January Cook-At-Home Resolution Challenge

posted December 30, 2007

by Amy Powell

http://cooking.cdkitchen.com/RealMealsInMinutes/622.html

Welcome to a new year and a new opportunity to fulfill those resolutions we always aspire to. If you take a look at most January magazine covers, it is pretty clear that this is the time of year to lose 10 lbs., go to the gym 4 days a week, organize your finances, and spend more time with your family. While spending more days a week in the kitchen may not necessarily tone your biceps and guarantee dramatic weight loss, it might surprise you to learn that, by making a resolution to cook more this month, you might get a little bit closer to achieving some of those other goals you are shooting for.

Depending on which report you are looking at, the average American eats dinner out between 2 and 4 nights per week. When the top item on most Americans' New Year’s resolutions is weight loss and fitness, you have to wonder how much all that sneaky fat in restaurant and fast food meals contributed to our nationwide need to lose weight. When it comes to your personal finances, unless your idea of eating out is the dollar menu at McDonald's, it is pretty clear that home cooked meals for one’s family are more economical than dinner for four at a restaurant. And as far as spending time with one’s family, nothing makes for better bonding than breaking bread together at the family dining table.

The problems with New Year’s resolutions are many as evidenced by the fact that most have been abandoned by Week 2. Resolutions can be unrealistic, overly ambitious, or you may lack the tools to make them achievable. Making a plan that is challenging but realistic, while maintaining access to the help you need to make it work, is a safe way of making sure that follow-through on that resolution is possible.

In an effort to get you closer to achieving all those resolutions while expanding your personal cooking horizons I welcome you to the January Cook-at-Home Challenge. Now that the holidays are out of your way, what better resolution than resolving to cook more meals at home, either for its own sake and for achieving those other resolutions? Should you choose to accept this challenge, the rules are realistic, the plan is achievable, and over the next several weeks I will be giving you some tools to get dinner on the table more often.

The Rules

1. You must cook dinner at home (even if it is reheating leftovers) an average of five nights a week for the month of January for a total of 20 nights.

2. Unless you are reheating leftovers of a meal you cooked from scratch yourself, to qualify the meal cannot have come from the microwave, emerge from the freezer, or be eaten out of a takeout box, even if that takeout box came from the salad bar at your grocery store.

3. Dinner must be eaten at the dining room table, kitchen table, or other such table meant for eating food around (TV tables do not qualify).

4. The TV must remain off for the duration of the meal.

I am often asked how, while growing up in a small rural town in California, I came to develop a taste for cooking and the pleasures of eating. A large part of that answer is because The Rules listed above are rules my mother and father followed for the majority of my childhood. Cooking dinner at home and eating dinner as a family is a way to be economical with your family’s finances, eat healthy, and most importantly, guarantee quality time spent daily with the ones you love, and there is no better resolution than that.

Paul's Favorite Tortilla Soup Recipe
http://www.cdkitchen.com/

Serves/Makes: 6
Ready in: < 30 minutes

* 1/4 cup vegetable oil
* 1 1/2 pound chicken tenders
* Salt and pepper
* 1 serrano chili
* 1/2 white onion
* 1 clove garlic
* 10 cups chicken stock
* 1/2 cup long grain white rice
* 1 can (8 oz size) sweet corn, drained
* 2 avocados
* 4 cups tortilla chips
* 8 ounces cheddar cheese, grated

Preheat vegetable oil in a large soup pot over medium high heat. Cut chicken tenders into pieces about 1 inch by 1 inch. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Finely mince Serrano chili, dice onion, and mince garlic. Add seasoned chicken to preheated oil and sauté for 2-3 minutes stirring occasionally until visible pink is almost gone. Add chili, onion, and garlic at this point and sauté for another 2-3 minutes until onions begin to soften. Add stock with rice and drained corn. Cover with a lid, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer. Continue to simmer for about 15 minutes until rice is cooked.

Meanwhile, peel avocados and roughly dice. Stir avocadoes into soup about 10 minutes into the simmering process. Lightly breakup tortilla chips if they are large. Grate cheese.

To serve, place about 1/2 cup of tortilla chips in the bottom of each bowl. Taste soup and adjust seasoning if necessary with salt and pepper.

Ladle 1 1/2 - 2 cups of soup into each bowl on top of the tortilla strips. Top each bowl with about 2 tablespoons of grated cheese. Serve immediately.