blank slate

I’ve really been enjoying the whole New Years atmosphere. To clarify, I don’t really believe in New Years Resolutions- life is a journey, dontcha know, and it seems like so many people treat their New Years Resolution as an opportunity to obsess, deprive themselves of things they enjoy, suffer a setback, and give up. On a personal note, I get really annoyed when the gym is crowded.

However, my resolution has been going SWIMMINGLY- I have flossed literally every day in 2013. And, after the nonstop holiday indulgence spree (which frankly left me feeling kind of stressed and unhappy for the last few weeks of December) there is something nice about people treating the new year like it’s a tabula rasa, like, as Steve put it, “2013 is the year ANYTHING can happen!” My response to him, of course, was that that is always true. But why not appreciate this new year, blank slate.

I’ve been cooking some new stuff, which has been fun.

We had a bunch of old, not-particularly appealing looking pears (you’ll see this being a common theme in this post) so I thought I’d make some baked oatmeal using the pears.

I more or less followed this baked pear oatmeal recipe, making a few additions and substitutions (added golden raisins, used just pepitas and pecans for the nuts).

You layer chopped up pear on the bottom of a greased dish (I used 2 and 3/4 small pears, which may have been a slightly higher quantity than the recipe called for; it was a little vague on size)

Then combine oats, nuts, seeds, seasonings (I halved the sugar because I added sweet golden raisins, and it was still plenty sweet).

 

Layer atop the pears (it really looks like granola, doesn’t it?)

Combine the liquid ingredients (somehow it had never occurred to me that baked oatmeal would contain eggs but it held the texture together really nicely)

Dumped atop the other ingredients

And baked til golden. A good experiment. I could see why the top would have been good with coconut oil- a little crunchier and fattier- but I just didn’t have any! It was still nice and chewy and flavorful.

 

Now, my main mission was to use up leftovers from our Christmas party to ensure that food didn’t go to waste in my house. Since I hate wasting food. And since no one else in my house pays a great deal of attention to using up ingredients that way (or, at least, using them up in time. Since my past job I took the coursework and test to be a Certified Food Safety Manager I just have this new often-uncomfortable awareness).

Anyway, there were some major operations going on.

I threw leftover turkey, two cans of white beans, a big vat of chicken stock, two containers of green chiles, some cumin, and some roasted onion, garlic, and jalapeno in a pot to make green chili.

 

The leftover turkey bones were then used to make stock (just boil ‘em til it looks like stock. This can also be done in a Crockpot).

And my favorite was using both leftover ham AND leftover phyllo dough to make quiche!

I was looking up quiche recipes at my favorite cooking websites, and was quite intrigued to find this "Real Man Quiche" recipe from Eating Well, which used phyllo dough to make a quiche crust.

My mom always, smartly, buys extra phyllo when making baklava in case of emergencies. I had already used some to make turkey pot pie after the party- sort of along the lines of this Cooking Light chicken pot pie recipe. So this was an opportunity to use it up and also be lazy rather than making crust.

Used extra ham in the filling, so it was a leftovers one-two punch. Tasty, too! For the filling I sauteed some onion, lotsa mushrooms, and lotsa spinach with the ham. Plus eggs and milk and Parmesan atop.

two uses

Want a healthy way to make ground beef and also get more use out of it?

Obvi.

So if you want to buy organic ground beef (yes! You do! Is the answer! So your ground beef doesn’t kill you!) you might find yourself more limited in your choices of fat content. I generally am only able to find 80% lean organic ground beef (which means of course 20% fat, of the icky saturated kind generally).

So here is what you do! Brown your beef like normal (I use a nonstick skillet). It’ll yield a lot of fat, which will turn to liquid in the pan. Meanwhile, set up your draining mechanism: a simple strainer over a container to catch what goes through. Now pour the whole mixture, beef, fat, and all, into the container, and quickly pour a lotta water atop.

