cooking along, singing a song

So if you know us, we love food! One of our resolutions for 2011 is to limit eating out to once a week. We tried this last year but didn't quite stick to it. It just costs so much to eat out, plus eating in gives you more control over nutrition. And both of us could stand to lose a few pounds.

So here are a few of our most recent successes, thanks to foodnetwork.com!

First...we had a humongous butternut squash and I wanted to make a soup with it. But I didn't want to do just a plain ol' butternut squash soup. I did a little fishing around on foodnetwork.com and found Ina Garten's butternut squash and apple soup.

Pros: So wholesome! And pretty much vegetarian (there was 2 tbsp butter, no meat broth or stock). I love the combination of apples, curry, onions, and butternut squash. It really had a meaty, hearty flavor, and Ryan was surprised when I told him there wasn't any chicken broth in it!
Cons: The recipe tells you to break down the squash before cooking it. This was a lot harder than it sounded and greatly increased the prep time. Peeling the squash near the part where it curves was really difficult and so was cutting it up into manageable cubes (did I mention that the squash was humongous?). My technique for this was to throw the knife into the squash, then pick it up with the knife stuck in it and bang it against the counter until the knife reached the other side. Very professional :) I eventually got it all cubed though! Next time I might roast the squash first and break it down when it's all soft and easy to work with.

One step I cut out from the recipe was transferring to a food processer after cooking. I just used Ryan's handy immersion blender and blended it right in the pot! I think it worked just as well :)

So we ended up having this soup along with some hummus & pitas, salsa & chips, and broccoli. All to kick off another New Year's resolution, Meatless Mondays! I first heard about this initiative from Mario Batali. Though I don't see us ever becoming vegetarians, Meatless Monday is a definite welcome & creative break from our usual meat + 2 veggie dinners. This week, we did another Meatless Monday, this time with salad, lima beans, corn cakes (delicious leftovers from Ryan's mom mmm), and quinoa. I kind of cheated with the quinoa and used chicken stock to cook it. But, it was still in the right spirit and the stock only has 20 calories per cup!


Another recipe we tried was Tyler Florence's chicken enchiladas with roasted tomatillo salsa. We were inspired to make our own tomatillo salsa after buying some from Trader Joe's. Don't get me wrong - the Trader Joe's version is pretty good! But, we are curious people. So, I bought tomatillos for the first time in my life, roasted them with onions & jalapenos in the oven, and processed them with some other delicious ingredients into the best tomatillo salsa I've ever had in my life!



The best part is that it just gets spicier with time. I had some of the leftovers last night, and wow!! Spicy. The chicken filling was also pretty easy to make.


Pros: Surprisingly easy to make even though everything is from scratch! Basically just roast & process for the salsa. The filling is cooked all in one pan - I love one dish recipes, easy to clean up! The recipe suggest using a rotisserie chicken from the store, but we used chicken breasts. I'd imagine using the deli chicken would save even more time.
Cons: I don't think there really were any cons. So I'll use this space to talk about improvements. When it gets warmer, I think I'll try roasting the tomatillos etc on the grill to get a more smokey flavor. Could be interesting! Also, I found these half flour half corn tortillas at Publix, so we used those instead of all flour tortillas. I want to say they were Don Pablo's...Don Juan's...I don't know. And, I ended up making a double batch of salsa (I accidentally bought too many tomatillos), but I'm glad I did so we could have extra to dip chips in!