Meatloaf Monday

You know all those "Meatless Monday" posts around the internet today? Well, for the meat lovers out there feeling neglected, here's a special treat: meatloaf! Meatloaf?? Yes, the unassuming loaf of meat. Elicitor of many an upturned nose from child and adult alike. Not especially photogenic or abundant in plate appeal, meatloaf can get a bad rap. Here to turn that frown upside down is this recipe (which-surprise!-includes veggies hidden inside) adapted from here. Without further ado… Meatfull Monday!

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef 

1 zucchini, diced

4 oz. button mushrooms

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 yellow onion, diced

2 tablespoons dried basil

2 tablespoons dried parsley

1 teaspoon garlic powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Note, the original recipe calls for zucchini and mushrooms, but I went with broccoli and carrots instead. Be adventurous with your veggie mix-ins!

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°. Simmer onion and garlic in a skillet over medium heat. Once the onions begin to become translucent, add vegetables and cover to let steam. Once vegetables are fully softened, add in parsley, basil, garlic powder and salt and pepper. Mix well and remove from stove to cool. Next is my favorite part: combine the cooled vegetable mixture with your raw ground beef in a bowl and squish it all together with your hands. This will feel a lot like massaging a brain (so I imagine). Line a bread pan in parchment paper and place brain--I mean, meat mixture into pan and press in firmly. Bake for about 50-55 minutes.

Before you go assuming this is now a weekly anti-vegetarian series, fear not. I don't love beef that much.

Tweet Pin It Now!

Flourless Chocolate Cake

The prospect of making this cake intimidated the heck out of me. As still somewhat of a novice baker, I've yet to attempt anything "flourless" in the kitchen. The thought of missing so crucial an ingredient (even gluten free recipes call for some form of flour) gives me the heebee jeebees. So, what's a fearful baker who's conveniently home for the holidays to do? Call in the big guns: DAD. You might notice much older (and wrinklier?) hands in some of the pics; wouldn't want you thinking those were mine. To be perfectly honest, my dad baked this entire cake. I just supervised and annoyingly peeked over his shoulder the whole time snapping away. Does that make me a bad blogger? If so, what a delicious cheat and done only with the best of intentions. If you like chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate, this cake is for you. Who needs flour?

We worked from an old, dusty recipe torn from the pages of a nondescript newspaper circa 1992, so I can't properly credit the original source, but a similar recipe can be found here.

Ingredients:

1 lb bittersweet chocolate or four 4 oz. bars (we used Ghirardelli's bars here)
2 sticks of unsalted butter
1/4 cup hazelnut liqueur (or coffee, almond, chocolate)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
7 eggs at room temperature
1 cup sugar


Directions:

Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter a 9-inch springform pan, line with parchment paper, and butter the parchment. In a saucepan, simmer the bittersweet chocolate (broken up into pieces), butter, and the coffee liqueur. When the mixture is fully melted & smooth, stir in the vanilla extract and set aside to cool. While that's cooling, beat your eggs for several minutes until they're fluffy (don't worry if this takes a bit longer than you expect) and add the sugar. Combine chocolate mixture with the eggs/sugar and blend. Pour batter into pan and bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out virtually clean. Let cool in the pan, then loosen springform and remove. When the cake is fully cooled (we allowed it to sit overnight), dig out your sifter and sprinkle powdered sugar over the top. In a pinch, use a sieve for this step (amateur hour in this house!) and feel free to throw in a paper cutout of your favorite holiday shape to form the "blank space" in the center. We went with the obvious--a tree! Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

.

Tweet Pin It Now!

Banana-Raspberry Comfort Food

I know it's already Wednesday, and Monday seems like a distant memory, and the sky looks like this today:

But I swear, Monday was much less cheery with torrential downpours and unseasonably cold temps, leaving me jonesing for some comfort food. Crappy weather + comfort food = banana raspberry muffins? I have no idea either. The stomach wants what the stomach wants!

Wishing I could say my kitchen skills are up to snuff with those of Wear Flats To Dinner, the coolest food blog around, instead I settled for this recipe from the painfully typical Epicurious (slightly adapted).

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (I used Bob's Red Mill AP gluten-free flour instead)
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 ripe bananas
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1 1/2 cups berries of your choice

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400° F. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in one bowl, whisking to blend. Add the bananas, blending until smooth. Stir in the milk, eggs next, then fold in your berries. Divide batter between individual muffin tins. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

With minimal ingredients and only two mixing bowls needed, these muffins are easy peasy to whip up. Should you encounter a rainy day, with a massive craving for bananas and/or berries, that makes total sense and I know exactly how you feel. Try these bad boys, they just might do the trick.

