Meals that take all day to cook, but only minutes to prepare!

All of the dinners I will be posting recipes for can be prepared in minutes, the catch is, they need to cook all day. Although you could speed up these dishes by cooking at a hotter temperature, letting them cook for hours will bring out the full range of flavors.

Tips for speeding up cooking:
Follow this order when you are prepping your food

Start with the meat!

• Start heating up your pan/pot and oil right away.
• Prep your meat (wash, dry, chop, whatever)
• Season meat
• Start cooking meat in a slightly smoking pot (to sear)

Veggies!

• Wash everything
• Peel everything that needs to be peeled
• Chop onions and garlic, most of the time these go in the pan/pot first
• Chop hard veggies (carrots, potatoes, celery), keep everything separate
• Chop soft veggies (tomatoes squash), keep everything separate
• Wash and chop all herbs right before putting them in the pot.

More tips for speeding up prep time!

• Carrots do not have to be peeled. If you let unpeeled carrots cook all day the skin becomes just as soft as the rest of the carrot and lends some texture to the dish.
• Only thick skinned (usually brown) potatoes need to be peeled. Even these can be left unpeeled if they are scrubbed very well and if they cook long enough.
• Get a sideways vegetable peeler. If you have one you know that these speed up peeling time.
• Get a GOOD knife and keep it sharp. We only own one good knife. It cost us around $50 at Bed Bath and Beyond. It does need to be sharpened every few times that we use it and it can not be put through the dishwasher or even left on the rack to dry.
• Use the right knife for the right job. Use a larger knife for chopping hard vegetables and meats. Use a smaller knife for trimming small amounts of fat or soft veggies. Chop your tomatoes with a tomato knife, or a steak knife. It cuts right through the skin and does not smoosh your food!

A few more tips!

• Fresh herbs are great if you grow them, but cost a lot in the store to buy. If you do end up buying them (or at the end of your growing season) wash them well, de-stem, and dry them, then freeze herbs in freezer bags in individual portions. This brings a fresh taste to your soups and stews.
• Have 2 cutting boards. One for meat, one for veggies.
• Have a bowl for scraps. An empty produce bag also works well.

Feeding babies and toddlers from a slow cooker

• Cool down all food
• cut into bite sized pieces, or puree for the little ones
• skip the broth!
• Don't over salt food when it is in the slow cooker. Instead flavor once it is on your plate
  

Stove vs. slow cooking

• If I am going to be in the house ALL day I use the stove. It is easy to regulate the temperature and easy to cook it faster or slower. But it is not safe to leave the stove on unattended.
• For slow cooking reduce the amount of liquid you use (check your owners manual) and make sure you bring it up to temp (especially if you prepare the night before and put it in the slow cooker in the morning) on high and then turn down to a lower setting.
• Every slow cooker is different. For the first use, at least, be around the house to see how high it cooks on each setting and how well the lid seals and keeps in liquid.
• If using a slow cooker you don’t have to brown the meat before cooking it, but the color and texture of the meat will be better if you do.

Check back frequently this week for delicious recipes!


Product of the day!
Sideways vegetable peeler!



Pic from: http://www.alwaysbrilliant.com/aa/aspx-products/1-7110/2-57490/SC-Froogle/kw-103281/bb/Ceramic-Potato-Peelers.htm

Blueberry Bonanza, Baby/Toddler chicken, My Fat Butt

Blueberry Bonanza!

My aunt recently posted on face book that she was looking for some fresh blueberry recipes. Here are the ones I sent her, along with the ideas I gave her, in addition to a tart recipe (which I made last night!). Anyone who wants a recipe for something not listed on here, just leave a comment and I will put it in a future post!

Sweet ideas!
-Put some whipped cream on them (or even better blueberry shortcake!)
-Blueberry crumble
-Blueberry pudding
-PIE (you can even use store bought crust and make it super easy)... Read More
-Blueberry French toast
-Fruit Salad
-Make your own blueberry yogurt

Savory Ideas
-Put them on a salad
-Blueberry soup
-Make some sauce for chicken, fish or steak
-Blueberry salsa

Drinks-
-Blueberry cocktail (gin, sour mix, blueberry puree)
-Blueberry lemonade
-Smoothie (yogurt, milk, tofu)

Recipes:

Blueberry soup-

• 1lb of blue berries
• ½ c water
• 1/4c dry red wine
• 1/4c sugar
• 3/4c low fat plain yogurt
• squeeze of lemon juice
• 1t cinnamon
• pinch of cardamom
• pinch of allspice
• 1/3 c sour cream

1. In a small pot boil sugar, lemon, and spices with water and blueberries
2. Boil for 5 min stirring constantly
3. remove and put in blender to puree
4. Cool in refrigerator
5. Stir in wine and yogurt garnish with small spoonful of sour cream (or more yogurt)

French toast
I would actually make blueberry syrup by combining blueberries, sugar to taste, squeeze of lemon, and small amount of vanilla in a sauce pan. Cook and reduce. You can also add this to cream cheese for an awesome bagel spread.

