Ok everyone here is the next episode! Enjoy it and have a great day!
A Foodie’s Life- Episode 3: Quinoa Stuffed Acorn Squash
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A Foodie’s Life- Episode 1, Baked Sweet Potato Fries!
Ok, this is long overdue. One person, specifically, you know who you are, has been asking me to podcast for years. I used to host a great podcast called A Dieter’s Life. Well, life is different now so instead of a podcast we have a video blog! This is just the beginning, so please I’ll take constructive criticism.
I’ve all ready filmed episode two and fixed a lot of the issues in episode one! Enjoy!
Baked Gluten Free Mac and Cheese
Last week I was exercising and watching the new show on ABC The Chew. It’s a talk show with Clinton Kelly, Carla Hall, Daphne Oz, Mario Batali and Michael Symon. While working out, we’ll talk about what kind of working out I was doing some other time, Carla Hall was making a recipe of Mac and Cheese with Sam Champion from Good Morning America. It was topped with bacon and had caramelized onions. Carla’s recipe uses a roux, which is common for Mac and Cheese. I always hesitate using a roux, I’m not sure actually why, I think it’s because I’m always afraid that I won’t cook the flour flavor out. I hate when things have that pasty flour taste.
A few years ago I was working on a party for 300, I had made a spinach and artichoke dip, but there was tons of it left over. The next day I looked at this vat of dip and wondered what the heck I was going to do with it. I put it in a pot and warmed it up, added a little bit of heavy cream or half and half, I can’t remember which and realized I had a mixture for mac and cheese. I boiled some macaroni. Out of that came my recipe of mac and cheese. I’ve never used flour again, just cream cheese, which is the base for the spinach dip.
After working out I had a twitter conversation with Carla about her mac and cheese, I honestly didn’t think she’d respond!
Is it wrong to be watching @carlahall while making mac and cheese? It looked so good!
@afoodieslife Nope! Not one BIT! Lol
@carlahall when I make my mac and cheese I use cream cheese and no roux. Comes out great!
@afoodieslife great for gluten sensitivities. Awesome!
I had never really thought about it before but it was a gluten free recipe if I made it with gluten free macaroni. I thought it was worth a try; I’m always looking for more gluten free recipes for clients. My house mate tries to live a gluten free lifestyle so under the guise that I was being nice to her I set out to make a batch of gluten free mac and cheese. Truth be told it had also been a rough few days at work so I thought this comfort food would make me feel better and not feel as bad about myself.
I went to the store and this is what I came back with, although no tomatoes were used for this recipe. I found a nice brown rice elbow pasta. First thing I did was boil the macaroni per the directions. For some reason the bag said to rinse it in cold water after it was cooked. I did, not sure why it said that though.
Then I cut up 1 onion, a yellow pepper, a piece of red pepper that I had left over, garlic and mushrooms. I put the onion in the pot first and sweat it, then added garlic, peppers and mushrooms. After that all cooked down I added an 8 oz package of cream cheese. Then 1/2 cup of fat free milk, 1/2 cup of grated parmesan and 1/2 cup shredded gruyere at the very end.
Once the pasta was cooked I drained it, rinsed it and added it back to it’s pot. I then added the cheese sauce to it. I got out a baking dish and sprayed it with pan spray. I added the macaroni and cheese to it, topped it with another 1/2 cup of grated parmesan. Then I baked it in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes.
I was surprised how much I liked it. The only thing I’d do differently is I’d add some parmesan or something green on top of the pan! It looks a little bland, but the veggies, garlic, and cheese all married together. I will be making it again.
Ron’s Gluten Free Baked Macaroni and Cheese
1 Onion, sliced
2 Cloves of Garlic, minced
1 Orange Pepper, diced
1/2 Red Pepper, diced
1 cup sliced mushrooms
2 cup fat free milk
16 oz brown rice pasta, Elbows
8 Oz cream cheese
1 Cup Parmesan Cheese 1/2 in mix 1/2 on top
1/2 cup shredded gruyere
Method
1. Boil pasta per directions.
2. Sweat Onions, add garlic, add peppers and mushrooms.
3. Add cream cheese to vegetables with milk, once ingredients smooth out add parmesan cheese and gruyere.
4. Drain pasta put back in pot and then add cream sauce to mixture. Mix until all pasta is well coated. Add to baking dish that you’ve sprayed with pan spray. Bake in 350 oven for 30 minutes.
Sweet Potato Fries, Baked!
In my quest to be healthy I’ve been eating a lot of sweet potatoes, so many in fact that I might just turn into one. Wait, they are round and I’m trying to not be round anymore. I digress.
One of my go to meals lately has been a sweet potato and a salad. I know the purists are going to be mad at me when I say that a professionally trained chef puts his sweet potato in the microwave and cooks it that way. But when you’ve worked all day and don’t feel like waiting for an hour or so while your potato cooks in the oven that’s the easiest way to do it. Poke a few holes in your sweet potato, put it in the microwave and five or six minutes later your done. Lather it with a buttery substance, season with salt and pepper and you have an instant meal.
Well, the other night I wanted a sweet potato but I was tired of the baked or nuked kind so I said to myself, ‘self, why don’t you make sweet potato fries.’ I don’t have a fryer and didn’t want all that grease so I decided to bake them. It truly is the simplest thing to do.
