Alfredo Sauce

This is a recipe you need some practice at to get it right. I learned it best by watching someone else do it first. You're basically trying to get it to a thick, but creamy consistency, which is hard to explain on a blog where you can't stir it and feel for yourself . . . But it's pretty easy once you try it and tasty too!

Thanks to Brooke for this great recipe. She was courteous enough to teach me this when I was first diagnosed, frustrated, and hungry.

Alfredo Sauce
Butter
Flour
Milk
Mozzarella cheese
Onion, garlic, other seasonings as you prefer

Melt ~2 T butter in a skillet on medium heat
Add some onion and garlic, simmer until soft
Add ~2 T of flour
Add tiny bit of milk to make a paste
Add mozzarella cheese a handful at a time
Stir until melted
Alternatively add milk, cheese, and flour to get the right consistency
Stir continuously, take it slow (you can fix your mistakes, so don't panic)

Go-To Meals-Chicken Broccoli Fettuccini

Still in that week of not wanting to use the 400˚ oven, so another go-to meal of mine is pasta. I try to dress it up with veggies and chicken, but it's really just pasta. Tasty, easy, non-400˚-oven pasta.

Chicken Broccoli Fettuccine
Pasta
Broccoli
Chicken
Alfredo sauce

Yup. That's why it's a go-to meal. :) Just cook the pasta according to package directions. While cooking, wash, cut, and steam broccoli and warm up some chicken. Mix together and cover with alfredo sauce.

I actually can eat the Classico brand of alfredo sauce, but if you have IC, be careful, everyone is different on what artificial ingredients they are sensitive too.

A great alfredo sauce recipe can be found here. Thanks to SIL Brooke!

A note about chicken. For a lot of my go-to meals, I use pre-cooked, frozen chicken either that I made myself or that comes in neat little packages like this. It saves time and tastes fine and is all natural so it doesn't make me sick. :)

Go-To Meals-Quesadillas

So here's the deal. This week was hot (mostly) and I REALLY don't like cooking when it's hot. Usually the summer of my childhood consisted of pasta salads, potato salads, anything COLD. However, I haven't found a lot of cold IC recipes (pasta salad has vinegar dressing, potato salad has mayo, etc). So I'm still looking for those if anyone has suggestions.

My solution has been using the oven as little as possible, and that turns into quick meals that I don't really have recipes for. They are so easy, I feel a little silly putting them up, but maybe it's something you didn't realize was so easy, so it'll help you . . . maybe.

Quesadillas
Flour tortillas
Cheese
Warmed Black Beans
Pre-cooked, warmed chicken
*You could put anything--olives, tomatoes, peppers, etc. This is just what I can have and what I usually have on-hand.

Really, that's it. Derek LOVES them, and they take about 5 seconds to make (more like 10 minutes from start to finish, but still, fast!). You put the beans all over the tortilla, then the chicken, then the cheese. Place in an pre-warmed skillet and cover with another tortilla. Flip when bottom tortilla becomes stiff. Then I slice it with a pizza cutter. Pretty simple. Derek usually dips his in BBQ sauce. But he's been dipping just about everything in BBQ sauce lately . . .

Oatmeal Chip Cookies

Dessert = Heaven. Enough said.

Actually, I really have a lot more to say.

With IC, I can't eat chocolate. It's one of my all-time worst foods to eat. It makes me sick for 3 days, seriously. It took about a year until I didn't crave it all the time. Now I only want it if someone is being a jerk and waving a hot, gooey brownie under my nose. But I digress.

It seems like 95% of desserts either have chocolate in them or are garnished with chocolate or are served with chocolate. However, there are A LOT of good recipes in that 5% of non-chocolate desserts. Also, a lot of chocolate desserts can be easily modified to exclude it.

Enter the chocolate chip cookie.

Simply sub out the chocolate chips for carob chips (carob is way better in smaller doses, like in a cookie, than 100% carob, like in a brownie), or butterscotch chips, or mint chips, or even white chocolate chips. Did you know white chocolate isn't really chocolate? Pretty much made my day when I figured that one out.

This is a recipe I've made since I was a little girl. And I still love it.
Oatmeal Chip Cookes
2 c flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
1 c shortening
3/4 c sugar
3/4 c brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp water
2 eggs
2 c oatmeal
1 c chips (mint, white chocolate, butterscotch, combinations, etc).

Cream the shortening and sugars together. Add and mix together everything but the flour, oatmeal, and chips. Add the flour slowly, 1 cup at a time. Add the oatmeal slowly too. Mix in the chips by hand. Bake at 350˚ for 8-10 minutes. Makes ~ 5 dozen cookies, depending on how big your cookies are.

Note: My stand mixer can blend up the oatmeal, but if you're working with a hand mixer, you may need to do the oatmeal by hand.

Mashed Potatoes

Okay, there are about as many variations of mashed potatoes as there are stars in the sky. Seriously. You can have them plain and pour gravy all over them. You can add sour cream and garlic powder and serve plain. You can add onion salt, parsley, and rosemary and serve plain. The possibilities are endless.

Because I can't make gravy w/o meat drippings, tonight I did an onion salt, garlic powder, parsley combination that turned out pretty good. I'll give you my gravy recipe later. :)

Disclaimer: Sometimes it drives me nuts when people say, "Oh, you just add some butter and spices, and you're done." GIVE ME QUANTITIES! But this is going to be one of those recipes, so bear with me. I tried to quantify as much as possible, but sometimes, you just gotta wing it.

