Shepherd's Celery Root Pie

The recipe of the month is, again, a good low calorie dish. But it doesn't look low calorie and it definitely doesn't taste low calorie. You can make this for anyone really and just not tell them that it's "diet," and if they like this casserole type of dish, I promise they will eat it. 

I personally can't eat stupid "diet" food that personal trainers are always telling you to eat, like plain steamed vegetables with poached fish; I'd almost rather just be fat and die young. Get a registered dietitian if you want food advice, gym rats are not famous for their love of fine dining. Anyone who would drink a protein shake more than once is unqualified to tell you how to eat healthy food that is also delicious.

We could all use some extra comfort, especially when trying to lose fat/weight, and this works for me. The reason I am using celery root here instead of traditional potatoes is not just because it's only 8 calories per ounce mashed, it's because it stays moister and therefore needs hardly any added butter in order to actually taste buttery. (You know how you can put a ton of butter into potatoes and they can still have a dry texture? That won't happen here.) By the way, if you're not sure what a celery root looks like, I have a picture on this recipe: Cream Baked Eggs and Fried Celery Root

Ingredients:

1 pound of lean ground beef, 93% lean or better (please don't use turkey, we are already substituting for potatoes, and if you take out the red meat too, well it's just not Shepherd's pie anymore)
1 large carrot, grated
1 small package of mushrooms, quartered, your favorite kind (if you hate mushrooms, substitute with a grated summer squash, but squeeze the juice out of the gratings.) 
1/2 small onion, chopped finely
2 teaspoons salt 
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon savory
1or 2 tablespoons steak sauce like A-1 or HP
1 large or two small celery roots (also called celeriac) peeled (like you would peel a pineapple) and cubed
2 teaspoons of butter (yes, only teaspoons)
splash of milk (about 1/8 cup)  
1 ounce grated cheese, any kind- I went trashy and used strips of one and 3/4 slices of Kraft Cheddar)

Put the peeled and cubed celery root pieces into a pot of simmering salted water and cook for about 15 minutes, or until the cubes are soft. Drain the celery root and mash up with the butter, the splash of low fat milk and some of the salt. You want about 20 ounces of this mash for your pie. Don't be cheap with the salt unless your doctor ordered you too. Dieting is not the time to cut everything out, it makes you too sad.

Saute the ground beef and onions on high heat for about five minutes until the  meat is all browned.  Add a teaspoon of salt, the pepper and other spices, the steak sauce, and the grated carrot and chopped mushrooms, and continue to stir and cook for a another five minutes, until everything looks heated through.

Pour the meat mixture first into a casserole dish, mine is about 11" x 8"

 Top this with the celery root mash, spread it out evenly and then sprinkle the cheese on top. Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes, until the edges are brown and the cheese is melted. This makes six servings of about 175 calories each, or four very generous servings for about 265 calories per serving. With calories this low you can afford a 140 calorie bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale with it. (I'm just saying.)

 You could be fancy and put fresh herbs on top, but frankly that takes away from the home-style feel in my opinion. If you go that route, I recommend dill or very finely chopped flat parsley.

Fall is here! Beef and Golden Beet Stew with Gnocchi

Don't worry about exact measurements here, to be honest I didn't actually measure out the chopped vegetables or meat, so you can play around with those amounts and it won't really matter, but I would err on the side of too much on the vegetables rather than too little. When they are chopped finely like this, they melt into the stew and become a thick comforting gravy, perfect for a chilly fall Sunday evening.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 to 2 pounds beef stew meat, cubed (chuck roast is good)
1/2 bottle red wine
water 
5 small golden beets
1/3 cup flour for dusting on the meat.
1/2 cup chopped red onion
1/2 cup finely chopped  fennel bulb
1/2 cup finely chopped carrot
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 heaping tablespoon herbs de Provence
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons pepper
2 bay leaves
1 package of gnocchi, or make your own homemade recipe

In your stew pot, heat up two of the tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat, then brown up the stew meat chunks that you've already dusted with flour.  This will take a few minutes, and hopefully you'll get lots of good brown stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan. When the meat is browned on most sides, dump it out on a plate and use about a cup of the wine to de-glaze the pan for one minute, still on medium-high heat, using a wooden spoon to scrape up all the crusty brown bits on the bottom.

