This Mama Cooks! On a Diet

My cooking resolutions for 2009

The January 2009 Chew on That's Monthly Mouthful for January 2009 asked:

“What is your Foodie New Year’s Resolution? What types of food do you hope to try, cook, or stay away from in the next year?”

You can see my answer to the Monthly Mouthful here.

What is your New Year’s resolution when it comes to cooking? Do you want to use your crockpot more? Maybe try your hand on smoking a turkey? Or maybe you want to grow it in your own garden?

Or maybe it’s food you want to avoid – eat less fat, sugar, processed foods, fried foods, etc.

Share your cooking resolutions below!

No trifling matter: gluten free, vegan and raw food trifle recipes

My trifle bowl recipe roundup is now being featured at the FoodieView Blog - Recipe Roundup: Trifles: No Trifling Matter.

Normally I wouldn’t be posting about something so tempting and over indulgent. However, I wanted to draw your attention to the to gluten free trifle recipe, the two vegan trifle recipes, and even a raw food trifle dish. Heck, people on more “restrictive” diets should be able to have a little fun, too.

Here’s to a happy, healthy and delicious New Year!

Got too much zucchini? Why not grill it? Grilled Zucchini and Summer Squash with Sun Dried Tomato Pesto

The zucchini and summer squash from the garden are piling up on the counter tops and threatening to take over the kitchen. What am I going to do with all these vegetables? Usually, I peel, chop them up in small pieces, and steam them. (I peel the ones from the garden since homegrown zucchini and squash seem to have much thicker skins.)

But that sounded boring, so inspired by Kalyn’s Kitchen’s post, Ten Delicious Zucchini Recipes for Everyone with an Abundance of Zucchini!, I decided to try a few new zucchini recipes of my own. Here’s the first of two.

Grilled Zucchini and Summer Squash with Sun Dried Tomato Pesto

I like Kalyn’s super easy Grilled Zucchini recipe since it’s very simple – just Italian salad dressing and dried herbs. But I wanted to do something a little different. Seeing the jars of sun dried tomatoes in oil in my pantry gave me another idea – tomato pesto!

1. Empty contents of a small jar of sun dried tomatoes in oil into a mini-blender. Chopped up the tomatoes and oil until a kind of pesto paste is made.
2. Chop your zucchini and/or summer squash (I used both) into 1/4 inch slices.
3. Brush each side of the slices with tomato pesto and pile on a tray or cookie sheet.
4. Preheat grill to 300 degrees. (My grill’s lid has a temperature guage. If yours doesn’t, Kalyn says to, “Preheat grill to medium-high…so you can only hold your hand there for 3-4 seconds.”)
5. Make sure grill is clean (use a wire brush to scrape off old charred bits so the slices won’t stick) and spray grill with non-stick cooking spray.
6. Place zucchini on grill. Depending on how hot your grill is – 2 to 4 minutes - check for grill marks and flip. Brush zucchini with oil/pesto left over on your tray.
7. Cook for an equal amount of time.
8. Remove from grill and serve.

I love roasted vegetables and thought this dish was terrific. However, the rest of the family wasn’t convinced and my husband said it was “too burnt.” Fine, more for me.

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.

On the search for healthy Mexican recipes

I recently wrote a Recipe Roundup for Foodie Review on Swiss Family Recipes. If you have a soft spot for fondue, you may want to check it out. On the other hand, you may want to avoid it if it's too tempting.

My next assignment from my FoodieView Blog editor is healthy Mexican recipes. I have a few dishes and tips in mind but would love to get some recipes and pictures from my fellow food bloggers.

If you have a post on a low calorie/low Weight Watchers POINTS Mexican food recipe or show a way to make your favorite Mexican dishes healthier, email me at mama at thismamacooks dot com or leave a comment below with your name, email, your blog's name URL, and the URL of the post.

I'd love to feature your post, your picture(s) and of course will link back to your blog and give you full credit.

Menu for Hope 2008

The Menu for Hope is an annual raffle in support of the UN World Food Programme, with fabulous prizes from food bloggers, food lovers, restaurateurs, and chefs from around the world. Last year, Menu for Hope raised over $60,000 for the World Food Programme.

I had the honor of donating two sets of books on food and diet last year. Unfortunately, I don't have the time - or the goodies - to participate. But you don't need to donate stuff to help. Instead, you can donate $10 for a virtual raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice.

Try your luck at lunch with Harold McGee, or a visit with Ferran Adria at the fabled elBulli test kitchen in Barcelona, or get a virtual sheep your very own. There's lots of amazing foodie prizes from food bloggers around the world. The more you give, the better chance you have to win.

The beneficiary for the Menu for Hope is the World Food Programme, the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Programme helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good.

Funds from this year's Menu for Hope will go specifically to support the school feeding program in Lesotho. We chose to back this particular program, not only because providing food at schools help the kids, particularly girls, stay in school, but also because the WFP is making a concerted effort in Lesotho to source food from local farmers practicing conservation farming methods.

We feed the kids and support their parents farming. What's not to like in this?
Menu for Hope 4 will run for two weeks, from December 10-21. Go to Chez Pim on December 10 to check out the prizes. See the Chez Pim Menu for Hope FAQs page to see how you can help. Or to the Menu for Hope donation page to buy your raffle tickets. And don't forget to join the Menu for Hope Facebook page, too.

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.

Food Blog of the Week - He Can't Eat That!

At He Can't Eat That!, Ann D blogs about the trials and tribulations around her children's allergies. While not strictly a food blog, it does deal with food allergies. Since it's a great resource for anyone trying to cook yummy meals while dealing with a food allergy, I've decided to name it Food Blog of the Week.

