Quinoa Salad

Tonight, we had a perfectly ripe avocado, so I needed a dish that would take advantage of that. The White Bean Smash with Broccoli over Polenta got postponed until a night where produce doesn't matter.

(white bean smash - blonde some garlic in a pan in olive oil. add 4 cups white beans, 2lb tomato product of some sort and cook until thick and stew-like. smash with bottom of jam jar or potato masher to help thicken the whole thing.)

Tonight's quinoa salad was mostly a product of planning enabling inertia. I often have a jar of cooked grains in the fridge to be used as the base for any number of dishes. Tonight, a jar of quinoa turned into a cold grain salad.

We also often have chopped peppers in the fridge. This makes last minute dinners, salads, burritos, etc MUCH easier.

Soo... dinner:

4 cups cooked quinoa

1 can drained corn - we never have canned corn in the house, but this came from a pantry cleanout elsewhere.

1 can black beans

1 can chick peas

1/2 small onion, finely diced

1 cucumber, finely diced

1.5 cups chopped peppers

dressed with a dressing made on the fly. the general idea is:

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1/8 cup olive oil

1/8 cup dijon mustard

1/8 tsp smoked spanish paprika

1 tbs maple syrup

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup orange juice

salt

stir, serve. add chopped avocado to the top.

Makes a good six servings and keeps well in the fridge.

Canning Soup

One of the things I worry about, perhaps disproportionately so, is the chemical load from the packaging our food comes to us in. I don't really trust even "BPA-free" packaging - what's hiding in there that will be the Big Bad next week/month/year?

With all of our other food weirdnesses (vegetarian, mostly dairy free, gluten-free for meals, additive free), I'm always looking for new ways to make life easier, since most convenience food isn't. (food, that is.)

This weekend, I'm going to try the terribly ambitious step of taking dried beans, rehydrating them and putting them into the pressure canner in 1 pint jars, roughly the size of store bought cans of beans.

I'm also putting up a batch of soup, using the same general plan - soak the beans, cook them for half an hour, then add them to the jars and process them for 75 minutes at 10lbs of pressure.

The Recipe:
1 T. extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 T. taco seasoning
1/4 t. chipotle powder
2 lbs diced tomatoes, and their juice (off-season. I know...)
4 cups soaked beans
2 cups frozen corn
1/4 cup tomato paste (jarred, not canned)
8oz broth or water
1 t. sea salt

the bean instructions I'm starting with:
http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_04/beans_peas_shelled.html

Project Pack-a-Lunch and Plan: Eat More Plants

I know it's less expensive and healthier to carry a lunch than it is to venture into the wilds of Manhattan to procure one. I did the math once, and my brain exploded. Even if I buy bagged "triple-washed" lettuce, only costs me about $3 for a salad from home that would cost me $10 if I buy it downstairs at the deli. That's a $7/day savings, and yet for some reason, I often have a hard time motivating myself to be bothered.

That's ridiculous - a week of $7 splurges is $28 a week for me. That's $1400 a year (assuming two weeks off in the year). Folks, that's not chump change. That's a vacation for the three of us. That's a new appliance. Or that second shed for storing the conventions in. It's... real money On something I can easily manage to do.

I'm always starting and stalling on PPaL, but I figure if I just make it a regular thing, I can do this. I've got a new spiffy office blender for making smoothies here from frozen fruit I can bring from home or at a grocery store here in the city. I've got at least four containers appropriate for hauling salad. and I have no excuse not to.

Tomorrow and Friday's plans:
Breakfast:
farina or oatmeal from my "pantry" here at work.
coffee

snacks:
Oranges (before they go off!)
Apples

Lunch:
salad - bagged lettuce, chopped peppers and onions, shredded carrot. TJ's feta cheese, cooked chickpeas. dried cranberries and pecans.
Imagine! butternut squash soup - I have a box of it that has been in my emergency lunch stash for far too long - I'm using it up.

snack:
blueberry almond milk smoothie - I just need to haul in the bag of frozen fruit and a box of almond milk.

A-Cooking we will go...

Today was a "cook ahead" day. I made two huge batches of food, to get us through the first half of a hectic week.

