Oh the Fall

Well, my last publishing goal didn't work, obviously.  Here we are in October.  We're all a little older, and life continues to putter forward.

As I explore life as a temporary single while my other half is at Basic training, I'm also exploring Vegan cooking.  I've mentioned before that dairy has become an enemy, and it has gotten worse the last few weeks.  For all I know it's stress and I'm misdiagnosing my own issue.  What I do know is that cutting it completely I felt infinitely better; so I'm taking the plunge and purging it from my diet for the next 10 weeks.  It's a good time to do it and it will only affect my meals...especially if they flop.

I've started a blog solely for tracking my Vegan adventure, if you are interested you can check it out here if you feel so inclined!  I would like to share recipes where I can, but most likely I will be sharing the books I'm using and name only the recipe that's worth mentioning.  I'm quite excited to play with the new ones I just picked up from the library!! 

Stick around, if you're willing, and I will work on being more present!

Welcome to Summer!

Greetings readers!  

Thanks for sticking with me throughout my hiatus.  It’s good to be back writing and cooking again.  And what a time to be back, with summer staring in full swing, gardens becoming lush wonderlands of fresh ingredients, and the farmer’s markets hopping with vendors and happy buyers.

Garlic Scape Pesto

Tonight we made Garlic Scape Pesto with fresh organic garlic scapes purchased at our local farmer’s market yesterday.  These are so fleeting we’ve missed them in years past.  I was afraid we’d miss them this year but we lucked out.  We bought two bunches, one is waiting in the fridge crisper for another experiment, one was dinner!

What is a garlic scape, you ask?  Garlic scapes are the flower buds that garlic bulbs put out.  In order to get the garlic we’re familiar with (a bulb with cloves) the scapes are cut, and the garlic forms cloves.  If the scapes weren’t trimmed, the garlic bulb would resemble an onion instead. 

This pesto is super, super easy to make.  My problem is the last time I made it was two years ago.  So I found a few recipes online, played with it, and it was good!  It needs a little work though.  It was a little strong and a little thick, but it was just as wonderful as I remember!!!

I’ve included the recipe for all of dinner below.  If you get the chance, give it a try!

Plans for the week

I’m not sure what we’re going to do this week, I do have a few bell peppers and another bunch of scapes.  It’s definitely grilling season so maybe we’ll play with the grill a bit.  We’ll see.  It’s going to be a short work week, what with the fourth, so that will mean more time to get back into the kitchen!  It has been one of the things I have missed greatly while work has been so crazy, and now that things should hopefully be calming down I will have more time to play. 

With any luck I’ll see you guys next week!

Have a great week and happy summer!!

Eat Happy!

Recipe:

Garlic Scape Pesto with Chicken and Sundried Tomatoes

Pesto

• 1 bunch garlic scapes, washed and chopped roughly
• ¾ cup walnut halves
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• ¾  olive oil
• Salt to taste
• Water to texture (plain yogurt might be good, milk or almond milk too…)
  
• Chicken, sliced bite sized (we used a little less than a pound, and had lots left)
• Sun dried tomatoes to taste (I used the ones packed in oil)
• Pasta of your choice (we used fresh spinach pasta, store bought)
• Parmesan or asiago

 ~Cook pasta according to instructions; once you get the water going you can work on the rest!

~Put all but salt and water in a food processor or blender

~Blend until smooth.  Add salt to taste.  Add water (if using) until it is as thin as you like it.

~Cook chicken in a non-stick pan, adding maybe 4 tablespoons of pesto to the chicken

~After the chicken is no longer pink on the outside, add sun dried tomatoes to the chicken

~Toss the remaining pesto with the drained pasta (it’s preferable if the pasta is hot)

~When the chicken is cooked through, add chicken and tomato mixture to the pasta

~Toss and serve, topped with cheese if desired

Long time no see

Well folks it's been way too long.  Work has been wild, home life has been wild too; never a dull moment with a puppy, that's for sure!

Meal planning, cooking and all of that has had major changes lately.  With the new job the time to cook is almost non-existent, and now I've started Weight Watchers, and that changes how we cook.

Needless to say we've been less than creative lately.  But I thought I would check in and with any luck I can go back to checking in regularly!

Thanks for sticking with the blog!!

No picture of any special food, but please enjoy the cute froggie cupcakes that graced a bake sale last spring.  I think they turned out quite cute!

Bountiful Baskets, Banana Bread, Cinnamon Rolls and Upcoming Attractions, Oh My!