Turn down the heat to a low simmer, and put the meat back in the pot, along with a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of pepper and the dried herbs.

While the meat gets started simmering in that cup of wine, you can chop up the onion, celery, carrots and fennel, and then saute them in a separate frying  pan with the other two tablespoons of olive oil, on high heat. Add the other teaspoon of salt and pepper to these veggies and stir them around occasionally. 

After about five minutes of cooking, when you see some brown edges on the veggies, add some of the wine, a few splashes at a time, so that it evaporates as it goes and get absorbed into the veggies, use about a half cup of wine total for this part. 


Turn off the heat when all of the liquid is absorbed and the veggies look soft and yummy. Doing this separate step, instead of just throwing the raw vegetables in, is the difference between. "Mmm, good stew." and "Wow, this is so good!"

 
With the beets, just use a paring knife to kind of "give them a shave," just scrape the outsides to clean them up a bit, don't peel them like a potato.  

Just before adding the water and bay leaves

Quarter them and add them to the stew, along with the chopped veggies that you just cooked, and the bay leaves. 

Add enough warm water to cover the ingredients, then cover the stew and simmer on very low (just a few slow bubbles) for one hour. After  one hour, tilt the lid so it's partially open, and cook for another hour.

After the two hours, dump in your dried gnocchi packet and stir, then turn heat up to a brisk simmer and cook for about three minutes or until gnocchi is done. 

If you are making homemade gnocchi or paleo sweet potato gnocchi, just follow the recipe cooking instructions and serve the stew over them instead of mixing them in to cook.

I recommend a Tempranillo or red Zinfandel wine with this.

Roasted Sausage with Fresh Figs and Carrots

My lovely neighbor very generously gave me a HUGE bag of fresh figs from her giant fig tree, and they were sweet and delicious. I ate ten or fifteen, but the thing is with fresh figs is that they get squishy very quickly, and sometimes if you have a lot of them getting ripe at the same time, you just can't eat them quickly enough.  

Obviously you can make jam, but they are really good in breads and meat dishes too.

Ingredients:
5 spicy Italian or Spanish sausages, cut in half
10 large fresh figs, whole
1 large sweet onion, chopped roughly into fairly large pieces
1/2 cup chopped fennel bulb
1 bunch small baby carrots, or 4 large carrots chopped into 2 inch pieces (if you don't like cooked carrots substitute sweet potato or Yukon Gold potatoes, cubed into small pieces)
2 tablespoons fresh chopped rosemary
1 teaspoon dried orange peel (or zest about half a fresh orange)
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt(or more)
1/2 cup fruity red wine OR if the figs are not very sweet use a ruby port
2 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Drizzle a large roasting pan with one tablespoon of oil, then arrange all of the fruit, veggies and sausages in the pan, then pour the wine over everything, then the other tablespoon of olive oil, and then sprinkle over the spices.

Roast in the oven for about 30-35 minutes. You can dish out the sausage and carrots first, then mash up the figs and onions into the juices before serving over the top. This serves about four people, and would pair nicely with an arugula salad and a nice Tempranillo wine like Black Hat from Scribner Bend.

Zinfandel Shank Stew

Ingredients:

3 or 4 cross cut beef shank slices, pasture raised if you can get it
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 whole cloves of garlic, peeled
4 or 5 small thin carrots
1/2 celery root, peeled and cubed
a few baby turnips, halved, or a regular sized turnip, cubed up
2 or 3 golden potatoes (or sweet potatoes if you prefer)
1 cup red Zinfandel wine
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
several dashes of Worcestershire sauce
water
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon savory
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1 cup shitake mushrooms
1 tablespoon Irish butter
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
several pats of extra butter

That's right. No onions.