Mashed Potatoes
Several potatoes
Butter
Milk
(opt) Onion Salt
(opt) Garlic Powder
(opt) Parsley
(opt) Rosemary
(opt) Sour Cream

So, you take your potatoes and peel them. Or leave the skins on. Either works. Skins-on leaves pretty flecks on the potatoes when you whip them up and gives you nutrients (they are like apples in that a lot of their nutrients are in the skin). If your potatoes are a little old, like mine, I didn't trust them enough not to peel them and look for rotten spots to cut out. Good choice for me, by the way. Had to throw one whole potato away.

Anyway, back to the recipe. Dice your potatoes into ~1" chunks. Put in a pot and cover with water. Heat to boiling then cover with a lid. This cooks them faster, but leaves it prone to boiling over, so watch it and remove the lid every once in a while.

After potatoes are soft, drain the water and add ~1 T of butter. Follow this with ~1/4 c of milk and beat w/ an electric mixer. Handheld mixers work great. Add dashes of seasonings/spoonfuls (~1/4 c) of sour cream/etc. You'll probably have to add more milk too, just do it a little at a time until the potatoes are at the desired consistency (light and fluffy, without seeming slimy/gooey--too much liquid).

This is totally a "taster" recipe. You'll just have to add stuff and see how it goes. It's kind of fun--each time is slightly different. :)

Meatloaf

I know, you either love it or hate it right? The meatloaf of my childhood was good, but pretty much inedible without a healthy slathering of ketchup all over it. You can eat anything if you like ketchup. :)

Unfortunately, my ability to slather things with ketchup has gone the way of the Dodo. Thus, I had to find a new recipe that wasn't just like eating a loaf of meat with no other flavor.

Tada!

Meatloaf
1 lb ground beef
1 egg
1/2 c oats
1/4 c chopped onion (or ~1/2 T of dried)
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Mix all the dry ingredients and then add the egg while the meat is defrosting. Then mix in the beef (I definitely recommend mixing the dry ingredients first, otherwise you end up with a loaf that's really salty in one place and sweet in another). Press that mixture into an 8x4x2" loaf pan. Bake at 350˚ until a meat thermometer reads 165˚ (~45 min). IMPORTANT: Ground beef is very dangerous. Mucho bacteria-o. Be sure your thermometer reads at least 165˚, don't just go off of the color of the meat.

Problem. This recipe is made to be slathered in BBQ sauce. I simply leave that off (though the hubby doesn't). The problem is that for me, the meat is almost too sweet. I don't have that tangy flavor of the BBQ sauce to balance it out. Any ideas on how to balance this recipe w/o using tomatoes? Or acid-laden sauces? Or vinegar? (You see my problem?)

Before
After:
Finished dinner

Stuffed Manicotti

I love Italian food, but there's the little problem of everything has tomatoes in it! Not that I'm bitter. :)
This recipe has a great flavor, even leaving out the tomatoes. I cut the quantities in half since there are only two of us (yes that picture is a half recipe). Then I usually make it again about a week later since I have all the stuff ready to go!
Stuffed Manicotti
1 pkg manicotti shells
1 16 oz carton cottage cheese
2 cups mozzarella cheese, grated
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
2 eggs, well beaten
1 Tbsp parsley flakes
1 quart spaghetti sauce (I use Alfredo sauce, but the red would have looked nicer on top)

Cook manicotti according to package. Drain. While cooking, mix the cheeses, eggs, and parsley in a bowl. In a 9x13 pan, spread sauce to cover bottom of pan. Fill each shell with cheese mixture until it spills out both ends. Place shells in pan. Top with sauce and sprinkle with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Bake at 350˚ for 25-30 min or until cheese is melted.

Variations:
I cook a chicken breast in the pressure cooker, then shred it and add it to the whole mix before stuffing. I gotta have some meat in my dinner. :)

I also add a dash or two garlic powder.

I use nowhere near a quart of sauce. Just enough to cover the bottom of the pan and the top of the pasta.

Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup

Okay, who doesn't love soup, right? With IC, I can't eat tomatoes, preservatives (bouillon), extreme spices, etc. Thus, a lot of soups are ruled out and I'm left with bland, boring water with some vegetables. Not very exciting. This recipe is great because it's hearty, flavorful, and a nice change from just plain ol' chicken noodle.
Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup
1 T oil (I use olive oil-yummo)
1 onion, chopped (I use dried onion flakes and some green onions)
4 stalks celery, chopped
4 carrots, chopped
2 large chicken breasts
3 1/2 c water
1 can organic chicken broth
2 c wide egg noodles
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of mushroom soup

Put first four ingredients in a pot and saute until vegetables are soft. Add chicken, water, and broth and simmer for 30 minutes or until chicken is done. Remove chicken and shred. Add noodles and simmer until tender (~10 min). Add canned soup and chicken and heat through (~5 min).

Variations:
Cook the chicken breasts in at least 4 cups of water in a pressure cooker. Use that resulting stock to sub out plain water and can of chicken broth. This also speeds up the process as you don't have to boil the chicken for 30 minutes. :)

I go back and forth between regular pasta and whole wheat. The wheat pasta is thicker and more filling, but more expensive. Either taste great, so you can't really lose!

I also add some sprinkles of rosemary, parsley, garlic powder, etc.

Crock Pot Pork Chops

I struggle with pork chops because I always seem to dry them out. Then it's like you're eating leather, which (let's face it) no one really wants to do. This recipe keeps them moist and has a good flavor, but I'm still looking for that perfect pork chop recipe. Ideas?

Crock Pot Pork Chops
4 Pork Chops
1 can Cream of Mushroom soup
2 Tbs apple juice
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp garlic powder
3 Tbs flour
2 Idaho-sized potatoes (or about 6 normal sized ones)

Cube potatoes and put on bottom of crock pot. Mix soup, juice, thyme, garlic, and flour and put half of it over the potatoes. Place the pork chops on top and cover with remaining soup mixture. Cook 6-7 hours on low (or I did 4 hours on low and the last hour on high--whatever you have time for).