Saucy

The hubs has many talents in the kitchen, and while I am not a terrible cook, I tend to be pretty basic-- I don't think I would participate or observe as many fun kitchen projects without him. I just wouldn't think to brandy fruits or make pickles on my own, but with the hubs, these kinds of activities have become more common in my life.

When we started growing tomatoes last year in our beloved vegetable garden, we had to incorporate them into our meals fairly regularly. Our plants thrived that summer, as they are doing this summer, and we had more tomatoes than we knew what to do with. Salads, bruschetta, and gazpacho made frequent appearances in our kitchen, but we were ready to expand to something new yet simple. Then the answer came: tomato sauce!

Our tomato sauces were delicious, but we did not freeze any to have later in the year-- a silly oversight on our end. This year, though, just as our backyard tomatoes are starting to become plentiful, and our market-bought tomatoes are in need of some eating, we decided to make things right with tomato sauce. While we will go through the first batch of sauce pretty quickly, we will do so with the intention of preserving a few jars of homemade tomato sauce, made with our own backyard tomatoes. 

I'm looking forward to visiting on a cold wintery weekend, making dinner with the hubs, and being reminded of these warm summer nights. As I am finding with each project we undertake with our backyard veggies and farmers market favorites, there is such a simple joy in creating treats that we can enjoy months later or pass on to friends and family. It is as though we are capturing tiny moments from our lives and our home and preserving them for a while longer, just enough for them to change and shift as the weeks and months pass yet still retain that first sliver in time. 

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A French Affair: Olive Bread and Ratatouille

My dad gave the hubs and I A Little Provençal Cookbook, a cute little French cookbook of basic recipes, and as soon as the hubs saw that there was a recipe for olive bread in there, he just about flipped over the moon and couldn't stop talking about it for weeks.

He really likes olives.

Since a meal of just olive bread would be rather incomplete, we decided to whip up some ratatouille to round out our dinner a few nights ago. The end result was amazingly delicious.

Of course, since we were making French food, I insisted on having a French-themed evening, with Georges Brassens playing in the background while we cooked, having French wine with our meal, and ending the night with the Pixar movie "Ratatouille." Very appropriate. :)

We don't usually follow a theme when we cook, but I found that it made the evening more fun for us, and I'd definitely like to do this more often. I remember in college, we used to get take-out sushi, drink Sapporo, and watch "Lost in Translation," as well as have burritos, tacos, and Corona when we watched "Y Tu Mamá También." It might be a little dorky, but that doesn't mean it can't be fun, too!

Have others done things like this before, too? What are some of your favorites?

Spicy Vegetarian Chili

When the temperature drops outside and the snowflakes start to fall, it feels so nice to cozy up inside and enjoy some warm comfort food. For me, this is the perfect time to make chili. It's filling, nutritious, and oh-so-delicious. A few months ago, the hubs and I found a great vegetarian chili recipe and have been making it pretty often. I found the original recipe online (here) but have made a few tweaks to suit my tastes.

Here we go:

*1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
*3 gloves garlic, minced
*1 teaspoon chili powder
*1 teaspoon ground cumin
*1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
*1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
*1 1/2 teaspoons honey
*1 can black beans (with liquid)
*1 can diced tomatoes (with liquid)
*1/2 bell pepper, chopped
*1 carrot, chopped
*1 cup corn
*ground beef substitute (I like Trader Joe's brand)

1. In a large pot, heat the oil over medium heat and sauté the garlic. Add the beef substitute, making sure to break it up so it crumbles.

2. Toss in half of the chili powder (1/2 teaspoon), half of the cumin (1/2 teaspoon), half of the cayenne pepper (1/2 teaspoon), and the cinnamon (1/8 teaspoon). Add the honey, beans, tomatoes, pepper, carrots, and corn. Give it all a good stir to mix up the ingredients.

3. Cook for 45 minutes, making sure to stir every now and again.

4. Add the remaining chili powder, cumin, and cayenne pepper, and let everything cook for another 15 minutes.

5. To serve, just scoop into bowls. Add sour cream, cilantro, and grated cheese if you'd like. Serves four.

The end result is spicy, but not too much. I actually sometimes add more cayenne for more heat, but that's up to you. If you'd like to make a non-vegetarian version, just cook some ground beef and and add it to your vegetable mixture.

Enjoy!

Earl Grey Carrot Muffins

The time has come for another recipe! One of my New Year's resolutions was to make something from every cookbook the hubs and I own. I decided to start with one of the books that I had never even opened before. The hubs and I have a collection of vegan cookbooks, partly because I used to be vegan (now just vegetarian) and partly because the hubs subscribes to a book service that sends him random books every month or so. The end result is several vegan cookbooks that are, shall we say, underloved.

Vegan recipes have the potential to be kind of gross. Tofu can be boring after a while, and if I'm being honest, I think that fake cheese tastes like plastic. However, there are lots of great vegan and vegetarian recipes that taste fresh and flavorful, and even my meat-loving husband agrees that they are satisfying and delicious. Since I don't like to cook with meat and can't stand the smell of seafood, we end up cooking vegetarian meals about 98% of the time in our house. I was definitely up for the challenge of finding a new vegan dish to experiment with.

