Lazy Man's Cabbage Rolls

We are usually pretty busy on the weekends and often times I don't have enough time or patience to make a good weekend meal. This is the biggest hurdle facing me as I try to make the last few recipes from my cooking group, as they all take a bit longer to prepare and cook. My friend Amber (check out her real estate blog) posted this recipe and it's perfect for the cold dreary weather we're experiencing, it's also a good hearty meal to eat while watching college football. Which is what we've done all day,well minus a nap or two!

Lazy Man's Cabbage Rolls

1 1/2 lbs ground meat
1/2 chopped onion
1 lg. can tomato sauce
1 head of cabbage, chopped
1 c. uncooked brown rice
1 tsp. salt
2 - 14 oz. cans beef broth
pepper, to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350. Brown meat over medium heat. Drain off the fat.

2. In a 5 qt. (11x15") baking dish combine onion, tomato sauce, cabbage, rice, salt & pepper; add meat.

3. Pour broth over the mixture and bake covered for 1 hour.

4. Stir, replace cover, and bake an additional 30 minutes.


Yield: A lot! Probably 10-12 servings.

Thoughts: Amber said she generally uses a combination of ground beef & pork, I just used ground beef. I also cooked the onion along with the ground beef and only used half a head of cabbage. I followed Amber's suggestion for topping each individual serving with mozzarella cheese, though just about any type of cheese would be good! Someone in our group said she served the dish along with mashed potatoes and I thought that would be really good. Especially served over garlic mashed potatoes!

Jambalaya

This was the first week of our new session for my cooking group and our theme this round is "fall." I switched weeks with someone, so I ended up having to post the first recipe. After a lot of debate I ended up going with jambalaya. I decided to go with this recipe because it's filling, it's versatile, the entire dish can be made in one pot and is a good for watching football!

Jambalaya is a lot like chili, everyone has a recipe and believes theirs is the best. As this was my first time making jambalaya, I look forward to trying out other versions. You can make jambalaya as healthy or unhealthy as you wish. Healthier choices include: brown rice (will increase your cooking time), low sodium products, white meat chicken and turkey sausage.

I used chicken breast instead of thigh and added turkey sausage because it's what I had. I also omitted the shrimp because we didn't have any on hand. Green onions make an excellent substitution for scallions. I had some problems with the meat & rice cooking in the begining. I'm pretty sure it was because my pot wasn't big enough, as it was nowhere near close to being done in the 20 minutes the recipe indicated. I put the mixture in a larger pot and cooked until finished. While I was looking around online, I noticed a lot of people cook theirs in the oven, I think I might try that next time around.

I served the jambalaya with sourdough bread and some white wine. The husband and I both thought the jambalaya was delicious and it made even better leftovers!

Chicken & Cashew Stir-Fry.

My cooking group has started the second session this week and I'm still trying to make all the recipes from our first session! I'm almost caught up, just a few more to go.

Chicken & Cashew Stir-Fry via Annie's Eats (by way of Liz's Cooking Blog, by way of Gourmet magazine [May 2007]) - how's that for some citations?!?!

I added some sugar snap peas, used green onions instead of the scallions, used chicken breasts and doubled the sauce. I apparently got a little heavy handed with the red pepper flakes so I added some hoisin sauce to counter the spiciness. I agree with some of the reviews on Epicurious which suggested adding additional vegetables - bok choy, mushrooms, onions, broccoli, water chestnuts, you get the idea. Served over brown rice this is a super quick weeknight dinner.

I am going to enter this into Joelen of Joelen's Culinary Adventures Chinese Cuisine Adventure. Check out her blog, she's amazingly talented and has all these great cooking parties & classes, makes me wish I lived in Chicago!

Chicken Lettuce Wraps.