Ann, I feel your pain. Trying to cook at the same time for a gluten free mother-in-law and a daughter with egg and soy allergies is a nightmare. I too hate having to go to several different health food stores to find everything I want, especially since they're all 30-40 minutes away. Plus health food is expensive!

The regular grocery stores are getting better, but they still don't carry everything. Luckily Ann's out there finding products like, Fleischmann's Unsalted Margarine and giving us links to recipes for meatcakes.

He Can't Eat That! - providing inspiration for all us food allergy-challenged moms.

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.

Food Blog of the Week - Jam Handy!

For those lovers of everything vintage, Jam Handy! is your type of cooking blog. Written by Kirkkitsch, a 30-something blogger out of Arlington, Texas, Jam Handy! is a gold mine of old recipes, magazine ads, and vintage cookbooks. Kirk faithfully scans the ads and cookbooks and documents the year. I really appreciate the effort and his sense of kitschy style. (See his CafePress store, Seul Boy for the best in vintage graphics on cards, mugs, etc. Can you say Christmas presents?)

Snooping around, I found a rather familiar recipe for Pumpkin Cream Pie:

Pumpkin Cream Pie (1981)

Ingredients:

• 1 package (6-serving size) Jell-O instant pudding and pie filling, vanilla flavor
• 1 can (16 oz.) pumpkin
• 1 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice*
• 1 container (4 oz.) Cool Whip non-dairy whipped topping, thawed
• 1 prepared 9-inch graham cracker crumb crust

*Or use 1/4 teaspoon each nutmeg and ginger and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.

Directions:

1. Combine pie filling mix, pumpkin, milk and spices in bowl. Mix slowly with electric mixer or rotary beater just until blended, about 1 minute.
2. Fold in whipped topping.
3. Spoon into crust. Freeze until firm, at least 4 hours or overnight; let stand at room temperature about 30 minutes before cutting. Garnish with additional whipped topping, if desired.

You see it's just like this recipe for Weight Watcher's Pumpkin Mouse that my Weight Watchers leader gave me a couple of years ago. It's a lifesaver when everyone else is stuffing their faces on pie and you're feeling sorry for yourself. It satisfies your sweet tooth and your need for something creamy, too. And best of all, it's only 1.5 points for one cup of mousse.

Pumpkin Mousse

Ingredients:

• 2 small packages of instant sugar-free vanilla pudding
• 2 cups of no-fat (skim) milk
• 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin spice
• 15 ounce can of pumpkin
• 8 ounces of fat-free Cool Whip

Directions:

1. Make pudding first.
2. Fold in ingredients.
3. Chill and serve!

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.

Food Blog of the Week - KidsKuisine

I came across KidsKuisine when I did a Google search looking for Spider Cake ideas for my children's books and cooking blog, A Readable Feast. KidsKuisine is from the folks at CopyKat Recips, another terrific foodsite.

The recipes on KidsKuisine just for Halloween are hysterical - Pumpkin Gut Nachos, Graveyard Pudding, and Witches Tongues, for example. Of course there's the infamous Kitty Litter Cake, too.

Their creativity blows me away. In the future, I will be consulting this site every time a kids' party food idea is needed. Out of the 34 Halloween recipes, I especially loved this one:

Strained Eyeballs 
Serving Size: 12

Not all Halloween treats need to be sweet.

Ingredients:

• 6 eggs, hardcooked, cooled and peeled
• 6 oz. whipped cream cheese
• 12 green olives stuffed with pimientos
• red food coloring or ketchup

Directions:

1. Half eggs widthwise. Remove yolks and fill the hole with cream cheese, smoothing surface as much as possible.
2. Press an olive into each cream cheese eyeball, pimiento up, for an eerie green iris and red pupil.
3. Dip a toothpick into ketchup and draw broken blood vessels in the cream cheese.

Since I'd hate to throw away the yolks, I'd experiment with adding some of it into the cream cheese. Yellow-ish eyes would be even scarier than white ones.

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.

BlogHop! - A new way to surf food blogs

The FoodBlog Blog directory has developed the Food Blog Blog Food Blog Browser (say that fast 5 times - ha!)

Called BlogHop!, and it's a get way to get your fix of 1,200 (and growing) food blogs. It'll make it really easy to pick the Food Blog of the Week, that's for sure!

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.

Food Blog of the Week - The Doctor Cooks

Yes, I know all you foodies love to read about BBQ, baked Bree, and chocolate mousse all day. But sometimes we need to eat more healthfully and little less indulgently. The Doctor Cooks can help.

Bethany Klug, DO practices holistic medicine at the Kansas City Holistic Centre. Dr. Klug offers bioidentical hormone replacement, whole foods nutrition, nutritional supplementation, homeopathy and biodynamic cranial osteopathic treatment to her patients. She is boarded in family medicine and osteopathic manipulative medicine.

She recovered her own health with whole foods nutrition and has developed extensive expertise in healing with whole foods cooking.

Her blog is as impressive as her credentials. She writes about eating locally grown food (a big trend in food these days) as well as organic and whole foods, and reducing sweeteners and animal products. Her posts are well written and her blog is attractively laid out.

And while I'm hardly a vegan, I do believe in eating food that's not processed whenever possible. Considering how much wild fish, game, and homegrown and locally grown veggies, fruit and berries we eat around here, I'm on the same page with the good doctor on many things including how yummy roasted beets are.

She hasn't been blogging a long time, so I hope she manages to keep the good work up in addition to her work on Back to Health the Whole Foods Way at the online University of Masters. After all, food should be as good for the body as it is for the soul.

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.