Has it really been 2 months since I've posted on here? Well, a week or two ago I blogged on SparkPeople about the crazy amount of sodium in people's diets, and how it can creep up on you if you're not watching. Read more about why I'm now watching sodium here: http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage_public_journal_individual.asp?blog_id=3638411

So, one of the things I bought at a recent trip to the grocery store was seasoning alternatives to salt. One was lemon pepper and another was a mix of spices. The lemon pepper did have a little bit of salt, but still only a fraction of the sodium in pure table salt. The "zesty seasoning blend" had onion, black pepper, parsley, celery seed, basil, bay, marjoram, oregano, thyme, cayenne pepper, coriander, cumin, mustard, rosemary, garlic, carrot, orange peel and tomato.

Tonight I cooked an ordinary meal and substituted the seasonings where I would normally use salt, or worse yet, soy sauce.

• Pollock fillets seasoned with lemon pepper
• Spinach, seasoned with the zesty seasoning blend (instead of the usual soy sauce)
• Butternut squash, plain

The fillets were fried as usual, and then I cooked the spinach in the same frying pan. Butternut squash, which was already cubed, was popped into the microwave and heated for 4 minutes, coming out perfectly cooked.

All in all, each dinner had less than 100mg of sodium, allowing Allan to remain well below his daily limit of 1500. Unfortunately, I hadn't estimated the portions correctly. Everything shrunk a lot more than I thought it would, but what we did end up with was pretty delicious! And healthful-- not only for the low sodium, but for the vitamins :-)

Wow, has it really been that long since I've tried something new in the kitchen? Funny how there should, in theory, be more free time sans Todd in the house, and yet we've actually done LESS cooking than when he's here. Maybe having a kid around motivates us to try to eat more healthfully.

Tonight I cooked up a few items I picked up on sale at Ralph's earlier this week. Manager's specials, as always, rock! :-)

Swordfish, cut into cubes
Tomatoes, also cubed
Sliced mushrooms
Rice
Onions

Did the usual stir-fry with onions, then added the fish and mushrooms, and finally, the tomato. It took a little while to cook because the pre-sliced mushrooms were so large, and a lot of liquid ended up in the pot. So I liquefied a large tablespoonful of flour (no starch onhand!), added it to the mix to thicken, and voila! A tasty sauce!

The picture isn't the greatest, and the layout isn't very appealing, but there you go-- simple stir-fry served with rice:

Total cost?
Swordfish fillet = $1.64
Mushrooms = $1.49
Tomatoes (3) = ~$1.50
Rice = ~$0.25

Grand total = $4.88 for two meals... there's enough leftover for a full meal for tomorrow's dinner! :-9

This past week has been a pretty bad week for us, cooking-wise. Soooo many activities in celebration of Todd's birthday, what with seeing "How To Train Your Dragon" in the theater on Tuesday, attending Pajama Storytime at the library on Wednesday, cleaning up on Thursday in anticipation of possible company on Friday, and then being too beat on Friday to do anything but order pizza. Add a weekend of going out and doing little excursions over town, and the whole week was shot.

Even tonight's dinner was only half-planned. The Trader Joe's chicken was thawed in the fridge, but how to cook it? And what to do for veggies? I decided to cook up some of the veggies that *really* needed to be cooked ASAP.

At 5:00, I went home, cut up onions and tomatoes and stir-fried them with a bag of bean sprouts in the wok. I had just enough time to remove the fat from the chicken, cut it into small pieces, and coat it in salt and pepper before I had to rush out the door to the hairstylist. I left the chicken to sit in the spices while I was gone.

I returned a half hour later, dumped the veggies into a bowl and stuck them in the microwave to keep warm, and fried up the chicken pieces.

Dinner was served true Asian-style: everything tossed into a bowl and mixed with rice. Easy to eat!

Approximate total cost:

3 chicken thighs: ~$3
2 tomatoes: ~$1
Bean sprouts: $0.49

Add up the onion and rice, and the total comes to around $5. Not bad! ;-)

A while back I bought a 2.5-lb bag of individually frozen chicken thighs from Trader Joe's. I liked that they weren't all stuck together and that I would be able to take out individual pieces to defrost. Since we get a lot of frozen fish (Albertson's has some nice bargains like 2-lb bags of individually-wrapped salmon for only $9) we'd been eating mostly fish lately.

After my little bounty of manager's specials from Ralphs exactly one week ago, I thought I'd try my luck again today. Didn't come away with much except for a sale on cherries and... a 49-cent package of presliced baby bella mushrooms. They obviously needed to be cooked right away. So I mulled over my choices, and decided on a standard chicken-rice-and-veggie fare.

• 6 oz baby spinach (also from Trader Joe's)
• garlic
• 1 package sliced mushrooms
• 3 chicken thighs 
• rice

The preparation and cooking was pretty simple. Fried the garlic, mushrooms and spinach in a wok with soy sauce for flavoring. The chicken I coated with salt and pepper, and covered with flour before frying. Mixed-grain rice cooked on the side in the rice cooker, and voila! A simple, yet tasty meal.

