Extreme Comfort Food and Fun with the Grill

Periodically, this blog strays away from the healthy aspect. :) This is one of those days...

For a while, I've been itching for some good, homemade mac & cheese. This was inspired by a recipe that I found in the copy of the most recent Penzey's catalog. I even went out and bought some mustard powder on my last Penzey's trip to make this mac & cheese! But the Penzey's recipe, while it sounded delicious, was baked. And the humidity had struck and the air conditioning is on so there was no way that I was going to turn on my oven. :) So, I thought I was going to have to put the mac & cheese on the backburner for a while.

And then I found this recipe last Wednesday. And I was in love. And we went to the grocery store Thursday night so I immediately picked up all the ingredients that I didn't already have.

Scan over the recipe and I dare you not to fall in love with it too.

I'll start out with the modifications that I made: I followed the Pioneer Woman's recommendation of using Cavatappi noodles (I find this recipe calls for a "heftier" noodle than just a macaroni noodle!) and eliminated the jalapeno pepper completely. I also used 1 cup of Pepper Jack cheese and 1/2 cup of Monterey Jack cheese instead of all Pepper Jack cheese.

I more or less followed the rest of the recipe as is, except I used a combination of Garlic olive oil and Chili olive oil.

Olive oil, onions, red bell pepper, garlic & corn:

Shredded Pepper Jack & Monterey Jack cheese:

I don't even want to think about how many calories were in this delicious dish, but sometimes it's worth it to take a break from the healthy living to have the ultimate in comfort food. :) And mac & cheese IS the ultimate in comfort food, and having the spicy elements adds a bit of a "grown-up" twist. Not to mention this mac & cheese is not neon orange a la Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. :)

I definitely will be making this again. I liked the modifications that I made, but I think I might add Jalapeno Grapeseed Oil to the mix instead of Chili Olive Oil. Go out and make this mac & cheese. Probably not this second, but this week. For sure. :)

The next entry in this blog post is much healthier!

For dinner tonight, we made Black & Red Chicken from the Penzey's catalog, and added grilled asparagus and mushrooms for a side dish.

The chicken we made as is. We dipped the chicken in Natural Grapeseed Oil and then sprinkled on quite a bit of Black & Red seasoning before rubbing the seasoning into the chicken. We then left the chicken in the fridge for an hour to let the flavors "soak" into the chicken.

After the chicken was "marinaded" for an hour in the fridge, it was put on the grill for about 10 minutes at medium high.

For the mushrooms, Andy drizzled olive oil and sea salt on them, wrapped them in tinfoil and put them on the grill. He made two "batches" - one with garlic olive oil and one with chili olive oil. They were grilled on medium high for about 15 minutes.

The asparagus was brushed with chili olive oil and put directly on the grill for about 5 minutes on medium high.

Overall- really really tasty!! Not very much salt/sodium in it since the Black & Red seasoning is salt-free and we only used salt in the mushrooms (and not very much). A really good recipe, but possibly I will use less Black & Red next time because it was extremely HOT (spicy!).

I think grilling vegetables is going to become a new staple in our house. A little bit of olive oil, shake on some spices and put on the grill and veggies are tasty but still relatively healthy (not being sauteed in butter helps, haha). I'm hoping to experiment more with grilling veggies throughout the summer.

The importance of good spices!

So lately, my life has been pretty uneventful. I haven't really done much cooking since it's either been humid, we've been grilling out, or we've been hitting the town with Eating Milwaukee (since my last post here we've reviewed Speed Queen BBQ and Barbiere's Italian Inn- a review which has not yet been published but is coming soon!) Over the weekend, however, I took a trip to one of my two favorite food-type stores in the entire world: Penzey's!

I went to Penzey's to pick up a few things and ended up with an entire bag full of spice-related goodies. Oh, that store never ceases to make me wish I had an unlimited cash flow and cabinet space (even though I, um, have an entire cabinet devoted to spices).

I went there for two specific reasons: 1- that I had a coupon from my last catalog for a free Northwoods, BBQ 3000 or Black/Red seasoning. 2- in the most recent catalog (which I suspect is never showing up at my house because it was due to arrive when the maintenance people switched around our mailboxes with the neighbors and right after that switch happened, we didn't get any mail), I read about a Beef Roast Seasoning that sounded a-MAZING! So of course, it was necessary to make a trip to Penzey's!

So, after browsing for about 1/2 hour, what did we emerge with?

Beef Roast Seasoning

Northwoods Fire (one of Andy's favorites, this jar was a replacement for the last one)

Black & Red Spice (because it smelled delicious, was one of the "free" options, and also because the Black & Red Chicken sounds tasty!)

Mustard Powder (because there was a recipe in the latest catalog, which I happened to pick up a copy at the store, for mac & cheese which called for mustard...)

Taco Seasoning (because who doesn't love a good taco seasoning?)

Chicago Steak Seasoning (self-explanatory! and also because we ran out of my favorite steak seasoning: the Rancher Steak Rub from Wildtree)

Pasta Sprinkle

and

Pizza Seasoning

Man, life is good since I live really near Penzey's!

My goal for the next few years is to get rid of all of my spices that aren't Penzey's, Wildtree, The Spice House or from other specialty shops. I know McCormick's spices are not bad, but they just aren't as good! For example, in 2005 I started making pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving. I used my McCormick cinnamon. The pie was good, of course, it's pumpkin pie! The next year, I had gotten some Penzey's Cinnamon (in this case the China Tung Hing Cinnamon) and used that instead. China Tung Hing Cinnamon = much tastier pumpkin pie. Promise! Now to get ginger and cloves from Penzey's...

