Belated pasta

I assume this happens to many, but I seem to be notorious for forgetting about food photos I've taken with my phone. Alas! Here was Wednesday's dinner - whole-wheat pasta with olive oil, garden veggies, and local Asiago cheese ... wholesome, healthy, and delicious!

eat-a-thon

Sometimes the weekend feels like an eat-a-thon . . . or more accurately, maybe a cook-a-thon?  I do the majority of my cooking over the weekends these days, (i.e., when John's around,) and have a tendency to live off leftovers during the work week.  Does anyone else seem to follow this pattern?

Here are a few more things we made/ate this past weekend . . . 

Magic Kale Salad with Maple-Glazed Tempeh:

Fluffy Sprinkle Sugar Cookies:

Homemade pizza:

Zucchini Bread:

And breakfast -- scrambled eggs with feta and basil, courtesy of John, and whole-wheat buttermilk pancakes with strawberries:

It was a tasty weekend!

from scratch, more than ever

I have been enjoying the cooler temperatures we've had in MN these past few weeks!  I'm back in my kitchen, enjoying making things from scratch more than ever -- old favorites (bread, granola, marinara, piecrust, beans,) and new challenges (yogurt, butter, and sour cream) have all come out of my kitchen this week!

Here are a few finished products, incorporated into meals:

A simple casserole of eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, basil, and fresh mozzarella, smothered in homemade marinara:

Homemade triple-berry pie, with homemade vanilla ice cream:

French toast (made from homemade bread):

A (homemade refried) bean-and-cheese quesadilla, with salsa, guacamole, and homemade sour cream for dipping, with a side of roasted broccoli and bell peppers:

Delicious all around!  So far, this re-commitment to from-scratch cooking doesn't seem to be costing me too much extra time -- I have been spending one weekday evening doing kitchen prep and some baking, and that seems to serve me well through the week!

What are your favorite things to make from scratch?

yogurt and beans

As promised, here are some pictures of my first batch of homemade yogurt that turned out:

(Translation: this was actually my second batch . . . )

I'm going to equate learning how to make yogurt to learning how to make bread -- you can follow directions in a book, but it's going to take a few tries to get things just right, just the way you like them. I'm still playing around with options, (fat percentage of milk, whether to add nonfat dry milk, whether or not to strain,) so I'll keep you posted.  :)

And here was a beautifully colorful, beautifully simple dinner we had over the weekend:

I simplified my meal-planning strategy this past weekend by sticking to recipes from Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers, and the seasoned black beans and yellow rice I made on Sunday were super-easy, super-delicious, and super-healthy!  (In case you're wondering . . . I'm coming around to white rice a little bit more these days, partly because it is so much faster than brown rice, but mostly because I have a TON of it on hand!)  The black bean recipe suggested topping the beans and rice with pickled red onions; John has a tendency to be extra-sensitive to overly sour foods, so I skipped the onions in favor of guacamole.  :)  Guac's always a winner, if you ask me!  We also crunched through a simple side salad, containing both cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden.  Yum!

dairy-riffic

I picked up a copy of The Complete Guide to Making Cheese, Butter, and Yogurt at Home at the library a couple of weeks ago, and I finally got around to trying out a few basic recipes!

First, homemade butter:

Even though this required considerable time invested in shaking up the heavy cream, I can't believe how easy it was to make homemade butter!  (Should I be surprised, though?  Probably not.  I vaguely remember making butter in kindergarten as a class project.)  It was kind of remarkable, watching the transformation the cream went through -- liquid, to whipped cream, to a thick paste, and then the final separation of the butterfat from the buttermilk, which was just WEIRD.  But fun!

We enjoyed the butter on some homemade "Broa" from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day, alongside a bowl of "Red Lentil Soup with Greens" from Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers.  Fantastic!

Please take notice of the chard in the soup . . . John grew that!  :)

Anyone who knows me well at all knows a meal isn't complete at my house without dessert:

Smooth & Creamy Vanilla Ice Cream topped with Hot Fudge Sauce and salted mixed nuts!  Wow.  Neither recipe took all that much time, and both turned out fabulously!  I love the subtle tanginess of the ice cream, (the base contains a considerable amount of Greek yogurt,) and the hot fudge sauce?  Words can't describe.  Tastes NOTHING like store-bought sauce, in every best possible way.  Heck yeah.

I also have some homemade yogurt in my fridge, but haven't found a photo-worthy way to serve it quite yet.  Stay tuned . . . .

