Tag Archives: Tasty Tuesday

Food for the Trail

Posted on by
5

Andy and I went backpacking last weekend. He was an Eagle Scout, so he’s camped and hiked lots and lots of times. We’ve been a few times together, and we have a pretty good routine down as far as getting the trip organized goes. He’s responsible for planning the route, picking the campsites, and getting us there, and I’m responsible for the food. (Though, what else is new? ;-) )

The first time we went I was pretty nervous about this and stuck to a “safe” list of bapckpacking foods that I had found on the internet or something. Since then, though, I’ve gotten a bit more creative and had some fun planning our meals. Backpacking food needs to be in light containers with easy open packaging, no fuss when it comes to preparation, and shelf-stable. I tend to think of foods that would be good for kids to eat, because those usually fit all the requirements.

For dinners, we carry a small stove-like thing called a JetBoil. It has an insulated canister that boils water very quickly, and also has an attachment that allows you to place a pot or pan over its propane flame. It’s light and compact and works really well, so we try to come up with as many meals as possible that require only water. Lunches are more casual, and in fact some days we just nibble when we’re hungry rather than stopping to eat an official lunch.

Here’s what we carried last time:

  • Knorr Butter and Herb pasta pacakge with no-drain chicken breast chunks in a pouch for Friday dinner (2 of each, though we only ate one)
  • A freeze-dried (just add water) beef and potato stew for Saturday dinner
  • Peanut Butter and Pretzel M&M’s for dessert
  • 6 Cliff bars in assorted flavors
  • Cranberry Ginger instant oatmeal
  • Berry-flavored apple sauce
  • Ice cream sandwich flavored shelf-stable pudding cups
  • Wheat and cheese packaged snack crackers
  • 2 quart-sized bags of home-mixed trail mix
  • Beef jerky
  • 4 blueberry bagels spread with crunchy peanut butter for optional lunches (the bagels are sturdy enough to not get weird or soggy from the peanut butter)
  • Freeze-dried “fruit that crunches” that I impulse bought at Publix
  • All-fruit “fruit rollups” from the organic kids’ section at Kroger
  • An extra pouch of ready-to-eat tuna left over from another camping trip (just in case)

We actually brought a fair amount of this back home with us, but you always want to have too much food, rather than not enough. You can tell I like to include “treats”–that makes it a lot more fun to me! Chocolate is a good addition to any trail-eaten meal.

And beef jerky isn’t something I’d ever think about eating on a regular basis, but I sure do enjoy it out in the woods. The freeze-dried dinners, which you can buy at any outdoors store, are a great, easy cleanup option, that are also pretty tasty and hardy. Next time, I might just stick with two of those rather than trying to make a camp dinner out of real dinner ingredients.

We also brought along an assortment of teabags and instant coffees for in the morning. I never sleep well in the wilderness, and this past time it was actually a little chilly overnight, so that hot cup of caffeinated goodness is a pleasure in the morning. My favorite mixture is a package of hot chocolate mix stirred in with a couple of tubes of instant coffee–instant mocha!

The best and most fun lesson I learned this time was to use the bulk bins at Whole Foods or somewhere similar to get ingredients for trail mix. That way, you can buy small amounts of lots of different things, and not spend very much on each element because it’s charged by weight! This is much better than having to buy a whole big bag of, say, almonds at a regular grocery store when you really only need a handful.

So there you have it: food for the trail. Have you ever been backpacking? What kinds of food do you eat while camping?

Late Night Hunger

Posted on by
2

I struggle with late night hunger. I’m not talking Taco Bell “4th meal” cravings. I’m talking gnawing, empty feeling stomach hunger that keeps me from falling asleep. I’ve always tended to get hungry at frequent intervals and needed to eat regularly, so I try to keep an eye on my hunger level and have a snack before bed if it seems I’m a bit peckish. But some nights I feel fine….until I’ve tossed and turned for an hour and all of a sudden realize that OH MY GOSH I FEEL LIKE HAVEN’T EATEN IN A YEAR AND I NEED FOOD NOW.

