Winter Corn Chowder

I did it! I made it through a month of frequent food blogging. I am pretty sure that I won't be able to keep up the pace, but it has been a fun adventure for me. I am going to leave you with a real gem. This soup is the Winter Corn Chowder from The Vegetarian Slow Cooker cookbook.

When my mom gave me this cookbook, she flagged some of the recipes that she thought I might enjoy. This is one of her selections and she was right! This may be my favorite recipe out of this book so far.

The only substitution I made was using fresh sweet potatoes instead of yukon gold potatoes. I had the sweet potatoes on hand and I thought it would bring out more colors for a brighter, fresher looking soup.


Someone was glad this was a slower cooker meal because she just wasn't in the mood to cook today. Sometimes being a cat is hard work, especially if there is sun in Oregon, you have to soak that up when you get a chance.


After the soup had cooked, I blended 2 cups of it in the food processor to give the whole soup a thicker consistency. In general, I think that people use some sort of cream to make corn chowder thicker, so I enjoyed the option of just blending up the vegetables.


The real gold star for this recipe is the garnish. Now I am one to normally ignore information about "garnishes" in recipes. But this recipe called for fresh chives and tomatoes and I thought that sounded good. Aside from making the soup brighter and more colorful, the garnish made this soup taste amazing. Everything tasted so fresh and wonderful!

Butternut Squash French Fries

It is the season for winter squash around here and Zoey has been eager to cook with a butternut squash.

Some of you may wonder how I get Zoey to appear so interested in produce. Am I sprinkling cap nip on my food? Storing my squashes next to the cat chow so they smell good to her?

No, the truth is that I am incredibly patient with Zoey, and I sit through lots of moments like this:


I have even thought of making some sort of "blooper reel" of pictures of Zoey very much -not- interested in whatever we are cooking with that day. Until then, it is time to get on with the recipe for Butternut Squash French Fries!

I found this recipe over at Roni's Greenlite Bites website. We used her method for chopping a butternut squash and it worked well.

Roni recommends cooking these for about 45 minutes, but I decided to take them out after about 15 minutes so that they would be "more firm".


I have actually made this recipe twice so far- the first time cooking the squash for 45 minutes, and the second time pulling it out after the 15 minutes. The advantage to cooking the fries for 45 minutes is that they start to taste almost like they have brown sugar on them. The fries get a little sweet and carmelized. Unfortunatley, mine also became a little limp.

As a personal choice, I prefer to have the fries have a little more "firm" and they were cooked all the way through after 15 minutes. Also they are so good that it can be difficult to wait for 45 minutes once they are in the oven!

Tamale Pie

I am still working my way through the Healthy Heart Handbook. This particular recipe caught my eye because it was called "Instant" Tamale Pie. Here is the caption from the book:

"After a hard day's work, come home, spend five minutes preparing this, take a shower and enjoy a complete meal"

Well, that is something I can get excited about. The hardest part of this recipe was deciding what types of vegetables to use as my "1 cup of steamed vegetables" in the recipe. I asked a friend for advice and he said "I don't know, what is tamale pie?". And at that point I had to come clean... I had no idea. I just liked that the cookbook had told me it would take 5 minutes and then I could take a shower. That is really the extent of the thought that went into the selection of this dinner!

So we got the rest of the ingredients out and put them on the counter so we could imagine what types of vegetables would be good mixed in.

The result?


Peppers!

So I steamed up some frozen peppers just long enough to de-frost them and mixed everything together:


The mix is basically some vegetarian chili, corn, salsa, and peppers. And then a cornmeal crust.

Into the oven for 30 minutes and then you have this:


This was a great dinner, especially since I didn't know what to expect. This cookbook has always impressed me and I have been happy with all the results.

As a matter of personal taste, I didn't love the cornmeal on top. I am not sure if I have ever had a cornmeal topping before, and if I have it was a long time ago. I think I expected it to taste like cornbread on top, and that is not what it was. But knowing that, I would make this again. It was super easy to pull together and didn't require any chopping which was a big time saver. I generally like to make meals out of fresh produce, but this was sort of a fun treat.

