Lentil Soup

I didn't want to end Lentil Month on a low note so I bought some soup to prove to myself that lentils are actually tasty when made the right way. Success!

Lentils, Shmentils or Burgers, Shmurgers

Lentils don't like me. I was trying to make veggie burgers and then everything got all chaotic and I had to hold Paige so Pat had to take over making the burgers and when he went to form them they weren't sticking together and I just threw my hands up in the air (not really, Paige would have fallen) and said, "Forget it! Throw it out!" and Pat said "Thank you!" and we had something else instead. And now my bag of lentils is all gone.

Lentil Soup with Smoked Sausage

Thumbs down. Pat liked this because he said it reminded him of beanie weenies. Gross. Owen liked it until he got a bite that burned his mouth and then refused to eat any more. I did not like it. I think it's a texture issue, so I might try using it as a breading like Lisa and Alex. Also, this was supposed to be a soup but there was hardly any liquid left when it was done!

Recipe here

Lentil Chili!

Holy crap this stuff was good. Alex's signature recipe, but with lentils instead of canned beans. Served over cornbread from scratch. We'll be eating this for a week—and cleaning it off the stove. And totally worth it.

Lentil-Crusted Tilapia

Yeah, lentils are good for soup. It's true. But you know what else? You can grind them up and crust stuff with them. This tilapia with lentil crust was really good! The fish was liberally salted and peppered, then crusted only on the top with the lentils, which we used our kitchen spice grinder to pulverize. We served it with NearEast brand tomato-basil rice, potato rolls, and (big surprise!) insalata caprese. Give lentil-crusting a shot—it's good!

Sorry for the Delay — Lentils!

Lentils are an important part of the diet in many parts of the world, especially in the Indian subcontinent, which has large vegetarian populations. Side note - also good in soup...just saying. Good luck :)

Simple things to make

You guys are so fancy with the stuff you make! I'm impressed!
The first picture is the one I should have posted last time. I really like this recipe, it's great since it's cold I don't need to worry about heating it. Good for the days when I work both jobs.
The second is the chocolate covered dried apricots rolled in pistachios, I have posted this before. Healthy and chocolate, win-win. (is too healthy)

Grilled Chicken with Fresh Grape Glaze

I randomly came across this recipe today that I had ripped from an issue of Cooking Light in June 2005! I was looking for some dinner inspiration and there it was! Again, sorry for the picture of meat for those of you that don't eat it...I forgot to take a picture of just the glaze. This was really good! Even Pat thought so!

Grape-Marinated Tofu Steaks

Tofu is a dinner staple in our household. Most people don't like tofu because they think it is tasteless, but it's all about the marinade and squeezing the water out of it first. If you squeeze effectively, the tofu takes on the flavor of whatever liquid you put it in afterward. I'll grant that the texture can be boring, but if you pan-sear it or fry it, it's quite good. Just ask the folks at your local Thai restaurant. Anyway, we marinated a block of tofu (cut in half) for two days in an all natural grape jelly based marinade that also had Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, onion powder, garlic powder, and black pepper. We were going to use grape juice, but we couldn't find a small enough bottle at the grocery, so we found a jelly that didn't have a bunch of chemicals and high fructose corn syrup in it and rolled with that instead. It worked out. Once we finished searing the tofu off, we reduced the leftover marinade in the same pan for a kind of home made steak sauce (more like a glaze, really). We served it with NearEast brand rice with lentils, green beans, and King's Hawaiian rolls. Yum!

Homage to Kim

Kim made a version of this chicken salad for the sandwich challenge. We made a vegetarian (vegan, actually) version with Quorn cutlets and and Vegenaise. The grapes were enormous seedless black grapes, so we cut them down a bit—they're the purple-looking bits in the salad. We had only minced red onion, Vegenaise, the Quorn cutlets (diced), the grapes, and celery. No marjoram. It was awfully good, and we were surprised we'd never tried it before.

White Chocolate Grapes

So...these were supposed to be grapes, dipped in milk chocolate and then dipped in crushed nuts...Instead I used up a small amount of white chocolate I had and then nixed the nuts since I figured my family would object. So really this ended up being not exciting at all. It didn't taste all that interesting becuase it's grapes dipped in white chocolate. Maybe I'll try it the right way another day!

Turkeys Eat Grapes!

So we adopt a turkey every year through Farm Sanctuary, and today we got the card in the mail about the Turkey we adopted, Velma, and look what she likes to eat! Grapes!

Something Real Simple...Like GRAPES

It's kind of an idea and a suggestion for this month. I figure you guys might all be making impressive Thanksgiving dishes that you'll want to share. So the rest of the month should be easy.

