Fun With Carbs

It’s that time of year, when everyone vows to fit back into their ‘skinny clothes’ after overindulging on rich holiday treats. It’s so inevitable that gym owners count on a spike in January membership signups to boost their numbers all year.

And then by February, it’s a distant memory…

If you ask me, I think the New Year’s resolution concept is a stupid gimmick. While there’s nothing wrong with self-improvement goals, who says you have to set them all in January and stick to them rigidly for 12 months? Seems like a recipe for failure and disappointment.

I’m probably the last person on Earth who should be doling out diet advice (actually, that honor might be reserved for the editors of This Is Why You’re Fat) but I’ve rounded up some links to healthy recipes on popular cooking websites. And if you find a dish as tasty as it is nutritious, please feel free to share with us!

• Whole Foods: Resolve To Eat Right
• Bon Appetit: Healthy Recipes Search
• Food Network: Healthy Cooking Month
• Epicurious: Healthy Recipes
• Cooking Light: http://www.cookinglight.com/
• Hungry Girl: Recipes (editor’s note: if you can get past the annoying cutesy recipe names…)
• Self Magazine: Food and Diet
• The Delicious Life Of Holly Pinafore: Healthy, tasty gluten-free recipes and how-to videos

Some of Fun With Carbs’ favorite healthy recipes: baked turkey meatballs blended with a red bell pepper/onion/garlic ‘puree,’ chicken stir-fry with vegetables and brown rice, grilled salmon with orange glaze, egg white omelets with spinach and feta, crockpot chicken soup with orzo, spinach salad with almonds and goat cheese crumbles. Mmm…maybe this ‘diet’ thing won’t be too terrible.

Fun with Carbs is going to be eating two Thanksgiving meals this week (I’ve got in-laws now) so posting will be light. Here’s a roundup of news-you-can-use as you prepare for your own Turkey Day:

Wines: If you missed it, our guide to Thanksgiving vino.

Turkey Day Guide: Recipes, tips and more

Thanksgiving Dinner at CT Restaurants: If you’re not up for cooking a 20-pound bird.

Leftovers: Food Network’s guide to next-day recipes.

What’s your favorite Thanksgiving meal? Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, pie? And does anyone love canned cranberry sauce as much as I do? It’s hideous, I know, but I love how it retains its cylindrical can shape.

Those mushrooms better STAY ON THEIR OWN SIDE.

Since we’ve discovered the crispy, melty deliciousness that is pizza on the grill, we’ve never looked back. Trouble is, it’s become a full-blown project in our house, starting with homemade dough and ending with attempts at precise heating instructions. But it’s worth it.

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We like to cook here at Fun With Carbs central. Sometimes there’s nothing more satisfying than eating a delicious meal and knowing you created it yourself. Plus, that way you know exactly how many tablespoons of butter went into the dish. (but sometimes, ignorance is bliss.)

If you’re looking for recipes, email me at leeanne@funwithcarbs.com – I’m terrible at following recipes and would rather cook to sight and taste, but I can try to approximate. This is what’s been coming out of the kitchen lately…

Spinach and eggplant pie

Spinach and eggplant pie. I found this recipe, in of all things, a soup cookbook that my mother gave me to me a few years ago. It’s essentially a cross between a hot spinach dip and a quiche. The cookbook says it can be served hot or cold, but it tasted better heated. The ‘spinach dip’ filling is a mixture of chopped spinach, egg, feta cheese, ricotta, Greek yogurt, lemon, onion and garlic. I sauteed the eggplant in olive oil and layered it throughout the pie. One key ingredient – that I’d leave out during my next try – was brown rice. The recipe called for a layer of it between the pie crust and the spinach filling. It may have served to soak up moisture, but it just lent an incongruous, unwelcome texture.

Shrimp scampi

Shrimp scampi. Not much recipe to this dish: the shrimp was sauteed with crushed garlic, olive oil and a squeeze of lemon, and then simmered briefly with white wine and a splash of fat-free half-and-half. But shrimp scampi always reminds me of the first time my husband and I ever cooked for each other as sophomores in college. I think I made pizzas, for that was all I could handle at the time. He tried shrimp scampi, but couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to procure lemon zest. Remember, this is before Food Network was big, before Rachael Ray grated lemons and limes all over your TV set. So he went out and bought a teeeeny jar of lemon peel for probably $8. I cringe and laugh when I think about college-days cooking and the time four of us watched a pan of chicken parmesan like hawks to make sure the chicken didn’t come out raw. (Like you can tell when it’s smothered with sauce and cheese.)

French bread

French bread, which is quickly becoming my specialty. Since I’ve had a bread maker in the house (THANKS ROB best Christmas present ever) I’ve been thrilled to create loaves of bread on a near-weekly basis. My former coworkers used to clamor for the ‘pretzel bread’ recipe (French bread glazed with egg white and coated with kosher salt, served with honey butter) but lately I’ve been sticking to a lower-sodium version with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt. I set the bread maker on the dough setting and let the dough rise in a covered bowl when it’s through mixing, then bake it in the oven at 350 degrees. It stays fresher days longer than any loaves I’ve baked right in the bread machine.

Tonight, we’ve got a small roast in the slow cooker that will become beef sandwiches on onion rolls. I’m downright fascinated with the crockpot, so I’m hoping to use it a lot this winter. Soliciting your favorite slow-cooked recipes…