This lighter cousin to lasagna and sister to Baked Ziti weighs in at 34.6 grams of protein and a moderate 32% of calories from fat.  An added bonus is that you can prep ahead and cook when it’s almost time for dinner.  Serve with a spinach salad or steamed broccoli.

Baked Penne

Serves 8; about 20 minutes hands on; ready in 50 minutes

• 8-9 oz penne rigate or ziti pasta
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 2 tsp minced garlic
• 1 cup chopped onion (a small-medium onion)
• 1.0 lb lean ground beef, 5% fat
• .5 lb sweet Italian turkey sausage, such as Jenni-O
• 1 (24-28 oz) jar tomato-basil pasta sauce, such as Classico
• 12 oz low-fat ricotta
• ¼ cup low-fat (2%) sour cream
• ¼ cup fat-free egg substitute, such as Egg Beaters
• ¼ cup + ¼ cup finely grated Parmesan
• 1¼ cups finely grated, part skim mozzarella

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil.  Cook the pasta according to package directions until al dente, about 11-12 minutes.  Drain.

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 375°.  Spray a 13×9” baking dish with olive oil cooking spray.  Set aside.  Spray a large skillet with olive oil cooking spray.  Add the olive oil and heat to medium.  Add the garlic and onion; saute until onion starts to soften, about 2-3 minutes.  Add the beef and sausage.  Saute until cooked through.  Stir in the pasta sauce and simmer, covered, for 10-12 minutes.

While the sauce simmers, mix together the ricotta, sour cream, egg substitute, and ¼ cup Parmesan.

Stir the drained pasta into the meat sauce.  Spoon half the mixture into the prepared baking dish.  Top with half the ricotta mixture, spreading it into an even layer.  Sprinkle with ½ cup of the mozzarella.  Layer the remaining meat-and-pasta mixture and top with the remaining ricotta mixture.  Sprinkle with the remaining mozzarella then the remaining ¼ cup Parmesan.  Bake for 35 minutes until bubbly and the top just begins to brown.

Per serving, approximately 437 calories; 15.8 g. fat; 37.7 g. carbs; 2.9 g. fiber; 806 mg sodium; 34.6 g. protein

Option:  Kick up the veggies by adding one cup of finely chopped zucchini to the garlic and onion mix.

Tip:  Resist the urge to add salt to the dish or the pasta water.  The jarred sauce, beef, and cheeses add plenty of sodium.

Trivia and myth busting:  Did you know that unless you add enough salt to a pot of water to turn it into the Dead Sea or unless your pot is the size of your house that the difference in boiling times between salted and unsalted water is less than a second?

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Try her Breaded Tilapia with Flax.  We loved it.  The flax wasn’t “hidden”, but it didn’t need to be.  It was a lovely and subtle taste addition.  Even better, this was quick and easy weeknight cooking.

I did wash the fish in skim milk and Egg Beaters before breading, added a dash or two of paprika to the breading mix for color, and baked at 375 degrees for 22 minutes.

Tip from an Accidental Cook?  Keep ground flax seed in the fridge for sneaking into dishes.  Since I sneak it into my breakfast grits, I bought a cheap coffee bean grinder that I use just for grinding flax seeds.  I usually keep about two months worth on hand.

It’s just not Thanksgiving without the stuffing. Or is that dressing?

Stuffing or dressing? Sage or not? Cornbread or white bread or both? Apples? Oysters? Nuts? Sausage? In the turkey or in a baking dish?

My answers? Dressing, sage, both, no, no, no, no, no.

Everyone has an opinion about “the” perfect dressing. Or stuffing. See? We can’t even agree on what to call it. With such strong opinions about what makes the perfect dressing, when every part of the country and almost every family has its own only-way-to-make-it and must-have ingredient, why would any sane person jump into this fray? Three reasons.

First, dressing is easy—time-consuming, but easy. So if you’ve been intimidated but would like to give it a try, here’s a basic recipe to start with. You can add your own touches. See the make-ahead schedule below to simplify it even further.

Second, although stuffing will never be on the Cookie Monster’s Anytime Foods List, this version uses some lower fat substitutions and has about 67% of the calories of the USDA “average” home-prepared stuffing. It also weighs in at 31% calories from fat rather than 44%. It’s a great example of what a little substituting can do. Just don’t tell anyone, and they’ll never know the difference. By the way, this recipe evolved from the 1964 Joy of Cooking, but I notice that it is very close to Paula Deen’s Southern Thanksgiving version, which I see will be repeated tomorrow morning.