I'm all for making food simple, that's really the only way I can succeed in cooking! and that is why i like the cooking section in Real Simple magazine, because it often is very simple. I made this a few weeks ago and i liked it so much i bought all the stuff to make it again. I just forgot to take a picture. Try it. You'll like it! (i even made the pita chips too!) Couscous Salad with Grapes and Feta

Baked Apple

I got this recipe from Glamour magazine and it was super easy and very yummy! The 'stuffing' is a mixture of butter, brown sugar, raisins and cinnamon. The recipe suggested walnuts too but I didn't have any. Next time I will add more of the mixture, I never made this before so I was conservative. It was very good with yogurt, but i bet ice cream would be even better!

An Apple-tastic Dinner

We seem to have found ourselves reaching to complete the apple challenge. Not sure why. Anyway, here is the result. In Alex's family, they used to often have salads with chunks of sharp cheddar cheese and apple pieces in them. We made these salads with red leaf lettuce, craisins, tomatoes, chunks of Vermont white cheddar that was on sale at Giant Eagle, the red apple on the right in the picture above, and a Morningstar Farms product called Chik'n Strips. For dressing, we used a balsamic vinaigrette on one and a shiitake vinaigrette on the other. The salads were awesome, except that we had intended to put almonds on them—Lisa found out that you can toast almonds in the microwave, so put them in there and forgot about them until after dinner.


For dessert, we had the idea to just get some puff pastry and make a sort of apple tart. We thawed the pastry and spread a thin layer of butter on it, then we sprinkled a bit of brown sugar. Next, we laid down the sliced apple (the green one in the picture above), and sprinkled more brown sugar and a bit of cinnamon. Finally, we put a couple pads of butter on top and folded the edges of the pastry around the filling, using an egg wash on the exposed bits. We served it topped with pecan pieces and a side of ice cream. It was, well, yum!

Apple Cake

Apple Cake I made with the apples from Patterson Fruit farm. Three different kinds of apples. Notice the seasonal display. Very tastefull, don't you think?

Bread and Mash

People! Where are your apple recipes?! Ok, I've gone a bit overboard this month but I got a lot of apples at Patterson's and need to use them! They aren't the best eating apples so they need to be put in stuff to really enjoy them.

I found this recipe for Apple, Maple, Pecan Bread and used it to sort of make up my own bread. I didn't put in the butter or yogurt and put in two bananas instead and it came out really great. It needed to bake a good deal longer though.

Martha Stewart steered me wrong on this one. Apple-Parsnip Mash. Not so great.

One Apple Pie

I have a small pie plate from my days working at Williams-Sonoma so Owen and I made a mini apple pie the other day. It wasn't anything new but it was pretty easy and tasty and it only used one apple! I adapted the recipe from some website so I'm copying down the recipe here so I remember what I did!

Crust:

1/2 C flour

2 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp cold water (or more if needed)

Cut butter into flour, add cold water until it forms a dough. Roll dough in ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes.

Filling:

1 apple, peeled, sliced, then halve the slices

1/6 C sugar

1 Tbsp flour

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

Roll dough, put in pie pan. score dough with fork. Add filling. Cover with more dough.

Bake 35 minutes. Let sit 15-20 minutes.

Turkey Apple Wontons

This recipe was called Chicken and Apple Dumplings (like the Apple Dumpling Gang! What?! Awesome.) but I used turkey and really, they are wontons. Those chopsticks are all for show, we didn't use them. I've always wanted to make something with wonton wrappers so I was pretty excited to come across this recipe which is why I waited three whole days into the month of October to make them. I boiled them instead of pan-frying. They were grrrrrrreat! I dipped mine in a little bit of soy sauce. And I do mean a little bit. That stuff is salty and I have the low-sodium stuff! If you would like to read about other people's reactions I'm going to put these up on my other blog too.

October!

Apple!

*noteworthy

I would like to add here, that Alex did a fine job of making Vegetarian Paella!

Bean Soup with Chick Peas and Tiny Raviollis

This is my famous Bean soup. I added tiny raviollis. Dad really liked it.He had soup for the week.

Chickpea Burger

I've been wanting to attempt a homemade veggie burger for awhile and then I got my Parents magazine and this recipe was in it and it called for chickpeas! What a coincidence! Unfortunately, they were not tasty. That's why I had to mask the flavor with ketchup and mustard. Still didn't work. I think this is another one of those things that is best to just buy.

