In my last blogpost about my cottage cheese smoothies I wrote about wanting to try a smoothie with avocado and tomato...well, Bee left a comment about how she uses an avocado in her smoothies and it makes them really creamy, so I couldn't put it off anymore! Bee also commented on how she likes her smoothies more savory / sour, than sweet...hmmnn...
I must be crazy because I can't bring myself to buy a tomato in winter, but somehow frozen corn seemed OK, lol Over the past 5 years corn has been an ingredient I've used sparingly, even in season (summer), because I don't consider it a vegetable, I count it as a carb, and since there are so many carb choices, by the time I get around to the farmers markets these days the corn season comes and goes almost as quickly as the asparagus season....(different seasons though) I'm going to change that this year!
Anyway, I decided to try an Avocado Corn Spinach w/lime smoothie. How did it go you ask? Well, the potential is going to be great, but there's definitely much room for improvements. Creating new recipes is a matter of simply tasting the food to make sure all of the ingredients make their "presence"....it's about balance. First let me say that the avocado was the best part...this time! It did, in fact, make the smoothie, well, smoother, lol The cottage cheese was the base and I added frozen sweet corn, a handful of fresh spinach (thanks Maribel!), the juice of 1 lime, and ice/water to my desired consistnecy. I also added 1 tbl of sugar, plain old white granulated sugar to make the corn flavor stronger and more pronounced. Corn is supposed to be sweet.
That's where it went wrong. I couldn't taste the corn at all! So I added one more teaspoon of sugar, as I was unwilling to add more, because the total calorie count was already on the high side....nothing, nada, no corn taste. But tasty in another way....not tasty enough to not want to make it better. How will I try and make it better? I'll wait until corn season, and I'll make some corn stock from the cobs to add instead of water.
3/4 cottage cheese 135 cal
1/4 avocado 100 cal (I'm guessing as I did not measure it)
1/2 c. frozen sweet corn 100 cal
1 tbl + 1 t. sugar 60 cal
spinach 0 cal
lime 0 cal
ice and water 0 cal
395 calories isn't bad except I grabbed the 1 c. measure instead of the 3/4 measure and add 45 calories more of cottage cheese and 50 cal more of corn by mistake turning it into almost 500 calories...yikes! Oh well, no big, it's just 100 calories....and it was alot to eat actually.
So now for my confession.....
I love supermarket roasted chickens! What's not to love? They are already cooked, and they are salted brined and buttered...or something....oh and they're cheap! And I'm not talking about the "organic free range antibiotic and hormone free" chickens you have to pay $14.99 at Whole foods. I like the ones from my local Mexican market! Good-ness a chicken you buy to roast yourself costs more and you still have to cook it, mess up your kitchen, wait for it to be roasted, and although my own roasted chickens taste killer good, so do these!
The guilt started getting to me, so I had Mark pick up a whole organic chicken for me to roast ($16 bucks!). The timing was perfect as I threw the bird in the oven at 5:45am, it was done at 6:55am, I tented it with foil, went to 7:15am yoga and when I got home lunch was waiting.
I forgot how good my roasted chickens were! I cut up an onion, lemon and apple to throw in the cavity of the bird, buttered it all over, salted and paprika-ed it. I didn't bother to tie it up, I simply threw it on a roasting rack, and into a 400 degree oven. I didn't have any chicken stock, believe it or not (plenty of pork and lamb stock), but lucky for me there was 1/2 bottle of white wine in the fridge to use as basting liquid.....oh and was it good! Too bad I wasn't making gravy cause it would have been mighty tasty.
I bought two more chickens at the market this morning and will roast them myself tomorrow. Does that mean I won't buy supermarket roasted chickens anymore? Hell no! But I'll save them for my cheat day so I can eat the whole greasy salty chicken myself!
PS On a serious note, I don't think there's anything wrong at all with buying cooked proteins. Especially these days when we have so many other way, way, way, worse options. Roasted chickens are great for all of the reasons I listed above and the convenience of harvesting leftover meat for salads and other home prepped meals is worth a little extra seasoning...and a hormone or two...just kidding...kinda
That sounds like a creamy avocado gazpacho or chilled soup. I wonder if you could just toss the corn in after it's all blended and you can have some "bite" in your smoothie. I think I'll try it that way.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I like to make my own roasted chickens...but I don't discriminate at all and those pre-made roasted chickens have saved me plenty of times.
Oh, and at the Asian market, they have this dry-roasted corn, it's in the bean section, and you boil it for cold or hot tea, unsweatened. I tried it at a Korean restaurant once and it's pretty tasty. You can try that to get more corn flavor too.
Maribel,
ReplyDeleteThe reason I didn't throw the corn in afterwards is that it was frozen! Somehow biting into frozen corn doesn't sound appealing, lol
But I do see your point, maybe making the smoothie without the corn and adding fresh corn into it afterwards will be good. As I wrote, I'll use corn stock instead of water and wait until summer.
I'll definitely look for the dry roasted corn at the Asian market, that sounds as if it would have many applications.
Decided just now to pressure cook the two chickens I bought! I'll harvest the meat for soup and salads, but I've got extra bones from the others I bought, so the stock I can make with all of those bones will be extra rich.
Keep trying on that smoothie! I switched to cottage cheese the last two mornings, and to be honest, I didn't taste a difference!! I wonder if it's because I use so many greens in mine and they just overpower that flavor anyway -- I know you don't add greens to yours, so that was my thought.
ReplyDeleteYour chicken sounds so good! I've added the lemon and onion (and fresh rosemary) but never tried an apple. I'll have to try that!
Bee,
ReplyDeleteI got it down! I started to write a blogpost about it last night and I just haven't finished it yet!
More to come soon!