Taco Salad Casserole

This sounds like it could have been taken from some outdated cookbook featuring a woman on the cover wearing a fifties-style dress and a spotless apron while holding up a casserole dish and smiling at the reader. 

Or perhaps it would come from a fabulously retro food delivery pair here in Austin like the Casserole Queens. (They've been featured on the Food Network a couple times.  How snazzy is that?  Or sizzly )

But no.  It came from my brain.  (Please, try to control your awe.)  and...IT'S HEALTHY.  (Now you can applaud.)

I've always loved the idea of 7-layer dip (despite the fact that there is rarely a chip that has the heft required for dipping into such a thing).  So, I figured, how can I make a healthier version and maybe even a full-meal version? 

Answer:

• Browned ground turkey (in place of ground beef)
• This is an instance when you can actually go for a lower fat content since it's going to be with a bunch of other items that will give it some moisture.  When using it in other applications, I typically use 93/7 (7% fat), but for this one, you can use 97/3 or 99/1.  
• Black beans
• Black beans are the best ingredient, ever.  I typically like to use Kuner's beans with lime and jalapenos in this recipe, but I actually strain out the jalapenos - just using the black beans without rinsing them includes enough heat for most people.
• Fat-free Greek yogurt instead of sour cream
• Use this instead of sour cream.  Seriously.  I promise in this application, you really won't taste any difference.  If you're unsure, don't put it as the top layer.  When it's mixed in there you definitely won't be aware of it. Fage is the best out there.  I buy a big tub of the stuff for all sorts of uses just about every week.
• Guacamole
• The fat in this one is good fat...leave it as is.  If the avocados look good to me and area  reasonable price (oddly infrequent even here in TX), I'll make my own with lime juice, garlic, and jalapenos.  However, in the other cases, I use Wholly Guacamole.  It's great in a pinch.  I'd also suggest not putting this one as the top layer as it will brown as it oxidizes.
• Brown rice
• I know that rice isn't necessarily a typical addition in the 7-layer dips that are out there.  I suppose this is what makes this a casserole (more of a full meal) rather than just a dip.  Brown rice adds some fiber to the dish (along with what the beans bring to the table).  I often use Uncle Ben's Ready Rice, but can't find the exact flavor here.
• Salsa
• Salsa is a great way to add flavor with very few calories.  There are so many good salsas out there.  Texas Texas, Kinky Friedman's Politically Correct (from which money goes to animal rescue), and Green Mountain Gringo are some of my favorites.  You could, of course, make your own too. 
• Low-fat cheese
• This is certainly a nice-to-have not a must-have.  It used to be that low-fat or fat-free cheeses weren't worth the packaging they came in, but the past few years have seen advances in the taste of low-fat cheeses, so this can be a decent addition without adding too much fat.

Some other potential additions are corn, roasted chicken, or chili.  Also, add some cumin in there.  It's potentially the best spice out there.

So there you have it.   I like to compile it in a glass Pyrex dish so the people eating it can see each layer they're about to taste.

the agony of defeat

Shockingly, my experiments in the kitchen don't always turn out as good as I would like.  Tonight was one such experiment. 

First off, at first glance, I thought I had couscous in my pantry.  I wanted to make couscous with dried fruit and almonds.  It's so tasty and almost seems dessert-ish.  Next, I thought, why don't I mix ground turkey with some feta and some spices and make some meatballs. 

None of it worked out.

First I tried to make meatballs.  I had chosen the 97% fat free kind of ground turkey, and let me say, if ever there were a confirmation that fat adds flavor...'cause this stuff was taste-free.  I mixed in some diced onion, feta cheese, dried basil, dried oregano, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  I thought for sure that would help things.  I balled them up into about golf ball sized meatballs and put them on a pam-sprayed baking sheet.  Into the oven they went at 350 for 20 minutes. 