Pumpkin Bread

Sometimes Zoey and I get distracted on our cooking adventures. For example, this weekend I was looking up recipes to make stuffing from scratch for the Iron Chef Challenge. After realizing that stuffing is mostly bread, celery, carrots and spices I decided that if I was going to make stuffing I was also going to have to make the bread from scratch.

Somehow I came across a recipe for pumpkin bread and the next thing I knew Zoey was sniffing a can of pumpkin and I was in the kitchen mixing ingredients. You can see the complete recipe by clicking on the link above.

I didn't even end up making the stuffing because the bread was so good we just ate that plain. I figured I couldn't enter the challenge this week if I ate all the stuffing bread before I had time to actually turn it into something.

Here is everything all mixed up and in the loaf pan:


I only cooked this for 45 minutes and it was done. This bread was sweet like a dessert bread and it didn't last long enough to make stuffing from it. It was a little sweet for my tastes, so next time I will add less sugar.


This did earn an A+ on the taste scale which is pretty good for not having any added fat or oil. If you are looking for a pumpkin bread recipe, Zoey and I suggest giving this one a try!

Oh, and I added some cinnamon on the top, in case you were wondering what the brown spots are. Next time I will skip the cinnamon and add dry oats to the top instead!

The Unfreezing

Well, it has been about a week and so as promised, here is what I am pulling out of my freezer. I did this experiment as a way to venture into the idea of freezing meals. To ease my freezer anxiety, I have spent the week reading everything I can about freezing meals for later enjoyment. Apparently there is a whole movement out there of people who just cook once a month and freeze all their meals. I don't see myself moving in that direction since I love cooking so much, but I see freezing as a really good option for leftovers.

I used to be a fan of frozen entrees (having maybe 2-3 a week) but lately I just haven't found any that met my nutritional needs. Plus I love to cook and I like the idea of creating my own frozen entrees. I have liked the idea of making my own frozen entrees so much that I even bought a Foodsaver a few years ago, although I have never even tried it. After this freezing experiment, that might change.

So enough about my freezer issues...

I let the frozen sloppy joe mix de-frost overnight in my refrigerator. When I took it out of the container for lunch today, there were still some small ice crystals on it so I was worried that it would taste like frezzer burn. I dumped the whole thing into a glass dish and microwaved it for 2 minutes:


I don't have any buns leftover from my last sloppy joe experience, so I spread this mix on some whole wheat bread to make a sandwich:


The result? It was delicious! I realize that the lighting in this picture isn't that great, but I already ate the sandwich, so I can't go take another picture.


My verdict?

Freezing is fun!

I have a book coming in from the library on freezing meals and I am going to dust off my Food Saver. I can't wait to try freezing more things!

Chocolate Birthday Cake

It's my birthday week and I'll have cake if I want to. And I do!

I am not an expert cake baker, in fact I am not even an advanced beginner. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I almost go out of my way to -not- learn the arts of fine baking. In the past the only birthday cakes I remember came from the grocery store. Most of my personal cake baking experience came from a Betty Crocker box and a couple of eggs.

I do have one moment of cake baking glory in my Montana past, I made a beautiful 3 layer "checkerboard" cake that tasted as good as it looked. Of course, the frosting alone was made with a pound of butter and a jar of marshmallow fluff... so clearly that wasn't going to cut it here.

Some friends and I tried a vegan cupcake from Whole Foods and we all agreed that it was a little dry. So I announced with confidence: "I can do better than this". After my success with the chocolate chocolate-chip cookies, no one doubted me. Of course, have I mentioned that I am not a professional? You'll see....

I found the recipe for a basic chocolate cake in Vegan Express, which I happened to have out from the library. So far so good, everything is getting mixed together - hard to mess that part up:


Fresh out of the oven and it looks great. I had sprayed the bottom and sides of the dish with non-stick spray and I had even coated it with sugar since I remember doing that with baked breads as a child. I was prepared to impress with preparation and even asked one of my friends to flip it out onto the plate. "Oh, it will come right out so be prepared for that" I assured him.