Heat the olive oil in a pot that's big enough to fit your beef shank slices along the bottom. When the oil is very hot, brown the shanks on both sides. Lower the heat to low, and add a cup of your favorite red Zinfandel wine, the Worcestershire and enough warm water to cover the meat by several inches. Add the salt and all of the spices, as well as the garlic cloves, and simmer covered for a half hour.

Prepare the rest of the vegetables, and when the half hour is up, chuck them in the pot too. Cover again and let it simmer for another half hour.

While that is happening, slice your shitake mushrooms and cook them in the butter on very high heat for five minutes, without turning or stirring them, then you can stir them up a bit and cook them to your taste. The reason you don't mess with them at first is because you want them to get roasty-toasty brown on at least one side. If your butter is unsalted, add a pinch of salt at the end.

When the stewed beef and vegetables are done, serve them up  in big bowls with a pat of butter  in each, making sure you have a little bit of everything in there, and lots of juice for you to soak up with your bread. What I do is pull the little round bones out before serving, but I take the marrow out of each one with a small knife or spoon and mix it in with the stew.

Top each bowl with fresh parsley and a sprinkling of pan fried mushrooms.

Cream Baked Eggs and Fried Celery Root

The cashier at the market usually has to think for a minute to remember the code for celery root (or celeriac), or she has to look it up. The bagger will frequently look puzzled, and ask me, "What do you DO with that?" 

I always say the same thing, "Oh you just peel it, and substitute it in recipes for potatoes." 

I like celery root, it has that nice herb-y sweet celery taste, but with starchier texture. True to my word to curious bag-boys at the grocery store, I suggest using it here as a potato replacement for a fried breakfast side dish.

But first, we begin with the eggs, because they will go in the oven while you make the root vegetables.

Ingredients for Two People:

4 eggs
4 slices of your favorite soft sliced bread (if you're doing Paleo, use "cloud bread")
2 teaspoons of soft butter
4 tablespoons heavy organic cream
salt and pepper
4 ramekins, or just use a muffin pan

Preheat the oven to 350, or 325 convection.
  
I have the standard little ramekins from Cost Plus World Market, they are fairly inexpensive, and when you're not using them for stuff like this, they are good for serving dipping sauces and condiments.

Start by rubbing the inside of each ramekin with a half teaspoon of soft butter. Then, cut circles out of the center of each bread slice. You can either use a biscuit cutter that's about the same size, or a little bigger than, the diameter of the ramekin. I actually just used the ramekin itself to cut the circles (they weren't perfect, but who cares?) Stuff each circle into the bottom of a ramekin. 

Carefully crack a large egg on top of each bread slice, and sprinkle very well with salt and pepper. Top with a tablespoon of cream, then put  in the oven for 15-20 minutes, depending on how you like your eggs. They are soooo gooooood.

You can go ahead and serve them in the ramekins, they will stay warm longer, but if you're worried about someone accidentally burning their fingers on the burning hot ceramic (that would be me), you can just run a thin knife around the edge and use a large spoon to gently half-scoop half-slide them out onto the plate.

While your eggs are in the oven, you can make the side dish.

Ingredients for the Side Dish:

1 celery root
4 skinny young carrots (small sweet ones)
olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper 
1/4 teaspoon allspice
fresh chives

Pour a generous amount of oil for frying in a cast iron (or regular) skillet and turn heat up to high. Don't worry about fat, these veggies don't soak it up like potatoes do. 

Start by peeling your celery root. Use a chef's knife and think of it like a pineapple. Cut the bottom off and then use the knife to carve off the outside from the top down, then cut the top off last, it's better to err on the side of wasting than be left with ugly brown outer fuzz.

Slice the celery root into discs, then chop into little cubes. Chop the carrots as well (don't bother peeling them) and put them in the frying pan. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and ground allspice and cook on high 10-15 minutes stirring frequently.