As it turned out, I had quinoa and not couscous.  I still chopped up the dried apricots and mixed them with the slivered almonds and the sultanas (golden raisins) while the quinoa was cooking...just so I could get my head around things.  I also realized...well, if I'm cooking quinoa, I should use broth.  And then I opened the pantry.  Sweet.  Just one cup of stock.  So the quinoa, after being rinsed thoroughly and toasted in the pan with a tiny bit of oil was cooked in one cup of chicken stock and one cup of water.  Not what I would normally do, but this was just the way the night was going.

The meatballs came out and despite being completely cooked, they looked anemic.  B-O-R-I-N-G.  Despite all the things that I put in the mix, they tasted as anemic as they looked.  Again I say...sweet. 

Then I thought, well, I'll just forgo the dried fruit and almonds (they were really for the imaginary couscous), and I'll add black beans into my quinoa.  I'll throw a little "house dressing" on it too.  I get the house dressing out of the fridge.  It's pretty much empty.  So I put what is left in the bowl and then went to make more dressing.  No balsamic.  It's at the boyfriend's house.  Strike85 against this meal. 

The boyfriend decided to add marcona (as he calls somewhat jokingly "maricopa county") almonds to his quinoa, black beans, and cut up meatballs.  He said he liked it a few times and that the almonds really made it. 

I had quinoa, black beans, a tiny bit of house dressing, and cut up meatballs.  A passable meal, but man, it was not what I had planned in my head.  I'll have to go and get some couscous to do my dried fruit/slivered almond meal. 

(As an aside, two nights ago I made leek/broccoli soup and put too much liquid in it.  The tilapia I made was fine, and actually tasted pretty good when piled into a bowl of the soup, but nothing earth-shattering.  Let's assume this was not the beginning of a streak of mediocre meals.)

Quick Post: My Favorite Spices and Another New Recipe

Cumin is almost always the front runner. Something about that smokey and versatile just seems to go with everything I make. Well, almost everything.

But, last week when I did my salmon en papillote recipe, I decided to turn to the old standards of the spice cabinet, dried oregano and dried basil. In that recipe I considered using herbes de provence as I often have on my sauteed zucchini, but a while back I guess I put too much on and did not enjoy it. So I figured, why not try the oregano/basil combo. It worked perfectly.

So today when I was making a healthy meal (trying to modify my calorie intake...wheee) that also tasted good, I thought about those two spices again. I browned about a pound of ground turkey and stirred in vegetable primavera pasta sauce. I then put those two items into a dish, rinsed out my large skillet, and put a touch more olive oil in. I sweated half an onion (in retrospect, a full one would have been more than okay in this recipe) and threw in two diced golden zucchini (the most amazing marigold color you've ever seen) and one diced green zucchini. And what did I season them with? Why dried oregano and basil, of course.

Since I had put salt and pepper on the ground turkey and the pasta sauce already had plenty of salt, I didn't put any more in with the zukes. Once they were cooked through (with a bit of bite left), I mixed them with the turkey and pasta sauce. It was great. I had had a hankering for a pasta dish, but this satisfied that craving without the actual pasta. This recipe ended up making 4 servings of 330 calories each, which fits perfectly into the meal size I'm going for.

Grand Plans - A quick post

Today I went by the grocery store just to get some pickles (I had to make tuna salad), and it was one of those situations where you end up buying a heck of a lot more than you plan. (Oddly, it was not because I was hungry.) BUT, I had specific recipes in mind. I've been wanting to oven roast some leeks (just thought it's worth a try), so I bought a bunch of leeks ($2.99). I thought about making my Melting Pot Soup, so I bought bok choy ($1.38) and chicken, spinach, and feta sausage ($3.17). In thinking back to my fantastic trip to Fredericksburg, I also decided to get some thin-cut pork chops to try out a wiener schnitzel recipe ($1.99). I purchased some avocados at Costco last week, and I've been dying to make some guacamole, so I bought an onion ($0.23), some garlic ($1.00), and some jalapenos ($0.19). In addition to some other items, I got a pretty full 4 bags for just around $35.

One thing I'm trying to focus on is not letting my food spoil before I get to use it. That's a hard thing for me because I always have such grand plans, but I'm hoping this time will be different because I do have grand plans.