Well... not so much:




As you can see, half of it did come right out but half of it did not. I debated trying to get the other half out and tried to wiggle a spatula under it to free it from the pan with no luck. Luckily I was among friends, so I just frosted it as it was. The cake tasted great! The frosting has a little peanut butter in it, which I wasn't expecting to like, but it was delicious. Everyone loved the cake and it was gone that night.



If any of you have an ideas for how to get a cake to come out all in one piece next time, I am open to suggestions!

Acorn Squash

Before you worry that all my focus has turned to snack foods, rest assured that Zoey is still sniffing out good produce for me to enjoy.

I love a good acorn squash. The best squashes come from the farmers market, but around this time of year they are still generally pretty good at the grocery store too. I am kind of an odd duck because I really prefer these beauties plain. No butter, no brown sugar, no anything else that people put on them. But, in order to enjoy them plain, it's important not to overcook them.

Luckily, acorn squashes are easy to cook up in the microwave and that is my preferred method, although now that the weather is cooling off, I may be an oven convert.

Zoey's Basic Acorn Squash Instructions:


1. First allow Zoey to sniff the squash for freshness.
2. Cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds.


Place the squash face down on a small plate with a little water in the bottom and microwave on high for about 7 minutes. Use more or less time depending on how big the squash is. For this squash, 7 minutes was perfect.

Allow your squash to cool for a minute or too and then grab a spoon and enjoy! I just eat it right out of the shell like this and I love it.

Pumpkin Heart Muffins

I am still on my quest for the perfect portable snack food. Enter the healthy pumpkin muffin! I found this recipe here although it originally comes from a cookbook for kids (perfect for me)! It is the season of eating pumpkin baked goods so I decided to give it a try.

As usual I didn't have raisins on hand so I needed a substitution. I am not sure when I decided that vegan chocolate chips were the best substitution for raisins but that is my decision and I am sticking to it. Here is the dough all mixed up and looking good:


I bought these cute heart-shaped muffin holders this morning. I have actually had my eye on them for awhile now and this morning I decided to splurge a little and get them. I was hoping for some heart shaped muffin magic:


Well, they didn't really come out heart shaped. I think that has a lot to do with the recipe and not a lot to do with the containers. The muffins were quite good though and each muffin has 200% of your vitamin A requirement for the day. Perfect portable snack food.


I figured out the nutritional information of the recipe including the chocolate chips I used. This recipe made 12 muffins.

Nutritional Information (for 1 muffin): Calories: 129, Fat: 0.8g, Protein: 3g, Fiber: 3g, Vitamin A: 217%, Manganese 31%, Selenium: 21%

Vegetable Pizza

This weekend we took a trip to a local farm near our house for some fresh seasonal produce. We picked up 6 beautiful bells peppers for only 50 cents each and I was eager to test them out. We have been having a bit of a pizza craving at our house recently, and going out to get pizza wasn't my first choice, so it was time to me to learn to make pizza from scratch.

First the dough:

I pulled out the old bread maker for this project. I am still troubled by my insufficient bread kneeding skills. I decided to go simple:

- 3 cups whole wheat flour
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon of sugar
- 1 packet active yeast
- 1 1/3 cups lukewarm water
- A sprinkle of Italian Herb Seasoning (optional)



I'll be honest, I only added the Italian Herb Seasoning because sometimes I like to pretend that Zoey and I are cooking on our own tv show and I think things like "I am going to add some Italian Herbs to the crust to add some color and extra flavor."

I don't think Zoey minds.

I topped the pizza with some tomato sauce, a fresh bell pepper from the farm, some olives and some artichoke hearts. In my mind, pizza doesn't get any better than this.



