Banana Bran Muffins

Overly ripe bananas are a dream ingredient to frugal bakers like me (especially before summer time rolls around).  You want fresh fruity flavor, but don't want to shell out $3.99 to buy a pint of blueberries from Chile?  Not a problem.  Just let some bananas get brown on your counter, mix with a few pantry staples and some buttermilk, and you've got yourself a delicious baked good.

 Banana Bran Muffins

2 eggs

2/3 cup light brown sugar

¼ cup canola oil

1 tsp vanilla

2 ripe bananas, mashed

1 cup wheat bran

2 tbsp flax seed meal

1 cup wheat flour

¾ cup AP flour

1½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp salt

1¼ cups buttermilk 

½ cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Whisk together eggs, brown sugar, canola oil, and vanilla until well combined.  Add the mashed bananas to the egg mixture.  In a separate bowl, combine wheat bran, flax seed meal, wheat flour, flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.   Alternate adding the dry mixture and the buttermilk to the egg mixture until everything is incorporated (don't over mix).  Pour batter into muffin pan coated with non-stick spray or lined with muffin cups.  Top with walnuts if desired.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes (or until a tester comes about clean).

Walnut Arugula Pesto

I’ve never really been into Valentine’s Day.  I’m all for expressions of love, but I don’t think they should be contrived, and I’ve always believed they should come from all sexes and genders (i.e. no ladies sitting around waiting for heart-shaped balloons and chocolates).  Plus, quite often by the time February comes around I’m feeling the need to make some serious dietary changes.  I exercise less in cold weather, sit around more, and eat a lot more comfort foods.  The last thing I want to do is go out for a big dinner and eat a ton of candy.

So this year for Valentine’s night dinner, G and I decided to make a pasta dish with quinoa rotini, roasted vegetables, chicken, and goat cheese. 

Part of our recent effort to make healthy eating easier during the week has been to prep food on Sundays.  One of the make-ahead items this week was roasted chicken breasts in lemon juice and olive oil, which we’ve had on hand to add to meals throughout the week (like Michelle Obama says, as a garnish). So by the time the veggies were roasted, everything else for this meal was pulled together and most of the clean-up was done.  For a sauce, we made a pesto in the food processor:

1 cup basil leaves
1 cup arugula
2 tbsp parmesan cheese
½ cup walnuts
3 garlic cloves
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

The arugula, which we got from the High Heeled Hippie at the Mississippi Farmer’s Market, really enhanced all of lemony flavors in the pesto and the rest of the pasta dish.

Nutrition Info Break Down: 
Pesto: Calories (276), Saturated Fat (3.2g), Unsaturated Fat (22.7g), Cholesterol (2mg), Carbohydrates (5.4g), Fiber (2.3g), Protein (6g)
Pasta: Calories (332), Saturated Fat (2.7g), Unsaturated Fat (1g), Cholesterol (31.2mg), Carbohydrates (50.1g), Fiber (5g), Protein (17.4g)

I don’t really consider myself to be a calorie counter, but this is a 600 calorie dinner full of nutritional goodness that we concocted in about 45 minutes.  Meals like this one and indoor soccer season are going to get me back to feeling healthy really soon! And I enjoyed making and eating some heart-healthy food with my boo…that’s true love people.

P.S. I just looked at the nutrition information page at the Olive Garden website as a basis of comparison for my Valentine’s meal…I feel really good about myself.

Fan Appreciation Night

Wow, the month of November got swallowed up before I could write about Thanksgiving or some of Jackson's newest restaurants or my favorite holiday food gifts. Fortunately, there's plenty of time left in December for me to cover a lot of that stuff. But one meal I'd like to revisit is a dinner G and I made one Sunday evening for friends and fans of this blog. I got to prepare some beautiful vegetables from the farmer's market and a big hunk of pork in addition to a casserole dish full of cheesy potatoes. It was an excellent beginning to winter.

