Chipotle Coleslaw

I've been experimenting a lot with coleslaw lately. Last night I made chipotle coleslaw to accompany barbecue sandwiches.

I will admit to not measuring a thing, but here's a ballpark recipe:

1 cup coleslaw mix (or shredded cabbage and carrots)
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 tablespoon mayo
1/2 tablespoon yogurt
black pepper, to taste
celery salt, to taste
1/2 chopped canned chipotle pepper

Combine all ingredients (except coleslaw mix/cabbage) in a medium bowl. Add the slaw and enjoy with your favorite sandwich or as a spicy side dish.

Broccoli Pesto

I didn't take any pictures of this dish because I didn't decide to blog about it until today.

You see, I've been neglecting my blog responsibilities and that's not right. I'm giving a presentation about social networking and part of my presentation is about blogs. I intended to tell people that you should blog about things that you're passionate about, and feel like I should lead by example.

Without further ado, here is last night's dinner, taken from the most recent Vegetarian Times, but altered. It was almost the perfect light, spring meal but it was a little heavy on the garlic. I woke with a fierce garlic taste in my mouth despite a thorough brushing of my teeth last night.

Ingredients:
6 T hazelnuts
2 c broccoli
A lot of parsley (I always prefer not to measure herbs)
2 T olive oil (the original recipe called for 3 times as much!!)
1/4 c or so mint leaves
Zest of 1/2 a lemon
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 garlic cloves (I'm guessing. I originally used 5 and it was way too much)
12 oz farfalle (bow tie) pasta

Toast the hazelnuts for a few minutes over medium heat, being careful not to burn.

Boil broccoli in a large pot for 3 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon and reserve cooking water. Cook pasta according to directions in cooking water.

Put everything (except pasta) in a food processor or blender to pulverize until it is pesto consistency. You might have to cut the broccoli up a little first to ensure even processing.

Drain the pasta but reserve 1/4 cup of water. Mix reserved water, pasta, and pesto, serve and enjoy!

An Ode to Salsa

First, I want to apologize for abandoning this blog for a number of months. I'll try to better. I still love food (and eat it every day), so I'll try to share some thoughts with my loyal readers more often about the foods I love.

My newest obsession: salsa! Homemade or store bought, this stuff is just so damn versatile. I of course have salsa nearly every week with burritos but pretty much relegated it to that.

What changed my opinion about salsa? The opening of a Trader Joe's near my house.

First there was the 3 pepper salsa. The Jar and I love this salsa in a grilled cheese sandwich (with sprouts too if we have any on hand).

Now I've discovered the garlic chipotle salsa, a deliciously thin and flavorful concoction. As soon as I opened it last night I knew it would be delicious in so much more than burritos. I enjoyed a few spoonfuls today in some leftover three bean soup. Delicious!

How many other ways can I incorporate more salsa into my diet? (Probably not the healthiest goal.) Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments or tell me about any of your favorite salsas...

Quick lunch lentil salad

There's no picture today because I just engulfed the salad, but I will share this quick and easy recipe I threw together today for my lunch. I found myself with an excess amount of lentils after making the lentil and rice pilaf from this month's vegetarian times. Paired with some pre-shredded carrots and some parsley that the Jar was kind enough to cut for me this morning, this salad is a pretty quick and easy throw together for lunch.

Ingredients:
About a cup of lentils
Small handful of chopped parsley
1/4 cup or so shredded carrots
1-2 Tablespoons soft-ish cheese (I used blue because that's what we had but goat or feta would have been delicious)
Balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic powder and salt and pepper to taste.

Mix together salad ingredients in a lunch-ready container and whisk together vinegar, oil, and seasonings in separate bowl. Combine and enjoy!

Microwave Dinner

Tonight the Jar and I had these "Refried Bean Poblanos with Cheese" for dinner. We picked up some Poblano peppers at the farmer's market (Wegman's never has a good pepper selection and the ones at the farmers market looked and smelled soo good).

We made a few substitutions in the dish - I used regular white rice instead of boil in bag rice, at the end Jar put them in a pan to melt the cheese and to char the peppers a bit, and we served them with sliced avacado, sour cream, and hot sauce. They were quick, easy, and delicious. A delightful new way to enjoy poblanos.

