Archive for the 'vegetarian' Category
Oh it was a tomato soup and toasted cheese week, it really was. Chased down with a big juicy zin.
I wished after this that someone would give me a bath, read me some stories and tuck me in bed. And tomorrow morning, I want cartoons and a bottomless bowl of Harvest Crunch.
I wanted this the minute I saw it. It turned out to be a perfect use for the roasted tomatoes I so thoughtfully refrained from eating straight off the baking sheet and froze to use in future soups and salads. They met with their intended destiny! Yay me.
I was too lazy to follow a recipe, but this is the great thing about soup – you don’t really need to follow one. Throw stuff in that pot, get started on the wine, and everything will come out hunky-dory. Especially when there’s toasted cheese on top. The original called for a bit of grated onion in the toasted cheese part, and I kind of wish I hadn’t skipped that part – next time I’ll grate the onion for the soup, and save some for the sandwiches. Contrary to how the above photo must look – like marbled cheese – this wound up making delicious use of cheese ends – aged cheddar and a nutty white cow’s milk cheese we got at Kensington market and I wish I could remember the name of.
Writing this, I’m thinking a spoonful of pesto in the soup would have been great, too. Or spread on the toast before scattering it with grated cheese.
Roasted Tomato Soup with Open-faced Toasted Cheese
canola or olive oil
a big dab of butter
1 onion, chopped or grated (if grated, reserve a bit)
a few garlic cloves, crushed
lots of roasted plum tomatoes (about a dozen?)
a can of fire-roasted or diced tomatoes
1 L chicken or veggie stock
a splash of cream
salt and pepper
Toasted Cheese:
thickly sliced crusty bread
butter
grated cheese
In a soup pot, heat a drizzle of oil and a blob of butter and sauté the onion and garlic until soft. Add the tomatoes – roasted and canned – and the chicken stock. Bring to a simmer and let cook for half an hour, until slightly thickened and everything is soft. Add a splash of cream and whiz it all with a hand-held immersion blender right in the pot, off the heat. Season with salt and pepper and divide between oven-proof bowls set on a rimmed baking sheet.
Meanwhile, toast the bread, butter it, and set atop the soup. Sprinkle with a bit of grated onion (if you like) and grated cheese. Run under the broiler for a couple minutes, until melty and golden.
October 28 2011 | soup and vegetarian | 11 Comments »
The above (and below) is an illustration of what can happen when your fridge is full and yet lacking inspiration, when you drag yourself to your computer and unenthusiastically type in “kale” because you have a sad bunch in your fridge and you think you should. And you’re just not that into said kale, even though you should be.
I came across this, and it turned into this. I made a batch of mayo (easy to do with a hand-held immersion blender – I’ll show you sometime) then added an enormous clove of sticky garlic, lots of pepper, an extra squeeze of lemon juice and lots of freshly grated Parmesan, and blitzed it again.
As I tossed it with the kale it occurred to me that bacon would do well here. Even better – prosciutto: when you cook it up it turns crisp and salty without being greasy and chewy, like bacon can be (not that there’s anything wrong with that… except when there is) and because it’s so thinly sliced and lean it takes minutes to crisp up in a hot pan with the merest slick of oil.
It would have been fab as-is. But I couldn’t help but fry up an egg in the pan I used for the prosciutto, and set it on top.
The end.
October 20 2011 | salads and veg and vegetarian | 13 Comments »
Nothing special to report for Mother’s Day, I’m afraid. I woke up early, with that morning-after dread triggered by the realization I went a little overboard on party nibbles (spring rolls! ginger pork! curried chicken toasts!) and birthday cake (the kind with the cheap shortening icing that coats your mouth and would make swell undereye cream!) last night. I had a bit of a food hangover. Mike had another kind, which is why he didn’t stir until after I had long since woken up with W, and had already made him breakfast to eat while watching Dora (the Mothers’ Day special). Humph.
I had to work today, anyway. So I got the kitchen clean enough to work on recipes and photos for a couple magazine assignments, and I went shopping for a long list of ingredients for my class at Red Deer College tonight. I was feeling a little sorry for myself, and so made a grainy salad to bring on the drive, and to eat before class, lest I talk myself thru a drive thru or ravenously devour half the finished products at our baking class. This has been on my mind for a few days:
Melissa W on 06 May 2011 at 12:59 pm: I make a similar incarnation of this salad using quinoa, sautéed leeks, celery, lemon/olive oil, feta and cranberries. Oh, and toasted pine nuts or toasted almonds. Glorious! It is magical. We call it Magic Salad, in fact.
I could not not try this. It is indeed magical. I hope I did it justice. I tried not to eat all the crispy fried leeks straight out of the pan. Note to self: think of other things to do with crispy leeks.
