Overgrown Green Beans?

My favorite way to eat green beans is to grill or saute them very briefly- so they're bright green and still snappy.  But when I've neglected to harvest the beans for over a week, I end up with overgrown pods that I'm tempted to toss in the compost.  These beans are way too tough to eat nearly raw- you'd get a serious jaw workout trying to get these down.

This is where Southern cuisine saves me.  While I typically shy away from long-simmered vegetables in favor of fresh flavors now, I have to admit there's a place in my kitchen for green beans boiled up until they nearly fall apart.  I just leave out the bacon grease.

I used to sit and eat cold green beans straight out of the can when I was a little girl.  I loved the tenderness of the pods, the way you could split them in half and eat the little beans from inside and, of course, the extreme saltiness of the canned beans.  Even better were canned green beans with little skinned new potatoes (also canned).

So now, when I have overgrown green beans, I just toss them into a pot with some little potatoes (skin on for me, now), a chopped onion, and water to cover and boil away until everything is tender as can be.  A vegetable bouillon cube, sea salt and pepper is all that is needed to flavor this dish.

This past week I served these up with an heirloom tomato salad dressed with olive oil, honey and red wine vinegar.  The bowl of purple hull peas on the side was a last minute addition to the menu- I just dropped the frozen peas into the crockpot with an onion and some water before I went to work.  When I came home, they were perfectly cooked and ready for dinner.

It's That Time!

It's that time of year again, folks.  It's the time of year that I forgo bananas and avocados.  The time I think twice about each piece of chocolate and don't down a glass of almond milk each night.  It's the Eat Local Challenge!

I'm not mourning the bananas and almond milk yet, though.  It's just day 3 of the challenge and I've been eating really well.  I've enjoyed yogurt and homemade granola for breakfast, cucumber and tomato salads from the garden, grilled corn & zucchini salads and tonight's kidney bean chili for lunch and dinner.  Oh, and lots of black bean tacos and Whole Grain Milling Company chips.  All local.  It's crazy how good we can eat here in Minnesota.

I'm sure I'll be whining about missing mangos in a few weeks, but for now I'm satisfied.  Here's the basic recipe for the chili I made tonight:

Local Kidney Bean Chili
Not a "meaty" chili- but darn good.  It would also be good with zucchini in it, now that I think about it.  That's a little non-traditional for chili, but it sounds good to me.

About 1.5 cups of dried kidney beans (local bulk beans from the co-op)
Water
2 cups tomato sauce (I used homemade canned stuff, but Buon Giorno Minnesota tomato sauce would work)
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced (from the garden)
2 fat cloves fiery garlic (from the Madison farmers market last weekend)
Kernels from 1 ear of sweet corn (from Wheatfield Hill Organics in Wisconsin)
1-2 Tablespoons chili powder (from Frontier Co-op in Iowa)
Salt to taste

Soak the kidney beans overnight or bring to a boil, then turn off heat and let soak for 1 hour.  Drain and add fresh water to cover.  Cook for ages and ages in a regular pan or use a pressure cooker and cook for 3 minutes.  Make sure there's not too much water/bean broth in the pot after the beans are cooked.  It should just be barely covering the beans.  Then add tomato sauce, jalapeno, garlic, corn and chili powder.  Bring to a simmer and cook for about 5-10 minutes.  Season with salt to taste.  Serve with corn chips or cornbread or other delightful local accompaniment.

Easy Weeknight Meal

Easy weeknight meal: steamed broccoli, made-ahead quinoa tabbouli, crockpot beans with sundried tomatoes

Bean and Sausage Stew

It's March and I'm not really excited that it was -2 this morning and that we're getting snow tomorrow.  Basically the only exciting part about cold weather right now is soup.  Yes, soup is exciting.  Don't laugh.

I'm especially excited about this soup because it's pretty different from my staples: Indian-style rasams and brothy Asian noodle soups.  This soup deserves to be called a stew and it's a "meat and potatoes" type meal!

I used the Tofurky kielbasa in this recipe, but if I had to do it over, I'd use the Field Roast sausages because I generally just like those better.  And they just went on sale at the co-op today!!!

