fast food . . .

. . . FOOD SNOB style!

Fast food #1:

Tortilla, cheese, leftover beans and rice, fold up, bake until crispy, voila! Nearly instant burritos. And we all know it takes less than five minutes to make a salad. :) Feel free to top your burrito with extra salsa -- I just happened to have purchased "extra hot" salsa at the FM last weekend, so the beans and rice were plenty spicy for me without anything extra. (The man who sold me my salsa said, "You like spicy? You will like this -- it will take you to Mexico!" Awesome -- I need a vacation anyway!)

P.S. Aren't you proud of Dan for picking up whole-wheat tortillas?

Fast food #2:

I can have curry on the table in the time it makes to make a pot of brown rice. (And mind you, I boil my whole grains, so brown rice takes at most 25 minutes.) Fry up the pressed tofu in hot oil, pull it out so you have room to quickly cook the veggies and ginger, add coconut milk, curry paste, low-sodium soy sauce, and a little sriracha, (water, too, if needed,) and simmer until thick. Stir the tofu in at the end, and dinner's served! Yum.

We've been enjoying a lot of squash curry lately, since squash is plentiful, cheap, and local. What "unconventional" ways have you been enjoying squash this fall?

unseasonably warm weather

We've been having unusually warm weather these past few days, (highs in the 60s!) and since Dan was trapped inside the recording studio all day yesterday, we decided to go for a hike this afternoon, even though it was kind of cloudy and threatening to rain. We drove north and west to Lake Maria State Park, which we visited last on my birthday in May! A few pretty shots from the afternoon:







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I've been cooking like a crazy person as usual this weekend, but I have few photos to show for all of my efforts! I somehow managed to make pizza AND chocolate chip cookies, and forgot to take pictures of each! Disaster! Here's what I did manage to capture . . .

Lunch today:

ACH. Blogger is rotating pictures that I did not rotate! Anyhow, tilt your head to the side and feast your eyes on this feast! Tofu Mom's Lentil Loaf, (vegetarian version,) roasted fingerling potatoes, and steamed brussels sprouts doused in garlic butter. I was initially disappointed in the lentil loaf because it did not set up or hold together well for me, but after my first bite, I'm in LOVE. Amazing, amazing, amazing!!!!! I think if left unattended, I could have eaten the entire pan myself. Make this now!!!! Total veg comfort food -- not going to fool any die-hard meatloaf fan, but this is its own fantastically delicious, rich, tasty creation. YUM!

And, dinner tonight:

More fried rice! Yum again! Dan's brother came over for an impromptu get-together tonight, and this simple, delicious meal made everyone happy. Both guys went back for seconds! Alright!

finishing up the shopping

I met up with my friend Courtney this morning, and finished up the weekly shopping. First, we hit up the Farmer's Market:



A smaller load this week, running only $15, but I still got tons of good stuff! Bell peppers (!), green onions, yellow onions, garlic, salsa, beets, and brussels sprouts! Yum all around.

After the FM, we made the long walk to the Asian grocery store:



Coconut milk, tofu, ginger candies, and persimmons! I'm very excited persimmons are in season right now, but no one is more excited than Courtney. :) She buys them a case at a time!!

I plan to get a head start on my cooking projects today, since Dan's MIA all day long -- super rockstar that he is, he's recording until 10 PM. More later!

return to the kitchen

I haven't cooked since Monday night! (Really, unless you count serving soup out of the Crock Pot and making quesadillas cooking, I haven't cooked since Sunday.) Egad! I guess I did bake Monday night, (muffins and granola,) but still . . . the moral of the story is, it was good to get back into my kitchen tonight. Dinner:

Millet-Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms, from Vegetarian Times, with a side of garlicky, balsamic-vinegary kale. I really don't care for millet, but I enjoy it in this recipe for some odd reason. Good thing, because it's damn tasty! Dan almost considered a second mushroom half, but restrained himself.

