Snickerdoodles

I wasn’t really planning on making a desert tonight since I decided to forego my cannoli plan, but after dinner J wanted something and if I have eggs then I usually don’t mind baking, so I did.  He had yet another interesting request today.  Sometimes he really shocks me in what foods come to his mind.  Chocolate is always on my brain so I suggested brownies but he vetoed that and suggested “those cinnamon cookies”.   Being a Yankee I don’t think he had ever had snickerdoodles until I made them for him and I’ve only made them for him a couple of times, so I thought it was odd that he thought of them.

¼ cup butter, softened

¼ cup shortening

¾ cup sugar

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla

1 1/3 cup and 1 tbs flour

1 tsp cream of tartar

½ tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

¼ tsp cinnamon

2 tbs sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Cream together the butter, shortening, ¾ cup sugar, egg and vanilla until fluffy and the butter and shortening are not clumpy.  Blend in the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, and ¼ tsp cinnamon.  Roll 1” balls of dough in the sugar and cinnamon mixture and place 2 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet.

Bake 8-10 minutes or until set but not hard, the tops should look cracked from where they spread.  Remove immediately from the pan and allow to cool on a rack.

24 cookies, 95 calories, 4 g fat each

I was able to make this batter and was just starting to load my cookie sheet when the oven had finished preheating, so I have a real hard time understanding why people use mixes.  Making things from scratch always taste better and don’t always take more effort or time, so no excuses.

Artichoke and Sun-Dried Tomato Ravioli

Ok so I have a confession.  Our goal was to try to only go out to eat one night a week, and so far we’re not doing too well.  This week we were going to go out on Friday and then I was going to make ravioli on Saturday.  We ended up going out for dinner on Friday, actually not to Boondoggles pat on back, but then after dinner we thought, well we can either go home and watch the Olympics, or we can go to Bdogs and watch the Olympics, so guess what we did. 

Then on Saturday, Since J would be at work I was going to have all sorts of time to clean the house then prep everything for a big meal of homemade ravioli and was also thinking of attempting to make cannolis.  After breakfast he kind of put a wrench in my plan for the day and decided he didn’t have enough work to do to go in, which I really prefer it just changed my plans.  It was nice because he stayed home and helped me clean the house (Score) and then we were able to hang out all day, but of course he was feeling more like going out Saturday night than my homemade ravioli (I know, I think homemade ravioli sounds pretty amazing too), and I didn’t argue.  So as we were trying to decide where to go to dinner we came up with a few places that sounded good, but only two of them would we be able to watch the Olympics and one was 30 minutes away and the other 5, so to Bdogs we go again.  I swear, twice in one weekend, that's even a lot for us. 

But then on Sunday I actually do get to make my ravioli and for my first time they were pretty good if I do say so myself.  I looked at a couple other recipes to try to figure out filling proportions and ended up being pretty far off.  I ended up with more filling than pasta and made more servings than I thought I was.  I also don’t think my calorie estimate is going to be very accurate today because of all this so today calories don’t exist.

8 oz ricotta cheese

1 cup artichoke hearts, diced

½ cup sun-dried tomatoes, diced

1 egg, beaten

Salt and pepper to taste

6 sheets of pasta about 2 inches wide rolled to setting 2

1 egg white

Mix the cheese, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, whole egg and salt and pepper in a medium bowl until well combined.  After rolling out the pasta lay it on the table and place spoonfuls of filling down it such that there is about 1 inch between each spoonful and they are about ½ inch from the edges.  Paint around the filling with a brush or paper towel dipped in the egg white.  Egg whites are a chef’s glue, this will get the two layers of pasta to stick together.  Take a second sheet of pasta and lay it on top.  Press down around the filling until it feels well sealed then cut in between each one to make the individual raviolis.  Set aside while you prepare the rest but don’t stack them on top of each other or they will stick together.  Once they are all done cook in a pot of boiling water until they float, about 2-4 minutes.  

This ended up making 3 servings and I still had about ¾ cup worth of filling left over, I didn’t do too well on proportions today.

Alone I think these tasted just fine and I don’t really think they needed a sauce, but I made a sage butter sauce anyway.

3 tbs butter, melted

1 tbs chopped fresh sage

That’s it just pour it over the ravioli.  I don’t know that the butter really added a lot, other than calories that I am ignoring today, but I do think the sage did, so you probably could just add a little sage to the filling and get the same effect, I think the sage complimented the filling pretty well.

I served this with a mixed green salad with dried apricots, pecans, and red wine vinegar/olive oil dressing and spaghetti squash (only because I had a craving not because it really went with the meal).

This week groceries were $55 and made 17 meals at $3.23, could be better but not too bad at all.

Falafel and Tzatziki

Last night I had another interesting request, falafel.  I do realize how lucky I am to have a husband who wants to try things other than meat and potatoes and will eat pretty much anything I put in front of him.  This was super easy but how I made it turned out to not be as low cal as I normally like. There were two things I did that I probably should have thought about before eating. Sometimes I forget to count calories until after I've already eaten, not quite as effective that way.  First, I pan fried the patties the whole time, I probably could have seared the outside to get a good crisp then baked them on a rack to heat them through.  Second, those pita pockets were deceptively high in calories, each one was 160 calories so even though we needed 2 pockets worth of falafel, we didn’t really need to pita pockets.