Bean and Sausage Stew

1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 yellow onion, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
1 large carrot, diced
2 medium gold potatoes, peeled and diced
2 vegan sausages (I used Tofurky Kielbasa), sliced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp. paprika
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. fennel seed, ground
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. celery seed, ground
1 16 oz. can cannellini beans, drained
1 Tbsp. mustard
Salt and pepper to taste



In a heavy soup pot, heat olive oil.  Add the onion, celery and carrot and saute until onions begin to become transparent.  Add the potato and sausages.  Stir and cook just a couple minutes, lightly browning the sausages.  Add the garlic and all the spices and beans. (I ground the fennel and celery seeds in a mortar).  Stir and immediately add enough water just to cover.  Bring to a boil and then lower heat to maintain a steady simmer. Simmer for about 15-20 minutes or until carrots and potatoes are tender and broth has thickened.  Add mustard and salt and pepper to taste.  Serve with a big hunk of bread and a bright, fresh green salad!

Brown Rice to the Rescue

Ah, it's good to be back.  Not that I really went anywhere.

These past couple weeks were overwhelming.  I was super busy at work (tons of outreach work, plus hiring someone new!), Mike was injured while sledding and couldn't walk for a week, the St. Paul Winter Medallion Hunt started and then we all got colds.  That meant we ordered pizza 3 times in one week.  And picked up burritos at Mississippi Market.  And ordered Chinese.  I wasn't doing too much scratch cooking.

But I did manage to cook a big pot of brown rice and beans each week.  I think that's the only thing that saved us from ordering pizza FIVE times in one week.  Thank goodness for brown rice.  It goes with everything and is so filling it's practically a meal in itself.

One night I paired the leftover (planned-over) brown rice with cannellini beans, home-canned tomatoes and home-canned pickled red peppers for a unexpectedly popular dinner.  I sauteed some onions and garlic in lots of olive oil and then added dried thyme, ground fennel seed and dried basil from last year's garden.  Then I added the beans, rice, peppers and tomatoes and simmered until all the tomato juice was absorbed and it looked almost like a risotto.  Then I stirred in fresh basil (a real treat this time of year).  I'll definitely be repeating this dish-  Maybe next time I'll even write down the recipe!

Another night I had some leftover red beans, but no grains.  So I heated the beans up in a little bit of barbecue sauce, whipped up some ranch dressing and used both to top a fresh green salad with lots of red pepper strips (red peppers have been on sale at the co-op, so we're eating LOTS of them).  This reminded me of when I used to order baked potatoes at barbecue joints in Texas and eat them swimming in butter, barbecue sauce and ranch.  I like to think this is just a touch healthier.  

Another favorite leftover rice dish here, but this one I usually make for breakfast.  I like to heat up my griddle and throw on some mushrooms and Field Roast sausage slices (usually the apple sage ones).  Then I top them with leftover rice so that the rice basically steams over the browning mushrooms and sausage.  Just before serving, I mix it all together and sprinkle with lots of black pepper and a little sea salt.  Oh, yes.  Delightful.   I love savory breakfasts!

So there you have it.  Those are some of my favorite uses for leftover beans and rice.

This week is bound to be more relaxing and allow for some real cooking.  The Medallion Hunt is over (sad, but that means I'll sleep at night instead of tromping through snowy parks).  Mike is on the mend (he's able to walk and sit, trying to build his strength back up for work).  And me?  I'm still on vacation!!!

Persian Stuffed Grape Leaves

When a coworker loaned me his old copy of Food of Life: A book of ancient Persian and modern Iranian cooking and ceremonies by Najmieh Batmanglij, I made a few copies of the recipes before I returned the book- And I'm so glad I did!  Turns out the book has been out of print for a while, but now is being republished in Feb 2011.  Judging from this recipe, I think it'll be a winner.  

Of course, there aren't too many vegan recipes in the book (except the pickles!).  But most are easily vegan-izable, like these stuffed grape leaves.  I LOVE Greek dolmas, the simple rice and dill stuffed grape leaves usually served cold with lots of lemon.  These are similar in that they use dill and lemon, but are much more filling because they have split peas or lentils in them, too.  I think these would be lovely with a tomato sauce on top, but I also enjoyed the unusual lemon and sugar coating.  

A recipe isn't totally necessary here, since nearly anything would taste good in grape leaves, in my opinion.  But here it is, with all of my modifications.

