A few days ago I purchased about 5+ pounds of ground turkey at Costco. Definitely a bargain, as long as you have plans as to how to use it all. Half of it went into making some turkey breakfast sausages which now reside in the freezer. The other half I used to make turkey meatballs. I’d seen a Kalyn’s Kitchen recipe for them, and decided to use her formula as my jumping off point. We’re trying to cut down on calories and fat in our house, so making turkey meatballs was a good plan. I just wanted them to be full of flavor.

I made very few changes to Kalyn’s recipe. I used fresh garlic, but you could easily use granulated garlic as she did in her recipe. I added some salt and pepper too. Since I had egg whites in the refrigerator, I used those instead of whole eggs, but that’s not any big deal. I added a nip of cayenne too. And, I added some olive oil to the turkey mixture because I found that really added some moisture to the turkey breakfast sausage. I may have used a tiny bit more cheese (I had pecorino in my refrigerator) too. The result? Wonderful. I happened to not have any cucumbers or tzatziki sauce or anything similar, so I opted to use a vegetable/tomato kind of chunky sauce on them instead. We liked them a lot. And now I have about 4 more dinners in the freezer. I made larger meatballs than Kalyn did, so we’ll just eat fewer of them, that’s all.
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I was reading through a rather lengthy article in the January/February issue of Cooking Light, and was quite fascinated by some of the info. No matter how much I think I know, there’s always more to be learned about the different cuts, the methods of cooking, and how lean or fatty any cut is . . .

The article was titled “How to buy the best beef,” and was written by Aliza Green, the author of a new book titled Field Guide to Meat. Photo at left is from the article itself.

How about these factlets: (1) we Americans consume 63 pounds of beef a year (wow, no kidding?);(2) In 1976 we ate 89 pounds per person per year (yikes); (3) 90% of the beef we eat is grown right here in the U.S., with most of the balance coming from Canada; (4) cattle weigh about 1000 pounds at slaughter, and are 18-24 months old.

The article went on to explain about what info you can get from the new labeling laws. I knew most of that part. But it also gave a more detailed explanation of grain-finished– cattle fattened on grain, usually corn, during the 3-6 months before slaughter. Problem is that cattle don’t instinctively eat corn, so when they do they experience “stress” and other ailments, therefore they’re routinely fed antibiotics. And they also receive growth hormones (remember DES?) to increase their size (larger cattle = higher weight = more profits into pockets of producers). Grain-finished, however, means more value for our consumer dollar. Then there are the grass-finished. These cattle forage on grasses and legumes and the meat is leaner, lower in saturated fat, cholesterol and calories. This meat generally has a more gamy flavor. Problem: it’s more time consuming to raise, which therefore increases the expense. Most of such beef is imported from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Brazil. Many people believe that grass-fed cattle are a more sustainable choice. Lastly, there is dry-aging. It’s a traditional process preferred by many steak lovers. It concentrates, or intensifies flavors, as it hangs in temp- and humidity-conrolled rooms for 10 days to 2 weeks (longer the better). Most dry-aged meat is sold in large vacuum-packed packs. The time in-bag is called “wet aging.”

The article also stressed budget-friendly, lean and flavorful cuts. In addition to the usual that we probably know about already (tenderloin, flank and sirloin) it recommended the Bottom Round (best if marinated); Hanger Steak (rich and beefy, for searing, grilling or broiling); Tri-Tip (rich flavor, affordable, for roasting or grilling whole, then sliced); Shoulder Tender (like pork loin, to be sliced into medallions for grilling); and Shoulder Center Steak(moderately tender, to be served whole or sliced). Since I go for ribeyes, I generally don’t even look further, but perhaps I should.

Lastly, I was intrigued with the list of the top-selling cuts of beef. I think they did not include ground beef (60% of our beef dollars go to ground beef), since the list below is about “cuts” of beef:
(1) top round steak, boneless
(2) ribeye steak, lip on, bone in (yes!)
(3) ribeye steak, boneless
(4) loin top sirloin steak, boneless
(5) bottom round roast, boneless
(6) chuck under blade pot roast, boneless

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We do, sometimes, here in Southern California, get the absolutely most gorgeous sunsets in the world. The other night was no exception. It’s one of the benefits of living on a hill. Even a night or two later there was a completely different, but nearly equally gorgeous sunset too. No recipes today, just some reminders of God’s glorious world. And a jog to the mind that we need to take the time, now and then, to see his creation and smell the roses, so to speak.