Roasted Pork Loin with Braised Vegetables

Soak pork loin or tenderloin in:

1 quart water
2 cups apple cider vinegar
Half cup of salt, dissolved
Half cupe of brown sugar, dissolved
Cracked peppercorns

For 6 to 8 hours

Before cooking meat, prepare any combination of root vegetables you like by cutting into half inch cubes. I picked carrots, onions, turnips, and threw in some apples as well. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and spread on the bottom of a roasting pan.

Remove pork from brine, pat outside dry, sear in a hot skillet on the stove top and transfer to roasting pan. Cover pork loosely with foil and bake at 350 degrees for approximately an hour and a half until internal temperature reaches 150 degrees. Let rest before cutting.

Scalloped Potatoes

4 potatoes (about 3 lbs.), peeled and sliced thinly
1 small onion, cut into thin strips
1/4 cup flour
2 tbsp butter, plus 1 tbsp for topping
2 cups half and half
6-8 oz. white cheddar, shredded

In a medium saucepan, melt butter.  Whisk in flour, cook for a minute as you would a roux.  Add half and half and bring up to a simmer.  When the sauce is just about to boil add the cheese, when it's melted remove the sauce from heat.  In a buttered casserole dish, layer potatoes and onions adding sauce, salt and pepper after each potato layer.  Top the dish with remaining butter and leftover cheese if desired.  Cover and bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes, remove top and bake for another 15 until golden brown on top.  Let set for about 10 minutes before eating.

Winter Salad

Fresh green leaf lettuce
Sesame sticks
Dried cranberries
Olive oil, balsamic vinegar, pepper

Toss greens (mine were the last of the season), in oil and vinegar, salt and pepper.  Top with sesame sticks and dried cranberries and serve immediately.

Kale Chips

For most of my life, kale has been one of those things that I know I should eat but I don't enjoy enough to make at home.  It's very high in vitamins C and A, and has fiber, but has just never been one of my favorite flavors when it comes to greens.  I got some last week at the grocery store and thought I would experiment a bit.  I sauteed it with garlic in vegetable stock and topped it off with red wine vinegar, which was pretty good, but didn't know what to do with the other half of the bunch.

Then I saw a recipe on one of my favorite recipe blogs, Smitten Kitchen, that was the answer to my prayers.  Kale Chips:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees, remove leaves from the stems and lightly coat with olive oil.

Spread in a single layer on a sheet pan, sprinkle with salt, and bake for 20 minutes.  Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.  The result is a sweet, salty, crispy snack that I packed up in my lunch to munch on like chips.

But I definitely want to try it the Smitten Kitchen way as a garnish on top of starchy side dishes or homemade popcorn.

It's still healthy that way, right?

Sal and Mookie's

Most Jacksonians already know the virtues of Sal and Mookie's, and of its owner Jeff Good.  What you may not have heard about is the restaurant's new pizza that's also a fundraiser.  The pizza, the Franklin Street, is named after its creator Brad "Kamikaze" Franklin.  Kaz does not eat pork, so he regularly asked Sal and Mookie's cooks to top his pizzas with ground turkey instead of sausage.  Jeff decided to create a pizza to add to the menu in his honor that includes the turkey, as well as tomatoes, spinach artichoke dip, onions, cheddar and mozzarella cheese, and creole seasoning.  Garrad and I tried it out on Friday night, and loved it.

To kick off the menu addition, Sal and Mookies is donating $2 from the sale of each Franklin St. to the Downtown and Farish St. YMCAs (which will continue through the month of November).  These kinds of collaborations are what Jackson is all about. More details here.

Tailgating Grub: Part 3 of the Soup Trilogy

 Chili is the ultimate crowd pleaser in the cold months.  I always think of it as the perfect compliment to football watching.  When I’m feeding a party with chili I like to go all out and set up a toppings bar with fresh guacamole, sour cream, corn chips, cilantro, diced tomatoes and onions, and cheese.  When I’m only feeding my family, we’re not as festive but no less enthusiastic about chowing down, like we were this week watching Monday Night Football (slash Boardwalk Empire).  Either way, I like to make an enormous pan of cornbread as the primary side dish.  This recipe is literally so good that we’ve been eating it around the clock since it came out of the oven…you’ve been warned.

