Findings In this cohort study of 1865 older adults without dementia followed up for up to 15 years, higher diet quality was associated with lower dementia risk. Among participants at higher risk, only a dietary pattern with lower inflammatory potential showed consistent inverse associations. Diet Quality and Dementia Risk in Older Adults With Alzheimer Pathology – https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2850780
This morning I lowered my risk for dementia with a bowl of berries, banana, and Greek yogurt.
Last Night
Smoked Pulled Pork, Mac & Cheese, Bacon, Cheddar-Jack, Sweet & Smokey BBQ Sauce and Green Onions.
Cooking For One is Not Fun is still not fun even after yesterday’s mini-rant. The plan was simple: go to the store, buy two rotisserie chickens, rip the meat off the bones and make a quick simple dinner. Well I didn’t fix any dinner and now I have a tub full of cooked chicken. After a hearty breakfast of pancakes, peanut butter and banana I started thinking about lunch.
I found two small sweet potatoes, tortillas and Monterrey Jack cheese.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Lightly grease with some olive oil.
Scrub the dirt off the sweet potatoes and split them lengthwise. Place cut side down on the greased aluminum foil covered baking sheet and bake. (small to medium 30-45 minutes, large will take an hour or so). When done, remove from oven and allow to cool.
Scoop potatoes into a mixing bowl. See the list of spices? Add a pinch of each. The actual amount depends upon how much potato you’re working with. Mix well and set aside.
Heat a griddle or large pan on the stove, medium flame.
Butter or margarine one side of a tortilla. If using butter, add some olive oil to the griddle because butter burns. Tortilla buttered side down on the griddle. Fill one half side with potato and dot with chicken and cheese. Flip the other half over so it looks like a quesadilla. Brown on both sides. It’s done when the cheese is melted and the filling is warm.
Repeat. Eat.
Bet you thought I forgot the Sriracha. If you like spicy go ahead and add to your potato mixture along with the rest of the spices. Or use Sriracha as a drizzle or dipping sauce. Just remember if you add this to the potatoes before grilling I assume zero responsibility for the searing burn in your throat.
Actually, go ahead and use your favorite hot sauce.
Yeah, the picture above is cheating. Here’s the real shot.
The Bottom Line
Tasty. But I said it before and I’ll say it again. Cooking For One is Not Fun and this was a lot of work to make one quesadilla. At least I’ve worked out the spice combo and the flavors are fine. I did end up mixing a few dashes of Sriracha into the potato. Cooking for one needs to be quick, simple, filling, and nutritious. This quesadilla did not meet the “quick” criteria.
In the future consider the following:
Bake and season the potatoes the night before to allow the flavors to marry and to save time when actually making this quesadilla.
Make more than one quesadilla. Trust me on this.
Tabasco brand Sriracha (an unpaid endorsement).
Buy and debone your chicken ahead of time.
This post is #9 in my One Rotisserie Chicken, 50 Meals – The Concept series that I started 12 years ago. At this pace I won’t live long enough to finish the series. At least no one pays me for my content. Maybe I’ll change the title to One Rotisserie Chicken, 10 Meals and declare this series done.
“When fresh spinach sits during transportation over long distances or stays in your refrigerator for a week, its folate content drops so much that frozen spinach becomes the better source,” Mary Ellen Phipps, MPH, RDN, LD, wrote for CNBC in 2022.
This is because frozen spinach often goes through a flash-freezing process just hours after it has been harvested, which helps to lock more of its nutrients in. “One cup of frozen spinach has more than four times the amount of nutrients, including iron, vitamin C, and calcium, compared to a cup of fresh spinach,” adds Phipps.
I was super proud of myself this past week when I bought a clam-shell of organic spinach and ate the entire tub. Now I know I would have been better off nutritionally with one of the many packages of frozen spinach in my freezer.
“sadly the specimen is not a potato and is in fact the tuber of a type of gourd. For this reason we do unfortunately have to disqualify the application.”
A gentle reminder to my readers. I take no credit for these recipes and Laura isn’t compensating me for this post. This is another Giant Sticky Note that serves as a reminder to try these recipes because I love sweet potatoes too.
