Artificial Sweeteners

"ZOMG Artificial Sweeteners r gonna kill u!!!"

I get this a lot. My usual response is threefold:

1. Anything will kill you in excess.
2. Studies have tried and failed to link moderate use of Splenda to health problems, whereas
3. We know for a fact that sugar WILL kill you. Even in moderation it does harm, which requires immediate action to prevent (specifically, cleaning your teeth ASAP).

"But what about honey? What about raw sugar? What about fructose?" I hear you ask! Well, they are all the same. Sugar is sugar is sugar. High fructose corn syrup is currently being demonized, but seriously, folks, it's just sugar. If it's slightly less healthy than regular sugar, that's like saying hitting yourself with a mallet hurts less than hitting yourself with a hammer. They both hurt.

That said, I do prefer to use raw sugar and honey, but that's because white sugar sometimes triggers migraines in my family (we don't know why). Also, I just like the flavor!

I still use sucralose (Splenda) as my go-to sweetener for most things, but only for budgetary considerations. The exception is when I am cooking something chocolate flavored, I will often use Truvia, because its taste goes really well with chocolate for some reason. As more varieties of natural sweeteners enter the market, I play with them and develop preferences, and have incorporated some into my regular use. Here's a breakdown of the ones I've tried.

1. Stevia - a natural plant extract. Now available in many forms. Interestingly, it was banned for some time, and still is banned in some parts of the world. I wasn't able to find out a good reason for this, though, and it's now sanctioned by our government. Rebiana (Reb A) is the specific word for the extract used by PureVia and Truvia. It's used in some parts of the world as a treatment for diabetes, and some studies do show an increase in insulin sensitivity and production; someday, we might be using stevia as a medicine. Until then, it's a sweetener.
   
   • Truvia: The best Stevia I've tried, sold in both packet and loose form as stevia extract in a base of erythritol (discussed below). Made by the Coca-Cola Company. I use this in recipes calling for chocolate, because something about it makes chocolate taste more chocolatey, which is always a good thing.
   • PureVia: The same thing, but has a more bitter taste. Made by the Pepsi Company.
   • Stevia in the Raw: Trading on their Sugar in the Raw brand, this is stevia in a base of maltodextrin, a common food starch. The maltodextrin annoys me. If I'm going to eat maltodextrin, I will just get Splenda. Furthermore, this has a strong bitter taste that has ruined more than one dessert for me.
2. Sucralose - Splenda's sweetener, now available in generic form. Safe except linked to thyroid problems (among others) in rodents at massive doses. Thyroid problems are treatable and the symptoms are obvious, and in order to trigger this problem, you'd have to, for example, drink two DOZEN cans of Splenda-sweetened sodas PER DAY for weeks, in order to even come close to the doses given to those rats. I consider Splenda to be safe and affordable. It's sold in a base of food starches to make it fluffy, which contributes some calories and makes it dissolve into liquids a bit unpredictably, but this is a minor issue.
3. Aspartame - Originally marketed as Equal. Whether by virtue of its older age, or by actual dangers, aspartame has had more potential problems linked with it. I have a major weakness for diet soda, and that's made with aspartame, so I never use aspartame in other forms in order to keep my consumption moderate. UPDATE: I poked around looking at some more research, and the FDA says I can drink 21 cans of soda a day for the rest of my life and the aspartame won't hurt me (which is not to say it's a good idea!). There's still a surprising amount of controversy over it, though, and its presence in the "safe foods" list is by a non-unanimous vote.
4. Saccharine - I think this tastes nasty and never use it. Maybe it's unhealthy, I don't know. Either way, it's gross.
5. Sugar alcohols - carbohydrates that taste like sugar but are metabolized so slowly as to have a negligible effect on blood sugar, making them safe for diabetics. There are many kinds of sugar alcohols which have different properties. Almost all of them are naturally produced in plants or even in the human body.
   
