Penelope Loves Lists » Recipes

The perfect summer dinner

Meredith — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:00:29 +0000

On hot summer nights, given that we don’t have air conditioning, I’m always looking for a meal that’s easy to prepare, doesn’t involve the oven and sounds good to me when it’s warm outside. This one is a family favorite that I thought I’d share.

Italian Rice Salad:

2 cups steamed white rice
1 cup frozen peas (thawed)
1 cup frozen corn (thawed)
1/4 cup red onion, finely diced
1/2 cup good quality feta cheese (and you may want more than this, I love mine really cheesy, so I’d add more.)
1 cup ripe, sweet cherry tomatoes
handful of chunked Italian ham (optional) (you could add kidney beans, too, for protein, if you want a veggie salad)
1/2 cup sliced olives (optional)

Dressing:
1/2 cup prepared pesto
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 -1/2 cup red wine vinegar (start slow and add to taste)
salt and pepper to taste

Mix dressing in a small bowl, set aside. Combine the rest of the ingredients, then pour the dressing over it. Mix well. You can eat it immediately, but it’s better after an hour or so. Even better late that night!

I love to pair this salad with some warm, fresh rosemary focaccia from Trader Joe’s and a glass of raspberry iced tea. I’ll have some mango sorbet for dessert if I’m feeling like a sweet treat.

Mmmmm. Now I’m hungry. If you make this meal, let me know what you think!

Review: Menu Planning Website Relish

Meredith — Sun, 16 May 2010 16:00:56 +0000

Like you, one of my most time-consuming weekly chores is making my menu for the week and then preparing my shopping list before heading out to the store. For the last three months, I’ve been using the menu-planning service, Relish! to make this task easier.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: the lovely women at Relish offered me a free 3-month trial of the service so that I could blog about it. But, they agreed to my sitewide policy: that I’d blog honestly, and will in no way skew my thoughts because of this free membership.)

How Relish! works:

First, you purchase a membership. They have several different pricing options.

Then, each week you choose from a new list of recipes. You can select meals from several categories, including kid-friendly, quick, simple, slow-cooker and vegetarian options. You can also keep track of your favorite recipes from Relish! and add them into your weekly menu any time.

Sample Menu

Once you’ve made your choices, their List-Making Function automatically generates a list of all the things you’ll need for the menu you’ve chosen.

Sample Grocery List

My thoughts on my experience:

Pros:

There are lots of choices for the meals. I never was at a loss to choose 5 – 6 meals that my family would enjoy.
The menus include side dishes, which I find really helpful. I hate trying to come up with the right side to each meal. Makes my teeth itch.
Their recipes make it easy to incorporate lots of fresh fruits and veggies into each meal.
The recipes are super family friendly – my kids liked everything I made, and so did my semi-picky husband.
The automatic list-making function shaved a ton of time off of the making of my weekly shopping list.
Many of the recipes were really delicious and none were huge failures. That’s more than I can say for most recipe books I own. In fact, there’s one recipe for breakfast for dinner that has changed the way I make scrambled eggs forever.

Cons:

You have to choose the number of people you’re cooking for for the entire week. You can’t specify meals for 5, you have to choose 4 or 6 people. For me, that’s hard because I don’t always have 4 people at every meal. I wish you could choose the number of servings per meal, rather than overall for the entire week.
A couple of times, the list the system created for me included items that I didn’t need for the recipes I’d chosen. It was a weird glitch, but happened only twice.

Is it worth the (roughly) $7/month price? For me, the answer was yes.

Of course there are lots and lots of resources on the internet that enable you to plan your meals for free. But Relish! made my planning much faster and easier than me doing it on my own. That’s worth a lot to me. And I liked opening up the site and wondering what recipes I’d be choosing and making for that week. My menu planning became kind of surprising and fun, rather than a chore.

Hey, that’s always worth the price, right?

If you want to give Relish! a try, they are offering readers of this site a 2-week trial membership. Just go to this link and enter the code “Penelope” in the “voucher #” box and you’re in!

Can Oat Bran Muffins Really Kick Hiney? Yes.

Meredith — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:00:34 +0000

I rarely eat breakfast. I know. That’s bad. It’s the most important meal of the day. I know all the science. It’s just that…I’m busy. My mornings are crazy. I’m not hungry ’til lunch. And…and… I know. Whiny much?

It’s because I know I need to eat something in the morning that I started making these Oat Bran Muffins on Sunday afternoons. My dad gave me the recipe after his doctor told him he needed to lower his cholesterol and recommended these muffins as an easy way to do that.

