Bicycles, Aubergines, and Lounging

Sam was making eggplant parmesan for dinner. YUM. A baked version. Baked is almost always better than fried.

Anyway, he didn't have the parmesan, so I hopped on my bike and rode to the grocery store to stock up on produce, spices, and the always essential orange juice. SO much better than sitting in traffic. The weather was great; very pleasant ride overall. I think it's funny that now that gas is always on the rise people act like it's not so crazy to ride your bike. The idea that a young adult would ride her bike for the sheer joy and convenience would still seem crazy to most... I think.

Anyway, eggplant parmesan, Moosewood Cookbook Page 132 style: Yummy.

Don't be fooled by the gross Olive Garden version. This was a million times better than what you'd get in most restaurants. Try it!

Someone typed out the recipe here if you don't already have this cook book.

Fall is now official!

...and that means acorn squash.

Acorn squash is the most delicious squash on earth. You can stuff it with anything and it will taste wonderfully. Usually we make a filling of bread crumbs, cheddar, celery, onions, sunflower seeds, and some stuff that I'm forgetting at the moment. This time, I tried a variation of apples, brown rice, sauteed onions, garlic, cinnamon, allspice, honey, and almonds. Yum. I like our classic version better but this is still very savory and satisfying.

Cut the squash in half, place it upside down on a greased baking sheet, and cook for 30 minutes at 350. Take it out, fill the squash, bake again for 20-30 minutes.

And for dessert, it doesn't get more autumnal than pumpkin pie!

Magazines Motivate Me

I have been feeling a little ornery and off-kilter the last few days.

How will I deal with this? Magazines.

1.) I subscribed to Vegetarian Times because I WANT IT and it will hopefully make me happy repeatedly and provided recipes for good food that will make me happy.

2.) Look at Runner's World Online. Be inspired to get my but in gear. I need endorphins to make me happy. The left-over birthday pizza I just ate will not accomplish the same feat.

Today's run of choice: Bike ride the mile from home to Hermann Park and run at least the 2.5 mile loop. Now I feel accountable and will actually follow through...

Disasters and Successes

I am in love with this cookbook. That is decided.

However, I have had one disappointment with it so far. After an exhausting day at work on Thursday, I was excited to try another new recipe. I waited in Houston traffic to get to the grocery store to get fresh spinach, stayed on my feet when I got home so I could clean the kitchen, diced and spiced, and made Spinach Rice Casserole (Pg 135). When I took the first bite, I wasn't a big fan. By the fourth bite, I no longer wanted dinner. When Sam packed the left-overs in my lunch on Friday, I ended up eating a lunch of brownies and apple slices instead.

Even though I disliked that recipe, I ADORED another. There's this darling cafe down the street where you can get heavenly white chocolate bread pudding for $7. I've often wondered if I could pull off the same divinity at home. Yesterday, I did! The oatmeal raisin bread that I didn't eat fast enough transformed into one of the easiest and tastiest desserts that I have made to date. And please, realize that when I say easy, I mean it. All I had to do was cut up the bread, put it in a pan, mix together eggs milk and some spices, and pour that stuff over the bread. I think it took 5 minutes total. Glorious. Plus, all the ingredients together for an entire pan probably cost me about $2. Good savings and great food.


WHITE CHOCOLATE BREAD PUDDING

3 to 4 packed cups cubed bread (OK if stale or frozen)
3 eggs
3 cups skim milk
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup white chocolate chunks

Preheat oven to 350. Have ready a 9x13 inch baking pan.
Spread the bread in the pan. Sprinkle white chocolate in along with the bread.
Beat together remaining ingredients. Pour the custard over the bread.
Sprinkle with nutmeg and cinnamon.
Bake about 35 minutes.
Eat warm with vanilla ice cream and/or strawberry slices.

MOOSEWOOD!

I just got the Moosewood Cookbook.

It is amazing. Everyone should have it.

Our first recipe made was asparagus-mushroom sauce (Pg 770) over whole wheat spaghetti. Delicious. Try it.

Why didn't anyone tell me about risotto!?!

I had my first taste of risotto at a friend's for a dinner party and I was amazed. This dish is SO good! Strong flavor, creamy, filling... good. In a word- good.


So what I'm confused about is: why don't I hear more people lauding the glory of risotto. It's not that hard to make. If you and a dining partner (kid, significant other, random person you want to feed) prepare the dish together, you'll have an enjoyable evening and your hands won't be too full.

I have also never cooked anything using heavy cream, so I can't be sure that the reason I'm in love with this dish isn't because I've never experienced the joy of such a heavy ingredient.

So, here it is. I made this today and am still basking in the stupor of creamy goodness.

