Monday, November 8, 2010 at 07:01 AM
We’ve all heard of oven-baked sweet potato fries, right? But butternut squash fries? Yes, I made these up in my very own kitchen and I highly, highly recommend them! Not only are they scrumptious in taste, but they will make your whole house smell wonderful!
I’ll be honest – these Butternut Squash Fries were not planned!
My daughter and I were having a Girls’ Only Dinner – reheated homemade turkey meatballs with Dreamfields spaghetti – while the “boys” were out at a Cub Scout meeting. We were having such a lovely time – talking about dance class, Kindergarten, lots of girl stuff – when I went to get something in the refrigerator and I noticed that I had one of those peeled, cored and seeded butternut squashes in the refrigerator – and it was about to go bad. Oh horrors! In fact, it was going bad – on just one edge – but something had to be done – and quick!!! Good thing my daughter loves to cook, so we could weave Save the Squash into our little Girls’ Night!
So first, I checked to make sure the squash was safe. It had a small mold spot on one edge. I went to the US Food Safety and Inspection website to check and I found that as long as I cut a 1-inch piece around the mold spot, I was all set. By the way, this US Food Safety and Inspection website is awesome!!! It tells you – right there on this Molds on Foods Page – everything you need to know about your food safety questions. It is now one of my favorites.
Moldy spot gone and knife cleaned, I decided that I just didn’t feel like boiling and mashing this squash. I wanted to get back to Girl Talk! My daughter was showing me all her new dance moves from her ballet, tap and modern classes. I wanted to get this squash cooking – and quickly. Then I remembered something that my friend Miss Conduct once said: All vegetables taste good when roasted at a high temperature with a little olive oil and Kosher salt. So true!
So, I sliced the squash quite thin and then cut it in half.
Together with my 5-year-old daughter, we laid it out on parchment paper…
and sprayed it with olive oil (NuVal score of 11) using my Pampered Chef Kitchen Spritzer) and sprinkled it with Kosher salt and ground black pepper.
Then we put it in the oven at 435 degrees for 25 minutes.
Then, we took them out and flipped them and put them back in for another 15 minutes.
When they came out of the oven – just as my husband and my son were walking through the door from Cub Scouts – they were just perfect. Crisp on the outside, warm and mealy on the inside. The perfect “fry” We liked them plain – the kids liked them dipped in ketchup. Yum – we have a new fall treat. And I’ve found a new way to get a new vegetable into my kids!
Butternut Squash, by the way, gets a NuVal score of 100, so I’m going to file this recipe under Incredible Vegetables. Enjoy!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cooking with Kids, Incredible Vegetables
Tags: Butternut Squash, Cooking with Kids, food safety, fries, Incredible Vegetables, mold
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 07:30 AM
Good Morning Blog Friends! As I mentioned a few posts back, I recently began working full time again after about four years of working part time. Getting back into the 9-t0-5-plus groove has been a bit of an adjustment for me and my family – to say the least! I’ve been taking care to stay super-organized, very planful, and now that we’re moved into our new house, I’ve been getting some of my life-saving systems back into place (like Dream Dinners and twice a month housecleaning).
While I don’t mind outsourcing the scrubbing of tubs and toilets to someone else while I’m busy working, I will not compromise when it comes to feeding my family. So while the effort might seem Herculean at times, I try to do what it takes to get a healthy meal on the table most nights. Working full-time (to me) is not a license to order take out. But it is OK to take some short-cuts from time to time.
On my recent trip to Big Y, I was reminded of one of the best short-cuts of all – frozen veggies! What a convenience! No cleaning, trimming, chopping or cooking involved. Just microwave or heat on the stove. Easy – peasy!
Frozen vegetables, without additives, get the same Incredible NuVal Scores as their fresh counterparts. So, here is a great example – Big Y Frozen Spinach with a NuVal Score of 100!
Or Birds Eye Steamfresh Frozen Whole Green Beans with a NuVal Score of 100.
