simple.green.organic.happy.

Category: Food & Recipes

Easy Dinners with a Side of Fancy: Rose Romano’s Italian Peppers
Sir, respect your dinner: idolize it, enjoy it properly.

You will be many hours in the week,
many weeks in the year,
and many years in your life happier if you do.

William Makepeace Thackeray

We Eltons like food. And we especially appreciate a good dinner (followed closely for our appreciation for a good dessert, a good mid-afternoon snack, and a good breakfast. Lunch kinda gets the bum rush around here).

If you’ve been reading here for the long haul, in other words you’re Danielle Liss or my mother-in-law, you’ll remember I went through a phase where I made everything from scratch. We ate really well then. I was also not employed at that time. The two are probably related.

Note: it is possible to make everything from scratch and stay on a tight budget if you work full time and blog on the side. Just not if you also have three kids in sports, work evening hours and also don’t really enjoy cooking. We give our hours to the things we desire most, and currently that’s sleep for me.

Anyway, Jeff and the kids got really super spoiled during that time from scratch, and they don’t like things like boxed pasta and jarred sauce anymore. You know, those easy standby dinners for busy nights. I understand the taste is a totally different experience, but glory, Momma gets tired, yes?

While we were at the beach last month a little birdie brought us something to make Momma’s life a little easier.

The birdie in question works for UPS and apparently can’t read.

“This Side Up” FAIL.

(Cheerful aside: please don’t tell Jeff I posted a photo of our peeling porch paint! Thankyouverymuch)

Anyway, everything in the box was unharmed as the jars were thoughtfully packed in their own little nests. (Top photo.)

What do the jars contain? Rose Romano’s Italian Peppers, a gourmet topping of fresh bell peppers simmered in a traditional marinara. All-natural, locally sourced ingredients with no synthetic preservatives, only items that you can recognize as real food:

Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), Fresh Red Bell Peppers, Fresh Onions, Brown Sugar, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Fresh Basil, Fresh Garlic, Sea Salt, Fruit Juice for Color, Citric Acid, Spices

Unlike most jarred sauces, Rose Romano’s isn’t bland or watery, and a little goes a long way. It’s intended to enhance and elevate the flavor of your meal, not obscure it.

The package came with a menu of meal ideas, which was awesome (I think it would be fun to make a family menu. Not really practical anymore, since my kids can read and don’t need to point at a picture, but fun anyways). We picked out a few things but Jeff threw the menu out under suspicion of cluttering the kitchen counter for more than 48 hours, so I had to wing it. Granted, the website has a ton of quick and easy recipes, but that didn’t occur to me until I started writing this, and now I want a Brie panini.

The very good news: everyone, including Jeff, loves the flavor of Rose Romano’s. Enough that they will also me to bring pasta back, even if I didn’t hand crank it myself.

Frozen locally-made ravioli on a bed of garlic spinach; topped with Rose Romano’s and a smattering of porcini. Heavenly.

Grilled chicken and salad (sprinkling of chia) is deemed dinner-worthy when you add a little Rose Romano’s dipping sauce.

We’ve also used Rose Romano’s in Western omelets, on Texas Toast, on burgers, on meatball sandwiches, with sausage and onion: all people-pleasing meals without a ton of time invested. Sometimes I do eat without my phone at the table, so I missed documenting those.

We went through those jars in no time flat. But they live on: I washed them out and use them as water glasses; sometimes I’ll throw a serving of protein powder in one and cap it, then add water after a workout. Portable protein shake.

The box is begging to be reused as a shadowbox, but I haven’t decided what I want to put in there yet.

The last of the Rose Romano’s was used in a family standby that we got from Jeff’s grandmother. After we ate it (and it was particularly yum) I asked Jeff if he wanted to hear the healthy substitutions I’d made, and he sighed heavily and said, “I’ll read it on your blog.”

