My 15-Day Reboot, Part 2

Six days down, nine to go.

The salad pictured here was the last thing I ate last night, besides a banana and an entire grapefruit.  It was big, and it was good.  Spinach, asparagus, avocado, tomato, olive oil and lime dressing. 

So, day one of the juice fast: not as horrible as I expected, but it is only day one.  One of the reasons it hasn't been so hard, I suspect, is that I'm actually taking in more calories by juicing than when I was trying to fill up on regular portions of fruits and veggies.  It's not like anyone ever makes a meal out of an apple, three large carrots, 6-8 leaves of kale, 2 packed cups of spinach and a thumb-sized piece of ginger, but such was my breakfast this morning in juice form. 

Another reason it hasn't been so bad is that I got a call from work saying that I wouldn't be needed this evening due to a low patient census on my unit.  Oh, well - less stress during the fast is better, even though I'd kinda rather have the money.  I made double batches of 2 or 3 different juices this morning so that I'd have at least enough to get through tonight, assuming neverending hunger for something that tastes like food.  After getting the invitation not to work, I bought some more juice fodder and continued juicing.  At this point, I can probably wait until Saturday before I juice again. 

Lunch was a freestyle mix of tomato, asparagus, zucchini and celery.  Surprisingly, it tasted a lot like a V8 and all it seemed to be missing was a shot or two of vodka. 

Mid-afternoon I indulged in a smoothie: not exactly juice, but I wasn't sure if the banana would "juice" well, so I juiced an entire pineapple and then put it in a blender along with two bananas in pieces and about four tablespoons of unsweetened shredded coconut.  Again - ssssoooooooooooooooooooo freakin' good, and all that was missing was a shot or two of rum.  I will most certainly be making a grown-up version of this when the reboot is over.  April 1, I have you in my sights.

For dinner, I sucked down a gazpacho juice I made this afternoon with a couple of cucumbers, four beefsteak tomatoes, a few celery stalks, a red bell pepper, a quarter of a red onion, a bunch of parsley from the backyard and a few tablespoons of lime juice (cheating again, but only because I forgot to buy limes).  My juicer doesn't juice herbs very well, so instead I put the parsley in the food processor, got it down to about a pesto consistency and added it to the juice.  It's really just like having regular gazpacho!

Later on, I plan on enjoying a juice made of kale, pears, strawberries and coconut water.  Probably the weirdest of all the combinations I've tried, but I sampled some after I made it this afternoon and it's pretty fruity and sweet in spite of the kale.

Another thing I'll say before signing off is that I kept half of the smoothie mix in the fridge for Steve in case he'd like to have some tonight, but if he wants it, he needs to claim it soon...

A Tale of Two Stir-Fries

Well, the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart ended two weeks ago and I've decided to stick with being vegan for the duration.  This wasn't really my plan, but then, neither was being vegetarian.  We'll see how it goes.

Saturday evening after work (I work every other weekend.  Always fun.  Not.) I chopped up about half of the veggies I recently bought with a stir-fry in mind.  Why only half, you ask?  Well, because half seemed like enough for one meal plus one or two meals worth of leftovers.  It also occurred to me when I put the other half back in the fridge that I could stir-fry the same veggies a different way later on.  So, I made a Chinesy (I make no claim as to authenticity) stir-fry for us on Saturday and an Indian stir-fry for dinner tonight.  If you ever find that you have an overabundance of several veggies that hold up well in a stir-fry, give something like this a try!
 
The Chinesy stir-fry came out well and was simple enough, now that the fine folks at MediterrAsian have given me the confidence to do Asian stir-fries with or without coconut milk or red curry paste:

2 tbsp canola oil
1.5 cups (approx.) baby carrots, quartered lengthwise
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger
1.5 cups snap peas, ends trimmed
1 red bell pepper, sliced lengthwise
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp Chinese five spice powder
4 oz. baby bella mushrooms, sliced
1 cup vegetable broth
salt and crushed red pepper to taste
2 tbsp corn starch mixed with 2 tbsp cold water

Heat oil over medium heat in work or wide saucepan.  Add carrots, garlic and ginger and saute for 3-5 minutes.  Add snap peas red bell pepper and cook another 3 minutes.  Add hoisin, soy sauce and Chinese five spice powder and stir well.  Add broth, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer for about 5 minutes.  Check flavors and add salt and crushed red pepper as needed.  Add cornstarch mixture and stir often as sauce thickens to a glaze.  Remove from heat and serve over rice.
***
Then tonight I chopped up the snap peas, carrots and red bell pepper for an Indian-style stir fry.  The spices are all from a mixed vegetables recipe in my Indian cookbook, but the veggies that I used were different because hey - it's what I had.  Also a winner!

2 tbsp canola oil
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1-2 bay leaves
1 tsp black mustard seeds
2 tsp urad dal
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 cup baby carrots, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1.5 cups snap peas, cut in half and ends trimmed
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/2 tsp cayenne
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt

Heat oil in a wide saucepan over medium heat.  Add next four ingredients, cover and heat until mustard seeds start popping and urad dal is golden brown.  Add onion and tomatoes, stir and cook for one minute.  Add turmeric and stir.  Add remaining veggies, stir well and cook for 3-5 minutes.  Stir in tomato sauce and remaining spices.  Blend seasonings well and cook for another minute or two.  Add about half a cup of water to make it saucier and so that veggies don't burn.  Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, for another 3-5 minutes or until sauce has thickened.  Serve over rice.
***
Well, it seems that winter's finally here.  Today I actually had to wear running tights and a knit cap for the first time since I started running again post-foot injury.  I don't know about groundhogs; for me, dark-eyed juncos are much more reliable in the meteorology department, and I saw a bunch in my backyard a couple of days ago - always a sign of cooler weather to come. 

Stay warm, eat and be healthy!

Thai red coconut curry stir-fry

I made this Tuesday night (leftovers were gone by lunch Wednesday) and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it.  It's been a very lazy week at home since I joined the sisterhood of hospital staff who worked on Christmas Day.