I think he was saving room, because he convinced me to go for a walk with him, promising me an ice cream cone at the end of our travels! We started our walk at the co-op, since Dan wanted to pick up some tea and we needed groceries anyway:



BULK:
local, organic, whole-wheat pastry flour
local, organic rolled oats
locally-roasted, organic, fair-trade coffee

CHEESE:
local part-skim mozzarella
sharp cheddar

HERBS & SPICES:
organic paprika from a local company

PACKAGED GROCERY:
baking soda
organic tomato sauce
whole-wheat panko
Seventh Generation dish soap

PRODUCE:
organic bananas
organic white button mushrooms
local hydroponic lettuce

REFRIGERATED GROCERY:
local, organic plain yogurt
local, organic eggs

I have plans to hit the Farmer's Market and Asian grocery store tomorrow, to pick up a few additional things.

In the end, the ice cream cone was worth the effort put in to obtaining it! Pumpkin ice cream is a good, good thing.

boo, food, hipster kitty

First off, happy very belated Halloween! Hope you had a good one. Dan and I had a pretty low-key day -- we ran errands in the morning/afternoon, went to a play/puppet show thing in a park that a friend was playing music for, and had leftovers for dinner. :) We did finally carve our pumpkin, though, and had plenty of seeds to roast! Yum.

On to food . . .

Lunch Sunday:

Buttery cabbage and onions over egg noodles, with sides of homemade applesauce, and rye bread and butter. Humble and tasty!

Dinner Sunday:

Fried rice! How is it possible that I've forgotten about this simple, quick, and delicious meal for so long! You'll be seeing more fried rice in my not-so-distant future, for certain.

Dinner Monday:

Despite the quesadilla looking like the star of this meal, that humble black bean soup in the background was delicious! (Well, so was the quesadilla, but the soup recipe was new.) I picked up Love Soup by Anna Thomas a few weeks ago, and this is the first chance I've had to cook from it. I made "Black Bean and Squash Soup," on page 140, and it was SO easy and SO delicious! (And doesn't really taste like squash, which is a good thing when squash is in season but you have an anti-squash partner.) I didn't really follow the directions in the recipe, just chucked everything except the salt in my Crock Pot (dried beans included!), turned it on, and went to work. Came home, added salt and veggie broth base, pureed with the stick blender, and voila! Yum. We've been eating this soup all week for work lunches, and I'm still not sick of it!

Last but not least, you know all the hipster cats wear their scarves inside during cold weather:

I don't make a point of torturing the cat very often, but this was worth it!

disastrous diet day

Ugh -- did anyone else eat too much junk food yesterday? There was a staff party at work, at which I ate pizza, salad, and THREE desserts, (well, I had to try one of each of the things that were brought, right?), then I had more sugar with the kids during their party, (cookies w/frosting AND candy corn!), and then I had MORE candy corn during the movie Dan, Ryan, and I went to last night, and THEN I had more sugar -- pumpkin cake! I did manage to squeeze a healthy dinner in there, though:



I've loved this recipe for "Cream of Wild Rice Soup" for both its taste and simplicity -- not a load of ingredients, and easy enough technique. (If you click through, you'll notice "turkey" in the title. Just omit the turkey, add a little more wild rice and veggies, and use vegetable broth.) (P.S. I don't use instant wild rice -- I just cook one cup of normal wild rice and stir that in at the end.) It was nice to get some veggies and whole grains back into my system after all of that sugar! We even had a green salad on the side! Woo veggies!

P.S. banana oatmeal sweetened with agave nectar this morning. I'll slowly work on purging the sugar from my system over the next couple of days! ;)

sunchokes!

Sunchokes, Jerusalem Artichokes, whatever you want to call them, I finally got around to cooking with the pound of knobbly little sunflower roots I bought at the Farmer's Market LAST weekend. (Not a day ago, but over a week ago!) I was so excited to find sunchokes, since I'd never tried them before, and quickly purchased a pound.

I googled soup recipes using sunchokes, and settled on a very simple sunchoke and leek soup, containing nothing more than a little butter, some vegetable broth, milk (or a blend of milk and yogurt, which is what I used,) salt, and pepper. About 45 minutes and a hit with the stick blender later, I had cream of leek and sunchoke soup:



Oh yum! I did detect a hint of artichokeish flavor, which I'm sure was enhanced by the slight sourness brought to the party by the plain yogurt I subbed for part of the milk, but really, sunchokes are their own flavor, in my opinion. Light, almost summery, incredibly subtle, fresh, and TASTY! You'd be hard-pressed to find another fall vegetable that tastes more springy!

Served up with a side salad and a couple of crostini spread with baba ganoush:



AND, pumpkin cake for dessert!



It's been a good night. :)