Bruce Tretter | Gotta Eat, Can't Cook

Posts Tagged ‘Bruce Tretter’

April 24th, 2024

Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Blog, Condiments, How To & Tips, Salad Dressings, Salads & Salad Dressings, Snacks

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Quick & Zesty Homemade Ranch Dressing – All in Pictures

As you can see in the graph below, Ranch Dressing was the number 2 most sold condiment in the US between 2019 and 2021. I can’t imagine that position has changed in the meantime.

The Quick & Zesty Ranch Dressing you see here is what I call a “base recipe” from which you can improvise however you like – flavor rules! – and I’ll provide guides about how to do that soon. The ingredients, shown below, needed to make this Ranch Dressing are all commonly found, require no cutting or chopping and are a lot more wholesome…

…than the ingredients you typically see printed on labels of store-bought Ranch Dressings, like those shown below. (By the way, the mayonnaise I’m using, far left in the picture above, is homemade, which you can see how to make by clicking this link. The yellow comes from added turmeric powder.)

Once you have the ingredients good to go, all you have to do is put them together,…

…mix them well and then let the dressing rest in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes to bring out the full flavors of herbs and spices you use.

Click this lin k or any picture on this page for picture book Quick and Zesty Ranch Dressing directions, and enjoy!

April 4th, 2024

Blog, Condiments, How To & Tips, Special Recipes

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Homemade Tomato Ketchup: “Super” Easy, Fully Flavorful, All in Pictures

As shown in the Statistica graph below, ketchup was the number 3 selling condiment in the US between 2019-2021. I can’t imagine that’s changed between then and now.

At the same time, as shown in the images of store-bought ketchup nutrition/ingredient labels below, most of those store-bought ketchups contain about 1 teaspoon of sugar per tablespoon of ketchup (3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon).

Through most of my adult life, I’ve backed off ketchup mostly because I found it too sweet. But then, not too long ago, I found a sugar-free ketchup at a fresh food market in Easton, Pennsylvania. And though I loved the taste: fresh, zesty and rich tomato flavor, I wasn’t too hot on the price, something like $8.00 for the bottle you see below – and I found that price consistent for similar sugar-free ketchups on other store shelves across the country.

So, how ’bout I learn to make it on my own?

First step, find a decent recipe on line, like the one you see here from Tastes Better From Scratch.

As noted in red above, though the recipe above looks perfectly fine (thanks, Lauren!), I improvised (any recipe is only a guide) by:

using crushed tomatoes because I like that better than tomato sauce
cutting the sugar amount from 4 tablespoons to one tablespoon
skipping water – no flavor – and because I used a can of crushed tomatoes (14.5 ounces) that was almost twice the size of the 8 ounce can of tomato sauce called for in the recipe above
cutting out the salt because I didn’t think it needed it
skipping the onion powder because I didn’t have it on hand and, instead, used 1 full teaspoon of garlic powder
added 1/4 teaspoon of ground clove because I love that flavor
skipped the red pepper/hot sauce just to find out how the ketchup would taste without it – I could always add either later

Bottom line: here’s what I came up with that’s “super” easy to make (no cutting needed), low in sugar and salt, and, most importantly, fully flavorful – that you can see how to make by clicking this link!

March 13th, 2024

Blog, Cycling Food, Fitness Food, Vegetables

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Microwave Cooked Broccoli & Tuna in Lighter Alfredo Sauce – Easy & All in Pictures

Here’s another recipe we worked on together through AARP-sponsored “Gotta’ Eat Well” senior citizen kitchen empowerment at Eastway Rec. Center in Charlotte last Thursday. As I told an engaged group of women, who have become a band of “let’s make something fun & flavorful” friends, making microwave cooked broccoli and tuna in a lighter Alfredo sauce is just one very easy and fantastically flavorful way to take microwave cooked broccoli from simple to exciting!

Here’s what you need for ingredients:

As shown in the ingredients picture above, the key to making the lighter Alfredo sauce is substituting heavy cream with evaporated milk and using fat-reduced (“lite”) cheese with no loss in Alfredo sauce flavor or creamy texture. Here’s a nutrition label comparison showing that ounce for ounce, heavy cream contains more than twice the calories and five times the fat as evaporated milk (1 ounce = 2 tablespoons; you have to double the numbers you see in the heavy cream label to make an equal comparison with evaporated milk).

Click any picture on this page for a complete, easy-to-follow step-by-step picture book recipe.

