Too Much Mustard

 I'm on a mission right now to clean out my kitchen.  I'm reading American Wasteland and feel a little embarrassed by the number of varieties of mustard in my fridge.  I count 7 now, but that's only because we finished off the last little bit of 3 jars this past week.

It's not just the mustard, though.  I've got a whole shelf of hot sauces and varieties of beans I've never even used before.

So here's what I've been eating to clean out the foods I've been neglecting at the back of the fridge and pantry.

1.  Black beans with millet, pickled limes, cumin-coriander-apricot chutney and harissa kale chips.  (pickled these limes 3 years ago)



2.  Roasted broccoli and carrots with WW Israeli couscous and last year's frozen pesto.  (Just enough couscous left for a couple servings.  Been sitting in the pantry for months.  I also poured a little thinned-out mustard over the broccoli and called it a mustard sauce.)














3. Barbecue pinto beans and chipotle lime Gardein strips over romaine lettuce and carrots.  With ranch dressing, of course.  (Finishing off some barbecue sauce and pintos).

 4. Butternut squash ravioli with edamame and pesto.
(Frozen ravioli.  Frozen edamame.  Frozen pesto.  Cleaning out the freezer!)

5. Chora dal na pooda with barley, saag, apricot chutney.  (The last of the hulled barley and finally tried the chora dal!).

I'll have more to share soon.  I have weird cereal no one wants, urad dal, and so many dried garden herbs.  It feels like Iron Chef trying to plan my meals around these ingredients.

So simple, so good

I intended to make something complex, and maybe just a little fancy-pants, when I put some cubed rutabagas and some wild rice on to boil.  But I got hungry and just ate boiled rutabagas and wild rice with a little fresh thyme and ground black pepper.

It was amazing and perfectly simple.

Banana Sundae

Not quite as good as an ice cream sundae, but the toppings are the same.

Chocolate Fluffer Nutter Cookies

Just when you think Dreena Burton's "You got peanut butter in my chocolate" cookies couldn't get any better, try adding marshmallows to them.

I call these Chocolate Fluffer Nutter Cookies.  Fluffer Nutter sandwiches are crazy and probably no one should really eat them, except maybe as a dessert.  But in a cookie, combining peanut butter and marshmallows seems perfectly reasonable, right?  Especially with chocolate.

The original recipe uses barley flour and they're really good that way, but I wanted to make these gluten free so we could all enjoy them.  So my adaptions are below:

Chocolate Fluffer Nutter Cookies
Adapted from Dreena Burton's recipe

1/4 cup evaporated cane sugar
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 cup millet flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch
1 tsp xanthan gum
3 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 handful (about 8) vegan marshmallows, cut into 4

1/4 cup chocolate chips

1/4 cup maple syrup

3 Tbsp agave nectar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup peanut butter

Preheat oven to 350 F.  In a mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar, salt, millet flour, tapioca starch, xanthan gum, cocoa, baking powder, and baking soda until the lumps are gone.  Then stir in marshmallow pieces and chips until they are coated in the flour mixture.

In a separate jar or bowl, mix together the maple syrup, agave, vanilla and oil.  Add to the flour and mix until a thick dough forms.  Then drop/drizzle bits of peanut butter (mine was refrigerated, so it was lumps of peanut butter) onto the dough and use a knife to cut it into the dough, leaving lumps and swirls.  Scoop rounded tablespoons onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Bake for 11 minutes, then let cool completely.

Fat on Fat on Fat

You know that 2010-2012 trend of putting bacon on and in everything?  That's what my life has been like the past few weeks, except with coconut bacon.  Perhaps you've already noticed.


































Well, tonight I outdid myself and made an avocado and coconut bacon sandwich drizzled with super good olive oil.


This is basically a fat sandwich.  It was incredible.

Pile It High

There is something magical about the combination of ranch dressing and barbecue sauce.  Especially on a salad.  Also with croutons and coconut bacon.  

It's a lot easier to make salads for dinner when you keep crazy good salad toppings like these around.  I've eaten mixing bowl salads three times in the past week.  This one has locally grown baby spinach, chopped romaine, shredded yellow carrots, croutons, coconut bacon, locally made smoked blue cheese, baked tofu soaked in my bestie's homemade whiskey barbecue sauce, and ranch dressing. This is a filling salad.  Be sure you pile the spinach and lettuce high to balance all the rich toppings.

My buddy Jesse says I only like barbecue and ranch together because I'm from Texas, but I think everyone should try it.  I enjoyed this salad while watching an episode of King of the Hill.  Hank Hill thinks you should go prep some salad toppings now so that you're prepared.

His words of wisdom on tonight's episode: "Plan ahead.  Then when stuff happens, you'll be prepared."

A Salad without a Name

Sometimes the last thing I want to do when I get home is cook dinner.  Especially after a long day, on a night where I eat dinner by myself, it's really tempting to order pizza or pick up some takeout from Kim's Kitchen.  But I'm teaching a class about eating more vegetables this week and one of the benefits of my job is that I get inspired by the things I research and end up eating more healthfully as a result.

So I made this quick and very veggie-heavy salad for dinner last night.  It was kind of a weird mix of flavors, but I really liked it!

"I Don't Know What to Call It-Blood Orange, Peanut, Tahini, Cabbage and Kale Slaw"

2 cups very thinly sliced savoy cabbage
2 cups very thinly sliced lacinato kale, stem removed
1 blood orange, supremed (a.k.a. membranes & pith removed)
1/3 cup roasted, salted peanuts
Tahini Sauce (tahini, tamari, rice vinegar)

Mix it all up.  This would work well if it had time to marinate, but I ate mine all right away.  Yep.  I ate my 5-a-day in one meal.

*Green onions would also be nice in this salad, too, but raw onions don't agree with me.  Cilantro would also be good, but I didn't have any.  Or baked tofu.  Also, it's kind of a pain to cut the membranes off the orange, but it really pays off with the juiciness of the oranges.  Also, I have no idea the proportions of tahini, tamari and vinegar.  Just give it a taste and add more of what sounds good.