Or this Birds Eye Steamfresh Frozen Asparagus with Corn and Carrots, NuVal Score of 100. I like that one because there’s something for everyone in it!
And I love this Winter Squash with a NuVal Score of 99. Yum! I could eat a whole box by myself! Interestingly, I craved Butternut Squash when I was pregnant with my son – and I did just that – all the time!
Also interesting is to see what happens to frozen vegetables when you do add some additives (as we like to call them at NuVal).
So, take plain ‘ole frozen broccoli…
and then add some cheese. Wow! It brings the score down from a 100 to a 32. Don’t be fooled by those claims of “lightly sauced”.
Add some rice and the score goes down even more – to a 27!
Ouch! So, shop the frozen vegetable aisle – but do so with caution. Either read the labels and make sure you are getting just the vegetables (nothing else added) or better yet, find a store with NuVal scores on the shelf and just look for those Incredible scores!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Frozen Vegetables, Incredible Vegetables
Tags: Frozen Vegetables, Incredible Vegetables
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 07:12 AM
Kale chips are all the rage these days. Healthy living bloggers everywhere are waxing on about this tasty little treat. Like my friend Robin Abrahams always says, “Add some olive oil and salt to anything, roast it in a hot oven and it will be incredibly delicious.” Or something like that! In any case, that is pretty much all it takes to make yourself some kale chips. Warning: they are addictive!!
I got my idea to make these while catching up on the G section of The Boston Globe from last week.
I love the Wednesday Food G section!
Here is the recipe.
Kale, by the way, scores an Incredible 99 on the NuVal scale.
The toughest part about this recipe is cleaning the kale. I like to shusshhhh my greens. That is my technical term for filling up my clean dish basin with cold water, letting my greens sit in the cold bath and then gently shaking them to get the dirt or sand out. I then drain the water, fill the basin up again and shussssshhh again. I had to do it three times with this dirty kale!
Next, I patted the kale dry with paper towls and stemmed it. I ended up with two piles.
The Boston Globe recipe suggests that you pour one Tablespoon of oil onto a baking sheet and spread it with a pastry brush and then lay each kale leaf onto that sheet and then turn the leaves over.
I have to admit, I blew through that one tablespoon of olive oil in a heartbeat and added some more. That was not such a great idea because some of the leaves got a little bit wilty in the end. But the leaves that had just the right amount of oil and salt were just perfect!! I loved them. My kids were not willing to try my new “chips”. They were also a little too healthy for my husband. More for me! I can see why everyone has been talking/blogging/writing about Kale Chips! Yum-meee!
Question of the Day
Have you tried Kale Chips yet? If not, do you think you would be into them?
Yesterday’s Winner
Congratulations to Commenter #28, Amy! You have won yesterday’s Trade-Up Tuesday Giveaway – two boxes of Annie’s Whole Wheat Macaroni and Cheese. Please send me an email at abetterbagofgroceries@gmail.com with your mailing address so that I can send it out to you. Thank you to everyone who entered!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Incredible Vegetables
Tags: Incredible Vegetables, kale, Kale Chips
Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 07:24 AM
I love asparagus. I mean, I really love asparagus. As in it goes in my shopping cart every single week. And with a NuValscore of 100, why wouldn’t it? While I do eat this stalky green vegetable year-round, asparagus is just synonymous with Spring, don’t you think? And since Spring is right around the corner (woo hoo!!!!!), I thought that today was the perfect day to share my asparagus tips (oh, what a clever play on words!) with all of you!
Tip #1: Smell your asparagus
That’s right. Give it a whiff when selecting your asparagus at the grocery store. Does it smell fishy? If so, put it back. Asparagus spoils quickly so you want to feel the tips to make sure they are firm and make sure that it smells fresh.
Tip #2: Treat asparagus like a bunch of flowers
You know how when you come home with flowers, you need to give them a fresh cut and get them in water right away? Same holds true for asparagus. Chances are the stalks have sealed up along the bottom, so give them a fresh cut and place them in a container of water. Store them upright in your refrigerator for no more than 2-3 days.
