Grilled Cornish Hens with Asparagus

I want to put more of my own recipes on this blog, sometimes though, some of the things I make don't really have a recipe other than "throw it on the grill." I take pictures of nearly everything I cook, but when I sit down here and try to write up some sort of instructions to follow or ingredients to include, my first thought usually is, "Well, duh! Folks know that already."

Maybe it's time I do that anyway. For instance, the other morning as I peeked into the deep freezer for something to thaw that wasn't pork or beef or standard chicken, I saw these Cornish Hens I had. Yes, granted, they're "chicken" but they're tiny chickens in a manner of speaking, and I suddenly had a vision of them on a plank on the grill, and Wah-Lah!, that night's dinner was born.

Sure, I surfed the web throughout the day looking for further ideas, but I was technically supposed to be working so I knew anything that required any real prep time was out of the question. I decided to stick with my original vision even though I knew I'd have nothing original for this blog.

It was quite simple. I thawed the Hens, soaked a plank in water, eventually spread some seasonings on the poultry, fired up the grill, and put the planked birds on indirect heat. Took about an hour, but can't say I really timed it. Near the end, I took some asparagus and laid them one the grill as well. If you like asparagus, it's a real good "go to" veggie for grilling with just about anything, i.e., steak or salmon especially.

Needless to say, dinner turned out great, and even though I have no real recipe to share, I thought at least I could slap a couple of pics up here for your inspiration.

Until Next Time...
Here's a real recipe for smoking Cornish Hens, but please don't tell The Boss or else she'll make me make it next time.
Cornishly Yours,
Michael

Difficult but not Insurmountable (a.k.a. Heathly Eating on a Budget)

If you follow my Twitter feed (MichaelPeeples1), then you might have seen a recent article I posted from Bodybuilding.com about "The 5 Cheapest Health Foods Money Can Buy." The article hit upon a theme I had already begun this post about so the timing of its publication worked out well.
 
I've talked about the love of cooking before and how, like any hobby of love, the initial costs can be high. What I didn't discuss was the average costs of the average family just trying to eat a healthier diet and how it can seem impossible to both eat better quality food while not breaking the bank.

People of all level of fitness, either the super fit or the overweight, face the delimma of costs versus health. A lot of today's food in the grocery stores and supermarkets will fill us up,  but can also leave us nutritionally incomplete. Efforts to break free of nutritional starvation can seem more difficult than a normal person with a normal busy schedule can handle.

For instance, sodium - a recent study showed that nearly everyone in the United States exceeds the federally recommended sodium level on a daily basis and that 90% of our sodium intake comes already packaged in our foods. So even if people stop salting their food, they still will be getting way more sodium than they should.  To reduce their sodium, people have to actively seek out alternatives or make it themselves. Soups serve as a good example, even the "low sodium" among them has high sodium levels. A person can take the time to prepare and make sodium free soup, but if pressed for time, it's much simpler to just open a can and pop it in the microwave.

But the first few steps are rather easy and inexpensive. You don't have to go out and buy a whole lot of exotic foods to do so. You can start with your next trip to the grocery store.  

1. Read the Labels - this is your most powerful weapon. It doesn't get any easier than this.

2. Educate Yourself - the more you read, the smarter you'll become.
There are a ton of articles in magazines and on the web plus more than a few published books on the matter to help us navigate a way to a healthier diet while keeping the costs down. Also check your local library. (Stay away from the sensational publications, though, they're just fad diet crap - you can usually spot them by their titles.) And while you may not put into practice everything you've read, at least you start making smarter choices from time to time. It's like the old axiom, "Baby steps."

3. Stay away from food you know is junk food - I used to think everyone knew the difference between real food and junk food. I was wrong. I've had friends say they don't want to give up "real" food for healthy food. When I asked what "real" food was, they listed off a bunch of junk food items, including potato chips and mayonnaise. So learn what is "real" and what is "junk" and try to avoid the junk as much as you can.

4. If you must buy can vegetables, at least wash them off prior to cooking - it helps reduce the amount of sodium.

4. Avoid processed sugar and sugar additives as much as you can. This includes artificial sweeteners.

Those few steps alone can increase your overall level of health while not increasing the overall impact to your pocketbook.

Until Next Time...
Watch this fitness couple stock up their kitchen by looking for sale items and reading tags and labels. I don't agree with all the choices they make, but it's good general advice.

Budgetly Yours,
Michael 

A Simple Gluten Free One Skillet Dinner

The goal was to make a tasty gluten free dinner, and despite what many would have us to believe, it wasn't that difficult.

I tend to use garlic in a lot of my recipes, which is good for the heart, but can become rather boring on the palate if used too often. I wanted more of a mushroom sauce for this particular dish, but without adding mushroom sauce or soup (since I haven't done much research into the gluten levels of either), I decided to try to extract as much flavor as I could from simply sauteing fresh mushrooms in butter. Needless to say, it didn't quite work out as flavorful as I wanted. Desperate to rescue what I'd done, I threw in the garlic at the last minute afterall.