Here’s what will happen:

The fat will get rinsed off the beef. Then you can season the beef and use it for things like this taco salad:

 

It’s good to add some moisturizing-type ingredients for the beef, because it will be less moist without its fat in it. I used a lot of fire-roasted tomatoes plus peppers and onions (more moisture!) and of course yummy taco seasoning spices like cumin and chili powder (even a touch of cinnamon), mm. Made into salad with chopped cabbage, avocado (the fat returns, in a very healthy form) and tortillas cut up and baked into strips. Quite nice.

But wait! There’s a container full of beefy water and beef fat!

Here’s what you do: chill the container. The beef fat will float to the top and, being saturated, solidify. Just break it off into little pieces and you know what you have? Beef broth.

Admittedly a little wimpy beef broth, but here’s what you do: slow cook oodles of sliced onions and mushrooms and what do you get? The basis for FRENCH ONION SOUP!

Mm. Not particularly summery, but oh-so-good. Plus bread ‘n gruyere atop, naturally. Let’s be real: french onion soup is a bread and cheese vehicle.

 

Plus my current summer obsession of salad that’s like… 3 parts dijon mustard, 1 part each olive oil and red wine vinegar. Fresh chives optional but great. OBSESSED.

You know what’s another great thing to have to put to dual uses? Injera, baby!

Steve’s wrapping up his second Americorps year (and going to grad school at the same time, nbd) and they’re doing an Olympics theme with the kiddos this summer. Equals exploring different countries of the world, including Ethiopia. Equals INJERA!

Agh injera is the best. If you have not had it and don’t have the plethora of Ethiopian establishments we have in the DC area, do yourself a favor and befriend an Ethiopian person and ask them for a recipe. Your life will improve considerably.

So I’m going to preface the pictures of this dinner by saying Steve preceded these items with seven hot dogs. Cause that’s my boyfriend, yep. I’d eaten probably my usual dinner of a bunch of veggies and fifty servings of dessert.

But then he took out the injera and got to topping it. He speedy-quick roasted a tiny eggplant (just poke it with a knife, put it in a 500-degree oven, and leave it alone. The molten stuff that comes out- ideally mixed with olive oil and lemon juice- is revelatory). Down that went. Then, in the corner there? That’s a mixture of plain yogurt and the burn-your-tongue-but-you-dont-care-it’s-so-good African-style hot sauce from the farmer’s market.

Whipped those together.

Then he made this concoction which as I recall involved a great deal of olive oil and walnuts and some Chinese spinach (?!). It was marvelous.

And it was a quality second dinner for us both :)

 

my dream company

Someday, I will create an organization that takes food from food banks that’s too ugly to serve to the people the food gets sent to (and my department sends food to kids, so anything with the slightest blemish qualifies as “too ugly”) and reinvents it. Ugly tomatoes become tomato sauce, delicious and healthy. Ugly bananas become banana bread. Stale bread becomes bread pudding (and, in a particularly genius flash, get this- the unhealthy dessert-y things, rather than given to food-insecure people who already get crappy unhealthy food, can be marketed as treats and sold as something benefitting a nonprofit. This will create an income stream, use up unwanted food, and let people feel good about themselves for buying bread pudding).

In the meantime, I will do it on a small scale in my own house. Lately, with apples. Billions of apples.

 

Fact: when you get a large produce donation at the food bank, it often means that produce is kinda busted. It still tastes good, it’s still healthy, but it’s not winning beauty contests. Let’s be honest, that’s why they’re donating it.

Thanks, Quebec! Still generous!

 

So here’s what you do for a MINIMUM of effort:

CROCK POT!

Who doesn’t love ‘em?

Slice or chop up as many apples as you can cram in there (about 12, in my case). No need to peel; they get super soft and it’s easier not to and it improves fiber. So to me it just seems insane to peel them. But I guess you can if you really hate being healthy and having your life be easy. Chopping the apples makes it more puree-y, keeping them in slices makes it more like pie. A personal choice.