First, I made K's new favorite fridge-food. Two chopped onions, 1.5 chopped red peppers tossed into a hot pan with 2tsp olive oil. cooked until softened. 3 large sweet potatoes steamed in the micro until mostly soft. add to pan with peppers and onions. add three cloves crushed garlic, 1tbs lemon juice and a good sprinkle of salt. let it cook until the bottom is good and brown.

Next, I made a somewhat successful variation of White Bean Jumble from "Student's Vegetarian Cookbook." . Basically, leafy greens, white beans, onions, garlic, potato, thyme. My recipe was roughly this:

20 oz fresh spinach
3 cups chopped potato, steamed until fork-tender
3 cups cooked white beans
2 chopped onions
1/2 cup tomato juice (ingredients: tomato, lemon juice, salt.)
1 tbs dried thyme
1 tbs dried chives
1 tbs lemon zest
1 tsp salt
1 tbs chopped garlic

blonde the onions, stir in chives and thyme.
stir in spinach and garlic. wilt spinach.
add remainder of ingredients.
cook until beans start to stick to the bottom of the pan in tasty brown bits.

--
With these two large batch recipes, we had lunch and dinner today, lunch and dinner tomorrow and possibly one or two other small meals.

Living with dietary restrictions means learning how to avoid emotional triggers - it's not as simple as "oh, just don't eat those things." A friend of mine - who has been a huge influence in me tackling this bravely - has described the internal struggles as conversing with her NoNoGrrl - the teenager who does exactly what you tell her not to, in order to prove her independence.

K has a NoNoGrrl who used to throw her vitamins out the window. Used to take as many quarters as she needed for the vending machine in exchange for eating greenbeans and then stop. She ate a full ten vegetables - corn, creamed corn, lettuce, cucumbers, carrots... I can't think of many others.

Bread, cheese, sour cream. These things are important to her NoNoGrrl. Ice Cream became a crutch when corn syrup and many mass produced desserts went on the no list. Suddenly, all the things she was soothing with are gone - I suspect this will make our relationships with food healthier and less neurotic, but it's work. Psychotherapy by way of elimination diet.

One of the things I've used to make cheese-free less painful is to add peanut butter to our standby of zucchini-tomato-chickpea/whitebean stew. Usually, the dish gets feta. The peanut butter gives it a substantial mouthfeel, and makes it creamy. This is HUGE when leaving dairy suddenly.

Our stew:

2 zucchini, chopped
two red onion, chopped
three cloves garlic, crushed
tomato - either juice, chopped fresh, canned.
herbs - whatever moves you.
one or two cans of either white or chickpeas.
peanut butter
lemon juice
salt

toss the onions in a pan and when they start to wilt, toss in the zucchini. add the tomato when the zucchini starts to melt.
stir in the garlic, the peanut butter, the lemon juice, the salt and your herbs. Sage with white beans, rosemary or thyme - I love to just throw open the cabinets and shake some of whatever looks good into the mix.

You'll note the lack of amounts - I cook by feel and will work on getting better about recording amounts.

We have a new slew of restrictions.

In addition to the prior list (no MSG or MSG mimicks, no preservatives, no artificial sweeteners, etc), we've now had to cut - at least for a while - dairy and gluten.

This means we're down to things we make at home that are grains, vegetables, fruits and legumes that we've cooked ourselves.

If we hadn't had a creative, generous vegan half-living with us earlier this year, we might be starving currently. I'm about to pop up a ton of "recipes" and posts related to this adventure, but let me just start by saying this: we use a LOT of feta. A LOT of pasta. a LOT of parmesan. Cous Cous.

When the neurologist, who I adore, suggested this course, we knew it was right, but knew it wouldn't be easy.

So proud I could burst into tears!

K has never been an adventurous cook. Give her a recipe of fewer than ten ingredients and fewer than ten steps and she can create food that's edible. simple, but edible.

As I type, she is working out, in her brain, how to make some sort of potato, carrot, onion, celery, lentil dish for tonight. Literally typing out a recipe for herself, planning to use things in the pantry that we already have, and that will make a tasty treat. :-)

Talk about romance.