Roasted Vegetables - Day 1

This is a 2 part post. Day 1 is the basic recipe for roasted vegetables and Day 2 will be a hearty soup that uses up any leftovers. (Hint: you want to make enough so that there are leftovers. The amounts that I list serve 2 people - so plan accordingly.)

I especially like this dish now that I am growing my own rosemary out on the deck. Rosemary is very easy to grow and there is something nice about using herbs right out of your garden. The best part about rosemary for me is that I just leave it outside all winter in a flower pot and it greets me every spring with new growth.

Roasted Vegetables:

Note: All vegetables should be chopped into bite sized pieces.

6 small red potatoes
4 bell peppers in your choice of colors
- I use red, yellow and orange because that is what they have at Costco
2-3 zucchinis
1 red onion
3 cloves of garlic
olive oil
fresh rosemary

Instructions:

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Place the potatoes in a bowl and drizzle them with olive oil. Toss to coat.
3. Arrange potatoes on large cookie sheet and cook for 7 minutes in the oven.
4. While those are cooking, combine the rest of the vegetables in a large bowl. Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle the vegetables with salt and pepper to taste (if desired)
5. After 7 minutes, pull the potatoes out of the oven and stir them so that none of them are sticking to the bottom of the pan.
6. Add the rest of the vegetables to the pan.
7. Arrange rosemary on top.
8. Return pan to the oven and cook for 7 minutes.
9. Remove pan from the oven and toss vegetables.
10. Return pan to the oven and cook 7 minutes.
11. Repeat steps 9 and 10 until the vegetables are tender.

I usually end up cooking them for 2 cycles. I used to cook them longer but then I decided that I liked the vegetables to be a little crunchy. Repeat the cycle until the vegetables are to your liking.

These vegetables are surprisingly filling as a main course. As you can see, this recipe makes a lot of vegetables. We usually eat about 1/2 of the vegetables for the first dinner and that leaves 1/2 for the soup the next day. Adjust the recipe to meet your needs. Save any leftovers in a container for the Day 2 recipe to come!

Sweet Potato Black Bean Quinoa Burger

I saw this recipe listed on another blog this week and I was eager to give it a try. The complete recipe can be found here. It took me about 20 minutes to cook the quinoa and get everything assembled.

I soaked and slow cooked my own beans instead of using beans from a can. Here they are with some onion and garlic:



The recipe said to mix all the ingredients together in a big bowl so I pulled out the biggest bowl I own. As you can see, that was a little overboard. This would have worked fine in one of my glass mixing bowls but it was kind of fun to pull out the big bowl. I was hopeful when I saw everything mixed together, I think this is the prettiest veggie burger blend I have ever made.




Here they are cooking up in my skillet. I cooked them on medium high for about 3 minutes on each side and that worked pretty well.



The top picture showed the final product on a whole wheat bun, but it was also really good on its own with a little ketchup. There is enough to have this for lunch tomorrow and I am pretty excited about that. I know I have found a recipe keeper when I can't wait to have it again the next day.



Edit: The first time I made these I didn't add the caraway seeds. The second time I made them, I added 1 T of caraway seeds and let me be the first to tell you that a little carraway seed goes a long way. If you add them, you might want to add less than a tablespoon.. or leave them out completely.

Tomatoes from scratch (2)

This is not a cooking post, but rather musings about my vegetable garden. And perhaps someday if actual edible vegetables grow from my garden it can become a post about cooking, but until then, these are just plants.

So here are my 3 lovely tomato plants. The first one is the plant that was featured in an earlier blog post. It has 3 tomatoes growing on it now!

Here is a picture of the only tomato plant that had to actually be tethered to the supportive stake. The other two plants just seemed to naturally grow toward the stake. I guess that makes this plant the rebel among them:


And finally the runt of the litter:

Is that an appropriate term for plants? I have no idea.

Now, you can't tell because of my amazing zoom-in abilities but these are not quite award winning tomatoes yet. The biggest one is maybe the size of a quarter. Maybe. Maybe if the sun hits it just right.