A couple of months ago, I made my first Thai coconut curry, based on a recipe I found online, and was disappointed enough with the result that I didn't bother to write about it.  I just ate the leftovers very sulkily at work over the next couple of days.  Later, I got a little curious about this "red coconut curry" that I'd heard about, looked for a recipe that seemed reliable, went out and got some Thai Kitchen red curry paste and some fresh veggies and got down to bidniss.

This recipe was my starting point, and the author helpfully suggests alternatives based on meat-eating status and availability of seasonal produce.  I replaced the chicken and chicken broth with tofu and veggie broth (and skipped the fish sauce), and my veggie selection was different as well.  I picked up a red bell pepper, some baby carrots and a head of broccoli and sliced up the last few mushrooms I had in a package from something else I'd made a few days prior (don't even remember anymore) and pretty much followed their instructions.  Oh, I also used lime juice instead of lemon and didn't worry about the basil.  When the stir-fry was ready (I took a picture of it in the pan because it was just so pretty!), I served it over a bed of rice noodles.  Delicious! 

Of course, if you're not a vegetarian, you could make it exactly as shown in the original recipe, but the nice thing about this and so many other recipes is that it lends itself to substitution.  Maybe try it with shrimp instead of chicken?  I dunno.  The only thing I'd say is that if you actually want to have leftovers, use slightly larger quantities of veggies and meat/tofu/whatever, because it cooks down a good bit and there was only one leftover portion for the next day's lunch.  (Guess who ate it?)  And if you use broccoli like I did, be sure to stir it in near the end, since it takes very little time to cook and you don't want it to be mushy by the time the dish is ready to serve.  I added the broccoli at about the same time as the cornstarch mixture, and it came out just right.

Well, this is probably it for 2011.  If you're in the Columbia area, I look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow morning at the Cold Winter's Day 5K or tomorrow night on Main Street, where George Clinton will be kicking off 2012 P-Funk style!

Stay warm and be safe, everyone!

Time for more juice

This made a nice combination side dish/dessert after warming up a vegetable teriyaki frozen entree for lunch today.  I had already thought about making another juice after finishing off the almost half-gallon of the Mean Green juice that I produced last time by making a double batch of the recipe, and Steve was helpful enough to pick up some more kale, cucumbers and a big bag of apples from Hendersonville, NC.  The apple, beet and carrot juice that I made today (second from the top in the recipe list) left enough of the kale unused that I'll probably make some more of the Mean Green in a day or two.

The Reboot Your Life website has a whole host of resources for people wanting to try a Reboot (juice fast) or just learn more about juicing.  As someone in the latter category, I'm already finding it very useful even though I've never even been a very enthusiastic user of my blender or Cuisinart.  You know, because of all the extra parts that have to be cleaned afterwards.  But a perusal of their juice recipes has helped me to realize that there's more to juicing than big bags of carrots or going to a lot of trouble to make fruit juices that are readily available at the supermarket. 

I'll say one thing...I'm not sure if it was the relatively high beet content or the juicer, but there seemed to be a lot of beet pulp in the bottom of the glass.  Maybe I didn't shake it well enough before pouring?  Still, it was a nice complement to the frozen entree, which, for me, is never enough food.  Must be a runner thing.

A couple more juice experiments will be happening soon...stay tuned!

Zucchini and yellow squash moussaka

Steve took care of my vegetable garden while I worked 12-hour shifts all weekend, so when I got home Sunday night, I saw two cucumbers, three crookneck squash and a zucchini that he had seen fit to pick when he went out to water the garden that morning.  A week earlier, he had bought four zucchini that were still in the fridge this morning, so I decided to take all the zucchini and yellow squash on hand and make a bigger-than-usual batch of moussaka.  Here's one of the slices we had for dinner:

I make it with zucchini more often than I blog about it, but the last time or two it came out a big, mushy disappointment.  The problem with using zucchini instead of eggplant is that it contains more water, so even if you salt the slices and then pat them dry before baking them, more liquid comes out of them in the oven and there's nothing else to absorb them.  Until now: I decided to give it another try after stumbling upon this blogger's tip about putting down a layer of breadcrumbs before each layer of zucchini.  I skipped his suggestion about grilling the zucchini slices because it's summer and I just don't wanna.  My placement of the yellow squash and zucchini was pretty haphazard-looking in terms of the colors, but I did manage to layer complimentary shapes together so that they covered the layer beneath.


For the red sauce (the base of which was a 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes), I used lentils instead of meat, as per usual, then peeled, shredded and sauteed three carrots that I had no other use for.  Since I also have a bunch of fresh herbs growing in the backyard, I also picked, chopped and threw in about 15 fresh basil leaves, 20-25 fresh oregano leaves, 5 sprigs of thyme and one sprig of rosemary.  I also had a random jalapeno that was looking a little long in the tooth, so after donning a pair of disposable gloves, I chopped that finely and added it to the sauce as well.  Salt and nutmeg to taste.  This made for a more complicated sauce than usual, but I really wanted to use up all the ingredients I could, just like when I make lasagna.


Into a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes, uncovered.  Let it rest for an hour before cutting into it, and at the risk of copyright infringement...bam!

Steve and I each had a helping like the one above and four remain, so we'll be enjoying leftovers for the next couple of days.  I'm glad I had today off, since it took about two hours for the whole thing to come together (not counting the time in the oven and cooling afterward).  Whatever I make next will probably be simpler.  Until then...

Fun with radishes

Here are my radishes - the first veggies I ever grew from seeds!

I was pretty anxious to use them once they were out of the ground and washed, because I've noticed in the past that radishes can dry out after just a few days in the fridge.  So, I replayed the radish sambhar recipe here but left out the bell pepper (didn't have any), used more radish than the recipe called for (all the ones pictured above) and used extra yellow split peas in place of the toor dal that I was fresh out of.  I also had a bunch of cilantro that all went in at the end.  Word to the wise: when making any recipe using yellow split peas plus veggies, start cooking the yellow split peas about 15 minutes before the rest since they take a while to soften completely (about 45 minutes).  Here's how it turned out, served over brown rice:

I also figured I'd be cheating myself if I didn't come up with a use for the greens as well.  I have a recipe on file for a pureed radish green and potato soup, but another use came to mind that also allowed me to dispense of half a block of tofu, a package of mushrooms, a zucchini and about four carrots that I had no other plans for: the hot pots that I first made back in January for Steve's birthday.  The broth was pretty much the same as before.  The rest included sliced mushrooms, zucchini and carrots cut into matchsticks, cubed tofu, the last of my rice stick noodles and radish greens sliced into ribbons.  I sauteed the carrots to soften them up a little before assembling the dish. 

