Organic Frozen Meals

There was no cooking for me last night. I’m seriously in a funk. I can’t determine whether it’s the actual cooking, if I’m bored, if it’s the blog or something else entirely. The only way that the cooking can end is if I win the lottery, but since I haven’t been playing that’s not very likely. Sigh. Someone needs to shake this funk out of me and get me back on track. Although I can’t really complain about it too much since we had sushi delivered for dinner last night. Yum! I promised myself that I would be cooking the Salmon Packets and Kale Chips tonight come hell or high water.

What I have for you today is two more reviews of frozen meals that I had for lunch this week. I decided to purchase two meals from the organic, natural section of Wegman’s. These always make me a little leery. I was well aware that there was going to be some sort of tofu like product in these meals. Sometimes I can handle tofu and other times it freaks me out just a bit. So I decided to pick out two meals that I recognize and enjoy. I figured if it’s something I normally like, I should be able to find something halfway decent about it.

The first one is Helen’s Kitchen Thai Red Curry. This meal is made with organic butternut squash, green peas, and brown basmati rice. The packaging states that this is 2 servings of vegetables and 11 grams of protein. It also said GMO free (trust me I didn’t know what that was either!), gluten free , and vegan. My first beef is I really didn’t see any butternut squash, well okay I saw two very small pieces of butternut squash. I don’t feel two small pieces is a significant enough amount to advertise this meal as having butternut squash in it. My only other complaint and it is a huge one is the Signature Tofu Steaks, they were icky. There was something about the taste of them that wasn’t appealing and they didn’t skimp on those! There were tons of pieces in there. I don’t know if it was the texture or just the taste, but I couldn’t even eat all of the tofu steaks. I took a few out of the meal and trashed them. I can not eat a tofu steak again. Blah. It was horrifying for me. Truly! I checked the ingredients in the tofu steak and there is nothing weird, so it might just have been the texture combined with the flavors of this dish. No more for me! I say try it if you are a tofu connoisseur, but I have never claimed to be one and I just don’t think I can try another meal from this brand.

The second meal is Amy’s Black Bean Enchilada Whole Meal. Now this one I really liked. The packaging states it is non-dairy, cholesterol free (that’s a plus for me!) and gluten free. The meal is an organic corn tortilla, with organic black beans, tomatoes, zucchini, tofu, black olives, and green chilies. The side dishes are Spanish rice with sweet corn and green peppers and organic pinto beans. There wasn’t much about this that I didn’t enjoy. The rice was even pretty tasty even after having been frozen. I love, love, love pinto beans! The tofu was chopped very small and stuffed into the enchilada so I had no problem with it. The only thing a little off was the enchilada sauce. There was a slightly odd taste to that. I added some Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and that helped. Overall this is probably one of the best frozen meals I’ve ever had and I am definitely buying another to try next week. I say try this meal if you like Mexican food. Obviously it’s not as good as going out to get it or cooking it yourself, but it’s a good representation. Yay for decent frozen food! My life is almost complete now!

I honestly didn’t realize how “crunchy granola” these frozen meals were. I’m glad I was putting something fairly healthy into my body. I do care about where my food comes from; I just don’t have the money to eat that way all the time. As far as frozen meals go these were about average in price. No shoppers club discount available. I wonder if there ever are? Sometimes I speculate if eating less gluten will help with my stomach troubles, so that’s another plus for these meals when it comes to me. I do not have celiac disease thank goodness, because there is no way I could be gluten free all the time. I’d die without my pasta and bread. In fact tomorrow I plan on having Spaghetti O’s with Sliced Franks! Yum! I know, it's a weird thing to enjoy, but I love Spaghetti O's!

Okay so I’m sucking it up tonight and I’m cooking. While I was writing about my frozen meal experience it got me excited for trying kale chips tonight. I know they are super good for me and I really hope I will enjoy them. Maybe I will start craving kale chips instead of tortilla chips. Okay maybe not. I’m wondering if I will be offering Anthony enough to eat with that meal though. Salmon and kale chips. I feel like I need to add a starch of some kind. That’s not a good thing since we have officially run out of potatoes, rice, and couscous. Although we do have a box of Rice-a-Roni I keep around for emergencies. I might have to break that out.

Bacon Wrapped Chicken

Day 19-Did my kitchen depression carry on? Yes and no. I did want to get into the kitchen and cook last night, but only because I wanted to get it over with. The passion is gone people, at least for this week. Being the amazing person I am, I carried on with cooking as planned. No take out tonight! I had a feeling this meal was actually going to taste pretty good so that was the goal that I kept looking towards in order to get through the process.

