Lesson #12: As a general rule, recipes modified to be low cal taste just like they were modified to be low cal. (Feel free to prove me wrong)

I had never been so excited about buying cookbooks. Actually, before this little experiment, I had never been excited at all about buying cookbooks. But I ran out to B&N to find something besides Jamie Oliver to keep me into all this cooking. I did find another one of this cookbooks, something that dovetails nicely with our garden, but I was appalled to see it contained a recipe for EFR, or Essex Fried Rabbit. Complete with picks of little dead bunnies. I have since paperclipped all those pages together so that I don't have to see them ever ever again. Now if I could scrub my mind of those images, we'll be all set.

I bought a couple of low cal cookbooks, too, thinking that I'd just substitute organic and natural versions of some of the things they call for that aren't Jillian-approved and make an even healthier meal. Problem is, those pretty pictures in the low cal cookbooks LIE. I tested about 6 recipes, and none were anything to write home about. Some were not edible. None tasted anything near what their high-cal cousins taste like. It was a waste of time and waste of food and made me want to give up on cooking altogether. I was not inspired.

So I'm back with my old pal Jamie and excited about the menu this week. Tonight is a yummy cauliflower soup with onions and carrots and garlic--all things Miss J would love--and it all simmers and gets good and gooey and then blended up into a cream and we add a bit of yummy cheese to the goo, and voila! I've already got it cooking and my house smells like a really good restaurant should smell. Making some grilled cheese sammiches on fresh sourdough to go with the gooey soup. Lots of veggies, some yummy natural cheese, and fresh-baked bread. I think we have a winner of a meal. Call me inspired once again.

Until next time, may all your recipes be happily, blissfully unmodified yet healthy, and may all your food be real!

Oreo Balls recipe

I have to thank Karen for the suggestion that I use Newman's Own Oreo-ish cookies next time. I'm adding them to my list for my Whole Foods Pilgrimage. So I'm gonna go ahead and act like I used them for the purposes of this recipe so that you can make yours all proper like. You know, with this being a real food bloggy thing.

I had these evil, evil desserts at a lock-in last week. They were the only thing keeping me going at 2 a.m. I'm just too old to stay up that late by choice anymore. Those days are so long gone.

I shouldn't have asked the mom who brought them how to make them. I really should've gone on believing they were something only talented and skilled bakers could make. Blissful ignorance would have been better than the truth.

They're easy, easy, easy. Easy.

So get this...all you need is a bag of Newman's Own Oreoish Cookies (or the real deal, if Whole Foods is nowhere near you, either), a couple packages of organic cream cheese (my HEB has Central Market organic), a box of milk chocolate and white chocolate, the kind you melt. Read the ingredients here and get the real stuff--there shouldn't be any unpronounceable ingredients.

Set the cream cheese out to soften enough that you could mix it easily. Crush up the Oreos in a baggy (Glad and Ziploc are both BPA free, so stick with these brands). Mix the two together and make cute little balls out of the mixture. I chilled mine for a couple hours just bc I had somewhere to go, but I don't think there's a rule. Then melt your chocolates and dip the balls in the milk chocolate, and drizzle white chocolate over the top. Chill until the chocolate hardens.

I'm quite sure even with the Newman's Oreos, Jillian wouldn't approve of Oreo Balls. They're pretty much pure sin. But I'm also quite sure Jillian doesn't read my blog, she's not my friend on Facebook, and I don't have to worry about her showing up at my house unless I get sick again for a week (see Lesson #11), so I thoroughly enjoyed each and every bite of each and every Oreo Ball I had.

I did take them up to school and doled them out to all my mom friends, the office folks, and Mattie's class, so they weren't in my house long. But they were good while they were.

So go make some today!! Everyone (but Jillian) will be glad you did!

Lesson #11 - When Mom and Dad get strep in the same week, the goal changes from "let's eat real food" to "what can we have delivered tonight?"

So apparently strep is sweeping through Houston like the Plague; don't know many folks who haven't had at least one case in their household. It started for me on Mother's Day evening, and because of my aversion for doctors, I stayed in bed, miserable, unable to sleep for 3 nights before I finally gave in and went to a Walgreen's Take Care Clinic for a strep test. Two nights later, Jason got it, and there's a whole other funnyish story that goes along with his trip to Walgreen's but he'd have my head if I blabbed it all over the internet.

So a week with both grown-ups sick for most of it translates into a week of really crappy eating. Pizza, day one. Chinese, day two. Smashburger, day 3. I managed to make something one night last week but I don't really remember what it was and I don't think anyone liked it anyway, and then we had some Chick-Fila mixed in there somewhere.

Yeah, so not such a good week. But it was all about survival. And all I have to say is that if Jillian wants to come cook for my family when I'm sick to make sure no laboratory-created "food" graces our plates, she's welcome to come a'knockin. She's got a new show where she makes housecalls, so maybe next time we all get laid out with some crud, I'll give her a ring. But in the meantime, the kids seemed to enjoy the break from the real food crusade.

Until next time, may your food be real unless you're laid up with double-parent strep throat and can't manage to cook anything.

PS: Greek food ROCKS!

So I don't have a lamb shank handy, nor the ability to roast one all day long, so the recipes I found online for gyros all call for ground lamb, and it's grilled over a hot flame in little meatloafey shapes and then sliced. I was a skeptic.

