A few years ago, I bought this fabulous cookbook about soups -- Twelve Months of Monastary Soups by d'Avila-Latourrette. It's got some great bones for soup recipes and is absolutely fabulous for those wanting to get into using seasonal produce.

Black bean soups and chilis are great food for the winter, because they're rich and hearty and the spiciness warms you from the inside out. They also reheat fabulously, for those with smaller households or who like to bring their lunch.

This soup is on the thin side as written on the book (with an extra cup of water), but I like my soups on the thicker side. I'm totally guilty of using up half a package of saltines in thin soups to get it to the consistency I like. The photo above was taken on the third eating of the soup, so it's really starting to thicken up.

In the last few months, I've been making dietary changes in an effort to eat more healthily -- more fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, less senseless fat and grease.

One of the things that has been problematic for me is my love for meatloaf, hamburgers, and meatballs. All of these things are typically made with cheap (and fatty) meat, and yet, are so comforting. Swapping out the beef for turkey or chicken definitely helps with the caloric issues, but It Just Doesn't Taste The Same, and sometimes, what you really want is that comforting taste from home, the beef. After many experiments, I have finally found something that saves the ground beef! It really was obvious, I don't know why I couldn't think of it on my own, especially given in my days of vegetarianism, I often used mushrooms as a meat substitute.

Swapping out 1/3 of the meat for cooked minced mushrooms, adding more diced vegetables, and swapping out bread crumbs for steel cut oats are all things that go for the good cause: switching to leaner meat (reducing the fat content and calories), increasing the grains (and better-for-you than pulverized white bread), and adding all sorts of vegetables ends up making meatloaf healthier without sacrificing the texture or flavor is great! And I'll be honest: as good as my mom's meatloaf was, this tastes better. (Sorry, mom!)

According to the magazine whose recipe I based this off of, the ground chuck/ground pork/bread version has 440 calories and 30 grams of fat per portion and their version (which has less vegetables - I've marked my additions in the ingredient list) has 268 calories and 12 grams of fat.


Since trying this out, I've tried swapping out 1/3 of the meat for cooked minced mushroom in meatballs and hamburgers, and it's worked out really well. As well, grinding the oats down (to be as fine as the bread was) makes the oats a fairly good substitute for bread crumbs in meatballs, as well.

I'm not particularly a fan of the 'meat and potatoes' school of thought for dinner, but there is something to be said about how quick and dirty it is. But as much as I love my mother's meatloaf, complete with its 1950s ketchup glaze, I do like shaking things up a bit. Minced aromatics (onion, garlic, bell pepper, carrot, celery) add a nice flavor, as well as ups the vegetable quotient (and nothing is as wrong as when she was feeling short of time and used dehydrated onion instead of chopping an onion). Worcestershire sauce and Dijon mustard do a great job at adding a bit of flavor, along with the typical salt and pepper - the extra liquids help keep it moist and juicy. Personally, I strongly prefer rolled oats to bread crumbs as the extender (fresh or not), though I'll be honest: I haven't tried it with my heartier multi-grain bread. (White bread is so flavorless - why would you want to put it in anything?!) But my favorite thing is my tweak on her ketchup glaze (2 parts ketchup to 1 part brown sugar). Adding some vinegar does wonders at thinning the sauce and balancing the sweetness.

Today, I bring you the blissful carb coma that is homemade mac and cheese.

I've never really been a fan of mac and cheese. I mean, it's alright in a pinch, but most of the time, it's too cheesy (instead of being creamy), or it's got a weird combination of cheeses (leaving stringy or separated cheeses).

But my mom and sister love it. So I ran into the recipe at cooking for engineers and offered to make it. It didn't look like it could be too bad. After all, it's originally from Cook's Country (Cook's Illustrated laid back baby sister), and they do some serious research into their recipe creations and analyze it in ways that would make even an engineer cry


Now, I made it a little differently. I'm a big fan of not going to the store for one or two items if I've got something that I can substitute with. So, instead of American cheese (which I really don't care for and only buy if I have a hankering for a cheap grilled cheese sandwich), I used colby. It doesn't have the stabilizing influence that the processed cheese has, but the flavor profile is similar (American cheese used to be made with a combination of colby and cheddar). Actually, I didn't even do that, because all I had on hand was a block of colby-jack (which is a blend of monterey jack and colby), and hey, monterey jack was called for in the recipe too, so there you go. 8 oz colby-jack instead of 5oz American/3oz monteray jack. And it didn't really sit for the whole 10 minutes afterwards.

I also put a pinch of my truffle salt in there, because I love adding just a pinch of it to cream sauces (which this very much is - a béchamel that has cheese melted into it). And there you have it: truffle salt, nutmeg, and cayenne are my cream sauce secret ingredients. And I used a generous pinch of cayenne instead of the hot sauce (because, again, I'm not going to the store for one or two items, especially when I have to buy way more than I will need for this one recipe and I pretty much NEVER use it)


Anyway... the carb coma was blissful afterwards. Creamy and cheesy without being clumpy or separated (which is so, so disgusting) or being too creamy or too cheesy, smooth. Perfect, really. I wasn't really expecting to like it as much as I did (especially since I normally am not one for a sprinkling of bread crumbs on top), but even that turned out quite well.