Mmm…Brussels Sprouts!

You know, Brussels sprouts really have a poor reputation.  This isn’t surprising, considering most people I know grew up eating them in their freezer-packaged, then steamed incarnation.  But I knew there had to be a better way.

 

I’ve been scouring my cookbooks and the web for different things to do with these tiny cabbage-looking things in preparation for my monthly food article (one of my two jobs).  For the December issue, I want to talk about choosing seasonal, local foods for Christmas dinner.  Asparagus, for example, shows up on many Christmas dinner menus, but it is way out of season for most of us at that time. 

 

I have found some great recipes for Brussels sprouts, though, including one where they are baked with bacon and apples.  For tonight’s dinner, I opted for a simpler dressing, since I wanted to taste the actual sprouts and not just some yummy toppings.  On a friend’s advice, I prepared them like this:

 

1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Wash and dry the heads, then chop off the woody stem end.  Then cut them in half — this way, they cook a little better and are more bite-sized.

 

2) Toss the heads with some olive oil and sea salt (and pepper if you like, but I didn’t add any to mine tonight), then spread them out on a cookie sheet.  Bake until they start to brown.  (A picture should be inserted here, but I think it’s time to get a new camera.)

 

We served them with organic top sirloin steaks and rice for a simple and hearty meal.  Maybe next week I’ll try the recipe with bacon and apples!

I Won Something!

Do you remember that giveaway at Frugal Granola I was talking about a few days ago?  Well, I won the sachets!  So stop by Frugal Granola (if you haven’t already) for lots of great simple living ideas, and support Michele through her Etsy shop for your Christmas purchases (especially all of you on the West coast!).  And if you’re looking to buy ME something, feel free to pick up the Merlot Napkins. 

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Tuesdays are always pretty crazy around here, with Husband being gone at work all day and grad school at night (his classes are on Mondays and Tuesdays this semester) and two additional children in my house (that I babysit).  I usually have some friends over from across town for an early dinner, then we take the kids to a local inflatable gym.  The inflatable gym has a deal where you can buy one of their t-shirts for $10, then get in free any Tuesday wearing the shirt.  Since it would normally cost $4 for my 3 year-old to get in, this works out very much in our favor — especially considering we’ve gone about ten times already!

 

To account for the varying tastes of my guests and allow flexibility for my friends to bring something of their own to contribute, most Tuesday dinners are a small plates affair.  We’re all a bit sniffly today, though, so we stayed home and didn’t have anyone over.  That’s probably for the best, since my kids were taking turns with my time all day.

 

I started the day already playing catch-up — I had to make two loaves of Banana Bread with Cauliflower (a recipe featured in Jessica Seinfeld’s book, Deceptively Delicious) because I bought a bunch of bananas and cauliflower last week and the bananas weren’t going to hang on much longer.  So I steamed the cauliflower before lunch, set aside some of it to eat with lunch, and pureed the rest of it.  One cup of the puree went into the banana bread, and the rest got frozen with some pureed lentils for baby food.  Lots of fiber and vitamin C!

 

In an effort to get all my dinner prep done in the morning, I started the lentils for the salad.  I wasn’t following a specific recipe for the salad, rather, I had what I thought was a great idea to merge two recipes that I really like.  The first recipe — Lentil Snacks, from Grocery Cart Challenge — is a super nutritious, frugal, crunchy snack that I’ve been tossing around in my head for weeks as the protein for an actual meal.  I wanted to add a sweet and creamy component, hence the second recipe — Apples and Celery with Gruyere from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone– a salad that features celery as the green portion, apples for sweetness, and nuts for additional crunch.  The creaminess doesn’t come from the gruyere, which is in chunks, but from a dressing of tarragon vinegar, walnut oil, and mayonnaise or yogurt. 

 

For my Toasted Lentil Salad, I envisioned the diced celery from Deborah Madison’s salad, dried cherries for sweetness, the lentils for protein and crunch, and a mixture of red wine vinegar, mayo or soy yogurt, and celery leaves for dressing. The Lentil Snacks have oil and spices in them already, so thew wouldn’t need to be added. 

 

Well, I’m not sure why this sounded good originally, because it just didn’t work!  It’s so obvious now, but it’s hard to get food ideas out of my head unless I experiment.  Failure is essential to learning, I guess!  The mixture isn’t too bad as a crunchy topping for an actual lettuce salad, so it wasn’t a complete loss.  Check out the Lentil Snacks recipe at Grocery Cart Challenge, though, because it is AWESOME.  And if you think of a way to make this into a meal, let me know.

 

I didn’t get around to making the green beans (the easiest part!), but I can eat them later this week.  They’re probably the last green beans we’ll have this year anyway, so I should hang on to them a little longer.  I made the sweet potatoes, though, and we had a very simple meal with the lentils and banana bread.  Here is how we made oven-baked sweet potato fries:

 

1) Preheat oven to 450 degrees, then scrub and peel the sweet potatoes.  Count on one potato per person, that way you have a little more than what you need.  Also, some people don’t peel them, but I think sweet potato peels are a bit too earthy.  I don’t mind leaving peels on regular potatoes, though.

