I've been trying a baked baby spinach recipe, roasted them in the oven for 15 mins at 350F. My boyfriends and my own consensus is that they taste interesting - sort of like roasted seaweed - but not good enough to put into our regular rotation.

Have you tried it out (e.g. at lower temps) with better results? Do you have better low cal snack ideas? Please share!

Moderation is key, and Ed's Serious Diet column has been a great insight to me -- but I'm curious:

How do you all mix good (great!) food with health in mind?

I find the best recipes use butter, cheese etc. and true to form - as we are meant to find them - taste best. I cut down on fat by using PAM a lot, whole grain bread and rice, low-fat cheeses etc.

I started cooking with health concerns in mind, but flavor was, and always will be, #1 for me. I try to stick with fresh, seasonal, locally sourced ingredients that require minimal amounts of doctoring for a good meal (aromatics and spices make this so much easier!).
Creamy and oil-heavy meals are an indulgence for me - and mainly in restaurants.

I'd love to know how SE-ers love to mix both great flavor and health conscious recipes on a daily basis.

A lot of cast iron skillet one-pot recipes I see pertain to meat (steaks, chicken etc. - meats that benefit from Maillard reactions).

As a veg, I can only think of caramelized onions, as well as fritattas and quiches that would require finishing in the oven that would make a cast iron skillet a worthwhile investment for me (I do have baking dishes, so I could add to do the dishwasher load instead).

Thoughts or suggestions? Or any veggie cast iron skillet ideas? Thanks in advance!

I know I've seen five spice tofu cooked in some applications in mainland China when I used to visit, I just can't remember how! I just stir-fried some with garlic and veg. oyster sauce, but I keep on thinking that I had it in some kind of spicy marinade as a child.

Any ideas / recipes? I'd like to use it as the main ingredient.

I bought all the ingredients for key lime pie minus the lime juice (d'oh!) - my SI's mother went out to get lime juice but came back with sweetened Rose's lime juice from concentrate.. I somehow really doubt this will work, but don't want to be a bother.
Any thoughts?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/25/kfc-doublicious-double-do_n_625623.html.

Commence cries of horror.

Was just curious - do you ever browse SE at work (this question excludes those of you who work at SE!).

My boss can see my screen, and maybe because I am a scared intern I don't browse SE because my company is a newswatch agency, and food has nothing to do with it!

Do you browse? Do you click away quickly if someone walks by so it doesn't seem like you're procrastinating?

While I'm interning in DC I couldn't pack a lot onto the Chinatown bus from Philly, so I only brought a baking sheet and microwave safe Tupperware. Bad idea - all my woks, steamers, beloved skillets.. all in Philly. I've been roasting corn in the oven, that's about it.

Any suggestions for what I can make that's cheap, healthy, vegetarian and good?

I was hungover and thinking about the hamburger fatty melt and then.. BAM! I had a drunk food / hangover cure idea.

... French toast PB & J sandwich?? With a little maple syrup on top? My boyfriend was grossed out by the idea, but I think I may try it tomorrow (or tonight, after a few drinks).

Thoughts?

Would you see it as a deal breaker if your significant other didn't really appreciate good food (e.g. fast food burgers will always beat the best Kobe beef) and considers microwaving 'cooking'?

I feel like a good meal is such a communal experience, that if one person truly enjoys it the other needs to be able to appreciate it to some degree. Your thoughts?

I picked up a copy of Frank Bruni's autobiography, Born Round, and have read through maybe 75% of it.

I've noticed that he described his self in such a way that I expected him to look a lot bigger in the photos he included. Especially the one of him as an adolescent at a swim meet -- I couldn't see any love handles!

While he does appear to be on the heavy side at times (e.g. on the campaign trail), I wouldn't characterize him as being as overweight as I'd imagined him to be based on his own self-descriptions.

