Time Saver Tip: Expedite Your Veggies!

As the weather turns warmer, Manatee and I have a major lifestyle shift: golfing, running and biking, oh my! The days get longer but time for cooking gets shorter. Enter the Badger Girl series of 'Time Saver Tips.' I am going to intersperse these with recipes and share with you little tidbits of knowledge while hoping to gain from you great boulders of knowledge. I am sure all of you have some great time saving tips for cooking and I would love to hear them.

Time Saver Tip #1: Expedite Your Veggies! Don't give up on whole foods and home-cooked meals in exchange for some meal in a box. There are quick, easy ways that allow you to include fresh vegetables without sacrificing time. 

Exhibit A: Frozen vegetables. I love fresh vegetables. Raw, steamed, grilled: I am a happy girl. Unfortunately, as our schedules pick up, fresh vegetables don't always get eaten and nothing smells worse than rotten broccoli or mushrooms. I know this from experience. Even worse: when you have both rotten broccoli AND mushrooms. Shudder. 

During these hectic times, I stock up on frozen vegetables. Now they have these great steam in a bag vegetables which makes cooking them even easier. Pop them in the microwave for a few minutes and you have fresh, steamed vegetables.  The traditional use would be as a side for some meat, but you can also toss them on a salad to make it more of a meal (I seem to connect warm food and cold lettuce with an entree salad) or toss them with pasta and sauce to make lazy spaghetti into a bistro dinner. 

WARNING: Avoid frozen vegetables in a fake chemical sauce. I know that lemon pepper butter sauce sounds good when you are in the store but trust me, it will taste so much better if you throw in a pad of butter and some herbs or pepper at home. Wouldn't you rather eat real, decadent dairy than dried chemicals? I know you would. Don't give in!

Exhibit B: The craft sale potato pouch. I do not know who invented this or how it is made but it is a true work of genius. Pop whole potatoes in this pouch, throw it in the microwave for a few minutes and you have a baked potato. No fork poking required! My mother told me she bought me one and I scoffed. She gave it to me and I rolled my eyes. Now I use it on a regular basis and would not dare part with it. I even take it to work with a potato to make a hot lunch. I have only seen these at craft sales and couldn't make my own if my life depended it. Put your friends, mother, aunts, sisters, anyone who goes to craft sales on the lookout for one of these. It's a great time saver. 

What tips and tricks do you have for expediting your veggies?

The One Dish Week Plan

This is the plan for the week.

Chicken Spinach Lasagna: Eat and Repeat.

This was a conglomeration of three recipes (including a chicken enchilada recipe). I looked at even more recipes prior to get an idea of what I needed to make a traditional lasagna so I would have a better idea of how to improvise. I know I wanted to use chicken and lots of vegetables. I have to say that the result was amazing. Believe it or not, it is a 'light' lasagna in that it is healthy and you can eat a serving (or a serving and a half) and not feel like you have a brick in your stomach. Success!

Chicken Spinach Lasagna

1/2 cup chopped onion

2 garlic cloves minced

3 cups diced yellow squash

2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms

3 chicken breasts boiled* and cubed

1 container of frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry

1 can of crushed tomatoes, 28 oz

1 can of tomato paste, 6 oz

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp dried basil

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp dried rosemary crushed

1/4 tsp of pepper

1 carton (15 oz) of no boil lasagna noodles**

1 carton of low fat ricotta cheese

1 3/4 cups of mozzarella cheese (or a blend of mozzarella, parmesan, or romano)

*I prefer boiling chicken breasts when I am putting them in a casserole. This has two major advantages. 1: It keeps the breasts moist. 2:I have very little contact with raw chicken breasts which is ALWAYS a good thing. They totally gross me out. 

To boil chicken breasts, put them in a saucepan and cover them with cold water. Bring to a boil on high heat and then turn down to medium heat and boil for 10-15 minutes. Remove, cool and dice.

**You can use regular lasagna noodles too. I'm just lazy. If you prefer the more work version, simply follow the instructions for cooking them. And if you live in the Madison area, I highly recommend RP Pasta Spinach Lasagna noodles. Yum.

1. In a large saucepan (or electric frying pan), saute onion and garlic for 3 minutes or until onions are translucent. 
2. Stir in yellow squash and mushrooms. Cook 5 minutes or until tender. 
3. Add crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, spinach, chicken breasts and seasonings. Reduce heat and simmer for twenty minutes.
4. While it's simmering, separate out 1 cup of shredded cheese. Mix remaining cheese and ricotta cheese together.
5. Set two cups of sauce aside.
6. Preheat oven to 350.
7. In an ungreased 13x9 baking pan, layer 1/3 sauce, noodles and cheese. Repeat. Layer noodles and sauce on top of that.
8. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes.
9. Remove foil, add 1 cup of shredded cheese and put back in oven for 5-10 minutes or until the cheese is melted.
10. Remove and let sit for 15 minutes. Note: This was by far the hardest part of the recipe but it's so worth because it gives the lasagna time to set. 
11. Slice, serve and enjoy!!

Easy Fast Chicken Lettuce Wraps

This post has been a long time coming. Months ago, Cooking Light did a great issue on different ways of cooking chicken. One of them intrigued me; They talked about grinding skinless, boneless chicken breasts with strong spices or sauces in the food processor to make your own flavored ground chicken. To be honest, I was a little grossed out when I thought about grinding raw chicken, but I can tell you that it was totally worth it.  After it was cooked and I had my first sample, this turned into a 'Best Decision Ever' moment. It's my new favorite way of making lettuce wraps.