Have fun! I constantly remind myself I own Laura’s cookbook and need to fix some of her recipes. This post makes three Giant Sticky Note reminders to myself to expand my vegan and vegetarian meals beyond my world famous Wheat Germ Veggie Burgers.
Well I pulled one off the griddle and tried it. I froze the rest and heated one up for lunch today. It was good…but not great hence the RIP (recipe in progress) tag. I made a sandwich on whole wheat and swirled some Sriracha mayo on it and the burger tasted better than last night. The burger is missing something and we’ll just leave this as a RIP and keep experimenting. Definitely needs more heat. Maybe some corn kernels to balance the heat. I’m also thinking of fresh onion and garlic, not the powders which would make this burger less of a pantry mash up but oh well. Here’s where we stand today.
Update 10.08.20
I ate the last of probably five or six of these “burgers” which were in the freezer. The good news is they freeze well and taste OK. The bad news is they taste just OK so now this recipe is being retired. RIP now stands for Rest in Peace. I’ve decided they are not very “burger-like” and more like sweet potato and black bean cakes with herbs and spices. This is the final update as this recipe goes up on the shelf along with any recipes from The Stack Project – Lasagne Stack Update 04.15.15. The Stack Project contained just one experiment Lasagne Stacks which also were just OK.
Sometimes you have odds and ends in the fridge. This was the inspiration for Scraps Frittata which in the end turned out fine. The other night at a bring a dish dinner I was asked to bring some Roasted Cauliflower with Parmesan for a side veggie. Our gracious host well known for his blunt honesty said,
“Maybe we shouldn’t have microwaved the cauliflower. The texture was different.”
I agreed. The veggie was kind of mushy. Maybe I shouldn’t have made the cauliflower earlier, covered the dish with aluminum foil, then microwaved it for serving. This veggie is obviously best served immediately from the oven.
Our host who does not like leftovers besides Good Pie didn’t want the rest of the veggie so I took it back home. What do you do with about 3 cups of leftover mushy roasted cauliflower?
In the bookstore the other day I could hardly contain my excitement. I found a used copy of Mollie Katzen’s 2013 cookbook The Heart of the Platefor six dollars! Middle and Early Boomers might remember her Moosewood cookbook.I still have a copy of that cookbook in my collection. There are a few recipes from The Heart of the Plate I want to try. The first one was Peruvian Potato-Bean Stew. But immediately I saw a problem.
I’m not in Peru. 4000 to pick from and the recipe calls for the blue one. Since I wasn’t going to find blue potatoes I figured I might as well just mess with the rest of the recipe too. So here’s my version inspired by Mollie.
Adapted from The Heart of Plate by Mollie Katzen
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 large sweet onion, diced
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon ground red chili
1 teaspoon Mexican oregano
1/2 large red bell pepper, diced
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
4 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, 1/2 inch dice
3 cups cooked Mayocabo beans with cooking liquid
15-ounce can diced tomatoes with roasted garlic and onion
freshly squeezed lime juice
salt and pepper to taste
Heat a Dutch oven over medium heat.
Add oil, onions, chili powder, ground chili, oregano and cumin . Gently saute for 5 minutes.
Add the bell pepper, garlic, and salt. Saute for another 5 minutes.
Add the potatoes.. Cover, reduce heat to low, and cook for 5 minutes. Add 1/2 cup of the bean cooking liquid, canned tomatoes, cover again, and cook until potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.
Add the beans, reduce heat to low and simmer until beans are warmed through.
Season individual servings with lime juice, salt and pepper to taste.
Yum
Random Thoughts
If you like chili you’ll like this recipe. It’s basically a potato and bean chili, no meat. If you cannot find Mayocabo beans use pintos. It won’t taste the same but will still be excellent, kind of like using yellow potatoes instead of the blue ones. Pinto beans will hold their shape better whereas the Mayocabo is creamier and tends to fall apart with prolonged cooking.
For the beans I used a pound dried, rinsed multiple times and soaked overnight. The next day I tossed the beans into a pot, added water to one inch above the beans with about a teaspoon each of cumin, Mexican oregano, garlic powder and a bay leaf.
garyskitchen.net 