You won’t need a recipe, really. Just cook up some quinoa (see below), and cut the white and pale green part off the bottom of a leek, cut it in half lengthwise and rinse it well, getting in between all the layers. Thinly slice it and saute in a drizzle of oil and blob of butter until golden and crispy. Cool and add it to the cooled quinoa along with a finely chopped celery stalk, half cup crumbled feta, quarter cup (ish) dried cranberries and toasted pine nuts or almonds (walnuts would do well too, I think); dress with olive oil (I thought extra-virgin was a bit overwhelming, but that’s just me), lemon juice and freshly ground pepper. Yum. Thanks Melissa!
(To cook quinoa, rinse it well under cool water in a fine sieve, then cook in a pot of boiling salted water over medium heat until tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes. Just like you’d cook pasta. Drain well, return to the pot, put the lid back on and let it steam – this will produce fluffy quinoa – until cooled.)
May 08 2011 | grains and salads and vegetarian | 18 Comments »
I thought by now I might have come back to the ground, having read every single one of your incredibly kind and thoughtful comments (and emails, and tweets), many of them more than once, and known exactly what to say. But I can’t seem to come up with more than one-syllable words, like wow. And thanks! And sniff. And then I go back to read some more. What an amazing gift, all this. I didn’t think it was possible to get choked up when I’m not even talking. You’ve gone and blown my mind.
Honestly, you have all relieved me of an enormous weight I didn’t even realize I had been carrying. The weight of my weight, I suppose. Collectively lifted it up and carried it away. I just wish I could pull up a chair and continue each and every conversation that has started here. I might try to take a stab at it, I think. I have a plan. I want to have a potluck, just for us, and I want as many of you as are able to come. Would you be up for that? Life’s too short not to.
Meanwhile, guess what? I made dinner. It’s funny how easily I forget that there is plenty of good, healthy food out there that I love as much as the not so good for me stuff. It has become ingrained somewhere deep that junk food will make me happy. It did as a kid, when we weren’t really allowed to have it, and I became somewhat obsessed. I yearned for the Hostess Fruit Pies and Ding Dongs I saw advertised on the backs of Archie comics, and when I finally made it to the states and got my hands on some, my brain refused to believe they weren’t as spectacular as I had built them up to be.
When I was pregnant with W, I lost my appetite all but entirely. For real. It was weird. I didn’t recognize myself. I finally understood those people who get caught up in stuff and forget to eat. How do you forget to eat? Do you forget to breathe, too? The concept has always been inconceivable.
And when W was born, everyone told me my appetite would come back. It didn’t. During those first few weeks even with the lack of sleep and breastfeeding I wasn’t that hungry. I panicked. One day there was a bowl of peanut M&Ms on the kitchen counter, and I didn’t want any. I told myself to just give them a try, that once I was eating them I’d remember that I really do like chocolate, and they would be delicious, and everything would be OK.
That must have been the sleep deprivation talking.
The interesting part of all this is that my connection with food runs so deep, I don’t recognize myself without an appetite. If I was given the option to flip some switch that dulled my hunger, made me uninterested in food, I wouldn’t do it, no question. Not even if it simultaneously eliminated all my weight issues. I would not give it up, not ever. No question. I choose this appetite.
Knowing that makes me feel better.
Which is all to say I have to consciously remind myself that I do actually like healthy food. I’m not 10 anymore, I do not gag at the sight of pan-fried fish. I DO NOT BEG FOR WONDER BREAD ANYMORE. I’m particularly hip on grainy salads, and so I’ve decided to make a habit of having one or two in the fridge at all times so that there’s always something proper for lunch or dinner or a quick nibble. Being prepared is a very Good Thing; hungry Julie is very convincing and can easily talk the rest of me into eating too much and starting tomorrow. The habit of starting tomorrow (and thus eating as much as I can tonight, in order to get it out of my system) is a big reason why I weighed over 300 pounds in the first place. Some days, just not falling into the “I’ll start tomorrow” trap is considered a triumph.
Oh! I also went to Pilates today! I did. Oy.
I sure can ramble over a rice salad. Especially when feeling speechless.
You won’t need a recipe for this salad, but more a general formula. My mom and I came up with it years ago, for a baby shower, I think. Sometimes we make it with orzo (small rice-shaped pasta) and sometimes with rice. It would be fine with brown rice, although this time I used white Jasmine rice.
Cook a cup or two of it as you normally would, and cool it completely. Toss it in a bowl with lots of sliced or torn fresh spinach (more than it looks like there is in the photo above), and a small chunk of slivered purple onion, some crumbled feta and the grated zest of a lemon. Add a drizzle of olive oil and the juice of the lemon, and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Adjust quantities of each as you see fit. Enjoy, and keep in the fridge if you need something to dip into.
