Here's a nice place to snag some recipes and A LOT of them.

Get recipes!

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2000

Answers

Also here:

http://www.allrecipies.com/

Stuart found an awesome recipie for homemade pizza sauce.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2000

Hi everyone--

Beth, I'd love to have your recipe for the homemade lowfat red sauce you talk about in today's entry...I can't find one I like.

Also, if anyone has suggestions for good lowfat ways to use brown rice, me and the enormous unopened box in my cabinet would appreciate it!

Melissa

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

Well, okay, this is a simple one, and may God and my father and my late Uncle Charlie forgive me for the lack of fresh tomatoes. (I do this from memory, no recipe, and it changes every time, so I'm probably going to screw this up.)

• 1 medium onion, diced very fine
• However many cloves of garlic you can stand -- I probably use 5 or 6 -- also diced very fine
• 1-2 teaspoons of as many of the following that you have on hand and enjoy:
  thyme
  basil
  oregano
  rosemary (I usually omit rosemary; I don't like it in spaghetti sauce)
• salt to taste
• a pinch of cayenne pepper or 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
• 1 or 2 14.5 oz. cans chopped tomatoes
• 1 14.5 oz can tomato sauce, or a small can of tomato paste and enough water to get the right consistency (I told you this would be imprecise)
• 1/2 tbsp. sugar if you like sweet sauce, which I don't so I leave it out. One of the roommates who taught me to make spaghetti sauce always included it, though.
• One or more of the following, if you're trying to get more vegetables into your diet or if you just want to liven it up:
  spinach, chopped very fine or pureed in a blender
  green or yellow squash, diced (zucchini gets too mushy)
  carrots, diced
  celery, diced
  bell peppers, chopped
  mushrooms, sliced
  
• 1-2 tablespoon olive oil (optional)

Sautee the onion, garlic, and spices until the onion is soft. If you want this to be 100% nonfat, use water, the juice from the canned tomatoes, and/or a splash of red wine. If you're not quite so fanatical, use 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil, or a combination of olive oil and one or more of the other liquids. Add the other vegetables if desired and simmer it covered until the vegetables are cooked and it all smells good. Don't add the tomatoes or tomato sauce until the vegetables are mostly cooked, because they'll get bitter.

Man, that was a lousy recipe. I really don't pay much attention to what I'm doing when I make sauce. Feel free to post a better one if you have one. I've also tried a recipe that includes a can of V-8 with the tomatoes, and no basil or additional salt. It sounded like cheating to me, but it was really wonderful. It included carrots and celery as well, plus 99% fat free turkey, browned with the onions and garlic at the beginning. That was a big hit.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

Oh, yeah, brown rice. I add onion and garlic and celery and carrots, as well as a little thyme. (Again, cook these things in a little olive oil first if you don't care about the fat, or in water or chicken bouillon if you do.) Lemon juice and a lot of black pepper are yummy, too, and the other day I used fresh tomatoes and a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar. I also like to steam broccoli, chop it really fine, and stir it into the rice.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

I get a lot of recipes from Arielle's Recipe Archives at http://www.neosoft.com/recipes/. It's an archive of receipes from rec.food.recipes.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

Oops, I just tried Renee's link and it's the same place as the one I posted. Sorry about that.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

A great vegan recipe with brown rice:

1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp garam masala (or curry powder)
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 cup brown rice
1/4 cup raisans
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1 apple, diced
1 cup water

Brown onions and garlic in oil, add rice and spices and saute for another minute. Add water, sunflower seeds, apple and raisans. Cover pot, simmer for 1/2 hour. Serve.

A very yummy, simple, low fat, and inexpensive one-pot meal. It's also good served cold for lunch.

I have many more recipes at my site.

- Javina

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

You can cook plain short-grain brown rice and serve my Soup of Things Orange on it.. I have..