It’s really frustrating, because by that point, nothing I eat is going to be enjoyable. I don’t mind having a pre-bed snack, but once I get to the point of not being able to sleep, any nourishment is going to be for necessity’s sake only. For that reason, I often try to ignore it and see if I can fall asleep and avoid the awkward standing-in-the-dark-in-the-kitchen chomping a granola bar occurrence. But that’s usually a bad choice, because it only prolongs the inevitable.

It happened with a vengeance on Sunday night, even though I felt perfectly satisfied after not dinner and not hungry as I got ready for bed. No food that I could think of seemed remotely appealing, because all I really wanted to be doing was sleeping. I drank some water to see if I could trick myself into thinking I was full, but to no avail. I ended up grabbing a handful of trail mix and choking it down.

It’s hard to know what to do about this problem. I don’t want to force myself to have a snack before bed if I’m not hungry, because that would be useless calories. But I hate, hate, hate hunger-inflicted insomnia.

I try to have something small and protein-rich when I do need a snack:

  • a glass of soy milk
  • a few slices of sandwich meat
  • a piece of cheese
  • a small handful of almonds

Though there is the occasional night wherein I find myself eating cold chicken casserole and noodles straight from the container…yep. My late-night snacking isn’t the diet killer that women’s magazines always warn against. I’m not eating delicious things like ice cream because I crave them or can’t muster up self-control. I’m literally eating because I have to, if I want any sleep at all.

Do you have any times of day where you struggle with a need to snack? What are your go-to healthy and satisfy nibbles?

Chopped Salad

Posted on by
3

While we were in New York, Andy and I had lunch at a place called Fresh & Co. It was a split-second decision guided by hunger and proximity, so I’m not sure if it’s well-known or renowned or anything. It was definitely satisfactory, though it didn’t blow me away. But I did love the concept of the salad I ordered: you picked your ingredients off of a bar (like Subway), they put them in a bowl and mixed them up, dumped them out on a cutting board and chopped it, then put it back in the bowl and tossed it with the dressing for you. It was quite a substantial salad and a fun meal.

On Friday, I attempted to recreate it at home!

Here are the greens:

lettuce, spinach, and sprouts

The veggies:

sugar snap peas, carrots, cucumber, and red bell pepper

The proteins:

hard-boiled egg, tofu, pepperoni (The tofu was so damp that it started making the pepperoni bleed, which is why it looks kind of yucky.)

Here’s all the ingredients in a bowl (the medium-sized rubber-bottomed, lidded Pampered Chef stainless steel mixing bowl, to be exact…yes, I like my bowls!)

And here’s me attempting to chop it all up:

I went back and forth between the pizza cutter and the big knife you can see at the top of the picture. The pizza cutter wasn’t quite sharp enough to get through all of the crunchy veggies, and it tended to make things spew out from behind it, but it was good in theory. This step of the process could use some perfecting; I think a bigger cutting board would be a good help!

Here’s the salad all chopped, dressed, and ready for the toss:

I whipped up a batch of my mom’s homemade vinaigrette, but you could use any type of dressing you’d like. In fact, I think this could be a really fun party food! Have everyone bring a salad ingredient and a dressing and make it a true smorgasbord.

And the final product:

It filled a big shallow pasta bowl, so it was definitely a lot of salad! We ate it with warm rolls and some cheese.

This is an easily customizable, healthy meal that was great for a warm night and a fun departure from our usual.

Have you had any fun experiential meals lately? What types of things do you tend to cook when it’s hot outside?

Beauty and Bedlam
I’m linked up to the Tasty Tuesday Parade of Foods at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam!

Basic Ham and Bean Soup

Posted on by
Reply

I am notorious (well, with myself anyway) for making a recipe that I really like…and then never making it again. Especially with the advent of Pinterest and the All Recipes app on my phone, it is so easy and fun to make a new recipe every night of the week. Of course I have my basic standbys that aren’t really recipes at all, like boneless pork chops on the George Foreman grill and pan-fried chicken tenders, but otherwise I mix it up so much! But I think I need to figure out a way to keep track of the winners so I can revisit them. I’d love to have an arsenal of true recipes memorized. Plus, if it was good the first time, it would probably be great the second time, too!