Into the oven for 25 minutes and success! The crust was wonderful and doughy and the toppings were delicious! The pizza was big enough that we will have leftovers for lunch tomorrow and I can't wait!

Green Smoothie

It is day 20 of Vegan Mofo and I am choosing to make something healthy. I read health books and cookbooks for fun, and recently I have come across the concept of "green smoothies". I have always dismissed the idea thinking something like "there is no way drinking blended kale for breakfast would taste good". However, I have seen countless blogs this month where people make different variations of green smoothies and claim that they taste great.

I am also reading a book on raw foods right now and I can accept that I am not eating as many leafy greens as I probably should. So I decided last night before I went to bed that I would wake up and give a green smoothie a try.

The leafy green vegetable that I do eat a lot of anyway is spinach so I decided to start with that. Ideally I would rather make a smoothie with other greens like kale or swiss chard, but I didn't want to take a trip to the store for something new when I had spinach at home.

We even have a guest sniffer this morning! This is our other cat, Will. I am not sure if he counts as Zoey's older brother or her boyfriend/ life partner. They are definitely best friends though and lately he has started sniffing my food creations.


Here's what I did:

Zoey's First Green Smoothie

Ingredients:

1 cup of fresh spinach
1 banana
1/3 cup frozen blueberries
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup light soymilk

Directions:

1. Put it all in your blender and blend!

The recipe makes enough for 2 glasses this size.

Zoey sniffs the final product:


Okay, so I know that I "cheated" by adding some light soymilk so now it isn't a raw food breakfast, but I was worried that things were not going to taste good. But, the funny thing is that this drink was almost too sweet/ creamy so I wish I had left the soymilk out. I guess the joke is on me.

This tasted a lot like a banana blueberry milkshake/ smoothie and I couldn't even taste the spinach. It was light and fluffy and I felt like I was eating a treat.

Next time I will add ground flaxseed for sure and I will leave out the soymilk. I may even try some kale or swiss chard. I do have some collard greens in my fridge right now, would that work or is that too bitter?

Iron Chef Challenge #3 (Sushi)

Oh boy. The Iron Chef Challenge this weekend was sushi. More specifically: seaweed and rice. Let's see, I've had sushi once in my life at a restaurant and I didn't like it. I have stayed away from the stuff ever since. But, I made a commitment to do the Iron Chef Challenges when I could and I had no valid reason for backing out this weekend so it was on.

Plus I figured that with enough soy sauce, anything would be edible. I have never made sushi before and instead of doing the smart thing and looking at some recipes, I did the Zoey thing and decided I would figure it out as I went along. I am pretty sure that making sushi is a somewhat advanced kitchen skill and I am far from advanced in the sushi department.

I went to Whole Foods to pick up some seaweed and special sushi rice. Since I won't have many nice things to say about this adventure, I will say that I think sushi rice is pretty.


Of course, once I cooked it, it looked like mush. For some reason it reminded me of stuffed animal fluffing which I sort of liked and found bothersome at the same time.

I spread it out on the seaweed (which I had heated over a burner to make it turn green).


Since I didn't follow a recipe and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like it anyway, I only added soy sauce and shredded carrots as the filling. I rolled it all up and somehow managed to get something that slightly resembles sushi! I'll admit this doesn't look like the pictures online when I searched for "how to roll sushi" but this is real life. And in Zoey's kitchen this is what we got:


I did eat one of these rolls and I have to say that I haven't developed a taste for sushi yet. Zoey was curious about the finished product, she seemed to like the smell of the seaweed.

Well, I did it. I was challenged. And to be honest, I am glad that it is over.

The Freezer

This is sort of embarrassing to admit: I am afraid of my freezer.

Not the kind of fear where I suspect my freezer will come to life and attack me in my sleep, but rather a fear of freezing home cooked meals. My current freezer skills lay somewhere around the ability to freeze ice.

As I am gaining more and more confidence in the kitchen I am reading cookbooks and cooking blogs for fun. Often I notice people saying things like: this freezes well.

Gulp.

Just the idea of freezing things makes me anxious.

