Cooking for One, Part 5: Spring Pasta

This is a simple dish, good for Spring: Pasta Primavera. I think of it like eating spaghetti but with vegetables instead of red sauce. The essential ingredient is the grated Parmesan cheese on top. For this I use regular, finely grated Kraft, not something fancy with longer gratings, though you may like that. For me it's a texture thing. That's also why I prefer regular spaghetti noodles rather than spirals or shells or something:

 I usually cut the noodles into pieces two to four inches long after cooking, this helps with getting both noodles and veggies on your fork at the same time. For vegetables I use a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, ones without lima beans (again, its a texture thing) and with corn (that's a sweetness thing). In this case Greenwise, the organic brand from Publix. They microwave right in the bag. I keep them separate from the pasta and Parmesan cheese until ready to eat, just like you would traditional spaghetti. Then I layer them: pasta, veggies, and enough grated Parmesan to make it look like there's been a snowfall. No butter or anything needed, so pretty healthy, too. I usually pair it with some (less healthy) garlic bread. I've been partial to the Paisano bread from Whole Foods lately. Enjoy.

Cooking for One, Part Three

I've become cavalier in my cooking. This is a disclaimer for the recipe below. I haven't actually measured any of this yet, but it was quite tasty. My only real training in food preparation comes from my mother and from watching Guy's Grocery Games. Oh, and from eating. I've been eating pretty much my whole life, at least three times a day. But I think it's watching Triple G (and Triple D: Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, though he doesn't seem to visit many real dives, or drive-ins, for that matter) that have set me free from a prior enslavement to measuring spoons.

I'll go by look, feel and taste these days. Especially for add-ins, like walnuts into brownies. Half a handful seems right. But the real secret that I want to share with you today is about dumplings, the pan-fried Asian kind. I don't make those. I buy them. Either from the little Chinese place at the strip mall a few blocks over in the bad part of town (that place is a bit of a dive), or in the frozen food aisle, ethnic section, at Publix. Both of those come with sub-par dumpling sauce, though, and my prior attempts to whip up my own were unsatisfactory. I knew it was a soy sauce base, but that's all I could ever taste when I made some. Neither ginger nor garlic cut the over-salty, over-soy-y taste. And water just, you know, watered it down.

The secret? Rice vinegar.

As warned above, don't trust my measurements, they may lead you astray, trust your instincts, Luke, but these are my guesses at what I put together. Worked wonderfully:

   3 tbsp Lite Soy Sauce (Kikkoman is the name brand, but I don't think it matters)
   2 tbsp rice vinegar (I got Nakano All Natural, again, probably doesn't matter)
 1/4 tsp sesame oil (go easy on this, it can overpower everything)
 1/4 tsp ground ginger (I would've preferred 1/2 tsp fresh grated, but I didn't have it)
 1/4 tsp garlic powder (again, fresh, like one clove, would've been better)
 1 tbsp diced green onions

Mix it up in your favorite small monkey dish.
Dip away.

Cooking for One, Part Two

If you enjoy eating your meals or snacks, as I do, by dipping a variety of rigid finger foods into some type of sauce, then the idea below may be for you.

I've found that I really enjoy consuming potato chips and dip, tortilla chips and salsa (or cheese dip), vegetable sticks and dressing, and so forth. Even though I try to stick to reduced fat potato chips and low fat dip, I know that chips and dip are not my healthiest choices. So I'm trying to lean toward carrot and celery sticks and broccoli and cauliflower branches. They can be a bit dull, so: Amateur Tip (I know, the idiom is "Pro Tip", but I'm an amateur when it comes to cooking. I have worked at three restaurants in my life (bonus points to anyone who can name the establishments), but the closest I ever came to food prep was filling water glasses, foil wrapping potatoes for baking, and restocking a bottled beer cooler.): try Kraft Lite Thousand Island dressing. It's already tangy (says so right on the bottle in my fridge), and give it some extra zing by dicing up 3 or four pickled jalapeno slices.

Very tasty. Happy munching.

Cooking for One, Part One

These days I mostly cook my own meals and am the only one eating what I cook. I eat a wide variety of foods, not all of them healthy, but some are. I don't eat nearly as much seafood as is on this scientific list of the most nutritious foods,  but I eat a lot of the fruits, vegetables, nuts and herbs listed there.

Other times I'll order a large pizza (usually from Pizza Hut or Domino's rather than Earth and Stone or Sam and Greg's, but that's just because I'm cheap) and I'll eat about a third of it right away, then I'll have it for dinner 2 or 3 times over the next several days, augmenting with a salad or petite frozen peas from Publix. I can eat half a week that way for about 10 bucks. Did I mention that I can be cheap?

That leaves a few days to fill in with some other fare. Last night it was panko-breaded frozen fish (pollock,  Publix branded, too, as it turns out). It's a bit less bad for me than Gorton's or Mrs. Paul's Beer Battered. I do like that beer batter, though. I also prepped some sweet potato fries -- slice them up french style, a bit of spray-on cooking oil and salt onto an aluminum foil covered baking tray and roast them at 425 degrees with the fish, so not fried at all. Very tasty and pretty good for me.

Anyway, I managed to make some tarter sauce to go with it that I was quite content with:

   1 dill pickle spear, diced
   1/2 tsp prepared horseradish (I like Inglehoffer, mostly for the little jar)
   3 jalapeno rings, diced
   2 tbsp mayonaise (Hellmann's if you have it)

Put it all in a small monkey dish and stir. Enough for two chunks of fish, you don't want there to be leftovers of fish or tarter sauce, anyway.

Double it if you're cooking for two.
Happy Valentine's Day.

Avocado Tips

I enjoy eating avocado on occasion. Generally I prefer it as it comes: just peel it and pit it as it is ripening -- not too hard, not too mushy. I like to slice it on sandwiches or chunk it on tacos, in wraps, etc. As you may know, however, leftover avocado has a bad habit of quickly turning brown making it a bit unsightly. It seems to be the exposure to air that is the culprit. So short of eating it all up, which is a bit gluttonous, I've found a couple things to be helpful. The first is to leave the peel on a portion of the avocodo. I just slice off as many rings as I think I'm likely to eat; leaving the pit in helps, too. But if you still have leftovers, you can put them in a rubbermaid-type container and add enough salsa to cover the avocado. This seems to prevent it from turning, at least for a day or two. Later you can just chunk up the leftovers and it becomes part of the salsa. Enjoy with your favorite tortilla chips. Yum.