May 06 2011 | salads and vegetarian | 39 Comments »
It’s been hard to post recipes this week – I haven’t been able to get into it. I keep coming here and not knowing what to say. What is there to say about soup when there’s so much going on? I’ve found comfort in cooking during the after-school hours – our dinnertimes have been spent with the news on, the end of the day an opportunity for a more in-depth update on the threat of nuclear disaster, relief efforts hampered by snow and freezing weather and aftershocks, and near hourly re-estimates of the number of people missing and displaced. Every morning the alarm clicks on to the CBC and a grim update on a crippled nuclear plant, the dozen souls left to try to bring it under control, and the looming threat of nuclear disaster, followed (or led by, depending on the urgency of the situation that hour) by reports of violence in Libya. It seems impossible that the world is still humming along. But deadlines must still be met, appointments kept, laundry done. The house is still a mess and everyone’s gotta eat.
I know we’ve all been struggling to wrap our heads around the scope of the devastation, the suddenness of it all, and what can possibly be done to help. I’ve had plenty of calls and emails and tweets asking if I’m planning round 2 of Blog Aid. Excellent question. But it seems different now than it was a little over a year ago. The original book was for Haiti; I enlisted the financial support of Blurb and West Canadian Graphics, and the Canadian government stepped in to match donations. I don’t have all that backup this time. And though I could get moving and try to do it all again, I think there’s a perception that money isn’t going to make as much of an impact this time. People aren’t jumping for their wallets as eagerly as they were last year. (Not that I’m discouraging donations! I’m certainly not. It just seems to be the way it’s going.) Anyway. I’ve been involved in a similar project that is now getting underway, which you’ll surely hear about soon, and so there’s that. And I keep having ideas, but often they’re silly. I had one on Monday morning that made perfect sense to me, so long as it was bouncing around inside my head. When I talked about it it seemed silly, and so I haven’t done much to get it off the ground.
Also, it’s been a busy week. There was a bout of what may or may not have been food poisoning, but was miserable nonetheless. There have been deadlines and tests and grown-up stuff, and frustration that I still don’t know anywhere near as much about this world-wide-internet as I should by now. (Never have I been so annoyed at myself for not paying full attention in elementary school when they taught us basic programming in the computer lab full of Commodore 64s. I could have been a pioneer in all this!) I should at least know basic coding-if I did, my plan would have gone live by now. I was going to launch it Thursday. It’s Friday. And then part of me wonders if it really is silly or if anyone will even get it. And then I distract myself with emails and passed deadlines. It has all fallen out of focus.
All I know is this: it’s not helping any of us to be walking around feeling helpless, hopeless, and heavy-hearted. As someone somewhere once said: we can’t help everyone, but we can help someone. I think besides donating what we can to the cause, we need to channel our efforts into helping ourselves and those around us. Doing little things to make life happier wherever we can can have an astonishing ripple effect. Just like plate tectonics, and the way subtle, often undetectable shifts in the earth can have tremendous effects on its surface.
OK, so now you know the direction I’m going here. I’m going to get to the part with the soup, and continue explaining my perhaps-not-so-brilliant-but-then-again-maybe idea tomorrow.
So I went to help Dan at one of his Kick the KD classes last night. He has a great bunch of UofC students he’s teaching how to cook. For free. What a guy. The class was great, even if they did make me feel ancient. (Not intentionally, of course. The fact that I made a Cliff Clavin joke and no one had a clue who I was talking about – Dan included – didn’t help.)
So H, one of the students in the class, told me about a roasted pepper and butternut squash soup she made – an adaptation of a recipe she found in a yoga magazine (always wondered who read those) – and it sounded too good not to make. Of all the butternut squash soups of my life, I don’t think I’ve made one yet with roasted red pepper. Bonus: it’s not only vegetarian (if you use vegetable stock, of course), but vegan, even. Look at me! Eating vegan! And not in the form of a sticky cinnamon bun! (Which I suppose aren’t really vegan anyway with all that butter.)
Creamy Red Pepper & Butternut Squash Soup
adapted from H, who adapted it from a yoga magazine.
a drizzle of canola oil
1 onion, chopped
2 lbs butternut squash peeled and but into half-inch chunks
1 roasted red pepper
1 L chicken or vegetable stock
1 Tbsp. brown sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon (optional)
pinch grated nutmeg
salted green pumpkin seeds, to sprinkle on top
Heat oil in pot for a few minutes, then add the onion and cook until softened (5-7 minutes). Add the squash and cook for 5-10 minutes, stirring frequently until softened and getting mushy around the edges. Once it’s mushy-ish (H’s words), add the broth, cover and simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes. About 15 minutes in, add your chopped roasted red pepper. Add spices and sugar before putting into the blender to blend up. Use a hand towel or J cloth and hold the lid down, and be wary of ‘liquefy’ setting. (Alternatively, use a hand-held immersion blender right in the pot.)
Serve topped with pumpkin seeds.
March 19 2011 | freezable and soup and vegetarian | 10 Comments »
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