Now on to my pumpkin plant. These flowers are huge. My neighbor this morning told me that I could actually cut the flowers off and stir fry them. Yes... okay, but then where would the pumpkins grow? Strangely I have never seen these 2 flowers open. Something tells me that is a bad sign, but only time will tell. And if the flowers do open I have a whole new set of problems on my hands:


Recently some family was visiting from Montana and they have quite a bit of gardening knowledge. I took them on a tour of my flowering garden and asked them if each flower would turn into a pumpkin the same way that each tomato flower had turned into a tomato. No such luck. Apparently flowers in the squash family are either male or female (unlike tomato flowers which have both parts). The flowers that I have so far are only male flowers. If female flowers show up I have to go out there one evening with a bottle of wine and a paint brush and make some magic (if you know what I mean).

And I thought I had it all figured out with just the birds and the bees. There is nothing like learning from family (while in your 30s) that the saying really should have been "The birds and the bees... and the squash family of plants... oh and cantalopes!" (see below)


This flower just appeared this week. Is this a girl flower? Does it look female to you?

I have a neighbor who watches me go out back and check on the plants every night. I can't wait to see what he says to me when he sees me go back there with a violin, a bottle of wine and a paint brush. And whatever he says, I can promise you that I will have no response.

Curry in a Hurry

This recipe comes straight out of the book Apocalypse Chow which I recently received as a gift after having it out for 9 weeks from the library. At a certain point, the library cuts the cord on my library book renewals and I have to face the facts. Now someone else at the library can enjoy it because I have my own copy!

The theory behind the book is that you can eat well even when the power goes out. My thoughts: if the recipes are easy enough that someone without power can pull them off, I should be able to make something edible in a fully powered kitchen. These are the types of books I get my best ideas from... well, these and cookbooks for kids.

I switched in some fresh vegetables in this recipe since the power is on and I have the ability to do that.

First I boiled up some yukon gold potatoes.


And since Zoey wasn't in the kitchen with me tonight I brought the kitchen to her so she could do the Zoey sniff test. Luckily this can was still sealed.


I mixed all the vegetables together with some curry powder and simmered it for about 10 minutes. The whole house smelled so good that I even opened the windows so that the neighbors could enjoy the smell of a good curry.


I served it over some brown rice and barley (which I am finally getting better at cooking even without the rice cooker of my dreams).


This recipe made a quick delicious curry and I am eager to try something else out from this book later on this week.

Slow Cooker Black Beans and Rice

This is another recipe from my favorite slow cooker cookbook, Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker. In the book this recipe is called something like Spicy Black Bean Chili, but I found it better suited to be fancy black beans over rice.

The first thing I did was soak the black beans. Since I have started this blog I have made a commitment to stop using canned beans and soak and cook all my beans. At first it was hard to get used to and some nights I forgot to soak the appropriate beans for the next day and had to substitute in some other type of bean, but I am finally falling into the swing of things.

On this occasion I remembered to soak the beans the night before so I woke up to these black beans:



Aren't those pretty? It's the little things :)

Let's see what Zoey thinks:


The funny thing is that Zoey used to be afraid of sniffing things. Lately she has taken to sniffing everything I bring home from the grocery store! I placed these in the slow cooker for about 5 hours to get them soft.

5 hours later:

I steamed up some peppers, onion and garlic with some chili powder.


Then I added all the other ingredients (things like tomatoes, beans, broth and more spices) and let it cook on high for about 3 hours in the big slow cooker. You can also see my mini slower cooker working here cooking up some barley and rice.



After 3 hours I scooped some bean chili over the barley rice blend and was a happy camper. I don't even think of this as chili anymore, but it makes a great black bean topping for rice.

Basic Artichokes

Artichokes may be my all time favorite food. Unfortunately when I come across recipes that use fresh artichokes, they are generally covered in butter and some other breaded topping which in my opinion makes the artichoke only the vehicle for the various toppings. Not anymore! To really enjoy all that an artichoke has to offer, I recommend eating it plain. That's right, totally plain.

In order to make this work, it is important not to overcook the artichoke. Trust me, if you overcook it you'll be sorry. And most of the recipes that drape artichokes in breaded toppings overcook the delicate artichoke in my opinion. No wonder people cover these in butter and bacon.