After ten minutes, just give one of your celery root cubes a taste, to see if it's cooked to your liking, you may like it a little on the firmer side than I do (also check for salt). Use a slotted spoon or spatula to remove from the pan and serve with fresh green chives on top, along with your buttery-creamy baked eggs.
(I had them on the side in the picture, but you should chop the chives on top of the vegetables.)

Braised Beef and Lettuce with Dill

Cooked lettuce. It's sweet and lovely. Please don't try to be a lettuce snob and substitute something darker like kale or dandelion greens in this dish. The whole point here is to have mild sweetness- this is a happy, smiley dish. It's a dish to make you feel cozy. You may watch re-runs of Happy Days or Mork and Mindy while you eat this, you may not discuss obscure 19th Century Russian literature or translate the works of Thucydides.

Ingredients:

8 ounces of lean ground beef
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup of cherry tomatoes slices in half
1 small head green lettuce, or half of a normal sized one, roughly chopped
1/2 sweet onion, sliced thinly
2 tablespoons of sherry
1/2 cup warm water
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon dried dill (very important)

Over med-high heat, cook your ground beef in the olive oil until it is well browned. Add the sliced onions and salt and pepper to taste, and cook for another 2-3 minutes, still on med-high. Add the tomatoes, sherry and water. Let this bubble up, then stir in the dill and lettuce and turn the heat down to a low setting (like a 3) and cook for another 7-10 minutes. 

I took the picture before adding cheese, but if you are a dairy fanatic like I am, you can sprinkle on top a mild soft cheese, a dab of Greek yogurt, or a knob of Irish butter. 

This recipe serves two, with each serving adding up to only 325 calories, assuming you use lean beef and limit yourself to 1 ounce of goat cheese to top each serving. I am not suggesting you count calories, but you have to admit, that's a nice lunch for that caloric price!  

Breakfast With Color, and I Don't Mean Fruit Loops: Eggs & Zucchini

I've been eating toast and cheese, or cereal, for breakfast during my illness, and to be honest it probably made me worse. Today I finally had a good breakfast that left me feeling light and energetic, but had lots of fresh flavor.

If you don't like eggs, just make the same thing and add more zucchini or some mushrooms- and just know that I think you're a little weird.

Ingredients:

2 green zucchini, quartered lengthwise and then sliced
1/2 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, sliced in half
1 teaspoon savory
1/2 teaspoon (or more) garlic salt
several dashes of black pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 ounce of crumbled feta, or whatever sharp cheese you have
2 good quality organic eggs
salt 

In a non-stick skillet heat your olive oil on high and add the zucchini and garlic salt. Cook for about 2 minutes then add the savory, a bit of pepper and the tomatoes. Continue to cook on high for another 3-5 minutes, depending on how much you  like your veggies cooked, making sure you stir them around once in a while. 

After the veggies are cooked, add the feta cheese evenly over the top, then crack your eggs over the top as well. Now COVER the pan with a lid or foil, and turn the heat down to low/med-low. On my stove the eggs were done to over medium-ish in four minutes, but you can lift your lid after 3 minutes and poke your yolks gently to see if they are the way you like them. This method  is kind of nice because your eggs are basically steaming, so you don't have to flip them.

Salt and pepper the eggs and serve yourself  right away, with good hot coffee of course, and if you're a bread person I would go with toasted sourdough.

Stew...You Need Some

Well it's been awhile. Between having two different flu viruses and a cold, plus moving, I've been too sick and tired to cook for the past six weeks. I've been eating a lot of street tacos from the little Mexican place down the street, and more Chipotle burritos than is good for anyone. I'm also heartily sick of In-n-Out, and tired of turkey sandwiches. It's about time for some REAL food. 

It doesn't get any more "real" to me than beef stew. 