Third, the cooking technique is a great convenience and stress reliever. It saves precious oven space and results in dressing that is both moist and fluffy. If you have your own favorite dressing (or stuffing, if you must), you still might want to give this cooking method a try.

• Three days (or up to three weeks) before Thanksgiving, make the cornbread. Cool, crumble, and freeze.
• Two days (or up to two weeks) before Thanksgiving, toast and cube the bread if you’re not planning to use prepared cubes. Freeze if you’re doing this more than two days before.
• One day (or up to two weeks) before Thanksgiving, chop the celery and onion. Saute and add seasonings. Freeze if you’re doing this more than two to three days before.
• Also, one day before Thanksgiving, thaw any frozen ingredients in the refrigerator.
• Thanksgiving morning, mix the cornbread, bread, eggs, and vegetables with the seasonings. Add the broth and it’s ready to cook.

Of course you can do all of this at the last possible minute. That works too. Trust me on this; I have experience.

Slow-Cooker Cornbread Dressing

Serves 20-25; about 60 minutes prep; ready in 4 1/2 – 5 hours

• 8 cups* cornbread, crumbled
• 8 cups (about 1 lb) white bread cubes*
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 2 1/2 cups finely diced celery, about 8 stalks
• 3 1/2 cups finely diced onion
• 8 Tbsp light butter, sliced
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 2 tsp dried basil
• 2 tsp dried tarragon
• 2 tsp dried sage
• 2 tsp paprika
• generous 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup fat-free egg substitute, such as Egg Beaters
• 2 cups* fat-free, less sodium chicken broth

Combine the crumbled cornbread and bread cubes in a huge bowl. Set aside. Melt the butter over medium low heat in a large skillet. Add the parsley, celery, and onion. Saute until the onion is transparent, about 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and add the light butter. Sprinkle with the salt and next 5 ingredients. Stir until thoroughly combined.

Whisk together the eggs and egg substitute and pour over the bread mix. Add the vegetable and seasoning mix. Stir, folding gently.

Spoon into a slow cooker and cover. Turn to High. Pour about half the chicken broth around the edges of the cooker. Cook on High for 30** minutes. Pour the remaining broth around the edges. Stir the stuffing around the edges into the center of the pot. Cover and turn to Low. Cook for about 3** hours, stirring the edges into the center about every 45 minutes. Add additional broth around the edges, if/as needed.

Per 2/3-cup serving, approximately 156 calories; 5.4 g. fat; 22.8 g. carbohydrates; 6.1 g. sugars; 1.1 g. fiber; 4.8 g. protein

* Ingredient notes

• Two boxes/packages of cornbread mix, made with low-fat substitutions, makes just over 8 cups.
• At the bakery in your market during the holiday season, you may be able to find bread cubes already prepared. They are perfect and a big time saver. If you are preparing your own, bakery bread rather than pre-packaged is strongly recommended.
• To substitute fresh herbs for the dried, you will need three times the amount specified.
• You can add in nuts, fruits, oysters, or browned sausage per your preference.
• Check the seasonings after about 2 hours and adjust as needed. (Our last test needed a bit of additional broth and salt added during cooking.)

** Cooking notes

• The timing given is for a newer (hotter) model slow cooker. In my old (cooler) one, I cooked the dressing on High for 45 minutes and on Low for 5 hours. Adjust the timing according to your experience with your cooker. The heat settings on slow cookers changed in the late 1990’s.
• The dressing may also be baked, covered, at 350 degrees for about 1 hour, uncovering it during the last 15 minutes if you like it browned on top.

There was a bed.  Actually a frame and springs and a mattress that was just fine.  Okay, it wasn’t fine.  But with a heavy duty mattress cover . . . what can I say?  We were grad-student broke and not about to turn up our noses at free stuff.

There was a sofa.  Uhhhh, not so much, but words escape me.  Picture a door, out flat, with 4 wrought iron legs attached and then a big slab of foam for a cushion.  A quick jog (actually a bus ride and a long walk) down Mass Ave. to the Cambridge Tea and Spice House, and our sofa had an avocado green Indian throw to cover the foam.  This worked.  It was the ’60’s, and all of our friends were young enough to sit cross-legged on this big, green raft.  Just not at the same time.

