soup, (fresh) rolls, TG sides

Wednesday, the night before Thanksgiving, we cleared out dribs and drabs in the fridge, designating some items for compost and some for the soup. Into the soup went some stock that I made and froze earlier this summer, NM chili powder, leftover vegetarian stock, some Chinese noodles, onions, carrots, leftover roasted parsnips, dried Chinese mushrooms, and I'm sure there were a few other goodies. The soup came out really well and had started to thicken a little by the time we ate it.

I was also in the mood for fresh rolls. I put in some Belgian endive, thinly sliced yellow pepper, thinly sliced carrots, cucumber, avocado, and Chinese noodles (the real reason I cooked up the noodles). The rolls were messy and good.

Last night, we attended a rather formal and traditional sit-down Thanksgiving dinner. There were 12 of us, self-named "the usual suspects." Mr. P and I are late arrivals into the crowd, but there's always a surprise guest, someone who would otherwise be alone on the holiday. There was turkey, stuffing, and gravy. Mr. P and I brought three vegan dishes -- green beans with almonds and garlic, veggie stuffing with mushrooms and chestnuts, and mashed sweet potatoes. I would usually be sneaking butter into all of those dishes, but at least one of the USs is mildly lactose intolerant, so we used oil and almond milk as appropriate. Still, very tasty.

Other dishes last night were mashed white potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts, lots of wine. For dessert, there was more mine, three kinds of pie, and of course, chocolate. There was great conversation -- politics, travels, depression, health, illness, geekiness -- the usual.

This afternoon, we're reprising our stuffing and sweet potatoes dishes at the house of other dear friends who typically invite a handful of families with college-age kids and Mr. P and me. We tried to bring two college freshmen so we wouldn't feel quite so left out, but they had other plans, so we will be bringing ourselves and some food.

Speaking of which, the sun is out, and it's time to get going.

easy and yummy

Two nights ago, we had pizza with one of those prepared crusts. I hadn't realized that the package didn't contain one thick crust - it contained two thinner crusts. We added a thin layer of marinara sauce, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, and a mix of cheddar and mozarella cheeses. And there was a side salad in there (lettuce, cabbage, avocado, carrots, tomato, a little extra cheese, cucumber, possibly something else). We used up a lot of "last bits" of food, clearing out a little space in the fridge.

Last night, I tried a "frozen meal in a bag" -- ravioli with a tomato sauce. I had bought it for a house sitter who ended up eating something else. You basically open the bag, pour the frozen bricks -- ravs, lots of sliced garlic, and sauce-disks -- into a pan, cover, heat, and 10 minutes later, you're eating. It was surprisingly good, nearly home-made tasting. For a side dish, I steamed some broccoli and garlic slices (hmm, a theme), added in some toasted pinenuts, then tossed in a sauce of tahini, umeboshi plum paste, and soy. That was delicious.

Tonight... maybe a soup. I have some stock in the fridge and in the freezer, and they'd work well together. It's all about clearing out more space.

miscellaneous this and that

A few nights ago, I made one of those Trader Joe's simmer sauces. I added tofu, kale, onion, mushrooms, and carrots. The sauce is not strong enough, so I spiced it up a little with cayenne and cumin. Served over rice -- very good and quite easy.

Last night, we dined with friends and brought one of our kitchen-sink salads. One of the friends doesn't eat hard foods, so no seeds or nuts. We carefully washed the peppers and cukes after seeding them. She was grateful.

And tonight, we had a very lazy, laid back dinner. We had loads of parsnips, so we cut them into sticks, tossed them with oil, salt, pepper, and chipotle chili powder, then roasted them. We chopped the last of the farm kale and gave it the same treatment, roasting it for about half the time. And we were in the mood for bruschetta but didn't have the right bread. So Mr. P used the last of the multigrain tortillas, to which we added mozarella cheese and kalamata olives. We toasted them, then added salsa.

Tomorrow, I think we'll use a pizza crust we just bought and make a salad. In fact, I expect to cook rather lazily for the next few nights. Then on Thursday and Friday, when we're invited to feast at friends' houses, we'll make some side dishes. We'll enjoy the turkeys visually and leave the bird-eating to the other assembled guests.

fall harvest enchiladas

Last night, I got ambitious and made enchiladas with chili sauce made from New Mexico chili powder. I started with a sautee of onions, mushrooms, turnips, rutabaga, carrots, and kale. I stuffed veggies and cheese into multigrain tortillas, which I gently folded. Then I covered the whole thing with chili sauce and baked for about 15 minutes. Very yummy.

What's the Indian word for Chard?

What happens when you have an abundance of chard and a hankering for Indian food and you just happened to pick up some tasty little fingerling potatoes? Whatever it is came out kind of like palak paneer -- just using chard instead of spinach. Here's what went into our main dish tonight: spice (cumin seed, mustard seed, turmeric, cayenne) -- heated until popping, onion, bits of fingerlings, (a little veggie broth and some steaming to cook the spuds), then mushrooms, paneer, a few tablespoons of marinara sauce, and chard. Came out well.

