Thursday, November 22, 2007

Thanksgiving

We're going over to visit with some very good friends this Thanksgiving. I told them not to worry about us, so this morning I have spent a lot of time cooking.

I promise some kind of photos. I promise.

We started off with some banana pancakes (one SCD ripe banana, one egg, mash it together with a fork, fry). Clark was really pleased with those and so far no diarrhea emergencies. Yay!

After that, I made a new batch of cooked mayo. I intended to get safflower oil, but that didn't work out, because it had added vitamin E and I wasn't sure if that was SCD legal. I'll have to look into that. I ended up getting some extremely light tasting olive oil, and that did the trick. It was very good!

Mixed that up, took a photo (I will post it later and then update this), and started in on some hamburger patties. I figured that if chicken salad was good, hamburger salad would be good too.

HAMBURGER SALAD (STAGE ONE)

1 pound beef patties or ground beef
1 whole red onion, cut into large pieces
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup SCD mayo
1 tsp olive oil

In my skillet, I tossed in a whole red onion, cut into quarters. At this stage onion is only for flavoring, so you don't eat it. If you're further along, chop it up finer. I also added some fresh peeled garlic. I sauted that in about a teaspoon of olive oil and then put three 1/3 pound ground sirloin patties into the microwave to thaw.

After they thawed, I put them in a sauce pan and started browning them. But wait, that's pan frying, which is a no-no, right? Well, not exactly. I do it kind of half and half.

I pan fry them until they're almost done (or at least halfway to done), but then I add about half a cup of water to the pan and put a lid on it. Now you're doing more of a steaming, boiling kind of thing. Turn the patties about every five minutes. Every time you turn them, check the water level and add enough so there's about 1/4 inch of water on the bottom at all times.

You'll end up cooking them in the water for probably 20-30 minutes that way. The liquid will reduce and will taste really yummy.

So that's that. Chop up the hamburgers and mix with the mayo (add more or less to taste). Yum.

Once that was prepared, I moved on to making some little veggie puree muffins.

This one I got off the Pecanbread Yahoo! group. Diane on the group posted the recipe, but she doesn't remember who came up with it. You can also use the batter like a pancake batter. I first tried the recipe as posted, but then I made a bunch of modifications, which are reflected below.

VEGGIE MUFFINS (STAGE ONE without vanilla; stage two with it. I think.)

2 cups pureed fruit or veggies (water squeezed out, seriously)
4 eggs
4 tsp oil (coconut was recommended; I used olive)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
4 tsp honey (optional)
1/4 tsp sea salt

Mix together. Put in muffin tins with liners.

Bake at 400 for about 30 minutes. Makes 12.

I made the first batch with a mix of leftover green beans pureed in the blender and some leftover cooked carrots, and they were really too wet, so I edited the above to reflect that you really need to squeeze the water out of the cooked veggies really really well. I also decreased the eggs. The original had four eggs and one cup of veggie puree. I made them that way at first, but I thought four eggs was just too much. Besides, we need to eat more veggies anyway, not more eggs.

My second batch is with carrots, and I made a half batch of the above recipe to test that. Hopefully they'll be better (I'll edit this again if they are). Clark loved the too-wet ones, though, so another winner. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Green bananas are gassed to make them yellow for sale. That is why sometimes yellow bananas seem to take forever to get ripe. It is a common practice. I guess they don't do it to organic bananas.

Here is how you can speed up the ripening process. Put a banana or two in a large zip-lock bag with a ripe apple. Squeeze out the air and seal.

Unknown said...

Argh, that's terrible. Blah.

I am going to try your zip-lock bag idea, because the paper bag thing really did not work. Thanks!