The grilling over the hot flame thing kinda stunk. It was hot, and I kept checking to make sure my eyebrows didn't get singed off. But, true to the recipe's directions, they were ready in just a few minutes. Took 'em off my own version of a spit and sliced them up. Had to sample with some hot pita bread and my homemade tzatziki sauce. Heaven, baby! I smiled as I finished off the last "sample" bite and thought of my dear friend Dana who must be dining daily up in Heaven on this purely heavenly food! She was a huge Greek food fanatic and introduced it to me just a few short years ago.

I think she had a hand in making my first homegrown Greek meal tasty. A little help with the Magic Bullet would be great there, Dana! ;) Miss you Girlie.

Lesson #10: INFOMERCIALS LIE! Liars, liars, liars!

When I saw the infomercial for THE MAGIC BULLET about a month ago, I knew I had to have it. The perfect food processor/blender/margarita maker in a cute handy-dandy little size.

So my sweet mom sent me a box full of cooking goodies for Mother's Day, including MY VERY OWN MAGIC BULLET! It was like Christmas getting into all that stuff. A vegetable washer. An egg slicer. But the headliner of the gift was of course MY VERY OWN MAGIC BULLET! Couldn't wait to break it in. Why bother reading the instructions when I sat through 30 minutes of the Info-Host and Info-Hostess showing me all the tricks this superhero of kitchen appliances was capable of. And all in 10 seconds or less!!

On tonight's menu--Greek--so I thought my very own Magic Bullet would be perfect for chopping up cucumber for the tzatziki sauce. Popped in a relatively small amount--certainly no more than they used on the informercial--and put the little cup on the little base, plugged it in, and looked all over for the "on" switch. Apparently, there is no "on" switch. I must not have been paying that close of attention after all. So the little sticker on my very own Magic Bullet says all I have to do is push down and turn left for on, right for off. I'm pushing down, and it locked in, but nothing. And now I can't get the cup thingie off. Finally, after scaring the crap outta myself when I used a fork to pry the cup off the base and the thing powered on as I stood there connected to the electricity by a metal object, I got the cup thingie off. Switched my cucumber bits to the bigger cup thingie and tried again. EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED. This time, I unplugged the base before jabbed the fork down into it to release the cup thingie.

WHY DOESN'T IT WORK LIKE IT SHOWED ON THE BLASTED INFOMERCIAL???? I don't know why I seem to need a tutorial to operate my very own Magic Bullet. It's been way more than 10 seconds and I still have no chopped up cucumber for my tzatziki.

Uncool Magic Bullet people. Very uncool.

Until next time, may your food be real and may you never get suckered into buying stupid dumb stuff off of stupid dumb infomercials.

Lesson #9: Graters are good for more than just shaving the dead skin off your heels.

So this evening I made a very tasty beef and ale stew topped with dumplings. Fresh tomatoes, onions, carrots, beef, a beer from Jason's personal Spec's kitchen cupboard, simmered all together for a few hours...then I got to grate really cold butter into some flour, mix it all up into a dough, and plop the little doughballs into the simmering pot of yummy-smelling beer meat.

This one's a keeper.

For everyone but Mattie, who is still sitting at the kitchen table refusing to eat. I hear lots of clattering, so she may have figured out that we were serious about not letting her up till she tried the lovely dinner I made.

So easy meal for sure, but I had actually never used a grater for butter before. The only thing besides cheese that I've ever grated is the nasty hard dead skin on my heels. Don't worry; I didn't use the same grater. That was my between-pedicure-fix for my nasty heels until the ingenious Ped Egg was invented. Those are graters, too, just packaged all cute and ergonomically designed to fit in your hand to make dead-heel-skin scraping much easier than trying to twist up like a pretzel when using a traditional cheese grater.

Mattie's all done with her dinner. Though I think supervision will be required the next time she's ordered not to leave the table until she's tried the evening's offering. All three dogs were licking their lips when I went in to inspect her progress. Mighty suspicious. And given my kid's propensity towards fibs, I'm not buying that she only fed the dogs the carrots.

Until next time, may your food be real and your heels not need to be grated.

I'm tired and no one loved my curry, including me.

Jason warned me that he wasn't going to like the curry. I told him he had to at least try it. Not wanting to look like a hypocrite in front of the 2nd grader who had heard that phrase since she started eating solids, he did. But then he just gnawed on the naan and got a bowl of chili.

And I didn't love it. It was okay. I'm pretty sure it was as the recipe intended. It just wasn't my thing. I couldn't take a big whiff of it cooking on the stuff and go "yummmmmmmmm." It wasn't that kinda meal for me.

But I tried it, and so did Jason, and so did Mattie. Bless her heart, she even said she liked it. Not sure I'll be making another one of those anytime soon.

Tonight's menu calls for a beef and beer stew with dumplings but I'm really very tired and just want to order pizza. I tried to get back on my running track again today and it was a massive failure. These old legs just don't want to run. I tried to remind them that just 6 short months ago, they ran about 10 miles before the big crash, and routinely ran 5,6,7 miles without a horrible amount of effort. They didn't care. They didn't want to run. I came home and fell asleep on the couch.

And naps really don't help--they make me droopy all day. I'm so sleepy right now that I'd love to pull the curtains and hit the sack but that'd be a little sad, right? I mean, 4:30 p.m. is Old People dinner time, not Old People bed time. [BIG LONGING YAWN]. So back to the kitchen to start on the stew. Or to www.dominos.com to order the pizza. Hmmmm....

Until next time, I hope your food is real and I'm not still tired.