Tweet Pin It Now!

Preparing For the Apocalypse...With Chili

Alright, so the end of the world is not upon us, but what the heck, I like to be prepared.

This need to feel prepared, I believe, dates back into the far reaches of my childhood. As a youngster in elementary school, I remember wearing my school uniform to bed so that I could wake up the next morning already dressed and ready to go. Seriously. My eight-year-old self was convinced I was so clever to have come up with such an idea. Proud of all the time I was saving in the morning (which couldn't have been more than 5 minutes at most), I would secretly congratulate myself as I jumped out of bed clad in a white collared blouse and navy jumper smurking I bet no one else does this! Yes that's probably true, because all the other 4th graders were busy being normal kids and waking up for school in normal pajamas. Looking back, #1 I can't believe my mom let me go to sleep dressed like that. It's nearly impossible that I woke up with anything less than 1,000 wrinkles all over my uniform which she then had to iron out. And #2, did I not shower in the mornings?? If I did, wouldn't that defeat the purpose of hopping out of bed dressed and ready to go? These are just a few of the burning questions I wish I could go back and ask my eight-year-old self. Unsurprisingly, all I can seem to recall is how pleased I was with myself for coming up with the whole idea.

Veggies give their last looks.

Eventually I grew out of the habit, but revisiting the memory now it's clear, in hindsight, that my adolescent self was just trying to wrest some sort of control over the seeming chaos of the morning school-day routine. Anticipate the "unknown" in some way. That, or capture a few extra minutes of sleep. As anyone who knows me can attest, I love my Z's. Regardless, having said all of this leads me to Sunday's chili-making spree. In my adult life I'd like to think I've learned to go with the flow more and remain flexible in the face of uncertainty, but admittedly, my latent preparad-ness tendencies only manifest themselves in less crazy ways than when I was a kid. Exhibit A: batch cooking for the week. Sunday was spent slicing and dicing onions, bell peppers, carrots, cauliflower, sweet potatoes and parsnips (along with some ground turkey and black beans!) into a delicious, hearty pot of chili that's served as my lunch every day this week. With the cool, crisp days of Fall just around the corner, there's really nothing better than stick-to-your-ribs chili.

Simmer away!

In a strange way, having my lunches/food ready to go for the week beforehand makes me feel generally less-stressed and mentally ready to tackle the workweek along with whatever else crops up. The way I see it, already knowing what I'm going to eat for lunch is one less "decision" to think about during the day. Don't get me wrong, I love a splashy Chipotle lunch as much as the next gal. As they say, variety is the spice of life. But for the most part I find it works for me. Plus, it helps at the end of the day too, when work goes late and I'm about to eat my arm off in sheer starvation--to have healthy food options already prepared and ready to pop in the microwave. Literally, life- and arm-saving. 

What little tricks and tips do you do to prepare for the day/week ahead? Hopefully it's not sleeping in your next day's clothes!
.

Tweet Pin It Now!

A Bread-tastic Weekend

I recently turned 28 and have been feeling all of my twenty-eight years lately. I realize the ridiculousness of this statement within the larger scheme of life and how relatively young 28 truly is, but what can I say, I am not feeling very spring chicken-y! All jokes aside, I am enjoying entering my late twenties, but have been noticing lately the domestic itch creeping in. Not in a bad way! Just interestingly so. Case in point: cooking. Up until recently, I have never been that keen on learning to cook despite both my parents being very talented in the kitchen and big proponents of the nightly home-made dinner while growing up. However, over the last couple of months or so, I've gotten into cooking and baking and it has become a fun journey of discovery and a real source of joy for me. I'm certainly no Julia Child (yet!), and don't have a ton of practice, but am loving the experience of finding new recipes to try and the sense of accomplishment that comes with the success (and sometimes failure!) of the finished product.

Ingredient line-up 

Today, I baked bread from scratch. And not just any old bread -- gluten-free/sugar-free bread. Pretty advanced stuff! I followed a recipe that called for coconut flour in place of regular all-purpose white flour from the blog Against All Grain, which you can find here.

I must say, the loaf came out looking and tasting darn good! No hint of coconut flavor either, which I was a little worried about.

All in all, a wonderful way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Fresh out of the oven!

P.S. a big shout out to the bf who fully supports my culinary adventures even though, as he puts it, "there is no sous chef in baking." I insist there has got to be. We are working on it!

Tweet Pin It Now!