Often my cooking anxieties lead back to events in my life and here they are:

1. Lasagna: My first attempt with freezing was on a lasagna that I had made and I wanted to save the leftovers. I cut the leftovers into single servings and froze them. About a week later I went to re-heat some lasagna for dinner and it just wasn't that good. It didn't have the same fresh taste that I was expecting.

2. Minestrone Soup: Thinking that my previous poor freezing experience was based on the type of dish I had chosen, I decided to give freezing soup a try. I made a minestrone soup with lots of vegetables and some pasta shells. Into the freezer it went. When it came time to re-heat the minestrone all the pasta shapes had dissolved and I was left with a vegetable soup with paste-like broth. It wasn't good.

But here I am all talk and excuses and no recent attempts. So today that changes. I am freezing the leftovers from the Sloppy Joes that I made and I am going to reheat them in one week. I chose a variety of freezing options. The first two are different amounts in my ziplock tuperware containers. The third option is a one cup serving in a bag flattened out. I can't remember where I heard the idea, but someone out there in the world suggested freezing 1 cup amounts in bags and then flattening them out so that they could be stacked in your freezer. If it works it will be brilliant.

So here they are, and since I made a blog post about it, I will have to test them all in one week. Until then if anyone has any ideas on freezing storage, how best to defrost these when the time comes, or other freezing knowledge- I am all ears.

Moroccan Chickpea Stew

I got this recipe from my mom, who first tasted it at her book club. You can find the complete recipe here. The funny part of this story is that when I first got the recipe, there weren't any directions attached. In case it isn't obvious, I don't have a natural skill for knowing what to do with each ingredient in a recipe. For example, if a recipe says to saute an onion, I want to know how long that is in minutes. So when I saw just a list of ingredients, my plan was to add them all to a soup pot at once and simmer. Simmering for 30 minutes seems pretty standard, so that was my plan.

I had already planned to leave out the yogurt in the recipe, but I wasn't sure if that would effect my massive soup combination so I asked my mom about it. Luckily she caught that I didn't have the directions and got me straightened out. The yogurt and rice are just sides, so I decided to skip the yogurt and keep the rice.

That's a long story for what turns out to be an easy delicious soup. First you saute the vegetables for a few minutes:


Next I decided to add everything to my trustee slow cooker instead of continuing on the stove top. I will say that I am getting a more intuitive feel for when to use the slow cooker and it works great in this recipe. I cooked it on high for about 3 hours and made a rice barley blend to serve on the side.

Vegetable Stock Blend

I am always on the lookout for a new vegetable stock option. Buying the cans gets expensive, I don't like the taste of the broth in the cartons and when I make my own out of boiled vegetables, it never lasts very long. So recently I decided to try some veggie boilun cubes only to get them home and see that one of the ingredients is high fructose corn syrup. Same thing in the cans. Well, in an effort to reduce my intake of high fructose corn syrup I decided to take matters into my own hands. (And let's face it, I'll take any excuse to try something new in the kitchen)

So here it is, my own vegetable stock blend fresh out of the Healthy Heart Handbook. That little book is gaining some mileage in my kitchen, so far everything in it has been a hit!

The basic ingredients in the mix are nutritional yeast flakes, onion powder, garlic powder, a little salt and some Italian seasonings.


I mixed it all up in my handy dandy food processor so that it would make a fine powder:


I mixed in a little parsley at the end to give it a pretty touch of green. Zoey was going nuts in the kitchen while I was making this. She kept putting her paws on this purple table and squeeking but I couldn't get the timing and focus on my camera right to capture the moment.


So far I have used this in recipes that call for a little broth and it has been quite good. I just scoop some out and add it to water. The real test will come when it is time to make a soup with it, but so far I think this is going to work out well.

Special bonuses are that I can store it in a tubberware container, which saves space AND since the base ingredient is nutritional yeast flakes, the broth mix provides a mix of B vitamins. That beats high fructose corn syrup any day in my book.