Dinner - March 19, 2010

Simple salad with some boiled new potatoes. This is one of my favorite things to have after traveling to recalibrate myself.

This looks like a clean out the refrigerator meal.
Sauteed greens with mushrooms. Mashed sweet potatoes. A sautee of snow pea and onions. Glazed tofu.
I would guess Immer's recipes were the base for the greens and potatoes. Kornfeld's recipe would be the base for the tofu.

Lunch - March 14, 2010

This is the start of a red bean chili from Bishop's A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen. The recipe had coffee in it. I liked it but it was more like really good red beans than chili. I think it will be some new techniques to add to my chili plans.

Lunch - February 28, 2010

I believe this is called broccoflower and is some sort of cross between broccoli and cauliflower. I would say it is more like cauliflower in feel and structure. I used it in a soup where broccoli was called for.

The soup was Iowa Open House Grain & Pasta Pottage from a Frontier Soups' Soup Mix. I made my own vegetable broth which turned out pretty good. I had saved the water from cooking some potatoes and parsnips and added it to a new broth I made with shallots, onions, carrots, celery, potato, and some spices. After making the broth it felt like a waste to use a spice packet with dehydrated vegetables.

While this was okay I wouldn't serve it to anyone. I didn't even make Matt try it. I did eat it all for my lunches over the following week. The pasta in the package was whole wheat but not very good. The rices in it were nice but it just never was quite worth the effort.

Dinner - February 2, 2010

This is Berley's Wehani and Wild Rice Stew with Cremini Mushrooms, Winter Squash, and Kale from Fresh Food Fast. I substituted another red rice for the Wehani rice. I also had to substitute some fresh oregano and dried sage for the fresh sage. I am never sure what to do with the slices of ginger with the peel on them after the rice is cooked. This time I put about half of them through the garlic press and added back into the stew. I also smashed the garlic and left it in the stew.

The toasted pumpkin seeds really make this dish. I served them hot off the frying pan so they were still popping and snapping on the table. I would say this is a nice dish for real vegetarians. I will be making it again but it I am not sure I would serve it to a guest.

My produce delivery started today. I am quite impressed with the condition of the produce. It all looked better than the grocery store selection. The real test will be how long the stuff lasts. I am really excited about this service and what it could mean to my life.

From Farm Fresh Delivery into this dish:
- Carrots
- Celery
- Pumpkin Seeds
- Acorn Squash
- Ginger
- Garlic
- Kale
- Cremini Mushrooms

I forgot to turn the flash on for this picture but I tried to save it in iPhoto.

Dinner - January 31. 2010

This was Berley's Quinoa with Brussels Sprouts, Tempeh, and Toasted Almonds from Fresh Food Fast. I made a single recipe which was much easier as it fit nicely in the pan.

I used 1/4 cup of oil instead of the 1/3 of cup called for. With that modification I got 684 calories per servings for four servings.

I think this is a simple tasting dish that is very satisfying. I could serve it to vegetarians but I probably would pick something a little more fancy if I were going to being serving guests. This will remain a standard for me for week nights. The left overs make a nice lunch too.

Breakfast - September 25, 2009

I enjoyed this bread for breakfast, but I made it the day before and ate quite a bit that day too. The recipe is called Whole-Wheat Flatbread with Grapes and comes from the www.culinate.com website and can be found here.

I found an error on the recipe which I mentioned in the comments of the site. It looks like they straightened it out pretty quickly.

Mostly the recipe came together well. The sugar on the grapes on top became liquid and ran off the end of the bread and provided a little too much caramelizing on the bottom of the pan.

I plan to make this again when we have company.

Update: Found some notes on making this. I reduced the recipe so that I was at just 3 total cups of flour so I could make the dough in the food processor. When I put it in the baking sheet I went to about an inch from the edge.

Lunch - September 11, 2009

I was home alone and whipped this up for myself for lunch. I will call it Not Really Re-fried Beans and Fresh Salsa. I don't remember exactly what I did but my current guess follows.

For the beans I sauteed an onion in some olive oil. I then added a drained can of pinto beans while reserving the liquid. I added some cumin and mashed the beans with a potato masher while they cooked. I then worked in the reserved liquid until it was the consistency I wanted.

For the salsa I mashed a clove of garlic and mixed it with some salt. I chopped up some cherry tomatoes, a very small red onion, and a dark red bell pepper and tossed them with the garlic. I believe I added a dash of Adobo sauce from some chipotle peppers I had in the fridge.

Very satisfying and easy.

Dinner - August 26, 2009

When the camera battery is low the auto-focus does not appear to work.

The first picture is a Tomato Curry. The recipe is from a cookbook that I already returned to the library. It was tasty but not what I expected. I had cooked up some yellow split peas over which I was going to serve the curry. I ended up just mixing them into the curry and calling it soup. It was a nice taste with the fresh heirloom cherry tomatoes of strange colors but anything is good with that much coconut milk.


