This Mama Cooks! On a Diet

Food Blog of the Week - Make My Sushi

Did you know that 13 pieces of California Roll sushi have only 9.5 Weight Watchers Flex Plan Points? So not only is sushi low in points, fat, calories, and healthy for you but it's delicious as well. That's why I love it, and most folks agree.

In the October 4, 2006 Newsday story, Sushi swims into unlikely waters, by Joan Remick, sushi was hailed as a comfort food by Manhattan-based restaurant consultant Clark Wolfe, who after 9/11 noticed that while:

...some Americans turned to comfort foods such as macaroni and cheese and meat loaf, others were seeking culinary solace elsewhere.

"After 9/11, sushi really did enter the vernacular as a comforting food," Wolf said. "A lot of people who wanted something clean and pure perceived sushi as something nutritious that was fun to eat and that was happening all over the country."

In his book The Nasty Bits, Anthony Bourdain mentioned that sushi is the favorite food of many chefs. He also has an interesting take on what he calls the sushi barrier. He believes once Americans accepted that sushi was normal culinary fare, it opened the door to all sorts of different and marvelous food.

So with no further ado, I present this week's Food Blog of the Week, Make My Sushi by Osowakki. O.K. it isn't exactly a blog. It's more like a website. Never mind, it's got some really cool sushi guides using Flash animation, like this one for an inside out roll as well as recipes and tips.

Stop by Make My Sushi and tell Osowakki that This Mama Cooks! sent you.

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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 - Gluten Free Goddess

Happy almost Thanksgiving! Thanks for joining me between brining the turkey and baking the pies.

This week's Food Blog of the Week is the Gluten Free Goddess. I really appreciate her gluten free since my mother-in-law has celiac. Cooking for her isn't much of a challenge, now that I've discovered all the gluten free mixes, pastas, breads and cereals at the health food store.

Gluten Free Goddess is blogged by Karina, an artist who loves to cook - or is she a cook who likes to paint? - living in the high desert of northern New Mexico with no TV. Karina also designs gluten free, vegetarian/vegan, and foodie art designs for Mucho Gusto! at Cafe Press.

Among all the bloggers with CafePress sites, I think she's among the best - good design, great graphicd, and she really fills up the front of the t-shirt. (Too many CafePress designers are skimpy on their designs.) Now if she'd only make some peanut and egg free designs for kids with other allergies. (Hint, hint - Boo Girl needs an Egg or Peanut Free Princess shirt.)

And like her lovely designs, her blog rocks ,too. Great recipes, wonderful writing, terrific photography and a good source for all things gluten free (products, web links, etc.)

So with Hanukkah coming next month, I thought I'd share her recipe for latkes. I use a similar recipe out of The Joy of Cooking cookbook and substitute the flour with white rice flour. Now if I could only find a potato pancake recipe without eggs, sigh...

Karina's Potato Latkes

Ingredients

• 3 large starchy potatoes (Idaho work well), peeled
• 1/2 onion, minced
• 1/2 to 2/3 cup superfine brown rice flour, or all-purpose GF flour mix
• 2 to 3 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 tsp sea salt, to taste
• fresh grated pepper, to taste
• organic canola oil, for frying
• applesauce for serving

Directions:

1. Grate the potatoes by hand or in a food processor (follow manufacturer's instructions for grating). Press the grated potatoes between clean paper towels, or tea towels, to extract moisture.
2. In a large bowl, combine the grated potatoes with the onions and GF flour, then add the beaten eggs, sea salt, pepper. Stir well. Start with 2 eggs, and a half cup of GF flour; add more of each if you need to.
3. Heat a good inch and a half of canola oil in a deep sided skillet over high heat. Carefully drop the batter with a large spoon, or fork, into the hot oil, and press down with a spatula. I like my latkes lacy and irregular, and this is the method I use to achieve this.
4. Cook the latkes until they are golden on each side - crispy on the outside, and tender in the middle. This takes maybe five minutes, depending upon the size of the latke.
5. Remove the latkes with a slotted spatula and place on paper towels, to drain.
6. We keep the drained latkes warm in a hot oven, at 400 degrees F., until all the latkes are ready to serve, and try to work fast, as latkes are best eaten hot from the pan. Serve the latkes immediately with homemade applesauce. Some people like sour cream stirred with a touch of horseradish on the side.

Serves about 4 - depending upon appetites. Enjoy! Shalom!

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Food Blog of the Week Returns with Culinary Colorado

No I haven't been struck with food poisoning or kidnapped by alien chefs. Just busy writing, and having family and childhood friends visiting. Plus I've been working with a local chef on a new food venture, which once launched, I hope to announce on this blog. (Exciting stuff, take my word for it.)

So back to the not-so-weekly Food Blog of the Week with a local food blog, Culinary Colorado. It's blogged by Claire Walter, who also wrote the book Culinary Colorado: The Ultimate Food Lover's Guide. She must have found my blog through the Boulder Media Women (BMW). I just joined - she's a member, too.

Claire has only been food blogging for a couple of months, but she covers the Colorado (especially Boulder) food scene better than any of the local papers. And this is coming from someone who only subscribes to The Denver Post because of the Wednesday food section and the free subscription to Cooking Light magazine for signing up for direct pay.