I like to throw in a cinnamon stick and perhaps some orange peel for seasoning. I’ve tried a cardamom-ginger-nutmeg variation that was good. The pineapple core I threw in one time added a certain je ne sais quoi. (Yes, I HAVE made this a lot!)

 

Regardless, the end result, after, say, four hours on high or 8-10 hours on low, will be delectable.

 

Amazing combo: homemade applesauce with Greek yogurt! Apple pie a la mode, practically, ish; ‘cept with protein and fiber. Packed it for lunch many a day.

I’ve also just in general been throwing together random creations with sliced/chopped/grated/pureed apple in them for various social occasions.

These I threw together ridiculously haphazardly and they tasted like APPLE FRITTERS. And they weren’t even that unhealthy! Holy cow!

Apple “Fritters”

2 T butter
2 T canola oil
2 T molasses
1 egg
2 T sugar
1 cup plain ol’ white flour
2 T spelt flour
2 T wheat germ
2 small apples, finely chopped

Beat together butter through sugar. Stir in dry ingredients. Fold in apples. Form blobs and bake at 350 for 13 minutes or so. Makes 9.

 

Amazing texture. The egg/molasses/butter thing just… worked, man.

So, there were more. Many more. There are still more. There will still be more.

Frankly, the pressure is starting to get to me. If anyone has any thoughts on what to do with these (or suggestions for what to bake with them :D), send them my way!

In the meantime, I will chop. Chop and slice.

 

As directed in the recipe for Vegan Apple Ring Cake. I am so not a vegan, but I am always reluctant to use my delicious farmer’s market eggs in a way that they and their extraordinary flavor will largely disappear into a batter and they’ll be used simply for their leavening.

Anyway, this wasn’t vegan because I used real buttermilk :D

But I just decided that I really wanted to make a bundt. I think they’re so cool looking; we inherited my grandma’s bundt pan; and the one and only time I made a bundt in my life I was in probably high school and we’d gotten a bundt baking mix but it was a layered bundt with like a crumb topping type thing… except in the middle… anyway upon inverting it from the pan it promptly fell apart.

Mind you, it was delicious, but consider this my bundt redemption recipe.

 

Reasonably healthful, with some whole wheat flour; healthy fats; and apple chunks folded in…

… and apple slices atop, sprinkled with sugar (they said turbinado; all I had was brown).

Gorgey porgey out of the oven.

And the smell! That little bit of rum you put in really gives it a special oomph!

Waited a safe interval of time to invert it, and held my breath given past experience…

Gorgeous! Very pleased.

I actually froze it for a shindig I’m planning next week. Per my grandma’s freezing methodology: in plastic wrap, then foil. Cakes generally freeze beautifully.

Not just apples, I’ve also brought home a few bruised and busted pears.

Ginger pear preserves, from Cooking Light, sounded swell.

I combined the ingredients, with a few substitutions (2/3ded everything; was outta lemons so used grapefruit; didn’t have the liqueur so I used some old stale ginger ale; reduced the sugar and accidentally added too much water. I am klassy.)

 

Things seemed to be bubbling along nicely in the second round of boiling (when the recipe said wait 12 hours, I waited… 19? But that shouldn’t matter, right?!)

 

Anyway… it was suddenly… mahagony.

Proving not for the first time I was not an expert jam maker in a past life; I made caramel.

So I shrugged, threw some sea salt in there (duh, salted caramel) and pretended it was deliberate. Can’t quite summon up the nerve to taste it, but the boy is excited.

control freak tendencies

So anyone who has spent any time with me in real life has figured out that I am a control freak. Like, pretty intensely. Never is this more manifested (at least in my head; hopefully it’s less visible to others) than when there are leftovers in my house.

To clarify: not my leftovers. Other peoples’ leftovers.