Maybe it was the cold air outside or my desire to have the apartment smell delicious when the hubs came home from his week away in LA, but I decided to bake muffins from Cook, Eat, Thrive: Vegan Recipes from Everyday to Exotic. This is a great cookbook that has a lot of international dishes, from empanadas to cous cous to brioche. I bookmarked a lot of recipes to go back to, but I decided to kick off this set of recipes with muffins. The recipe for Earl Grey carrot muffins sounded intriguing and relatively simple, and since I love Earl Grey as a beverage, I wanted to see how they would turn out when put in a muffin.

*1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
*1 teaspoon Earl Grey tea (powder form- crush in a mortar & pestle or in a coffee grinder)
*1 teaspoon baking powder
*1/2 teaspoon baking soda
*1/4 teaspoon sea salt
*1 cup sugar
*1 cup grated carrots
*1/2 cup water
*1/2 cup vegetable oil

This recipe was simple enough. I heated the oven to 350 and quickly mixed all of the ingredients together. Technically, the book says to separate the ingredients across two bowls, but that has never made sense to me, so I put it all in one large mixing bowl.

I mixed the ingredients just long enough to get rid of any dry clumps and then promptly scooped the mixture into a muffin tin lined with baking cups. The recipe is supposed to yield 12 muffins, but I think I overfilled the muffin cups because I only had enough for 10. Close enough!

After the letting the muffins bake for 20-25 minutes, they were done! These turned out pretty well, and I loved their Earl Grey fragrance. These were also unexpectedly sweet, but this might be because I used sugar in the raw rather than white sugar. The end result was delicious! My only complaint was that the bottom of the baking cups were pretty oily, which I assume was from the vegetable oil. I don't typically like to bake with vegetable oil but since this was a vegan recipe, I couldn't use eggs. If I were to use this recipe again, I think I would substitute the eggs for the oil, but otherwise, I thought these muffins were pretty tasty as is. Yum!

Have any of you tried vegan baking before? What did you think of it?

Smoothie Semi-Fail

As part of my efforts to cook more and kick ass in the kitchen, I decided to try making a kale smoothie since apparently kale is the new wonderfood and will basically keep us alive forever. My sister makes great smoothies, but when I asked her how she puts together her delicious kale smoothies, she just sent a vague e-mail saying, "I use Greek plain yogurt, peanut butter, and bananas." That sounded easy enough, but I still didn't know the proportions to use.

After searching the internet, I figured I could make something that somewhat resembled her smoothies. I couldn't find fresh kale in the grocery store, so I settled on frozen chopped kale. This may have been my first mistake.

This is what I originally based my smoothie recipe on:

*2 cups kale (I just chopped the 10 oz. block of frozen kale in half and figured that was enough)
*1 sliced banana
*1/4 cup milk
*2 tbsp nonfat Greek yogurt
*1 tbsp honey
*1 tbsp peanut butter

I combined all of this in our blender and let it spin around for a while to mix up all of the ingredients. However, this resulted in a very thick, goopy smoothie that had huge flecks of kale in it and was difficult to drink. So to fix it, I poured in some more milk and orange juice to give it more liquid. That definitely helped the consistency, but I still ended up with large pieces of kale in my drink, which I wasn't anticipating and didn't particularly like.

Overall, it still tasted good, but I would have liked a smoother smoothie. Next time I'll go with a different recipe and perhaps use fresh kale to see if I end up with a better result. At least I tried! :) Any smoothie suggestions for next time around?

Scrumdilyumptious

I admit that I can be pretty lazy when it comes to the kitchen. When I get home from a long day at work or school, the last thing I want to do is think about what to make for dinner. As a result, the hubs and I usually end up staring at each other pitifully until one of us asks the question on both of our minds: "Should we just order take-out?"

While this is certainly an easy, effortless option, it is not the most financially responsible one. The hubs and I are both in graduate school, and our very limited budget can't keep up with our love for the spring rolls at the Thai place up the street. So about a month ago, the hubs proposed that we ban ourselves from ordering take-out for dinner until after Thanksgiving. Now, with just a few more days to go until T-Day, I am pleased to report that it looks like we will reach our goal!

If I'm being honest, I have to admit that I wasn't able to refrain form purchasing meals for a few lunches. I try to bring leftovers with me for lunch, but a few times I either forgot to pack a lunch, or we didn't have any leftovers for me to take. So we didn't stay 100% away from buying meals, but we did manage to do so for dinners.

Being forced to think about what to cook for dinner initially seemed stressful, but once I sat down with the collection of cookbooks we have accumulated over the years, I found that the process wasn't too bad. I stuck with recipes that seemed easy to learn or that I had already used in the past. We ended up with a lot of zucchini casseroles and stuffed shells, but I also learned to make chili and fritattas.

Here were some of our recent successes:

Olive sourdough bread with spicy mustard, tomato, and cheese

Vegetable stir-fry

Waffles with cream and fruit

Saving money and becoming more comfortable in the kitchen are two good motivators for me to continue this challenge of cooking dinner. It's fun to learn something new, and it feels great to know that I've made something that looks and tastes delicious.