Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Keeping Secrets

For overall health it is a good idea to eat a few meatless meals every week. Unfortunately, saying the words "meatless meals" in my house is grounds for divorce. To say that Hubby balks at it, is putting it mildly. However, he's eating meatless meals without knowing they're meatless. One can hide many sins of omission in a soup or casserole. Heh, heh!

Take tonights supper for instance. Cajun bean soup with cheese bread. Today's high temperature was 41 degrees. It's damp and cold so a soup with a home baked batter bread sounded good to me. There is a brand of dried beans I purchase for this. It's got 15 different types of beans in it and the package of cajun spices. I wash the beans and soak them just while I'm chopping onions, celery and garlic.

I saute the trinity in a little olive oil and once that's done add three quarts of water plus the beans. It takes around 2 1/2 hours to cook down. About a half hour before serving I add a large can of crushed tomatoes and the contents of the cajun spice packet.

I make the cheese batter bread with half whole wheat flour in the mix. Instead of cheddar cheese I use a mixture of cheddar and spicy taco cheese, that way I can tell Hubby the color of the bread comes from the spices in the cheese. If I tell him I've put whole wheat flour in it, he'll not eat it. This is a meal he actually enjoys eating, and there's not a bit of meat in it anywhere, plus there's whole wheat flour in the bread.  Shhhhh! Don't tell him that or he'll deny that he likes it. Sometimes healthy eating means keeping secrets.

22 comments:

  1. Sherry:


    Here lately I've been eating a lot of Salads and I've been exercising a lot more too. I've managed to drop 13 lbs since the Saturday before last, not too bad. but I still have to have some meat once in awhile..

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  2. Here lately, every time I come to your blog, it seems I get really hungry...

    That bean soup sounds great. I might have to try it some time.

    I'm a meat lover, but I can definitely do some meatless meals from time to time.

    peace

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  3. Sherry:

    What you don't know can sometimes help you. :^)

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  4. you're right about that Sherry. Supper sounded good to me. Hmm... wonder if the pup could duplicate it.

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  5. Scratch,

    I've lost 27 pounds since the week before Christmas without depriving myself of a single thing I want to eat. I'm just trying to get a wider variety of foods on my menus and learn to make healthier choices. Also, since I'm buying grass fed meat and poultry it's a bit higher price per pound than factory farm meats. I need to stretch that budget with a few meatless meals a month.

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  6. PaulV,

    Hubby thinks in terms of no meat means bad tasting food. So far he's enjoying the meatless meals I've devised, but I know him well enough not to mention that.

    Since the company that creates the dried bean mixture for my soup is based in Indiana, you might find it at your local grocers. The Brand name is Hurst's HamBeens, and it's their 15 bean Cajun soup mix. I find it right in the dried beans and lentils section of my grocer.

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  7. Whit,

    Hubby was raised on good old fashioned farm cooking. It's hard to get him to try something new. In order to get a healthier version of something, I start with something I know he likes and then try to rework the recipe to make it healthier. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

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  8. Ice,

    You might be able to find the product I use there. I buy a dried bean mixture called Hurst's HamBeens Cajun 15 bean soup. It has the cajun spices in a packet inside the bag of dried beans. If not, she should be able to purchase any mixed dried bean selection and just add one of Emerils Cajun spice concoctions to it.

    It makes a lot of soup for two people so I freeze half of it for future use.

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  9. 41 deg high in May? Wow, I'd eat whatever soup you put in front of me too.

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  10. I will have to get the bean cake (vegi-burger) recipe my wife is using these days. Based on mashed pinto or red beans with a lot of other things in it and spiced up a bit. It fries and looks like meat, smells like it to. Taste is good, not meat but close, we really like it.
    Trinity I always heard was celery onion green bell pepper. You must be from the reformed church if your trinity is with garlic. Nothing wrong with that, it sounds great.

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  11. I gotta look for that soup! Meatless for me is no problem, but if I put a meal on the table without meat in some form or fashion, hubby will start looking through my underwear drawer for a crack pipe or meth.

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  12. By the way, your music ROCKS!

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  13. I'm not a fan of cajun anything, go figure, but I love beans of all kinds. a good old pot of beans and cornbread is a meal in itself.

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  14. Skinny,

    Yep a high of 41 deg. plus rain. Last nights low was 31. We had a frost this morning and then it warmed up to lower 70's. Weird weather here.

    I'm a soup or stew person when the temps are low and the weather is cold and dreary.

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  15. YF,

    For me, trinity is whatever 3 chopped veggies I saute to put in something. Sometimes it's onion, bell pepper and garlic. Sometimes its celery, onion and bell pepper.

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  16. Slick,

    I hope you find it just so you can try a meatless meal on your Hub. Of course, you can always add a sausage of some kind to it to keep him from hunting down the crack pipe. ;)

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  17. Slick,

    The older I get the more I enjoy the songs on that playlist. It's kind of a Woodstock meets Stevie Ray Vaughn and Southern Rock list.

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  18. Bella,

    In this case all the cajun spice does is give it a bite. The bean combo tastes strong enough to kill that slightly vinegary taste that cajun spices have sometimes.

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  19. Maybe a good Cajun sausage would save my bacon! Ya know, if I could get him to hunt down a non-existent crack pipe, he would be occupied for hours on end. There's a thought.............

    Woodstock meets Stevie Ray Vaughn meets Southern Rock! Oh, heck YEAH! You cannot go wrong there! My kind of music!

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  20. Slick,

    I told Hubby I was going to make it some day with Italian sausage in it. He actually said it tasted good just the way it is. I was going to ask him if he was sick, but I kept my mouth shut on that.

    Hey, as long as he doesn't make a mess that you have to clean during his hunt for the non-existant crack pipe......GO FOR IT!

    You do realize our choice of music kinda dates us? I say women are like fine wine, we improve with age. That's MY story and I'm sticking to it!

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  21. we'll give it a shot.

    thanks

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  22. ICE,

    You're welcome. Hope you manage to try some. It's really good soup.

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