You would think that being a foodie, I’d enjoy getting food related gifts. Sweet treats, dishes made from exotic recipes, restaurant leftovers. But quite honestly, the only gift I’d really like is some sort of raw ingredient. That I can cook, MY way, knowing EXACTLY how it was prepared and WHAT went in it and the health implications thereof.

My aunt gave me a pumpkin one time. It was great!

Anyway, we never host Thanksgiving and are always sent leftovers from whatever we attend. This year was no different, since my aunt Jeanie, whose wonderful Thanksgiving I attended; and my aunt Joanne, who picked my mom and sister up at the airport the day before Thanksgiving, ordered them home, and promised them Thanksgiving delivered to the house, did too.

So this year, I decided to try and just CHILL OUT and ENJOY THE LEFTOVERS.

For this particular lunch I was helped by the fact that I got to eat outside, due to it being in the MID SIXTIES despite the fact that it is LATE NOVEMBER! Gosh, lucky me :D

Along with a bucket of tea, I made a wonderful Whole Foods Hot Bar-esque plate. It’s great having lots of different things to taste! This is the ultimate for me! I should enjoy it!

 

Starting at the mashed sweet potatoes and going sideways, there are those wonderful orangey mashes of delight; my roasted veggies; some broccoli stem relish (that I’ll post about sooner rather than later); black olives (I know fancy shmancy sour olives and wrinkly olives and all that are the gourmet things to enjoy but I had forgotten how much I loooooove BLACK OLIVES FROM A CAN!); and brussels sprouts.

Even better was the side dish:

Greek yogurt, shredded wheat, and the most EXTRAORDINARY cranberry slaw/relish thing. Don’t know how it was made but it’s marvy!

 

But wait! There’s so much more!

I feel like it’s such an obvious choice after Thanksgiving or any mashed potatoes occasion to make shepherd’s pie.

We had indeed been sent home with mashed potatoes (and though mashed potatoes are one of those foods that incite my control freak tendencies, these tasted delicious and fresh, and not positively overloaded in butter. You also just use a thin layer of them as the topping, as you’ll see, so I consider this a healthful choice.)

But wait! I not only had leftover mashed potatoes. I had leftover VEGGIE BURGERS, having made a batch of my lentil burgers earlier in the week.

So this isn’t just Thanksgiving Leftovers shepherd’s pie- it’s VEGETARIAN shepherd’s pie!  

I had previous made and loved Cooking Light’s wild mushroom lentil cottage pie, so I roughtly followed its methodology.

I sauteed carrot, celery, and onion to tenderness, then added some mushrooms.

Then deglazed with a splash of veggie broth.

 

Rather than adding cooked lentils, I crumbled in my veggie burgers. I used considerably less vegetable broth- maybe 1 cup total. To enhance flavor, I added red wine vinegar and some ketchup.

 

It looked somewhat astonishingly meaty; and also did a beautiful job of thickening up as it baked, producing a texture (though not a flavor) very reminiscent of traditional shepherd’s pie.

By far the most fun activity- frosting the pie!

By which I mean smearing on mashed potatoes.

This was fun but I also had a slightly control freak-y moment when I worried I’d run out of mashed potatoes. But I did not. And got really the perfect layer.

  

When my pie emerged from the oven it had charmingly sprung a “gravy” leak in one corner, but goodness the potatoes were lovely.

 

As for the taste, my mom and I chowed down on roughly three fifths of that big pan there. Very nice.

Finally, this is the ultimate in my control freak tendencies: when I inherit something I’d never in a million years make on my own.

When I look at a sweet potato, I see a vegetable. I see a vegetable that is very sweet and delicious on its own, and mixing in large amounts of sugar seems silly. I see a vegetable that is silky and tender in texture when cooked well, and mixing in large quantities of butter seems silly (and less than heart healthy).

So when I get sweet potato casserole… with sprinkles on top… I am left slightly befuddled.

BUT in these circumstances, just MAKE SOUP.

