Anatomy of a Decadent Salad

 

Today I made a whopper of a salad.

I started with lots of veggies.

{ cucumber, carrot, celery, 

mushroom, red bell pepper }

Then added some protein.

{ ham, boiled egg }

AND THEN I topped it off with my first attempt at skillet croutons. 

This salad was completely overwhelming. I would have been better off to make it 1/3 this size. Or smaller. And then have a little soup on the side. That would have been awesome... Live & learn!

Skillet Croutons

adapted from The Pioneer Woman

3 slices Texas Toast

4 Tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter

Cut each slice of bread into 16 cubes. Melt 1 Tablespoon of butter in a skillet over low heat, then add the bread cubes and toss to coat. Toast the croutons in the skillet over low heat for about 10-12 minutes, adding 1 Tablespoon of butter every couple of minutes until you've used all 4 Tablespoons. (This will ensure all the croutons soak up the butter and toast nicely.)

Yeild: 48 croutons

Calorie content: 14 calories per crouton

{ Quote of the Day }

Me: (after Josh discovered and began devouring my delicious homemade croutons) Hey, you might have to start eating salad now.

Josh: No, I might have to start eating croutons.

"Homesick Texan Tuesday" Leftovers

I need to reiterate how fantastic Homesick Texan's "Green Chile Posole with Black Beans" recipe is. We have all been raving about it since Tuesday. This one's a keeper.

Pictured here without the shredded Monterey Jack. I can't find this recipe on her blog, or I would post a link. Guess you'll just have to buy the book...

Here's a cute pic of a leftover kolache I heated up for myself. I never really warmed up to these, but Mom and Josh liked them.

Homesick Texan Tuesday

There's this thing that sometimes happens between me and my mom, where I'll borrow one of her cookbooks, become fanatically obsessed with it, then she ends up on Amazon, one-click ordering a new copy. This is how I acquired The Homesick Texan Cookbook. This evening I tried to make it up to my mom by inviting her over for Homesick Texan Tuesday! I made green chile posole with black beans, gorditas with picadillo, and kolaches. (I'm exhausted BTW.)

Green Chile Posole with Black Beans

HT's posole recipe is wonderful. It challenged me to use all kinds of ingredients I had never dealt with, or even tasted. 

Such as tomatillos...

...serrano chiles...

...and a poblano chile. (Lard is new to me as well, but it was used for the gorditas; not the soup.)

 

Here is the poblano in roasted form.

 

So anyway, the posole is really neat because you put all this green stuff in a blender to make the soup base. Then you add hominy (which is the English word for posole), black beans, lime juice and half-and-half. Love this soup!

Gordita with Picadillo

So the gorditas were insane. More specifically, the gordita shell was insane. You make the dough with masa and lard, then you pan-fry it, then you deep-fry it. No wonder gordita means "little fat girl" in Spanish. I know how she feels...

 I'm not sure that my gordita shells "puffed" the way they were supposed to, but we made it work.

The picadillo filling is a seasoned ground beef mixture that calls for one diced russet potato. 

That first gordita was totally staged (Josh's lunch gordita for tomorrow), but this is the actual gordita I actually ate for actual dinner. Not as picturesque, but it's covered in wonderful shredded lettuce.

This is Mom's actual gordita. She likes lettuce and tomato.

Kolaches

Not sure how I feel about the kolaches. I did half with cream cheese filling and half with apricot filling. They're not very sweet. The bread-to-filling ratio seemed off, especially with the apricot. I guess I'm not crazy about these, but I may feel differently tomorrow.

Salad Season

Tis the season to lose all that F-in' weight. To that end I'm eating salad. Eating salad doesn't have to be lame, it can be fun! Here is a combination I've been perfecting for the last few days. It's a hybrid of a magazine recipe and my memory of a salad that used to be on the menu at Outback. It's 290 calories, and really yummy. So yummy that I only require 3 Ritz crackers to get it down, not my usual 5.

Here's the formula:

• a pretty big but not huge bed of romaine or red-leaf or whatever you like
• 1 whole green onion, thinly sliced
• 2 1/2 ounces turkey (I like mesquite smoked from the deli counter sliced thick)
• 5 artichoke hearts, chopped
• 10 grams of feta, crumbled (bleu cheese would be great too)
• 6 candied almonds, chopped
• 2 Tablespoons (32 grams) Kraft raspberry vinaigrette with poppyseeds

The raspberry vinaigrette makes it really special. (Thanks Lucy for putting that on my brain.) Candied pecans would be better, but I recently inherited a vast quantity of candied almonds.

Chili: The Family Recipe

This is a very special recipe for chili. It's actually the only chili I've ever made. My mom found this recipe years ago (not sure where) and has been making it ever since. I've been making it for quite a while as well. It's so good, and it's very healthy because of the huge quantity of vegetables that goes into it. Trust me, by the time it's done simmering, you'll know you're onto something good!

The recipe makes roughly 10 cups (a lot, in other words).

Chili (The Special Buys Soon-to-be-Ledbetter Family Recipe)

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef
cooking oil
2 onions, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 tablespoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can white corn, drained and rinsed
2 cans diced tomatoes, undrained (I vastly prefer the petite cut tomatoes.)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 cups chicken broth
salt & pepper to taste (I use 1 1/2 or 2 teaspoons salt, can't remember which, and no pepper.)

Prep

Brown the ground beef in a large pot. (I use my big 8-qt pot. You'll need something bigger than a 3-qt) Remove beef from pot; drain and set aside. Heat oil (1 or 2 tablespoons) in pot and add onions, pepper, carrots and celery; sautee until tender. Add beef and all remaining ingredients to the pot and simmer 30-45 minutes. If chili reduces too far, additional chicken broth may be added to achieve desired consistency.

THE END

If you're a busy working gal (or guy), you could make up a batch of this over the weekend, then take some for lunch to heat up throughout the week. Unless you're on a serious diet, you need to dress this up with some shredded cheese and saltine crackers. And if you're seriously NOT on a diet, shredded cheese and Fritos (the most calorie-dense food known to man). If I'm eating 1 cup of chili (230 calories), I use 1/4 cup of shredded cheddar (110 calories) and 6 crackers (70 calories). 410 calories. (I find it helpful to know how many calories I'm eating.)

By the time I got around to taking a picture of my chili, it was almost gone. This is the last little bit I packed up for Josh's lunch this morning.