Garlic, Chickpea, and Spinach Soup

This recipe comes from Linda Fraser's The Cook's Encyclopedia of Vegetarian Cooking. The broth of the soup is mostly just storebought vegetable stock, but it has had a corn starch, sesame tahini, and heavy cream mixture (seasoned with salt and pepper) added to it, giving the soup a kind of potato soup consistency that makes sense when you consider the fact that there is, in fact, potatoes in the soup. Additionally, there are six ounces of fresh shredded spinach, a can of chickpeas, garlic, onion, cumin, and coriander. Overall, a successful dish. Tasty with the recommended sprinkle of cayenne pepper upon serving. We had ours with leftover pita from the falafel and, of course, insalata caprese—you know, just to cleanse the palate.

Chickpea Dinner, Dessert!

I have a lot to say. Sorry for the novel.
Here's the story of why I made these recipes. I always make brownies to celebrate the first Brown's game (it makes them losing not hurt so bad, right?) and I had planned on revamping those chocolate chip cookies with chickpeas but didn't want to make two desserts so I did a search for chickpea brownies and found this recipe. It turned out so good that I wanted to see what other chickpea recipes were on the same blog and found chicken with apricots, tomatoes and chickpeas. Sometimes I choose recipes solely based on whether or not I already have the ingredients and I did so I ended up making the chicken too! The Brownies were excellent and the chicken dinner was good. But first the brownies!

I made a half recipe since I wasn't sure how these would be and they were fantastic. I loved the texture and flavor. I had put some peanut butter chips on top of a little bit of it in case it needed more flavor but I'm glad I didn't cover the whole thing because it was unnecessary. The picture doesn't make them look as good as they taste because they are a bit crumbly (but only a bit!) so they were hard to cut. Go check out the recipe, there's no flour! It's just chickpeas, chocolate chips, honey, eggs and baking powder. Crazy.

The chicken recipe had some very strange flavors but they all worked together when you throw them in the same pot. The only part of the recipe I altered was that I used a half can of chickpeas. I'm really glad I did because you can tell by looking at the picture that a whole can would have been way too much. Plus I found mini-cans of chickpeas at Marc's so now I don't have a half can of chickpeas sitting in the fridge waiting to be used.

Falafel!

So Lisa wanted to be the one to start the "chickpea party," as she called it, but we were beaten to the chase by Kim. No big surprise there, but we did make these Wednesday, I just haven't gotten around to posting until now. Anyway, we've made many a falafel dinner from out of a box, but we've never tried to make them from scratch. That's what we did this time, using a recipe from Joanna Farrow's 30 Minute Vegetarian. It is definitely worth the trouble to make falafel yourself, as it turns out, but the pan frying made the first batch fall apart a bit. Still, it was extremely good whether in pita as a sandwich (cukes, tomatoes, and ranch dressing), or on pita as a "falafel pizza" (guess who had hers that way...). Oh yeah, there was also Mediterranean curry couscous on the side. Yum!

Roasted Chickpeas

I really thought these had some promise since the recipe involved honey, sugar and cinnamon but they did not turn out well. Eating them is like when you accidentally put a popcorn kernel in your mouth and try to chew it. Ouch. Maybe if I had taken them out of the oven sooner...
Recipe here

Basmati rice medley

Dad and I went to Trader Joe's on our anniversary celebration day. We found this rice to make. Sorry I didnt incorporate rice into a recipe I guess I ran out oI time. But next month I will make sure to get some recipes together. Its going to be chick peas, or ceci. But try this it was very good.

Rice Pudding

I felt a little silly since I made a batch of rice specifically for this recipe and I'm pretty sure the point of rice pudding is to use up leftover rice...but that's ok because it was really tasty. We almost had a disaster when I started sprinkling chili powder on instead of cinnamon but I noticed before I had stirred it in:) Very yummy! I used crushed pineapple instead of chunks like the recipe suggested and cut the size down significantly since I didn't want 10-12 servings. The recipe combined rice, vanilla pudding, raisins, pineapple, cinnamon and vanilla.

Recipe Here

Another Variation on Insalata Caprese

On the weekend of the 13th, we were in Cincinnati, so, of course, we had to go to Jungle Jim's and get the best fresh mozzarella in the (known) world (of cheese). We had the idea to make a Caprese salad, since, well, we always do. But how to incorporate rice? The answer: risotto (of course). This risotto is made with olive oil, red onion, garlic, vegetable stock, salt, pepper, white wine, and a heavy dose of fresh basil. We used the risotto in lettuce cups (that were difficult to eat as such) that had the mozzarella and a tomato slice each. The basil in the risotto served as the basil for the salad, and a touch of balsamic glaze brought it all to the next level. Lisa still says she would like the basil fresh, but we thought this was a clever way to work Caprese salad into the rice challenge.

