Comunidad Health Foods

Apparently, meatloaf is making a comeback. What once used to be regarded with disdain – surely we’re too good for lowly little meatloaf, that block of dry ground meat and whatever  mysterious leftover ingredients mom needed to use up that week – is actually topping the lists of predicted food trends for 2012. Now, I never grew up on meatloaf. I can’t even tell you the first time I tried it, or if I even necessarily did before I made my own version last year. I don’t know if I quite understand everyone’s previous grievances with meatloaf. I know people who associate it with “poor people’s food” – generally, people who grew up in hard times and can’t really separate those financial struggles from the foods upon which their families relied; I know other people who balk at the texture. Yet really, what is meatloaf but a “bulk” scale version of a burger? It’s ground meat, some filler…it seems pretty innocuous, if you ask me. Plus, as people have been commenting recently, it’s super versatile, and you know how weak in the knees I get for a recipe that can shape shift to keep things exciting without too much added effort.

Rachael Ray includes her own version of meat loaf in her Classic 30 Minute Meals cookbook, and I gave it a shot just last week. She uses ground turkey breast instead of beef, adds in some meaty mushrooms (which you could totally increase in order to cut back on the meat even more), and has you form the mixture into patties rather than one log. The patties are lightly sautéed rather than baked, and I think the combination of keeping them individual and on the stovetop really helps to eliminate that cliché “dry” meatloaf that so many people probably have stuck in their minds. I thought they were absolutely delicious. The other thing they most certainly were, was enormous – I think, given the right side dishes, the meatloaf mixture could easily feed 5-6 non-ravenous people, though the recipe claims it’s only for 4.

I served it with two other RR recipes – lemony green beans and herb smashed potatoes. I only tasted the potatoes and then focused on the meat and beans for a lower carbohydrate meal, which is why the full patty was good for me, but if you have a healthy serving of potatoes and fill a good half of your plate with the green beans, you could easily trim back on the meat portion of the meal. Although, I found both side dishes to pale in comparison to the main meat loaf patty, so maybe you should go for a more enjoyable pair of sides instead of these two specifically. In fact, I’m not even going to tell you about the green beans because I actually disliked them, and it takes a whole lot to get me to actively dislike any veggie-based recipe. It was admittedly, to some extent, my fault for using defrosted frozen beans instead of fresh, and heating them in the pan with the lemon juice, which resulted in that unwanted shade of green, but it still just didn’t do anything for me, or really anyone else who had them. They were edible, sure, but ultimately forgettable. The potatoes were much better, and maybe my lackluster review has more to do with the fact that I just don’t get very excited about regular potatoes in general. You can see my adapted version of Rachael’s recipe for those below.

Also, please note below that I used dairy alternatives in place of all of the butter. The original calls for the real stuff, but my dad chooses not to mix meat and dairy, so we always cook with soy/almond milk and butter alternatives when a meat dish calls for dairy. It took a while to find a butter alternative that worked. Most are chock-full of hydrogenated oils, and a surprising amount contain trace levels of dairy products, such as whey from milk. We finally found Bestlife Buttery Spread, which is free of hydrogenated oils and all signs of dairy, even in the most minute amounts. I still use regular butter whenever meat and my dad aren’t involved, and my dad also uses regular butter whenever he isn’t planning to eat meat, but this has been a great find for us. Just know that you can make this recipe with regular dairy products if that’s what you prefer – it’s how it was intended – but I think all of dishes turned out perfectly well with the substitutions, too.

It feels like forever since I’ve written a Thirty Minute Thursday post, between Thanksgiving and my trip to Cancun, but to make up for it I have two of Rachael Ray’s dependable recipes today. You see, there must be close to a half dozen different ways of making oven fries in her cookbook (ok, make that 4), and it seems silly to write a separate entry for each of them since they really follow the same basic preparation method. I haven’t made all of them yet – just two so far – but they wound up being pretty great and definitely easy.

The first one I tried was an herb and cheese oven fry recipe that I brutally overcooked (re: burned), but I still liked them. They had a ton of flavor, and I’m not even just talking about the char! The cheese was what burned, meaning that flavor wound up being pretty weak, so I can only imagine how tasty they would have been if I had paid more attention to them while they baked.

Next I tried “pigskin potatoes,” which were also really tasty, and very much like an oven “fry” should be. The thicker ones weren’t quite crisp enough for my liking, so I’d suggest taking care to slice them as equally as you can manage, erring on the side of thin (unless you like thicker, less crispy fries) – I know my potato slicing skills could use some work. Still, they had a ton of flavor, even moreso than the last ones, and were spicy from the copious amounts of black pepper that I added. I didn’t add salt, but of course – being fries – they’d be good with a little sprinkling!