I took advantage of Trader Joe's wonderful selection of frozen appetizers and two tried & true recipes for my recent book club meeting. A friend, who makes delicious lettuce wraps, suggested I go with the knock-off PF Chang's recipe. She was right, they were delicious and the sauce was perfect. The rice recipe is courtesy of America's Test Kitchen and is seriously the most perfect rice I have ever made, not to mention it's easy to prepare and tastes great! I struggle with rice, it's a joke in our house, I almost always ruin real from scratch rice. Who am I kidding I have problems with Rice-a-Roni too. So this recipe is a life saver for me and since I've made it more than once I know it wasn't a fluke!

Appetizer's

Trader Joe's vegetable egg rolls with sweet & sour sauce.

Trader Joe's pork & chicken potstickers with potsticker dipping sauce. We also had steamed edamame sprinkled with Kosher salt.

Main Course

Chicken lettuce wraps, with Chinese sticky rice and steamed Asian style vegetables.

For dessert I had brownies, just used a box mix I had on hand though I did add some mini-marshmallows for fun! The brownies were topped with ice cream - either cookie dough or cookies and cream. I'm making myself hungry as I think about this.........delicious! Oh and fortune cookies too, because the meal wouldn't be complete without them!

Recipes I've Missed.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I'm part of an online cooking club. Someone posts a recipe, we make it & then report what we thought of it, etc. This week the fourth recipe was posted and I'm sad to say I've only participated in one, and it was the one I posted. Bad huh? Here's a recap of what's been cooked so far. Let me know if you make any of these and your thoughts, etc.

Week 1 -I just didn't have time to make it, I'll come back to it eventually. Here's the recipe: http://www.rachaelraymag.com/recipes/beef-pork-lamb-recipes/grilled-pork-chops-with-peachy-hot-salsa/article.html

Week 3 - The husband does not like sweet & sour chicken. I thought about making a scaled down portion for my lunch, but it just seemed like a lot of work for lunch. I may or may not come back to it, haven't decided. Here's the recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/lf_hl_eatingwell/recipe/0,3190,FOOD_30878_100936_,00.html

Week 4 - Neither one of us is a fan of fruit & meat combinations. Sweet & savory just usually doesn't do it for me. I doubt I'd ever make this, but here's the recipe:

Weight Watchers Apple Chicken

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 apples, unpeeled,cored and thickly sliced
1 onion, sliced
1/2 cup apple cider or apple juice
1 1/2 teaspoons cider vinegar
1 teaspoon cornstarch

1. Sprinkle chicken with thyme, salt and pepper.
2. In large fry-pan, heat half of the oil over medium high heat; brown chicken all over.
3. Transfer to plate.
4. Add remaining oil to fry-pan.
5. Cook apples and onion, stirring occasionally, until golden, about 5 minutes.
6. Add apple cider, bring to boil, stirring and scraping up brown bits from pan.
7. Return chicken to fry-pan.
8. Cover and cook over medium low heat, turning once, until no longer pink inside (about 7 minutes).
9. Transfer chicken to serving platter.
10. Whisk vinegar with cornstarch; whisk into fry-pan and cook, stirring, until glossy and thickened (about 1 minute).
11. Pour over chicken.

WW POINTS per serving: 5
Nutritional information per serving: 241 calories, 8.4g fat, 2.1g fiber

4 servings

Red Beans, Sausage and Rice.

I admit I'm not that great at coming up with catchy titles for dishes I concoct - hence this one. However, the title, like the dish, is pretty straightforward, it's also simple to make and delicious to eat! This dish was inspired by a dinner our friends made while on vacation this summer and could have more (or less) ingredients (onion & celery for starters) added to suite your individual taste buds and whatever ingredients you happen to have on hand. Quick, simple and great for cold winter nights.

Red Beans, Sausage and Rice

1 green pepper, chopped
2 links smoked sausage
1 box Spanish rice (Rice A Roni Whole Grain Blends)
1 can diced tomatoes, sorta drained (no salt added variety)
1/2 pint red kidney beans
Pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, hot sauce, to taste

1. Saute the green pepper in a small amount of olive oil in a large skillet. Add the sausage and continue to cook, about 10 - 12 minutes. Drain peppers and sausage and return to the skillet.