Falafel

1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed

1 tbs flat leaf parsley

1 small onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp ground cumin

Salt and pepper to taste

Olive oil

4 whole wheat pita pockets

Add everything but the oil to a food processor and pulse until the beans and onions are a course meal.  Form the mixture into 10 patties.  If it’s not sticking add a little water.  Heat enough olive oil to coat the bottom of a skillet to medium heat.  Pan fry the patties and turn so both sides are browned and crispy.  Remove the patties from the skillet to drain on a plate with paper towels. 

Tzatziki

¾ cup Greek yogurt

½ cucumber, diced

1 tsp lemon juice

1 clove garlic, minced

Salt to taste

You need your food processor again.  Add everything to the food processor and pulse until the cucumber is no longer chunky.

And that’s it, super simple.  I was a little rushed last night so this was all I did, but if you have a little bit of extra time, to make the tzatziki better you can put the yogurt in a cheese cloth or non-terry cloth kitchen towel and drain out the water.  There is most likely a few different things in your kitchen you could use to do this.  You could use a colander over a bowl or one of those big strainers set over a bowl. 

Serves 2, for the falafel, pita pockets and tzatziki it was 750 calories and 21 g fat.  One pita pocket and less olive oil would have helped a lot.

With this I had a salad with mixed greens, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese, and a balsamic vinegar/olive oil dressing.

Lemon Blueberry Poppyseed Mini Muffins

Last night was our Bible study, so it was leftovers, no time to cook dinner.  I did make some mini muffins to take with us though.  I found this recipe a few months ago and have been wanting to try it but haven’t had anything to do with a batch of muffins other than eat them myself.   They turned out really well I think, and I assume everyone else agreed as they were all eaten.  Okay I may have eaten 4 of them before we even left, but hey that’s beside the point.

1 cup all purpose flour

½ tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

½ cup milk

1 tbs lemon juice

½ cup sugar

¼ cup unsalted butter, room temperature

Zest from 1 lemon

1 large egg

1/8 cup poppy seeds

18 blueberries, frozen is fine

Position rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350.  Grease a mini muffin pan or line with paper liners.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.  Whisk the milk and lemon juice in a bowl and set aside to curdle (this makes buttermilk just in case anyone was unaware).  Using an electric mixer, beat sugar, butter and lemon peel until light and fluffy, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl.  Beat dry ingredients in 3 additions alternating with the buttermilk in 2 additions.  Mix just until blended.  Mix in the poppy seeds.

Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin in heaping tablespoons.  Add a blueberry to the center of each muffin and smooth the hole over so the blueberry is covered.

Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.  The recipe said 22-24 minutes, but mine were done in 16.  They also didn’t add blueberries so I guess that cut back on the time quite a bit.

Makes 18 mini muffins, each muffin is 85 calories and 3 g fat

Baked Ziti with Turkey Meatballs

Last night was the big meal to get us through lunches for the rest of the week, but you could easily cut this recipe in half for just 4 servings.  This is pretty simple but for me it’s good comfort food, I can’t turn down anything with pasta and cheese.  

2 lbs 99/1 ground turkey

1 cup pine nuts

1 cup bread crumbs

2 eggs, beaten

olive oil

1 cup parmesan cheese

4 oz mozzarella cheese

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1 tsp oregano

1/4 tsp garlic powder

28 oz canned diced tomatoes with basil and oregano

16 oz whole wheat penne pasta

Mix turkey, nuts, bread crumbs, eggs, and the seasonings and form the meat into 1" balls. Heat 2-3 turns of olive oil over medium-high heat and brown the meatballs.  Be sure not to crowd the pan, I did this in 4 batches and had to add additional olive oil for the third batch.  Turn the meatballs a few times so they are browned all the way around.

Cook the pasta to al dente. Puree the tomatoes and season the sauce to taste with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and oregano.  Mix the sauce and ½ cup of parmesan cheese in with the pasta.  For me, tubular pasta I always break down and buy, even though I know it would taste better if I made it myself, but there is no way I have the time to roll up a ton of little tubes of pasta, I do have a day job.

Spread the pasta into a 9x13 baking dish and top with the browned meatballs.  Top the meatballs with thinly sliced mozzarella cheese and the rest of the parmesan cheese. 

Bake at 350 to melt the cheese and finish cooking the meatballs, about 15 minutes.

Serves 8, 650 calories, 27 g fat

This is pretty high in fat but I love cheese, so every once in a while I do splurge.  You could cut back on the cheese or use low fat mozzarella, which would also save some calories too, but cheese is not something I like to buy cheap or fat free/low fat.  There is a popular concept in healthy cooking that suggests using less or low fat cheese because you won’t notice the difference.  I think if the cheese doesn’t add enough to your meal such that you won’t notice if there is less or you won’t be able to taste the difference between an amazing fresh mozzarella ball versus fat free, plasticy like shredded cheese, why waste the calories and add it at all? If it adds to your dish, go for the gold, if not, leave it out, and this dish with its gooey awesomeness definitely calls for cheese.