We served it over rice with a side salad.

Not sure what's on the agenda for tomorrow night, maybe something vaguely New Mexican, maybe not.

a little too much excitement in the kitchen

Last night, I came home to cook up that beautiful, plump, organic, green head of broccoli I got at the farm and as I was cutting into it, noticed a little movement out of the corner of my eye. It was a beautiful, plump, organic, green caterpillar, just waking up from its refrigerated slumber. I gave a slight shriek and continued to cut up broccoli. When I noticed the second caterpillar, I gave up, got the whole mess into the compost bag, and started over again. Ick ick ick ick ick. I thought I was pretty brave after the first one, but the second one sent me over the edge.

Plan B. I cut up a bowlful of kale, chard, and some other weird green and microwaved it along with some minced garlic. Then I tossed it with cilantro pesto and whole wheat pasta and served it with Romano cheese on top. Quite decent.

Tonight was far less eventful. Mr. P, who is *still* sick, kindly made rice. He also cut up some small squashes, covered them with olive oil, pepper, and salt, and roasted them. (Oh, and unlike a few nights ago, when he tried to help with dinner preparations and cut himself, he managed to escape unscathed tonight. We take signs of healing where we can get them.) When I got home, I tossed some frozen Costco spanekopita into the already-hot oven and relaxed for a bit. The pies, squash, and rice made for a rather nice and very easy dinner. First time ever that we were sitting down to eat 45 minutes after I left work.

Tomorrow will be another long and soul-sucking day, so we're definitely going out to eat. If Mr. P isn't up for the adventure, then we'll get take out. And that's that.

fall bounty

I went to the farm today for our fall harvest pickup. I brought home all sorts of greens -- kale, chard, broccoli -- and squash, brussel sprouts, two types of cabbage (plain and savoy, which Mr. P calls poodle cabbage), rutabagas, carrots, onions, garlic, parsnips, and probably more.

I cooked up the Brussels sprouts. You have to understand that Mr. P is a hero to his two siblings because of a projectile vomiting incident involving Brussels sprouts years ago. Thus ended the strict adherance to the "several bite" rule that at that time ruled the family. But Mr. P will eat my Brussels sprouts. I basically just sautee them in a little olive oil and butter, along with pine nuts, until brown. And because they are so very fresh from the farm, I can err on the side of undercooking because we both fear the aforementioned results of overcooking. They were good tonight.

I also made stuffed poodle cabbage. I sauteed onion, mushrooms, rutabaga, parsnip, carrot, and green pepper, and added a little tamari. then I steamed individual leaves of cabbage, cut out the tough end, and rolled the mixture and a little grated cheese into each leaf. The stuffed leaves went into a pan, covered with marinara sauce, and I baked until the sauce bubbled. We served it with a little Romano cheese on top.

There was so much extra stuffing that I made more leaves, and they're now in the freezer awaiting a busy night when we need to make an instant meal.

It was a fairly elaborate meal, and a tasty one. Tomorrow, I'm thinking we'll do something simpler, perhaps steam some broccoli and greens, toss in some of the frozen pesto we have (this year I made both cilantro and basil pesto) and serve it all over pasta. Easy and done.

bonus recipe - Greek potatoes

Another recipe by my friend Read W, adapted from New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant. I haven't made this dish, but I got to taste it on Saturday night. The potatoes come out so tender that at first I thought they were gnocchi.

3 lbs potatoes, diced (boiling potatoes would be best for texture, [Read] used Yukon gold)
1/2 cup lemon juice
3 oz olive oil
1 tsp salt (more if your liquid is unsalted)
1/2 tsp pepper
1-1/2 tsp dried oregano
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups boiling water (or stock; I used boiling water and some shoyu)
Parsley, chopped
(Feta, crumbled)
Oil a large shallow baking dish. Combine the first 7 ingredients, set on a middle rack in a 500F oven, and pour in the boiling water. Bake, uncovered, about 50 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add more boiling water if needed until potatoes are cooked through, but you want the water to boil away by the time the potatoes are done. Add the parsley, and the feta if you want it to be more of a main dish.

chipotle sweet potato soup

My friend Read W passed this recipe along. Of course, we used extra garlic, ginger, and chipotle peppers. The hardest part was waiting for the proto-soup to cool enough so that we could put it through the blender. We don't have one of those modern stick blender thingies.