Yummy as always, with or without sriracha!

This week's looking like it will be too hot for soup, so be on the lookout for some sort of salad recipe that will use at least one ingredient from the garden.  Stay cool everybody!

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

All of the above ingredients went into the dinner I made last night after a very rough day at work.  Cooking was the furthest thing from my mind when I got home; all I could think about was propping up the achy foot I walked around on all day (boo, plantar fasciitis).  I'm glad I did because I was getting sick of settling for a frozen Amy's Kitchen entree (even though they're good), chips and salsa, chips and hummus or a salad consisting of the salad greens and dressing (nothing to chop). 

Until yesterday, I also had a ridiculously overgrown parsley plant in the backyard with stalks - actual stalks, like five or six of them - that were making it hard for the newer leaves to grow in.  So, inspired by necessity, I chopped off all the stalks, snipped all the parsley with normal-looking stems off them and then used all four cups worth to make a parsley and walnut pesto, about half of which went into the risotto (same recipe as here but with ground sage sauteed in Earth Balance with the rice; the pesto instead of spinach; and no nutmeg).  The lentils were cooked in salt, rosemary and a few sprigs of fresh thyme.  Steve found the lentils a nice complement to the brightness of the pesto risotto, and the leftovers hit the spot after my 10-mile run this morning!  I also look forward to using the leftover pesto in a quick and easy pasta dish in the next day or two.

Tonight I made a recipe from this month's Food and Wine magazine that came together really fast by substituting canned chickpeas for dried.  I also left out the caraway and cilantro because I didn't have any and because the recipe seemed to have enough flavor without them. 

I was right!  I also substituted about six big, finely chopped spearmint leaves (one tablespoon?) for the teaspoon of dried mint because I have tons of mint in the veggie/herb garden right now and because the dried mint that I have on hand right now is the cheap stuff from the Mexican aisle that's chock full of stems.  (Double boo.  I should collect some from the backyard and start preserving it myself.)  With canned chickpeas, it only took a little over a half-hour to make, and the combination of wilted Swiss chard and a cool yogurt topping was a lot like something by a Turkish chef they profiled several years back.  Try it out sometime when you don't have a lot of time or energy to cook!  The recipe doesn't mention a starch, but a bed of couscous seemed like the obvious choice.

Hope everyone's enjoying this nice weather - I know I've been enjoying the rain in intervals that keep me from having to water the veggies I'll be cooking with this summer!

Back in the kitchen

...after nearly a month of not blogging and hardly cooking.  It's not that I didn't cook at all, but on the rare occasions that I did, I simply replayed favorites like the sweet potato spinach praram and pasta salad or just made a plain Greek-style spinach and feta salad.  The rest of the time, when I wasn't up for making anything, it was either frozen dinners or chips and hummus.  Clinicals are over, and I've had a little more time to cook this week.  That's a good thing, because I'm back to having a lot to work with and not a lot of time before it goes bad. 

Bring on the Indian (-style) food.

Yesterday I dispensed with a couple of carrots and a big bunch of cilantro by making something like chickpea soondal but with carrots and cilantro and no coconut.  Easy peasy.  I was afraid that the big bunch of cilantro I had would be too much for two chopped carrots and one can of chickpeas, but it actually came together really well and the leftovers were just as good in today's lunch.  I cooked up just enough brown rice to mix with both of the generous helpings I got from it.

Tonight I made palak tofu.  The inspiration was actually a frozen dinner that Steve buys sometimes called Mattar Tofu.  It's a vegan version of mattar paneer that uses tofu instead of the cheese.  Well, I just happened to have an unopened bag of spinach and half a block of tofu leftover from the last time I made the praram, so I made the palak tofu using those ingredients plus a few seasonings I always have on hand:

3 tablespoons canola oil
3 dried red chilies, torn into pieces
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 tablespoon ginger paste
9 ounces fresh spinach
1 onion
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon Madras curry powder (medium hot?)
8 ounces extra firm tofu, pressed and sliced into 1-inch squares

Heat the oil over medium-low heat, add the next three ingredients and saute until fragrant (just a few minutes). 

Meanwhile, puree the spinach and onion in a blender or food processor until smooth.  Add to the ginger-garlic mixture in the pan.  Add salt, curry powder and tofu, stir well, cover and cook until onion flavor no longer overwhelms the dish, about 15 minutes.  (Avoid the temptation to over-salt it before it's done; the onion flavor will cook out.)

Serve over rice.

Soup, Ready in 24 Hours

This photo was taken a few bites in...I was just that impatient!

I'm getting to where my freezer and cupboard are filled to capacity without the same space shortage issue in the fridge.  And since a recent warm spell has gone away and we're back to more normal, windy weather for early March, this week seemed like as good as any for making a big pot of soup. 

Until now, the only other things I'd ever made that took more than one day were the broth for the post-Thanksgiving turkey noodle soup and the North African-inspired soup I made in the crock pot a week later.  Lately, one of the items that's been taking up a ridiculous amount of cupboard space is this huge, coffee can-sized container of dried soybeans that I got from my co-worker with a vegetarian daughter (the same one who passed along the big bag of TVP that I used to make the shepherd's pie).  Having never eaten the dried kind before, I accepted it without really knowing what I was getting.  Would I would like them enough to make them again, or would they end up in the compost bin without ever being soaked and cooked?  Over the weekend I decided it was time to find out one way or another and dispense with these and some other canned and dried beans. 

And here's where the plot thickens.  You see, I neglected to look up cooking times for soaked soy beans and assumed that they would cook in an hour or so, like other dried beans that have been soaked overnight.  Wrong.

