the grain bowl

Once upon a time, I spent wayyyyyyy too much money on lunch.

I spent the morning working out and studying my booty off. It was cold and nasty and I couldn’t envision any food at home that seemed to meet any parameters in terms of hunger satisfaction or delivery of nutrients. And I was (kind of) in the neighborhood of the new Mom’s, which I’d yet to check out. It was thoroughly, thoroughly mind boggling, and had a terribly convenient (albeit ludicrously overpriced) little take out market where they’d make you a steamed bowl of joy. I managed to restrain myself from paying another $5 for fresh juice, and came home with this:

The Peruvian Bowl! (Note: that is what they call it. I can just imagine someone Peruvian looking at this and going “…”). Anyway, it was DARN good. Brown rice, black beans, avocado, tempeh, and the thing that made it awesome times 1,000: chimichurri! Crazy flavorful, tons o fat chimichurri.

It was also warm and stick to your ribs-y on this icky, icky day I ate it. So basically we were best friends.

 

 

It was a rather large meal, and had also cost me $$$, so I was delighted when I was pretty full and there was still a decent amount of the bowl left.

The next day I set about revamping it into Grain Bowl: Take 2. Somehow all of the avocado and tempeh had mysteriously vanished (… weird) so I jazzed it up with:
- crispy kale (loved the textural dimension this added to it!)
- roasted mushrooms
- hardboiled egg

STILL great! Uglier…

  

Obviously this meal would have been considerably more attractive had I moved it to a new bowl. But washing extra dishes wastes water. And also time.

   

So THEN I went: Self, you can’t drop that kind of bank on lunch every day. Furthermore, it is morally and intellectually ridiculous when you know how inexpensive those ingredients actually are. So, you are just going to have to MAKE YOUR OWN.

And this will make a great default meal. Oatmeal has always been my default meal for breakfast. I can make it in my sleep, it is physically and emotionally satisfying to me, I can customize it in a variety of ways to keep myself from getting bored, etc. A salad with a poached egg on top serves the same purpose for me for dinner.

So the grain bowl. Breaking down its components:

- Grain (duh)
- Vegetables (for some reason it is much easier for me to eat vegetables in this form than in a salad. I think it’s all weather related. I’ve started to notice an alarmingly strong correlation between the weather and my mood- yet another reason I should never live in Siberia- and the same seems to be true for the weather and my appetites)
- sauce for jazz that ideally incorporates a healthy fat

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

To make the grain bowl happen, I recommend making a megabatch of whole grains at the beginning of the week. Quinoa was my jam this week: complete protein, holla!

This bowl had grains; scads of roasted mushrooms; chickpeas; egg for protein; walnuts for crunch, healthy fat, and awesomeness; and finally, some sort of green sauce that I cannot for the life of me remember. I actually can’t remember making this meal and was baffled to find it on my memory card. Always reassuring, memory loss at the age of 24.

 

It’s good that this had walnuts. Walnuts= omega 3’s= memory. Clearly I need them.

 

This one I ate yesterday, and I do remember it.

Grains, roasted carrots ‘n broccoli, avocado, egg on top. And for the piece de resistance, homemade cilantro pesto! Mark Bittman’s recipe. Just cilantro, oil, garlic, and salt. Lovely.

Sooooooo many cooooooooolors!

  

And this one was my absolute favorite, due mostly to methodology, because I made everything stovetop and I think it amped up the flavor.

I began by cooking some mushrooms just in cooking spray. Then I added leftover roasted carrots ‘n broccoli (from the day before: win!), a few leftover grilled peppers from a meal out, and 1/2 a cup of Trader Joe’s fat free refried black beans. And the quinoa. And then that got sticky and I added the cilantro pesto to help unstick stuff from the bottom of the pan… but it still got nice and crusty :)

Served atop a bad of greens for extra veggie love (and because the greens were looking rather dismal and needed using!). Topped with avocado for extra awesomeness.