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You know, this blog thing is always fun for me. I like to write. I enjoy cooking. And not that this post wasn’t fun – it was – once I got past the angst over wanting to write up this dinner at all. So you say, what’s the problem? Well – I’ve already written up these two. Instead of making something new and different, I craved the tried and true. Two of my/our favorite things. The Amazing Glaze steaks and the garlic green beans. You see, we food bloggers are somewhat driven – to keep making new and different things, to keep you, our loyal readers, interested. But just in case you haven’t made these two recipes from my previous postings, I’m telling you again, YOU NEED TO MAKE THESE TWO DISHES. Okay. Whew. Got that off my chest.

THE GREEN BEANS: they’re so easy. So garlicky. So delicious I have a hard time keeping my fingers out of the skillet after dinner is all overwith. Even when the green beans are room temp cold. The other night was no exception. I can eat these refrigerator cold too. Since they’re coated in extra virgin olive oil, they’re just as easy to eat chilled as room temp, or hot. But hot is my favorite. These call for an abundance of garlic, smashed and minced with salt on the chopping board, then lightly sauteed in a big skillet. The green beans are simmered in water until they’re just under-done, drained, and added to the garlicky skillet. Cook until the beans are done and serve hot with just a tiny glitter of kosher salt on top. Click HERE for the write-up about them.

THE RIBEYE STEAK: nothing short of awesome. I spotted some USDA Prime ribeyes at Costco the other day and that’s all it took. Had to have them. And there was no question what I’d do with them. Amazing Glaze. The best part is that I still have some of the sauce (the glaze) leftover from months and months ago when I made them last. It hasn’t even been in the freezer – just in a small container in the refrigerator. In all its barbecue-y, smoky chipotle goodness. My DH fired up the grill, and he used the Hugh Carpenter method of grilling the steaks – over the heat long enough to get grill marks on both sides, then on a rack on a pan off the heat for a few more minutes until the ribeye registers 123° or 124° on the meat thermometer. Briefly it rested under a foil tent (and I spread some of the amazing glaze over the steaks while they rested and re-absorbed all their juices), then we dug in. Click HERE for the write-up about the steaks and the amazing AMAZING GLAZE.

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For about 2-3 years my DH Dave and I have been eating a breakfast that consists of one pork sausage link, about 1/3 cup of Greek yogurt (2%) and a half a piece of grainy bread with a thin slather of peanut butter on it. I’ve never added up the calories or fat grams of that breakfast, but we’ve decided to try limiting, even more, the carbs we eat. And to eat more healthy fats. That meant trying to make some kind of (tasty) turkey breakfast sausage.

Eating turkey sausage will be ever-so-much better for us than eating higher fat pork every morning. Note that one patty (which was all we needed) has 4 grams of fat. And we’re probably going to eat more eggs than we have in the past. So, I did a lengthy search on the internet and my own cookbooks for seasoning mixes for breakfast sausage. Knowing that ground turkey has so little taste all by itself I knew I wanted a fairly high-spiced combination. Finally found one that I liked the sound of, over at recipeczar.com. But never satisfied with just one recipe, I took some ideas I found in some other recipes: one suggested adding olive oil to the turkey mixture (great idea, I thought, to give the meat more moisture); another mentioned finely minced red onion (I used onion powder) and some ground ginger.

I bought a big quantity of ground turkey at Costco and mixed up the sausage by hand. The photo at right shows the mounds of herbs and spices added. Once mixed up thoroughly, I patted them out into small patties and put them on a waxed-paper lined cookie sheet and froze them. Once frozen they went into a plastic bag for easy retrieval every day we want them. The plan is to remove them the day or night before, and just defrost enough for that next day. I know that ground turkey spoils very quickly, so they will stay in the freezer until needed. The photo above shows the patties – they’re much smaller than they appear – each one is about 1 3/4 inches in diameter, maybe 2 inches. And they’re quite thin.

Several recipes for turkey breakfast sausage cautioned about not overcooking the patties. After all, we know that turkey meat is very lean – and it will go from just right to overdone (meaning dry and inedible) in no time at all. So if you make these, keep that in mind. The first time you cook them, designate one as a test patty (cut it open to determine how long it really takes to be “done” on your stove and in your skillet). Then make a mental note of how many minutes that was – likely it will be less than you think. They definintely take less time than pork. And don’t saute them at a high temp. I heated the pan first, drizzled about a teaspoon of olive oil in the pan then set the patties in the pan. They lightly sizzled for about a minute on each side, then I put the lid on and allowed them to steam for about another minute or two.  Done. The texture isn’t as firm as pork, but it was so tasty I didn’t miss it.