Herbs

A few weeks ago I picked up a packet of chive seeds and a packet of basil seeds. I wasn't expecting much; we've tried unsuccessfully to grow herbs in our last few apartments. Luckily, our new place has much better light and outside space for the plants.

They've gotten quite impressive over the last few weeks (thanks to a lot of rain).



Special note to GarbageVan fans - the above pot was rescued from a nearby dumpster shortly after moving into our new place.

Pan Roasted Herbed Vegetables in a Tomato Basil Sauce over Penne (aka Weekly Spaghetti)

The Jar and I have two dishes that we eat every single week: burritos (as previously mentioned) and tomato based pasta (referred to as spaghetti). The reason why we started planning our meals week by week was actually that we found ourselves eating pasta far too often. It's delicious and requires little work (especially if using a canned sauce).

For this week's pasta we had fresh zucchini from the farmer's market, a red bell pepper, and sweet onion. I (inadvertently) cooked the veggies at a high heat for a few minutes and this resulted in a nice roasted texture. The veggies are seasoned with a generic Italian seasoning that we inherited when some family members moved away, but is essentially oregano, basil, and rosemary.
The veggies were then cooked with jar tomato sauce and served over penne.

Burritos

We have burritos once a week for dinner. They're quick, they're delicious, they're flexible. While there are a variety of different ways to make vegetarian burritos, I prefer mine without fake meat or bizarre vegetables (broccoli should never be in a burrito).

My favorite burritos contain:

• tortillas - the ones you have to cook yourself are the best
• beans - canned or otherwise
• sour cream - I absolutely love Organic Valley Lowfat
• hot sauce - Cholula is my all-time favorite (I once considered buying a 1/2 gallon...)
• salsa
• cheese if you want
• avocado if you have it

Bagels on the Mount

I love bagels. New Jersey is a great place to find good bagels, but Middlebury, Vermont is too, as this very old student review of the Middlebury Bagel and Delicatessen says. I'm particularly fond of the both the spinach bagel and the dill & cheddar bagel. YUM.
We packed up bagels (for the Jar and I) and a donut for Livia when we hiked Mt. Abe.

Yogurt

I've always wanted to make my own yogurt and finally got around to trying it this year when I found myself in possession of copious amounts of free time. Yogurt making doesn't take that much involvement; just dump milk into a pot and heat it up until it bubbles, then let it cool, and stir in some starter yogurt. It just me takes forever to heat up the milk because I don't want to burn it. A Saturday spent lazying around the house with a good book is the perfect time to put on a pot of yogurt to cook.

I've been using the recipe from this NY Times article. Whole milk makes delicious yogurt, skim milk makes a little too runny, but 2% works out just fine (although it isn't nearly as decadent as the stuff made with whole milk).
Here's a picture of my most recent batch:

Breakfast Burritos

I'll be posting this week about our recent trip to Vermont.

The first thing I wanted to share is something everyone else may know about but I just discovered: homemade breakfast burritos.

I've been aware of the ones you can get at McDonald's for a long time, but never bothered to try them (when I was eating meat the lure of the Egg McMuffin was too much for me and now I don't go to McD's very much).

I didn't photograph our breakfast burritos, they look pretty much like a burrito but with egg in them. In Vermont ours consisted of a single layer of egg, cooked omelet style, topped with sliced fresh peppers and tomatoes, sour cream, cheddar cheese, and a few dabs of sriracha sauce.

The ones we had this morning were essentially the same but without tomatoes and with a little onion. I've been known to eat nothing but different types of burritos for dinner for an entire week, so I'm quite excited to have the option to have nothing but burritos for breakfast as well.

Van's Road Trip Lentil Salad

Just a short post today as we run off for a fun weekend in Vermont.

The lentil salad that I got at Bon Appetit last week inspired me to make this salad. I have made the lentil salad from the "Great Healthy Food for Strong Bones" cookbook*, but Jar doesn't like it quite as much as I do, so I decided to make it a little different, borrowing heavily on the suggested dressing from that book.