But we found the best detritus in the pantry.  For some reason, I will never understand, the previous tenants left behind two cast iron skillets and a cast iron Dutch oven with a lid.  A little cleaning, a little seasoning, 41+ years, 1336 pots of spaghetti, 1887 pans of cornbread, 6313 strips of crispy bacon, 4324 Saturday morning pancakes, 123 pots of Sunday afternoon bean soup, untold pan-grilled chicken breasts, and one TV appearance later, these pans are still going strong.

I’m not about to jump into the debate on the safety of non-stick cookware.  It’s just that I’ve never understood the point.

• Cast iron is durable.  My mom’s cast iron Dutch oven was a wedding present, purchased used from a ”widow lady” 65 years ago.
• Cast iron heats evenly.
• Cast iron is cheap.
• Cast iron doesn’t need any special cooking utensils.
• Cast iron is easy to clean.
• Cast iron can be heated dry for toasting nuts and seeds.
• Cast iron can be heated to high temps for stir fries and blackened fish.
• Cast iron goes from the stove top to the oven.
• Cast iron is virtually non-stick.  A quick spray of Pam and a teaspoon or two of healthy oil is all that’s needed.

So this is long, long overdue, but if you happen to be the person or persons who moved out of 66 South Street in Waltham, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1966, I want to say thanks.

(I can’t tell you what happened to the bed or the sofa.  We left them for the next tenants.)

We’re here on the dining terrace with the chef of Houston’s hottest new restaurant.  Trey has a growing reputation for boldly expanding the classics with new cooking techniques and flavor infusions.

P @ P:  Trey, thanks for visiting with us.  It says in my notes that you first started cooking at age 2.  Can that be right?

T:  Actually it was a few days before my second birthday.

P @ P:  That’s very young.  Could you even reach the stove top?

T:  Barely.  But it was easy to reach the broiler oven.  It was just at my height.

P @ P:  Oooh-kay?

 T:  My dad had a Williamsburg peanut basket on the kitchen island.  I was entranced with the idea of a rich, deep, smokey infusion for the peanuts.  So I put the basket in the lower broiler oven to slowly absorb the flavors.

P @ P:  Was this a success?

T:  Hmmm, not so much.  The next day Mom turned on the upper oven to preheat and the basket caught fire.  There was a lot of smoke and flames.  It was really cool, but the peanuts had to be tossed.

P @ P:  Oh my.

T:  Well, Dad has always been a better-safe-than-sorry kinda guy.  We had fire extinguishers everywhere.  Okay, not everywhere, but definitely one in the kitchen, and he made sure everyone knew where they were and how they worked.  Mom is very level-headed and calm in a crisis.  So she yelled for my sisters to get out of the house, grabbed the extinguisher, and put out the fire.  Then there was this really cool foam everywhere.

P @ P:  How did this first cooking experience influence your later work?

T:  I think perhaps I’ve been seeking that same thrill for 30 years.

#####

This did happen.  Well, the basket and the fire and the extinguisher part—later we’ll see what direction our grandson’s career takes.  If you’ve noticed an uptick in First Alert stock over the past week or so, that may have been the result of our family rushing out to buy kitchen fire extinguishers.

I tell anyone who will listen about how wonderful our daughter-in-law was in a crisis.  With a two-year-old on one side of the flames and a four-year-old on the other, and a six-year-old upstairs, she didn’t panic.  Well, she probably did, but she acted calmly.  No one would have blamed her if she had grabbed the kids and run, but all the conditions were right to try to put the fire out.  And she did.

We’ve also taken a pledge never again to tease our son about his propensity for preparedness and nagging educating his family about it.  The truth is being prepared at the least prevented serious damage.  As hot as the fire was, it may well have saved the house or even saved a life.

October 7-13 is Fire Prevention and Fire Safety Week this year.  I’m celebrating by buying a new kitchen fire extinguisher.  Now if they only came in more colors.

ROT Warning!  That would be Really Off Topic.  Don’t you just love it when someone just says it’s a holiday and, thanks to the Internet, it is?  Holiday Insights says that teachers started this day back in the 1980’s to encourage students to ask more questions.  This is a problem?  (Question #2)  But back to the off-topic topic.  The folks at Well Cat are always creating holidays and they copyright them.  So here’s Question #3.  How do you copyright a day?  That means no one else can what on this day?  (That must be Question #4.)  Should the rest of us just hold our breath on the copyrighted holidays?  (#5!)  Actually I really like the WellCat holidays.  Thanks to them, this is also Fish Tank Floorshow Night.  Back to our regularly scheduled blogging . . .