Italian Rice and Beans

I didn't bother taking a better picture of this since it wasn't all that great. Not bad. Not great though (Lisa and Alex's look much tastier!). The number of beans was much too high. I had prepared some tomatoes from our plants to make tomato sauce but ended up using them in this recipe instead of canned tomatoes. It was a combination of rice, beans, tomatoes, oregano, basil and italian seasoning. I have one more recipe I hope to try before the end of the month!

Recipe Here

Mexican-Italian Fusion Risotto

This is a risotto made with the usual Italian Arborio rice—and this is where the Italian part ends. The herbs and spices are along the lines of what you might find in taco seasoning—chili powder, cumin, oregano, cayenne. The rice was sauteed in olive oil with onion and garlic, then vegetable stock was added along with the herbs and spices. Instead of finishing with wine and Parmesan, we added lime juice and queso chihuahua. We ended up with a sort of Mexican-style risotto. It could have been better, but it was still tasty, and the leftovers will disappear in short order.

Jambalaya!

I apologize since this picture will not look very appetizing to some of you but this jambalaya was super fantastic. I'm sure someone out there would yell at me for calling this jambalaya since I didn't put in the shrimp or ham but I thought that was just too much stuff. I would even make this dish without the sausage and just use it as a side dish, that's how good it was. So, you vegetarians should make this with the shrimp instead of the sausage and you will love it. The recipe is from my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook but I found it online here too.

Rice Cereal!

I put this on my other blog and then realized that this could count towards Rice month! This was the first time Paige got to participate!

Recipe: 1 Tbsp rice cereal + 4 Tbsp formula
Verdict: Paige was interested but let a lot of it dribble out of her mouth.

Brown rice, mexican style!

I rely on this dish a lot because it's easy to make and I'm very hungry and impatient when I get home from work. Brown rice, veggies and cheese on the inside. Cheese, salsa and olives on top. Yum!

Shrimp and Broccoli Packets

Here's a before and after shot of the shrimp and broccoli packets that Lisa thought of as a rice dish. They were all sealed up in foil and baked, and a little water and a few ice cubes provided the moisture to cook the (instant) rice. The recipe called for two teaspoons of seafood seasoning (we used Old Bay), but Lisa missed that and only put a little, so the end product was a little bland. We added more, but it didn't really add enough flavor. The shrimp was properly cooked, though, and the rice was really good, so, mission accomplished! More to come.

August Ingredient - Rice!

Sorry if the image is grainy! Get it?! Go!!

We went safe. This is regular french toast, scrambled eggs, blueberry muffin and grapes for color. This is appropriate for any meal! We made it, the last day.

Success!

This was the other recipe I wanted to try before breakfast month was over. Peanut Butter Banana Muffins from Deceptively Delicious. They are sooooooo good!!!! (That's four exclamation points people! ) They are healthy-ish with a good dose of peanut butter. I cut down on the amount of sugar they said to add from 1 cup to 2/3 cup, next time I would probably do 1/2 cup just to see if it mattered. A good tip was that the recipe adds half of the brown sugar at the very end, just stirring once or twice so you have these little pockets of crispiness. I'm going to try that with other muffin recipes too. There was a bit of an accident when I thought they weren't done cooking and I tried to put them back in the oven. They all fell out of the pan and some of them broke apart but I rescued a good portion of them.
(I have the book but I found the recipe online here if you want to see it)

Pancakes

If you've looked at my other blog you know that I'm still trying to find good recipes from my Deceptively Delicious book. So far I've found one and this is not it. These had sweet potato puree "hidden" in them. Without syrup these would have been all tossed in the trash but luckily the recipe didn't make too many so we powered through and managed not to waste any. I have one more breakfast food I want to make. Lisa and Alex get to pick next!

French Toast

Using Schwebel’s ’taliano and Orlando Italian with sesame seeds, we made french toast. For dinner. See, we would never have breakfasts like these if we didn't have them for dinner. Anyway. My batter was just egg, unsweetened soymilk, and a touch of vanilla. I had one stack with pure maple syrup, and another with a concoction my Aunt Gwen told me about long ago—a dusting of powdered sugar and a few drops of lemon juice. It's awesome. Lisa's batter was just egg and unsweetened soymilk. She opted out of the vanilla so she could use the leftover egg to make a tiny egg and cheese sandwich (see picture above, left). Both of us had veggie bacon on the side and good 'ol orange juice. Another lovely breakfast.