Tip #3: Steam, then blanch.
Steaming is one way to cook asparagus. It is a great cooking method for Spring when you want to really taste the freshness of your vegetables. But there’s nothing worse then over-steamed, mushy asparagus. So, if steaming is your method of choice, steam it until the stalks just turn green and then remove them from your steamer or from your boiling water and place them in a basin of ice water. You could invest in one of those fancy-schmancy asparagus cookers, but I find that steaming it in a skillet with about a 1/2 inch of water works just fine.
Tip #4: Grill it or roast it
This is my favorite way to cook asparagus, probably because the leftovers are great on a salad the next day. On most busy weeknights, the asparagus goes right into a very hot oven (like 425 degrees). First, I submerge it in a basin of water to make sure all the sand or dirt comes off. There’s nothing worse than gritty asparagus. The, I dry it with paper towels. Next I lay it out on a cookie sheet lined with Parchment Paper. Then, I lightly coat it with olive oil using my Pampered Chef oil mister. It’s a great way to add just a small amount of oil.
Roast it until it turns bright green (about 10 minutes). Remove from oven and sprinkle with Kosher salt and lemon juice. Yum!
Instead of the oven, you can also place your lightly-oiled asparagus right on the gas grill. It does tend to come out a bit crunchier this way.
So there you have it, my Asparagus Tips! Find some non-smelly asparagus at your market today and try it out!
Question of the Day
What is your favorite Incredible Vegetable? Do you know the NuVal score? You might find it on this blog, Tina’s blog or on the Nuval website.
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Incredible Vegetables
Tags: asparagus, Incredible Vegetables
Monday, February 1, 2010 at 06:43 AM
What is this vegetable and how did it get into my refrigerator? Good question. Another good question would be why is it starting to look a little wilted? That would be because it’s been hanging out in my refrigerator waiting for me to do something with it – for an amount of time that I am ashamed to disclose.
Regular A Better Bag of Groceries readers have heard me talk about how I’m on this quest to cook through THAT part of the produce section. You know – the part where there are lots of beets with leafy tops, unfamiliar greens, and this specimen. This was supposed to be anise. You see, I was chatting with my friend (and spinning instructor) April, a regular reader of ABBG. She was gushing about anise and how it is this awesome vegetable that tastes like licorice and how she would like to know how else she can prepare it – other than her usual method, which is steaming. Sounded like a great blog topic to me, so I planned to buy some anise.
I headed to the grocery store for my usual weekly shopping trip with my 4-year-old in tow. For the past few weeks, we’ve been trying out the hand-held scanner for our shopping. This was only our second trip using the HHS, and I must admit, it takes some getting used to. Fortunately, I can still get my long and leggy, yet flexible, pre-schooler into the child seat of my shopping cart and she is my Scanner. She really digs the whole scanning thing and promptly tells me the numbers that come up on the scanner. It keeps her entertained and contained – truly a miracle in the grocery store. My favorite part is check-out, when I can forgo the whole putting everything on the belt and bagging procedure. Woo hoo! However, the most cumbersome part of the process is shopping in Produce, because you have to weigh your items and print bar codes. I grabbed this leafy vegetable, thinking it was anise, and upon weighing and printing my bar code, I found out that it, indeed, was not. It is Chinese Cabbage. Since I was so new to the Hand Held Scanning thing, I did not realize that you can delete items from your order – easily. I figured that out later in my shopping trip when aforementioned 4-year-old scanned the same can of crushed tomatoes 3 times.
So now, I am the proud owner of a head of Chinese Cabbage. It is an Incredible Vegetable with a NuVal score of 100. All good. But I just don’t know what to do with it. I need help. That’s where you come in…
Question of the Day
What, oh what, should I do with the Chinese Cabbage?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Incredible Vegetables
Tags: Chinese Cabbage, Incredible Vegetables
