Dinner - February 24, 2010

This is a TLT (Tofu, Lettuce, and Tomato) Sandwich from Eating Well's Ipod Touch Application. In the background you can see Black Bean Soup from Eating Well Magazine's February 2010 issue. The sandwich recipe can be found here. The soup recipe can be found here.

The recipe calls for extra firm tofu but I had (and generally prefer) firm tofu. I smashed it under a pipe plate with some weight on it before proceeding with the recipe. I found the tofu came out of the oven as promised which is unusual for me and backed tofu. I used veganaise for the mayo. I thought these sandwiches were good but should never be compared to a sandwiches with bacon. The tofu tasted mostly like mustard to me.

The soup calls for prepared salsa. I did not have any so I substituted 1/2 cup diced tomato, a clove of garlic, a 1/2 tsp of adobo sauce, and 1/4 cup of bell pepper. I added the cilantro un-chopped to the food processor with the last batch of soup. This soup was easy and better than canned.

Lunch - January 30, 2010

I created a make do lunch. I am going to call it Quick Tomato Pantry Soup.

1 large shallot finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1 28oz can chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup chickpeas, rinsed
1/2 cup frozen corn
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
salt
pepper
2 tbsp basil chopped

Saute the shallots in the olive oil in a chef's pot. Add the tomatoes and bring to a low boil. Mash tomatoes with a tomato masher. Add the chick peas and corn and heat through. Add the balsamic and salt and pepper. Stir in the basil and serve.

I am going to say this was 3 servings and tasted pretty good.

Dinner - Sepember 26, 2009

I am now recalling that the ratatouille that I made the day before had jalapenos in it that were very spicy resulting in a lot of left overs. Here I served it with some rice, re-fried beans, sauteed corn, and fresh salsa to mellow it out a bit. I believe we thought this was great. The roasted vegetables added that fajita flavor to the meal.

Dinner - September 21, 2009

For a starter we had a "Tomato & Bread Salad with Basil" that I made up. When I was packing Matt's lunch I cut off the end piece of the whole wheat bread that was starting to dry up. I cubed it and left it on a plate to finish drying during the day. For the salad I mashed 1 small clove of garlic with some salt. I chopped two large tomatoes (one red and one yellow) and mixed with the garlic. I chopped a handful of basil and mixed it in. I added a teaspoon or so of balsamic vinegar and tossed in the bread cubes. I tossed and served the two of us. This was good but I add some course salt when I served it that ended up being just a bit too much.


For the entree we had a curry from Berley's Flexitarian Table called "Lentil and Rhubarb Curry with Potatoes and Peas". I did not have the ginger or the shallots. I used all onion, oil in place of the ghee, and added a bit of prepared curry powder along with a bit of ground ginger. I doubled the red pepper flakes and upped the garlic cloves by one. I also used regular lentils in place of the french lentils and did no soaking ahead of time.

We both liked this. It did not work out as perfectly as the last time I made it but I thought it was still pretty good. I think trying to compare it to our carry out curries doesn't work since they rely so heavily on cream and fat to taste good. This is a nice healthy basic curry to make when ever you have some rhubarb around. I would say this could feed 4 if served with some bread.

Dinner - September 8, 2009

I tried the Three Sisters' Stew with Okra and Leeks from Berley's Fresh Food Fast again. This time I backed off on the jalapeno to about a half of a large one. I also made my own pinto beans.

The result was a stew where the spice just added to the flavor of the dish. I could have gone for a little more spice. Since the pepper is the first thing in the pot it is hard to gauge.

Matt rounded out the meal for us this time with some corn chips.

I made the recipe from gathering the ingredients to ready to serve in under an hour. It is a nice one pot meal where you can chop the veggies as you go.

Lunch - Septpember 4, 2009

This is Gazpacho Salad from The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas. This is the vegetarian cookbook that my mom had when I was growing up. I guess I nabbed her copy when I was in college. I recently purged my cookbooks but I held on to this one from 1972.

I added chickpeas to the salad to make it a meal. The recipe says to use firm tomatoes which would help limit all the extra liquid I had, but when you have ripe tomatoes you just can't pass them up. It is the nice dressing that makes this more than just chopped vegetables

I like chopping and I don't like turning on the stove so this is a good recipe for me. I have made a less soupy version of this for sharing at picnics.

