Thursday, June 05, 2003

 
The other night we sat down and figured out how much money we spent on groceries last month. Granted, I think last month we spent more than usual, due to the whole dieting thing and lots of new produce coming out, but we still managed to spend almost $1800. Yes, approximately $20 per person, per day! That, my friends, is what is known as "a wake-up call." Now, we've got to figure out a realistic budget and stick to it. So, in honor of that commitment, we didn't go to the store and made dinner form what we had at home already. Not surprisingly, given the amount of fresh produce we purchase each week (that usually goes bad before we think about using it), there was plenty of stuff to make a full dinner and dessert.

First, we had chicken, marinated in lemon juice, seasoned with some salt-cumin-chili mix and grilled on the George Foreman. Easy enough, as I just marinated it as I was preparing the rest of the meal. Next, I made some beets, both red and golden. These I just cooked whole, in the microwave, for about 15 minutes. A couple of the golden beets were extra large and needed an extra 5 minutes, I think, but I'm not entirely sure how long they actually cooked since Pop stopped the microwave partway through to heat up some coffee for :35 seconds and didn't bother to look at how much time was left when he did it. Now that I know how easy it is to cook beets in the microwave, it hardly seems worth the hour and a half it takes in the oven. All you do is cut the beet greens off (save them for braising, though!) and put the whole beets, unpeeled, in a dish that's filled to about half with water. Then cover with plastic wrap and cook on high for about 15 minutes. You can go a little less for small beets or a little longer for larger ones. After they are done, just take them out, let them cool a little (or not, I always end up burning myself because I can't wait) and rub the peel right off with some paper towels. I learned that little trick from Good Eats. I just sliced the beets into quarters or eighths and tossed with a little margarine and some citrus vinegar and salt. Now that's Good Eats!

Finally, we cooked the beet greens with some swiss chard that we've had for almost 2 weeks in the fridge. It holds up surprisingly well, actually. I rinsed off the beet greens and ran them through the salad spinner. Then I chopped up the chard and beet greens and Leah braised them with some garlic, onion, a little olive oil and chicken stock.

For dessert, I made Chocolate Cheese Pots, from a low fat cookbook (which was published in the UK). It was just mixing lowfat plain fromage blanc (which is just fresh cheese, kinda like quark) and fat-free plain yogurt with some sugar, cocoa powder and instant hot chocolate mix, a little vanilla and then folding in some egg whites and chilling. It turnd out okay, but was less chocolately than I hoped. It was more like lowfat chocolate-flavored cheesecake filling or something. I think some whipped cream instead of egg whites would have made it better, but then it wouldn't be low-fat, now would it? Oh well, I'll have to think of something to make it taste more like chocolate and less like yogurt for next time..

Jacki 6/05/2003