I don’t recommend you pan fry them from a frozen state – by the time you get the inside cooked through the outsides will be dry and overdone. Not good. If you cook these right they’ll be tender and moist inside. If they are dry, you’ve cooked them too long or at too high a temp. My evaluation? Absolutely great. We both really liked them. Liked the flavorings. Just enough cayenne to give it some oomph. And hints of all kinds of other things, none of which you could pick out.
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Just before Christmas we had a real cold snap. The first morning after we’d had significant rain down here in the lowlands, our close mountains were just blanketed in snow. We don’t see this all that many times a year, so it’s always spectacular when it happens. I don’t have a telephoto lens, so with my point and shoot Canon I zoomed as much as I could. We live near the top of a hill, and in the foreground are other hills in an area called Lemon Heights. Those are close – you can see the houses. The snow covered mountains in the background are about 30-40 miles away, to the north of us, mountains that ring the north side of the San Gabriel Valley.

The mountains are kind of pinkish because the sun was just coming up. The sun hadn’t peeked over the very top of the hill we live on, so the houses in the foreground were still in moderate darkness. Because of the weather, the main freeway from here to Las Vegas was closed for a part of several days from snow and ice. The Grapevine was closed briefly too, the major artery that connects the big basin of Los Angeles from the San Joaquin (wah-keen) Valley to the north, where so much of the fruits, nuts and vegetables are grown that supply a lot of our nation.

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Delicious Egg Muffins, just out of the oven. The one in front is turned slightly on its side.

My DH’s guys came to our house yesterday for their weekly Bible study. Usually they eat sweets – doughnuts, coffeecakes, etc. But I decided this time that perhaps they’d all prefer more protein instead. After all the sweets and overall excess of the holidays, I’d make this one a bit different.

So, I turned to a recipe I’d been wanting to try for awhile. I’ve mentioned previously Kalyn’s Kitchen, a blog I read regularly. Kalyn is a follower of the South Beach Diet, which means eating only a few specific low-glycemic carbs and consuming plenty of lean proteins and lots of vegetables. And eggs. Kalyn fixes this type of egg dish nearly every morning – she makes them up in quantity (a week’s worth) and quickly microwaves them as she’s rushing out the door.

Even using low-fat cheese which is a bit less flavorful as full-fat cheese (mine was a mixture of cheddar, jack and Mozzarella) it was very, very tasty. The green onions add a lot. I didn’t happen to have any vegetables that I thought were just “right” for these, and I wanted to try them once without veggies before I added them the next time I make them. I liked these a lot. They’re extremely easy – mincing up the green onions was about the most tedious, if there really was any tedium to making them. I made exactly 12, and when I pulled them out of the oven they were puffed up very high (like a popover), but within seconds they began to deflate to what you see in the photo above. What’s nice about these is that you can vary every single ingredient (egg whites, or more of them than whole eggs, different kinds of cheeses, and use whatever veggies you like). Just remember that the vegetables take up a lot more volume (space) in the muffin cup, so you’ll get more than 12 if you use bulky veggies. If you don’t like preparing breakfast every day, and want something healthy and easy, this is your ticket! Thank you, Kalyn.
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Check refrigerator:

Yes, I had zucchini.

Yes, I had cottage cheese, Parmesan, garlic, tomato sauce.

Yes, I had ground beef in the freezer.

My head said: “oh yes, I could make that easy moussaka!”

So I did.

This is an old, old recipe. Given to me by a friend of my mother and dad’s. Kay Barstow was in her 60’s when I was a child in the 1950’s. And she wasn’t much of a cook, really, but she knew a bunch of fairly simple dishes of which this was one. She wasn’t cooking anymore when I got this recipe from her in about 1970 when she probably was in her 80’s. Good recipe!

If you’ve ever made moussaka, it’s a fairly laborious dish. Sliced eggplant lightly sauteed for the bottom layer. Ground beef and/or lamb in a tomato sauce, then a Bechemel sauce must be made to go on top of that. Kay obviously didn’t go through all that work. And where this recipe came from, I don’t know. Maybe it was her very own, but I rather doubt it. But in any case, it’s easy. Certainly quicker than the real thing.

Here are the steps:

(1) Lightly saute zucchini in olive oil and layer that in the casserole.

(2) Saute some onion, ground beef and garlic, then add tomato sauce and some seasonings and put that in the casserole on top of the zucchini.

(3) Stir up some cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, eggs, Feta and ground cinnamon and pour that on top, then sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top. Bake. Done.

It had been a few years since I’d made this, so I decided to make this a little bit more my own. Some of the things were my additions: the added Feta cheese and Greek yogurt to the cheese mixture; some seasonings to the meat; a prepared tomato (seasoned) sauce rather than just plain canned tomato sauce. If you wanted to use more vegetables, you certainly can – just use a deeper dish. You could also use ground turkey instead of beef, and low-fat cottage cheese too. I used what I had on hand. My DH thought it was fabulous. I did too.
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Wanting a fairly simple dinner the other night, I knew I would use chicken. So I glanced at my newest cookbook, Ina’s Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics (her newest), and found this recipe for a chicken stew kind of dish but with bouillabaisse overtones. Bouillabaisse (pronounced boo-ya-bess) is a French seafood stew that I enjoy very much. So Ina took all the identity of the dish and adapted it to chicken. (Why didn’t I think of that?) It wasn’t difficult at all. It did take some time to brown all the chicken pieces (I made enough to feed 8), but once you combine ingredients to go into the oven, it’s very simple. But I only recommend it with some reservations. Read on.