I threw the following ingredients (except the black beans and green beans) into a pot around 6:00 last night and figured it wouldn't take more than an hour for the soy beans to cook through:

Seven Bean Soup:
2 tbsp olive oil
3-4 carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup frozen green beans, thawed
1 cup frozen lima beans, thawed
5 cups vegetable broth
1 cup dry soybeans, soaked and drained
1 cup yellow split peas (?)
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-oz can of diced tomatoes
2 tsp dried Italian herbs
salt and pepper to taste

As the evening wore on, I realized how very wrong it was to expect this to cook through in the same length of time as a package of HamBeens 15 Bean Soup.  When I went to bed a little after 9:00 (one thing about being an early morning runner is that you have a small child's bedtime), the soybeans were still crunchy!  So I took Steve's advice and turned the heat all the way down and let it cook through the night.

When I got up this morning...still crunchy!  G&^^$##*%!  So I turned the heat up a notch and headed out for my run.  Upon my return, they were...better, but they still had a ways to go.  So, I turned the heat back down to 1 and left for work a little after 7.  Thankfully, Steve works at home, so I didn't have to worry about the house burning down while I was away.  I ended up simmering it over low heat until about 5:30 tonight.  By that time, most of the soy beans were tender, but a few were still a little firm to the bite. 

Oh, well.  Since I ended up cooking it crock-pot style on the stove, the flavors had plenty of time to come together.  I added an 8-ounce can of tomato sauce near the end, which also gave it a little something something.  The soup was actually really good!  As Steve said, it was worth the wait. 

Now I know to plan ahead anytime I want to make more of these.  I'm thinking these have the potential to make a yummy cassoulet or slow cooker baked beans.  Stay tuned...

Sunday Double-Header

For the first time in ages, I cooked for lunch and dinner yesterday, having been inspired by the wealth of culinary insight to be found in the blogosphere and the Food Network website.

Lunch was black beans and rice with pineapple.  I got the idea from The Runner's Kitchen, who apparently got the idea from someone's forthcoming book.  My recipe differed a little from both:

2 cups water
1 cup brown rice
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
6 dried red chiles, cut in half
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp cumin
1/2 of a 12-ounce can of pineapple chunks
1/3 cup of juice from canned pineapples
2 cans of black beans, drained
salt to taste
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Bring water to a boil and cook rice according to package instructions (usually about 45 minutes on medium-low heat).

In a separate saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat.  Add the next four ingredients and cook until onion has softened, about 3-5 minutes.  Add pineapple juice and cook until most of it has evaporated and chilies have plumped up slightly, another 3-5 minutes.  Add remaining three ingredients and cook until pineapple and black beans have heated through, another 5 minutes.  Stir in chopped cilantro and serve over a shallow bed of the brown rice.
****

And I guess I'd grown tired enough of having to eat 280-calorie frozen dinners on nights for which I had failed to meal-plan that I went ahead and filled my new (as of Thanksgiving) 9 x 13-inch casserole dish with a vegan shepherd's pie inspired by Rachael Ray's recipe. 

Mine, unlike hers, also features textured vegetable protein (TVP).  For the unfamiliar, this is a soy product that you buy dry and have to soak covered in warm water (like couscous).  From there, it takes on the flavor of whatever else you mix it with, but the idea is that it's a handy vegan substitute for ground beef.  I don't love it, but someone from my office gave it to me and I didn't want it to go to waste.

4 Russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1.5-inch cubes
4 tbsp Smart Balance, divided
1 tsp white pepper

salt to taste
3 medium carrots, cut in half lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 onion, chopped
1 pound frozen green peas, thawed
pinch of nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
1.5 cups textured vegetable protein
1.5 cups water
12 ounces baby bella mushrooms, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
paprika

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Place potatoes in a large sauce or soup pot, cover with water (1-2 inches above potatoes), salt generously and bring to a boil.  Boil covered until fork tender, then remove from heat.  Drain off as much water as possible and mash with a hand masher.  Stir in two tablespoons of the Smart Balance, white pepper and additional salt to taste.

In a separate pot, heat Smart Balance over medium heat.  Add carrots and cook until softened, about 5-7 minutes.  Add onion and cook until onions have softened, about 3-5 minutes.  Add next three ingredients, stir well and cook until peas have heated through, about 5 minutes.  Remove from heat.

In a mixing bowl, cover TVP with hot water and cover with a plate for 5 minutes.  Stir in mushrooms, salt and pepper.

Grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan and spread mushroom mixture in an even layer across the bottom.  Follow with an even layer of the peas and carrots mixture, then top with an even layer of the mashed potatoes.  Sprinkle paprika over the top of the mashed potatoes and bake for 45 minutes.
***
The prep work takes more time than anything with the shepherd's pie, and this ended up being another casserole that I started at 5:00 but that wasn't served until just after 7:30.  I'm just glad I managed to stay up for another hour after eating, having gotten up early yesterday to run. 

So now I'm set for leftovers for the rest of the week.  I think I'll have some now!

Soup and Salad Sunday

Another recipe I've been thinking about and just now getting around to making.  I've been wanting to make something akin to minestrone, but since I didn't have any cannellini beans in the house (they often get used the day I buy them), I made do with a cup or so of dry lentils and some other things on hand.  This was a handy way to get rid of some carrots that have been hanging out in the fridge for over a week as well as one large onion from a bag purchased more recently.   The rest could have been used whenever, and today was as good a day as any.

Lentil soup:
2 tbsp Smart Balance
1 large onion, chopped
2 small carrots, peeled and sliced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tsp dried Italian herb mix
1 cup frozen green beans, thawed
4 cups vegetable broth
1 cup green lentils, rinsed and sorted
1 15-ounce can of diced tomatoes

Heat the Smart Balance over medium heat in a 2-3 quart saucepan.  Add carrots and onions and cook until softened, about 3-5 minutes.  Add garlic and herb mix and cook for another 2 minutes.  Add green beans and cook until warmed, another 2-3 minutes.  Add vegetable broth, lentils and tomatoes.  Stir, cover and simmer until lentils have cooked through, about 25-30 minutes.

And today's salad involved an ingredient I'd never used before: radish sprouts purchased at the All-Local Farmer's Market at the end of my 11-mile run yesterday morning! 