You're only as old as you feel.

How old do you think I feel today? :)

odds & ends

What do you do when you don't really have the makings of a full meal on hand, and a whole host of veggie odds and ends leftover?  Why, pizza, of course.

Whole-Wheat Pizza Crust, topped with olive oil, parmesan, provolone, onion, garlic, red bell pepper, portobello mushroom, sliced olives, oregano, chili flakes, and zucchini.  Yes, the ever-present zucchini even made it onto a pizza.  ;)  I discovered that I left my pizza peel at John's house, so I was "stuck" making a rectangle pizza.  Well then, I guess I'll just enjoy my soft, bready, deep-dish pizza at my house, then!

To avoid generating more odds and ends, I turned the second half of the ball of pizza dough into cinnamon rolls!

I haven't made cinnamon rolls in a LONG time, and I forget how much butter, cinnamon, and sugar the filling requires.  :)  I didn't use nearly enough!  And I was desperately low on powdered sugar, so there isn't nearly enough glaze, either.  Still!  These will be great for breakfast, as they aren't too sweet.

exactly what we needed

Sometimes, I happen to glance more closely at a product's packaging, and notice a particularly tasty-looking recipe!  Enter Creole Kidney Beans and Rice, from the back of a can of kidney beans:

If you link through to the recipe, note that the original (off the back of the can) also called for a diced green pepper, and white rice, not brown.  I think that if you chose to use brown rice, you'd want to use a bit less than called for, or increase the amount of vegetable broth you add.  Either way, this was a speedy, tasty, filling, healthy, and inexpensive dinner, with a couple of leftover zucchini fritters on the side.  After a long day of hiking, this was exactly what we needed!

Hope you all had a good weekend!  We were busy, but in a good way -- on Saturday, we visited the Minnesota History Center and saw the "New Deal for Artists" and "The US-Dakota War of 1862," then walked over to the Science Museum and saw the Omni movie "The Living Sea."  After a short nap and a stop at Mississippi Market for supplies, we headed off to Fort Snelling State Park for an evening of hiking and picnic-ing.  Today, we drove far, far away to Sibley State Park for loads more hiking (more than 5 miles!) and another picnic!  It's amazing, how much mileage you can get out of a couple museum memberships and a state park yearly pass.  ;)

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. :)

Found food

I took a few things I found in the garden (chard, basil, green onions, and tomatoes) and added them to a pizza for dinner tonight! Then I took the quart of blackberries we found hiking on Sunday, and made them into a crumble for dessert. Yum. It's a pretty good Wednesday, all things considered!

my favorite color

When trying to come up with something to accompany my leftover sloppy lentil sandwich for dinner tonight, I ended up thinking up way too many amazing-sounding side dishes.  I had such a hard time choosing one, I decided to simply save the sandwich for another night, and eat only side dishes for dinner!

Zucchini fritters, edamame, dilly beans, and a steamed artichoke.  I promise I didn't intend on a monochromatic dinner!  Green is my favorite color, though, so I guess it's okay.

Oh, and more green for dessert . . . zucchini cookies!

Waffles, perhaps.

I had a lovely brunch with some friends yesterday, at which I volunteered to share some Breakfast Sausages, which were a hit!  Since the recipe makes a pretty large quantity, John suggested that, perhaps, I could make him some waffles to go along with the leftover breakfast sausages.  :)

I almost always make "Amazing Overnight Waffles," from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Cafe, as they truly are amazing, and they are also dead easy.  Throw some stuff in a bowl, whisk it together, cover and head to bed . . . in the morning, add an egg and some melted butter, and it's time to make waffles!  I usually have the batter ready before the iron is preheated, they are that quick.  Sausages, coffee, and blueberries on the side rounded out the meal nicely.

What are some of your lazy weekend go-to favorites?

Blueberry-Oatmeal Muffins . . . With Zucchini!

An experiment that well this morning, but not perfectly, in an effort to continue to use up the ever-present zucchini in my refrigerator these days . . . Blueberry-Oatmeal Muffins With Zucchini!

I wasn't perfectly happy with how these turned out, (they fall on the side of "way too moist to have any actual structure,") so I'm not going to post the recipe . . . but if I make them again and figure out a better balance, I'll be sure to let you know!

Until then . . . please tell me . . . what would you do if you were faced with still more zucchini?

