Tag Archives: cooking at home

Beef Daube (because everything sounds better in French)

If the words “beef stew” make you think of an unhealthy concoction in a can, you’re missing the boat! The French have long known that the cure for the winter blahs involves a bubbling pot of beef, slow cooking with vegetables, red wine, and stock. Pair this version of their traditional “Boeuf Daube” with a loaf of crusty bread and a bright green salad (one made with spinach, sliced oranges, and toasted walnuts in a citrus vinaigrette sounds about right) and you have the perfect dinner to warm you from the inside out. God bless the French.

Beef Daube
adapted from Cooking Light 2004 

serves 6

Ingredients 
1 Tbsp. olive oil
 3-4  garlic cloves, crushed
1  (2 lb.) boneless chuck roast, trimmed and cut into 2-inch cubes
 1  tsp. kosher  salt
 1/2  tsp.  freshly ground black pepper
 1  c.  red wine
 2  c. chopped carrot
 1 1/2  c.  chopped sweet onion
 1  c.  beef stock or beef broth
 1  Tbsp.  tomato paste 
1 tsp.   chopped fresh rosemary
 1  tsp.  chopped fresh thyme
 1  (14.5-oz.) can diced tomatoes, undrained
 1  bay leaf 

3 c.   hot cooked whole wheat  noodles
Directions 
1. Preheat oven to 300°.
2. Heat oil in a Dutch oven over low heat. Add garlic; cook 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove garlic with a slotted spoon; set aside. 
3. Increase heat to medium-high and add beef to pan. Cook 5 minutes, browning on all sides. Remove beef from pan. Add wine to pan, and bring to a boil, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Add garlic, beef, salt, pepper, carrot, and next 7 ingredients (through bay leaf); bring to a boil.
4. Cover and bake at 300° for 2 1/2 hours or until beef is tender. Discard bay leaf. Serve over noodles.


Note: You can also make this in a slow cooker/crockpot. Simply complete steps 1-3 and transfer mixture to the slow cooker. Cover and cook on HIGH for about 5 hours.
This entry was posted in All blog posts, Food, Recipes and tagged , , , on by .

KISS-able Meals to Cook at Home

Everywhere I’ve been this week, people have been abuzz with talk of resolutions. I wrote earlier about how important it is to take it one step (or one bite!) at a time when it comes to tackling those long lists of commitments designed to build the “new you”. Taking on too much at once is a recipe for failure. So, we’ll tackle just one change at a time.
Even then, if we over-complicate the plan to change that one behavior, we’re doomed to fall short.  And when we fall short, we often just abandon the whole idea and go back to our old ways. So, to help you stay on track, I offer you one very important piece of advice.  
KISS – keep it simple, sweetheart.

Let’s look at an example. Imagine you’ve resolved to cook at home more often. Many MANY of my clients begin coaching programs with this goal in mind, and it’s one I wholeheartedly support. But here’s the thing. Cooking at home does not have to mean Gourmet Tuesday! In fact, I often tell people who are just beginning to cook at home that if it requires a recipe it’s probably too complicated for a weeknight! Seriously! K-I-S-S.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s say you’re on Day 2 of your New Year’s Resolution and to find inspiration, you’re flipping through the January issue of your favorite cooking magazine.  You see a meal that looks terrific. You decide to make it tonight, to begin your first week of “more cooking at home.” With side dishes, it involves three recipes, 24 ingredients (18 of which you don’t already have on hand), and several hours of prep time. Are you going to do this every night? Are you going to do this even ONCE?


So, how do we KISS this dinner? Like this:


Grilled salmon           (topped with chopped fresh herbs)
Baked sweet potato  (topped with a dollop of  Greek Yogurt)
Steamed broccoli      (drizzled with lemon juice and olive oil)


Now that’s a healthy meal you can prepare in about 15 minutes – and by doing the little things in parenthesis, which don’t even require a recipe, you can take the whole meal from good to great. You can cook this way routinely and save those delicious but complicated recipes for those days when you have more time to devote to playing in the kitchen.


Try it. Test me. See if you can cook at home more often without even getting out a cookbook. Discover for yourself that simple is better. And when you do? You might just want to kiss me.

 

This entry was posted in All blog posts, Food and tagged , , on by .

3 Kitchen Tools You’ll Love

I’m not a big gadget person. I like to keep things pretty simple, especially in the kitchen. I detest clutter (I mean really detest clutter) so I don’t always think gadgets are worth the space they take up in my cabinets. 

Have you seen some of the crazy things being sold on television? Do we really need the Egg Genie? Or pizza scissors? How about the hot dog toaster  – one gadget to simultaneously cook hot dogs and toast buns? Please.

Yet there are a few kitchen tools that I find myself reaching for so often, they are worth every square inch of space they require. There are more than three on my personal “must have” list, so I’ll share some more another day,  but here are three I don’t think I could (happily) live without.

1) A garlic press                2) A salad spinner             3) A citrus juicer



Let’s start with the garlic press. There are few kitchen tasks as tedious as mincing garlic. If you’ve ever found yourself mincing clove after clove with irregularly shaped bits clinging to your knife and praying you don’t cut off your fingertips, this is for you. This tool allows you to hack the ends off a clove of garlic, stick it inside, and press out perfectly minced garlic. Simply scrape out the fibrous outer layer that is left inside the press and toss the tool in the dishwasher. Brilliant.

The salad spinner is a relatively recent addition to my kitchen (and one my husband is amazed I actually use – it’s pretty big for my taste). But washing greens is so important in order to remove dirt and potential contaminants, and there is nothing worse than a salad made with the resulting wet lettuce. The leaves are soggy and the dressing won’t stick! A quick turn through the salad spinner (which is a job my 3 year old refers to as “pumping the lettuce”) crisps the greens right back up again. Just the way they belong.

The citrus juicer is one tool where simpler is better. There are fancier versions on the market, but the one I have pictured above is my favorite. It makes short work of juicing lemons, limes, or oranges. If you’re doing that job by squeezing with your hand today this is a worthwhile upgrade. You’ll get more juice and no seeds or pulp in your finished dish. This is another one you just throw in the dishwasher to clean.

So there you have it, 3 kitchen tools you’ll love. I’ll share another round of favorites soon.

This entry was posted in All blog posts, Food and tagged , on by .