't too bad.

Ingredients:

8-10 potatoes, pealed and diced
6 strips of bacon
1 onion, diced
28 oz. chicken broth (I used chicken base and water)
1 tbs ground white pepper
1 tbs thyme
1/4 cup flour
1 cup Sour Cream
1 cup Milk
1 Cup Sharp Cheddar Cheese, plus some for topping soup
2-4 Green Onions

• Peal, clean and dice potato and onion.
• Cook bacon until just browned and saute onion until browned a bit.

• Add broth, onion, bacon and potatoes to crockpot.  Cook on low 6 hours or high for 3 hours.
• 30 minutes before serving, mix flour and milk, add to crock pot with sour cream and the cup of cheese.

• Serve with chopped green onions and cheddar cheese.

I've talked before about my Honey-Balsamic Roasted Beets.  I decided to try it with Golden Beets.  And I liked the results, but will stick to red beets.  The Golden Beets are better just roasted with parsnips, rutabagas and turnips with olive oil and Italian seasoning.

 I just peeled the beets and diced them up.  Then splashed balsamic vinegar over them and drizzled honey over the top.  Roasted them for 45 minutes at 425 degrees F.

 Let them cool down and put them in the fridge  for a side dish or snack for latter.

Cuban Chorizo Stew make a great supper on a stormy night

I love chorizo, but have never cooked with it myself.  I order it a lot, but never have cooked with it.  So when I saw the recipe for Cuban Chorizo Stew, I wanted to try it.  Again, I love Budget Bytes.  She has so many great recipes.

I made Budget Bytes' Cuban Chorizo Stew.  And it was a hit!

I followed her recipe other than adding cilantro since someone doesn't like it, and used fire-roasted tomatoes since I love them.  This was so good and very easy to make.

 Isn't it a colorful stew?  On the right is just the rice.  I like Jasmine rice.  The best part, it didn't stick to the pan like other rice.

And the finished dish...

Coming soon will be some of my favorite recipes that I haven't made in a while, but are of my own creation.

Eat out most of the weekend, but did cook a GREAT soup!

I'm sorry to say, I didn't cook much this weekend.  But I did eat out and get a few fun items to share.

Saturday for lunch I went to The Fighting Burrito. It is by the Downtown Library at 309 13th St., DesMoines, IA.  I love the Crazy Horse Burrito.
"A fi ery burrito named for a people’s hero. Local sundried tomato, wild rice, white beans, our slow-cooked beef, and monterey jack cheese, and bring the heat with spicy corn salsa, jalapeños, and our Mad Jackson’s Peach Punishment Hot Sauce."

I highly recommend it.  I get it with black beans instead of white beans.  Check out their website.  They are open 7 days a week.

Saturday night I was lazy so I ordered Domino's.  I got a thin crust pepperoni and jalapeno pizza.  YUMMMY.

Sunday I walked to work and my very nice friend and coworker went to Court Ave. Brewing.  I got the Falafel Sandwich.  It was so good.  Like a veggie burger.  My plan is to make these at home some time soon.  It was a falafel burger with lettuce and onion and a cucumber dill sauce.  It was good and filling.





Sunday's for dinner I made Spinach Tortellini Soup.  This was inspired by Budget Bytes, but I made a few changes.

The recipe called for the following:
1 small onion
4 tbs minced garlic
28 oz can tomato sauce
28 oz can crushed tomato
28 oz water
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
Cracked pepper
19 oz frozen cheese tortellini
10 oz frozen spinach


I added:
 5 chicken bouillon cubes
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tbs crushed red pepper

I didn't follow the directions well, so here is what I did.
1.  Saute onions and garlic until soft
2.  Add spices and cook for about 30 sec-a minute
3.  Add tomatoes and water along with bouillon cubes.

4. Simmer on medium high for about 10 minutes.
5.  Add tortellini and spinach.  Continue to cook and stir occasionally to brake up the spinach.  Cook for about 10-20 minutes.

6.  Serve with some grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese.










Sorry for the delay on this post.  It was a very good soup and highly recommend it.