Tortellini with Edamame and Kielbasa

I spotted this recipe at Disney Family Food site, and WOW! It took all of 20 minutes to make and throw on the table… and the family DEVOURED it! I love edamame (I blogged about the nutritious little buggers here), and snack on them regularly. The kids don’t like them, though. Ah, but I figured out a way to get them to eat it! Now if I can only get them to nab some ritzy IT Jobs…. sigh…

Well, I have copied the recipe (below) but I’ve made a few modifications to make things a little easier and to use fewer cooking pots than the Disney recipe calls for. This is a GREAT recipe! My kids ate everything in this dish.

Tortellini with Edamame and Kielbasa
serves 6

Ingredients

1 pound frozen cheese tortellini
1 cup shelled edamame (frozen section of the grocery store)
1 cup diced red pepper
1 pound Kielbasa
1/2 cup Italian dressing (I made my own using a dry packaged mix– I also used olive oil instead of vegetable oil)

Directions

Take the tortellini and the edamame packages out of the freezer to loosen up a little.
Fill a big stock pot halfway full of water and set to boil.
While the water is heating up, slice the kielbasa into 1/4″ slices, and dice the pepper.

When the water starts to boil, dump in the tortellini, and boil for about 5 minutes.
Add the edamame, and boil for 2 more minutes.
Drain in a colander and set aside temporarily.
Set the stock pot back on the hot stove and dump in the kielbasa slices and diced peppers. Heat on high, rapidly stirring, for about 2 minutes. Dump in the Italian dressing to heat.
Dump in the tortellini and edamame, stir.

EAT!

I served a salad on the side, but it wasn’t really necessary. The edamame is very filling, and the meal is very well-rounded. My kids ate the edamame! I’m still beaming.

Quick Fake Spanish Rice

I hate Spanish Rice! Yuuuuuuk! So I’ve never made it in my life. But we had a houseful of hungry boys one evening and I was very short on supplies. Here’s what I threw together, and they devoured the entire dish with great gusto. The recipe takes advantage of leftovers, or you can make everything fresh. (Still tastes yukky to me). Well, actually, I did give this a try and it wasn’t TOO bad. Not something I’d serve up for house guests at swanky Tampa apartments… but for a quick fix for the kids, it’s PERFECT.

Quick Fake Spanish Rice

5 cups leftover rice
4 cups ground beef, cooked and drained of fat
1 can (24 oz) spaghetti sauce (I used Hunt’s “Four Cheese” flavor)
1 1.25 envelope Taco Seasoning Powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Heat up the cooked ground beef and rice in a large pot on the stovetop. If the rice is dry, add a small amount of water to keep the rice from burning. Add the Taco Seasoning packet, the garlic powder, and the salt; mix well. Add the can of spaghetti sauce and mix again. Allow the sauce to heat up but don’t let it burn! When sufficiently heated, turn the mix into a large bowl and let the kids go at it. Even better, give them paper plates and disposable cups, too! Make yourself a peanut butter sandwich and surf the Net.

Curried Turkey Dinner

This recipe makes a nice, light meal for those end-of-summer-but-still-hot summer days. It’s also a good one to have on hand after Thanksgiving, when you are burdened with a superfluity of turkey leftovers! It has curry, one of those rare spices that has a name that has actually been converted into a verb. (Think about it, do we say “Cinnamoned Bread” or “Adoboed Chicken”?!). Curry is rather strong– I used to live in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, nicknamed Little India. Every morning, right around 7am, the pungent odor of curry would rise from the restaurants below up to my 7th floor flat. :-p I guess living there was better than living next to a bunch of San Jose motorcycle accident attorneys in their condos… but it took me a looooong time before I could make myself cook with (and endure) curry. So adjust the curry to your liking. I will say that curry IS good for you, so maybe that will help you persist!

Curried Turkey Dinner
Serves 4-6

2-3 pounds of fresh broccoli florets, washed and cut into chunks and cooked until tender (you can use frozen broccoli if you want)
3 cups cooked, diced turkey
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup low-calorie mayonnaise
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder (to your taste)
1 1/2 cup seasoned croutons

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

In a bowl, combine and mix the mayo, soup, lemon juice, and curry powder. Let sit for a moment.

Place your cooked broccoli into a medium-sized casserole dish. Add the turkey on top.

Pour your mayo/soup mix on top of the broccoli/turkey, making sure that you cover the broccoli (so it doesn’t get crispy or burn in the oven). Sprinkle the croutons over the top of everything.

Place the casserole in the oven, and bake for about 25 minutes. Serve immediately, with Basmati rice and a fresh-green salad with carrots. Yum!

Zucchini Casserole

We did a little experimenting this weekend with some zucchini, seeing we have a massive zucchini population explosion going on here at the Mecomber homestead. I posted about my Stuffed Zucchini recipe here, gushing about how versatile it is, etc etc. Well, my beloved daughter yanked herself away from her stereo cabinet and computer for a little while to treat me by cooking dinner for 10! She took my Stuffed Zucchini recipe and tweaked it a little. This is what she made.

Basically, she used the same ingredients (massively increasing the measurements to feed 10, of course) . Instead of making boats, she diced the zucchini and made a casserole. Oh my word– it was soooo good!! All of the kids ate it except the Picky One. They kids even had seconds! This is a great recipe. If you have extraneous zucchini, I suggest you give it a go.

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