Really, when the world throws you a curveball, it is just always a good idea to make soup :D

My sweet potato casserole soup has three ingredients:

1. Sweet potato casserole
2. Vegetable broth (to thin it into soup, dilute calories/butter/sugar)

and

3. Roasted butternut squash!

 

Compatible in flavor, adding a nice texture to sink one’s teeth into, the butternut squash did a PERFECT job of bringing this soup together.

And lo and behold, all that butter and sugar and pecans? It made for a DELICIOUS soup.

In fact, it was positively INSPIRED and never something I’d make on my own. So there, control freak. Let a little outside influence in.

chicken family

Chicken Family is what my aunt Jeanie calls her neighbors. Because… they have chickens! In the middle of suburban Maryland! It’s quite adorable, looking out their window and spying a row of chickens just chilling on a post.

The chickens pretty much have free rein to wander around the backyard, consuming bugs as they like, enjoying the fresh air. I would like to believe that this is the life of the chickens whose eggs I buy at the farmer’s market.

There are actual multiple generations of chickens- the chicks, those shorter ones, are only six weeks old. Don’t they grow FAST?!

This chicken got stuck under their patio (somehow… it practically touches the ground) and my aunt was chicken-sitting at the time. She thought her neighbors would return to a house with a decomposing chicken corpse beneath it. She felt bad for both the chicken and the family. But behold! Ironically enough on Easter morning, the chicken somehow emerged from her grave, with only a bloody head to show for it.

She’s still kinda bald.

 

My aunt Jeanie is an expert chicken handler by this point, so she showed us all how she held Buttercup. (Buttercup is actually the “daughter” of Sunny, one of the other chickens. Kind of the alpha chicken, actually). Because since she was a chick she had humans around, including the daughters of Chicken Family, she is very calm and friendly and okay with being held.

I held her and was astonished to realize how soft and warm and almost pet-like a chicken feels like. Didn’t know what to expect, exactly. You do have to hold down their wings, though, not in a restraining way but in a reassuring them you won’t drop them way. I got a little loose and Buttercup got a little nervous and flappy.

Steve did great, too!

Then it was back to Jeanie’s to raid the fig tree. This tree was a birthday present from Tim, Jeanie’s husband, three years ago, and it is now PROLIFIC! Which means lots of figs for Lele :D

There are few things in this life that I find more delicious than the sweet, earthy, juice bite into a fresh fig.

We idly mused about cooking and then decided to get Thai takeout instead. Works for me!

Apps- chicken satay and spring rolls. Classic.

Pad thai, pad see ew, eggplant in garlic sauce…

… rice, green curry (pad thai closeup. Though I’m sure most of you have seen pad thai before.)

I love eating at Jeanie’s cause she has these GORGEOUS huge, architectural-looking Crate+Barrel bowls. They make everything look so glamorous!

 

My meal was heavy on the plants.

 

Then Chicken Man (father of Chicken Family. I mean, not the biological father of the chickens, obviously) arrived with HOMEMADE RAVIOLI SAMPLES.

The bomb dot com!

There was tomato ravioli with shallot-ricotta-herb filling

And (to DIE for), spinach ravioli with VENISON FILLING! Chicken Family is seriously legit about the food they eat. They see the chickens every day, they collect the eggs.. and sometimes they head out to deer country to get themselves some venison.

I had definitely never had venison before and oh. em. gee. It is FANTASTIC! So tender, so flavorful. And lean and healthy! I am totally craving more Bambi meat!

Jeanie had an odd new product and said her friend had claimed wild health benefits from it. And said I should take a picture.

So I did, and she went, “Eh. Tastes like apple cider vinegar.”

So an unofficial product review, if you will.

