Peanut Butter Oatmeal Softies - Hungry Girl - B

Hungry Girl isn't kidding when she calls these "softies." They crumble in your hands when you pick them up. I really liked them because they satisfied a craving for a peanut buttery cookie, and a sugar craving in general. They only have 140 calories and 3.5 grams of fat, so eating these instead of real peanut butter cookies is a wise choice. They get a "B" because they didn't actually impart much peanut butter flavor. This is because the recipe calls for Better n' Peanut Butter, which is reconstituted, de-fatted peanut flour. It only has 1 gram of fat per tablespoon, as opposed to the 7-9 grams in real peanut butter. It was also $6 a jar, which made me grumpy.

here is a link to the recipe:
http://hungry-girl.com/chew/chewdetails.php?isid=1787

Asian Chicken Soup - Cooking Light - A

WOW! Yum!

This chicken soup looked complicated, but it was delicious. I didn't buy the lemongrass that the recipe calls for, and I bet it would be even better with it, but the recipe got an "A" without it. I also used rice noodles instead of the regular pasta, because I had that on hand. This photo was taken the next day, when all of the noodles had absorbed the broth in the fridge, so the real deal was a lot...soupier. Also, the recipe called for the chicken to be cooked in the broth, but I used leftover shredded chicken from a rotisserie.

Recipe:
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=686180

Pictures:

Oatmeal Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies - Cooking Light recipe - A

These cookies are great! I was worried that only a half of a cup of banana wouldn't put forth much banana-y flavor, but I think getting roasted in the oven really brings it out. It also makes the cookies really moist and soft. It also made more than 24 decent sized cookies - more like 30. If I'd purposely made it 24, they'd've been really big, which I could do next time. I'll tell you what I won't do next time though, and that's use chocolate chips for diabetics (grain sweetened carob chips.) They are gross. They don't melt, but instead boil up and get hard. I'm not sure what they are supposed to be used for otherwise. Once we get past their rather raisin-y flavor, we ate them like crazy. I'll definitely make these again, and that's all the reasons these get an "A."

Recipe:
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1906392

Pictures:

Pesto - Personal Recipe - B

I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Writing my own recipes is not one of them. I try really hard, but the things I think of rarely turn out the way they did in my head. Shame.

I recently looked at the nutritional information on a jar of pesto and nearly had a heart attack. I think from the Parmesan cheese, Olive oil, and pine nuts, the goodness of the leafy greens of basil was thrown out the window. Well, I'm sure all of the goodness is still there, but it's like when my boss dunks her Metamucil cookies in frosting. Or when a good kid hangs out with bad kids. You get the picture.

I love the flavor of pesto, though, and I want to make some pesto sandwiches to take on a picnic. We have enough basil to feed an army (of one - myself,) that my dear and darling fiance has grown for me on the deck, at a moment's reach. There are 5 plants in all - 4 little ones and a giant one. Check it out.

The above plant is actually on the roof, so picking is very precarious, as you can imagine. Pesto is dangerous business in this house.

So I plucked one stem from each of the little plants and 4 from the big plant. 8 stems in all. I washed them, dried them, and picked off the leaves, and shoved them into my food processor.

Then I toasted some walnuts in the oven. I read that the nutritional properties of walnuts are better than pine nuts. Toasting them probably leeches out all of the good qualities of them, though. They are just so much tastier toasted. Also, they were all I had on hand.

Here are all of the pesto leaves all snug in their beds.


Throw those toasty walnuts in.

Add a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Not nearly as much as a whole half a cup, which is what most recipes call for. Seriously. That would be a lot of olive oil.

Then blend into a paste. A tasty, tasty pasty.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl and blend some more.

It looks a little like super thick saag vindaloo. But doesn't taste like it. At all.

This recipe made about a cup of pesto. It's much thicker than store bought pesto, but half the calories and a fraction of the price. Even if you had to buy the basil because your super fiance doesn't grow it on your roof, it'd still be a bargain.

Tortellini Soup - Recipe from a former co-worker - A

We're really into soup these days for many reasons. The first being that I generally do not have to turn on the oven in this heinous, July heat. The second being that we read that soup makes you feel fuller longer.

This recipe was given to me by a co-worker from an old job one year at Christmas when we had a recipe exchange. My good friend, Lara (reptilianskiesandpeacockeyes.blogspot.com), orchestrated the whole ordeal. Some people shared some really great things that I can't get enough of, and will blog about later, because I am bound to make them again they were so darn tasty (homemade irish cream?) Some things looked so putred that I would never try them, and that is saying a lot, because Ryan and I have some extremely open-minded palates. Some things were extra fancy and I'll have to wait around for a special occasion to try.

Onto this soup. My mom used to make something similar when I was little, so this one appealed to me. This recipe exchange was over a year ago, but I have a lot of recipes to go through that I save in a big binder, and it was this one's turn to be tried (separate blog post about the binder later.) It's very simple, and basically had no method. I love those kind of recipes.
First, saute some garlic in some olive oil

Then add some chicken stock (about three cans or one carton.) And a bag of tortellini.