I've been meaning to check out City Roots as well, and, having seen their selection on Saturday, I can't wait to stop by their location this week for some more new veggies!

Spinach salad with black olives and radish sprouts:
2-3 handfuls fresh spinach, washed and torn
1 small bag (1 cup?) radish sprouts
1/2 cup sliced black olives, drained
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste

Assemble the first three ingredients, in order, on two salad plates.  In a small bowl, combine the next three ingredients and pour over the salad.

Good good stuff!  And I'm happy to actually have time to cook when I'm not too tired, like I was all day yesterday.  "Dinner" was me stuffing my face with hummus and spicy blue corn tortilla chips in front of the TV, catching up on 30 Rock and Outsourced.  Yay, Saturday night.

But I've got plenty of leftover soup to enjoy over the next couple of days, and tomorrow Steve and I will be celebrating Valentine's Day at Al's Upstairs!

Enjoy this lovely weather while it lasts!

Burgers 'n Slaw

...gotcha.



Burgers 'n slaw were what I had in mind when I planned this meal, but I wanted to make it vegan.  I had also thought of making oven-baked sweet potato "fries," but Steve didn't think he had room for all three.  So I just made the burgers 'n slaw.

For the black bean "burgers," I used this recipe but substituted flour for the vital wheat gluten, since flour also contains - you guessed it - wheat gluten.  I also used 3 teaspoons of chipotle Tabasco sauce (one of my favorite condiments!) in place of the chipotle peppers that I didn't have on hand.  And I cooked the burgers in a nonstick pan instead of in the oven.  These came out a lot like the black bean cakes they used to serve at Birds on a Wire before it closed, which is fortuitous because I really liked them (with a baked sweet potato on the side) and didn't know how to make them.  I served them open-faced because the only hamburger buns we have are in the freezer and, with clean silverware available, they just seemed unnecessary.  The burgers were good plain or with a small amount of deli mustard on top.

For the ginger jalapeno slaw, I used this recipe but used a little less cabbage - more like 4 cups of regular and two cups of red.  I also added about half a cup of cilantro to give it a little extra yum. 

I kinda wish I'd made the slaw yesterday or early this morning so that the flavors would have had more than an hour to blend, but it was still good.  I'm glad I made this since I have plans in the evening that will preclude cooking again.  Looking forward to the leftovers!

The Occasional Vegetarian Gets a New Oven

So, the self-cleaning oven with flat-top range that Steve found on sale on Home Depot's website last week arrived while I was at work Friday morning.  Thankfully, Steve was here to let them in and make sure they leveled it right.

Check it out - it even has that new oven smell!

So guess what I did to christen it, even though I still had three turkey and stuffing leftover meals in the freezer?





Chickpea Soondal and Kale Pitas

The chickpea soondal recipe is in Healthy South Indian Cooking, and I reheated the last of the kale from the other night to fill out the pitas with some greenery.  I've only made the soondal once or twice before (in the four years I've had this cookbook) and usually served it with rice and one other veggie side dish, but this was the quickest and easiest thing to whip up, since nothing needed to be chopped for it and the kale and pita were there and ready to go.

1 can chickpeas
1 tbsp canola or corn oil
1 dried red chili pepper
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp urad dal
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp chutney powder
1 tsp minced fresh ginger root (I used ginger paste from the Indian grocery store)
1/4 cup powdered unsweetened coconut (also from the Indian grocery store, along with all the spices)

Drain the chickpeas, rinse and set aside.

Heat the oil in a saucepan or skillet over medium heat.  When oil is hot, but not smoking, stir in red chili pepper, black mustard seeds and urad dal.  Fry until mustard seeds burst (listen for popping sound) and urad dal is golden.  (The cookbook says to cover the pot at this point, but I often forget to check things while I'm chopping and end up burning the urad dal and whatever else is in there.  Better to leave it uncovered where I can see that the urad dal are browning.)

Immediately add chickpeas, turmeric, salt and chutney powder and mix well.  Add ginger and cook for another minute or two.

Add coconut and stir.  Remove from heat and serve.

The kale went in the microwave for 1 minute and 15 seconds, sliced the pita in half and then filled the pita pockets in layers starting with the soondal, since it was dryer and would help retain any liquid from the kale.

As you can see, I was so hungry by the time it was ready (oven/range photos taken at 1:03, before I started cooking) I almost forget to take the picture.

I also made this on the slow-cooker, so I'd have it when I got home from yoga.  The yoga didn't happen and this took longer than I expected, but it still made a nice, warm lunch today:

North African-Inspired Stew

They used to make this one soup sometimes at Smith, called North African Vegetable Stew, that had chickpeas, potatoes, zucchini, carrots, onions and a ton of spices.  Well, I had the chickpeas, onions and carrots, but I had to substitute sweet potatoes for regular potatoes and frozen yellow squash for the zucchini.  I was hell-bent on clearing out the cupboards and some of the produce that didn't become part of Thanksgiving dinner, so although I would have preferred it the usual way, this at least cleared out some ingredients with nothing better to do and, I hope, improved my chi a bit.

2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, diced

2 cans chickpeas, drained
4 small sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 bag (8 oz?) frozen yellow squash
2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1.5 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

Saute the onions in olive oil until translucent.  Add to the crock pot with the remaining ingredients and 8 cups of water.  Cover and simmer on low for 12 hours.

I enjoyed a bowl of this while Steve was outside raking pine straw, and he came in later and enjoyed some too.  Since he picked up some more spinach at Food Lion today, I'm thinking that at least one near-future lunch or dinner will be of the soup-and-salad variety.

Dinner will probably be out of the town tonight.  More later about fun with my new appliance.  Thanks, as always, for reading, and "Go Gamecocks!"

After Thanksgiving

As you can imagine from reading my previous post, I had tons of leftovers after Thanksgiving. So, I didn't cook for almost a week except for making a pot of turkey noodle soup (Steve's suggestion). This was more work than it sounds like.

It actually started on Thursday, with Steve expertly removing most of the flesh from the carcass with the handy dandy electric carving knife.

