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I found this recipe for Skinny Chicken Parmesan from Feeding My Temple on pinterest a while back. It annoys me when I see “skinny” in the title of recipes, but it’s a fast way to know that somebody’s made an attempt at making a healthy dish.

As per usual, I made some modifications.

The recipe is simple: Bread your meat, pour sauce over it, top with cheese and bake. And for you people counting points, it’s 7 points + per serving — her recipe makes 8 servings.

Since I can’t eat gluten, I used our trusty food processor to crush up some corn flakes and rice krispies to use instead of bread crumbs.

Also, I don’t use fat free cheese. When they make fat free and reduced fat things, they add filler. Usually filler is something you don’t want to eat. Unless there is a MAJOR difference in fat or calories, I always choose the real deal.

I also recommend buying the bricks of cheese and making your own shredded cheese. Why? Two reasons: It’s cheaper and there’s less preservatives and salt in it that way. When they prepackage shredded cheese, all sorts of junk goes into the cheese to keep it from clumping together or drying out.

Okay, now that I’ve preached to you about the dangers of reduced fat, fat free and fake stuff, I’ll share a secret with you. The real reason we shred our own cheese (well Mark’s real reason anyway): We add a clove of garlic to it. Adding a clove to the cheese while shredding it pretty much infuses the cheese with the garlic.

He might kick my butt for sharing this secret … he seems to think it was HIS idea. But I bet there are other garlic lovers out there who’ve been doing this or something similar for years.

Ah, yes. Garlic cheese.

Bread your meat … put it in the oven with some sauce and cheese over it, and bake.

YUM.

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At least once a month my apartment fills with the delicious aroma of sautéed onions and garlic.  You can bet that one of those aroma-filled days is a sauce-making day. It’s become a monthly tradition to make a giant pot of marinara to last for the upcoming few weeks. Freeze, thaw and create. The marinara we make is an excellent base for just about anything — chicken, sausage, shrimp, beef, turkey, veggies — you name it. We’ve even used it as a pizza sauce in a pinch.

Oh, and when I say “we” make, I really should probably say Mark makes. It’s really his baby. I would like to try this with fresh tomatoes sometime. Hopefully sometime I will have a garden with which to do such experimentations.

M. Cecconi’s Marinara

2 T olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
4 large cans of diced tomatoes
Italian seasoning
crushed red pepper
salt and black pepper

In a very large pot, heat olive oil over medium.  Add garlic and sauté for 2-3 minutes.

Toss in onion and sauté for 3-5 more minutes.  Add salt and pepper to taste (usually a teaspoon of each).

After onions turn glossy, add tomatoes and stir. Add Italian seasoning (usually 2-3 tablespoons) and a dash of crushed red pepper*.

Reduce heat to low and put lit on pot. Let simmer for several hours, stirring occasionally. Once the sauce has been cooked to the consistency of your liking, let cool and pour 1-2 cups at a time in a blender and blend to a consistency of your choice (I like mine chunky, so I blend half the sauce and mix in the rest). Separate into smaller containers and freeze until use.

*If you like spicy, add 1 teaspoon. If not, go with 1/2 teaspoon. It won’t taste very spicy until after the sauce has been simmered and blended.

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After Mark’s trek to the Des Moines Farmers Market last week, he came up with an amazingly awesome idea for dinner. He’d picked up a batch of garlic focaccia bread (and I wish I knew where he bought it from, because I’d love to credit them — not to mention, get MORE). I had some steak in the fridge from grilling a few nights previous. Thus, his idea was born.

Grilled Steak and Blue Cheese Sammies on Garlic Focaccia Bread

1 large chuck steak, grilled to taste (I like medium rare), sliced thin
1 loaf garlic focaccia bread, sliced into 4 quarters, then sliced lengthwise for sandwiches
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T butter
1 avacado
1/2 c blue cheese crumbles
baby leaf lettuce
steak sauce or hot sauce

Heat a small skillet over medium. Butter and spread garlic on the bread. Toast bread until brown and crispy. Repeat with all slices. Set aside. To assemble sandwiches, place steak, avacado, blue cheese, lettuce and choice of sauce on the sandwich. Serve warm. Makes 4 sandwiches.

Sorry I’m a terrible recipe-writer, but that’s pretty much what we did. It was amazing. Check out the photos. They’re totally drool-worthy.

Focaccia, pre-grilling

Mark grilling the bread

Of course, Mark added more garlic to his bread after toasting.

Sandwiches, almost ready to go — sans lettuce

And the finished product … almost too big for me to eat.

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Mark was challenged last weekend. The task: make dinner without going to the grocery store.  He could only use what I had in the apartment.

Could he do it?

Was there really any question? This kid knows his stuff. He pulled through. And in a fancy way.

I’m not including a recipe this time because we’re going to refine it with all the changes we talked about during dinner, but it was still amazingly delicious. The list of ingredients included: lasagne noodles, tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, fontina cheese, basil, italian chicken sausage, garlic … I think that might have been it. Not sure what order. He made a sauce of some sort out of the cheeses and rolled the lasagne noodles around the sausage. I added the basil towards the end (I LOVE BASIL. Especially fresh basil).

My addition to dinner was the garlic toast. I actually used rye bread instead of my normal wheat. I will share a recipe for that (so you don’t walk away feeling cheated!)

Calee’s Garlic Toast

(recipe is per slice of bread — because I may or may not just make one piece occasionally)
1 slice bread (I like Sarah Lee 45 Calories and delightful)
1.5 T olive oil
italian spices
1/2 t minced garlic (or less if you’re into that)
2 T parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400°.  Mix all ingredients except the bread.  Pour or spread onto the slice of bread. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until toasted.

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