And I have to say-- those chicken thighs are delicious! They were so easy to thaw-- I just took three frozen pieces from the bag at noon and set them on a plate to thaw. By the time I got home from work, they were ready to cook.

Here's a shot of the food. The color looks a little strange, must've been poor lighting, so it looks a little duller than it actually was. Of course, it didn't help that the chicken wasn't really browned well. Better luck next time, eh!

Last night I was inspired by a recipe I came across in Better Homes and Gardens for garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas). I knew I had a can in the pantry, and had long wondered what I could do with it. It called for stir-frying some carrots with the beans and serving over couscous.

As mentioned in my earlier post today, I got a bonanza of different veggies at Ralphs. Since I knew most of them had to be cooked sooner rather than later, and since I knew the carrots we already had would hold longer than the bargain veggies, I decided to try one of them instead. I picked the butternut squash, since it was sweet and full of vitamin A, just like carrots.

Ingredients:

• 1 can garbanzo beans
• butternut squash, diced
• onion, diced
• baby spinach
• quinoa
• cumin

I started out by stir-frying the onion and butternut squash (which already came pre-sliced/diced in the bag) in grapeseed oil in a wok. Sprinkled with about a teaspoon of cumin and some soy sauce for flavor. Covered the wok and let it cook for several minutes longer. Quinoa was cooking in a pot to the side, according to package directions.

When the butternut squash was almost done (softened but still somewhat firm), I added spinach and cooked till it shrank. Turned off the stove and threw in the can of garbanzo beans to warm them up a bit. Served the whole mix over a bed of quinoa. Voila:


Total cost?
1 can garbanzo beans = 99 cents
1 pack squash = 99 cents
baby spinach = $1
1 cup quinoa = $1.25
1/2 onion = ~25cents

Grand total = $4.48 for a nice, filling and vegetarian meal!

I like the idea of supporting our local farmers, I really do. The concept of CSAs (community supported agriculture) is really neat. One of the nearby ones delivers a bag of freshly-picked produce to our company for $22/week. I got a chance to see it for myself when a co-worker received his bounty and posted pics. Looked delicious, but not nearly enough for a family of 3 to last a whole week. In the meantime, it's grocery stores to the rescue...

Today during my lunch break, I went to Ralphs for some much-needed grocery shopping. We were running out of staples, and the weekly ad in yesterday's mail showed a few nice produce sales, particularly strawberries (my favorite). I thought I'd get the berries and some broccoli and that would be it. But once I got there, I was amazed at all the things marked down in price as "Manager's Special"-- i.e. stuff that needed to be sold and consumed pretty quickly. Before I knew it, I had stuffed my cart with all sorts of goodies, including vegetables I'd never bought before. Amongst my finds:

a pack of seasoned brussels sprouts: $0.99
a pack of cubed butternut squash: $0.99
a bag of bean sprouts: $0.49
2 packs of sliced mushrooms: $1.49 each
roma tomatoes: $0.99/lb
broccoli: $0.99/lb
3 1-lb clamshells of strawberries: $0.99 each

Combined with some of the other stuff already in our fridge (spinach, carrots and onion), we have enough to last us a week, veggie-wise.

Not a bad deal! Now we just have to plan our meals accordingly and use up all the marked-down veggies before they go bad. Hmm... now we just have to figure out what to do with them... any ideas? :-)

Yesterday I posted about making a nice mixed veggie soup. Very versatile, great for leftovers, too.

Today I got home with not a lot of time to think about what to cook, much less go out to the store to buy ingredients if I did think of something. Had to make do with what we had.

Rice in the cooker, and then frozen tilapia fillets in a sink of warm water to thaw. Leftover veggie soup comes in handy, but it isn't enough for the three of us.

So, I stir-fried 8 oz of baby spinach in a wok with olive oil and soy sauce. Set the spinach aside in a dish to keep warm.

Then I cut up the thawed tilapia into large chunks, and fried it with the last of the bagged cole slaw in the same wok with a bit more oil and a bit more soy sauce.

Voila! Fish and rice = basic staples. Veggie soup, plus cabbage from the cole slaw, plus spinach = a nice variety of healthful vegetables.

It's a great way to get a really nice variety of veggies going. If you add the right ones, you don't really need to add much in the way of flavoring.

Here's my standard fare:

• carrot
• onion
• zucchini
• celery
• tomato

Dice each of the above veggies, add a little water to a pot, and start cooking. Make sure to cook in order of how long it takes-- carrots and celery, then onion, then zucchini, then tomato.

The carrots and onions add a wonderful sweet flavor to the veggie broth, and the tomatoes balance it out with a bit of sourness. All that's needed is a sprinkling of salt and voila! A healthful stew of soup. Goes great by itself or mixed with other dinner fixings.