   • Maltitol: Used in candy-making for its gooiness, but difficult to digest. It causes all kinds of intestinal distress in high doses, and for many, a "high dose" is, say, two bites of candy. The cause is the same as beans, meaning some people don't digest it well (which is kind of the point, since the idea is to digest these slowly and avoid the sugar rush). Sorbitol is very similar.
   • Erythritol: Metabolized and excreted through the renal system, meaning you pee it out. Thus, no intestinal problems. It's a good solution for people like my husband who can't tolerate maltitol. However, the idea of peeing sweetly weirds me out, and I prefer not to use too much of this in case it turns out someday that it's not good for your kidneys. There's no evidence causing me to think that, it's just my hangup.
   • Xylitol: My favorite of all. Xylitol has been linked to major health benefits (yes! Healthy sweetness!) for our mouths, preventing dental decay and the passing of dental bacteria from mothers to babies. Chewing gum with xylitol is great for your teeth. Nobody knows why (or they didn't last I checked) but the theory is that the bacteria think it's sugar and try to eat it, then can't flourish because (HA!) it's not really sugar after all. Xylitol has also been used to combat fungal infections and as a systemic antibiotic for various infections. But there is one massive drawback. Xylitol is extremely toxic to dogs. Some dogs tolerate it well, but some will die after eating two sticks of xylitol gum. The reaction is not a conventional toxicity like chocolate, but rather an autoimmune response like a peanut allergy, hence the unpredictability of it. The emergency room visit and the followup vet bills after Trinity got into some xylitol have convinced me to only keep this around in small quantities and be VERY VERY careful to keep it WELL out of her reach.
6. Ideal Brand: The name is silly, but actually it kind of IS ideal. It's xylitol intensified with sucralose, to make it more affordable. This is available in many grocery stores, albeit in small amounts and not for the best price. Still, I keep it around and use it to sweeten drinks like tea and chocolate milk, figuring this maximizes the health benefits of the xylitol. The fact that it comes in paper packets means it's safer from Trinity, too, since I use it one packet at a time instead of putting into whole recipes.

Well, there you have it. I hope that helps. At the moment, nobody is reading this blog but me and possibly my mom, so I have not bothered to cite sources and write a bibliography. Someday when I am rich and famous and it's worth my time to do so, I'll come back here and write something more detailed for y'all.

Enjoy the sweet life, people!

Delicious Almond Milk Drink

I tried making homemade almond milk recently, grinding the almonds in my blender. It tasted great, but the texture was gritty and straining it through the cheesecloth was a pain.

So I tried commercial almond milk, specifically Almond Breeze (Blue Diamond's almondmilk). The flavor wasn't as good as my own, having an oddly metallic taste that I suspect comes from the vitamins and minerals added to make it a better substitute for cow's milk. But I've been enjoying playing with it nonetheless, and have settled on a favorite Indian-inspired recipe for it.

Makes 1 serving

1/2 cup Almond Breeze
1/3 cup whole milk
2 packets Ideal, Truvia, or whatever sweetener you like, or 1 1/2 tbsp Splenda or sugar
Honey to taste, optional
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
Dash cinnamon
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Just mix it all up in a cup and you're good to go. Indian food lore says the combination of almonds, milk and cardamom is an excellent restorative and cooling drink. I say it's really tasty.

White Chili with Chicken and Roasted Chile Peppers

Inspired by this recipe for white chili from Cooking Light, here is a subtle and unorthodox white chili whose richness comes from mashed cannellini beans and roasted chile peppers.