Red Curry Chicken Lettuce Wraps

3 Chicken Breasts

3-4 Tbsp of Red Curry Paste

1 tsp of salt

3 Small Cucumbers (English or Gourmet Minis), chopped

3 Green Onions, chopped

1-2 Tbsp Cilantro chopped

Butter or Boston Lettuce leaves

Sirracha Sauce

1. Put chicken breasts, red curry paste and salt in food processor. Pulse until ground. It probably looks gross now. Trust me, it will look much better after the next step.
2. Spray some olive oil in a frying pan on medium high heat. Add chicken to pan and fry until it is cooked through.
3. Add cucumbers and onions. Cook 2-3 minutes. Add cilantro. 
4. Spoon chicken mixture into lettuce leave. Top with Sirracha (if you dare). Note: It's also good with greek yogurt if the spice is too much for you. 

The Obsession Continues

Bread- 2.
Badger Girl- 1.

The Bread took this round.

So I was supposed to shape the dough into a tight ball (see above) but the dough was not cooperating (see below). 

This just about drove me nuts. The cookbook told me I needed to have iron hands with kid gloves. Really. How about a sledge hammer? Would that help? 

I don't have problems getting the dough to rise as seen above. It darn near rose off the pan. Again. 

Also, in the picture in the cookbook, there is this neat, art-y cross in the breads. You can almost imagine a portly baker dressed all in white when you see the crosses on the bread. Mine looked like I took a machete to it. 

My guest ate some of the bread toasted this morning and said it was good. I am still too mad. I had some after it came out of the oven and pronounced it a disaster. Manatee disagrees and has convinced me he likes it. When I stop pouting, I will probably try toasting it.

I am going to take a break from these sponge breads and return to some more basic recipes, things at which I have previously succeeded and enjoyed doing. This weekend we are having some of Manatee's family over for make your own pizza so I will be making the crusts the next few days. Hopefully I can rebuild my baking confidence. 

Thai Spring Roll Cups

This recipe came about from my love (and overdose) of Thai Spring Rolls and from having the Food Network on when I was organizing my closet (which was an all day event therefore lots of cooking shows).

Exhibit A: For our dinner party a few weeks ago, I got it into my head to make Thai Spring Rolls. Essentially basil, broccoli slaw, chicken, rice noodles, and hoisin sauce all wrapped up in rice paper. We had them for the party and then in an effort to use up leftovers, I continued making spring rolls, all week. Now I can't look at rice paper.

Exhibit B: Giada at Home. 

From Giada, I took the idea of the wonton wrappers. I brushed on Canola oil and then placed the wonton wrappers in a mini muffin pan. I baked them at 375 for 7 minutes, let them cool in the pan for 5 and then took them out to cool. Those would be the 'rice paper' of the spring rolls.

The main filling was chicken breasts ground in a food processor with hoisin sauce and Thai Chili Garlic Sauce. The ratio was approx. 3 breasts to 3/4 bottle of hoisin sauce to 1 Tbsp of Chili Garlic Sauce. As a warning, the ground chicken looked nasty. So nasty that I fried it up before my guest arrived because I wasn't sure if she would have wanted to see it if she saw it raw.

In each wonton, I put:

• 1/2 leaf of fresh basil
• a few rice noodles
• ground chicken
• dab of Sirracha 
• broccoli slaw

The leftover meat we used for lettuce wraps which were amazing! We put some meat with a little hoisin, Sirracha and some broccoli slaw. Yum. 

Birthday Cake

Biggest lesson learned from making my own birthday cake: A common tip when you are frosting a double layer cake: "Place squares of wax paper under the cake when you are frosting. When you are finished, pull out the wax paper and there will be no frosting on the cake stand."
This is either a vicious lie or just another demonstration of my lack of coordination skills. I pulled out the wax paper and the cake almost came off with it. Then I was trying to pull the paper out while keeping the cake on the stand so there was frosting everywhere. Luckily I had extra frosting and some time before my guest arrived to clean up the stand. If anyone has any suggestions on how to get this tip to work: send them my way. I'm planning another cake for my nieces this weekend.

It's my birthday and I will bake if I want to...

Yes, it really is my birthday and this is the first time in a long time that I have had off on my birthday. Manatee and I went back and forth on whether to go out to eat or not, then I decided I wanted to make dinner for us and a very close childhood friend. This was for two reasons. One, and the more practical of the two, I have had a 'twitchy gut' as one of my friends calls it which is generally more twitchy after eating out. Some of it has to do with hidden fats and oils, some with bad luck, some with poor choices on my part. Secondly, I feel a lot of pressure on my birthday to do things, that I somehow need to live up to the day. In California, I had no plans one year so I booked a manicure, pedicure and massage. The massage released some kind of a emotional floodgate and I was left sobbing for an hour afterwards for no apparent reason. Lesson learned.

Since I like baking and cooking, I thought why not spend the day doing that and then have a nice, healthy, home cooked meal to share with the people I love. It was a bit of no-brainer. At first, I wanted to pull out all the stops and have some super fancy dishes I have never made before. That thought didn't last too long. I am going to some oldies but goodies with only exception being the appetizer which I am making up based on a couple of different recipes/ideas.

Shredded Carrot Salad (Around my French table)
Thai Spring Roll Cups
Chicken Pad See Ew (Ultimate cookbook with my own variations)
Double Layer Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting (An amazing Weight Watchers recipe so I can have it for breakfast the next day and not feel bad about it)

Notice the recurrence of carrots? This brings me to my next point. I hated, hated, HATED carrots as a kid. I thought they were the most repulsive thing ever. Too sweet to be a vegetable, not juicy enough to be fruit. It always amazes me how our tastes evolve throughout time. This is one of the reasons I keep my cooking magazines. Though I generally pull out recipes that appeal to me, I know that in three years, next year or even next month, I may have a new taste or developed a new liking to a food. I also try to keep trying foods even if I didn't like them before.

As a now older woman, that is my sage advice. You never know what you may start liking.