Stroganoff

For years, the perfect stroganoff has evaded me. I'll be honest, though, I haven't really tried it again since I started cooking much more hardcore post-college. The versions I'd made were good, but never quite filled the hole left behind by the now-closed little Russian cafe I used to frequent the few years beforehand. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I've more often relied on the sauce packets (and can never remember which I prefer- McCormick or Lawry's), full of all sorts of gunk I probably shouldn't eat. Sure, I've subbed the regular egg noodles for whole wheat egg noodles and I've been using plain, nonfat, Greek yogurt in the place of sour cream so long that sour cream tastes bland to me, but the packets remained. Until now.

After this week's braised beef, stroganoff jumped out at me as a use for the leftovers. As it turns out, it makes the perfect stroganoff! I cut a little bit up into cubes and tossed it into a sautee pan with some of the leftover vegetables (heavy on the mushrooms, but there was some carrot in there, too) and a quick pour of the braising liquid. I added a boat load of black pepper and reduced the liquid by about a third. After taking it off the heat, I added the yogurt and poured it over the noodles. Perfect! Recipe schmecipe. Just try it and follow your own taste buds.

Breakfast was simple: Blueberry bran muffin from Trader Joe's and scrambled egg whites

Snack: Braeburn apple (mmmm...) with a tablespoon of natural peanut butter

Lunch: Kashi 7-Grain crackers (15) with 2 tablespoons of pizza hummus (seriously, it tastes like pizza goldfish crackers), fat free feta cheese (1 ounce), sliced turkey (2 ounces)

Snack: Orange

I'm kinda jonesing for something sweet, so I'll probably have half a pb&j sandwich (on low cal multigrain bread) as my evening snack a bit later