6 Anaheim chile peppers - Anaheim chiles are like long jalapenos, being about as long as your hand and solid green. Not to be confused with Italian peppers, which are lime green, or jalapenos, which are small (thumb-sized). If you can't find them, use 5 Poblano peppers plus 1 jalapeno.
2 chicken breast halves
1 1/2 cups chopped onion, about 2 medium or 1 large
1 tbsp minced garlic, about 3 cloves
1 large can cannellini beans or 2 small cans, drained and rinsed
1/3 tsp ground coriander
2 cups chicken broth (I use water + bouillon)
2 tbsp cornmeal
Greek yogurt, plain - use sour cream if you can't find it

Preheat the broiler. Wearing gloves to protect your hands, cut the tops off the peppers, then slice them in half and scoop out the seeds. Arrange the pepper halves on a baking sheet, skin side up, and press down on them with your hand to flatten. Broil for 5 minutes, then check on them. If the skins are blistered and blackened, take them out. Otherwise, give them another 2 minutes.

Place the peppers in a heat-safe bowl and cover with saran wrap or a plate.

Meanwhile, heat a large pot over medium-high heat and sauté the chicken breasts until well golden on both sides. Depending on your stove and the size of your pot, you might have to raise the heat to high in order to get them to turn golden. (Warning: DO NOT use a non-stick pan over high heat. It may release toxic fumes, and will damage the pan.) Remove chicken to a cutting board.

Add the onions and garlic and 2 tbsp water, and sauté until the pan is deglazed (all the brown bits are scraped up and the onions look brown as a result). Then add the broth and bring to a simmer.

Chop the chicken into bite-size pieces and add them as well.

Now take out the peppers, which should be cool enough to handle by this point. Wearing gloves, peel the skins away. They should come off easily. If they don't, then the pepper was undercooked - it doesn't matter, but next time you'll know to cook them a little longer. Throw the peel away and chop the peppers. Add them to the pot.

Put 1/3 of the beans on the cutting board and smash them with the flat of your knife, or a large spoon. Then add the beans to the pot along with the coriander and stir well.

Simmer until the onions are cooked and tender, about 5 minutes. Then stir in the cornmeal, stirring until it thickens.

Serve with the yogurt on top.

Very Best Pie Crust, Very Favorite Apple Pie

Well, it's that time of year again. Specifically, it's suddenly okay to use an entire stick of butter for anything, when during the other three seasons such a thing would be unthinkable. My favorite use for butter is pie crust, and I have a favorite pie crust recipe.

In my family, only the grandmother makes pie. She is Pie Empress, Pie Matriarch, Bringer Of All Things Pie, and final word on pie-related matters. My father learned to make pie by watching her, but could not practice while at home because GOD FORBID a MAN make pie in Her Kitchen. As a result, Pie Making was a holy and elite art.

When I was old enough to help in the kitchen, I was taught to make pie crust. This was a mystic ritual involving a great deal of care and attention, careful rolling, patching of holes to create a perfectly round disc of dough and plenty of sharp commands to "Be careful! You'll ruin it!" Still, nobody but my granmother would dare bring a pie to Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter. (No other holidays or gatherings had pie.) Even so, there was one Thanksgiving when there were more pies than people. It was a good year. Thanks was assuredly given.

Then I went away to college. I had my own kitchen. Autumn happened. I made a pie, with a recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.

It was awful. It took hours, it was exhausting, I was terrified I would ruin it and it did, in fact, come out tough. So I stuck to pumpkin pie, where the crust doesn't much matter, for years.

Until one day I vowed I would break FREE of Pie Tyranny!

I went to the trusty old Internet. I asked Google to find me a recipe for pie crust that would taste good and be easy. And I discovered Kitchen Parade's Flaky Tender Pie Crust. A large part of the secret, she said, was to use a metric butt-ton of butter and/or shortening. The other half of the secret was to not give a damn about how it looked - just roll that sucker out every which way and slap it on your pie, nobody will care as long as it's delicious and IT WILL BE as long as you don't fuss about it. And add enough butter.

Sounds good to me. I tried it.

It was amazing.

I tried it a couple more times, just to see. It was amazing then, too. Now I have a new pie crust recipe, my dirty little secret because it uses almost twice as much butter and four times as much sugar as the family recipe.