Hi there!

I’d like to start by saying how excited I am the follower count is at five.  Talk about a great way to start the week!!  Welcome to the Kitchen!!

This week is another Bountiful Basket week, and we’ll have to get a little creative.  I have more broccoli than I know what to do with, along with two beautiful bunches of pencil thin asparagus…yum… We also have huge heads of bok choy and Nappa cabbage that are full of promise.  The most random though is a coconut…I have no idea what to do with it yet, but I’m sure we’ll figure out something!

I’ll let you guys know how the basket turns out.  It should be a wild ride this week!

Breakfast Breads

Yesterday I had a dilemma; I had six bananas on the verge.  Now, the banana bread recipe I have is my grandmother’s, and if I remember correctly it was her grandmother’s too.  The perk of this recipe is it assumes you’re using bananas that are almost beyond edible as wells as sour milk, a kind of cleaning-out-the-pantry kind of thing.  I have not used spoiled milk (in fact, I have never made it with regular milk, period) but I have used bananas that were…well…almost frightening.   So I decided to make banana bread.  My recipe calls for 2-3 per batch, and I had six.  So, logically, I figure I’ll make a triple batch. 

My first hiccup came when I realized I was almost out of sugar; that was an easy fix, I substituted brown sugar for regular and it gave a really nice color to the batter.  My second came in the actual amount of batter that a triple batch creates.  How much batter is actually in a triple batch is half again what my stand mixer holds; before adding six cups of flour there was approximately ten cups of batter.  Needless to say it took some careful pouring to cut the batter in half so I had room to add the flour…but the bread turned out good.  I probably should have split the one large loaf into two or possibly three, but it was still good!

This morning brought another baking whim: cinnamon rolls.  While my husband took his turn to sleep in, I split my attention between a new cinnamon roll recipe and our rambunctious puppy.  The dough was a little on the disagreeable side but the rolls turned out amazing.  Granted, they need to bake longer, but they were quite good.

Up Coming Attractions

In trying to keep blog posts flowing, I was brainstorming topics I could write on.  After some thought I figured it would be fun to write on different diets; what fun to explore Vegan and Gluten Free cooking, and further explore Vegetarian cooking.

I plan on starting with Vegetarian, as Vegan expands on the Vegetarian principles; Gluten Free is a whole new ball game for me, so it will take me longer to research.  Check back for new posts on these diets in the near future!

If you have anything you would like me to touch on, whether on the diets or something else, I would love to hear it!  Drop me an email at niaskitchenadventures@gmail.com or leave a comment!

Stay tuned for some fun explorations!

Happy Eating!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Greetings!

  

In true Hallmark fashion most people will have gone all out on Valentine's.  Some of us were content with a quiet meal at home.  While budget constraints and scheduling kept us from a low key dinner at our favorite restaurant, it didn’t prevent us from having a throw-back to our first Valentines in our own place.

A homemade romantic dinner is just the ticket.  This year marks the first three course meal I’ve ever made completely (as opposed to contributing with a group).

Starter

We started with an organic Italian lettuce blend, added slivered almonds and honey-Dijon dressing.  It was simple and quick.  One thing I’ve slowly come to learn is you can’t make the whole dinner complicated; it sucks the fun right of making it and gives all sorts of places for things to go wrong.

Main

Our main was totally from scratch.  Herbed chicken ravioli made with homemade spinach pasta, tossed with a homemade yogurt Alfredo sauce.  The filling recipe is below.  Check out the links for the pasta and Alfredo recipes!  “Yum” says it all!  I haven’t had an Alfredo sauce in years; finding a good yogurt base is amazing, and lets me enjoy a rich, creamy sauce without hating myself later…in calories and with the whole lactose thing! 

I did change the Alfredo a bit; I increased the yogurt and decreased the ricotta.  The resulting ratio was 1:1.  I also added granulated garlic; I toyed with adding roasted garlic but decided against it because of the time it would take in addition to everything else.  It turned out amazing anyway!!

Dessert

Dessert was a two part finale.  From our Bountiful Basket I had strawberries and pears.  At Matt’s request I made the pears into sorbet.  The result was a light and wonderful Ginger Pear Sorbet, and it was incredible.  The strawberries got a chocolate fondue to be dipped in.  Following a recipe in our fondue book, I modified it by adding yogurt instead of cream; it worked wonderfully!  We’ve had chocolate covered strawberries for Valentine’s the last four or five years.  Why break tradition?