March 11th, 2024

Blog, Fitness Food, Salads & Salad Dressings

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Senior Kitchen Empowerment Progress and Fresh 5-Ingredient Nonfat Yogurt Salad Dressing

I’ve mentioned before here that I’ve started working with AARP and Eastway Rec. in Charlotte, NC, to provide skills to senior citizens, like me, so that they can empower themselves in the kitchen and make quality of life/life-promoting foods on their own. We’ve only had 5 sessions together, but we’ve already max’d out attendence and gotten positive feedback from those participating that they’re actually using the demo recipes and techniques at home. That’s where the rubber hits the road!

Here’s one of the recipes we worked on last Thursday: Fresh 5-Ingredient Nonfat Yogurt Salad Dressing, which is an easy way to change the flavor and calorie content of the fresh 5-ingredient salad dressing shown in the previous article: Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing.

All you have to do is replace oil with nonfat yogurt. See the nonfat plain Greek yogurt to oil nutrition fact label comparison below and note that a serving of nonfat plain Greek yogurt is 1 cup (8 ounces) while a serving of oil is 1 tablespoon (1/2 ounce). That means that 1 cup (8 ounces) of oil contains 1920 calories and 224 grams of fat as compared to the cup (8 ounces) of nonfat yogurt shown below containing 130 calories and 0 grams of fat.

Here are the ingredients needed to make this dressing. Though any nonfat plain yogurt will work to make this dressing, I like using nonfat plain Greek yogurt for this dressing for its high protein content, thick texture, and rich flavor.

Click any picture on this page for a complete, easy to follow step-by-step picture book recipe.

March 6th, 2024

Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Blog, Cycling Food, Fitness Food, Hiking Food, How To & Tips, Running Food, Salads & Salad Dressings

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Easy Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing Picture Book Recipe

About a month ago, I posted this extremely easy-to-make Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing that’s so versatile, it goes great, of course, on salads, but also on pasta, rice, sandwiches, cooked vegetables – imagination is your only limit.

This post is about how to make that dressing fresh-er just by substituting garlic powder with fresh garlic.

I’m a big fan of fresh garlic for its rich, bold flavor – and its broad spectrum health benefits that include: improved immune system, lowered blood pressure and cholesterol, cancer prevention, improved athletic performance – and more (for more details in short, easy-to-read form, click this Spice World link).

Two quick practical tips about fresh garlic. First, choose fresh garlic bulbs, like the one shown below, that are firm to a hand squeeze, heavier in weight (more water content) and show no signs of dark grey mold under the skin or green shoots growing out of the bulb.

Second, to make peeling the garlic skin easy, which is the least fun part about dealing with fresh garlic, first crunch the individual garlic cloves with a forceful press and satisfying garlic skin pop using the side of a wide-bladed chef’s knife, as shown here.

Once you chop the fresh garlic, as shown briefly below, the rest is all down hill. Just add mustard, ground black pepper, vinegar and yogurt.

Peeling the skin off a fresh garlic clove, then slicing and chopping that fresh garlic clove

You can see all the above – and more – by clicking this link for the complete Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing picture book recipe.

February 15th, 2024

Blog, Dessert

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Easy-to-Make, Explosively Flavorful Chocolate Pudding

Explosively flavorful fresh chocolate pudding – with added chocolate chips (absolutely add them!): It’s far better than anything you can buy in a store and about as close to chocolate heaven as you can get – and still be on this Earth.

Here are the needed ingredients – all real, nothing fake.

2 tips regarding this recipe – or any pudding recipe:

1. Cook using low-medium heat and stir the pot often making sure to scrape the pot bottom surface to keep the milk, as it warms, and cooking pudding from sticking to the pot, which both keeps the pudding from burning and makes cleaning the pot a lot easier.

2. Although they’re optional, I like adding rich dark chocolate chips to the pudding for an added punch of chocolate flavor and like adding those chocolate chips after the pudding has cooled to just warmer than room temperature so that they also add comfortably chewy texture to the pudding.

Click this link or any picture on this page for picture book directions that show how to make this fresh chocolate pudding – and enjoy!

January 24th, 2024

Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Blog, Cycling Food, Fitness Food, Hiking Food, How To & Tips, Running Food, Salad Dressings, Salads & Salad Dressings

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Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing Picture Book Recipe

Last post mentioned work I’ve just started with AARP (American Association of Retired People) and Eastway Rec. Center in Charlotte, NC, to help senior citizens empower themselves in the kitchen to make life-promoting foods.

The first recipe we made together was the Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing shown below, which is just as incredibly versatile as it is easy to make.

