Cooking Light weeknight dinners? yes, please!

These last two weeks have been just awful in terms of getting home in time to prepare healthy foods for the family. We ate out far more often than I'd like to admit. One solution to the time crunch has been to use my slow cooker more often. Although it brings back unpleasant childhood memories for Leone, I'm going to make chili this week.

I also bought a new Cooking Light cookbook. It's called "Fresh Food Fast: weeknight meals," and although it goes against some of my food purist impulses (more about this later), so far it's looking promising. I made the first recipe tonight, Italian Beef and Polenta casserole and it was a big hit. I used 6% ground beef, although you could certainly use ground turkey. I also used two zucchini, which made me feel better about the dish. next time I could probably throw a lot more vegetables in, since Chiara pronounced the zucchini bits quite tasty.

Mind you, Chiara ate the dish after initially making gagging sounds when she first looked at it. Yeah, that's an encouraging sign! Of course my tomato wouldn't come near it, but I never expected him to. He ate an apple, two wedges of laughing cow cheese and a tortilla, so he's good. What a strange, strange child. Chiara was initially not all that crazy about the polenta in the recipe, but then she got over it when I showed her how to mix it with the beef. Then she was quite excited about it. I also pointed out to her that polenta is really the food equivalent of her heritage; i.e. indigenous corn with an Italian twist!

As I mentioned earlier, this recipe does violate some of my food purist impulses. It calls for a jar of spaghetti sauce. I used Classico garlic, because I firmly believe that you cannot have too much garlic. It also called for a sliced up tube of polenta. I know I can get it from the restaurant for free (not to mention tastier and more authentic), but in a pinch, those polenta tubes are sure convenient! I didn't chop any tomatoes or onion. It all came together surprisingly easily. The dish was pretty darn fast, certainly easy, and made six servings. Next time I'll use less beef and put i more vegetables. If I had to work tomorrow, the leftovers would probably be pretty darn tasty. Next up is spaghetti with zucchini and cannellini beans. Hopefully that will be successful too-and just as easy!