Two Thanksgivings ago Andy and I decided to have a solo holiday, and I bought a ham because I a) don’t like turkey that much and b) was scared of cooking a turkey. Somehow a ham just seemed much more manageable. It came out delicious, but we of course had a LOT left over. I got it into my head that I wanted to make a ham and bean soup and a quick Google search turned up this one from All Recipes.

Ingredients

  • 1 pound dry great Northern beans
  • 8 cups water
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 ham hock
  • 1 cup chopped carrots
  • 1/2 stalk celery, chopped
  • 1 cup chopped onion
  • 1 teaspoon minced garlic
  • 1 teaspoon mustard powder
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 2 cups chopped ham
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper

Directions

  1. Rinse the beans, sorting out any broken or discolored ones. In a large pot over high heat, bring the water to a boil. Add the salt and the beans and remove from heat. Let beans sit in the hot water for at least 60 minutes.
  2. After the 60 minutes of soaking, return the pot to high heat and place the ham bone, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, mustard and bay leaves in the pot. Stir well, bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 60 more minutes.
  3. Remove ham bone and discard. Stir in the chopped ham and simmer for 30 more minutes. Season with ground white pepper to taste. (I’ve never had white pepper before…I just used black.)
Recipe By: J. A. McConville
I don’t even like beans that much, so I can’t really fathom what made me decide to make a bean soup…but I’m glad I did! I remember this soup being tasty and hearty, but I then proceeded to never make it again.
Fast forward to last week, when I found myself with leftover slices of baked ham in my refrigerator (the very same that inspired the Croque Madame) and remembered this soup (which I had kept bookmarked on my computer for over a year and which became the very first pin when I opened my Pinterest account!). I didn’t have the ham bone this time, but I figured it would be okay. I substituted a cup of chicken broth for one of the 8 cups of water to add a little flavor, and it came out well once again! I’m a bad blogger and didn’t take any pictures, but we enjoyed it on Saturday night, again for lunch on Sunday, and Andy had one last serving for lunch today! The flavors are so good…sweet, almost, and the texture of the beans manages not to be what I dislike about beans. My only complaint about the recipe is how long it takes, so save it for a lazy Sunday when you’ll be around for awhile, and you’ll find that good things come to those who wait!
P.S. I wish I knew methods for converting recipes for preparation in the slow cooker, because I think this one would be a great candidate. Anyone have any suggestions? It might even work as-is!

I’m linked up to Tasty Tuesday at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam!
Beauty and Bedlam

a taste of paris

Posted on by
4

I found a boneless baked quarter ham on sale at Kroger awhile back and decided to defrost it for St. Patrick’s Day. But Andy and I barely made a dent in it! So I started thinking, “What could I make with leftover ham?” And one of the first things that came to my mind was croque madames! I don’t know what made me think of them.

“Croque,” as far as I know, is like a French grilled ham and cheese sandwich. A “croque monsieur” has no egg, while a “croque madame” comes with the addition of a fried egg. They can be found on the menu of every little cafe in Paris and many French bistros here, too.

I used a recipe from All Recipes that I found on a quick search of their app. I probably could’ve looked for a more authentic on, but this one looked good to me. It called for thick slices of white bread, 2 tablespoons of butter, 2 cups of cheese (I used colby), thick slices of ham, and 2 eggs. Simple! I found 2 French “boules” on Manager’s Special at Kroger for $0.49, so I snatched those up and cut good-sized slices from them.

First, melt the butter in a pan and add the cheese. Let the cheese melt. In order to keep it from becoming a glob, I whisked steadily and added a splash of half and half to thin it out. Just for funsies, I also sprinkled in some dried mustard powder and garlic powder for flavor. Dip the bread in this mixture so that both sides are coated. I was nervous about this step, but it worked like a charm! Put the bread into a separate heated skillet and add the ham and the other slice of bread on top to form the sandwich. Someone in the All Recipe comments suggested cooking the eggs first (to your yolk preference–hard, runny, etc.), which I had done, so I added them to the sandwich at this point, too. Then just cook away liked a normal grilled cheese sandwich, flipping as desired, until the cheese is browned and slightly crusty.

This made a BIG sandwich, but I ate the whole thing! It was a really simple process that yielded a pretty impressive looking and yummy result. I would definitely make these again!