We're having friends over tonight for dinner! I like this menu because it's fairly easy to prep in advance and has a lot of delicious and healthy food in it... yum yum.
Menu:
Turkey Divan Casserole (1/4 of recipe = 10g carbs)
Roasted Carrots (3 oz = 7g carbs
Brown Rice (3/4 cup cooked = 28g carbs)
Cranberry-Feta Salad (1 serving = 10 carbs)
Total: 55g carbs.
We got Chicken Divan from a friend as part of a baby meal after Mary was born, and LOVED it. Basically, combine cooked chicken, cooked broccoli/cauliflower, mushroom soup, milk, and cheddar cheese in a casserole dish, then bake and enjoy! I add mushrooms for more bulk and flavor, and use thyme to season. I don't know how I managed to avoid knowing about this casserole, but it is now a standard at our house! It's easy, delicious, and super low-carb. This is Turkey Divan because I got a cheap cheap turkey a few weeks ago. I roasted it last week and we're eating the leftovers this week. Also? This recipe makes me want to drawl "It's di-vahhhhhhn, dahling,' whenever I talk about it.
Turkey (or Chicken) Divan: Combine 1.5 cups cooked turkey or chicken, 1 cup cooked broccoli, and 1 cup mushrooms in a casserole dish. In a separate bowl, mix 1 can cream of mushroom soup and 1/3 cup milk. Add salt, pepper, and thyme to taste (I use a lot) (we like flavor). Pour sauce over the casserole dish and stir a bit to coat it all. Sprinkle 1/3 cup cheese on top. Bake at 450 for 15-20 minutes until the cheese is bubbly.
Roasted Carrots: From The Pioneer Woman Cooks! Recipe here. I use dried thyme and baby carrots. Because that's how I roll. I combined everything ahead of time and just popped it in the oven when I started prepping the Divan (di-vaaahhhhhhhn).
Brown Rice: Durrr. I'm actually not very good at cooking rice (or beans, or eggs (used to be, better now), or not burning grilled cheese. I can frost a wedding cake but I can't cook rice. Somebody notify the grandmother's league!
Well, like the eggs, I'm getting better at the rice. It's almost always cooked through now and rarely burnt on the bottom. Well done!
Did you know you can make those handy microwavable frozen rice packets at home? That's what I did when I made rice for turkey curry earlier this week. Go here for details.
Also I love brown rice. I think it tastes so much better than white rice. Especially short-grain, slightly sticky brown rice. Yay flavor.
Cranberry-feta salad: Romaine lettuce, sliced onions, dried cranberries, feta cheese, balsamic vinaigrette dressing. One of our standbys.
That's it! I'm always looking for new low-carb and delicious vegetable-based recipes.... we'll see what I find next.
Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Recipe Review: Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
This recipe is from Allrecipes.com. See the original recipe here.
With 4.5 stars and almost 2,800 reviews, I figured this one was a sure-fire hit. Plus, they're chocolate chip cookies! Even the recipe provided on the back of the bag turns out great cookies. Reading reviews like these convinced me I had found a winner.
"They're rich and buttery, with crispy outsides, and a soft but chewey [sic] inside."
"They turn out fabulous every time!"
"I like many others have been searching and searching for a really good chocolate chip cookie recipe and I finally found it!"
Also? Read the name! I doubted that level of hubris would be allowed to remain long with so many reviews.
However, this is what I got: 40 crunchy, too-thin cookies, with the chips left stranded like the islands of an ancient sea. They don't taste... bad, although how you could get a bad-tasting result from a recipe involving almost as much sugar as flour, I'm not sure. We've been eating them (for, ahem, breakfast) (with a glass of milk! that makes it healthy!) (Right?) and enjoying the chocolatey goodness, but I'm certainly not going to put them out at the cookie-swap this Friday.
So what happened? I think that I didn't use enough flour. The dough is really sticky and when it runs away like that it's generally considered to be lack of thickening agent, aka flour. I've heard all about how scooping flour out of the bin with the measuring cup packs it in and leads to doughy and bland goodies, so this time (because I really wanted these to be great!) I used a spoon to fill my measuring cup. Then I weighed the flour (taring out the weight of the cup of course) and proceeded to weigh out the rest of the flour I needed. I guess it was... not enough? Perhaps the original recipe relied upon people doing the regular scoop method? I doubled the recipe so I still have half of the dough. I'm going to add more flour to it and try again.
Update: I added 4 oz more flour and they cooked up a treat! But they're still not as awesome as those reviews suggested. They're good. I mean, they're chocolate-mint chip cookies. But the best? Maybe not.
With 4.5 stars and almost 2,800 reviews, I figured this one was a sure-fire hit. Plus, they're chocolate chip cookies! Even the recipe provided on the back of the bag turns out great cookies. Reading reviews like these convinced me I had found a winner.
"They're rich and buttery, with crispy outsides, and a soft but chewey [sic] inside."
"They turn out fabulous every time!"
"I like many others have been searching and searching for a really good chocolate chip cookie recipe and I finally found it!"
Also? Read the name! I doubted that level of hubris would be allowed to remain long with so many reviews.
However, this is what I got: 40 crunchy, too-thin cookies, with the chips left stranded like the islands of an ancient sea. They don't taste... bad, although how you could get a bad-tasting result from a recipe involving almost as much sugar as flour, I'm not sure. We've been eating them (for, ahem, breakfast) (with a glass of milk! that makes it healthy!) (Right?) and enjoying the chocolatey goodness, but I'm certainly not going to put them out at the cookie-swap this Friday.
So what happened? I think that I didn't use enough flour. The dough is really sticky and when it runs away like that it's generally considered to be lack of thickening agent, aka flour. I've heard all about how scooping flour out of the bin with the measuring cup packs it in and leads to doughy and bland goodies, so this time (because I really wanted these to be great!) I used a spoon to fill my measuring cup. Then I weighed the flour (taring out the weight of the cup of course) and proceeded to weigh out the rest of the flour I needed. I guess it was... not enough? Perhaps the original recipe relied upon people doing the regular scoop method? I doubled the recipe so I still have half of the dough. I'm going to add more flour to it and try again.
Update: I added 4 oz more flour and they cooked up a treat! But they're still not as awesome as those reviews suggested. They're good. I mean, they're chocolate-mint chip cookies. But the best? Maybe not.
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