Stuffed Grape Leaves

1 cup white rice 

1 1/2 cups water

1/2 cup red wine

1 "Not Beef" bouillon cube

1/2 cup dried tomatoes (chopped if large)(dried apricots would also be good)

1/2 cup split peas or lentils

1 tsp. salt

1 cup chopped green onions

1/2 cup chopped fresh dill

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

Juice of 3 lemons

1/4 tsp. black pepper

3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

50 (approx.) jarred grape leaves, rinsed

2 Tbsp. Earth Balance or olive oil

2 Tbsp. sugar

Start by cooking up some white rice and some split peas or lentils.  For the rice, combine rice, water, red wine, bouillon and dried tomatoes in a saucepan, cover and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to a simmer and cook until rice is tender- very slightly underdone is okay.  Meanwhile, cover the split peas or lentils with water and simmer until tender.  I used chora dal (split white lentils) and they were done about when the rice was.  But depending on the legume you choose, it could take longer.  Drain the lentils if needed.

In a large bowl, combine the cooked rice and lentils, salt, onions, fresh herbs, the juice of 2 of the lemons reserve one), pepper and cinnamon.  Taste and adjust seasoning as needed before stuffing leaves.  

Preheat oven to 350F.  Prepare a 9 x11 inch glass baking dish by oiling lightly and placing 2 layers of flat grape leaves in the bottom.  

Then take 2 grape leaves, overlapping, and place about 1-2 Tbsp. of filling on one end.  Tuck in the sides of the leaves and roll towards you until the filling is sealed inside.  Place stuffed leaves in the baking dish, seam down.   

Once all the leaves are stuffed, dot the top with bits of Earth Balance or sprinkle with olive oil.  Pour 1 1/2 cups of water over the leaves and cover with foil (or an oven safe lid, if you have one).  Bake for 45 minutes at 350F.  

Meanwhile, mix together the remaining lemon's juice with the sugar until dissolved.  I know it sounds weird, but it's super good!  The final dish doesn't taste sweet, the sugar just cuts the acid of the lemon slightly.  Pull the grape leaves out of the oven after 45 min. and pour the sugar-lemon mixture over the top.  Cover and return to the oven for another 20 minutes.  Then the leaves should be tender and the liquid mostly absorbed.  

I recommend serving with something.  I didn't really plan out what to have as a side dish until I put these on the plate and realized how naked and boring it looked.  I threw together a mildly Middle Eastern salad with olives and herbs.  This would have been great with a really fun salad with pomegranate seeds and walnuts or something.  Or some bread.  

But for a quick snack, the leftovers are fantastic!  I've eaten them cold out of the fridge for a very satisfying mini-meal.  They've got grains, protein and greens all in one little package- pretty perfect.  Also, I'm confident that you could prepare everything in advance and just do the baking later in the week for an easy meal.  

On an altogether different note: 

The pantry challenge of 2010 is over.  I refilled my bulk jars (or at least many of them) today.  I'm proud to say that I was able to empty nearly all of them and get them washed- so this end-of-year pantry eating is pretty practical for a fresh start in the new year.  Now I'm pretty excited to have enough flours and nuts to do all the baking I want!!!

Beans with Wine!

My pantry challenge is morphing.  I'm not on a total shopping hiatus anymore.  I'm buying fresh foods- veggies, fruit, almond milk, etc.  But I'm trying to cook primarily from the pantry still.  I still have so many dried beans and grains!  Purple barley? I forgot I even bought that!  More millet?  Really?  And those red beans.  I don't even like red beans.  Why did I ever buy them?

I'll be eating them, though.

Here's my new favorite way to cook just about any mix of beans (especially beans with a little barley).  I just toss the soaked beans in the pressure cooker with a chopped onion, a little dried thyme, a couple of cups of red wine and a bouillon cube.  The beans come out amazing!!!  They need a little salt and that's it.  We had beans with biscuits on Saturday and the kids loved this simple meal.  Then I had them again today with toast for a really hearty lunch.

I really enjoyed picking up some veggies this weekend and ate a giant Greek salad with breakfast.  I used up leftover olives, artichoke hearts and the last of the red wine vinegar in the process, so it still sort of helped clean out the pantry.  Mostly it just made me happy, though.

Also on the menu today was hot chocolate.  I found marshmallows in the pantry buried underneath the seaweed!  I'm super loving my new chocolate Fiesta dishes (a little early Christmas present to myself...).