MORE zucchini, favorite vegetables

I think I might just turn into a zucchini.  My advice to you . . . if you happen to meet a farmer or gardener this time of year, and you don't want zucchini, make it a quick meeting.  :)  John has been volunteering at a farm this summer, and comes home weekly with ginormous zucchini.  Since I've already made chocolate cake, fritters, and cookies, it's time for muffins:

I used this recipe from Real Simple, with excellent results.  I did decide to use half whole-wheat pastry flour, and I can't really tell at all.  Next time, I  might use all whole-wheat flour!  I doubled the recipe, using three packed cups of well-squeezed zucchini, and ended up with 26 muffins.  Some for me, some for John, and some for my friend Dora!  I think everyone will be pleased.

Dinner last night accidentally incorporated both my favorite vegetable and John's favorite vegetable:

"Spanikopita," from The Cheese Factory Restaurant Cookbook, is one of John's favorite meals, and containing his all-time favorite vegetable -- spinach!  I don't make this recipe all that often, as it's kind of expensive, (just think . . . a pound of feta and three pounds of spinach!), but it's so dang tasty, it's worth the occasional indulgence.  :)  We enjoyed my favorite vegetable, steamed, on the side!  Delicious.

Back to work today, after a busy but fantastic three-day-weekend.

finishing up leftovers

This weekend has been busy as heck, but also kind of uneventful when it comes to cooking -- we have mostly been finishing up leftovers, skipping meals in favor of huge bowls of frozen yogurt topped with every candy known to man, and enjoying somewhat boring, yet still fun meals of egg salad sandwiches while out hiking.  :)  I did manage a little cooking yesterday, though!

Breakfast:

Whole-wheat and chickpea flour blueberry pancakes, with a side of blackberries.

Dinner:

Cuban Black Beans and Rice, with sauteed chard from the garden on the side!  The chard is really kicking butt lately -- it seems like every time we harvest a big bunch, we turn around fifteen minutes later and there's another big bunch ready to go!  What fun.  This recipe for black beans and rice was excellent, by the way -- relatively quick to the table, simple yet flavorful, nutritious, and inexpensive!  I enjoy beans and rice from time to time, but I have a hard time finding recipes that make me want to eat huge quantities.  This one was definitely worth going back for seconds for!

a long list

It's amazing how long one's "to-do" list gets after not having a single evening free during the week!  I spent the first part of my long weekend, yesterday afternoon, cooking, baking, cleaning, prepping, washing dishes, and tidying up my apartment.  Whew!  I'm still pretty tired this morning!  Here was one of my major accomplishments yesterday:

I finished up the last of the monstrous zucchini John brought home from volunteering over a week ago, and made a batch of zucchini cookies!  Here's my recipe:

ZUCCHINI COOKIES

Combine dry ingredients:
3/4 cup AP flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp Penzey's Baking Spice
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 3/4 cups regular rolled oats
1/2 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup raisins, Craisins, or other chopped dried fruit of your choice
Cream together:
1/2 cup butter at room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup natural granulated sugar

Stir into butter mixture:
1 egg, beaten
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 medium zucchini, grated and obvious water squeezed out (1 1/2 to 2 cups)

Stir dry ingredients into wet until combined. Drop by 2-tablespoon fulls onto parchment-lined cookie sheets. Bake at 350 for 12-20 minutes. (The bake time depends significantly on how much moisture is left in your zucchini before adding to the recipe -- just keep checking that first batch!)  Cool on a wire rack.


Shout out to my friend Tiffany, who was over for most of the evening yesterday, and helped with a number of my projects, including these cookies!  They turned out soft, moist, slightly spiced, and just a little nutritious.  :)  I think John, Dora, and I will really enjoy these with our picnic lunch today!

amazing deals

I really kind of love Costco.  Now, don't get me wrong . . . I live within throwing distance of my co-op, so I do most of my shopping there, and definitely love the Farmer's Market for cheap, local, seasonal produce, but Costco has some amazing deals, let me tell you!  I met my friend Ann after work tonight, and we loaded up our cart.  I picked up tons of produce, some cheese, organic eggs and butter, Greek yogurt, natural peanut butter, and a pack of packets of "Wholly Guacamole."  I think some of my best scores, however, were on shelf-stable items:

Notice the coconut water on the left.  One of those shelf-stable boxes is typically $4.99 at my co-op.  I scored a pack of SIX for FIFTEEN BUCKS!  That's like getting three boxes for free!  I also picked up roasted/shelled/salted pistachios, (I see plenty more Magic Kale Salad in my future,) walnuts, pecans, organic and Fair-Trade sugar, organic shelled hemp seeds (!!!!!!), organic quinoa, pine nuts, and bulgur.  I still kind of can't believe I found hemp seeds at Costco!  I've really never cooked with them much before, as they are typically VERY expensive.  Have you used hemp seeds before?  What do you enjoy them with?

back in the kitchen again!