Salsa
Combine

• 2 c whole blueberries
• 1 1/2 c chopped blueberries
• Jalapeno pepper, minced!
• 1 red pepper diced
• 1 small red onion diced
• cilantro to taste (I hate cilantro so I leave it out)
• salt to taste
• 1 large lemon, juiced (you could also use 1 lime instead)

Fish Sauce

1. Combine in a pot

• 1/3 c chicken stalk
• ¼ cup OJ
• ¼ c balsamic vinegar

2. Bring to a boil

3.Add rue (1T cornstarch in water) cook until thicker
4. Stir in 1c fresh blueberries
5. Pour on fish or chicken

Lemonade (yum, yum)
2 variations
1) puree in blender-3 c blueberries, 2/3c sugar, 2c fresh lemon juice. Stir into 3c cold water and ice!
2) This one is the kind the kids I watch LOVE- mix together 3c water, 3/4c lemon juice, 2T cream of coconut, 1c frozen blueberries, 1 sliced star fruit, 1/3 c sugar (or more to taste), ice!

Vinaigrette
Puree 1/2c blueberries, 1 clove garlic, 1/4c red onion, 2T champaign vinegar (you can use white or white balsamic but make sure it is high quality), 1/2t sugar, and olive oil until you get the consistency you like!
I also like to add in parsley, chives, and a dash of cinnamon

Blueberry Tarts

These can be simple or complicated, depending on how much time you want to put into them.

Tart shell

1. Heat oven to 350 (if using store bought cookie dough follow pkg directions)
2. Grease a muffin pan VERY well
3. Cut COLD sugar cookie dough into rounds that are larger than the bottom of the muffin pan
4. Place rounds in pan and push down so the dough has a lip
5. Cook until golden brown
6. Cool
7. Remove from pan

Pudding

1. Make your favorite vanilla pudding (homemade is not that hard to make!)
2. Put in a dash of ginger
3. Cool in fridge

Blue Berries

1. Take berries and mix with a few tablespoons of apricot jam
2. Refrigerate

Putting it all together

1. RIGHT BEFORE SERVING (these will get soggy)
2. Place a spoonful of pudding into tart shell
3. Top with blueberries
4. You can also top with a little candied ginger if you want!

Freezing Cooked Chicken-from baby food to toddler chunks

By far the healthiest way to cook meat is to steam or poach it. I prefer to poach because I don’t have to worry about it drying out or being undercooked (you can leave it in forever). Although some meats are harder to poach, poaching chicken is quick and easy.

To poach chicken cut off any fat on the chicken breast and dump it in a pot of boiling water. Let it cook until no pink remains in the middle of the chicken and you are done! Add your favorite seasonings and you have your firs meal of poached chicken.

Chicken for beginning eaters- you can make baby chicken out of ground chicken that you sauté, but I prefer to poach and then food process the meat. When you put the chicken in the food processor make sure that it is already cut into chunks.

When you prepare chicken this way it does not get a slimy texture. Instead it becomes little granules. You can then take the chicken put it on a cookie sheet and freeze it, making chicken “sand.” I like to prepare it this way because you can then just scoop out as much of this sand as you want, add broth or what ever else you want to, and there you go! You have easy baby food. This way you also don’t have to use a set amount (such as if you froze it in an ice cube tray).

Toddler chunks- Instead of cutting the chicken, poaching it, and then freezing it, I like to poach entire breasts and then shred it. This makes the texture of the chicken more natural and a bit stringy. It is very easy to freeze this way and breaks apart well when you want to thaw.

Ty’s favorite ways to eat quick thawed chicken

When he was a baby Ty liked his chicken

-Mixed with plain whole milk (organic) yogurt

-Mixed in with a little cheddar cheese

-Rolled in with cream cheese

-With a little pepper, paprika, and garlic

Now Ty likes his chicken

-With taco seasoning

-Spicy!

-With stir fry sauce

-Mixed in with squash

My own struggle with weight loss:

If you know me you know I am not a thin woman. Recently Ty and my husband have inspired me to lose weight. I don’t want him to have an out of shape mom who eats a lot of junk food but forces the good stuff into him!

While I was breast feeding I was unable to lose a lot of weight. Each time the pounds started to come off my supply was reduced and Ty would not get enough food. So I kept myself at a constant weight.

Now that I am done breast feeding I plan on becoming a healthy weight with the help of my husband (who has recently become a healthy weight). Each week (on Fridays) I plan to weight myself and see if I dropped weight, met my goal, and evaluate my progress.

You should be happy to know that this week I dropped more weight than my goal! Yeah for me!