 

2) Chop into fries, being careful not to leave sharp or really thin edges (these will burn easily).

 

3) Blanch the fries and dry well.  (Blanching = drop them into a pot of rapidly boiling water for a minute or two, then empty the water and quickly add very cold water to stop the cooking.)  Don’t leave them in for so long that they get mushy.

 

4) Once you’ve dried them well, put them in a bowl and add some olive oil (I just drizzle it on — I probably used a tablespoon or so for two large sweet potatoes), sea salt, and freshly ground pepper.  Mix until coated well.  Spread onto a cookie sheet, spreading them about evenly.

 

5) Cook until edges brown, maybe 20-25 minutes? (I’m terrible at paying attention to time.)  Turn them over about ten minutes in to brown both sides and achieve maximum crispness.  They should look like this:

 

 

My camera must be on it’s last leg, because I only got one other clear picture — this one of the Banana (and cauliflower) Bread, with the Lentil Snacks in the background:

 

 

Husband is grilling steak tomorrow, so that should be pretty straight-forward. 

Not A Good Way To Start The Week…

Today was a big letdown all around — I still haven’t gotten to the grocery store (waiting for Husband to get home from school!) so I couldn’t make Orange Chicken for dinner, my daughter’s allergy/bathroom issues continue to be unresolved, and I have piles of dirty laundry and toys strewn all about the main floor of my house. 

 

It wouldn’t be so bad, but now Halloween is almost here, and I have yet to put the finishing touches on the kids’ costumes and buy candy.  My daughter is going to be Cinderella (as soon as I sew up the gaping hole on one of the sleeves — yard sale find!) and my son is going to be a dalmation (which, by the way, is a little too cutesy for me, but again, for $4 at a consignment sale, I can swallow my pride).  Because I’m a cheapskate, we’ve never passed out candy, but Husband says we’re going to this year.  We’ll see. 

 

On the brighter side of things, I did have a friend come over and till up hundreds of square feet in my backyard in anticipation of gardening in the spring.  Hopefully it won’t be too late to get the winter cover crop planted, then I’ll have naturally organic soil come March.

 

Well, I guess now that Husband is finally home, I can finally go to the grocery store.  I have a busy week ahead!

Menu Plan Monday: October 27, 2008

 

Here’s the plan for this week…I’ll post more about the Toasted Lentil Salad and Brussels sprouts later this week.  Leave a comment or email me if you have any questions!

 

Monday: Orange Chicken (dairy free) — similar to this recipe

Tuesday: Toasted Lentil Salad, Sweet Potato Fries, Sauteed Green Beans (vegan)

Wednesday: Tacos (meat and dairy optional)

Thursday:  Vegetarian Chili with Chocolate

Friday: HALLOWEEN! Quick dinner — enchiladas (beef for us, vegan for my daughter)

Saturday: Steak, rice, roasted Brussels sprouts (dairy-free)

 

For more menu planning ideas, visit Organizing Junkie!

Favorite Destinations This Week

The kids are napping, and I’m getting ready for an evening out with Husband.  More importantly, I have the night off from cooking.  Enjoy reading my favorite things from this last week, and have a relaxing weekend!

 

Make Your Own Seasonings: 7 Unique Recipes at Simple Mom — awesome?

 

No-Peel Apple Options at Frugal Granola — I need to buy my apples soon! Too yummy!

 

White Chocolate Raspberry Jam with Coffee Liqueur at Mother Earth News – my mouth is watering just thinking about this!  Too bad I don’t have a canner.  Maybe next year!

 

New Sushi Selector: What’s Good, What’s Not at Sustainablog — the EDF has issued a new guide for choosing your sushi sustainably.

 

How to Give Up Soda at The Green Parent — my husband is the one with the addiction, and I’m not so sure this would work for him.  But maybe for you?

Giveaway at Frugal Granola!

Michele at Frugal Granola is giving away (through random drawing) a set of homemade lavender sachets she made as a kick-off/grand-opening for her new Etsy shop.  You can get in on this by leaving a comment on this blog entry (make sure you read the directions first), and be sure to read her blog, as well, for her great insights on simple and natural living, gluten-free cooking, and more. 

 

You’ll also get an additional entry for blogging about the giveaway, which is, um, part of the reason for this plug.   But I do enjoy her blog, so it’s a plug for her, as well!

More Fall Food: Turkey and Pumpkin Chili

 

Who doesn’t love fall?  And what a better food to celebrate the season and warm up with than a chili made with pumpkin and ground turkey?!  My good friend Cherie in the Bay area turned me on to this, so here’s a big thank you for the tip!  Enough with the exclamation points now.

 

She warned me that it needed lots of seasoning (because hers came out kind of bland), but I made sure to add all the spices when I sauteed the onions, etc., since that’s when I usually add spices to other dishes.  I didn’t add as much jalapeno as it called for, either, because I wanted my kids to eat it, but the little bit I tasted in the chili indicated that two whole jalapenos would have really complemented the sweetness.  My husband added some pepperjack cheese to his, which he said rounded it out very nicely.  The only other substitution was coconut oil in place of olive oil, which worked well and didn’t add any distinctly coconuty flavor.