First, a quick back story. The first time I ever made this recipe was with a group of fellow veterans who were turning their lives around through Veterans Incorporated (Vets Inc.) in Shrewsbury, MA. One of the guys in the group, a fellow Navy veteran – and terrific character, chimed in when I listed the seven ingredients I intended to use: garlic powder, salt, ground black pepper, mustard, honey, vinegar and oil.

“Why do we need the added salt and sugar? A lot of guys here have diabetes and/or high blood pressure. We don’t need that _____(4-letter word for “stuff”)!”

I get blunt beautifully and had to agree about the added salt and sugar. But this was the first recipe I was rolling out with these guys and first time I’d ever met them. My inner thought: “Fine, I’ll cut the salt and honey – but, boy, this dressing’s gonna’ taste like crap.”

I quickly made the dressing and asked the guys to taste a spoon of it full-on before I tasted it myself. The stunner? They loved it – and so did I.

Not only does this dressing taste great (most important), but it’s also incredibly versatile. As shown in the few sample pictures below, it goes great on any kind of warm or cold salad, over cooked vegetables, meat, chicken, fish, pasta, rice – imagination is your only limit.

Here are the ingredients needed to make this salad dressing. You’ll actually see six ingredients below because I often use two different types of vinegars for added flavor, which you certainly don’t have to do.

Click this link or any picture on this page for a complete step-by-step picture recipe that includes information about the sourness of different vinegars and why this recipe is considered low in both salt and sugar.

January 15th, 2024

Blog, Empowerment, Salads & Salad Dressings

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Helping Seniors Empower Themselves to Make Life-Promoting Foods with AARP and Eastway Rec.

I’ve written this here before, and it’s entirely true; only you can empower yourself. Sure, others can help. But the best anyone else can do is provide you with the skills you need to empower yourself because empowerment comes from within. You have to feel it, own it. Once you do, ha!, you’re off to the races!

I’m now 65 1/2 years old, a legitimate senior citizen. And I’ve just started working with AARP to help fellow seniors learn the skills they need to empower themselves to make quality of life-promoting meals on their own though a program we call “Gotta’ Eat Smartly” at Eastway Rec. Center in Charlotte, NC.

To pull back a bit to the bigger picture, even though we’ve just begun, the program’s intent is to start locally, right at Eastway, to develop a proof of concept that connects directly with seniors and shows positive results. Those results include growing participation and seeing how seniors actually apply the skills they learn at our live in-person sessions and at home.

Once we do that, we can then replicate those same skill-providing techniques and use them more widely throughout central North Carolina and beyond. Like throwing a stone in a pond, it’s all about creating an enthusiastic splash that ripples out and connects with as many people as possible by providing seniors – and eventually others – with the skills they need to make life-promoting foods, foods that our bodies and mind need to function as effectively as possible, give us the foundation to live the best quality of life possible – and taste killer good!

Regarding flavor, the next two posts will show the two recipes we put together at Eastway last week: Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing…

…and Pear Avocado Salad.

More very soon. Promise!

November 25th, 2023

Blog, Chicken & Turkey, Leftovers, Special Recipes, Thanksgiving Dinner

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Picture Book Cooking Thanksgiving Leftover Ideas

Leftovers are the most flavorful rewards of cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

First, I hope you had a fun time and fully flavorful Thanksgiving dinner with friends and/or family.

Second, one of the best rewards of making Thanksgiving dinner yourself is all the leftovers that actually enrich with flavor after the holiday meal itself.

First, click this link or the picture below for picture book directions that show how to remove and store meat from a cooked turkey.

Here are two easy to make turkey leftover recipes, turkey nachos and turkey parmesan, intended to inspire your imagination to make fully flavorful Thanksgiving leftovers that suit your taste.

Click this link or the picture below for very easy turkey nacho picture book directions.

Click this link or the picture below for easy-to-make and fully flavorful turkey parmesan picture book directions.

Enjoy the rest of your Thanksgiving weekend with full-on flavor!

Bruce

November 20th, 2023

Blog, Cooking Technique, Dessert, Poultry, Thanksgiving Dinner, Vegetables

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Stress-Free Picture Book Thanksgiving Dinner Help

Thanksgiving: my favorite holiday. All that’s expected is a fully flavorful meal with good friends and family. Great – unless you’re the host and are stressed about how to put that meal together.

Breathe easy – no problem!

To make any of the standard Thanksgiving dishes you see above – and more – as stress-free as possible, just click any picture on this page or this link to the Gotta’ Eat, Can’t Cook Thanksgiving Help page for step-by-step picture directions that will show how how to make any of the standard Thanksgiving dishes you see above – and more – as easily and stress-free as possible.