Ellie Krieger's (again??) New Classic Meatlof

I know. I have been cooking from this book very often and quite obsessively but I think this post will be the last one from this book at least for a little while.

This time, I made meatloaf from her book. This meatloaf if a healthier version of regular meatloaf and it has lots of veggies and some oats.

Click here for her recipe. 

It was good but was not great. I think the reason why I didn't love it was because I used 98% fat free ground beef. The recipe called for 90% and higher and I chose to use 98% fat free to be extra healthy.

However, I think this decision backfired me. Since there was not much fat in it, it came out little dry.

It tasted really good and I love the fact that it had lots of vegetables in it so if I used 90% fat free meat, it should have been juicier and better.

The sauce was quite rich and yummy.

Even though I didn't love this meatloaf, my son loved it and he ate at lot of them. He ate it with pasta and also with rice.

This is a great way for kids to eat vegetable without even knowing.

For the side, I made roasted potatoes. Just simple potatoes with salt, pepper and olive oil.

I don't make meatloaf too often but next time I make it, I will use meat with more fat. That was the lesson I learned.

Anyways, I am running out of food pictures to post. My camera is in repair right now. It has been more than two weeks but has not been fixed yet.

These photos are from few weeks ago and I have been cooking some fantastic stuff since then but I don't have a camera to capture those fantastic food :-)

I hope we will get our camera back soon because we are having Halloween party with all my mom friends and also also I am going to take my son for trick or treat on the day of halloween.

I need my CAMERA!!!

The book I used for this meatloaf is this.

Ellie Kreger's Autumn Vegetable Curry

So, I have been cooking from this Ellie Kreger's cookbook lately and this is another recipe from her. This is called Autumn Vegetable Curry. This has tons of vegetable in it and healthy yet tasty.

Well, it has some curry power and coconut milk. In the recipe, it required only 1 cup of light coconut milk but since I love coconut milk, I just used the whole can. (plus, it was not light) so I think mine is little bit richer than her original recipe.

Here is the link for her Autumn Vegetable Curry recipe. 

My husband and my son loved it and I was also very happy with it. I cook my son's separately and made it less spicy for him. I was not sure if he would like all these vegetables but since it is cooked well and soft, he didn't mind eating all these vegetables. He even liked chick peas!

I think this is a great way for you and your family to eat more vegetables. I think when I make something with curry, I and my husband always like it. We love curries!

I also made another dessert from her cookbook. This time, Peanut butter cookies!

This one has some whole wheat flour so they are little bit healthier than regular peanut butter cookies. We don't give much sweet to my son yet (also not yet peanut butter) so he didn't eat these but my husband loved them. For some reason, I didn't expect him to love it so much so I was a bit surprised.

When I was watching her show on FoodNetwork, I didn't find any recipes which I wanted to try so I am quite surprised to find so many recipes which I wanted to try and liked from her cookbook.

When I borrowed it from the library, I had no expectations but it sure was a great cookbook. I tried many new things from this book.

Maple Pecan Chiffon Cake with Brown Butter Icing

Our friend from California came to visit us on Sunday and I made this cake which I found in a baking book I borrowed from library.

The cake is called Maple Pecan Chiffon Cake with Brown Butter Icing.

And the book is called "Vintage Cakes" by Julie Richardson

I tried to make Chiffon cake before and it did not come out as I hoped so I was a bit nervous about making this cake but this one cake out wonderful.

The cake has maple syrup and toasted chopped pecan and icing have browned butter and vanilla.

In Japan, cake normally have whipped cream instead of icing or frosting and when I first move to the U.S., I didn't like icing or frosting but after living here for 15 years, I started to like icing and frosting.

This icing is very rich and tasty and goes great with maple pecan flavor.

This is how the cake looked before icing.

This is how it looks when you cut it.

This is a slice.

Our friend liked the cake and so did I and my husband. i am glad it came out well.

This book has many recipes which I would like to try. It also explains some history behind those cakes and it is very interesting to just read those little stories.

Since it is getting cooler now, I would love to bake more cakes but if I keep baking those huge cakes and keep eating, my weight will definitely increase. This cake was also very big so I shared some with my neighbor. It is great to have neighbors who like sweets :-)

By the way, I am carrying a pedometer with me lately wherever I go. It is quite popular device in Japan. I always had this pedometer but I just started to use it recently. In Japan, we say that recommended steps a day is 10,000. However average steps a day is not eve near 10,000.

I read that an average Japanese woman take 6,000 steps a day. I am not even take 6,000 a day. I need to walk more.

Anyways, my yoga class started again for the fall season and I am enjoying my yoga class.

Sometimes, I do my yoga posed at home to release some tension and my 20 months old son try to copy me and do some yoga poses with me. It is super cute!

Well, I would love to be a better baker but I am also afraid that practicing baking skills make me gain weight. I guess our neighbors has to eat lots of cakes for me :-)

Tofu and Chicken Hamburg

There is this popular cookbook in Japan which is published by a company called Tanita. Tanita is a company who sell weight scale which can also measure your body fat. This scale from Tanita is very popular in Japan and I actually have one myself.

And this company has a cafeteria which offer healthy lunch for its employees since their goal as a company is to promote healthy life style and maintain healthy weight and body fat and they wanted to start promoting this starting with their own employees.

This cafeteria became popular and they decided to publish a cookbook to promote healthy food for the public and this cookbook became one of the best selling cookbook in Japan last year.

I was very curious about this book so when my sister came to visit me last year, I asked her to bring one copy for me.

To be honest, I haven't used this book at all till now. Partly because many of the ingredients are not easy to obtain from my local supermarket.

However I found one recipe which I can make from what I have and what I can get from regular supermarket so I decided to give it a try after more than a year of looking at this book.

The dish I tried is Tofu Hamburg. Hamburg is a very popular dish in Japan. It is with onion and ground beef normally but this one is with Tofu and ground chicken. It is also have this seaweed called Hijiki.

The sauce is with ginger and sugar and soy sauce and some other stuff. I think I measured sugar wrong since it was really sweet but it tasted good.

My husband and my son loved it. My son had it without any sauce but he loved it.

The rice is half white and half brown. I thought my son wouldn't like it but actually he didn't mind at all. Sometimes, we think that children don't like certain things but they might surprised you by liking it. So I decided to let my son try things even when I think he wouldn't like it.

Anyways. this is a great healthy meal and I am sure I will be making this again. Hijiki is not something which you can get from a regular American supermarket but this is dried seaweed so I buy them when I go to Japanese store and I keep them in my pantry. It is very healthy food and I like it.

I baked broccoli in the oven for the side dish. Lately, I am trying to eat more vegetables since I feel like I don't eat enough vegetables.