The second recipe was the topping from Jack Bishop's recipe "Crisp Tortillas with Pattypan Squash, Eggplant, and Tomato." The recipe can be found in A year in the Vegetarian Kitchen. I did not use the tortillas or the queso fresco. I believe I doubled the rest of the recipe. This was again not what I was expecting but pretty good. The lime and chipotle chile gave the dish some variety from a regular ratatouille.

I enjoyed both dishes but I would say they have a little work to become regulars. I am giving these a taste rating of "have potential" and I really mean they have a lot of potential. Cooking up lentils, soup, and veggies separately was a lot of work so as a whole I would say this was a weekend meal but the individual dishes all have weeknight potential.

Dinner - August 4, 2009

This is gazpacho with basil croutons. This was made from a recipe you can find on epicurious.com called Shrimp Gazpacho with Basil Croutons. I left out the shrimp and I used an excellent mild sour dough bread for the croutons.

You do not need to chop all the veggies up like the recipe says. The half that go in the food processor can just be chunked. This saves a lot of time but if you are going to make the croutons this might be hard to pull off after work and get everything to cool. I make it for weeknights but I have my system down.

Matt first made this gazpacho over 10 years ago and it is the standard for us.

Dinner - July 7, 2009

This was a meal we shared with my sister and our friend Chuck. It is from Peter Berley's The Flexitarian Table. It is Summer Menu 5: Tofu with Lemon, Soy, White Wine, and Butter Sauce; Striped Bass with Lemon, White Wine, and Butter Sauce; Quinoa Salad with Green Beans, Corn, and Tomatoes.

The tofu and quinoa were excellent. The fish was limited by the quality of the fish. We have made this fish with good fish in the past and it was excellent too.

We don't make this tofu a regular dish because of the butter but pull it out for company. The quinoa is a summer regular here. The quinoa is also a good dish for sharing at picnics.

The pumpkin seeds are listed as optional on the quinoa but I think they should not be skipped. I have never found red quinoa and have always used regular. I used half yellow wax beans. I also used to two 12 oz blocks of tofu instead of the pound that is called for and was glad to have the extra tofu. I believe I slightly upped the sauce.

The meal as a whole needs to be saved for weekends. The quinoa can be a meal or lunch itself and I would say you could pull that off for a weeknight. The thing that makes it hard for a weeknight meal is the cooling time on the quinoa and the coordination of the separate cooking for the ingredients. I have a bit of practice now and would not hesitate to make it for a weeknight.

For taste I will give it a 5 as we have gone back to this one for guests and even had our caterer for our wedding do a version of the tofu.

What does a Herbivore take to a Pig Roast?

I decided on a Black Bean and Rice Salad. I don't now if there is a right answer to this question but I did learn a few things.



When cooking for a pig roast, here is what not to do:
1. Spend time going to farmers market for fresh vegetables
2. Make your own fresh vegetable broth
3. Make a double recipe (about 2 gallons)

Of course that is what I did. While the few who tried it said they liked it, I am still trying to get rid of it.

I used a recipe that I used to make 10 years ago as the base. It can be found at http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/2369. I suggest checking out all the resources available at http://www.epicurious.com/ if you haven't been there.

I used brown basmati rice instead of white. I used home made vegetable broth instead of chicken broth. I used lime juice instead of orange juice. I also added a little adobe sauce to kick up the spice. I only added a about a 1/4 cup total of olive oil for the whole recipe and a little bit of pumpkin seed oil.

Before I added all the rice and oil, Matt had some for lunch. I then took it to the pig roast. I then brought most of it home from the pig roast. I had some for a midnight snack. The next day I cooked up some spinach with garlic and mixed it in to a couple of servings and we had that for a late lunch. The next day I cooked up some frozen corn with garlic and mixed that into a couple of servings which we took for lunch (Matt ate his on top of a spinach salad). I took the big tub back to work to have with a lunch grill out. I looks like a little more is missing.

Hot Weather Ratatouille

It was too hot to turn the oven on and it was getting late. I opted for this easy one dish stove top recipe. It is called Tempeh Ratatouille and is in Berley's book Fresh Food Fast. He calls for oil and serving it on cracked wheat but we skipped both. I also only used half the tempeh.

I was not expecting much and found I loved it. Matt was remembering a recent Ratatouille we made from Berley's Flexitarian Table and could only say this one had potential. I really don't know what to expect from the dish so the ease and flavor won me over.

We do think more effort should be made to cook the tempeh longer but this was probably due to the lack of oil. Also this barely fit in my dutch oven so I don't know what kind of large skillet he has. I used the juice of lemon as the recipe called for but I probably should have reduced this since we didn't have the oil.

We enjoyed a very nice bottle of champagne. I was surprised to find the wine was great with the raw bits of vegetable I stole while chopping, in particular the tomatoes. It didn't do too well with the lemon juice and hot pepper in the final dish but there was not much wine left by that time anyway.

When Matt wasn't looking I used a piece of whole wheat bread to sop up the great liquid left on my plate. The picture is from half way through the meal.

We ate about half of this for dinner and took the other half for lunch the next day. I thought it made a great lunch.