My big accomplishment for this weekend was finishing this puzzle that was pretty difficult only because the pieces all fit to multiple other pieces.  I kept rearranging the end pieces right up until I put the last dozen pieces in.  I wish I could get paid to work jigsaw puzzles and could just do that all day every day.  

Trouble cat likes working puzzles, too.

Beanie Breakfast

Here's one of my favorite things to do on my big cooking day (usually Sundays).

Each week I take one day to prep meals for the rest of the week.  Sometimes it's just pre-chopping some vegetables or marinating some tofu.  Sometimes it's more involved, like making lasagna or pizza crusts.  Just about every week I cook some beans, though.

I like to cook my beans in the pressure cooker to save time and then store them in the fridge for quick meals later in the week.  When I pack away the beans, I like to put just a little bit of the bean broth in the jars- so that my beans and rice aren't too soupy later.  But what to do what that delicious broth?

I reserve just a bit of the beans and lots of broth and puree with my immersion blender to eat right away!  It's a perfect Sunday morning brunch with some whole grain toast slathered in Earth Balance.  Tons of fiber, protein and water.  This Sunday the soup was spicy pinto bean.  Any kind of lentil is really good as well.

Just another example of beans for breakfast.

Back in Black

Usually my weekend meal-planning system saves me time and money.  Other times my weekend meal planning is a total failure.  This week, for example, I prepared a huge batch of black chickpea curry and brown rice with soy yogurt raita.

On Monday night Mike had already started cooking dinner when I got home and he didn't remember that the curry was what I planned to serve. I can't complain, though, because he's an awesome partner who cooks dinner for the family all the time.  So we ate pasta with broccoli and cauliflower in a lemony-tahini sauce.

Then on Tuesday the kids and I visited Mike's mom and went out for Chipotle.  Not what I planned, but delicious and the kids were thrilled.

It is now Wednesday night and I'm cooking up some pasta with mushrooms and spinach even though I still have about 8 cups curry and nearly as much brown rice in the fridge.  I've eaten it for 2 days in a row at lunch and I just can't eat it for both lunch and dinner in the same day.  Looks like this curry will need to get frozen or something!

Even though I'm not ready to ONLY eat this curry for the next 5 days, it is really good.  I scored the black chickpeas (made by Timeless Foods) at Linden Hills Co-op.  I used this recipe (Bengal Gram Curry) except used more chickpeas than the recipe suggested.  I used the whole package.  I wouldn't recommend that.

Beans, Greens, Rice

Just a quick note about dinner last night because it was so scrumptious...and because it was also my breakfast this morning and my lunch.  

Even though this dinner was really just beans and rice with some greens, it felt kinda fancy.  The risotto had lots of red peppers, fennel seed, peas and white wine (loosely based on the Fennel Breakfast Risotto in the Vegan Brunch cookbook).  I forgot to soak my cannellini beans in advance and there's no way I'd cook my beans without soaking them, so I picked up a couple of cans at the co-op and simmered them with sun-dried tomatoes, homegrown dried sage and lots of garlic and lemon.  They ended up tasting like they had simmered all day- very flavorful!  Kale's on sale this week, so I picked up a couple of big bunches of lacinato and just sauteed them with garlic and tamari.

The kids especially loved the risotto and Mike really liked it all mixed together (of course).  I pan-fried the risotto with some vegan sausage for breakfast and it was pretty awesome.  This is a meal I could eat frequently.

Eat Local Challenge: Days 2-5

I meant to blog about this challenge more often, really. Here's a couple of things I've made in the past 4 days, in no particular order:

Marinated zucchini salad. Hell yeah. This is ridiculously good. I like zucchini, but I don't usually LOVE it. This salad has thinly sliced zucchini, halved cherry tomatoes, sliced red spring onion, and fresh basil. The dressing is really simple: white wine vinegar, olive oil, a smidge of agave nectar to cut some of the sourness, salt and pepper. The co-op's demo coordinator made this when the farmers from Featherstone came to hand our samples from a recipe from their cookbook and I fell in love with it. I've made it twice in the past 3 days!

Pickles! I had a ton of cucumbers from the garden and up them up in some brine in the crock to ferment for a couple of weeks. I followed a recipe from the Joy of Pickling (big surprise, huh?) for "Lower East Side Full-Sour Dills". It's only been 3 days and they smell amazing already!