I wanted to make something with bacon in it this week to honor Anthony, my bacon fanatic husband. I came across a recipe for Bacon Wrapped Chicken on Taste of Home. This is a pretty fattening recipe so if you are looking for something dainty and healthy check out my other posts. Last night I still really didn’t have a side dish in mind for this chicken. I bought some zucchini at the store on Sunday, so I needed to do something with that. I looked through the cupboards and found a partially used box of plain couscous. Perfect! Since I was flying by the seat of my pants with this one, I asked Anthony what I should add to zucchini sautéed in olive oil. He said it would probably only need some onion sautéed with it. Onion! My mortal enemy. Why do we always need to use it?! But alas I decided that would be the best option.

Did I mention this recipe is quick? It’s great for a weeknight dinner. So I started getting the chicken ready. I pounded the chicken out until it was pretty thin. Then I took the chive and onion cream cheese and spread it onto each chicken breast. I think I went a little overboard and could probably use a little less cream cheese next time. Then for whatever reason the recipe says to put a few dabs of butter on top of the cream cheese, so I did. Anyone know what that would be for?? I’m not sure it’s necessary, since I can’t figure out what the butter’s purpose is. Don’t forget some salt after you add the butter. Once that is finished, you roll the chicken breasts and wrap one piece of bacon around each one. Place the chicken breasts seam-side down on a greased baking pan. Pop them in the oven at 400 degrees for 35 minutes.

After the chicken was in the oven I chopped up the zucchini and onion. Once the chicken had been cooking for a bit I started sautéing the zucchini and onion in olive oil. But as is typical with my brain it must have shut down and I put the zucchini and onions in the pan at the same time. Oops! Not a huge ordeal, the onion just didn’t cook the way I really wanted it to. I added some salt and pepper to the vegetables. Once the veggies were nicely sautéed I started the couscous. I love couscous, it cooks so fast! Yay!

Now the chicken is ready to be put under the broiler for 5 minutes. I had to go to the bathroom at this point in the process, so I left the kitchen for a few seconds. Next thing I know the smoke detector is going off. I tell Anthony to deal with it since I was in the bathroom. He comes into the kitchen and checks the chicken and says he saw a fire in the oven. So he shut the oven off and apparently everything was all better. I did notice that there was bacon grease splattered on the oven door, but I never saw a fire just a little smoke inside the oven. If only one person see's the fire, then the fire doesn't exist. Right?

The couscous was mixed into the zucchini and onion mixture, with a tablespoon of olive oil. Looking good, if I do say so myself. The chicken smelled and looked pretty good too. I’m not a good chicken cooker. Chicken makes me nervous, since I’ve gotten food poisoning twice from chicken. Never any cooked at home though, so that makes me feel a bit better about the situation. Plus this chicken was on “fire” so it must be done!

Final Product:

All of this tasted good to me! No complaints. I think I could have done without the extra grease sitting under the chicken. A broiler pan might be the better pan to use next time. When eating the chicken with each bite you get some of the cream cheese goodness and the bacon flavor. Anthony added some parmesan cheese to the top of the couscous and it was the perfect addition. Yum! As far as I know Anthony also liked this meal, but since I’m not sure if he is telling me the truth I’m suspicious!

Totals: 10 minutes prep, 40 minutes cooking time, 1 baking pan.

Next up: Grilled Salmon Bacon and Feta Packets with Kale Chips

Beef Strips with Orange and Ginger

Day 18-I’m lacking confidence and I’m not feeling excited about my cooking either. Going into the kitchen these last few days I’ve felt the dread return. I have no idea why I’ve regressed. It might possibly be because I still wish I was on vacation. It’s what I’m going to call kitchen depression. You feel super every where else, but the minute you start thinking about cooking or walk into the kitchen you feel as blue as Eeyore. It certainly doesn’t help that I just found out that Anthony has not been completely honest with me on how my food has turned out. There have been times when he said it was a good meal, but really was thinking that the shrimp were overcooked (or something to that effect). Not cool. I need to know if something I am serving isn’t good, so that I don’t make the same mistake again!!