Recently, a family tragedy tore us apart. My faction, to which I belonged by default since I wasn't personally involved in the disagreement (other than to occasionally comment on how crass it was to squabble over a dead man's meager will), was facing the smallest Christmas in my memory. That's myself, my husband, my dad, his wife, her two kids, my uncle John, his wife, and their two kids. And no Grandma.

No pies.

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Pearl, my dad's wife, rose to the occasion marvelously. She was the hostess, and created pies for us and a special gluten-free pie for my dad - he had been reduced to eating the fillings out of Grandma's pies after he developed a gluten intolerance (that's no way to live). Considering Pearl had only been in America for, I think, six years at that point, having grown up in the sadly pieless Philippines, she did a great job and we were all delighted with her pumpkin and cherry pies.

I brought an apple pie.

I was terrified that Grandma or Tia would forgive us and come to Christmas anyway, which was really not in the Christmas spirit and did not do either of them justice because they've always been kind to me. But I was afraid I'd hurt their feelings by daring to bring my non-standard pie. Not only was the crust different, but I have a favorite apple and spice blend that was also a bit of a deviation. AND, I made the filling with Splenda, not sugar.

There weren't any leftovers.

I won't try to reproduce the crust recipe here. You really should go to Kitchen Parade and read it there. The instructions are wonderfully precise and easy to follow, and you can't go wrong with them. But I will tell you my opinion on the filling.

6 apples. The variety of apples makes a huge, huge difference. Always use more than one kind of apple; they are more than the sum of their parts. And always use half Cortland apples. If you can't get Cortlands, try Braeburn. The other half can be any kind, but I prefer old-fashioned, full-flavored varieties that are often overlooked because they aren't as juicy or sweet or crisp as new ones. But this is a pie! They don't have to be sweet or crisp, they only have to be flavorful.

3/4 cup Splenda, a little more if you use very sour apples

3 tbsp cornstarch

Spices:
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp cloves
1/8 tsp nutmeg

1 tbsp lemon juice

Peel and slice the apples.

Mix the Splenda, cornstarch, and spices in a bowl, then sprinkle over the apples. Toss to coat.

Add the lemon juice and toss to coat.

Ta-da!

Another thing I like to do: I make mini-pies, using custard cups, with only a top crust. They bake for 40 minutes at 375 and are perfect for a single serving. They can be frozen raw and baked whenever you want a fresh pie, without the temptation of a whole pie sitting in the fridge.

Korean Meatballs

Based on this recipe from Cooking Light, these meatballs are easy, fast, and delicious. I'm a big fan of the Korean sweet-and-garlicky meat style, but find it difficult to incorporate into everyday meals, so this was pretty awesome. I've made a few changes to make the recipe even easier and faster.

Ingredients:
1 package ground meat, any kind will do. About a pound or a pound and a half.
3 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp molasses
1 tsp garlic powder
3 tbsp tamari

Mix with a spoon, and then form into meatballs with your gloved hands while a nonstick pan heats over medium-high heat. Also be heating the oven to 375.

Form the meatballs, about the size of ping-pong balls. Add a teaspoon of peanut oil or canola oil to the pan, and add the meatballs. Press down on them gently to flatten a little bit. That's so they cook more evenly and don't stick.

Cook for 3 minutes on each side, long enough to brown. Then, move to the oven and cook for 5 minutes or until done. Serve with Sriracha (chile paste with garlic).

Changes I made, and why:
1. MEAT: Recipe calls for grinding chicken breast in the food processor, and I was like WHAAA? No way! So I used ground turkey, but I think ground beef or pork would also be very good, and more authentic, too.

2. Sugar and molasses: You could also use 3 tbsp brown sugar, but I prefer to use raw sugar and then added the molasses for moisture and flavor. It's just a personal preference.

3. Garlic powder: Recipe called for tons of chopped garlic. I dislike chopping garlic, and anyway the garlic wouldn't have integrated very well into the meat, so I chose to use garlic powder for its smooth, fine texture and ease of use.