Next, I set the carcass in the new big crock pot (go office freecycle table!) with 8 cups of water and simmered it on low for about a day and a half - Thursday evening to Saturday lunch.

Obviously, there was no need to cook on Friday - leftovers out the proverbial wazoo.

Saturday I chopped up 3-4 cups of the remaining dark meat and added that to a soup pot already containing two sauteed carrots, one sauteed onion and some garlic. Then I strained the contents of the crock pot (with a great big mesh splatter guard) into the soup pot and added orzo pasta and a little salt and pepper. A few minutes before serving, I stirred in about half a cup of chopped fresh parsley from the backyard.

This was really tasty, but I wonder now if I should have skimmed off the fat from the soup, because the leftovers were kinda gelatinous and weird. With the first leftover helping, I added water because it appeared to need it. Fail - way too thin. The next couple of times I reheated it, I put it in the microwave just like it was and let the fat melt down on its own. It really warmed us up!

Since then, all I've really done is cook up the remaining bunch of kale and some lentils. Thursday night's dinner was a replay of the tuna bacon spinach pasta that used up another big bag of fresh spinach. We had to substitute capicola because Publix hasn't had the pancetta in a while; apparently, their supplier hasn't either. Maybe I'll have to start walking across the parking lot to the Fresh Market?

Thanksgiving Throwdown

I know I'm far from the only person who cooked yesterday and the day before, but for me, Thanksgiving is the culinary holiday to end all, and I want to share with everyone what I made!

I don't have anyone to cook for besides Steve, and the holiday always sneaks up before I'm ready to even think about entertaining, so I usually don't.  Nevertheless, I've been cooking a real Thanksgiving dinner every year since I moved into my house - mainly because I wanted to see if I could do it, and partly so that I'll have some experience with it should I ever find myself contributing food to extended family gatherings during the holidays (a task that, for now, mostly falls to my dear Aunt Kaye in Chesapeake, VA).  For years I worried that I'd find myself married and having to cook for in-laws from hell without ever having made a turkey or pork tenderloin before, undercooking the meat and sending everyone to the emergency room with food poisoning.  So, I've rehearsed for such an occasion four years in a row now and (to my knowledge) not made anyone sick.

So here's how I spent my day yesterday!

Turkey with herbs and citrus

This is the turkey recipe I've followed each year.  For the most part, this was the same as Giada's recipe.  The main differences are that I doubled the "butter" and olive oil and used Earth Balance instead of butter for the butter-olive oil-herb mixture for the skin.  Since Earth Balance is pretty salty, I skipped salt here.  Also, I didn't have any herbes de Provence on hand, so instead I used a dried Italian herb mix consisting of oregano, rosemary, basil, marjoram and sage.  Close enough for rock 'n roll.  I stuffed the cavity with the orange, lemon, onion and herbs and rubbed the butter-oil-herb mixture on the skin the day before and left it in the fridge overnight.  Where the recipe says to add broth and herbs and throw it back in for 40 minutes, I went up to an hour for peace of mind (the cook time in this recipe has never seemed quite long enough for a 15-pound bird, so I leave it a little longer at each step) and because I had sweet potatoes and stuffing in the oven at the same time.  I didn't use low-sodium chicken broth as recommended, so where it says to add one final cup of broth to the roasting pan, I just added water.  This can get really salty if you're not using the low-salt and salt-free items indicated.  When it was finally ready to come out of the oven, I made the gravy pretty much the same as in the recipe, except that where it says to spoon off the fat from the strained pan juices and then cook some butter and flour, I spooned off the fat (green in color from the olive oil), put that in a saucepan and whisked in some flour, followed by the rest of the pan juices and additional chicken broth.  The greenish-brown color of the roux changed to a normal light-brown gravy color as soon as I added the de-fatted pan juices and broth.  This also needed no additional salt, so when it was ready to serve I just added pepper.  Num-num!

Carrot and fennel stuffing

I decided this year that I'd had enough of Emeril's cornbread and andouille dressing recipe - it's a good meal all by itself (hot Italian turkey sausage is a good substitute for the andouille), but very complicated when you're working on other dishes.  Instead, I went hunting for simpler recipes and found this one, which gave me an excuse to go to the store and pick up some fennel.  I did use carrots but skipped the apricots because a) I wasn't dying to have them, and b) Wal-Mart didn't have any when I went looking for them last weekend.  No biggie - it was good with all the other veggies.  The biggest difference between this recipe and what I actually made, besides the absence of apricots, is that I didn't use a baguette.  I happened to have a loaf of Pepperidge Farm buttermilk bread in the freezer, so I toasted and cubed the slices over the weekend and then stored them at room temperature until I was ready to make the stuffing.  Not sure how many cups that was, but it was 14 slices and, with the rest, fit into a 9" x 13" casserole dish.  I had to go up to 5 cups of broth because the larger amount of bread didn't seem to be soaking it up, and then I left it in the oven about an extra 20 minutes because it seemed a little soupy after the first 20 minutes.  (So maybe I didn't need the extra broth?)  I was bummed that it appeared to have burned when I took it out of the oven, but when I tasted it, it didn't seem burnt so much as caramelized.  Maybe the buttermilk in the bread had something to do with it?

Sauteed kale with radishes

I bought a bunch of radishes with tops last week on a whim - and then didn't do anything with them.  It occurred to me that Thanksgiving would be just as good an occasion as any to use them, but in what?  I'd only ever used them to spice up greens before.  Steve doesn't really like any greens other than kale and fresh spinach.  Since we've been eating a lot of the latter recently, I decided to go for the kale.  The idea was to have a healthy alternative to creamed spinach or greens cooked with salted meat.  This is by far the easiest side dish I made yesterday, although the baked sweet potatoes with streusel (below) were a close second. 

2 tbsp Earth Balance
1 bunch radishes (about 6-8 radishes), halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic
1 bunch kale, chopped and rinsed in several changes of water
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

In a large enough pot to hold all the fresh kale, heat Earth Balance over medium heat.  Add radishes and cook until softened, about 3-5 minutes.  Add garlic, stir and cook another 2 minutes.  Add kale, salt and pepper and stir well to coat with Earth Balance and mix with radishes and garlic.  Cover, lower heat to medium-low and cook until kale is wilted, about 10 minutes.