Anyway, feeling like Eeyore I walked into the kitchen Friday night to make a stir-fry. I’ve never made a stir-fry from scratch, I buy the frozen ones! This was from scratch and involved beef. Scary. I knew it wouldn’t be hard to make, but my kitchen depression was bad. So I put on my fun apron and slowly got started. I chopped up some carrots from the garden, an onion, and ginger. Then I thinly sliced the meat (sirloin). That part wasn’t my favorite. There were hard little bits of fat in it towards the end, so I cut those out. Yuck. The rest of the meal was pretty simple, it was ONLY a stir-fry. You marinate the steak strips in the juice of one orange and the orange zest. You reserve the liquid once you are through marinating the beef. Then you make a mixture of soy sauce, ginger, and cornstarch and mix that into the meat. Then you heat up sunflower oil, add the beef and cook until there is a little color. Then you add the carrots and cook until the meat is done. The last step is stirring in the scallions and reserved liquid. I think I over did the sesame oil at the end and the meat was a little over done, I really don’t cook meat so I knew it wouldn’t be perfect.

Final Product:

Thoughts? It was okay. Another one that I’m not rushing to make again. I really just didn’t enjoy my time in the kitchen tonight. Someone needs to slap this lack of confidence and desire out of me. I wasn’t motivated and I really just didn’t care.

Totals: 20 minutes marinate, 10-15 minutes prep, 10 minutes cooking time 1 wok or big skillet, 1 bowl.

I avoided the kitchen at dinner time for the rest of the weekend. I did make an apple cake, which basically was a mix, though I did have to chop 6 apples. Other then that moment, there was no dinner made by me this weekend. It was a kitchen protest. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m really hoping my kitchen issue ends tonight, because my budget can’t afford for me to stop cooking.

On to some fun: I finally got around to poaching eggs. I don’t eat eggs, because they do not agree with my system. After watching Masterchef and seeing people poaching eggs I really wanted to try it out. So as a reminder on how to do it, I watched two videos on youtube.com of people poaching eggs. It seemed pretty straightforward, the only part that I knew would be trouble for me, was getting the temperature of the water right. Unlike one of the chefs in the video, I do no carry a pocket thermometer around with me.

First things first you crack an egg into a little bowl, making sure not to break the yoke. Then you fill a pot of water 2/3 of the way full and bring it to a boil. Once the water boils, you turn the temperature down to where the water is just starting to have bubbles, but they are not breaking the surface. Then you add some salt (1 tsp) and some vinegar (1 oz) to the water. The vinegar will help the egg white to stay together. The next step was the most fun for me, you put a spoon in the water and create a whirlpool effect. Then you carefully drop the egg in the middle of the whirlpool. After the egg is in for a few seconds run the spoon underneath the egg to make sure it isn’t sticking.

Then you wait for the egg to start rising which is supposed to mean it’s done. I don’t really agree. I tried 3 different eggs. With the first egg the yoke was a bit too runny. The 2^nd eggs yoke was really too runny. And the third was the best. The yoke was just about to start firming up, but had a less runniness to it. I would say the egg could be done anywhere between 90 seconds to 3 minutes. You just really have to watch it. I’m pretty positive my water was not at the correct temperature, which might be why it took 3 minutes for my egg to finally look correctly poached. Overall I had a good time doing it and I’m going to have to make poached eggs for people when they come to visit. Assuming they can eat eggs.

1^st try

2^nd try

3^rd try

Frozen Meals Part 2

I didn’t cook last night. We went to Rohrbach’s a German Restaurant/Brewery for an event they hold once a month called Brewtopia. It’s a beer tasting that has a theme. Last night’s theme must have been fruity beers, because that’s mainly what we had. So we tasted beers that had apricot, blueberry, orange, and black cherry flavors to them. We also ate there. I had a Reuben, which is one of my favorite sandwiches of all time. Anthony ordered a German pretzel and a German sausage sandwich (can’t remember which one but it was either: liverwurst, bratwurst, or bauernwurst). Both of our entrée’s were served with German Potato Salad. It’s soooo yummy. It has the right combination of bacon, vinegar, sugar, and potatoes. The food at Rohrbach’s is very good and of course so is their beer.

I tried two more frozen “healthy” meals this week. I’m going to be picking up more at the store this weekend. I figure I’ll try as many as I can and let all of you know which brands I think taste the best and are worth the money. On another note I did eat Spaghetti O’s this week for lunch too and I still love them!! They might not be the healthiest thing for me to eat, but they are just so yummy. I think they are one of my comfort food items. They remind me of my childhood, and I didn’t have a terrible childhood so that’s a good thing! I might just have to buy the one with sliced “franks” this weekend.