We also enjoyed an amazing cup of Greek coffee compliments of Matt.  It was a perfect way to end dinner!

Bringing it all together

All in all it took 2 ½ hours to get it all done.  I think the main reason it all came together so nicely was thanks to writing down the order before hand.  There’s a rhythm to these things, and if you get it right you get dinner done at the perfect time…otherwise you have odd things finishing at odd times and chaos ensues…trust me on that!  This is the first time I actually got it all right!

Sorbet came first so it had time to set in the freezer (the ice cream maker could only do so much).  Next came the ravioli filling, followed by actually putting the ravioli together.  I had pasta left from last weekend that needed a brief thaw and was ready to go; this saved me quite a bit of time!

As the ravioli water boiled and cooked I made the chocolate fondue and got it in the fondue pot.  After pulling my strainer from my pasta pan I used the pasta water for the bottom portion of my improvised double boiler for the Alfredo.  Between getting the water going and the fondue started I got the table set and got the salad ready.

Regardless of how you spend the holiday, have a Happy Valentine’s Day!

East Happy!

Recipe:

Herbed chicken filling

·         1 chicken breast (~½ lbs)

·         Chicken broth, enough to cover the breast

·         Rosemary, chopped fine

·         Thyme, chopped fine

·         2 eggs, separated

·         1/3 Cup Parmesan

·         4 tbs ricotta

~Put broth into a deep skillet or pan

~Boil the chicken in the chicken broth until cooked through, sprinkling with herbs before flipping the chicken breast

~Let chicken cool slightly; chop finely with knife

~Add ricotta, egg yolks and Parmesan to a medium bowl; mix well

~Add chicken.  If the filling is very dry, add the egg whites.  If it is still very dry add some of the stock.  If the filling is too wet it will run when cooked, so when in doubt do dry

~Put one scant teaspoon of filling per ravioli; this recipe will fill ~1lbs of pasta

Bountiful Baskets, Pad Thai and Kitchen Failures

Greetings!

This week is a Bountiful Baskets week.  With the regular basket and the guacamole pack we have even more goodies to play with.

With the produce from our basket, I now have a huge collection of yummy goodness that I need to use.  Some, like the celery bunch, I can do just about anything with.  Things like the spinach though…well…let’s just say it’ll be a new experience.  I’m thinking a ricotta spinach pasta filling…maybe spinach pasta and yogurt Alfredo…or spinach raviolis and yogurt Alfredo…hmm…we’ll have to see if there’s a grocery store run between now and then!

It’s going to be fun to cook based on a random share of food, rather than just meal planning.  It almost seems easier, limiting the possibilities of groceries. Working with new ingredients is quite fun, though.  We’ll see if they present too much of a challenge…but then, where would the adventure be if they didn’t?

Pad Thai

The first of the basket went to an improvised Pad Thai.  The recipe I used from The Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles called for sprouts, shrimp, peanut oil and a few other things I’m missing in my pantry and fridge.  So with a base idea I improvised the recipe, and I’ve included my version at the bottom for your dining pleasure.   Let me tell you, it’s a keeper!  The red pepper was amazing and was a great counter to the hot peanut sauce!!

Kitchen Failures

It’s been a while since I’ve had an epic kitchen failure.  My most memorable failure happened not long after I moved out of my parents’ home.  You would think that something like chicken in a crock pot would be something so simple it would be idiot proof.  I’m here to tell you that it wasn’t.  I still remember three days of scrubbing carbonized chicken out of that poor crock pot.  The experience taught me that simple doesn’t always mean it’s guaranteed to turn out, and that while crock pot liners may be on the expensive side, they’re more than worth their weight in gold.

I’ve heard of other memorable failures involving delicious smelling casseroles interred to the garbage thanks to shattered Pyrex more than once; then there’s another of my favorites, where I ran out of sugar while making a double batch of jalapeno jelly and substituted Splenda for the rest…this only works if you have the right pectin.  Lucky for me the jelly is used mostly as a barbeque sauce foundation or meat sauce, so the runny jelly was less detrimental that, say, a fruit jelly would have been.

I’m not as adventurous as my husband when it comes to throwing together a recipe, but I’d like to think it’s my style rather than fear of failure.  Our mantra is “if all else fails, there’s always pizza.”  We’ve failed to that more often than I can remember.  Not all of my failures are memorable, but the ones that are make great stories!