After a long hiatus from cooking much of anything, (thank you, 90+ degree heat and high humidity,) I decided I had had enough salads, and got back in my kitchen this weekend.  :)  It's still hot, but I managed to sweat my way through several meal's worth of stovetop cooking and/or baking/roasting in the oven, and boy, was it worth it!

Dinner Friday night:

A simple meal of whole-wheat pasta tossed with homemade marinara and parmesan, with roasted pattypan squash on the side.

Bunch Saturday:

Breakfast burritos!  A whole-wheat tortilla stuffed with homemade refried beans, cheese, hashbrowns, scrambled eggs, salsa, guacamole, and sour cream.  This is one of those meals that if eaten after 10 am, will keep you full until dinner.  :)  Mmm.

Dinner Saturday:

Sloppy lentils piled on a whole-wheat bun, dilly beans, cherries, and Spud Puppies.

Dinner Sunday:

 

Tofu Steak with Miso and Ginger, Steamed Baby Carrots with Orange-Dill Butter, cucumbers with sour cream and dill, and Zucchini Fritters.  This meal was a LOT of work, (and generated a lot of dishes -- shout out to John, who washed nearly all of them!), but it was so worth it!  I had a blast finding new ways to make some seasonal produce shine.

My life is incomplete without dessert:

Chocolate Zucchini Cake!  Between the cake and the fritters, I have managed to take down about 2/3 of the ginormous zucchini John brought home from volunteering last week.  I still have about a pound left . . . muffins?  Bread?  Cookies?  What's your vote?

"I could eat this every week."

That was the comment I heard during dinner last night; too bad it's been at least six months since I last made this meal!  Whoops.  Well, in my defense, it wasn't the healthiest dinner around -- but it sure was tasty!

Homemade buttermilk biscuits, split and topped with tempeh sausage gravy.  I pulled the biscuit and creamy gravy recipes from The Betty Crocker Cookbook, and stirred in "Tempeh Sausage Crumbles" from Vegan with a Vengeance.  Yum, yum, extra yum.

And I just had to show off how tall and fluffy my biscuits grew:

on sandwiches

I have a confession to make:

I kind of hate sandwiches.

Why?  Well, I can't really say.  Part of it probably stems from my early childhood, when I craved foods served separately.  You remember those huge sectioned trays you'd sometimes get at church potlucks, that had something like 7 or 8 holes in them?  Those made my day.  Even my roll had it's own compartment.  You know, so it wouldn't get "juice" from something on it and get a soggy corner.

Part of it is probably because there aren't many creative vegetarian sandwiches out there.  How many times have you had to choke down a mediocre-to-poor hummus and veggie sandwich/wrap because that was the only healthy/non-meat option?  Right.  I've had my fair share, too.

Part of it is definitely because, even though sandwiches are portable and that's probably their biggest selling point, sandwiches DON'T keep well.  Can you think of a single sandwich that is better 4 hours later?  I can't.  Soggy bread, soggy veggies, misshapen and squashed overall.  No thank you.

But, I don't hate all sandwiches.

I love egg salad.

I love avocado, mayo, and sprouts on toast.

I love sloppy joes.  (Well, sloppy lentils.  Or sloppy tofu.)

I love vegetarian "barbecue" sandwiches, made with homemade seitan and topped with tons of creamy coleslaw.

Every once in a while, I love a good PBJ.

And hot damn, do I love tofu banh mi:

More often than not, I really prefer to make my own -- and this recipe is one of the best I've found to date.  (However, I double the tofu marinade ingredients, and add a teaspoon each of grated fresh ginger and grated garlic to the marinade.  What Asian food isn't better with extra garlic and ginger?)  This sandwich has all of the things I love most about banh mi, in reasonable quantities -- plenty of flavorful tofu, plenty of sriracha mayo, and plenty of carrot/daikon pickle.  MMMMMMMM.

What are your thoughts on sandwiches?