These are some beans I picked up at Seedsaver's Exchange a few weeks ago. They're an heirloom bean called Hutterite Soup bean. I pressure cooked them with a ton of last year's sundried tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, balsamic vinegar, and a bit of maple syrup. Wow. These were rich!

This is what I've eaten for lunch every day this week: Beans with biscuits (Herbed Whole Wheat Drop Biscuits from Vegan Brunch) and some kind of salad.

This is just another picture of cucumbers that I like. I didn't take any pictures (darn!) of the tasty samosas I had this week filled with potatoes and locally grown peas. I made a soy yogurt raita for the side and filled it with hot chiles, cilantro and mint from the garden. Yum!

The challenge is going pretty smoothly so far. We'll see how I'm doing after trying to pack as much local food as possible for a 4-day camping trip!

Beanie Weanies

I don't know about everyone else, but I seriously loved Beanie Weanies when I was growing up.  And it's been way too long since I've eaten any.

This version is ever-so-slightly more grown up, but still pleased my favorite 8 year olds tonight.  At first they said, "Oh no. [insert sad face] Are those carrots?"  Then a quick, "No!  Those are hotdogs!  Yes!"  

I cooked the navy beans in the crock pot overnight with ketchup, molasses, maple syrup, mustard, a chopped onion, salt, and (my secret ingredient) sun-dried tomatoes.  The sun-dried tomatoes make a good rich and salty substitute for the bacon usually found in this dish.  I started off my day with these beans over toast with tons of Earth Balance.  

Then at dinner time I fried up some tofu pups (wheat free!) and added them to the reheated beans.  On the side we had some gluten free biscuits that I had stashed in the freezer and some quickly roasted onions, carrots, and green beans.  And the glowing beam of light on the plate is an heirloom tomato from the garden drizzled with garlic vinaigrette.

Beans for Breakfast

Here's one of my "beans for breakfast" crockpot recipes:

2 cups dry cannellini beans, soaked 8 hours and drained

6-8 cups water or broth

2 bouillon cubes (omit if using broth)

1 onion, diced

2 carrots, thickly sliced

3 celery stalks, coarsely chopped

1/4 cup fresh parsley, minced

2 Tbsp. fresh oregano, minced

Black pepper to taste

salt to taste 

6 large sage leaves, minced

2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar

I used 1 regular Rapunzel herb bouillon cube and one "no salt added" cube and enough water to cover the soaked beans by about an inch.  I just put everything except the salt, sage, and balsamic vinegar into the crockpot and cooked on high for 10 hours.   Then, after making sure the beans were plenty tender, I added the minced sage and balsamic vinegar.  Then I added salt to suit my tastes.  It ended up being about a teaspoon. 

The beans can be served as a soup or just as beans with a bit of amazing broth, depending on how much water/broth you added.  I like it as a soup for breakfast, sopped up with some homemade bread!

Summertime Soup

I've been craving soup lately- probably because it's my favorite thing to cook. I can only be deprived for so long before I break down and enjoy a steaming bowl in spite of the hot weather. Today's soup was designed around the local veggies in my fridge that needed to be used.


Summer Squash Soup
The creamy, tender squash, bright herbs, and simple broth make this soup light enough for summer. The kidney beans make this dish a complete meal.
serves 2

2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large yellow summer squash (a.k.a. yellow crookneck squash), halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
2-3 carrots, chopped (about 1 cup)
1 cup cooked kidney beans, rinsed
2 cups water
1 no-salt vegan bouillon cube
1 1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 Tbsp. nutritional yeast (optional)
1/2 tsp fresh thyme
1 Tbsp minced fresh sage (about 3 large leaves)


In a medium saucepan, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, squash and carrots and stir frequently until the squash begins to break down a bit, about 3-4 minutes. Add beans, water, bouillon cube, salt, and nutritional yeast (if using). Bring to a simmer and cook about 20 minutes or until carrots are tender and squash is soft and falling apart. Add the sage and thyme to the soup and taste. Adjust salt as needed.

Green Tamales

Tonight's meal was brought to you by the sweltering summer heat and an oven turned up to 400F.

I'm currently trying to avoid buying anything at the store, as I've already surpassed our grocery budget for the month. So everything in this meal was already in our garden, pantry, or fridge. Feel free to substitute things that are in YOUR house when you make this.