And my Ex-boyfriend Stir-fy I usually eat with brown short-grain or brown basmati.

both recipes are at my site

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000

I don't use a lot of brown rice so not sure I can help with that, but I do use white rice a lot and this recipe might be good with brown rice too: just cook it normally (enough for two people) with a few teaspoons of soy sauce in the water for taste, and add about a half cup each of frozen peas and peaches-and-cream corn (the sweet stuff, yum) and a quarter cup of pine nuts for taste. This makes a nice lunch or side dish for a supper - if using as a side dish, don't have it to the side of meat, or else don't put in the pine nuts, if you're aiming for a low-fat diet. I like to put some uncooked chow mein noodles on top too, or else brown some almonds instead of the pine nuts. I suppose you could use any nut. Pecans might be nice.

For my tips on bread making try: http://www.pericardial.com/jan00/000103.html

And on low fat cooking - some other suggestions:

- Try spaghetti sauce with polente (cooked cornmeal mush) instead of noodles. It's yummy and different. Or add cornmeal to rice when it's cooking. I often use cornmeal as one would use a spice. - Make a shake with skim milk and frozen bananas and frozen strawberries - it's not as good as ice cream (I mean, let's get real) but it's still pretty darn yummy. And since we've all been assured it's spring now (even though it's snowing where I am) we're allowed frozen drinks again. - Put low fat plain or vanilla yogurt in a sieve lined with two coffee filters and let it drip wey into a pan (in the fridge!) overnight. What you're left with is yogurt cheese, which can be added to lemon pie filling for a yummy winter lemon mousse-like thing (wait til the filling cools), or else put in cheesecake instead of the high- fat cheese, or just spread on toast like a runnier (and lower fat) cream cheese. - Any dish you'd make with a cream sauce can usually have tomato sauce (which is lower fat) substituted in, and also you can switch starches (rice or potato or pasta) for a slightly different dish if you have leftover sauce and don't want to make the same thing.

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2000

FoodTv's archive of recipes from all of their shows is great, especially when you're trying to perhaps, "stretch" a bit.

http://foodtv.com

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2000

Yes! Foodtv.com! Good Eats (my favorite cooking show ever)! (just not the French Onion Soup- not a big hit over here last night).

As for brown rice, I used to like to cook up a batch, then steam some asparagus and serve it on top, liberally sprinkled with lemon juice. Yum.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2000

Beth, I'm hoping you'll post ingredient lists/recipes for the smoothies that you drink for breakfast. I was reading the vegetarian topic (but hesitated to post there for Reasons of Troll) and noticed the mention there. I'm always looking for quick and easy breakfasts, and I'll be damned if I can make a good smoothie. I know, throw a bunch of stuff in a blender, right? You'd think it might be that easy for me...

I'm still making the spaghetti sauce recipe you posted over a year ago.

-- Anonymous, July 16, 2001

Sure. Here you go:

• 1/2-1 cup frozen fruit -- blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries are good. I also like cherries and occasionally peaches, but peaches can be bitter. Strawberries are good sometimes, but I've had bad luck with frozen strawberries. I really like to go half and half on this one; my current favorite combo is 1/2 cup frozen cherries and 1/4 cup frozen cranberries. (Those are way too sour to use without the cherries.)
  
  
• One banana
  
  
• 1/2 cup nonfat plain yogurt
  
  
• 1/2 cup juice, either orange or cranberry; I only use the 100 percent juice type of cranberry juice because the other is too sweet.
  
  
• Optional (and this is the part that grosses Jeremy out, so your mileage may vary): 1/4 cup unprocessed bran or bran cereal (like Fiber One). I've also used wheat germ or granola.

Just put it all in the blender and go. You can substitute other fresh fruits, but I've found that if the texture is best if you have at least 1/2 cup of frozen fruit. Fresh strawberries or peaches are fabulous if you have them, and fresh mango works with some combinations. Use pears or kiwi at your own risk. (That was a bad one.)

-- Anonymous, July 16, 2001

Surprisingly (to me anyway) cantaloupe combined with strawberries can make a tasty smoothie.

In place of orange/cranberry juice vanilla soy is also nice.

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2001