Ingredients:

1 to 1 1/2 pounds of beef (or lamb) stew meat
1/4 cup of some kind of organic flour
1/4 cup of good olive oil or Irish butter
1 large sweet onion, chopped
2 medium carrots, chopped (don't peel them)
3 celery stalks, chopped
1/2 fennel bulb, chopped
1 clove of garlic, whole
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon dried or fresh thyme
1 tablespoon dried savory
1/2 teaspoon dried orange peel
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon A1 Sauce
1/2 cup tawny port
1-2 cups of warm water, just enough to cover the ingredients

Cut the stew meat into small even pieces and then toss them in the flour to coat. Heat the oil or butter up in a medium sized pot, and then brown the meat pieces over medium-high heat for a couple of minutes (you don't have to brown them evenly, just get some brown stickiness going on). Remove the meat from the pan and set it aside, and yes, you have to do that. 

Now you can throw in all of the chopped veggies, I like to chop them pretty small so they sort of melt into the stew. Plus I've noticed kids and grown men who are weird about eating cooked vegetables like it better that way. Put the salt and pepper in with the veggies, and cook them, still on medium-high heat, stirring frequently. After about ten minutes, add the tawny port and then let it heat heat up before you add the stew meat and juices back in and turn the heat down to simmer. 

Next, add the warm water, just enough to cover everything, and also add in all of the spices. Cook on a good simmer, on my stove it's about a 2, uncovered, stirring occasionally for at least one hour.  
Use a wooden spoon to stir, I swear it makes it taste better. 

You can cook the stew up to 1 1/2 hours, or even two, but if you go up to 2 hours, turn the heat down to a slow simmer after the first hour. More than two hours will dry the meat out, so don't leave it too long. 

Serve over mashed sweet potatoes (not yams, that would be sort of redundant with all the carrots) or mashed sunchokes.

You're a fool if you don't at least consider drinking a big mug of porter or stout with it. Tonight we're drinking Samuel Smith's Imperial Stout

Steak, and Replacing Pasta with Vegetables

Last night I HAD to have steak. It just HAD to happen. No purveyors of fine steak were open late on a Sunday, so I made do with a Safeway steak- a nice double-thick rib eye. To further complicate my need for steak, I don't have anything that passes for a grill right now. 

I persevered.

I gently rubbed the 1+ lb, bone-in rib eye cowboy steak with olive oil. I poured Himalayan salt on it with reckless abandon. I sprinkled it generously with pepper. I let it hang out on the counter, looking good. I cooked it on both sides for one minute each in very hot oil. I then put it under the broiler in the oven for 15-ish minutes, then let it rest for another 10 minutes, taking it to medium-rare heaven in the middle, and medium on the edges. All steaks are shaped differently, so if you're not good at judging the cooking times, there's no shame in using a meat thermometer.

Now in the old days (and by that I mean over a year ago) I would serve this with some sort of starchy goodness, like pasta. Instead, I used all of the good things I would put on pasta, and put them on summer squash instead:

4 yellow summer squash
1/2 a sweet onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup white wine (or water or stock)
2 level tablespoons tomato paste
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 cup chopped fresh arugula leaves
1 oz of your favorite cheese, shredded or crumbled (I use feta)

Saute the onions, summer squash and spices in ONE of the tablespoons of olive oil for about 3-4 minutes on high. Then add the tomato paste, garlic, and white wine and lower to medium and cook until wine is gone and tomato paste looks thick again, another 3-4 minutes at least, depending on your stove. 

Lower the heat all the way down to the lowest setting, add the cheese, the other tablespoon of oil and the arugula leaves, stir it all in and let it hang out on the stove 'til your steak is done. Serve with sliced steak...and a nice big glass of Sangiovese.

Like most of my recipes, this meal will serve 2 people, or 1 person twice...

Roasted Lavender Chicken and Yams

It's cloudy and chilly, and that means only one thing, I need to stuff myself with comfort food. Nothing is more comforting than roast chicken. Okay, maybe a grilled rib eye is...or bread pudding...or macaroni and cheese...never-mind. The POINT is that hot juicy chicken, and sweet melt-in-your-mouth yams are pretty damned comforting.

Le recipee eez as follows <---say that with le faux French accent, because it makes it fancier.