4. Tamari: Recipe called for salt + low-sodium soy sauce. That's just silly. Tamari has a better flavor than soy sauce, so if we're going to be adding salt anyway, we might as well use the better-tasting Tamari. It's a good idea to keep low-sodium soy sauce on hand anyway, though, because when making sauces that recipe volume, it's better to use the low-sodium sauce instead or it will become too salty.

5. Flattening the meatballs: Rolling meatballs around to brown them always causes them to fall apart, at least for me. Flattening them means they can be cooked like mini hamburger patties. they hold their shape, are easy to flip, and don't stick. The only sacrifice is an oblong meatball instead of a spherical one, which doesn't bother me.

Enjoy!

Bouillon is Better than Broth

Because frankly, I have better things to do with my time than boil soup stock, and better things to do with my money than buy canned broth. Not to mention the fact that homemade broth ruins all those vegetables, and you have to throw them away. That, plus the short shelf life, is a recipe (heh heh) for waste.

I hate waste. Can you tell? Wasted time, wasted money, wasted ingredients. Hate, hate, hate.

A good quality bouillon tastes as good as canned broth (to me), at a fraction of the price AND a fraction of the pantry space. When your kitchen is as small as mine (remember your college dorm room? About 1/4 that size), pantry space is at a premium.

Also, and people don't often realize this, bouillon can be mixed mixed to any strength. Ordinary recipes call for broth to be boiled down to make it stronger (a waste of time!), but with bouillon, you can skip that step and just mix the broth the strength you want it! Example: Recipe calls for 2 cups of broth to be boiled down to 1 cup. Instead, add 1 cup water and 2 cups' worth of bouillon.

Furthermore, bouillon can be mixed with anything, not just water. When a recipe calls for, say, a cup of half-and-half (for creaminess) and a cup of broth (for flavor), you can instead mix the bouillon into TWO cups of 2% milk, and the result is not only better-tasting, but healthier, too. (I don't like wasting calories, either. If I'm going to have cream, it's going to be ICE cream, not chowder.)

I use this brand, which is ironically named Better Than Bouillon.

Here is a recipe to get you started thinking creatively about bouillon.

Swedish-Style Gravy - Great on IKEA's Swedish meatballs and way less fatty than their own gravy!

2 cups milk
1/4 cup flour
2 tsp Better than Bouillon beef flavor
1 tbsp butter

Whisk the flour into cold milk. Then heat over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. When it's warm, add the bouillon. When it bubbles, cook and stir for another 20 seconds, then remove from heat and drop in the butter. Whisk vigorously until the butter melts.

Incidentally: Adding cold butter to finished sauces is called "mounting" the sauce, which I think is hilarious. I do this instead of making a roux because it imparts the buttery flavor with less butter. A roux would have required at least twice as much butter, maybe more. Authentic French cooking uses this method to add MORE butter, essentially over-saturating the sauce with butter to make it hold more than it could have otherwise by emulsifying it. Oh, those crazy French!

Enjoy!

Red Wine Turkey Stew and Dumplings

This recipe is slightly adapted from "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Recipes For Two," by Beth Hensperger. The cookbook was given to me by my very kind grandmother; unfortunately, I never cook for two - I cook for four, and use the leftovers as lunch the next day. I also don't like to have half a thing of whatever ingredient sitting around going bad, and I always like to put more veggies into my stews so I don't have to prepare a separate vegetable dish.

So, I am always having to upsize the recipes in this book, and also my slow cooker is annoying and I often prefer to use the stove. Here is the stovetop made-for-awesome-leftovers version of this delicious and economical stew.

