pumping up the produce

As I wrote earlier in the week, I am trying to make an effort to eat more produce these days -- specifically, more veggies!  I tried to center our meals around veggies this weekend, and chose Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers as my "focus cookbook."  (Do any of you ever do that when you are meal planning?  Sometimes when I'm overwhelmed by ideas and options, I choose one cookbook and select only recipes from it for upcoming meals.)

Breakfast Saturday morning:

How to have French toast nearly effortlessly on Saturday morning?  Slice the bread and set it out to dry before you go to work on Friday morning.  Friday night before bed, make a custard, (I used 4 eggs, a cup of milk, a tablespoon of sugar, 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla, several dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg, and a pinch of cardamom,) and soak the bread in the fridge overnight.  With these simple jobs done, all you have to do is get up and fry up your toast!  Yum.  I made us a beautiful fruit salad for the side.

Saturday supper:

Since butternut squash is John's favorite soup variety, I figured I better try the recipe for "Thai Butternut Squash Soup" from my focus cookbook.  I was really pleased with the results!  I made a couple of small modifications, (I roasted a whole squash instead of using frozen puree, used more spinach, and used the whole can of coconut milk and less water,) and we both loved this.  (I especially loved the salty, savory little "tofu croutons!  Tasty delicious.)

Sunday lunch:

"Magic Kale Salad" with pan-fried tempeh.  A repeat, for good reason!  Felt so good to eat a huge plate of greens!

Sunday supper:

A favorite from my focus cookbook this week, "Saucy Hungarian Eggplant."  I haven't made this in ages, and what a shame!  Light yet hearty, this stew is totally nutritious, flavorful, and also helped me take advantage of the GIGANTIC bag of bulgur I bought from Costco not too long ago.

It wouldn't be a quiet weekend without a baking project!

I really felt like baking today, although I wasn't ready to start my Christmas cookies quite yet.  :)  I searched the interwebs for a somewhat healthy muffin recipe full of holiday flavors, and ended up adapting a recipe for molasses spice muffins . . .

Whole-Wheat Gingerbread Muffins
Yield: 24 mini-muffins plus 8 standard muffins

Ingredients:
1 stick butter at room temperature (I used salted)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup molasses
2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
pinch cloves

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Cream butter and sugar.  Add eggs, buttermilk, and molasses, and stir until smooth.
3. Combine the flour, baking soda, and spices.  Stir into the wet ingredients just until combined.
4. Fill muffin liners 1/2 to 2/3 full.  (These puff up a lot, thanks to the buttermilk/baking soda reaction!) Bake mini-muffins for about 15 minutes, standard muffins for about 24 minutes.  Cool, and store tightly covered at room temperature (or in the fridge, if you don't think you'll eat them in a few days.)

Lately, I've been enjoying scooping some of my muffin batter out into my mini-muffin pan, and taking those to work.  I love to bake, but we can't always get through a full batch of muffins before "the fuzz" gets to them.  :(  My coworkers have been enjoying the somewhat healthy, homemade "mini-treats" I bring occasionally!  A great solution to my "problem," and a win-win for everyone!

Garden-fresh

A simple, garden-fresh Friday night dinner -- tabbouleh, hummus, pita, olives, and feta! Nothing quite like the scent of freshly chopped herbs, if you ask me. :)

transition food

Even though we are barely starting to see the first whispers of spring in chilly MN, it's still plenty cold and blustery at night! I think of this dish as more winter food, but with the high concentration of veggies, it's actually quite light. Perfect transition food, in my opinion!

"Saucy Hungarian Eggplant," from Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers, (one of my favorite cookbooks of all time!), topped with a little leftover herbed yogurt from my chickpea pancake fiesta over the weekend. Now, this dish is excellent topped with plain yogurt . . . but the herbed yogurt turned it into something downright elegant!

I have a busy few days ahead of me, culminating with a marathon apartment-viewing extravaganza on Saturday. I expect I'll be eating leftovers for the next four days, so not much blogging coming up, but hopefully I'll get to the store on Sunday and have something to show! Until then, folks.

