This Mama Cooks! On a Diet

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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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Food Blog of the Week - Crock Pot Recipe Blog

Honestly, what would we all do without our crock pots? Well using one just got a whole lot easier thanks to this week's Food Blog of the Week - Crock Pot Recipe Blog part of A Crock Cook.

Not only does this website feature a blog, but oodles and oodles of crock pot recipes. Unfortunately, there's no photos at A Crock Cook. But then again, if you've seen one bowl of crock pot chili, you've probably seen them all.

I knew I was in the right place when I saw that ground beef had its own category. I have so much ground deer and antelope (which I treat like beef) in the freezer that I've run out of ideas. I especially like this recipe for Crock Pot Lasagna. I'll have to omit the egg due to Boo Girl's allergies, and may try adding some shredded mozarella instead.

Crock Pot Lasagna Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 lb (500g) ground beef
• 1 large onion, finely diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced (or 2 tspn pre-purchased garlic)
• 1 lb jar tomato spaghetti sauce - choose your favorite flavor (we used spring vegetable)
• 8 oz (250g) fresh lasagna sheets (no boil - found in cold section)
• 1lb (500g) mozzarella cheese - grated/shredded
• 1lb (500g) ricotta cheese
• 2 oz (60g) parmesan cheese - grated/shredded
• ¼ cup milk
• 1 egg - lightly beaten
• 1 tsp oregano salt and pepper

Optional:

• other favorite herbs - depends how much is in the sauce you use
• mushrooms - sliced and added at end of frying meat

Method 1:

1. Fry the beef, onion and garlic in a frying pan, using a tiny amount of oil.
2. Fry until slightly browned. And pour off any excess oil.
3. Meanwhile, gently combine the ricotta, milk and egg.
4. Then mix in the mozzarella and parmesan. Retaining about 1 tbls of parmesan for later.
5. Now we are ready to construct it in the crock pot. We found there was no need to grease the pot, but if you must - do it now.
6. Using a large serving spoon or ladle, place about ¼ of the meat mixture in the crock pot - spread evenly.
7. Top this with a layer of lasagna sheets, cut to size. (See the notes below)
8. Top this with 1/3 of the cheese sauce.
9. Repeat steps 6, 7 and 8 once more. You should now have cheese sauce on top.
10. Now repeat step 6, then 7 and 6 again.
11. Top with remaining cheese sauce.
12. Sprinkle the retained parmesan on top.
13. Cook on low for 4-6 hours.

Notes:

• Serves 4-6
• While not critical the layers should be - meat, pasta, cheese, meat, pasta, cheese, meat, pasta, meat, cheese
• To assist with cutting the lasagna sheets - use a plate the same size as the crock pot & cut around using a knife.

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Food bloggers unite at BlogHer '06

Welcome BlogHer Food Bloggers. It was terrific to meet some of you at the Birds of a Feather breakout session at BlogHer '06. (For the rest of you, this was chronicled by Kalyn's Kitchen and Elise of Simply Recipes.)

That's me in the lower left hand corner of the picture looking directly at the camera.

Lucky me, I got both my food blogs mentioned, this one and A Readable Feast, on Elise's and Kalyn's blogs. Stop by their blogs and check the rest of the group out.

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It's A Readable Feast

A Readable Feast, my new ClubMom mom blog, has launched! It's a place where I show how a pinch of cooking and reading children’s books help me connect with my family.

Actually its just an excuse for me to indulge in two of my favorite things - books and cooking - while reading all the books I missed out as a kid.

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