I love that these little guys pack a fiber punch that I can use. But, what I really love is:

they’re quick to make.
they’re even quicker to eat. I grab one on my way out the door and it keeps me full and focused (where have I heard that phrase?) until lunch time.
they have so many powerhouse ingredients: olive oil, oat bran, walnuts, raisins, honey. All good stuff. (By the way, walnuts can increase your sex drive, in addition to everything else they do for you. For a stressed out Penelope, that’s a God send, right?)
they’re low in fat and sugar.

For all those reasons, I decided to share this not-so-groundbreaking-and-yet-useful recipe with you.

Kick Hiney Oat Bran Muffins

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Lightly spray muffin tin(s) with light cooking spray.

Dry Ingredients:
2 Cups Oat Bran (you can usually find it in the hot cereal section)
1/4 C brown sugar, firmly packed
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)

Wet Ingredients:
3/4 cup lowfat milk
2 egg whites
1/4 C honey OR molasses
2 tbs olive oil

Extras:
1/4 C raisins
1/4 C chopped walnuts
1/8 cup chocolate chips (if you’re trying to trick your kids into eating them)

Combine dry ingredients, mix well with fork. In separate bowl, combine web ingredients, mix with fork. Add dry ingredients to the wet ones and mix just until moistened. Be aware it’s a fairly moist batter. Add in any extras you’re using. (I highly recommend the walnuts and raisins.) Fill muffin tins with batter.

Bake at 425 degrees for 15-17 minutes. Allow to cool. Store in refrigerator. Makes 12 muffins.

Penelope Tip #1: this isn’t environmentally conscious, but, I HATE washing muffin tins. So, for ease, for just this recipe, I use disposable muffin tins. Please don’t send me hate letters. I’m trying to save on paper towels and to compost, I promise.

Penelope Tip #2: double the recipe and freeze half. They freeze well and it’s a total time saver. Sort of a “duh” tip, though.

Penelope Tip #3: add in just a few chocolate chips and include a muffin in your kids’ lunches for a morning snack at school. Their long-term energy will keep the kids’ attention from waning as lunchtime nears.

Penelope Challenge: the muffins bake for 15 minutes. See what you can accomplish in that time. I wrote this entire post, including finding images, in the time it took to bake one batch. Nothing like working against a loud, annoying timer.

Image credits: Brook Farm and Foodista Blog’s Flickr Stream

Penelope Loves Her Crock Pot: or closest thing to a clone I’m gonna get

Meredith — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:15:45 +0000

I get such satisfaction out of cooking with my Crock Pot (or, more properly, my “slow cooker”).

I love that I can wake up just 15 minutes earlier than usual and prepare that night’s meal. I love that all day, I can think “I’m here at my office, working like a crazy person, and at home, my Crock Pot is bubbling away, making tonight’s dinner.”

When I get home, it’s a quick salad, some bread, and – poof! – dinner. Such a timesaver and, really, the closest thing I’m going to get to having a clone short of my sister abandoning her family and coming to live with me. (That ain’t gonna happen. I’ve tried.)

Here’s one of my favorite slow cooker recipes, both because it’s delicious and because I can get it going in less than 10 minutes. Let me know if you try it.

Meredith’s Chicken Cacciatore:

Makes 6-8 servings

1 large onion, thinly sliced
2 packages of chicken thighs (about 8 pieces)
2 6-oz cans of tomato paste
4-oz of fresh mushrooms (you can use canned, but I think canned mushrooms are yucky and the fresh come pre-cleaned anyway, so it’s still fast)
1 1/2 tsp salt (you might want more, taste it in it’s final stages and add if desired)
1/2 cup dry white wine (of a quality you’d drink)
2 garlic cloves (or, as I use it, 2 spoons of crushed garlic from the jar)
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp celery seed (if desired)
1 bay leaf
(+ for serving: rice/pasta and 1/2 cup goat cheese)

Put the onion in and cover with chicken. Stir the rest of the ingredients together and pour over the chicken. Cover and cook on low 7-10 hours or high 3-4 hours.

I serve this over rice, but you can serve over spaghetti or any pasta.

Penelope tip: sprinkle with goat cheese and serve. This extra zotch of creamy tanginess is what makes the recipe for me. And, I always make the full recipe and have enough for leftovers the next night. I just change out the salad and bread to make it a bit different. My family never minds.

My favorite slow cooker recipe book isFix-It and Forget-It Cookbook: Feasting with Your Slow Cooker" target="_blank"> The Fix It and Forget It Cookbook by Dawn Ranck and Phyllis Pellman Good.