But no matter at this point. I have the basis for a one-skillet dinner which is going to change over time as I experiment. Right now I'm calling this "One Skillet Gluten Free Spiral Pasta with Shrimp."

Ingredients:
one bag (one pound) Tinkyada Pasta Joy Gluten Free Spirals
one pound deveined and pre-cooked shrimp
one can diced tomatoes
one package (12 ounces in this instance) of sliced mushrooms
four tablespoons of butter
fresh garlic or garlic powder to taste

Directions:
Prepare pasta per instructions, drain, and set aside.
Saute mushrooms in butter
Add shrimp and garlic to skillet until shrimp is cooked
Add pasta to skillet; stir in can of diced tomatoes.
Once all is well mixed, cover for ten minutes, stirring occasionally to even out thoroughness.
Serve

Calories:
I didn't do a calorie count this time since this is still in the experimental stage, but other than the butter, this should be a relatively low-cal meal. 


Like I mentioned above, this truly is a recipe in the experimental stage. I have a vague idea what I want, but still not sure of the path to get there. My next steps include a search for gluten free mushroom sauce or soup, and I want to also keep the sodium level down to a medium roar.




Until Next Time...
Since the protein base of this recipe is shrimp, I thought I'd link in this video of the Five Largest Shrimp caught in recent times. 

Experimentally Yours,
Michael 


p.s. Later I did find a single can of Campbell's Golden Mushroom in the pantry, it contains wheat flour.

Love, Passion, and Money

This should have been obvious to me, but like with most things I tend to learn the hard way. Food blogging and upping my cooking skills turned out to be no exception.

It's well documented by people smarter than I that preparing and eating meals at home is economically wiser as well as better for your health and weight management. The Boss and I were as guilty as many Americans these days when it comes to dining out - we did it too frequently and we ate and drank too when we did. We had fun, but long term, it's not the best habit to get into.

In a recent effort to save a little cash I decided to make us a seafood dinner from a  recipe in Mr. Sunday's Soups by Lorraine Wallace and made "Hearty Seafood Soup" (page 90, paperback) Of course I had none of the ingredients required, including the mussels, shrimp, and halibut, and some of the spices weren't ones I regularly keep. But after hitting the grocery store, I nearly fell backwards when I saw the total, and smiled sheepishly smile at The Boss like a little boy who innocently screws up.

Once in the kitchen, though, I then spent a few hours crafting one of the best soups I've ever made. There was enough for eight servings and we ate leftovers for days, which financial probably made the costs worth it, but I really have no idea if it did or didn't.

The lesson here though is a simple one: When you do something you love, sometimes the initial costs are high.

Just like someone who enjoys woodworking has no qualms about spending money on specialty or high quality tools that the average person wouldn't spend. Or just like the visual artists who buys high quality expensive paints instead of cheap mid-quality that a casual weekend artists may buy, the culinary lover will spend extra money for higher quality ingredients and cooking tools.

Those costs must be offset somehow. So while you may love what you do, the real test of your love lies in what you're willing to sacrifice. And taking that beyond the immediate financial aspect, sometimes the sacrifices involve other things as well. Maybe you get behind on your favorite television show, never find time to clean out your car, etc. But when it comes to your passion, you find that you don't mind giving up some other things. That's how you know when you're committed.

I hear athletes say it all the time, "It's not how bad you want it, it's what you're willing to sacrifice to get it." That is true of all ventures. So embrace your passion whatever it is, and be happy.

Until Next Time...
No matter how skilled in the kitchen you think you are, this video from Gordon Ramsay servers as a great reminder/tutorial about some basic techniques.  

Lovingly, Yours,
Michael 

Maya Angelou's Take on Health Food

Maya Angelou passed away two years ago (May 28, 2014) and in memoriam, I thought I'd post food poem she wrote:

The Health-Food Diner
by Maya Angelou

No sprouted wheat and soya shoots
And Brussels in a cake,
Carrot straw and spinach raw,
(Today, I need a steak).

Not thick brown rice and rice pilaw
Or mushrooms creamed on toast,
Turnips mashed and parsnips hashed,
(I'm dreaming of a roast).

Health-food folks around the world
Are thinned by anxious zeal,
They look for help in seafood kelp
(I count on breaded veal).

No Smoking signs, raw mustard greens,
Zucchini by the ton,
Uncooked kale and bodies frail
Are sure to make me run

to

Loins of pork and chicken thighs
And standing rib, so prime,
Pork chops brown and fresh ground round
(I crave them all the time).

Irish stews and boiled corned beef
and hot dogs by the scores,
or any place that saves a space
For smoking carnivores.

KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid)

Sometimes the best things in life are the simplest.