I look forward to reading more from Claire and maybe bumping into her at a BMW potluck. Bet she'll bring something good to eat, too!

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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 - Hooked on Heat

Hooked on Heat is written by Meena, a creative writer and designer living in Toronto, Ontario. (She's also writes at Girl en Route.) The blog is entertaining and well written, the photography wonderful, and the layout (especially of the recipes) clean and easy to read.

As she writes, "With my Mom being Malaysian, my Dad an Indian, me growing up in the Middle East and having been in Canada for the last few years, my recipes reflect the eclectic tastes that I have gathered along the way."

Eclectic she is. Like the title says, Girl likes her hot and spicy food as her "Curry Culture" and "I like 'em Spicy!!" catagories show. While I appreciate a good curry now and then, my palette is pretty wimpy and I love my sweets. Not to worry, Girl has a "For the Sweet Tooth" category as well. (Nutella on croissants? Oh my - better than birthday cake!)

I was especially intrigued with her recipe for Sooji Halwa, an Indian dessert that reminds me of eastern cousin to rice pudding.

Sooji Halwa

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Sooji (Semolina, also known as grits or Cream of Wheat by us Americans)
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 7-8 green cardamom pods (seeds taken out and crushed)
• 2 tbsp raisins
• 2 tbsp chopped almonds
• 2 tbsp ghee (clarified butter)

Directions:

1. Heat water in a small pan to dissolve sugar completely. Set aside.
2. In a non-stick deep pan, heat ghee and add sooji, stirring constantly on low heat till slightly golden.
3. Add the water-sugar mixture, raisins, and cardamom, and continue to stir till water begins to evaporate and it forms a thick mass.
4. Mix in almonds and serve warm after a hearty meal!

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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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Food Blog of the Week - Nami-Nami

Food Blog of the Week is back with a recommendation to check out another UK-based food blog, Nami-Nami. Based in Edinburgh, Scotland, it's written by Pille, an Estonian foodie.

Pille also has two other food related blogs, Nami-Nami Reads the Papers, where she scans the UK newspapers for stories about food and eating, and Nami-Nami Recipes, which is a listing of all her recipes by type and cuisine.

So why do I recommend it? The photographs! Honestly, I just want to eat this blog. Look at the rolls or the wheels of cheese on fire and assorted wedding fare. She even makes Scottish haggis, neeps and tatties look good.

But my favorite are the mushrooms she picked. Someone please pay her lots of money to put this on a postcard or book cover - it's GORGEOUS.

But it's not all food porn. There's some terrific recipes as well, including her famous (Non) Candian Apple Cake. It's a great recipe to try now that we have so many terrific apples in season.

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Food Blog of the Week takes a break (and breaks some eggs)

This Mama has severely overextended herself this week with writing assignments, Usborne Books recruiting, and charter school matters. So no Food Blog of the Week today. Instead, I offer up a recipe for Omelet in a Bag, which was emailed to me by two friends last week.

Omelet in a Bag

1. Use quart size Ziploc freezer bag.
2. Have guests write their name on bag with permanent marker.
3. Boil pot of water.
4. Crack 2 eggs (no more) into bag, shake to combine them.
5. Add ingredients such as: ham, onion, green pepper, tomato, hash browns, salsa, etc.
6. Get air out of bag, zip up and shake.
7. Place bag in rolling, boiling water for exactly 13 minutes.
8. You can usually cook 6-8 omelets in a large pot.
9. Open the bag and the omelet will roll out easily.

I think it's a great way to cook up omelets when you're camping (no frying pan to wash), or when you have a bunch of people over for breakfast and want to serve them all at the same time.

It's also a handy idea for making quick eggs in the morning. Just prepare your ingredients (except eggs) the night before and place them in the bag. Refrigerator overnight and in the morning add the eggs and cook.

• Mr. Breakfast has a warning about melting Ziploc bags
• Chuckwagon Diner recommends 10 minutes of cooking time
• Lifehacker analyzes the recipe step-by-step (good pictures, too)
• Men in Aprons' omelet looked so good I had to share the picture (above). Alas, it wasn't Adam who cooked it. Instead see his attempt and tips.

Thanks for your patience. Food Blog of the Week will return next week.

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Food Blog of the Week - The Passionate Cook

Let's take a jump across the pond for this edition of Food Blog of the Week. The Passionate Cook is blogged by Johanna Wagner, 35, an Austrian based in London. She loves cooking, fine dining and wining, traveling, and hates beetroot (!) and mediocre food. She's also a member of Slow Food, so obviously practices what she preaches.

The Passionate Cook stands out because it is extremely organized. I love the pull down menus on the left, which make it so easy to find what you're looking for. They encourage browsing as well.

Johanna's photos are as yummy as her recipes. I especially enjoy her photos of London food markets. One of my favorite things about visiting Europe is touring the grocery stores, butcher shops, and indoor and outdoor markets. The variety of meats, fish, cheeses, and produce is amazing. It's something we sorely lack in America, with the exception of our better farmer's markets and bigger ethnic food stores.

So stop by The Passionate Cook and tell her that This Mama Cooks! says hello. And while you're at it, take a look at this fine venison dish. Honestly, everything in life is better with bacon and port.