Dinner - September 3, 2009

Again, I revisited a favorite. This recipe is Three Sisters Stew with Okra and Leeks from Berley's Fresh Food Fast. Have I mentioned how much I love cookbooks organized by season?

I used purple okra and tomatillos. I had no cilantro for garnish and of course I skipped the sour cream for garnish. I also used olive oil in place of the butter. Besides this full oil try, I have made this recipe with half the oil and with none of the oil and have enjoyed all.

My notes say start to finish in under an hour and that you can chop the vegetables as you go.

I think that you can consider this a complete meal because of the beans. If I were going to serve this to a guests I would probably add some cornbread or some other starch on the side. I will stick with the taste rating of 4 that I gave it before but this is really good and I hope everyone tries it.

You can find a previous post here.

Dinner - August 30, 2009

One more go on a favorite. This is from the recipe Chilled Tomato Soup, with Shallots, Cucumbers, and Corn from Berleys' Fresh Food Fast. I took this over to Kevin's to share for dinner.

I say taste your cucumber and if it is strong, reduce it. I think the corn can be upped a bit. I used red onion in place of the shallot because that is all I found at the market. The shallot adds a little complexity.

I made a double recipe and that served the three of us along side some grilled food with one serving left for lunch. The recipe says it serves 4 but that would be just a small cup.

Previous posts:
cold-soup-for-hot-weather
dinner-without-photos

Dinner - August 29, 2009

Some summer classics again.
Gazpacho. My previous post with the basil croutons can be found here. The recipe can be found at http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Shrimp-Gazpacho-with-Basil-Croutons-12647. This one lacks the croutons and the shrimp. I have been out of red wine vinegar all summer so I have been using sherry vinegar.

"Green Beans and Potatoes with Pesto". The recipe is from Jack Bishop's The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook. I used half yellow wax beans. You can find a previous post here.

The tomatoes and green beans are from my dad's garden. The rest of the ingredients (except for the olive oil and vinegar) are from the Hyde Park Farmers' Market.

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 - August 2, 2009

This is a tomato soup with mushrooms from a mushroom cookbook I got from the library. The soup calls for a little bit of beet in the soup. I am going to guess this is for color. The soup was fine.
The salad was simply dressed greens with new potatoes and sauteed oyster mushrooms. The salad was fine.

I will say that these dishes have potential. I am imagining that a french bistro that is just around the corner from here could do some very nice versions of these dishes. It think this combination could also make for a nice meal.

Dinner - July 27, 2009

I can't remember this meal. It appears to be zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, and kidney beans tossed with some pasta. I am guessing that I just improvised.

Matt does not recall it either. I am hungry right now so I think it sounds pretty good. I guess this is why I have to keep track at the time.

UPDATE: I found an entry in my calorie tracker for that day. I called the recipe "Zucchini and Pasta with Tomato and Pinto Beans" but I credited no source so maybe I did make it up.

This makes 4 servings. One serving had 408 calories.

Here is a general list of ingredients:
2 tbsp olive oil
7 cups zucchini
8 oz of pasta
2 cups chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 can pinto beans

Dinner - September 3, 2009

I found my high rating of this recipe from two years ago and thought I had better try it again. You can find the old post here.

I believe the recipe still deserves high praise. This time I had the okra. My only substitution was 2 tbsp of olive oil for the butter. I guess we also left off the sour cream garnish.

This turned out quite spicy. The jalapeno I had was quite large.

This recipe is called "Three Sisters Stew with Okra and Leeks" and can be found in Berley's Fresh Food Fast. Berley pairs it with a corn cake that had too much butter and cheese for me to try.

With the beans this stew can be the whole meal but the spice and volume one needs to eat make it a bit challenging. Next time I may try a little bread or cornbread with this to make it an easier meal to eat.

Matt said we should eat this every week. It is the season for this recipe so I may try.

This was quick to make. There is chopping but not very fine and it can all be done as the recipe progresses.

Lunch - June 30, 2009

This was a little salad I made up for Matt's lunch. He likes bean salads to toss with a box of lettuce at work. Our local source for prepackaged bean salads has dried up.

Chickpea Salad Topper
1 cup of chickpeas drained (with 3 tbsp of liquid reserved)
2 green onions (white part chopped, green part sliced)
1 Hungarian pepper (chopped)
1 tomato (chopped)
1 yellow squash (chopped)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp red wine vinegar
3 tbsp of reserved liquid from chickpeas

I used chickpeas that I had cooked up following the basic recipe in Bishop's Italian Vegetarian cookbook.