Made an old standard tonight: pasta with cream of mushroom soup and canned tuna. Kind of like the idea behind Hamburger Helper.

Cooked pasta, drained, then added 1 can cream of mushroom soup (condensed), 1 can of tuna and 1 can of peas.

For veggies, I diced some zucchini and stir-fried it with bagged cole slaw, and served on the side.

Voila! A quick and easy meal, which makes a nice change from yesterday's take-forever risotto! ;-)

Lesson learned: cook the zucchini first! It takes longer to cook than shredded cabbage.

Total cost:
half a bag of farfalle = 50 cents
1 cream of mushroom soup = 69 cents
1 can of tuna in water = 99 cents
1 can of sweet peas = 79 cents
1/3 bag cole slaw = 50 cents
1 zucchini = 50 cents

Grand Total:  $3.97

• 2 Carrots, diced
• 1 Zucchini, diced
• 1 package Mushrooms, sliced
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 tomatoes, diced
• 4 cups Chicken broth
• 1 cup barley
• 3 tablespoons butter

1. Heat 2 spoons butter + olive oil, fry onions until soft. Add salt, pepper and soy sauce.
2. Add 2 cups chicken broth and barley, stir and cook a few minutes.
3. Add remaining broth, bring to simmer, cook barley, covered, for 20 minutes

4. Add vegetables (except tomatoes) and cook additional 10 minutes, uncovered.

5. Add tomatoes and cook another 10 minutes, or until broth evaporates and barley is tender (but chewy). Stir in remaining spoon of butter and add more salt and pepper to taste.



For added protein, I microwaved some turkey meatballs from Trader Joe's, and added them to individual servings of risotto... or soup?

See, I think I wound up adding too much liquid, because between the broth and the vegetables, it ended up being more of a soup than risotto. There wasn't THAT much liquid leftover, so it was only slightly "soupy", but it was delicious that way, too! The barley has an interesting, nutty flavor-- a little remniscent of oats, but with the consistency of brown rice, with some added chewiness. Delicious!

Total cost?
Half a bag of barley = 75 cents
Zucchini = 50 cents
Pack of mushrooms = 99 cents
Onion and carrot = 25 cents
Tomato = $1
Meatballs = $1

Grand total = $4.49 for all 3 of us.

Ingredients:

• Swai fillet
• Broccoli
• Sliced mushrooms
• Onion or garlic
• Basil

Steam broccoli, cook rice, set aside.
Chop a handful of onion, and fry in oil in pan. Add basil (fresh is best, but dried also works well)
Sprinkle salt and pepper on both sides of swai fillet.
Fry swai fillets in the onion/basil oil, 3 minutes each side.

Take out swai fillets and set aside.
Add sliced mushrooms to pan, season with soy sauce, and sautee until cooked.

Serve swai with rice and broccoli on the side, and coated with mushroom and remaining sauce from pan.

Total cost?
almost 1 pound broccoli = 77 cents
1 package sliced mushrooms = 99 cents
swai fillets @ $1/fillet = $3
rice for all of us = 25 cents

Grand total = $5.01 for 3 meals at dinner plus Todd's lunch the next day.

At noon: cube boneless, skinless chicken breasts, season with salt and soy sauce, and let soak in a bowl in the fridge.

In the evening:
Fry chicken in oil in a large wok at high heat.
Prepare couscous according to package instructions. Add some diced tomatoes towards end of cooking.
Stir-fry spinach with soy sauce and a dash of lemon, and serve on the side.

A lot of the juice from the chicken ended up in the wok after cooking. Add some liquefied starch or flour into the mix, heat to boiling, and the mixture will thicken, creating a perfect sauce!

Heat leftover salmon water (or any water used to cook meat (extra flavor!) else just plain water)
Add soybean paste and diced medium/firm tofu.

Serve over reconstituted wakame seaweed with a slice of whole-grain bread with almond butter.
Season with extra Tamari soy sauce if desired.

Ingredients:

• Salmon
• Cole slaw
• Eggs
• Spinach

Stir-fry spinach with oil and soy sauce. Add a dash of lemon. Set aside.

Stir-fry cole slaw with mushroom sauce to taste.
Boil salmon and shred (save the water for soup-- see next day)
Crack egg into bowl, add soy sauce, beat, and mix in slaw and salmon bits
Fry as a pancake

Serve individual cakes with spinach and rice on the side.

Ingredients:

• 2 tomatoes
• 2 zucchinis
• 3 carrots
• pasta
• salmon

Bring pot of water to boil.
Cook carrots, zucchini and pasta for ~10 minutes.
Add tomatoes and cook a few more minutes.
Also added Trader Joe's chicken broth packet for extra flavor.

Cook salmon separately.


Ladel soup into bowls. Cut cooked salmon portions into pieces and add to soup.