SNOW DAY!

I have pretty much always worked for non-profit preshool/child care programs in my career, which means, we NEVER get snow days. Typically, policy has been we don't close unless the public schools close, and the public schools never close!

Well, that is, until this week! Seriously, this is the first time I've remembered Minneapolis and/or St. Paul Public Schools closing in well over ten years. (I remember the University of Minnesota shut down one day during my freshman year because the air temperature was a high of -20 Farenheight, with even scarier wind chills. I'm sure the schools were closed that day, too!) It was such a surprise, receiving a call from my coteacher on Sunday night, with the message "SNOW DAY" loud and clear! THEN, last night, my boss called, stating, "another snow day tomorrow!" Wow! (The reasoning? I guess we got such a dumping of snow over the weekend, the city has not yet been fully plowed, so the school busses can't get through.)

Well, really, the reason doesn't matter -- snow days are the BEST! Of course, my favorite thing to do on a snow day is BAKE! Now, I've drastically changed my Christmas cookie plans for this year, since my parents have decided to come up. My mom does a ton of baking most years, and I didn't want to duplicate anything she's making, so my list has been cut from a dozen different things to about five. I wasn't even planning on making roll-out cookies this year, (since my mom already makes them,) but yesterday, I just couldn't help it! Snow days require frosting and sprinkles, in my opinion!




No offense to my grandma, whose "Christmas Cookie" dough I almost always make, but I decided to do something simpler this year, with a smaller yield. I settled on Real Simple's Basic Sugar Cookie Dough, which was just right. I ended up getting 40 cookies from this recipe, (the suggested yield is 18,) likely because I rolled the dough a little thinner and used smaller cookie cutters than they did. (I also believe strongly in re-rolling scraps. If I hadn't, I would have wasted at least half of the dough!) My cookies only took about 9 minutes, too, instead of their suggested 12 to 15. After cooling, I whipped up a super-simple buttercream, (1/2 cup butter, 4 cups powdered sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, and about 3 tbsp milk, or until the frosting held together but was still creamy and spreadable,) and attacked my stash of sprinkles. Wahoo! Dan didn't feel like helping with the decorating this year, and that was just fine -- the recipe was manageable enough, I finished the decorating before I was sick of it. :)

AND, since we cannot survive on cookies alone, (although it would be fun to try,) I did some actual cooking these past couple of days, too.

First, "Saucy Hungarian Eggplant," from Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers:

For some reason, seeing bulgur in the cupboard made me think to make this dish! Really, though, it is spectacular and easy, and one of my favorites from this cookbook. I couldn't believe the prices on decent-looking artichokes from California this week, so I decided to pick up two for us to enjoy alongside. (We also had salad! It was a veggie-full meal.)

Last night was an incredibly simple miso soup supper:


Here's my recipe, which serves two:

1. Combine 6 cups of water, 2 strips of kombu, 2 dried shiitake mushrooms, and 4 "coins" of fresh ginger. Bring to a boil, then turn off the heat and cover your dashi. This can steep basically as long as you'd like, but for at least a half-hour. Remove and discard the kombu, shiitakes, and ginger.

2. Return the broth to a boil. Add 1/2 package firm tofu, pressed and cubed small, about 12 fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced, and 1 "bundle" of soba noodles, broken into about 1-inch pieces. Boil for five minutes, or however long your noodles take to cook, stirring frequently.

3. Turn off the heat and stir in 1 bunch of green onions, sliced, and 2 tablespoons of miso. Enjoy!

We had a small bowl of leftover soup, which I wasn't expecting, but because we had barely done anything all day long, I guess our appetites weren't at their normal level! Alas, I guess I'll just have to have the leftovers for breakfast this morning!

Off to enjoy snow day #2, here -- if I feel like getting out to buy more flour, I'll definitely be doing more baking! Wee!

"Simple Supper" second success!

I made another dish from Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers last night -- "Saucy Hungarian Eggplant!"