ARTICHOKE RISOTTO
(adapted from a recipe from The Food Network)

• 1 TBS olive oil
• 2 TBS unsalted butter
• 3/4 c. chopped onion
• 1/4 c. red bell pepper
• about 2 TBS of garlic, chopped or pressed
• 2 cups Arborio rice
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 5 c. vegetable stock
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 2 tsp. salt
• ground black pepper
• 1/2 c. chopped green onions
• 1 can of artichoke hearts, rinsed and quartered
• 1/2 c. heavy cream
• 1/4 c. Parmesan
• some parsley to garnish

In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium-high heat. When oil is hot, add butter and then onions, bell pepper, and garlic; cook until vegetables are wilted.

Add rice and saute 1-2 min. stirring constantly, until grains begin to look opaque. Add wine and cook until evaporated, stirring constantly. Add 3/4 c. stock, the lemon juice, and some salt and pepper. Keep stirring. Continue to stir constantly, adding 3/4c. more of stock every time it looks like the rice has absorbed most of the liquid in the pot.

After rice has cooked for 10 min, add green onions and artichoke hearts. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

Add heavy cream and Parmesan. Stir well. Remove from heat and let sit for 5 min. before serving. Garnish with parsley.

Fresh green beans made a great side dish.

This meal was incredibly rich. I looked in some of my cookbooks and found a lot of other recipes for risotto that do not call for any cream; I'll have to experiment with those another time. Since we were stuffed (but never willing to go without dessert), I cut up some fruit with a little bit of vanilla yogurt. Scrumptious.

Side note- We're finally going back to school post hurricane so I will have less of this crazy abundant free time to spend baking, cooking, and blogging.

Finding Great Recipes

• Mollie Katzen, beloved author of the Moosewood Cookbook, has a great website with a healthy sampling of nutricious recipes for soups, salads, casseroles, etc.
• Post Punk Kitchen is a vegan publication with some really interesting options!
• Veg Web is a bit of a hodge podge, which makes it difficult to navigate, but the reviews are really helpful.
• Whole Foods has a good collection of recipes neatly categorized. Obviously, the ingredients are easy to find if you shop there.
• And, of course, my beloved King Arthur Flour. Baker’s Banter is their blog and they also have recipes listed on the main website.
  
  There are also the staples:
  www.allrecipes.com
  www.epicurious.com
  www.cooks.com
  

Scrumptious, Easy Bread

This bread is amazing. It's super easy to make and works great by itself, as toast, as sandwich bread. It's moist and versatile. Don't be fooled by the raisins; this isn't a spiced dessert loaf. It is yummy, though.

OATMEAL RAISIN BREAD

(adapted from one of King Arthur's recipes)

• 3 cups white whole wheat bread
• 1 cup old fashioned oats
• 2 TBS butter
• 1 1/2 tsps. salt
• 3 TBS honey
• 2 teaspoons of yeast
• 1 1/4 c. lukewarm milk
• 3/4 c. raisins

1. Add the yeast to the lukewarm milk with a pinch of sugar. Give the yeast about 10 minutes to activate.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine all of the ingredients into a fairly moist shaggy dough. Knead by hand for 10 minutes until it's smooth.
3. Cover the dough with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let it rise for an hour.
4. Shape the dough into a log and then place it in a lightly greased 9x5 loaf pan. Cover the pan with plastic wrap and let it rise for another 1 to 1 1/2 hours, until it crests 1 to 2 inches over the rim.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

Paired with a classic cup of black tea and a Graham Green novel

King Arthur Flour is wonderful because it is an employee-owned business. They treat their employees well and the profit they make is distributed equally.

Wholesome Sweeteners is also a wonderful company to support because their products are organic and fair trade. That means they are treating - the land, your body, and the many people who help to make the product - well. Always nice.

Mix these two wonderful, ethical foods with some vegetarian fed organic cage-free eggs, sugar and spice, and you have a scrumptious guilt-free (in the responsible consumer sense of the phrase) soft gingerbread cookie to nibble with your fair-trade tea.

SOFT GINGERBREAD COOKIES

(recipe from King Arthur's amazing collection)

• 1 cup ( 2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 2 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 large eggs
• 3 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose FlourSugar
• sugar for coating
  
• Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease two baking sheets.
• In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until they’re light and fluffy. Beat in the molasses, baking soda, salt, and spices. Add the eggs, beating well and scraping down the sides of the bowl to make sure everything is incorporated. Stir in the flour.
• Scoop the soft dough into 1 ½" balls; a tablespoon cookie scoop works well here. Roll them in granulated sugar. Space the cookies on the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 2 ½" between them. Bake them for 10 minutes. The centers will look soft and puffy; that’s OK. Remove the cookies from the oven, and cool thems on the pan for 10 minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool completely.

Health benefits are sweet: making the most of what was left sitting in our powerless fridge during the hurricane

There was a head of broccoli left in our fridge that we needed to consume before the elements got to it. Broccoli does not seem to stick around long. However, it is so gosh darn delicious and nutritious! It is a cruciferous vegetable, like cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and radishes- so it's full of phytochemicals and shown to prevent many kinds of cancer. (Everything seems to cause cancer and everything seems to prevent it... grains of salt need to be spread all over I guess.)