The best thing about this day is that it gives me a reason to use a quote from Scott Adams that I’ve been saving just because:

“If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask?  Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?”

Heh.  In the spirit of today’s observance, here are a few questions that no one wants to ask . . .

How many teaspoons in a tablespoon?  That would be three.

How many tablespoons in 1/4 cup?  That would be four.

How big is a coffee measure?  That would be two tablespoons or 1/8 cup.  It’s a handy addition to your measuring cup set.

Why isn’t a cup of coffee one cup?  Don’t ask me.  Actually the cup is was (as in your grandmama’s china set) one cup.  But if you fill it to the tippy top, there’ll be a big mess so a “cup of coffee” is really 3/4 cup or 6 ounces.

It’s Friday with sunshine and lunch possibilities and Springsteen and the E Street Band playing in the background.  So go Ask a Stupid Question or four and have a great day.

Heh.  Actually, a little bit of bacon goes a long way in adding flavor, particulary for vegetables.  And it’s when we get bored with the same ol’ dishes that we’re tempted to cheat indulge.

Try about a half slice per serving.  Cook it in a heavy saucepan or deep skillet then remove it to crisp.  Pour off all but about one teaspoon of the drippings.  Then add the veggies to stir fry a bit before adding other ingredients, seasonings, and liquid.  Finish cooking, as needed, and sprinkle the dish with crumbled bacon.

(Note that even this little bit of bacon adds a significant saltiness, so go lightly on adding other salt.)

The catch to this is having the bacon on hand.  If you don’t use bacon on a regular basis, then it becomes a plan-ahead item for the shopping list rather than a grab-and-cook staple.

Here’s the quick tip.  After opening a new package of bacon, separate the slices and stack them with a piece of waxed paper under each slice.  Slide the stack into a freezer bag, label with the date, and freeze.  When you need a piece or two for a dish, you can easily peel off the amount you want.  There’s no need to thaw before cooking.

How do you do that? It depends. Isn’t that helpful?

The timing and temperature varies with the freshness and temperature and type of nut or seed, sometimes by quite a bit. Here are two methods with some general guidelines.

Place the nuts or seeds that you want to toast in a dry skillet. Heat to medium, shaking the pan often (almost constantly) to turn the seeds or nuts and move them around. This is usually a bit faster than the oven method (below), and since you can use the same pan for additional cooking, it saves on clean up. Be careful with seeds however. Some of them, such as sesame seeds, will jump as they toast.

You can also toast nuts and seeds in the oven. Use any baking pan, no need to spray it. If you are heating the oven for another dish, any temp between 325 and 400 degrees will do. You can even put the pan in the oven before it completely preheats. Check the nuts or seeds often, shaking the pan when you do. They will go from will-these-ever-be-done to burned very quickly. I ususally set the timer for 5 minutes (3 minutes if the oven is pretty hot), but some will take as long as 8-10 minutes.

They are “toasted” when they develop a little color and have a bit of a fragrance.

I also learned that it would be nice to have a magic kitchen.  Did you ever notice that Rachael Ray’s pantry arranges her ingredients for her, so that the ingredients she needs are always in the front?  She never spends any of her 30 minutes digging around.  But I digress.

Truly, it was only three years ago when I began developing recipes for Fizzy Meals and needed an accurate estimate of timing that I began faithfully sticking to that rule of have the ingredients ready before you start.  I also confess that it amazed me how much simpler cooking was–and faster–when you have your stuff together.

But this week while browsing a favorite food blog, Elise Bauer’s Simply Recipes, I discovered that there is a lovely French cooking phrase for “get your stuff together first.”  It’s mise en place (pronounced MEEZ ahn plahs) which literally means “setting in place.”  So now with a French phrase in hand, I’m hopeful that I can convince my sous chef husband, John, of the importance of prepping before cooking.

‘Fess up.  How’s your mise en place?  Do you get your stuff together first or just dive in?

Need I point out that fresh mangoes are a favorite thing of mine?  But cutting and cubing them can be a real pain until you learn the inside-out trick.  Then it’s actually kind of fun.

This video from about.com is a good demonstration of the technique.