The recipe called to serve the eggplant over bulgur, (and suggested toasting the bulgur in olive oil first -- heavenly!) and then to top with plain yogurt. This was so fantastically delicious! Yum! Truthfully, I don't think I'd change a thing about this recipe -- it was quick, hearty, healthy, and delicious!

My first priority last night, however, was making another batch of zucchini cookies:

Last weekend's batch is already gone! The horror! The children had been asking me to bring some in, so I had to whip up another batch ASAP. Unfortunately, baking took up my yoga time last night -- I think the moral of the story is, I'm not very good at doing something EVERY DAY, besides, well, you know, sleeping, showering, and brushing my teeth. I'm too busy!

I'll keep trying with the yoga, though -- we'll see how the rest of the month goes.

Happy Friday, all! Woo weekend!

I heart weekends.

Really, who doesn't? I've had a good one so far -- plenty of time to catch up on errands and work around the apartment, hang out with Dan, and best of all, blog!

I was a busy girl again yesterday -- I went to the Farmer's Market, Asian grocery store, and co-op, washed and prepped two huge bunches of lettuce and FOUR huge bunches of kale, baked a couple of sweet potatoes, roasted a couple heads of garlic, baked up a batch of granola, cut a ton of corn off the cob and froze it for later enjoyment, baked a chocolate-zucchini cake (more on that later when we cut into it and I can get a decent photo,) went for a bike ride with Dan, did two huge loads of laundry, and enjoyed a long and leisurely dinner with Dan and his family -- belated birthday celebration for my sweetie. Whew! No wonder I was so tired last night!

Best of all, I was so busy last week, I have a huge blogging backlog. Let's get started!

Here's Dan's birthday dinner, way back from last Monday night:

When I asked Dan what he wanted for his birthday dinner, he said, "pasta and salad." I harassed him for something a LITTLE more exciting than that, and he came up with, "rigatoni with pesto." Okay! Nobody carries whole-wheat rigatoni, so we had to settle for white pasta (GASP! YUM!) with some sliced zucchini thrown in the pasta water for the last two minutes, all tossed with homemade pesto. (My pesto recipe is pretty basic, but I use almonds instead of pine nuts, since I always have almonds on hand, and pine nuts are ass expensive.) Tasty delicious! Truthfully, my favorite part of the meal might have been the little, local sungold tomatoes in the salad. Sungolds and "Kellog's Breakfast" tomatoes are a tie in my book for the best tomatoes ever. Mmmmmmmmm!

Tacos, how I love thee:

Whole-wheat tortillas from the Farmer's Market, topped with home-cooked black beans (with garlic, onion, and lime juice,) stir-fried peppers and onions, queso fresco, salsa, guacamole, sour cream, and shredded cabbage. Now I'm craving tacos again!

Anybody found anyone who doesn't like tacos yet?

"Bulgur, Arugula, and Cannellini Salad," from VCON:

We needed a dinner that would be ready immediately upon arriving home on Thursday night, and this fit the bill. Healthy, chilly, and delicious for a hot and busy weeknight. I might even try this with chickpeas next time! (I'm starting to realize that I really don't like white beans, except pureed into homemade hummus. Is that weird?)

Tomato, mozzarella, and basil salad:

Local heirlooms, local hand-rolled fresh mozzarella, local basil, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. Mmmmmmmmmm! I bought a small loaf of rye bread at the Farmer's Market to accompany this salad, and it was VERY tasty. The bread came from the nice man who I discovered is also making soft pretzels every week . . . heaven! I can't resist the artisan soft pretzel! I must buy one every week. :)

Gorgeous, local, fresh berries:

This is why I spend so much money at the Farmer's Market -- I can't help but buy local berries when they are in season! They are so expensive, but SO worth it! This dessert prompted me to say yesterday, "I LOVE summer! Wait, no I don't -- I hate the weather, but I LOVE the food!" Dan just laughed at me. :)

What do you love about summer?

I have another busy day ahead of me today -- more errands, more cooking, and more laundry. PLUS, Christine and I are making the trek down to IKEA tonight! Yay IKEA! Later!