So....What’s For Dinner, anyway?
My kitchen has been alarmingly clean these last few days, and as happens more often than not, I get inspired to cook, when it is ‘waiting for creating’, as it were. In that same way, I need my studio to be semi-neat before I work in it, as I am not one of those artists who thrives in chaos…
Tonight, I had an idea for something I have never attempted. Since working on the cholesterol thing (this is for your information, Dr. Murchison, if you are reading this!) I have had only one fast food hamburger/French frie day, and have been making a lot of my own stuff, eating a lot of salad—you can ask my co-workers, I promise! But tonight I felt like having something ‘fried.’ Unwilling to abandon the wagon so quickly and thoroughly, however, I cast my memory back to a wonderful thing I had, called a potato latke.
I was invited to a Hanukah celebration, one year by a dear friend. When I arrived, it was a bustle of activity, as the mom prepared these little shredded potato cakes. They had various sauces for dipping and it was my first one—but lets face it, I have never met a potato dish that I didn’t like.
I haven’t grocery shopped for the week, so tonight I had one sweet potato and one parsnip on hand, and I thought, “That is what I will do!” I shredded both into a bowl—really it was the whole potato and half a parsnip, since my arm got tired on the hand grater. I try to be pretty "old school" in kitchen tools-- still have the hand can opener, too. I didn’t have traditional bread crumbs, so I used sun-dried tomato and olive oil Triscuits—ground up in the blender. Into the shredded vegetables went 2 whole eggs, and the crumbs. A short time later, I had a little assembly line going, and ‘fried’ them, using a very minimal amount of oil. I paired the cakes with a piece of chicken on the George Foreman grill ( a single gal’s best cooking gadget) , fresh frozen green beans (the only kind I like) nuked in a Pampered Chef steam bowl with lid, and a mound of spaghetti squash with Promise spread on it for the sterol benefits. For those of you who have no idea what to do with spaghetti squash—here is the tip. Cut it in half and put it, cut side down in a dinner plate with a few tablespoons of water. Make sure you stab it a few times with a knife ( for less explosive possibilities) and microwave it for 15-20 minutes. That is my secret, and it comes out great everytime! Who said going healthy couldn’t taste great? And if you fry something in Omega-3 heart healthy oil, does it really count, anyway?