    

Fact: quinoa is really good when it gets toasted. Less airy. More stick-to-ya-ribs.

quinoa love affair

Fact: in the past, quinoa has not particularly been my jam. Eating a big bowl of quinoa to me is comparable to eating a big bowl of air.

Fortunately I have found a few recipes that have caused me to see the error of my ways.

This looks like a good starting point, doesn’t it?

While an avid reader of food blogs, the irony is when I actually end up cooking a new recipe, it’s typical that I have an ingredient on hand and google it to figure out what to make. Often I end up on food blogs, but not necessarily ones that I read.

Anyway, having some oldish pineapple and mushrooms on hand led me to this recipe for pineapple fried quinoa. Yknow, pineapple fried rice minus… the rice!

Let’s be real: we love Chinese food fried rice, but does it ever leave us full? No. No it does not. Does it ever leave us feeling good the next morning? Regretfully no.

Not so with this tasty fabulousness.

I made a few modifications to the recipe (my starting veggies were green pepper and mushrooms, I added edamame later on, I finished with a little seasoned rice vinegar since I love it so, I didn’t have any maple syrup, etc.) but none that seriously changed it, and it’s really one of those recipes you can tweak to your heart’s content.

Like any recipe, it is beautifully finished with peanuts and Sriracha. Yum! (If you have fresh basil, you should definitely add that!)

 

Once I had quinoa on the mind and realized that a quinoa-based dish could be rockin’ as long as I bulked it up with additional flavors and textures, I wanted more. Enter a blog I actually do read, Iowa Girl Eats, where I read a few weeks prior about a scrumptious sounding recipe for quinoa mac and cheese. I am a huge fan of recipes with healthy ingredients that make you feel like you are eating something much less healthy!

Start with onion, sweat it out.

I opted to add butternut squash for the vegetable addition, since I love it and the colors blend so nicely.

Went ahead and tossed the quinoa around in the pan so it could toast for a minute. Extra flavor never hurt anyone.

Then I added water and let all that cook.

MEANWHILE, I shredded some cheese. (Shredding things is one of the most tedious things a human can do, in my opinion. Thank goodness for food processors. Also, I have a real propensity for injuring myself with graters, mandolines, knives, etc.)

Annnd mixed up the milk and egg mixture that binds everything together (this is more like a casserole-style mac than a stovetop style mac- fairly dry and cohesive). I added sage because orange squash plus sage is a very happy combination indeed.

And now we have reached the phase of this story where my camera is dirty and I did not notice. Because I am classy that way. Pardon the blur.

Quinoa and butternut were all done and tender.

 

And got shmeared into the pan to bake.

Out it came, not especially crusty on top but nice. If you are a crust aficionado, I recommend baking at a higher temperature.

  

So lunchtime!

To balance out the meal and bring in some more veggies and a little healthy fat, I made a simple kale-avocado-lemon-paprika salad on the side.

This was one of those ridiculously healthy meals you feel so virtuous eating.

Does the quinoa casserole taste like down home macaroni and cheese? Frankly, no. Would you really expect it to? However, it does taste GOOD. One of those thoroughly pleasant and flavorful stick-to-your ribs dishes. And, it actually makes you feel good AFTER you eat it, rather than leaving you in a (admittedly, this is sometimes pleasant) post mac- and cheese food coma. So you can have this for lunch and then have some afternoon energy.

*High fives self on hiding the camera blur between bowl and plate* I have got to get better at taking care of my camera.

Final comment: did everyone enjoy the inauguration? Fact: the Obamas dancing with the soldiers at the Inaugural Ball, which I watched in the middle of writing this post, basically left me sobbing weakly and unable to function for a few minutes. So. Beautiful.

plant family

Sorry to’ve not been around.

I’ve been breeding.

 

Lookit my beautiful babies!

They are growing BUDS!

Which is particularly impressive given their past life. These guys have a PEDIGREE: they are Abraham Lincoln heirloom tomatoes. They spent the early years of their development in the USDA building in downtown DC, and then somehow ended up in the hands of my bestie, Lydia, who works at DC Central Kitchen. So she, being an excellent friend, called me and went “Uh, I have fifteen heirloom tomato plants. Want some?” The USDA was REAL keen to get rid of these poor guys, languishing away indoors. They were sort of tragic and droopy.