The first frozen meal I tried this week was Kashi Lemongrass Coconut Chicken. I was pretty excited to try it since I like other Kashi products a lot. Plus the company is all about healthy, natural products which are things that I find important. Then there was lemongrass. Lemongrass is not an ingredient that I know much about. I’m certain that I’ve had it a few times in my life, but I can’t remember what it was in. Lemongrass is not something I ever really want to taste again. Of course we all know I will have to try it again, since I have the “3 strikes and you’re out rule” to eating food (see my Shrimp and Quinoa post). This meal probably would have been on my list for all time favorite frozen meals, if the lemongrass took a hike to Cambodia. The meal had chicken, broccoli, carrots, sugar snap peas, coconut flakes and red quinoa pilaf. The texture was great and I really enjoyed the quinoa pilaf. The sauce is a lemongrass coconut sauce. They should just admit that it’s only a lemongrass sauce. They should also admit that you will not taste anything other then the lemongrass. And that it so strongly tastes of lemongrass that it has a bit of a bite to it. While eating it I was reminded of Lemon Pledge and my belief that I was eating Lemon Pledge sauce was confirmed when I saw other people on the Kashi website describe it that way. I’m not joking people, this tasted like Lemon Pledge smells and it wasn’t good. I was so very disappointed since I love coconut and was really hoping to get some of the coconut flavor. Never fear Kashi, I will be trying another variety of your frozen entrée’s but I will be avoiding any that include lemon of any sort!

The next meal that I had was Lightlife Indian Veggie Masala. I cheated a bit with this one. I’ve had this entrée before and I like it a lot! Whether it’s actually healthy for me or not (there are a good amount of carbs in it), it feels super healthy. The box says it has three servings of vegetables and one serving of whole grain. That right there is more then I typically eat in a day, so this meal is perfect for me. The Indian Veggie Masala has cauliflower, sweet potatoes, chick peas, tomatoes, peas, onions and brown rice. The sauce has a tomato, ginger, curry taste to it that I just loved. The texture and flavors are really good in this meal. Plus the meal is pretty filling, for mostly just being vegetables. And I feel healthier just for having eaten it today. Will I be trying other varieties of Lightlife? You can bet on it!!

You can’t win them all, so even though the Kashi lunch was not what I had been expecting I’m very grateful that Lightlife knows that a little goes a long way! This blog is getting more and more fun for me to write every week. I’m enjoying trying to cook. I’m super excited about my brand new Anthropologie apron (I’m in love with that store!). I can’t wait to try poaching some eggs tomorrow, let’s hope I succeed! I’m also quite intrigued about going to the grocery store and picking out some more frozen entrees to try. Fun stuff!

Curried Cauliflower Soup

Day 17-Yes, I did finally cook again. But first I would like to talk about our recent invite to a friend’s house for dinner. I had been admiring my friend’s pictures on Facebook of the food he has been cooking every night. The food always looks so much fancier then what I do and rightly so since it is. He uses goat cheese, shitake mushrooms and various ingredients like that. I obviously don’t. He also just throws things together, which I really wish I could do. So I mentioned that he should be writing a blog, since his food looks so much better then mine. Then I suggested that he cook for us, so I can actually try his food. This week he finally invited us over and I was not going to pass up the offer.

I won’t get the name of what he made for us exactly right, but it was along the lines of: Tri Tip Steak with Mashed Red Potatoes (there was some kind of cheese in them), Asparagus, and Shitake, Baby Bella Mushroom, Artichoke Crostini. The mushrooms and artichokes were on this bread from Wegman’s with garlic and other goodness in it. The whole meal was very good! This coming from the girl that only rarely eats beef. I don’t even know if I’ve ever had Tri Tip before. So maybe this is a beef I could actually like! The crostini was so good that I had at least 3 and these were not small. Our friend said that he is starting to write down the recipes for the meals that he makes if they are really good. He wants to open a restaurant some day and he will need to have the recipes available for that. I’ll never open a restaurant, but I sure won’t mind eating at his!

It was time for me to get cooking last night. I really wanted to try the recipe for Curried Cauliflower Soup that I had found on a blog. One, it sounds pretty healthy and two, it has curry in it and that means turmeric! (If you don’t know why I love turmeric so much please look at my post entitled “Curry Pork Sausage Couscous”) Things went pretty smoothly last night. The ingredients needing to be cut for this recipe are one apple (Golden Delicious), 1 head of cauliflower, 1 small onion, 1 clove of garlic. I wasn’t really sure how to chop the apple so I sliced it and then chopped the slices. The cauliflower took awhile since I’m not a fast chopper, but it was easy enough. No problems with the garlic and onion since I use those ingredients a lot, but I’m so tired of all the tears when I chop onions. It’s almost unbearable and then my eyes are stinging from my lotion and mascara dripping into them. Yuck.