I’d love to hear any of yours if you’d like to share!  Not all kitchen adventures turn out well.  If they did, it wouldn’t be an adventure!

Eat Happy, and never fear failure!  There is always pizza!

Recipe:

Pad Thai

·         Olive oil (1/8 C -1/4C)

·         1 Chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces

·         1-2 cloves garlic, minced

·         1 bell pepper, chopped

·         2 eggs, lightly beaten

·         ¼ C peanut butter

·         4 T fish sauce or soy sauce

·         Hot  sauce

·         Garnish: bean sprouts, red pepper flakes, peanuts (chopped)

~Heat oil in a non-stick skillet or wok until it shimmers and just starts to smoke

~Add chicken and cook, stirring constantly, until cooked (the smaller the pieces, the faster they cook)

~Add garlic until aromatic (maybe 30 seconds)

~Add the bell pepper, stirring constantly; cook about 1 minute

~Pour egg in the pan; stir constantly (there’s a rhythm here).  Break up any clumps of egg that might form.  Egg should cook within a minute or so; when the egg is cooked…

~Add the peanut butter, fish sauce and hot sauce, stir constantly until the peanut butter is creamy and saucy

~Dish up, and top with any of the garnishes

Gil's Stock

Greetings

Last week got away from me, I was half way through a post but never got back to it.  This week I write as therapy; we lost a dear friend yesterday.  It was very sudden; she wrecked her car.  As we start the new week, the second of a new year, it really brings home how short life is.  This post is dedicated to her; she never lost faith that I'd quit being a picky eater, and slowly I'm getting there. 

Veggie Stock

Today I'm making a new batch of stock, partially because I need more and partially as therapy.  A lot of work and time and effort go into stock (so far I've only done vegetable stock, but I plan on making chicken stock soon) and it's very much worth it.  

There are a lot of recipes and a lot of disagreement on what to put in stock.  Some argue mellow flavors, so as not to overwhelm the soups.  Others argue it's a great way to use those trimmings we were just going to throw away.  Still others argue for only fresh, brand new ingredients.  In my opinion, it really depends on what you're going for.  Trimmings will do a cheaper stock, but it might not be as tasty as a stock made from ingredients purchased specifically for it.  As for flavor, I really think a good stock will accentuate a soup, as long as they don't conflict flavors.  The only way to know for sure what will work best is trial and error, and you'll find the one that works for you.

As a good example of variances in preference, I prefer rutabaga and leeks in my stock, where my mom prefers fennel.  Neither of us is a fan of the other's stock, yet they both taste amazing when we cook with them.  It's all about personal preference. 

Stock is the basis for so many staples, not just for soup.  You can add it to the crock pot when you make a roast; you can make gravy; you can add it to stir fry instead of water; you can poach meat; and the possibilities are endless.

What I do know is when you take the time to make stock, it makes all the difference; I still use canned/carton/bullion stock, but it's just not the same.  As hokey as it sounds, that homemade stock adds more love to your food; as therapy it works well too. 

Today's stock is posted below.  I never make it the same way twice, but it's a good place to start.  

Enjoy the stock.  May you enjoy it too Gil, wherever you are.  We miss you.

Eat Happy, and rest in peace.

Recipe:

Gil's Stock

• Mushrooms (4-5 large white)
• Shallots (4-5)
• Garlic (4 cloves)     
•  Leeks (3)
• Bell Peppers (1 red, 1 yellow)
• Celery (6 stalks)
• Baby Carrots (handful)
• Rutabaga (1)
• Ginger (1 small piece)
• Paprika
• Peppercorns (1 tablespoon, approximately)
• Soy sauce
• Rosemary  (1 fresh sprig)
• Thyme (3 fresh sprigs)
• Bay leaves (3-4 little ones, 2-3 large ones)

 ~Wash and roughly chop all veggies; put in an 8 quart stock pot

~Fill pot with water

~Top with paprika (to taste), peppercorns, sprinkle soy sauce (maybe 1/8 of the cup), and stir to incorporate.

~Bring to a boil; turn temp down to simmer and simmer for about an hour

~Let it cool; strain the stock and store.  It will keep in the fridge for maybe 5 days, and up to 3 months in the freezer.  If you have any old ice cube trays, you can freeze the stocks in phases.  Let them freeze overnight, put the cubes in a ziplock back and freeze another batch.  It works great.  Label the bag with what kind of stock and when you made it.