1 medium onion, chopped
olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
3 cloves garlic (we used five)
1 tsp dried ginger (we used fresh)
3 very large sweet potatoes, the redder the better, peeled and diced
1 canned chipotle, minced, with adobo (happened to have a can; we used two peppers)
vegetable stock to just cover
1 cup or so milk/soy milk [edit: a can of coconut milk is really good (which is what we used)]tamari to taste
1 large (approx 22 oz) can black beans, rinsed (we used a 15 oz can)

Saute the onion in the olive oil with the salt over medium-low heat till well softened. Add the garlic and ginger, and saute a few minutes more. Add the sweet potatoes, chipotle, and vegetable stock. Simmer, partially covered, till the potatoes are very tender. Puree (a stick blender is easiest) and add milk to thin as you like. Taste for salt/tamari & heat (you can finely mince more chipotle or just use the adobo if you want more heat). Stir in the black beans and heat through.

The extra canned chipotles: I [Read; I did this too] put individual chipotles on plastic wrap and spoon their adobo over, and then freeze hard. Once they're frozen I wrap them tightly in plastic wrap and store in the freezer.


It was delicious. We served it with some fancy multigrain chips and a small side salad.

Best. Pizza. Ever.

Last night, we were both tuckered out, so we had leftovers and called it a success. We ate only the best leftovers and tossed everything else, so we now have a clean slate.

This afternoon, I went grocery shopping and picked up salad ingredients, most of which I haven't bought for months because we've had such great produce from the farm. I made a smallish salad -- lettuce, red pepper, scallion, carrot, plum tomato, raw shrooms.

And we made a pizza. I spread about 3 tablespoons of marinara sauce on top of a pre-made multi-grain crust. Then I layered on chopped mushrooms and garlic that I'd tossed in olive oil, some chopped kalamata olives, and topped it all with goat cheese. Did you know you can freeze goat cheese? And it's very easy to cut frozen goat cheese with a bread knife -- you get thin shavings, which are great on a pizza. Anyways, Mr. P thought it was the best pizza I'd ever made.

Tomorrow night, I'm going to an "elegant potluck" preceding an elegant old fashioned ball, where we'll dance early contra dances, a little closer to English dancing than to our modern contras. I thought I'd make my signature dish, macaroni and cheese. I'll use my favorite whole wheat pasta, make a white sauce, and carefully stir in grated cheddar and grey poupon mustard. I think it will be a hit -- it usually is.

Alas, poor Mr. P is under the weather, so I'll set some mac&cheese aside for him to enjoy while I'm out.

vegetable heaven

Last night, Mr. P ended up cooking. It was an Indian dish that cooked up rather quickly -- curried cauliflower, potatoes, paneer, and peas. Oh yum. We threw some toasted cashew nuts on top and served it on rice with a side of chutneys.

Tonight, I made a vegetable stir-fry, which I served on top of pasta -- no fresh rice and no patience to wait for it to cook. I cooked rice anyways, so it'll be ready to go tomorrow. The stir-fry had onions, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, frozen corn, frozen peas, pinenuts, salty black beans, a little hot oil, and hoisin sauce. It was weird, but actually not bad "once you got used to it," according to Mr. P.

not bad and quite quick

This evening, we had a bunch of cilantro lying around, cilantro that Mr. P had forgotten to use on his potluck dish last week. So I made a cilantro pesto -- herb, olive oil, romano cheese (pre-grated), and pine nuts, chopped up in the food processor. I put most of it in a plastic bag in the freezer for consumption later this winter; the rest went into a bowl.

Then I mixed in some filled gnocchi which I had heated up and steamed broccoli, mushrooms, and garlic. Mixed the whole dish and served it with Romano cheese on top.

On the side, we had a little salad of fresh mozarella, plum tomatoes, carrots, and scallions.

A good quick meal; quite satisfying, actually.

Mr. P takes a turn in the kitchen

Thursday night, Mr. P needed to make a potluck dish for work the next day. I suggested that he make dinner too, which he willingly did. I went shopping on Tuesday and when i got home latish on Thursday, he was busy making one of my favorite dishes -- ma po tofu. He uses Chinese pepper and beans in black chili sauce and he usually adds some random vegetables (like corn). Then we top the whole thing with more black pepper and chopped scallions. Frankly, I've nearly lost my taste for the dish in restaurants because Mr. P's version is so good.

The reason he didn't just double the potluck recipe is because I haven't much liked the dish he was making to share with coworkers. But last night, after the last urchin had come by to treat (hopefully no tricks this year), we were pooped and there was extra potluck food. So we had that for dinner. It was really good and I figured out how we can make it so that I like it. The dish is similar to dosas -- except that instead of white potatoes, you curry sweet potatoes and wrap it in lavash bread (not homemade Indian bread). And I finally figured out that the dish calls for too much clove. We'll cut back on it or eliminate it next time and perhaps put curried sweet potatoes on the rotation.

I expect that the kitchen will be closed at least tonight and possibly tomorrow night, when we'll be in Boston for a performance.

And perhaps a trip to the grocery store is in order. After 20 weeks of getting most groceries at the farm, I need to get back into the habit of actually shopping for our meals. Fortunately, there are a few places I can stop off on the way home from work if the larder gets especially empty.