I was going to just make some collards, some beans, and some polenta...but decided to put it all together inside the collard leaves for a tamale-like dish. I love how it turned out!


Green Tamales (serves 6)

12 collard leaves

Filling
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 mild chile, finely chopped
2 cups polenta
4 cups water
1 tsp. salt

1 cup cooked kidney beans (I pressure cooked some)

Sauce
1 red pepper, seeds removed
2 medium tomatoes
1/2 sweet onion
1 tsp. smoked paprika
1/2 tsp. salt

Start by preheating the oven to 400F. To prepare the filling, heat 2 Tbsp. olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and mild chile, stirring as it cooks to prevent any burning. When the garlic is fragrant but not browned, add the polenta, water, and salt. Stir to completely combine. Continue stirring until you have a thick, pudding-like polenta- about 10 minutes should do it. Stir in the cooked kidney beans and remove from heat. Taste the mixture (careful- it's really hot!) and adjust salt to your liking.

Fill a wide, shallow skillet about 1/2 way up with water and heat until simmering. Then wash 12 collard leaves and remove the largest part of the stem- about 1/3-1/2 of the way up the leaf.

Then drop the leaves in the shallow pan of simmering water for, oh, maybe a minute. The leaves should still be bright green. Now it's time to assemble your rolls.

Place about 1/2 cup of filling closer to the stem end of the collard leaf.

Fold in the two lateral sides of the leaf.
The fold up the stem end and continue rolling up and over the filling. Roll them tightly for a nice looking finished dish.
Pack the rolls into a lightly greased 8x11 baking dish. Then prepare your sauce.
Puree red pepper, tomatoes, onion, smoked paprika, and salt in a food processor or blender until smooth. Spoon over the collard tamales and bake, uncovered, for about 20-25 minutes.
We had ours with some tasty sweet corn smothered in Miso-"Butter".
Here's an inside shot:
As you can see- the polenta firms up nicely to mimic a tamale. Except with these tamales you can eat the wrapper!

A proper Southern meal

This is how I want to eat every day. This is simple food that is rich, satisfying and highly nutritious.

I pressure cooked some black-eyed peas and then seasoned them with Bragg's and a little liquid smoke. For the greens, I fried up some little pieces of marinated tofu, onions, and garlic and then added an assortment of collards, mustard greens, and overgrown lettuce from the garden.

The cornbread is the Southern Style cornbread I always make from Gluten-free cooking school. I eat my cornbread with my meal because I like savory cornbread. Mike and the boys like theirs for desserts, smothered in maple syrup. They were a little bit mad at me for serving the peas on top of the cornbread, but I really wanted them to try it. Instead, the kids scraped the peas off and saved the cornbread for last.

Cucumber "Pickle" Salad

4-5 pickling cucumbers, roughly chopped
2 small cippolini onions, thinly sliced
2 Tbsp. minced fresh dill
1 pasillo chile (or other chili you like- these are mild), minced
1/2-1 tsp sea salt (salt to taste)
1-2 Tbsp. rice vinegar

Stir everything together and let it marinate at least 30 minutes before serving.

Sprung

Spring has officially sprung when we get ramps, fresh peas, and sorrel in at the co-op. I really wanted to make a side dish that combined all three of these lovely spring vegetables- so here's my creation:

Spring Sorrel and Peas

1 Tbsp Earth Balance
6 ramps, chopped (green portion discarded)
1/2 cup fresh English peas, shelled
1 bunch sorrel (about 2-3 cups)
1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves
black pepper
sea salt
1 tsp. Veganaise (optional)

Heat the Earth Balance over medium heat in a small saute pan. Add the ramps and the English peas and cook for about 3 minutes. Then add the sorrel and thyme and cook another 3 minutes, or until sorrel has wilted. Finish with several grinds of black pepper and salt to taste. If the sorrel is too lemony-tart for your taste, try stirring in a tsp. of Veganaise. The creamy texture works well with the peas and cuts some of the tartness of the sorrel.



The surprise standout of the meal, however, was not the sorrel and peas (Duh, Liz, these kids are 8 years old).

But it wasn't the pasta and "meat" balls (made from leftover blackeyed peas and rice) either. It was the roasted green beans and carrots! We all loved these and were so sad when we couldn't have seconds...So I suggest making a lot.