First you wash your potato. Then you cut it length wise
Then you cut the pieces you have length wise again. Voila! You have sweet potato fries.
Then put your fries into a bowl added olive oil and seasoned them. I used salt, pepper and garlic powder but let your imagination run free. That’s what makes cooking fun right? You could put a hot spice on there like chili powder or you could even go sweeter and add some cinnamon. Let your taste that evening guide you.
I added the fries to a pan that I had coated with a little spray just to make sure nothing stuck. Then I baked them in the oven for about 15 minutes at 400 degrees. I find the higher heat you don’t get soggy fries!
The fries came out beautifully. And they were a compliment to my dinner of pork chops from Raven and Boar in East Chatham, NY and some sweet corn from Taft Farms in Great Barrington, Ma. I also have a leg of lamb from Raven and Boar that I’m cooking tomorrow evening. I’ll let you know how to comes out!
Sweet Potato Fries, Baked!
1 Sweet Potato
Salt & Pepper, to taste
Garlic Powder, to taste
Olive Oil
Method
1. Cut sweet potato into fries.
2. Put cut potato into a bowl, add olive oil, season with salt, pepper and garlic powder.
3. Bake in preheated 400 degree oven for 15 minutes until fries are crispy.
Veggie noodles with peanut sauce
I love pasta but it doesn’t quite fit with my new health plan. In an effort to get the enjoyment of pasta but not the calories I decided I would turn my veggies into pasta. On Tuesday’s I have the day off so quite often I offer to cook for my roommate. She thinks I’m being nice, I just wanted to have something else to write about. But hey, I’ll take the nice points.
My thought was that I would mix the veggies with some sort of asian noodle and then make a simple peanut sauce. I combed the aisles of the grocery store and I just found two noodle products, one that was all ready cooked (Yucky!), and one that looked more like ramen type noodles. I stood there and scratched my head. What was I going to do? I finally decided that I would just make it strictly a veggie dish, just bulk up the veggies. The other thing you should know is that I literally had to talk myself down from buying a whole loaf of bread to go with this meal. Seriously. I walked past the bakery, perused what they had and decided against it. When I was in the Asian section and couldn’t find the noodles I wanted I tried to convince myself that getting a loaf of bread was fine since I wasn’t having the calories from the noodles. I started to walk over to the bread again. In my mind I saw myself getting home, lathering up the bread with sticks of butter and eating it all in one sitting. I took a deep breath and refrained.
I ended up buying carrots, a zucchini, summer squash, lime, soy sauce and to that I was going to add peppers,mushrooms and garlic. So I got home, took the dog out and put the groceries away. I decided it would be a good idea to get my mise en place ready. Do you know what mise en place is? Mise en place in French means ‘put in place.’ It’s what chef’s do with their ingredients before each service in a restaurant.
How was I going to make my veggies look like pasta? A peeler! I took a peeler and just peeled everything to get nice little strands of mock pasta.
When I got to the seeds on the zucchini and summer squash I stopped peeling. I wanted the texture to be like pasta and felt like the seeds would have messed that up. I did put the seeds and left over stuff in a ziploc bag so I could use them on a salad later.
Then I set out and made my peanut sauce. I added together juice of a lime, juice of 1/4 orange, 1.5 tablespoons of peanut butter, and a tablespoon of olive oil and soy sauce and mixed with a wisk until it became smooth.
I also sliced up peppers and minced fresh garlic.
Above is all of my mise en place, except I’m not sure where my garlic went. At this point everything is ready to saute in the pan. I got a pan out, put enough oil to lightly coat the bottom of it and began to saute the peppers, then I added the garlic and mushrooms. You always want to add the garlic at a time when the heat isn’t too high because it tends to burn easily.
Then I added the rest of the vegetables. I didn’t want them to cook very much because I like texture in my veggies so I stirred them a little bit and then turned the heat off and covered the pan. 
Then I added the peanut sauce and mixed it around. I tasted a little to check for flavor and realized that it needed some more salt so I added some. I held off on adding salt until the end because the soy sauce was salty enough and wanted to make sure I didn’t over power it.
I decided that I would cook some salmon with it. I just put some fresh garlic on the salmon, salt and peppered each side and then put a wedge of orange on top. I baked it in a 375 degree oven for about 15 minutes. I loved the simple flavor of the garlic, salt and citrus. The best part for me was I was able to twirl the veggies around my fork just like I could pasta!
Veggie Noodles with Peanut Sauce
Ingredients
1 carrot
1 zucchini
1 yellow squash
1 cup sliced mushrooms
2 gloves minced garlic
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
Sauce
Juice of 1 lime
Juice of 1/4 orange
1.5 tbs creamy peanut butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 table spoon soy sauce
Method
1. Wash and peel the carrot, zucchini and squash. Peel the squash just to the seeds, you do not want seeds in this dish. Save the remaining squash for a salad or another saute.
2. Slice the peppers as thin as you can get them and mince the garlic.
3. Mix all sauce ingredients together and let stand.
4. Saute peppers in olive oil and add mushrooms and garlic. Saute rest of ingredients being careful not to over cook. I turned the heat off and covered the pan so they could steam. Add the sauce and serve!