Matt really liked this. He said it was the fresh tomato that made it so good.

Dinner without Photos

The camera battery needed charged and I was too hungry to wait.

I tried the Chilled Tomato Soup with Shallots, Cucumbers, and Corn again from Berley's Fresh Food Fast (page 100). This time I made a half recipe and tried to just use a food mill. This didn't work and I had to dump the mess into the blender and then back to the food mill. So if you are making a whole recipe I suggest blending in two batches.

The soup was still good. I used a whole ear of corn for a half recipe and liked that. Again I didn't peel the cucumber but this one probably should have been.

I also made a side of pan grilled zucchini and summer squash. I cooked about 1.5 lbs sliced in long slabs lightly salted in 3 or 4 batches. In a separate pan I nearly caramelized a small red onion. I then returned all the squash to the pan with the onion and heated through. At the end I tossed in a small handful of chopped basil. The onion really helped this one out.

I had visions of staking these grilled slabs of squash into some sort of sculpture in the middle of my plate but I was hungry so I went for a pile next to the soup. It would have been a waste anyway since the camera was charging.

We indulged and had a little bit of bread with this meal which helped it feel more like a meal. I also had a glass of Moulin-a-Vent which while not really going with the meal is not a bad generic choice for food in general.

I finally wanted some Okra and I couldn't find it

I made the Three Sisters Stew with Okra and Leeks from Berley's Fresh Food Fast without the okra (page 105). I have never gone looking for okra so I didn't know it was hard to find. Berley notes in the intro to the recipe that you should make the recipe even if you can't find okra and I agree.


While this was cooking I made up some Spicy Summer Bean and Chickpea Salad with Harissa Vinaigrette from the same cookbook (page 125). I was planning for this to be for lunch the next day but it was so good we decided to have some with dinner. We were glad to have it also to have some variety of texture to the meal.

On the stew I left out the butter and the olive oil in the cooking and the sour cream in the garnish. This means we ate a soup of nothing but vegetables, water, and salt. It was excellent. I am going to guess it is the leeks that create the decent broth but the ripeness of the vegetables that carry it the rest of the way. If you can get the vegetables, I suggest making it tonight. In a month you may have missed your opportunity. The chopping on this is not to bad since most of the items remain large. I chopped as I cooked to save time.

On the beans I used 2 Tbsp of lemon juice instead of the 3 since I left out the olive oil. I also only used 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper. Maybe I will try a little more next time. We found that the chickpeas could use a little salt. Trimming the beans is the biggest time on this recipe.

Cold Soup for Hot Weather

This week I went to an indoor produce market for most of my vegetables on Monday night called Pipkins. I had been up to Findlay Market on Saturday but it was too hot to do all my shopping. The meal we made last night was enough to tell me that Pipkins has some excellent vegetables.

We started the meal with Chilled Tomato Soup with Shallots, Cucumbers, and Corn from Berley's Fresh Food Fast (page 100). I actually used all the ingredients as listed since there was no oil and grains to try and weed out. In the herb options we went with all basil. I didn't peel the cucumber since we were using a thin skinned style.

As far as the procedure went we found that the tomatoes were too much to do in the food processor in one round. This we discovered after trying one round and getting tomato liquid all over the counter. We also found that a mesh strainer just held everything. We quickly reached for the food mill with good results. (The next time I did just try the food mill and found that you still needed some puree action prior. I was making a half recipe the second time so it fit in the blender then back through the food mill to remove the seeds.)

The results are a very tasty gazpacho like soup. The base showed off some excellent in season tomatoes and each bite was a pleasing mix of corn and basil. You really shouldn't make this soup any other time of year. I would say taste is a five and ease is a three.

We finished out the meal with some straight ahead bok choy. Started with Bishop's recipe for Braised Bok Choy with Plenty of Garlic from Vegetables Every Day (page 35). I only had 1.5 pounds from two small head so reduced the recipe accordingly. Also left out the oil and used water in place of the broth. We were quite happy to eat the bok choy but I won't be serving this simple preparation to guests. This particular batch of bok choy was low on greens. I will say taste two and prep three.

It took an hour and 25 minutes from start to table. This included some time in the middle to look up a bok choy recipe, clean up the kitchen, and enjoy some beer. We ate all the soup and all of the bok choy.