Roasted Green Beans and Carrots

About a pound of green beans, trimmed and cut in half
2 carrots
2 Tbsp. olive oil
coarse sea salt
black pepper
a touch of fennel seed, crushed (optional)
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar

Heat the oven to 400F (perhaps for "meat" balls, too?). Cut carrots crosswise into 3 sections, then thinly slice them lengthwise. Toss the carrots and green beans with the olive oil in a cast iron skillet or other oven-safe dish. Sprinkle with sea salt, black pepper, and just a pinch of crushed fennel seed. Roast for about 5 minutes- or until carrots and green pepper are just tender. Finish with balsamic vinegar and toss to coat. Serve immediately.

Black Eyed Peas

This weekend was another busy weekend, so I wasn't cooking much at home. We subsisted on giant salads eaten out of mixing bowls and way too much ice cream.

I did have tons of fun cooking tortillas, salsa, and tamales at my Tex-Mex class, though! Everyone was really surprised how easy it can be to make tamales. Hopefully they'll give them a try on their own now...

Tonight I pressure cooked some black eyed peas and brown rice and made ED& BV's Blackened Tofu. Our salad was like coleslaw, but with broccoli added. It was a gorgeous day today, so we ate outside on the deck.

Here's the recipe for the Black-Eyed Peas and Brown Rice:
(This makes enough for about 8 servings)

3 cups brown rice
2 cups dry black eyed peas
3 smashed garlic cloves
1 onion, thickly sliced
2 vegetable bouillon cubes
3 Tbsp. tamari
about 16 drops of liquid smoke
1 tsp. paprika
1.5 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cumin
8 cups water

Combine everything in a pressure cooker over high heat. Bring up to pressure and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool slowly. Serve with tons of hot sauce for the adults.

Soup and Pasta

Just when I thought Spring had come, we got a cold front. And now we are expecting a foot of snow tonight. So my diet will continue with wintery warming foods a bit longer. This soup is perfect for a cold rainy/snowy day.


Black Eyed Pea-Nut Stew

1 cup dry black eyed peas
4 cups water
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. oil
1 Tbsp. grated ginger
Juice of 1 lime
2 Tbsp. tamari
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 cup hot water
1 medium yam, cubed
1 carrot, roughly chopped
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1 jalapeño, seeded and minced (optional)
salt to taste

Combine peas, water, salt, and oil in a pressure cooker. Bring up to pressure and cook for 5 minutes. Allow to cool slowly until pressure is released. (You could also cook these in a regular pot). In a bowl, whisk together the ginger, lime juice, peanut butter, tamari, and hot water until smooth.

Add the peanut butter mixture, yam, and carrot (and jalapeño, if using) to the cooked black eyed peas and bring to a boil. Simmer for about 10 minutes or until yams and carrots are tender. Add salt to taste. Garnish with cilantro and serve with corn chips for dipping.

This week I received my Teese! True to their promise, this cheeze tastes like real mozzarella and melts well. I mixed up a casserole full of Cashew Ricotta, gluten free penne, broccoli and marinara sauce. Then I topped it with the Teese and baked it until it melted.
As you can see, we dug in right away!

Tonight I really wanted pasta and cheese, but I also needed to use up a free eggplant that was about to go bad. So I simmered the eggplant with olive oil, cumin seeds, salt, red pepper, coriander, and canned tomatoes. For the pasta, I used Eden Organic's kamut pasta. How can you resist pasta that gives 10 grams of protein, 15% of your iron, and 6 grams of fiber in 1/2 cup of pasta?!

And since it is distantly related to wheat, I get to eat it all myself! Sorry Mike!

Kitten Yoga

When Crystal and I were doing yoga on Sunday, the kitten decided to do yoga with us. Trouble's approach is to try to absorb the benefits of yoga through osmosis- by laying on people doing yoga. Here we are in savasana:
And on the meditation cushion:
Then tonight I was in Viparitta Karani on a block when Trouble jumped up on my belly and started to knead!
I think she's really into this.

And because this is a food blog, not a yoga blog, I'll post up a picture of a great classic macrobiotic dinner we had last week. This is brown rice, adzuki beans cooked with kombu and kale, and a mix of roasted yams and carrots. The leftovers were great in my lunch all week and I felt very virtuous.