Ingredients:

1 package turkey tenderloin (2 tenderloins), cut into bite size chunks
Oil for the pan
2 regular yellow onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
6 carrots, chopped
6 parsnips, chopped
1 russet potato, peeled and cubed
1 1/2 cups red wine (since the wine makes up most of the broth, use a bottled wine from the liquor store, not salted cooking wine)
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme and 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley (easy if you make herb ice cubes!)
1 package white mushrooms, quartered
Water
Beef bouillon

Heat a dutch oven or stew pot over medium-high heat and sear the turkey in it. Remove the turkey to a plate and saute the onions and garlic until the garlic begins to soften, about 4 minutes. Add the wine, scraping to loosen browned bits. Add the remaining vegetables (except the mushrooms) and bring to a boil.

Add enough water to bring the water level up to about 1 inch from the tops of the food - this means that there is still lots of veggies sticking up like icebergs out of the stew. That's okay. Now stir in enough bouillon to make the broth - for me, that's usually 1 tsp. Reduce heat and simmer about 1 1/2 hours.

Technically, you could actually skip the simmering stage, since turkey tenderloin is, well, tender. But simmering makes a better broth.

After the simmering is over, prepare the dumplings. You can make a half-batch of your favorite dumpling recipe, or you can use mine:

1/3 cup cake flour (if you don't have cake flour, use 1/4 cup white flour and 2 tablespoons cornstarch)
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour (if you don't have it, use regular white flour)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda (important!)
1/4 tsp cream of tartar (less important)
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp butter
1/3 cup milk or buttermilk

Mix the dry ingredients together with a whisk, then cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or butter knife until the pieces are like grains of rice. Then add the milk, stirring until just blended - don't stir too much.

Turn the stew to HIGH and, as soon as it's bubbling, drop the dumpling batter onto the surface, trying to make them land on solids instead of sitting in the broth. This should make 6 dumplings.

Cover and steam for 10 minutes. Then serve the stew right away, while the dumplings are fresh!

Using Herbs

Fresh herbs are awesome. They are also short-lived, expensive (since you throw half away most of the time), and annoying.

I keep all my herbs in little pre-measured herb ice cubes in the freezer. This enables me to have fresh-tasting herbs with no freezer burn anytime I want them! That's my solution to the "flavor versus convenience" conflict.

Herb-buying goes like this:

1. Bring home a packet of herbs. For example, rosemary.

2. Wash the herbs, and strip off all the leaves.

3. Chop the leaves nice and fine.

4. Measure the leaves about a teaspoon at a time into an ice cube tray, 1 teaspoon per cube.

5. Very gently pour water over them using the spray nozzle from your sink. If you don't have a spray nozzle, that's okay, just drizzle the water on gently. Only use enough to cover the leaves, not so much that there will be a big hunk of ice attached to them.

6. Place in the freezer. When they're frozen, remove them and put them in zip-lock baggies.

7. When it's time to use them, give them a quick rinse under the tap to remove any freezer burn crystals. The coating of ice protects the flavor of the herbs inside. If making a soup or sauce, just use as-is; otherwise, thaw in the microwave and drain first. They will taste as fresh as they day you bought them :)

Chicken Pot Pie, better than store-bought

I have been on a quest for chicken pot pie for as long as I've been cooking, and it's always elusive. Until now. A big part of the secret is the little white onions, so be sure not to substitute them!

Filling:

1 cup frozen peas
4 carrots or about enough to make 3/4 cup when chopped
1 cup little white boiling onions, about 6 - golf-ball-sized ones are okay - cut in half, no need to peel
1/2 tsp chopped fresh thyme
1/4 tsp chopped fresh sage
1 cup milk
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp chicken bouillon (enough to make 1 cup of broth)
Ground pepper to taste
Breast meat from 1 rotisserie chicken, chopped

Topping:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cups cornstarch (that combo means the health of the whole wheat plus the lightness of the cornstarch)
1 stick butter
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cream or tartar
1/2 tsp baking powder
2/3 cup milk

Prep:

Oven to 450. Place 2 cups of water in a small pot to boil. Drop in the onions.

