The Ugliest Dish I've Ever Made

This week I ventured in to another uncharted territory: casseroles. Never really made them before. Since we don't get home to eat until late at night, I've been looking for meals that can be prepared ahead of time and finished when we get home. I decided to give another one of the recipes out of my EatingWell: The Farmers' Market Cookbook a try, and settled on the Zucchini Rice Casserole. Since this recipe is also located online, I'll take the easy way out and provide you with the link, rather than re-type the whole dang thing. Here it is!:

Zucchini Rice Casserole

The first thing that appealed to me when reading the ingredients was that it had just about every food group you could want: healthy grains, seasonal veggies, dairy, and lean meat. The second appealing factor was that despite the fact it contains not 1, but TWO kinds of cheese, it's pretty low cal at only 249 calories per cup. I found that 2 cups was more than enough to fill me up! This would easily feed a family of 4, but since it's just the 2 of us it scored bonus points for having plenty left to re-heat the next night (and tasting just as good as it did the first night!).

I made a few minor changes in the ingredients to reflect what I had on hand. I used 1 zucchini and 1 yellow squash. I only had 1 cup of brown rice so I also used 1/2 cup of Trader Joe's Brown Rice Medley which also includes black barley and daikon radish seeds. I REALLY like the different textures the medley added, and would consider substituting it for the plain brown rice altogether. Instead of cream cheese, I used the rest of the local Daddy's Girl Dairy goat cheese I bought at the farmer's market last weekend. This cheese is worthy of a blog post all of its own. Its consistency is much closer to cream cheese than typical goat cheese, and the flavor is very mild.

I used grass fed ground bison since there was no ground turkey or turkey sausage at my local market. Bison (aka buffalo) is one of the healthiest meats around, and tastes very similar to beef. Per 100 gram serving, bison contains only 2.42 grams of fat and 143 calories, compared to beef with 10.15g fat and  219 calories, and skinless chicken with 7.41g fat and 190 calories. It's lower in cholesterol and higher in iron than beef, pork, or chicken. Bison is loaded with vitamins A, B12, and C, and are raised without drugs, chemicals, or hormones.

The dish, from start to refrigerator, takes a little under 2 hours, but most of that is in the oven. It's a great dish to make if you're cleaning house and can come back to it once in a while. Once you're ready to cook & serve, 45 minutes in the oven is all it takes. Here's what the finished product looked like:

Like I said, not the prettiest thing that's ever come out of my kitchen. To make up for it, the flavors were awesome. This dish was super duper yummy. Jeremy loved it, and we both had seconds. One of my favorite parts about this dish is that it will be so easy to substitute ingredients based on what's in season or what's on hand. You could easily use ground turkey, chicken, or pork, or shredded chicken. You could switch out cheeses and go Italian with some mozz and parm, or local with some cheddar. It's hard for me to think of a vegetable you COULDN'T use in this dish. Basically, it's very simple, super versatile, and ridiculously delicious. Hence, blogworthy. Too bad it's not prettier! 

No AC

So, our AC has been out at the townhouse, and by the time it's fixed it will be one week living in a hot hell-hole. This has definitely had a negative impact on my cooking, as I don't want to be inside, much less standing over a hot stove. And my grill is still out of commission, so I've resorted to grabbing whatever is pre-made and available from my stove and finding somewhere with AC to eat it. I haven't even made any tiny donuts yet! Hopefully I'll be back to cooking tomorrow night, because it's such an easy habit to break!

To try and keep myself on track I purchased 2 cookbooks. I haven't done that in years! Like I said, I don't really cook using recipes, but I'm still new to this healthy cooking thing so I'm finding that guidelines are helpful right now. Plus, all the recipes come complete with nutritional information, which is very handy.

Both books I got were from the folks at EatingWell magazine, which is a really great publication I subscribed to a few years back. Actually, it took me 3 full issues to realize it was a healthy food magazine, because all of the recipes are so.... normal!

The first book is called EatingWell In Season, The Farmer's Market Cookbook. I've just read the forward, but I had to laugh because it was basically a 6 page expansion of my 1 paragraph rant on eating locally grown fruits & veggies and supporting your community's agriculture. The book is divided in to 4 sections, one for each season of the year, and each section highlights that season's fresh fruits & veggies. Including over 150 recipes, most take 45 minutes or less, which is a plus! Just about every one comes in at less than 500 calories per serving. Each season also includes several sample menus, a combination of several recipes in season that pair well together.

The second book I purchased is titled EatingWell- 500 Calorie Dinners. 140 recipes, all taking less than 45 minutes, most taking less than 30. The opening line is "Do you love food but hate "diets"? Do you want to be healthy and fit but you find yourself too busy or simply at a loss about what to make for dinner? Then this book is for you!". Well, that describes how I feel to a T, so I had to get it. It's pretty cool because each entree recipe gives you a 500 calorie menu with options to select for sides to complete your meal. There's even a "healthy pantry" shopping list which includes lots of great standard pantry staples to keep on hand for healthy eating and impromptu meals.

I haven't had a chance to try any meals from either book, but I definitely plan on it over the weekend, assuming we've got AC by then!