Anyway, I was psyched that my stir fry finally came out just the way I wanted. The trick was to read the tofu box. Mori-nu had a great recipe that told me to bake the cubed tofu covered in sauce and it worked out much better than my usual attempts to brown it in a skillet.

Eileen's Work-With-What-You've-Got

Successful Broccoli Peanut Honey Tofu Stir-fry!

• 6 Tbsp. soy sauce
• 2 tsp. honey
• 2 tsp. balsamic vinegar
• 2 Tbsp. ground ginger
• 2 cloves of garlic, pressed or diced
• 1 package of extra-firm tofu (We used Mori-nu because it was safe and sound in it's little box in the pantry while the refrigerator was in the throws of the storm.)
• 1 head of broccoli
• a bunch of honey roasted peanuts

1. You start out following Mori-nu's recipe: Mix the first 6 ingredients together in a small bowl. Cube the tofu and lay it in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Pour the sauce over the tofu and cook it at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. (The sauce that spills all over the sheet leaves quite a mess so you may want to just marinate the tofu in the sauce and then lay it on the pan.
2. While the tofu is baking, rinse and cut your broccoli. Cook it in a skillet with about a half cup of water so the broccoli steams but stays crisp. After the water cooked off, I added a bit of soy sauce and honey to the mixture and kept cooking. I also threw in a good amount of honey-roasted peanuts since we bought a ton of them to eat while we were "hunkering down."
3. You should also be making some rice. Cook it in a pot with water like you always cook rice. White rices like basmati are good for this recipe.
4. Once the tofu is done, add it to the broccoli concoction and stir it all up. I cooked it for a minute or so with everything mixed together so it would taste like it all works together.
5. Serve the broccoli/tofu/peanut mixture over rice. It's surprisingly good.

Hurricane staples and luxuy foods post-hurricane.

Well, Hurricane Ike. You got us. Power lines are down all over. Beautiful huge old oak trees have turned into dangerous obstacles, and I don't get to see my students again until at least Thursday.

The foodie in me was very ready to get back to my own kitchen with running water and a working stove after two days basking in the hospitality of someone with a larger safer home with boarded up windows. Refried beans, tortilla chips, Lone Star beer, Hershey's bars, and trail mix, and clementines were the staple foods of our hurricane experience.

Last night, we got power back and made linguine with home-made sauce and these great eggplant rolls. It was so nice to be able to use an oven again.

EGGPLANT, SMOKED MOZZARELLA AND BASIL ROLLS

• 1 large eggplant
• 3 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
• 6 ounces smoked mozzarella cheese cut into 8 slices
• 2 plum tomatoes, each cut into 4 slices
• 8 large basil leaves
• balsamic vinegar, for drizzling
• salt and freshly ground pepper
  Serves 4
  
  1) Cut the eggplant lengthways into 10 thin slices and discard the two outermost slices. Sprinkle the slices with salt and leave for 20 minutes. Rinse, then pat dry with paper towel.
  2) Preheat the broiler and line the rack with foil. Place the eggplant slices on the grill rack and brush liberally with oil. Broil for 8-10 minutes until tender and golden, turning once.
  3) Remove the eggplant slices from the broiler, then place a slice of mozzarella and tomato and a basil leaf in the center of the each eggplant slice, and season to taste. Fold the eggplant over the filling and broil seam-side down until heated through and the mozzarella begins to melt. Serve drizzled with olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar, if using.

After enjoying a filling and enjoyable meal with some chardonnay, it was starting to feel like we didn't just have a hurricane. This morning, the ultimate luxury. We could use our stove to make coffee. Wonderful. We also made some apple spice pancakes. Just take my classic whole wheat pancake recipe, and add some cinnamon, nutmeg, and a diced apple. It was good. Top it with apple sauce.

APPLE SPICE PANCAKES

• 1 1/4 c. wheat flour
• 2 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 c. skim milk (Thankfully, we had some dried milk we could mix with bottled water since our milk spoiled during the storm.)
• 1 apple, finely diced
• a healthy amount of shakes of cinnamon and nutmeg

Mix it all together, cook it on your stove top. Top with apple sauce or maple syrup.

Hope you're all safe and sound.

Fall Favorites

PUMPKIN APPLE MUFFINS WITH STREUSEL TOPPING

I've been craving pumpkin. It still feels like summer here in Houston but I've decided to act like it's fall in the Midwest. This muffin recipe was delicious with a cup of freshly brewed coffee from our french press. I chose to forgo the oil and just added a couple of tablespoons of apple sauce.

Life is great. I'm very lucky. The school year is going well, my friends are all back from their world travels over teacher summer, my husband has a new job that he enjoys, and I have nothing to stress about. Hope you enjoy the recipe!