Make the topping first. Combine the dry ingredients and then cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or two butter knives, whichever you have, until it's crumbles with a few bits the size of peas (it's all about peas tonight, folks). Then add the milk, stir just until a dough forms. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead 10 times.

Roll out into the right shape to fit your casserole or pie plate that you plan to use. Turn the dish upside-down on top of it and trim it to fit - you want it pretty exact. Then put the crust on a cookie sheet, and put the cookie sheet in the oven to bake. Set the timer for 14 minutes.

By now the water is boiling, so put the peas in while you chop the carrots - try to get the pieces not much bigger than the peas. After four minutes, scoop the peas and onions out with a slotted spoon and drop in the carrots. Put the peas into the casserole dish.

While the carrots cook (set a timer for 8 minutes), peel and chop the onions. They don't need to be chopped very small. The reason you cook them first is because otherwise the peels are annoying to remove. Also chop the chicken and put it in the casserole dish.

Put the chopped onions into a skillet with the milk, bouillon, and flour. Whisk the flour until smooth and turn on the heat. Whisk constantly while it warms up.

By now the crust is probably ready to check and the carrots are probably ready, too. If the crust is golden, remove it and set it aside; otherwise, give it another 2 minutes. Put the carrots into the casserole dish, and add 2/3 cup of the cooking water (which is now a tasty broth) to the milk mixture in the skillet.

When the milk mixture thickens and bubbles, remove it from the heat and pour it into the casserole dish. Add the herbs. By now, all the filling ingredients should be in the casserole dish. Just mix them together.

Gently remove the crust from the baking sheet and place on top of the pie.

You're done!

Here's the "why" for some of the weird things I did in this recipe:

Why the annoying little onions? No idea, but their flavor is necessary. Yellow or large white onions just don't cut it. Sorry! Boiling them first makes it easier, and they don't sting your eyes either.

Why bake the crust separately? Maybe this is just me, but I can't ever keep the filling from bubbling over the crust and making it soggy if I bake the crust on top of the pie. Also, this way shaves a good 15 minutes off the prep time.

Why THIS crust and not a pie crust? It's healthier this way. Less butter, but still homey. It's a biscuit recipe. You could use Bisquick or even refrigerated biscuit dough if you like.

Why bouillon and not broth? Because this way you can use milk as some of the liquid, lending creaminess and richness to the gravy without all the added fat that would come from the butter and/or cream one would normally have to use to get that same effect.

Why all the micro-managing? I don't need you to tell me how to chop my own dam carrots! Because if you do it just like I say, you can have homemade chicken pot pie on the table in half an hour. That's a pretty impressive achievement. But by all means, feel free to prepare it in whatever order you prefer.

Why rotisserie chicken? Because it is delicious.

Like I said, this is the result of a lot of trial and error. To my taste it is a damned near perfect (pardon my French) combination of authentic and delicious homestyle flavor together with modern healthful cooking. The only problem is the butter. You could use vegetable shortening, but you'd have to add more salt. You can also cut the biscuit recipe in half and have a thinner crust.

Hello and Welcome to Fall - Autumnal Turkey Cutlets

Autumnal Turkey Cutlets

4 turkey cutlets
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup chopped dried cranberries
1/4 cup crumbled gorgonzola or blue cheese
1/4 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp chopped fresh sage
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup cooking sherry

Heat a skillet over medium-high heat. Coat with cooking spray, and spread the turkey in the skillet to cook for 3 minutes.

Turn the turkey over, and sprinkle all the other ingredients on top EXCEPT the sherry. Cover and cook for another four minutes or until done. Remove the turkey to a plate.

Add the sherry to deglaze the pan, and cook off the alcohol. Drizzle the resultant pan juices over the turkey.

I served this with honey-roasted root vegetables as listed in Cooking Light, one of my favorite side dishes. Though its extensive labor in chopping the veggies kind of negates the speed and convenience of the turkey cutlets!