Thick grilled Pork Chops tonight! Sweet Potatos cooked in the fireplace. Fresh steamed broccoli.

For my boyfriends birthday the wish is for chocolate cake with whipped cream frosting.I'll probably do layers possibly with raspberry filling. I can handle the chocolate cake part but I want to make a perfect frosting. I want the perfect stiffness and peaks.

SO anyone have good tips for fool proof whipped cream frosting?

My wife is cooking fish n' chips tonight!

I have to pick up some beer for the batter...does it matter which kind? I'll probably just get a 6-pack of Miller Lite...regular beer beer.

Fusilli alla Caprese. It's almost not cooking -- okay, you cook it but briefly.

Here's a salad edition of this dish -- good for weight-loss, carb-control, or bodybuilder chow. It may also be served as a hot entrée.

Like this. The mozzarella definitely goes in last, with the chopped basil. Adding it in when the tomatoes and garlic are still quite hot will mean the mozzarella will stick goopily to your serving spoon. But it's quite nice if your cheese cubes are a little soft and rounded about the edges.

It's a light, fresh'n'bright-tasting pasta meal. Variations on it would be about endless: add in sliced black olives, sliced mushrooms, some varieties of firm sausage.

Hey, Bri' -- the reason we take up the wooden spoon of culinary mastery is because we've opened cans -- peeled the wrapping off of American cheese Singles and snacked on a dozen at a sitting -- eaten plenty of microwave burritos and canned mac-&-cheese. If we were once military, we ate in chow halls -- think of school food, sometimes especially high in calories. And we've bloody had it.

And hard snackfood pretzels bore us about as stiff as the pretzels.

But now, there are cookbooks. Now there is Food Network, where any newbie-nerd can!!

Now there are two powerful, opposing trends: food out of factories that produce anything from Tater Tots to Purina-yuppie-chow, and a huge population of newish private cooks either making some real use of their stoves (or doing rent-a-kitchens), cooking for themselves using ingredients nobody else has messed w... er, processed.

It's a pain in the ass to make all this food, but when you compare it to the frozen/factory/institutional versions, they all suck, and suck really bad. In fact once you make food the right way for a while, you can't eat the shitty stuff any more because you realize how foul it really is.

I like Spaghetti-o's, Hamburger Helper, and frozen macaroni-and-cheese.

Chicken and dumplings

Creamed ground beef
(comfort food masquerading as a diet recipe from the Alli website)

(recipe was for *one* serving, so, of course, I had to scale it up by a factor of four. Please. One?)

12 oz lean ground beef
8 tbsp choppped green onion
8 tbsp margarine
8 tbsp flour
32 oz milk
2 cups frozen peas
salt and pepper to taste

Brown beef and onions, drain well, set aside.

Melt margarine in skillet. Slowly add flour, whisking continuously. When all the flour has been incorporated, making the roux, turn the heat off.

Slowly add the milk to the roux. It will become quite thin but thicken upon reheating. Once it is all added, making the gravy, turn the heat back on medium. Add the meat mixture and the peas. Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve over toast. Delicious.

:sick:

glatt: hahahahah.... more for me! In fact, I brought leftovers for lunch, lovingly packed for me by Tink!

I will say she's no fan of peas, though. Perhaps this is your complaint too.

Whoa. That's an Alli recipe? I thought you were supposed to NOT eat fat when you're taking it.

3 oz lean ground beef: 16 gms fat

I guess you can use skim milk, no fat, but I'd think the gravy would turn out weak.

1TBSP low fat margarine (which it didn't specify low fat, but I'm guessing): 9 gms fat

Hmm, but it sounds kind of good.

My reaction too. To be fair, I was going by memory about the recipe. I do remember, now, that the text said "Extra lean ground beef". Maybe the fat content is lower there too. And the margarine did say canola based, la la la... something... I went with what I had in the fridge. And it did say skim milk, which is all we drink at home anyway. Except when I'm making that tomato soup.

I did have a large portion, between 1 and 2 servings, and an Alli pill, and I haven't had any "treatment effects" as they euphemistically put it. It was a good meal.

Are you having success with the Alli? I've cut out so many carbs just by hardly ever stopping for beers, but I'm still stuck at a plateau. Maybe I need the added boost of cutting the extra fats out of my diet? (Maybe I just need to get my fat ass on the treadmill.)
I will try that recipe, too. I would think, with what I've heard about Alli, that you would notice if there was too much fat in it by those pesky treatment effects of which you speak. :)

today I'm making profiteroles to take up to Dad's for the weekend.

Choux pastry is really simple and tastes great. Fill the little pastry puffs with custard then top with chocolate. Yummo.

Sometimes I fill them with chantilly cream, but I think custard is better when there's kids about.