2. Cook rice and add to the sausage and peppers. Add the tomatoes and kidney beans; stir all the contents together. Add any additional spices to taste. Cover with a lid and cook on medium until all ingredients are heated through.

Yield: four servings
Recipe obtained from: me.

Simple and delicious.

It's been awhile since I've looked at other food blogs, so this past weekend I devoted some Internet time to seeing what others have been making in the last few weeks. I found several new recipes and ideas for future recipes, but one recipe in particular stayed with me. I love meals that not only taste delicious, but are very easy to prepare and the recipes for Mojo Crock Pot Chicken & Healthier Taco Rice from A Taste of Tina fit the bill perfectly.

Essentially I followed Tina's recipes exactly as written. I made a couple of modifications, but those were mainly for personal preferences. I omitted the onions in both dishes because I don't like them, though I did add a few shakes of dried onion to the chicken mixture. To the rice I added some frozen corn and a can of died tomatoes. I wrapped the chicken in a flour tortilla and topped it with black beans, Monterey Jack cheese and lettuce.

I had some problems with the rice, simply because for the life of me I can not make rice. During my take two with the rice, the husband even told me I shouldn't make rice anymore. Eventually, I did finish the rice and I thought it was good (the husband isn't a fan of brown rice anyway, so his opinion doesn't count). And perfecting the art of cooking rice has shot to my list of goals to complete for 2008!

Faking It.

Lesson #1 - You can always add more, but you can never take out.

This recipe was supposed to be part of a soup I sort of just threw together. Of course sometimes when one throws stuff together, it doesn't come out well and this soup was an example of one of those times. It should have been delicious and it was until I added one too many jalapenos without thinking or tasting. I'm talking four-five worth - stupid I know. I de-seeded them so I wasn't anticipating them being that hot, um yeah, they were.

In addition to the the massive amount of jalapenos, the soup included: black beans, pinto beans, tomatoes, radish, tomato juice, s&p, cilantro, basil, chicken & vegetable broth, avocado & the Chipotle rice - I think that's it. Really I just added a whole bunch of stuff I thought would be good in a soup and blended it all up in the food processor. Oh and in case you're wondering we sort of salvaged the soup, we just took two ladle's full and added more broth - vegetable because it was all I had left. It was still pretty spicy, but at least eatable and it really was pretty good.

Now even though the jalapenos took center stage, the star of the soup was the knock-off Chipotle rice! Yeah, this stuff was good. It wasn't the exact consistency of the actual restaurant's, but I was impatient, hungry and certainly frustrated by the time it was finished. If you think Chipotle's rice is somewhat crack-like, I urge you to try this recipe out.

As a PSA, I'll advise you to steer clear of the nutritional content link on the Chipotle Fan website, if you'd like to remain in the dark about what a trip to Chipotle will cost you! You've been warned.

Chipotle's Basmati Rice
1 tsp. Vegetable oil or butter
2 tsp. Fresh cilantro
2/3 c. White basmati rice
1 c. Water
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 Lime


1. In a 2-quart heavy saucepan, heat oil or butter over low heat, stirring occasionally until melted. Add rice and lime juice, stir for 1 minute. Add water and salt, bring to a full rolling boil. At boiling, cover, turn down to simmer over low heat until rice is tender and the water is absorbed, about 25 minutes. Fluff rice with a fork.


Yield: 2-3 servings
Recipe obtained from: Chipotle Fan


What I did: You'll notice the recipe calls for cilantro, yet it's not added in the instructions. When I made this, I didn't even add the cilantro - since the rice was a base for soup. But I think I'll add it right at the end next time. Other than the cilantro, I followed the recipe exactly and was rewarded with delicious "almost" like Chipotle style rice.