Let it boil for about 10 - 15 minutes. The tortellini will puff up really big. Then add a can of diced tomatoes.

And a box of frozen spinach. I added leaf spinach here, but I should have gone with chopped so that it was more evenly distributed and easier to ladle out of the pot. Next time, I will buy a bunch of fresh spinach from the store to chop up and put in there (not baby spinach because it gets slimey. )

Let this simmer for about 5 minutes to heat everything through. Then add some fresh, chopped spinach.

Enjoy.

Grilled Pork Chops with Shallot Butter - Cooking Light recipe - B

These were good. The recipe was easy to follow. I'd've (yes, I know that is not a word. It's "I would have...") been peeved if Ryan didn't actually grow all of these herbs and I had to buy them all individually, but luckily, I snagged a green-tumbed man to do these things for me. Lucky, lucky me.

The recipe called for 7-oz., bone-in, center-cut chops, but I am mildly ignorant when it comes to pork, so I always just grab whatever. I know I've been disappointed with thin-cut chops in the past, I hate personally hate bone-in chops, so I grabbed a package of butterflied chops. I realized after that I should have chosen the thick-cut chops, because those would have been closer to what they serve in a restaurant. Next time.

I used double the amount of garlic and smart balance light instead of real butter. Also, lime rind instead of lemon because we've been on a super mojito kick this weekend. Ryan also grows mint. I think I'll keep him.

We ate them with baby potato pancakes and apple sauce.

Recipe:

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1906360

Pictures:

Apricot Glazed Chicken Thighs - Cooking Light Recipe - C

These get a "C" grade simply because they were just "O.K." They didn't knock our socks off in any manner of speaking, but they were tasty, and the final product turned out just like the pictures. The apricot flavor was totally lost with the grilling. Actually, I didn't even grill them. I cooked them in an electric skillet, but still!

Recipe:
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1898569

Pictures:

Barbeque Chicken with Mustard Glaze - Cooking Light recipe - B

Barbeque is a misnomer here, because there was no barbeque-ing involved. I did not use a grill and the recipe didn't call for it. There is just a homemade, barbeque flavored sauce that goes on the sauce that warranted the name. I went along with it because a mustard glaze sounded good. Ryan and I are really into chicken thighs these days. I always thought dark meat was fattier, greasier, etc. but 2 thighs have about 250 calories, which is fine with me. Lots of Cooking Light recipes use thighs. There is probably less variation in size, too, whereas breasts vary greatly. (insert snickering here)

This recipe gets a "B" grade because of two things. Firstly, there was too much brown sugar in the spice rub. Second, the recipe called for it to be cooked on a grill pan at medium high. The combination of these two cause some serious blackening of the glaze to the pan. If there had been less brown sugar, or if they were only cooked at medium, I wouldn't have burned the entire dinner's calories off just scrubbing my pan afterwards. Or maybe that was Cooking Light's intention. Either way, do one of those things and I bet you'll come out with better thighs. Chicken that is, for your own thighs, try some squats.

Here is the recipe:
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1906382

Pictures:

Tropical Carrot Cake - Cooks Country by Cooks Illustrated recipe - A

I know this is the second post of the new version of meghanandryanraterecipes.com, and I also gave this one an "A," but this cake is to die for. If you like carrot cake. I make exactly 1 time per year, and that is for Lara Carl (reptilianskiesandpeacockeyes.blogspot.com) for her birthday. I made it one time when I got a copy of Cooks Country magazine and shared it with her and the downstairs neighbors. Lara actually hates cake, but loves this one so much that I make it for her birthday every year. I've never actually asked her if she wants it or not, I just want an excuse to make it for her and I've done so for the past three years. This year, I made it as a layer cake, which is what the recipe calls for and what I did the first time I made it, but I've also made it as a sheet cake and cup cakes. That is a picture of Lara taking a picture of the cake.

Here is a link to another blogspoter who made the cake. It is nice to know that his turned out just like mine! He says he wound up with extra frosting though, and I would NEVER let that happen!

Recipe:
http://urbandrivel.blogspot.com/2007/03/cooks-illustrated-tropical-carrot-cake.html

Pictures:

Oatmeal Honey Apple Cake - Cooking Light Recipe - A

This recipe gets an "A." I know that is the first of the new attempt at this site, but really, it gets an "A." In my never-ending search for low-fat desserts, I came across this last fall and have waited until now to try it. I think it is supposed to be a Rosh Hashannah recipe because apple and honey cake is a traditional dessert for ringing in a sweet new year. I really liked that none of the honey flavor was lost in the cake, as honey tends to be. A lot of the calories were cut out with the lack of butter in the batter. I also made it even less fattening by using 4 egg whites instead of the two eggs called for in the recipe. It's a pretty dense cake without them. I had all of the leftover egg whites from the yolks I used last week to make a pudding. This cake gets even better the next day. I also wouldn't recommend pre-toasting the almonds, because ours got a little over toasted under the broiler.

Here is the recipe:
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1723427

Pictures: