Saturday night - food

Got a lot done today. Doing two loads of laundry now. Spent over $100 at the grocery store. Don't usually spend that much but I doubled up on some sale items (Cascade, for example). Had deviled eggs for lunch and chili for dinner, plus a snack. I had a little trouble peeling a couple of the eggs, so the deviled product [click on pic] came out irregular. Ever since my friend in FTL/STL mentioned making deviled eggs a couple of months ago, I've been making them myself. Of course I've made them before, but lately I've been using just mayonnaise, dry mustard, salt and a little vinegar. I've always loved deviled eggs. And they're a lot less trouble than omelets and less clean-up, and taste a lot better than plain boiled eggs (and with just a little added fat and minimal effort).

It may be common knowledge but I recently read that a lot of the cholesterol in eggs is not absorbed in our bodies. We know that eggs are considered healthier than they used to be considered. For a while, eggs were considered just bad.

They had stew beef on sale again but I was tired of the vegetable beef soup, which I've made two weeks in a row. I got some Bear Creek chili mix and will make it with stew beef. I've never tried their chili mix before.

Meanwhile I like this recipe called "West African Tuna Casserole" which was originally published in an edition of "The Joy of Cooking." A. made it when we lived together in Tallahassee. It's very simple and very healthy. It consists of canned tuna, black-eyed peas, chopped tomato, sauteed chopped onion, tomato paste, salt, and red pepper flakes (which is the kicker). I'm trying to simplify it to eliminate the chopping and be able to prepare it in the microwave oven (vs. the conventional oven), since it seems to be a good candidate for that. The old recipe is too complicated even for so few ingredients, involving various stages of baking in the regular oven. Why heat up the house and waste electricity?

Tonight I bought cans of black-eye peas, a can of petite diced tomatoes, and a bag of frozen chopped onions. (I already had tomato paste even though I bought more--I can always use that.) I'm ready to make this in the microwave tomorrow. I have a large, plastic microwavable container ready. The first step will be cooking the frozen onions. Everything else is cooked already and just needs to be mixed together and warmed up. I'll let you know how it turns out.

(I see someone else has been attempting to streamline this recipe somewhat.)

[Sunday update] I would call the microwaved casserole a success. Next time I'll do it a bit differently, however. Instead of Hanover black-eyed peas, I'll use Bush's, since they're not as mushy and drain better. Also, since I use two cans vs. two cups (i.e., more peas than called for), I'll amp up the tomato paste, salt and crushed red pepper for more flavor. Otherwise it was fine. Not great, but good. And super-easy. (I'd like to add another little can of tuna but I'm afraid it wouldn't fit in the 8-cup container with room to stir it.)