Guy Food

I love to eat healthy, really. It makes me feel good, keeps my girly figure intact, and helps me power through my (sometimes very long) days. That being said, I still have cravings for bad-for-me food just like everyone else, and recently it was a meatball sub. Usually I don't like meatballs (I push them off my spaghetti, avoid them at appetizer buffets, and the Swedish cannot tempt me at Ikea) but I think it was the combination of crispy toasted bread, melty bubbly cheese, and chunky tomato sauce that had be craving a meatball sub.

So I made one - healthy Katelyn style!

Ladies, your guys would be pleased to eat this, it's total guy food. You don't need to tell them it's good for them.

Turkey Meatballs 

1 pound ground white meat turkey

1/2 cup minced parsley

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp red pepper flakes

1/2 cup fat free/low fat mozzarella

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 egg

1/2 (homemade) bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all these ingredients together and form into one inch balls. Heat some oil in the bottom of a medium pan over medium high heat. Brown all sides of the meatballs, remove to a sheet pan and bake 10 or so minutes, or until cooked through. Be sure not to overcook - turkey dries out quickly! 

Sandwich meatballs inside a toasted hoagy bun, topped with chunky tomato sauce and some more fat free mozzarella cheese, then broil in the oven to melt the cheese. 

1 egg

What to Make When you Have Nothing to Cook With

I haven't been to the store in two weeks. Shameful I know. Especially when I really love grocery shopping. I'm not joking. Absolute truth. I get so excited by the prospects of what will be when I get all those fresh ingredient home from the grocery, I almost can't contain myself and usually end up spending too much money. Reasons why being a personal chef and caterer is perfect - I am guaranteed LOTS of grocery shopping in my future. (Stifles excited giggles.)

Conversely, I also get really excited when I have limited items to work with, as was the case this weekend. Being a good cook isn't just about making things taste good, but also about how you utilize your ingredients and make them be the best versions of themselves. Somehow I was able to make cornmeal, canned tomatoes, and chunk tuna into a satisfying and filling Italian-inspired dinner.

Parsley polenta, stewed basil tomatoes, topped with chunk tuna fish.

I was able to use the left overs the next day to make crispy polenta cakes with tomato sauce!

Parsley Polenta

1 cup water or chicken broth

1 cup milk (I used skim)

1/2 cup yellow or white cornmeal (medium or finely ground)

1/3 cup freshly chopped parsley (bonus points if it is Italian flat leaf parsley)

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

Combine the water and milk in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir in cornmeal with a whisk slowly to prevent lump-age. Continue to cook until mixture thickens, about 5 minutes. Take polenta off the heat and stir in parsley and cheese (if mixture is too thick, add a splash of scalded milk.) Season with salt and pepper.

I Choose to Chew my Green Goddess Smoothies

There are lots of things that make me curiously happy, like a pair of jeans that fit perfectly, a surprisingly warm day in the middle of January, the fact that my birthday is only four days away, and Greek yogurt drizzled with honey and toasted almonds for breakfast. What made me exceptionally happy today, however, was when my dinner plans turned out even better than I could have hoped. You know the old saying that starts out "best laid plans of mice and men..." and sometimes you feel like the man and sometimes you feel the mouse, but regardless your plans "gang aft agley."

I had made kale pesto while still on break and threw it in the freezer for a day such as today where I ran wide open since 9am and returned home famished. I tossed this pesto with sauteed broccoli, whole wheat rigatoni pasta, and topped with diced tomatoes and shredded Romano cheese. It was a beautiful concept as I was brainstorming my dinner walking home from classes, much like a kindergartner meticulously plans his after school snack down to every last detail, but as I was mixing it all up my excitement waned a bit when the proper creamy consistency of traditional pesto was lacking from my pasta (due to the fact that I omitted the customary Parmesean cheese in the pesto in order to cut calories and fat.) I added a little of the pasta's cooking water, with all that gummy starch, and again I was curiously happy as I plated my pasta dinner... which just occurred to me contained many of the elements of a Green Goddess smoothie. I always preferred chewing my vegetables anyway.

For those of you who may be curious, my pesto was comprised of blanched kale leaves, toasted walnuts, fresh basil, olive oil and a little water to bind, seasoned with salt and red pepper flakes. This is of course just a jumping off point as you can base your pesto off of anything you would like, including spinach which I have done in the past with great success.

A Day with no Pictures...

I have the saddest news ever folks – my camera is DEAD. And of course my camera charger is in a different state than I am (meaning it is all the way at home) and thus completely useless to me know when I need it to take pictures of all the wonderful treats I have been experimenting with this week. My camera is simply mocking me now, sitting in a basket on my desk and staring at me uselessly.  Oh now I wish I could have showed you my dinner from a few nights ago! And the cookies that I made on the fly with what I have lying around the apartment. But unfortunately you will just have to be entertained by my words and not my amateur photography skills.

My sorority has a philanthropy event coming up with week on campus and I jumped at the opportunity to contribute to our bake sale for the event. We are calling it Band Jam, and have rounded up a few local bands to play an outdoor concert for those that would like to attend. Of course donations will be collected to benefit our philanthropy, Diabetes Research, and it generally is a pretty good time with my sisters and the patrons that come to hear the bands. Last year it was really successful, but unseasonably chilly and all I could think about was how I wished I had worn another pair of socks and had a mug of tea in my hands, but this week is supposed to be warm in the evenings and comfortably fall like.

But what to make for the bake sale? I have been pining for the opportunity to bake or cook for a reason, be it friends over for dinner, hosting my Bible Study group, or a birthday, and finally I have the opportunity! But herein lies the problem with being a full time and fully involved college student who loves to spend ALL her time in the kitchen – I have no time. No time to run to the grocery to get necessary baking ingredients, or actually bake the goodies for the occasion. So last night was an experimenting night for me. I fashioned my family’s chocolate chip cookie recipe to use what I had on hand. Thank goodness for my roommates who keep butter on hand, because this college kid for sure doesn’t. A couple cups of flour and oats and some leftover M&M’s and ta-da! We have M&M oatmeal cookies for the bake sale, all of which are definitely worth 50 cents for the philanthropy.

Second, I just have to tell you about the dinner that I fabricated a few nights ago. I was gifted some beautifully home grown tomatoes last weekend while I was babysitting for a local family – what a gift! Like gold to me, free homegrown tomatoes – heaven! I just had to stuff one of them. I filled it with sautéed veggies (carrots, bell peppers, onions, and garlic) and a heaping pile of julienned spinach leaves, tossed with some brown rice, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil, and I threw the two halves in the oven to warm through and toast on the top. (If I had a food processor I would have made some homemade bread crumbs for the top of the halves to crisp up. I still have one tomato left so maybe next time.) While this stuffed tomato was baking off, I pulled out one of my chicken breasts, seasoned with salt and pepper, and browned in a skillet with olive oil. But how boring is that? What to top it with?

My grandma gifted me with a jar of jalapeno peach jam a few weeks ago, and wonderfully complex it is. The sweetness is what you taste first, and then there is the sneaky spice and heat of the jalapeno that creeps in. I first tried this jam on some homemade whole wheat biscuits (more on that in another post) this weekend and just HAD to find more uses for it. So I melted some down in the microwave with some water, then poured it over my browned chicken and it was dinner time!

Hang in there with me for this week and I promise I will have that charger mailed down soon! And then I will promptly make these recipes again and TAKE PICTURES OF THEM and then share!