Has anyone else noticed this? I thought this might just be my opinion (although I am pretty tiny at a size 2 and grew up in thin-central Asia, so I do recognize that people tend to be heavier in the West than the East), or that he just might have viewed himself as being "bigger" because of his food issues.

Any thoughts?
The book has been a great read, so far, though!

OK I know that this question has been covered in the breakfast sandwich poll.. but how do you like your eggs (naked, and on their own with S&P?).

I just tried poaching my eggs via the SE technique recommendation -- basically hard-boiled them, but after having amazing poached eggs on a lentil pilaf I am WON OVER.
I also love scrambled eggs with soy sauce and vinegar, but w/o the condiments I don't like 'em, which eliminates them.

I love runny eggs (all the better to dip my bread with!) so over-easy or over-medium (and the aforementioned poached) are my number ones. When I feel like being healthy, hard-boiled egg whites do it for me,

And you?

Tonight is topped with breadcrumbs made with toasted crushed saltines,over garlic and sauteed mushrooms, peas, and pasta tossed with parm and thickened some reserved cooking liquid.

Beyond the Red Bulls and cheap Domino's pizza: what are your good, cheap, quick recipes that can be easily-made ahead and downed straight out of the fridge, which will provide enough nutrition to get through all-nighters and exams week?

I'm currently running on energy drinks, string cheese and Chinese take-out (and procrastinating on studying for my 9am final by posting this).

Suggestions and recipes will be greatly and tired-ly appreciated.

Having missed on many opportunities in the kitchen preparing Chinese food with my mom growing up, I find myself often calling her (whenever the 12 hr time difference allows) and emailing her for recipes that I try to replicate at college while homesick.

For a lot of dipping sauces and noodle dish sauce (where we pour the sauce over the noodles and mix, such as this bean-paste and tomato sauce we used to make), my mom tells me to add a little bit of "hot oil" on top to finish. Can anyone elaborate on this Asian technique? Have you heard of using it in other dishes or is this something my mom has picked up from generations of traditional Beijing-style cooking within our family?

I often eat (at home in Hong Kong) a cold cucumber salad that's definitely Chinese-inspired. I've tried to get the recipe out of my mom several times but her English isn't fabulous and all she can has e-mailed is "salt cucumbers, no cooking!".

I had the dish again in DC, and have been trying to replicate with the (sparse) help of online recipes.

Basically what I've been doing is slicing the cucumbers in bite-sized wedges, then salting them in a coriander to remove moisture for half an hour. Then I marinate them in 1/4 cup of rice wine vinegar, 1 tbs of lite soy sauce, and a Splenda packet and adding a dash of sesame oil (per whole cucumber). It still doesn't taste "quite right" so I was wondering if any other SE-eaters had an original recipe or could give me some intel (at least until I can get my mother face to face to show me how she makes it!).

P.S. I also tried to make it today with my newly purchased Slap-Chop, which is a disaster of a purchase and a painful waste of $15 to a college student. Stay away!!

I have a bag of potatoes I'm going to use up and decided to do potato salad.

What's your recipe, and what do you put in yours?
At home we do peas and cut up gherkins and pickles with mayo.

I'll be interning in DC this summer (staying at GWU), and I was wondering where I could find cheap, vegetarian food near the campus and around Capital Hill.

I visited the Mall yesterday and then Chinatown and no kidding was the Chinese food awful. I've seen the DC food guide, but I'm from Philly and love truck fare. Does it exist beyond those pretzel / half-smoke / ice-cream vendors around the Mall?

Thanks!

I'm a strict vegetarian and am looking for some baked portobello mushroom ideas.

I'm currently marinating 2 portobello caps + stems in mirin, soy sauce and garlic to bake for tomorrow's dinner, and will be adding the leftover marinade to cornstarch to thicken and top an Asian-influenced mushroom sandwich recipe.

Any suggestions (cheaper ones, since I'm a college student, and baked, since my smoke detector goes nuts when I pan fry) greatly appreciated!

Thanks!