Other Penzey's favorites in our house include the Cajun Seasoning, Chili Powder, Cinnamon Sugar (great in applesauce!), Tandoori Seasoning, Sandwich Sprinkle and Tsardust Memories.

I realize that spices from places like the above are not the cheapest, so it may bring about the question "how is this frugal?" Well, splurging on good spices equals even better food. You may cut corners by buying bulk meats and freezing it, making more things from scratch, drinking Crystal Light or Kool-Aid (don't knock it...) instead of buying soda, some people use beans more often than meat (I'm not going to do that since I don't like beans, but I've read that it is good for the budget!), etc etc. There are a lot of ways to cut your food budget, but I think skimping on spices is a poor way to do so. For example, if you are pouring over the ads every week and see a good deal on chicken and buy a bunch of it to freeze, when the time comes to eat said chicken, a cabinet full of good spices equals a lot of choices for making a delicious marinade.

A lot of spice specialty shops also have multiple sizes of their spices. With very few exceptions, I buy the smallest jar possible of a spice before I know if I am going to love it or not. I can always buy more if it turns out that it is the Best. Spice. Ever.

One of the problems with buying higher end spices is that it gets seriously addicting and then you are devoting an entire cabinet to spices. Not that I would know...

So I highly encourage you to find a specialty spice shop in your area and go there for your spice purchases from now on. If this is old news and you already do this, where do you shop and what are some of your favorite spices?

Coming soon- a post on the importance of good olive oil. It makes a difference, really!

Chicken Tortilla Soup

I love Mexican food, and I'm lucky enough to live in a city where there is a large percentage of Mexican restaurants. :) That being said, however, I have only found two places with a suitable Tortilla Soup- La Carreta at the El Dorado Seaside Suites in Riviera Maya, Mexico, and Riviera Maya Mexican Restaurant (I'm sensing a common theme here...) right here in Milwaukee. Since La Carreta is a bit far away (ha) and Riviera Maya is a bit expensive, I decided to try making my own.

I found this Slow-Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup recipe on AllRecipes.com, and decided to give it a shot. It was ridiculously easy, ridiculously tasty, and relatively healthy. I didn't make any modifications to this recipe at all.

The "hardest" part of the recipe was the chicken shredding, because it's pretty tedious. General chicken shredding instructions found here, thanks to eHow. I used the boiling water stovetop method, no pounding involved. Something the tutorial doesn't say but I've found has been extremely helpful is to cut the chicken into small strips. The cooking time is much shorter, and it's easier to shred smaller pieces of chicken than a full sized chicken breast. Today's chicken came from Trader Joe's, and I mis-read the label and bought chicken tenderloins, so they were already pre-cut and smaller, but cutting regular chicken breast into the tenderloin size would work too.

I used La Preferida mild red enchilada sauce and diced green chiles. I'd like to try making the enchilada sauce when I make this again, but for now the La Preferida was just fine. The recipe also called for a can of whole peeled tomatoes- mashed. I decided to go for the mashing tomatoes with a fork method. :)

Chopped the onion using our Slap Chop, which was courtesy of my family's Xmas White Elephant exchange. It makes chopping onions much easier and tear free- I highly recommend getting one, especially if you like onions!

After the chicken, onions, enchilada sauce, green chiles, tomatoes, garlic, chicken broth and water- we added the cumin, salt, pepper, bay leaf and chili powder. Since I'm a spice snob, I used chili powder from Penzey's (while Penzey's is a specialty spice shop- they have amazing spices, and if you subscribe to their catalog they have amazing coupons. For example, the first catalog I got had a coupon for a free Cajun spice.)...I highly recommend Penzey's if you live near one, and be sure to sign up for their mailing list!

The last things to be added was the frozen corn, and fresh cilantro. I had picked up a bag of fire-roasted corn at Trader Joe's about a month ago and it was PERFECT. The recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of cilantro, but since i had bought a bunch of fresh cilantro at Piggly Wiggly, we added way more.

I took this picture prior to turning on the CrockPot. Since I didn't get a chance to go to Trader Joe's to pick up the chicken until about 2:00, I had to cook it for 3 hours on high instead of 7 hours on low.

Right before the soup was done, we made the tortilla strips. We sliced up 5 soft corn tortillas, brushed them with garlic olive oil from the Olive Cellar.

I put them in the oven for about 8-10 minutes at 450 since the recipe did not really specify, but next time I may put them in for 15 minutes at about 350 instead.

The tortilla strips were perfect. Next time, I may try using our chipotle oil from the Olive Cellar, or chili olive oil from The Oilerie. They also might be a fun snack to make with leftover corn tortillas.

All in all, this recipe did not require that much assembly and it turned out delicious!

Caloric count: 262 calories per serving (recipe does not specify serving size), or approx. 2000 calories for the entire pot of soup. Our pot yielded five large bowls- approx 400 calories, or 8 WW points per bowl. Since it was heavy on the protein, it was also very filling so we didn't have any side dishes with it at all.

I cannot say enough good things about this recipe and I encourage you to try it out yourself. It was super easy to make, super tasty and the most difficult part was shredding the chicken. It would be a perfect weekend dinner because you can assemble it in the morning and then put the crock pot on low and let it cook all day. Depending on time, you could also make it in the morning before work, but since shredding chicken is a huge chore for me, I don't think I'd ever make it during the week if I had to work during the day. :)