The poet Billy Collins once wrote after stumbling upon one simple, average word in the dictionary: "No cookie nibbled by a French novelist/could send one more suddenly into the past".

The same is true of food and I believe that's why many of us love to recreate the recipes of our mothers, aunts, grandmothers, etc. The food connection to the past hits multiple senses simultaneously and transports us back to those times and those kitchens where a certain magic resides.

It was such a memory that inspired my "Lasagna's Cousin" recipe, and this past week when I had extra chopped hot dogs that needed to be used up, that a simple can of regular pork and beans sent me back to my mom's kitchen many years ago. 

Ah, yes - Good ol' Beans and Franks. 

As a latchkey kid with a mother who didn't enjoy cooking anyway, a simple recipe with minimal prep time and inexpensive ingredients was just the kind of thing she made to get the "making dinner" item scratched off the evening's activities. Beans and Franks was one of the many recipes she used to keep two kids full. 

She had many others, like salmon patties, a mac & cheese with tuna bake (although she called it casserole),  cube steaks, pan-fried Spam, etc. Basically anything that could be prepped and cooked in under 30 minutes. 

It is these very memories though that inspire even the most talented cook to new creations. These memories coupled with some people's desire to recreate them that spark a new found love of cooking and add to the overall collective. Modern cookbooks are now filled with little stories or essays about a beloved relative's recipe as the general cooking public desire more and more to hear stories about familial love associated with food, cooking, and the kitchen.

Everyone has heard the adage "Stop and Smell the Roses", and that's exactly the same thing in this instance. Sometimes it's good for us to forget about the multiple ingredients, the extra this or that, or the need to "wow" our family and internet follows with beautiful dishes that explode our taste buds. Sometimes we should just pause, make a simple Beans and Franks dinner and reminisce. 

Until Next Time...
Here's a short video on how to make cube steaks (although I think this particular vlogger has them simmer too long)
Simply Yours,
Michael 

Taco Pizza for a late night B-Movie

An activity I always enjoyed while growing up (I've mentioned this before) was watching cheap horror movies and eating pizza on a Saturday night. The room was lit only by the light of the television screen, everyone had a glass of Coke, napkins littered the coffee table next to paper plates, and there was usually popcorn or a bag or two of chips nearby. Back then the pizza involved a frozen pizza I doctored up with extra ingredients, unless someone was lucky enough to con their parents out of the cash to order one delivered. A great tradition I carried on as different friends came and went through the years.

Now as an adult who has, in a manner of speaking, revived this tradition with The Boss, I wanted to make a pizza from the bottom up. It's more fun, costs much less, tastes better, and is moderately healthier than delivery or frozen.

Since this was the weekend before Cinco de Mayo, it only made sense that I would make a Mexican themed pizza, and since I had all the ingredients on hand already, a Taco Pizza sounded like a good idea.

Like most cooks, I had a notion of what needed to be done but I thought I'd check my books and online as well. No one had anything quite like I envisioned, all though one book I own came close even though they used shrimp instead of taco seasoned meat, which inspired me to include both.

This particular time, due to my work schedule, I had to use a premade crust, but there's no shame in that. I put my trusty and well-loved pizza stone in the oven to preheated to 400 degrees. In the meantime, I browned the meat and seasoned it with the taco seasoning mix as per the directions on the package. I used an organic salsa lightly as a pizza sauce, then sprinkled a light layer of cheese on top of the salsa.

I threw in the shrimp with the meat at this point to make sure it got coated with the taco seasoning mix as well. I didn't throw them in earlier because they were deveined and I didn't want them to shrink. Once I felt they were coated adequately enough, I scooped out the meat/shrimp combo and spread it evenly over the pie. I added a can of diced chili peppers, a handful of jalepenos, and some black olives. Then I sprinkled just another very thin layer of cheese, just enough that it didn't hide any of the ingredients, and finished it off with a few pinches of cilantro. Once I placed it on the heated stone I only had to wait about 10-12 minutes.

Once you take it out, you can add shredded lettuce on top or sour creme if that's what you prefer, and you're ready to dig in. (Note: I took this picture right out of the over without the lettuce topping. Also, the crust looks a little more burnt than expected because I used a whole wheat crust.)

Ingredients
- pizza dough
- standard taco ingredients, i.e., meat, shrimp, chicken, chilies, cheese, etc. etc. (Note: one pound of ground beef can make at least two pizzas, if you're only making one, then you have extra beef to use for nachos later.)

Directions
- see above

I know these next few days I'm going to burn out The Boss on Mexican food, but I figured if I throw some gaucamole in the mix, she'll forgive me all my sins. <wink> After all, Love originates in the kitchen.

Until Next Time...
Watch this wonderful video on how to make Super Deluxe Steak Nachos. Great stuff, gang, great stuff.

Adios,
Michael