I fortified them with stakes (chopsticks), water, and lotsa sun, and they are thriving!

   

And just yesterday they got some baby siblings!

Rumor has it tomato and basil grow well together.

The friends from my tomatoes were cleverly germinated by my father in yogurt jars! Neat!

 

(B for basil. He’s got a whole nursery going over there)

Also on the subject of plants, see that little gap between my front stoop and where the ivy begins?

 

It is, in fact, a (seemingly) rather large underground hole.

And the cat loves it. She goes sprinting across the lawn, dives underneath, and completely disappears. We call it her bunker, and enjoy speculating about what activities go on down there. Slash what she’s hiding. She emerges purring and covered with cobwebs.

Another thriving plant: the oregano! Year after year, with absolutely no encouragement, it winters over and thrives.

And went into my lovely dinner.

Chopped up some farmer’s market squash (all different colors; yellow, light green, white, dark green), and threw it in the oven for a head start on roasting (just with a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper)

Meanwhile, cooked up a cup of quinoa.

Stirred together squash, cooked quinoa, a can of white beans, and a whoooooooole bunch of fresh oregano. Sprinkled the top of the casserole with Parmesan, chucked it in the oven for… awhile, and went outside to play frisbee with my sister and our neighbor’s adorable children.

Dinner is served.

  

Effortless, amazing (particularly with a little extra cheese). Love summer.

Important questions:

1. What do I do next with my tomatoes? I’m scared they’re going to outgrow their planters. But I don’t want to put them in the backyard cause there’s not a lotta light and I think deer will eat them (they eat everything else).

2. What’s your favorite easy, summer-vegetable-licious, one-pot dish?

cookout paparazzi

I had a guest artist documenting my most recent cookout.

Lydia sent me a text all, “Whatcha doin?” And I said “Grillin! Come over!”

And then she asked if she could help and I said take pictures.

Preheating and Pandora:

 

Sheila stalking something… (She’s on a real vole-eating kick. And got a ROBIN the other day oh God it was so traumatizing)

On a happier note, pesto! Photographed in the pot next to last year’s dead plants. (For the record, that box now contains gernaiums and is much less sad looking).

Fixin’s for a quinoa salad.

 

Fresh deck-grown oregano joined the party.

First off the grill: asparagus (the last of the bunch. Everyone got two spears, heh.)

Then I put sweet potatoes on the grill while Steve frantically tried to rescue a fallen asparagus spear.

Teamwork. Love.

  

Grilled sweet potatoes: Slice. Steam til just tender. Spray. Grill. Try to keep them from falling through the grate, but, yknow, no one’s perfect.

One of my favorite recipes for wilted spinach salad. Mm. Involves soy sauce, lemon, mustard powder, and olive oil.

The finished quinoa salad, most of the work of which was done by Lydia. Quinoa, apple, cuc, vinaigrette, oregano, lemon. Think she also threw in some of the oil from the top of the pesto.

BISON BURGERS! We had half a pound left and I split it three ways for burgers for my mom, the boyf, and I. (Lydia’s a vegetarian; I made her a bean burger and half of it fell through the grate. FOIL, LELE.) Anyway, these were GREAT and I’d been totally jonesing for a burger as I made my way through meatless Lent.

 

Secretly, I could’ve eaten all three. They were amazing. I do my burgers with just salt and pepper, Worcestershire, and fresh oregano.

Fun fact: you know how icky compounds form when you grill foods at high heat and get (delicious) char on them? Well the antioxidants in herbs LIKE OREGANO help prevent that :D I read that in Today’s Dietitian.

Feast! Under the beautiful sky! Next to the beautiful trees! Feeling the wonderful breeze!

Lydia always tells me there aren’t enough pictures of me in my blog, and exhorted me to interact with the food.

So here I am petting the hamburger buns. We both *love* this picture.

And I *loved* this dinner (and ate lots more than this!)