My method:

1. Trim the stem off the artichoke
2. Set the artichoke in 1-2 inches of water on the stove.
3. Bring to a boil.

4. Cover and reduce heat to medium high.
5. Let simmer for 25-35 minutes depending on the size and hardiness of your artichoke.
6. Once the leaves can be pulled out easily remove from heat and enjoy the wonderful vegetable one leaf at a time.
7. When you run out of leaves, cut out the furry part and enjoy the artichoke heart.

I buy my artichokes at Costco because they are consistently high quality. And I can get 4 artichokes like the one above for about $5.00, which is a pretty good deal. Last year during one of my artichoke phases I came across a dead worm about 1/2 way through the leaves. I understand that bugs and worms crawl on my food because it grows in the earth. In fact, I should have been overjoyed that a worm was enjoying my artichoke because it suggests that the artichoke wasn't coated in pesticides. Instead, I was a little troubled. Mostly because if I hadn't looked down at the perfect moment I would have eaten it. Worm texture might have ruined my love of artichokes... maybe permanently.

In the spirit of advertisers who make claims on packaged foods like "Now with less sugar" or "Now with more fiber", every time I fill my Costco cart with artichokes I say "Now with less worms!" So far, saying that phrase has kept me lucky.

Quinoa Vegetable Paella

I love quinoa. There is something about eating the tiny grain that is really fun for me. But I actually stumbled across this recipe because I was looking for a new use for artichoke hearts. I am perfectly happy eating them straight out of the can, but I was looking for something that would give the can some more mileage. When I saw this recipe on one of my favorite food websites I was ready to create it myself.

The full recipe can be found here. The only change that I made was adding garbanzo beans instead of kidney beans (and I only did that because I forgot to soak some kidney beans the night before). Next time I will try it with red kidney beans.

Here is how it looked after the quinoa had cooked and I had just added the zucchini.


Let's see.... what's left?



That's right Zoey, the artichokes! That was the whole point of the adventure!

So this was dinner at my house tonight. And as you can see from the first picture, there will be plenty for tomorrow too. This is a great way to get in some of the seasons fresh produce and one of my favorite grains!

Burritos with Cous Cous

If I can wrap random things in a burrito and serve it for dinner, I am all over that. These burritos came to me on a whim one night when I had planned on having burritos for dinner, but I had forgotten to soak black beans the night before. I thought I could pull it off without black beans when I heard "Are we having the good burritos tonight?". "Yes!" I replied with confidence. I am not sure what makes a burrito "good" at my house, I have never heard any complaints and I don't think I have ever made them the same way twice. But tonight with this special question of goodness at stake, I was pretty sure that salsa on a tortilla wasn't going to cut it. So I present to you:

Burritos with Cous Cous

Ingredients:

Tortillas
1/2 package of smart ground vegetarian taco meat
1/2 package frozen red, green, yellow pepper blend
1 cup garbanzo beans
2 T nutritional yeast flakes
Salsa

Directions:

1. Start cooking the cous cous according to package directions.
2. While that is cooking, add the frozen peppers to a non-stick pan at medium-high heat.
3. After 2-3 minutes, add the smart ground vegetarian "taco meat". Cook for an additional 3 minutes or until all the peppers are warm.
4. Heat up the garbanzo beans in the microwave for 1 minute.
5. Set out the wraps, nutritional yeast flakes and salsa:



6. Create your burritos!


A note about nutritional yeast flakes: Nutritional yeast flakes provide a range of B vitamins and add a nutty/ cheesy flavor to food. I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I am skeptical of new foods, especially things that sound scary, like "nutritional yeast". However, now that I have tried it, I sprinkle it on different foods and it is actually pretty good. If you are on the lookout for adding more B vitamins to your diet these are great little flakes to try.

Now as a conclusion to my story about good burritos: After dinner I asked if these were the good burritos and my taste critic responded: "Oh, that was a joke- all your burritos are good!"

So maybe salsa on a tortilla would have worked tonight, but I am glad I didn't settle because otherwise I may never have thought to put cous cous in a burrito and it was very good!