Went to Jeanie’s again the other weekend for a porchwarming party. (She and Tim just got a sweet new porch. It’s super beautiful and screened in and I kind of want to live there). The party was fantastic, because Tim and his two friends had a JAM SESSION! Tim plays guitar and mandoline, and his friends play cello and standing bass and it was an awesome mix with everything from Crosby, Stills and Nash to Poison (!!! How I love evvvvvvvvvvvery rose has its thooooooooorn).

Wanting to contribute, I brought recycling cookies.

To explain, when my sister leaves town (as she did at the end of August to return to school) she inevitably leaves a bunch of her food around. Her food, while certainly nothing to be judgmental about, is the kind of food I prefer not to eat.

I though, however, that the various candies and things would make awesome mix-ins for a sort of compost cookie experiment.

The goods:

 

My Southwest Airlines Lorna Doones and my sister’s white chocolate Reese’s, trail mix, and white chocolate chips.

I made myself a basic cookie batter, inspired by the Momofuku compost cookie recipe that you can find on The Google (though I tried to health it up a bit with whole what flour and less sugar- since I added only candy-type stuff and none of the savory mix-ins)…

Then mixed in my junky stuff.

Didn’t get a picture of the final product, wouldn’t you know it (I actually just failed to trust my own self control around the junky food, which is part of the reason I baked it into cookies. So when I baked junky food cookies, I then FROZE them until immediately before the party. Because to be frank, I am a sugar crack addict).

But I sure ate them at the party :D And they got RAVES. My cousin Ashley kind of stared at me with wide eyes and said, “I didn’t know you could bake cookies like this!”. And all the boys kind of just kept grabbing handfuls. Aww.

I Have Too Much Junk Food Cookies

2 oz. butter
½ a cup canola oil
½ cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups baking ingredients candy/trail mix/junky food. You could do potato chips or pretzels or something savory- if you do, you may want to up the

In a mixer, cream together butter, sugar, and oil until smooth. Scrape down the sides of your bowl. Then add egg and vanilla, mixing slowly until incorporated.

Mix together dry ingredients (flour through salt) and slowly add to batter with mixer going slowly. Dough will still be sticky. Fold baking ingredients (junk food) into the batter with a spatula until just incorporated. It is a good idea to chill it- you could chill it for a long time in the fridge, or as I did, just chuck it in the freezer for 15 minutes or so.

Bake at a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes or so, or until done. My cookies were soft and tender!

Now, I had actually divided the leftover junk food in the cupboard into chocolate and non-chocolate catergories. My plan for all this chocolate (much of it mint-infused)? Brownies, naturally.

I had Jello Mousse Sensations, a product with one of the most alarmingly unpronouncable ingredient lists I’d seen in a long time; Trader Joe’s chocolate mint creams which actually seemed to be made of real food but neither my mom nor I go for creams, and Hershey’s air, which I guess is designed for people who eat air.

 

Creams and Hershey’s went into a microwave-safe Pyrex measuring cup with enough milk to cover them and got melted down.

 

Meanwhile, I’d whipped up the “mousse” with an egg to make a smoothish fluffyish mixture. I added the chocolate to that.

Then I added a teaspoon of baking powder and enough flour to make it look like brownie batter? This was entirely memory-based, intuitive cooking of what it should look like. I added a little cocoa powder, too, both for thickening and a little more bitter chocolateness, since all the chocolate I was adding was pretty heavily sweetened.

I put it in a brownie pan and baked it in a 400 degree oven for half an hour or so—til it passed the toothpick test.

And then?

 

Holy crap! I made delicious, fudgy, minty brownies out of a desire to recycle junky food! They were SO GOOD and had the PERFECT TEXTURE!

I’d planned to bring them to potluck, something Steve has sort of tried to revive with this year’s Americorps group, but… didn’t happen. No one showed. So Steve enjoyed some, and then I tried to leave them at his house and he was all “No! No!” so I said, “Fine, give them to Katie”, my old supervisor whom I adore who he planned to see at work the next day.

So food was recycled and good chocolate went to a good person. A highly successful endeavor.