5 organic chicken drumsticks ( I say 5 because that's what comes in a vacuum sealed package from Costco, one or two more or less really doesn't matter)
4 large yams, or 5 medium sized ones (yams are orange inside, sweet potatoes look almost like regular potatoes inside, although they work fine too)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup fruity and/or sweet white wine like a moscato
1 heaping teaspoon dried lavender (I have purchased this at Target, believe it or not, and also Cost Plus)
1 teaspoon dried orange peel, or zest an orange (you can use the juice too, whatever)
1 heaping teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 heaping teaspoon lavender
1 heaping teaspoon marjoram 
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 heaping teaspoon rosemary

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Wash the yams and cut them in half lengthwise. In a roasting pan (if you don't have one, your big lasagna pan will work fine) arrange your drumsticks and your yams in a single layer, don't stack anything, you want everything snugly laying side by side. You also want the skin side of your yams facing down. Pour the wine over everything, then pour the olive oil over. Next sprinkle all of your seasonings as evenly as possible, concentrating the garlic and rosemary on your chicken. The amounts on the seasonings are just a guideline, feel free to sprinkle on the seasonings right out of the bottle, and just go for it until everything has a nice even dusting! 

Roast in the oven for 45 minutes at the 425 degree temperature, then add a 1/3 cup water and tilt the pan a bit so it runs around, then cook another 10 minutes on 300 degrees. 

During cooking, the sugars from the yams will ooze out and get really dark colored, don't worry about it, it's not hurting anything. (Although you might have to soak the pan a bit before you wash it.)

When you serve your dish, pour a little of the syrupy glaze from the bottom of the pan over the chicken. You might want to serve a glass of that white wine that you used to cook it with, I mean what the hell are you going to do with that bottle of wine? You don't want to be one of those people who keeps open bottles of wine in their refrigerator for a year. That's just embarrassing. And it's insulting to the winemakers of the world.

 P.S. Cost Plus World Market is a good place to get spices at a decent price, as is Trader Joe's and Target (it was weird buying spices at Target, but they have been pretty good so far for the price.)

Peppery Kale and Cheddar Omelette

Cereal, toast, pancakes...all delicious. The problem is, when I eat these carb-a-riffic breakfast foods I feel weak and hungry an hour or two after. So most of the time for breakfast I eat either Greek yogurt with honey, cinnamon and almonds, or eggs cooked in some way with vegetables or herbs. Today's omelette came out extra tasty, so here we go:

2 eggs
2 tablespoons of water or milk
2 teaspoons of olive oil
1 chopped green onion
1 big handful of baby kale (I got a bag of organic at Costco for next to nothing)
salt 
black pepper
nutmeg (don't skip this, it's the best part)
1 slice sharp sharp Tillamook cheddar  (or other sharp cheese)
(grape tomatoes on the side for acidity and color)

Easy peasy, start with a teaspoon of the olive oil in a small non-stick pan over medium heat. Toss in the green onion and kale, salt them ever so slightly, and cook just until the kale wilts down. Remove the kale and onion from the pan and put the other teaspoon of olive oil in. While this is heating, in a bowl whip the heck out of your eggs and water (or milk) and add a good pinch of salt and pepper and a WHISPER (a half-dash?) of nutmeg. 

Pour into the pan and cook. I like to gently push the eggs toward the middle of the pan with my spatula and then tilt the pan around in a circular motion, letting the uncooked egg from the top layer of the omelette run to the sides of the pan and cook there. Once you have just a very thin sheen of uncooked egg on that top layer, place your kale, onion, and your slice of cheese on one half, then use your spatula to flip the other half of the circle to cover everything. 

Turn the heat off and let it sit in the pan for a minute until the cheese melts inside, then serve immediately with an extra sprinkle of good black pepper over the top and some tomatoes on the side.

 This actually kept me going until lunch, so it's eggs for the win.  

Costco Angst

Oh Costco. How I love thee and hate thee.