Um, OK. Here it is then. I’ve changed the name to protect the family recipe

Rose Romano’d Meat-and-Cheese Casserole

You’ll need:

One package egg noodles
One diced onion, I use a medium sized one, I like onion
One jar Rose Romano’s Italian Peppers
One pound of ground beef, more or less
One bar of cream cheese
One small container of sour cream, I think that’s 9oz. (or equivalent amount of plain Chobani yogurt)

Here’s what you do:
- Preheat oven to 375°, grease an 8×8 deep dish
- Boil your egg noodles for one minute less than the “al dente” time on the bag (they’ll cook more in the oven). I’m assuming other broad noodles would work just as well; Jeff won’t let me stray from that part of the recipe. Also, I think “broad noodle” would be a fun insult.
- Sauté your ground beef (I think grass-fed & free-range gives the casserole a better flavor; it’s also way less fat and of course easier on the environment) and your diced onion until the beef is cooked through. Add jar of Rose Romano’s peppers. Simmer on low. If you are using a leaner beef, add a spoonful of sugar, it mellows the flavor. Trust me.
- Cut the cream cheese into chunks in a microwaveable bowl and nuke for 30 seconds. Stir. Microwave a few seconds more if necessary to get a spreadable consistency.
- Add your sour cream, or swap it out for plain Chobani yogurt if nobody’s looking.
- Layer in your greased dish: noodles, cheese mix, sauce, noodles, cheese mix, sauce.
- Bake until bubbly, about 35-40 minutes.
I think this tastes even better the day after. Those are the best kinds of meals to make because I’m pretty much the only one who eats leftovers.

This is not an “eating light” recipe. It’s not fancy and it doesn’t photograph well. BUT. It’s comfort food, it’s delicious, it yields leftovers, it reheats well, it’s a fill-you-up-for-your-long-run-or-soccer-game sort of meal. We need those sometimes, for our bodies and our souls.

I wish I still had some. Sigh.

Give me some more ideas! What recipe involves a marinara that I could elevate with a little Rose Romano?

What other healthy or healthy-ish substitutions can I sneak in now, blog about later?

Disclosure: I received Rose Romano products for review purposes. All opinions are my own.
September 10, 2012
Why the Nutritional Content of Organic vs Non Doesn’t Matter
Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.
-Brillat-Savarin

Today all over my internets there were headlines about the “breaking news” of a newly released study indicating the nutritional content of organic food is not much different than conventionally grown; that researchers found only “a few differences involving pesticides and antibiotics.”

No kidding.

How is this even news? An apple is an apple, friends; an orange is an orange. Which apple or orange you consume makes little difference in the nutrition your body will gain from it, and that’s why I advise to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If all you can afford is conventionally grown, then by all means choose that over processed and packaged.

But those “few differences” involving pesticides and antibiotics are kind of a big deal.

Personal nutrition isn’t the reason to buy organic, just like we don’t hold open doors for old ladies just so they might include us in their will or donate to children’s hospitals just in case our own kids are one day struck down by cancer. We do those things for the greater good. We do them because they are the right thing to do.

By buying organic, we:
- contribute to the health of the farmers and laborers so they don’t have to handle dangerous pesticides.
- contribute to the health of local ecosystems by not decimating the insect population, which is needed to support the food chain of our native wildlife, not to mention to continue pollinating our crops.
- contribute to the health of our environment by lessening the amount of chemical deposits in our soil, air and water.
- contribute to our own health and the health of our families by limiting the “body burden” of chemicals we carry and their interaction in our bodies.
- contribute to the sustainability and availability of organic foodstuffs, both by immediately supporting current organic famers, and by illustrating a demand that conventional farmers can see meeting with supply as economically viable. Money talks.
Studies like this make me nuts. The facts are selective, the reasoning faulty.

It’s not all about you.

The study also found that while bacterial contamination is much the same for organic and conventionally farmed meats (probably because they are slaughtered and packed in the same plants), non-organics were 33% more likely to be resistant to antibiotics.

Why? Factory farmed animals are systematically given antibiotics to preempt the diseases common to overpopulation, lack of mobility and insufficient individual care. It’s a health hazard I feel no one takes seriously enough. Anything we can do to stop the evolution of drug-resistant “superbugs” shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Our generation hasn’t had to withstand any epidemics on the scale of smallpox, the flu of 1918, cholera, typhus; I don’t know about you, but I’m totally cool with keeping it that way.

So, no. Buying organic isn’t going to help you lose weight, increase your vitamin intake or make you into a better person. There is no one magic pill, health is a synergy of many things, OMG, how have we not learned that yet. Improve your diet by improving your overall diet. Get healthy by making healthy decisions in every part of your life.