Because I don’t really believe that these are separate recipes, but rather two variations of one basic recipe for how to make oven baked potato “fries,” I thought it would make more sense to blend the two recipes into one more generic one that you can tweak as you like. Add the spices or toppings that you love, and omit the ones that you don’t. Even consider switching up the base ingredient – potatoes – for a less conventional fry: sweet potato, kohlrabi, zucchini, and turnips would all work with perhaps just a slight modification of cooking time. 

 One Year Ago: Regrettably Hydrogenated Mint-Chocolate and Caramel-Butterscotch Candy Barks

Yesterday was National Guacamole Day and today is, of course, Thirty Minute Thursday, so I thought I would combine these two with a Mexican-inspired meal that I had recently. I think that potatoes have gotten a bad rep recently, and although I don’t tend to eat copious amounts of them, I do think it’s a little undeserved. This potato tortilla is a perfectly healthy dinner option, and the incredible health benefits of the tomatillo guacamole that I paired it with make that even more true.  I chose to leave the skins of the potato on because I just can’t get enough of them, but it also helps add an extra boost of fiber that will counter the potentially less than ideal effects of a higher starch food. The healthy fats from the avocado and the protein from the egg will also certainly help curb any glycemic response that potato-haters seem to fear.

Now, I did flub this recipe a little bit. Strike one was when I let the potatoes brown, despite the recipe saying explicitly not to. I don’t really know the reason behind this – it’s possible that preventing browning makes for a better tasting tortilla, or perhaps it helps with cohesion – but I personally never complained over a golden-brown, crisped up potato product. That’s when they taste the best, right? What was far more disheartening was my total inability to flip the “tortilla” in one piece. It crumbled to pieces, but it still tasted good. And I say, if this happens to you, call it an egg-and-potato hash and move on. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from getting more involved in cooking, it’s that stressing over such things is not worth it.

I’m very happy that I chose to pair it with a recipe for tomatillo guacamole that I found online. It added a beautiful, vibrant color (and as a topping it hid my fallen-apart tortilla). I would also love to see some red pepper or salsa to add an additional color and flavor component. The tomatillo guac, though, was wonderful without the help of a spicy salsa. It wasn’t as creamy as a traditional guacamole, but it was a nice blend between that and a salsa verde. I’d also like to note that I used a completely unripe avocado and once I peeled it from its skin it worked just fine! Ah, the beauty of blenders.

My high school gustatory passions pretty much consisted of cheesesteaks, French fries (cheese fries were even more heavenly), and buffalo wings – the hotter, the better. I remember one time actually needing to hold ice cubes to my lips after a particularly harrowing experience courtesy of a hotel room service menu in Colorado. I haven’t bitten into a real cheesesteak since giving up non-grassfed beef almost a year ago, and my French fry consumption has mostly been weaned out and replaced by things like roasted root vegetables cut into fry shapes (lest you think this is some form of self-deprivation, I’d like to add that I find the roasted veggies to be much tastier now than a plate of greasy fries). I also haven’t chowed down on a good plate of wings in what seems like eons.

So when I saw a recipe for buffalo chicken sandwiches in Rachael Ray’s Classic 30 Minute Meals, I couldn’t get it off my mind. Every week when I sat down to plan my menu, I would think of that recipe. It was only a matter of time before I gave in and tried it out. Of course, I revamped it, giving it my RD-to-Be stamp of approval (without, of course, disappointing the high schooler who is still very much a part of me, believe it or not). I also like to think that I cut back on some of the total calories, making it a more me-sized meal, since I tend to eat several smaller meals throughout the day. One super-stuffed baked potato and a chicken sandwich and dessert just seemed like a bit much.

Words cannot describe what I wound up with on my plate that night. This was a total indulgence, 100% enjoyable, and not even something that anyone should feel overly guilty about (brushing aside the whole-other debate of whether or not there’s really any food we should feel guilty about in the long run). With this meal, you get fiber, lean protein, and more flavor than some people might know what to do with. This is also the first time I’ve liked celery in a dish – it gave the potato filling a nice crunch and freshness – so bonus points for that.

Next time, I might make it a little spicier – the buffalo flavor came through loud and clear, but needless to say I didn’t need 10 glasses of water to help me through the finish line. I also need to remember that microwaving times vary depending on how much food is being heated in them, so when I cut the recipe down and didn’t change the potato cooking time, I wound up with some pretty shriveled potato skins. Not the end of the world.

In the end, this is probably my favorite from Rachael Ray’s cookbook so far. I may actually catalog this in my real, honest-to-goodness recipe box, and if you’ve been following my Thirty Minute Thursday posts at all, you’ll know that most of the time I tell you that her recipes are really just rough guidelines to keep in the back of your mind. They aren’t the kind of meals you need to follow step-by-step. It’s true that you can tweak this and mess around with it just like the other recipes, but I do want to remember this for future meals because you can bet it’ll be gracing the Floptimism kitchen again. And again. And again…