The rest of the soup making was a breeze. That’s one of the reasons I love making soup, it’s usually fairly easy. First you heat up 2 tablespoon of olive oil, then you sauté the onions in the heated oil. Once they are soft, you add the apple, garlic, and 1 tablespoon of curry powder (this might be too much if you don’t like spicy foods, so cut that back some) and cook for 2 minutes. Then add the cauliflower and 4 cups of vegetable broth and bring that to a simmer. Once it’s simmering turn down the heat to medium-low and cover. Simmer for 20 minutes and then take it off the heat to cool for 20 minutes. Once it’s cool blend the soup in a food processor or blender and stir in 1 teaspoon of honey and 1 teaspoon of rice wine vinegar. Officially you are done after that, but I reheated the soup because Anthony wanted hot soup, not lukewarm soup.

Final Product:

My thoughts: Ah it was okay. It was nothing spectacular. Anthony said it was a boring soup. There was nothing that took it to the next level. I wouldn’t call it bland, since it was too spicy for both of us and we had to add some sour cream to it. Would I bother making it again? Probably not. Trust me I really wanted to love this since it’s healthy, but I would say there was only a mild like. I’m not sure what we could have done to this soup to make it better, but I’m not giving up on ways to add more turmeric to our diet!

Totals: 10 minutes prep, 30 minutes cooking time, 1 pot, 1 blender or food processer

Clams

I got a break from cooking and I’m not talking about my vacation. Anthony decided that since he is on break from school he would cook once or twice this week. We had been discussing cooking up some clams. After being down at the beach and smelling all the delicious clams, we had a really big craving for some. I know nothing about clams other then the fact that they live in the sea and they are a quite tasty. Anthony seemed to know what he was doing though. So I went out and bought a bag of clams (50 count of Littlenecks) from Wegman’s. I did price the seafood market and the clams were only 4 cents cheaper, not worth the drive.

Anthony had to run to the dentist before dinner, so he told me to clean the clams if I was so inclined. I figured why not. So I googled how to clean clams and that’s when I started getting a little queasy. I’m not an airhead, dimwit, or idiot as far as I know, but I’ve never really thought about clams. The first information I read was that the clams were supposed to be taken out of the package immediately, so they could breathe. Breathe? Okay let’s just ignore that for now. Before cooking submerge the clams in water with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch (apparently cornstarch helps make them cleaner). Then let them soak for 20 minutes. During this time the clams will breathe and some of the grit from inside the shell will release. Breathe? Moving on.

I filled the sink with water and the cornstarch. I opened the bag of clams and that’s when it really sunk in. These things are alive!!! WHAT?!!! I thought, Okay calm down and breathe chicky. Then I thought, ewwwww…I don’t want to touch them! Of course I did, but I started getting worried that some had already breathed in the bag, since some were slightly opened. I thought maybe those ones had already died and gone bad. I never really thought about the fact that clams are alive when you bring them home. Then another thought hit me, eating these things raw is a sin! How have I been doing that for years?!! I was horribly disgusted. I didn’t even want to touch the inside at all, let alone cut it out and just place it in my mouth. Gross!! Anthony finally arrived home as I was doing this and reassured me that all would be fine and threw the rest of the clams in the sink. BE GENTLE! These things are alive!! (Yes, I really did say that!) I have to say I’ve never been more fascinated by anything in my life. Live creatures in my sink, this was amazing. I stood above the sink, watching and listening to those clams breathe. It was thrilling. I freaked out a little bit when I noticed one clam had a foot out of the shell. Not pretty. I might never eat a raw clam again!

I then carefully scrubbed the grit off of their shells. Then Anthony was ready to grill them up.

I was so gentle with placing them in the sink and scrubbing them, but oddly enough didn’t feel a lick of guilt in killing them. I made salt potatoes with melted butter and Anthony made bruschetta to eat with the clams. He also made white wine butter sauce with smoked paprika and garlic. The sauce was really good. Anthony says he over cooked the clams; they felt a little tough. They were also a little gritty. I guess they didn’t breathe enough or something. Overall the meal was very good. We didn’t eat all of the clams. We each had some and then pulled the meat out of the rest of the shells to save for sauce.

Final Product:

I don’t have any recipes to give you for this post, since I didn’t cook and Anthony doesn’t usually work with recipes. Would I have this meal again? Of course. I love seafood!

Next Up: Last night we were invited to a friend’s house for dinner, I’ll talk about what he made and show you some pictures. Don’t worry I’m cooking tonight: Cauliflower Soup. This could get messy.