What you get is a tender chicken dish with potatoes (I used yams just because I had them and didn’t have any potatoes on hand) in a tomato-based sauce. If I made this again I’d serve it with some pasta (instead of the potatoes or yams), because there is a lot of sauce.  I didn’t think the sauce lent itself well to yams, and I’m not sure the dish is the right fit for potatoes either. But, no sense in wasting the sauce, so I think I’d just make some pasta on the side and serve the chicken on top of it. My photo above I took after the fact and forgot to add the dollop of rouille to it. Sorry about that.

One of the key ingredients to bouillabaisse is saffron. This recipe calls for a LOT of saffron, so dig out your wallet. Fortunately, I had plenty on hand. It gently flavors everything about this dish.

If you were to go onto the Food Network’s site for this recipe, you’ll find lots of people think there are some mistakes in the printed recipe. I agree. I’ve corrected them in my recipe below. (1) the chicken needs to be baked at 350 or 375 in order to get the potatoes to cook. After 90 minutes at 300, the yams I used were still quite firm so I ended up simmering the pot on the stovetop for another 10-15 minutes to get them tender enough to serve; (2) the rouille (a mayonnaise kind of sauce you dollop on top of the stew) contains too much oil (most people thought 1/2 cup was sufficient). It definitely didn’t need a full cup of oil. I did the full amount, and the rouille was very thick. Plus, I have way too much left over, so perhaps the reduced quantity is correct; and (3) adding the Pernod is optional (I don’t happen to like it, but if you like anise, go right ahead).

The rouille added a really nice garlicky high note. It also contains additional saffron. I would not eliminate that part of the dish – it needs the little cap on the stew with the garlic zing. I was a bit puzzled by my recipe software with the high calorie content of this dish. I guess it’s high because you use chicken pieces with skin, even though I don’t eat the skin. Ina’s recipe indicated it served 3 people, but I think it would serve more unless you buy a really small chicken.

A note about leftovers: A couple of days later when I reheated this to serve as leftovers, I was quite disappointed. The saffron flavor had completely disappeared.  How very sad, because I think it added something distinctive to the flavor. Especially sad because saffron is so darned expensive. And the garlic flavor had completely disappeared too. Bizarre. So, my advice is to make this only for the number of people you’ll serve at one meal. I also didn’t like the red sauce leftover. It lacked oomph – tasted too much like tomato paste right out of the can. I knew it wasn’t but that’s what it tasted like. I think I wanted to add salt, but knew there was plenty in it already. And the yams tasted next to awful with it left over. I threw them out and used the rest of the chicken in something else. I did end up using the sauce for a moussaka casserole (will post tomorrow), which was a great way to get double-duty out of the quantity this made. So, next time: make to serve over pasta, no Pernod again, and bake at a higher temp. And plan for no leftovers. So, I’m only recommending this with reservations.
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Over the holidays I’d planned to make this chowder, but just didn’t get around to it. But I had most of the ingredients, so it took little or no time to put it together the other night. We’re trying to eat a bit more healthy – note only 300+ calories a serving and 10 grams of fat. And that’s WITH some heavy cream in it.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a Trader Joe’s near you, they carry a mixed shellfish bag (calamari rings, bay scallops and shrimp). And I augmented it with a bag of already-cooked extra-large shrimp, cut up into chunks. The most amount of time spent was on chopping up the vegetables and cleaning the leeks. So that tells you how rapidly you can make this. The Cajun seasoning adds a zing to it – and I caution you to be careful about how much. Cajun seasonings vary in heat levels, and I don’t think I even added 1/4 teaspoon, and it was on the fence of being too hot for us. I wanted some vegetables in it (mushrooms) but you could use whatever you prefer. And it’s been mentioned here before that I am partial to Penzey’s (concentrated) soup bases– in this case I used the Seafood Soup Base that I’ve had in the refrigerator for about 6-8 months. It’s SO worth buying – rather than having to buy jars and jars of clam juice for this. Maybe you can find Knorr’s little cubes of fish stuff – that would work too. Be careful of the sodium on other products.

Since I had some garlic and saffron rouille on hand (from a chicken bouillabaisse I made a few nights ago) I added a dollop of that on the top of each soup bowl and garnished with the parsley. If we were eating bread I’d serve this with a baguette and butter, and a green salad with a garlicky dressing. Just delicious, and probably even better once it’s sat overnight in the refrigerator.
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