The nice thing about this dish is that, although very simple, it comes out tasting like you put more effort into it than you did.  Steve asked what the secret ingredient was and seemed surprised when I gave him the rundown.  People who like greens with vinegar can have their vinegar, but I've often found that salt (in moderation, of course) is just as easy a way to take the edge off of fresh greens.

Sweet potatoes with walnut streusel

For the most part I followed Tyler Florence's recipe.  However, since it was just us, I only put two large sweet potatoes in the oven.  For the streusel, I only used 1/4 cup of butter, brown sugar and flour and substituted chopped walnuts because Steve doesn't like pecans. 

I had some misgivings about doing this instead of a sweet potato souffle because you don't always know how good the sweet potatoes are until they come out of the oven.  Luckily - or maybe because they were locally grown? - the little piece I pinched off after taking them out of the oven was sweet enough not to need mixing with brown sugar or cinnamon. 

This brings us to dessert, which we did get to share with an evening guest:

Citrus pound cake with cranberry syrup

Just like the recipe says.  This is probably the first cake I've ever made without baking powder or soda, but by following the directions exactly, it came out.  I made the pound cake first because I wanted it to be room temperature when served, and the heat requirement was different than for everything else on the menu.  My friend Usa (who ran the NYC Marathon this year and finished in 3:50) came over in the evening for dessert and wine.  I made the cranberry syrup and served it up with the cake when she got here, and we talked about German restaurant experiences in the Columbia area (she's from Germany) and, of course, the marathon.  This rare visitation had me thinking that I really should plan better so that I can enjoy holidays like this to the fullest.  Steve's always good company, but it's still nice to have guests every once in a while.  Next year?

One last thing about the food: after Usa left and I started clearing away the dishes used to make the syrup, I discovered that the strained cranberries make a delicious homemade cranberry sauce!

So...having proven several times over that I can indeed make an edible turkey, I'm thinking that next year I'll scale back and make something that only calls for the turkey breast.  More on that next year.

Stay tuned to see what I do with all these leftovers through the weekend.  Hope everyone is enjoying their Thanksgiving weekend and not being trampled underfoot by Black Friday shoppers!

Lentil soup

Can't believe it's been almost two weeks since my last blog post.  Not because I haven't been cooking, but because most of it has been replays of old standbys like Zucchini moussaka and fried rice made with frozen stir-fry veggies.  Life's getting hectic again, but I finally made time to restore health and sanity with a simple homemade vegetable soup.  (As for the continuation of the exotic veggies...the Chinese okra sat in the fridge too long and I couldn't use it, and I made the bitter melon with about the same spice mix as the bottlegourd.  Whoa, dude - bitter melon's bitter.  Wish I'd done a Chinese stir-fry instead; soy sauce probably would have taken the edge off better than the Indian spices did.)

So, after stopping into Publix on Monday and picking up a few things, I decided to dispense with some of the lentils that have sat in the cupboard unopened for months.  This lentil soup is one of the first things I learned to make during my junior year in Geneva, when I lived in the university apartments and had a monthly allowance for groceries.  It's also the first thing I ever made using broth, and one of my vegetarian classmates declared on a trip to the store that if you need broth, THIS (holding a box of Knorr vegetable bouillon cubes) is what you buy.  Eventually I found chicken, fish and ham broth, but I still like the veggie broth from time to time. 

2 tbsp olive oil

3 carrots, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced

1 large yellow onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic

8 oz. mushrooms, sliced

6 cups vegetable broth

1 cup dry white wine

10 oz. dry green lentils

3 sprigs fresh rosemary

2 tsp Cavender's Greek seasoning

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in an 8-quart pot.  Add the carrots and saute covered until softened, about 5 minutes.  Add the chopped onion and garlic and saute covered until softened, another 3 minutes.  Add the mushrooms, stir and saute covered until softened, another 3 to 5 minutes.  Add the broth and wine and bring to a boil.  Add lentils and rosemary and reduce heat to one notch below medium.  Cook until lentils are tender, about 30 minutes.  During the last few minutes of cooking, add the Greek seasoning and parsley. 

I'll go ahead and admit that I had been going more for a rustic French result, but now I'm thinking that would have worked out better just with chicken broth, rosemary, salt and pepper.  The Greek seasoning was basically a "save" because the soup seemed to be missing something before I added it.  At least now I understand why this recipe has been hit-or-miss in the past.  Plus I've got leftovers for the next two days' lunch and a bunch more carrots left to use in some of the many fall recipes I've been bookmarking!  Check back soon to see what's next...

Vegetarian Cassoulet

Now that I'm feeling better and ready to eat something relatively mild, I decided on a vegetarian cassoulet recipe that I found on Epicurious. Mine didn't vary a whole lot from the recipe at the link, except that I was interested in trying fennel instead of the celery that it called for. (My typical thought process when reading a recipe with celery in it: "Celery...nah.") I was worried that the anise flavor of the raw fennel might overwhelm the dish if I added the ground cloves too, so I left those out. Also, I used 2 cups of chicken broth and 2 cups of veggie broth instead of a quart of water, and near the end I stirred in about a quarter cup of flour because the mixture wasn't thickening as quickly as I'd hoped (definitely not the 30-minute timeframe the recipe suggests). Lastly, I skipped the breadcrumbs in favor of a light sprinkling of Parmesan and parsley garnish - Steve's preference. Plus I didn't have any baguettes to grate, didn't feel like making a trip to the store, and the Italian breadcrumbs of indeterminate age in my cupboard seemed like they could be a key ingredient in another food poisoning mishap.

That's the rundown of tweaks. And if I do say so myself, the result was delish!