Buy organic to do your part to help make the world a better place… or at least not a worse one than we have now. It’s called social responsibility and if you have the means, be responsible.

And if you decide to shirk that responsibility, fine, it is your life and your money. Just please be honest with yourself about why.

Willful ignorance is very unattractive, especially when passed on as your legacy to your children.
September 4, 2012
Drinking Up Summertime with Silk Citrus Fizz
Summer is the time when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes,
and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.

A few of those days and you can become drunk
with the belief that all’s right with the world.

-Ada Louise Huxtable

Every year, during the same week in August, we stay at our family beach house. It’s a summertime tradition that after more than a decade borders on hallowed ritual. Throughout the week, a parade of family and friends come to join us; some that we see often, some that we see only during this week, this standing date.

It’s a time of catching up on each other’s lives, of reminiscing about shared memories and making new ones at a frantic pace, to remember next year. We play in the sand and water, we stay up entirely too late at night laughing together, and we contentedly sit on the wraparound deck together, lounging on Adirondack chairs, happy to read or nap or people-watch quietly during the hot afternoon. Grateful just to be together.

It’s also a time to cook together; it’s funny how we all learned to cook over the years. We’re all grown up, we are. The fruits and vegetables of backyard bounties come with us; we stop at farmer’s markets along the ride down; we run out for seafood and chowda. We eat like kings.

The drinks are important too. There really isn’t anything better than eating with friends and washing it down with summer lemonade or tea poured from a sweating carafe. Each summer week has always had its “it” drink- I remember vividly the summer we only made gin & tonics to sip on the porch; there was a year of Irish Car Bombs (I don’t remember that one as well, if I am being honest); the summer of White Russians. There was a series of summers dedicated to drinks made from ice cream- Strawberry Shortcakes, Oreo Mudslides, Orange Creamsicles.

Now, of course, we all have kids (not just me!) and as I’ve grown older I can’t take the dairy anymore. Which makes me oh so sad (the dairy intolerance, not the kids). But I’ve discovered the perfect drink for Summer Retreat 2012. It’s got kid-appeal, tastes like a creamy orange dream, and contains zero dairy for the intolerant (me) and the vegans (not me). Hooray!

It’s called a Citrus Fizz, and it’s one of a bunch of yummy summer drinks you can find over on the Silkology Facebook page(Silkology: combining the art of mixology with the delicious flavors of Silk). This recipe uses the soymilk I already buy, but there are concoctions using Silk’s Fruit & Protein drinks too. I would have loved to try one of those, but our little beach grocery doesn’t stock them!

Why Silk? I like it a lot:
- non-GMO; made from 100% North American-grown soybeans which can be traced by consumers down to the county level
- soy- a complete protein, containing all your amino acids (I’m not a vegetarian, but I’ve cut way back on meat and protein intake is something I think about)
- soymilk contains as much calcium & vitamin D as milk
- Silk works with Conservation International on a Responsible Soybean Sourcing and Production Program, a non-profit dedicated to responsibility and sustainability
- electricity used in production of Silk products is offset through the Bonnevills Environmental Foundation
The recipe called for orange water, which we didn’t have, so we subbed in San Pellegrino soda in Blood Orange for the soda water listed in the ingredients. Result: refreshing orange creamsicle perfection that the kids gulped down.

And for when the kids go to bed… well, I tried adding some vanilla vodka I found in the kitchen cabinet and let me tell you something. Ahem. I’m going to have to keep an eye on the bottle because it would be very easy to drink too much of this. Dangerous.

All this to say: I’m ready, friends.

I can’t wait for you to get here, to watch our kids play together, to laugh too loudly and sleep too late. This is the year of the Citrus Fizz.

Let’s cook something delicious and make some memories.

Silk inspired me to think outside of the bowl with their new Silkology-inspired drink recipes. How can you reinvent YOUR favorite summertime gathering?

Let me know in the comments to be entered into a Sweepstakes for a chance to win a Silkology Prize Package, including ‘Silk for a Year’ (24 certificates for a free half gallon) and an entertaining drink set (pitcher, stirrer, shaker, tray and glassware).

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Silk. The opinions and text are all mine. Official Sweepstakes Rules.
August 7, 2012