Love. I love the new cookbooks I purchased there, especially Practical Paleo (great book).

I love the prices for organic products, like tomato paste, blueberries, chicken, ground beef, sweet potatoes, carrots, baby kale, celery etc. 

You can get decent pans, knives, small kitchen appliances, and they'll take things back with very little trouble.

Now hate. Maybe hate is strong word, but the latest Costco attitude- I don't like it. Costco employees used to be among the friendliest. Now, I don't know, they always seem slightly irritated, at least they do at the three Costco locations I frequent here in Northern California.

The free samples...both love and hate those. Who doesn't like free food? I DO want to taste the new Greek yogurt. But do I want people crowding the aisles around the sample table like sheep making it impossible for me to effectively navigate when I'm in a hurry? I do not.

And what, may I ask, is going on with the boxes all of the sudden? They used to just box everything for you, and they did it with remarkable speed. Now IF you're lucky they'll ask you if you want a box, and then if you say, "Please box everything, I have to climb stairs with it all," they will box about half it. What is going on? Why are they hoarding boxes? What difference does it make if they go in my recycle bin or theirs? (If anyone actually knows the answer to this I'd like to hear it).

One day my husband asked for boxes and the check-out people actually said (with a straight face and everything), "We're out." 
He eyed them quietly for a moment and then said, "Really?" 
As they stood by, unconcerned, I watched him walk over to the nearest monster sized display of goods (I think it was men's socks and vitamins) and start consolidating items, which enabled him to grab two large empty boxes in about 30 seconds. The employees chatted while they waited for him. I was both vexed and entertained.

Ah, then we wait in the SECOND line, the line to get out of the store, where supposedly the cart gets checked for loss prevention purposes. This line makes me crazy. How do other stores manage to make it without this stupid extra step? Are they all going out of business? I paid for my stuff, just let me go! 

So having ranted like a looney, I will close with this, I will keep shopping at Costco because I am addicted to cheap organic food and the best price for sparkling water around. But I will grab my own boxes as I shop and as I wait at the door to exit while they look over my receipt, I will say over and over, in a screechy panicked voice, "I didn't steal anything I swear!"

Oh and P.S. to Costco. Eggs are not dairy. Dairy comes from wing-less creatures like cows and sheep. Eggs come from chickens. Chickens do not make milk. When I say "Where are the eggs?" and the Costco employee looks at me like I'm an idiot and says, "In the dairy room of course," well it makes me want to hurl my free sample in his face.

Stuffed Squash Blossoms

Cooking with flowers...it's not really an everyday thing. Usually when you think of flowers and cooking, well, you think of them sprinkled over a wedding cake or an over-priced salad. To me squash blossoms really taste more like an herb, or a type of lettuce and they're just the perfect shape for stuffing. If you haven't tried them, give it a shot. Lots of people fry them, or stuff them with cheese, but here's how I like to cook them:

 

Before Baking

 

Lunch!

Thank you, farmer's market! I got a bag of squash flowers this past summer for only a few dollars. These beautiful yellow and orange squash blossom babies are good stuffed with almost any mixture of rice or meat and fresh herbs (think dill or mint), but this time I stuffed 15 squash blossoms with:

3/4 pound good quality grass fed ground beef (or choose the best beef at your store)
1 medium egg
5 dried California plums, diced
2 green onions, diced
Two Tablespoons fresh parsley (I'm weird, I like the curly stuff)
2 tablespoons pine nuts (other nuts or seeds are good too, that's just what I have today)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper (estimate)
1/4 teaspoon allspice (if you've had your allspice for ages, use double)
1 lemon wedge to squeeze on after
a little olive oil

Clean blossoms if they need it and get rid of the stems. Rub baking dish with good olive oil. Mix ingredients and stuff into squash blossoms. Arrange them on the baking dish and spray or lightly drizzle with more olive oil. Bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes (could be longer depending on your oven) basically cook them until your meat is cooked through. Serve warm or room temp. with olives, cheese, and/or fresh bread.