"In a cream sauce, it's a tasty little fowl. . . "

Remember my rhapsodizing over cream sauces? Well, it might not be a cream sauce, but it got pretty darn close. AND it included wine, one of my very favorite things.

First off, I have been bitten by the cooking bug, though I still can't find the patience in me to actually follow a recipe. I even bought The Joy of Cooking, mostly because I figured I needed to work my way up to Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vols. I and II. Still, I decided to take some inspiration by a recipe I'm sure is in there somewhere, with a lovely concoction I'll call Chardonnay-Mushroom Chicken.

It was simple, and of course required me to drink Chardonnay. All I did was cut up a boneless, skinless chicken breast (must mind the portion sizes, of course. . . grrr), brown 3 oz. of cut up mushrooms in 1 Tbsp of olive oil, and then make a sauce with a little pour (we'll say 1/4 cup) of chicken broth, 1 Tbsp of skim milk, 1 tsp of garlic powder, and 1/2 tsp of cornstarch. Oh, and, of course, the Chardonnay. A lovely Festival '34 Chardonnay--and all I used in the sauce was about a Tbsp to a Tbsp and a half. I drank much more than I cooked with.

THEN I put the chicken, some more broth (sure, another 1/4 cup-ish), the sauce, and mushrooms in a pan, covered in foil, and baked. It turned out very nice, very moist, and quite tasty with very little salt. I think I would have used real garlic (if I had remembered), but I was so distracted with the vino that I forgot to chop any up. The sauce wasn't very think--probably needed more cornstarch.

But other than that, I didn't even really miss the cream. . . . much.

"A bottle of red, a bottle of white. . ."

Two points for whomever can guess the title's reference.

In any case, can I just say that I love Italian restaurants? Not I-talian restaurants, but really good, really local, really . . . GOOD Italian restaurants. I got the opportunity to venture out, mit kein Kinder, on a date night. Now, of course, being me, this meant that we had to try out a local restaurant, mull over some wine or cocktails, and eat at a leisurely stroll rather than a breakneck run. We decided on Italian and headed out toward Canton.

Luckily, we found a great little place called Sylvester's North Side Grille. Normally I'd make some comment about the "e" on the end, but in this case it was well worth the extra letter. We walked in the door and the manager/maitre d' advised to grab a drink at the bar and he'd seat us within 20 minutes. So after nursing a Maker's Mark and Coke, we were seated very quickly in a cozy booth.

What followed was a cavalcade of deliciousness. Or deliciosity. Whatever it was, it was divine. And it was all washed down with a lovely Banfi Reservo Chianti Classico. Everything tastes better with Chianti. Including, apparently, fava beans and some poor sap's liver.

Er, ANYway. . .

First off, calamari. Now, this was not your typical grab-a-handful-of-frozen-squid-and-deepfry-it calamari. This was lovingly sautéed with red peppers, green peppers, onions, and pickled Cubanelle peppers. Excellent. Salad, of course, with a lovely vinaigrette, mopped up with homemade bread. Then, I had the best chicken piccata I have ever had, which included artichokes, capers, a white wine sauce, and lemon zest. Oh, and fresh parsley. Alex had chicken parmigiana, which looked delicious, too. I won't rhapsodize over his food, because, well, I didn't eat it.

There was absolutely no way I could eat dessert, which was a shame since I was celebrating losing 41 pounds, but I'm sure I'll get to sometime.

"A bottle of white, a bottle of red, perhaps a bottle of Rosé instead. . . "

Stuffing the Proverbial Pepper

Okay, so the title of this blog makes it sound like I'm about to post something dirty. I'm really not. I thought it was funny, considering I made stuffed green peppers last night for the first time (and ate them for the first time in YEARS). Now, remember, I'm stuck in this whole I-wanna-get-healthy-so-I'm-gonna-eat-healthy-ALLTHETIME rut (ha), so the traditional recipe had to be altered a bit. Gone was the delicious Italian sausage-and-tons-of-cheese stuffing, replaced by ground turkey, nearly-puréed mushrooms and red onions, plain tomato sauce, brown rice, and variety of spices.

In all fairness, I did break down and cover the lot of it with pizza sauce and a tiny tiny TINY smidgen of part-skim mozzarella.

It was very tasty. You almost wouldn't know that it was less that 400 calories for an entire pepper stuffed to the gills. Of course, as I was waiting for the blasted thing to cook (apparently one has to bake the darn things for almost 2 hours, which I of course neglected to discover until 5 pm, when 2 very hungry family members were whining about wanting food), I paged through one of my many cookbooks. Mmmmmmm chicken pasties. . . . mmmmmmmm maraschino cherry meringue . . . . . mmmmm Cabernet Sauvignon.

In any case, the only indulgence I had while waiting for said peppers to bake was the Cabernet. The rest would have taken forever to make, and, well, I had already put in the effort for the stuffed peppers. Of course, my 7-year-old still only ate a BIT of the stuffing and none of the pepper. . . but he didn't know about the hidden veg. Victory!

I still think I want to cook through a cookbook. Or many cookbooks. Just not one with gross recipes. . . and you know what I mean. Any suggestions?