 

The recipe says it makes six servings, but my husband and I finished most of it off. My daughter only ate a little bit, and I had enough left over for a lunch-sized portion tomorrow.  We did eat two bowls each, though, so I guess that comes out to the full six servings.   I also ate two pieces of my bread with it, but that was all part of a strategy to eat a smaller amount of chocolate cake at my friend’s birthday party later in the evening.

 

Next week, I’m going to try a recipe another friend sent me for Vegetarian Chili with Chocolate.  Did I mention that I love chocolate?

’50s Style Comfort Food

It’s FINALLY starting to seem like fall here…the leaves are starting to change color, it’s getting dark earlier, and we had frost warnings last night.  Thankfully it wasn’t a freeze warning, because I wouldn’t have felt like going outside to cover my plants at 10pm when I found out about it!  It was still short-sleeve weather last week when we took the kids to the pumpkin patch…

 

 

…yep, that’s my daughter wearing a tank top and shorts in the middle of October.  Within a week’s time, though, summer has officially been phased out.  It’s all comfort food on the menu this week at our house!

 

At my husband’s request, I made Swiss Steak tonight.  Having never made this before, I searched for a recipe that seemed close to what my Grandma Jean used to make – memories of her making this when I was very young are what is evoked when I think of this dish.  Because I remember her making it often, I’d always gotten the impression that this was the sort of thing people ate in the 1950s, when mod young-marrieds dressed impeccably for any life event (even a mundane weekday dinner) and life, in general, was peachy-keen.  Perhaps this dish has gone out of fashion because it features a tough cut of beef — red meat has gotten such a bad rap over the years, my whole lifetime really — but I think that’s what we liked about it.  The steak simmered in tomato juices, onions, and spices for well over an hour, then we served the whole thing over mashed potatoes, with the juices acting as a gravy.  The only thing missing from my childhood recollection was green bell peppers.  Husband and I realized that after taking the first bite!

 

To make the mashed potatoes dairy-free, I add a liberal amount of Smart Balance margarine, some unsweetened soy milk, and salt and pepper (to taste).  We’re looking forward to the day we can use REAL milk products in our potatoes, instead of creating a fake, soy imposter.  I’m looking into a substitute for all the soy, since my husband and I are not big fans of soy, and we’re starting to think our daughter is developing a sensitivity toward it. 

 

For a vegetable side, I braised four turnips.  To back up a bit, let me mention that when I plan out the week’s menu, I usually plan for certain vegetables to be used (according to what’s in season, what I’ve found locally) and come up with the exact preparation later.  So when I did a search for “braised turnips” earlier today, I was pleasantly surprised that the first item it came up with was from a blog I’ve been following, the Nourished Kitchen.  Her recipe calls for ghee, bone broth, and parsley, which sounds wonderful, especially when looking at the pictures!  But since I can’t use ghee, didn’t have bone broth, and only had dried parsley, I opted instead to go simple with some oil, stock, and salt and pepper.  I melted a teaspoon of coconut oil in the pan, added the turnips, then drizzled a little bit of walnut oil on top of the turnips.  (The combination of oils wasn’t for any particular reason, except that we’re still getting used to coconut oil.)  I didn’t leave them there long enough to brown — everything else was ready, I had started the turnips too late — but that would’ve made them even better.  I let them simmer in some boxed chicken stock until the liquid was almost completely reduced, then dressed them up with some sea salt and freshly ground pepper. 

 

So here’s the whole thing, with a slice of my homemade bread on the side:

 

 

In spite of looking too white with the mashed potatoes and uncaramelized turnips, it all tasted good and homey.  Now, let’s just hope my photography skills improve.

Food Storage and My Overactive Imagination

The much-awaited Nutrimill and Bosch mixer arrived last Friday, so a good friend and I made our first batch (four loaves) of bread on Saturday with freshly milled flour.  Our giddiness at the sight of the grain mill turning wheat berries into flour is almost too embarrasing to admit — I’m pretty sure we jumped up and down with silly grins on our faces at the sight of our first milled wheat.  We got a little nervous once we started adding the flour into the mixer for kneading, but we still ended up with a pretty good first batch of bread.

 

So now that we know we can do this, there is the issue of buying and storing a large quantity of wheat berries.  It’s not so hard to find a place to store one 6-gallon bucket, but already I’m dreaming about buying MANY 6-gallon buckets of various grains — oats (mainly for breakfast, not bread-making), quinoa, amaranth, etc.  I guess I really won’t have to worry about finding a place for all of these things for a while, since each bucket is at least half of my grocery budget for a week, but I still want to plan space for it in my kitchen.  My small pantry is already bursting at the seams, and I have a lot of open space in my kitchen, but perhaps there is another place in my house that would be good for food storage.  For now, I need to get the image of my kitchen looking like an 1800s mercantile out of my head.