Whiting au poivre with herbed lentils

So, last week I saw where some website had posted French recipes in celebration of Bastille Day.  One of them was "Tuna au poivre with lemon-caper lentils," with tuna being chosen as a healthy substitute for pepper steak.  Well, I almost never have either in the house, but we did have whiting in the freezer.  Also, Steve doesn't like capers because of their unsavory provenance ("they're a garbage vegetable"?), which was just as well because I had carrots and some zucchini from the backyard that needed to be used up.  The link to the recipe this is based on is here, and here's what I actually made (Tuesday night):

2 6-oz. whiting filets and one flounder filet, thawed
salt and fresh-ground pepper
1 cup lentils, rinsed and sorted
1 sprig fresh rosemary, chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
2 medium zucchini, quartered lengthwise and sliced about 1/3 inch thick
1 tbsp lemon juice

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.  Salt and pepper both sides of each fish filet, pressing in the pepper.  Place the fish filets in a greased shallow baking pan and bake until fish flakes with a fork, about 15-20 minutes.  Halfway through the cooking, sprinkle lemon juice on the fish filets and put them back in the oven.

Meanwhile, bring 2 1/2 cups of water to boil.  Add lentils, carrots, rosemary and salt.  Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.  After 10 minutes, add zucchini, put the lid back on and simmer until lentils are done, another 15-20 minutes.

Easy, huh?  Steve and I both had the whiting on Tuesday night, and I had the flounder for lunch at work the next day.  The flavors of whiting and flounder are different, but I thought it worked either way.

As hungry as I am, I can't believe I'm still typing.  Thank God Steve brought home another rotisserie chicken; now all I have to do is cook up some of the broccoli he brought home a few days ago and we'll be set!

9 Veggies, 1 Soup, 1 Salad

After returning from a weekend camping trip, on which our food stores typically consist of pre-cooked chicken or turkey sausage, buns, Goldfish, Pop-tarts and pistachios, I noticed that I still had a ton of produce that might have been fun to bring along had our cold storage space not been mostly taken up by beer.

So…on hand I had a few beets, a trimmed bunch of mustard greens, one small head each of broccoli and cauliflower, spring onions, a few tomatoes, one cooked, husked and chilled ear of corn and a couple of carrots. Since I’m not able to cook every night of the week and didn’t want to spend all Sunday afternoon in the kitchen making several things to be consumed during the week, I took the easy way out and threw everything into a soup pot with a few cups of water and some partially cooked chana dal (dried split chick peas, available at Indian grocery stores). Here's what it looked like.


I have to say I was a bit disappointed in how much sweetness the beets added to the mix. Given the chance to do it all over, I think I would have nuked and then chilled the diced beets and then used them in a spinach, corn and feta salad served as part of a soup-and-salad combo. I might have also added a can of tomato paste or sauce for additional thickness and flavor. That said, here’s the soup-and-salad that I did end up making and what I used:


Corn and feta salad

This recipe is based on a cold side dish I used to enjoy at the now-defunct Birds on a Wire restaurant, located on Devine St. in Columbia until 2008 or 2009. Since the food was generally mediocre and the service worse, the only reason I really have for missing them is that I never learned how to make their black bean cake. Here’s a take on their corn and feta salad:

One ear fresh corn, baked with husk on and chilled
3-4 oz. feta cheese, crumbled
green onions from one bulb of spring onions or one small bunch, sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp lime juice
pepper to taste

Once the ear of corn has chilled, peel off the husk and cut off the kernels with a serrated knife and discard the cob and husk.

Place the corn kernels in a mixing bowl. Add all other ingredients and stir until blended. Spoon onto small plates and serve. (Serves 2-3)


Indian Sambhar-style mixed vegetable soup
For most of my Indian cooking, credit needs to be given to Alamelu Vairavan, whose Healthy South Indian Cooking** book I found in the book shop of the United Nations headquarters in New York in 2006. None of her sambhars, not even her Mixed Vegetable Sambhar (p. 175), actually call for this many veggies. However, given the consistent list of spices, I figured the basic configuration would allow for additions and substitutions.

4 cups water
1 cup (dry) chana dal*, pre-soaked for one hour
salt to taste
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons urad dal*
2 tablespoons black mustard seeds*
2 large carrots, peeled and diced into ¼ inch cubes
4 small beets, peeled and diced into ¼ inch cubes
4 spring onion bulbs, chopped
1 head of broccoli (stems removed), chopped
1 head of cauliflower (stems removed), chopped
1 bunch mustard greens (12-15 large leaves), chopped into bite-size pieces and washed in several changes of cold water
3 medium tomatoes, peeled and diced
1 tbsp sambhar powder* (like a mild curry powder)
Cayenne pepper to taste
*Can be purchased in Indian grocery stores.

Drain and rinse pre-soaked chana dal. Boil 4 cups of water in a 2-quart saucepan and add chana dal plus 1 tsp salt and turmeric. Cook covered for 20-30 minutes or until soft.

Heat the canola oil in an 8 qt pot over medium heat. When hot, but not smoking, add mustard seeds and urad dal. Cover pot and cook until mustard seeds pop and urad dal turns golden brown.

Add carrots and beets, stir and cook for 5 minutes. Add spring onions, stir and cook another 2-3 minutes.

Add broccoli and cauliflower, stir and cover for another 2-3 minutes.

Add cooked chana dal with their water and about 4 cups more water. Add tomatoes and mustard greens, pushing the greens down into the water with a large spoon. Stir in sambhar powder and cayenne (and more salt if needed), lower heat and simmer, covered, for 15 more minutes or until mustard greens have wilted.

Unsolicited testimonial: Steve was polite. To my pleasant surprise, given how seldom he eats corn by choice, he actually seemed to like the corn and feta salad. This ear of corn wasn’t especially sweet, so the kernels provided texture and just enough sweetness to complement the scallions and feta. Comments for the soup included “it’s pretty good” and something about each bite bursting with vitamins. Again, I found the beets to be a bit out of place in this soup because of the sweetness they added. Thankfully, they did not (at least not until the leftovers sat in the fridge overnight) discolor every other ingredient as I’d feared – just a few of the onions and carrots they cooked with in the beginning. Had I left out the beets, Indian spices and about half the greens and added tomato sauce and some Italian herbs, this actually would have made a great vegetarian minestrone. Will definitely make this again – just not the exact same way.

**Vairavan, A. and Marquardt, P. Healthy South Indian Cooking. New York: Hippocrene, 2001. ISBN 0-7818-0867-7