High Life Turkey Chili

1 lb ground turkey

1 lb turkey sausage

2 tbsp olive oil

1 cup onion, diced

½ cup red pepper, diced

½ cup green pepper, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 tsp chili powder

½ tsp cumin

1 large can crushed tomatoes

1 can diced fire roasted tomatoes

2 cans spicy kidney beans

½ can tomato paste

1-2 chipotles, minced

1 can of beer (any lager in the fridge will do)

salt, pepper, and honey to taste

In a large pot, brown the ground turkey on medium high heat and remove from the pot.  Brown sausage (deglaze pot with beer if sausage sticks) and remove from the pot.  Add oil to pot (if no fat rendered from meat), then add onion, red pepper, green pepper, and salt and pepper.  Once vegetables are translucent, add garlic, chili powder, and cumin.  Deglaze pot with a liberal splash of beer.  Return meat to pot and add the remaining ingredients (including the rest of the beer).   Add honey to balance the spicy flavors.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about an hour until the chili thickens and all of the vegetables are very soft.

Too Good Cornbread

2 boxes Jiffy Cornbread Mix

2 eggs

½ cup milk

1 can white cream style corn

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1 fresh jalapeno, diced

Add all ingredients into a mixing bowl and stir until just combined (do not over stir).  Pour into a greased 9” round cake pan or 9”x13” rectangular pan (I recommend lining the bottom of the pan with parchment paper also).  Bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes until the top is very brown and a toothpick comes out clean.  Cool on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes before removing from pan.

Of Squash and Soup

Though modern grocery store inventory doesn’t reflect much in the way of seasonal produce variety, every fall my Kroger is usually bursting with squashes, pumpkins, and gourds.  My mother is an avid squash lover, so I have many memories of building dinners around squashes during the cold months:  stuffed acorn squash, roasted butternut squash, salads with squash “croutons,” and many kinds of squash casseroles.  I’ve been surprised as an adult by those who are apprehensive to purchase squashes due to ignorance of preparation techniques.  Therefore, I’ve created a step-by-step guide to making butternut and acorn squash soup that I hope will convert the faithless.  I also recently read a great guide to butternut squash by the Mighty Martha that is worth checking out.

Winter Squash Soup

3 tbsp butter

1 medium onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, chopped

24 oz. chicken or vegetable broth

1 acorn squash (about 1.5 pounds), peeled and cubed

1 butternut squash (about 1.5 pounds), peeled and cubed

1 can white beans, rinsed

1 tsp fresh sage, minced

1 tsp fresh thyme, minced

1 tsp red chili flakes

1 cup light cream

 Peel the butternut squash with a vegetable peeler.  To clean the acorn squash, peel the outside ridges, then cut into lengthwise sections and trim off outside skin with a knife to clean out the crevices.  Scoop out seeds and cut into roughly 1 inch cubes.

 Melt the butter in a large pot and sauté onions until translucent. Then add garlic, cooking for another minute.  Add squash, beans, seasonings, and broth.  If the liquid doesn’t cover the vegetables, add water until everything in the pot is immersed.

 Bring the soup to a boil, cover it, and reduce the heat to a simmer and let it cook for about an hour until the vegetables are very tender.  Remove from heat and cool for about 15 minutes.  Puree the soup using an immersion wand, food processor, or blender.  Test soup for seasonings, add more salt if needed, or honey if lacking sweetness.

 Return to a low heat, and add cream and stir until well blended. (The texture I like to shoot for is thick enough to be hearty, but thin enough to not look like baby food.  The cream usually brings the soup to that consistency, but if it still seems too thick I sometimes add in more chicken or vegetable broth.) Serve right away or store it.  This recipe makes a lot of soup, so I froze half of it for when it really starts to cool off!

 We served ours up as a dinner with a bacon, tomato, and cheddar grilled cheese sandwich, and the salty and sweet combo was a perfect match.