Ingredients:

• about 1/2 a bag of dried lentils (I used Goya because they're cheap)
• a 2 inch log of goat cheese
• 1/3 of a sweet onion
• 1/4 green bell pepper
• 4-5 baby carrots
• 1 tomato
• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• mustard powder
• garlic powder
• mustard powder
• dash of paprika
• salt + pepper

Method: Cook the lentils in plenty of water until tender - about 15-20 minutes. Immediately crumble in the goat cheese and stir it around until it melts. Put the onion, bell pepper and carrots in a food processor if you have one and process until smooth. Otherwise chop finely. Seed and chop the tomato. Add all veggies to the lentils. For the dressing mix together (to taste) the remaining ingredients.

*for those of you interested, this is an awesome book. I got on sale at the used bookstore in Cleveland, and it looks like you can find it on Amazon for about a dollar. Just read "strong bones" as "lots of cheese." :-)

Oral Surgery Diet

No photos today, just a brief documentation of some (mostly) delicious food that I've eaten since losing the ability to chew with my front teeth last week.

Immediately after the surgery the Jar took me to get a bunch of prescriptions filled and we grabbed some lentil salad and rice pudding at Bon Appetit in the Princeton Shopping Center. I had never been there before and found it to be a delightful (if not pricey) place. The best part of the lentil salad was the goat cheese chunks, the worst part was the big bits of red pepper, which I would normally find delightful but couldn't eat just yet. The rice pudding was incredibly delightful and made me reminisce about the now defunct Pudding on the Rice in Provo. (If any readers out there would like to start a rice pudding cafe, please do so near my neighborhood!)

After settling in to my new post-oral surgery life we made a trip to my favorite grocery store (Wegman's) and loaded up on instant mashed potatoes. Yes, I know I could have just made mashed potatoes but I was craving the salty deliciousness and small amount of work required from the instant variety. We stocked up on other predictable items like a giant jar of applesauce and instant pudding.

The two things that got me through the last week with some semblance of nutrition were smoothies and oatmeal. Having oatmeal at breakfast (thanks Jar!) provided a nice start to my day, especially in the few days after surgery when I would wake up groggy and swollen.

Smoothies consisted of some combination of the following: frozen strawberries, frozen peaches, fresh cherries, fresh blueberries, banana, yogurt, and orange jucie. I managed to make an outstanding number of these smoothies and mixed up the ingredients enough to keep it interesting.

There you have it - a detailed description of most of what I've been eating in the last week. Man, I love how easy the internet makes narcissism.

Tofu Stir Fry Experiment

Last night the Jar and I decided to use up some leftover veggies and tofu and make a delicious stir-fry. This was our first attempt at improvising a stir fry recipe. I've been trying to make my own recipes more these days and we have enough experience with stir fry (we had a year or so of eating almost nothing but stir fry) that I thought I would give it a shot. Jar wanted something spicy, so we added a serrano pepper to the mix and some chili garlic sauce to the sauce. This is really quite easy and you could substitute any bottled or prepared sauce you like.


Ingredients:
Peanut oil
1 block of extra-firm tofu
Assorted vegetables including: broccoli, carrots, onions, zucchini, bean sprouts, hot peppers (optional)
garlic
ginger

Sauce:
soy sauce
mirin
chili and garlic sauce
peanut oil
cornstarch
water

First fry the tofu in peanut oil over medium heat until it is nice and brown on the outside. Remove the tofu from the pan with a slotted spoon.


The peanut oil will add a really nice flavor to the tofu. You'll want to make sure you have all of your vegetables chopped to the size you want them and your sauce put together because the stir fry goes pretty quickly.

Next, add more oil to the pan (peanut or vegetable), fry the onions, hot pepper (if using) and any ginger over medium high heat for a few minutes. Add any other vegetables and fry for a few minutes longer.


When you're comfortable with the crunchiness of your vegetables, return the tofu to the pan, add the sauce and cook for a few minutes longer until the sauce thickens, serve with rice, and enjoy!

Breakfast for Dinner Party

Jar and I recently celebrated the successful completion of his general exams (known as qualifying exams at normal schools) by throwing a breakfast for dinner party. As you can tell from the first post on this blog, Jar and I love breakfast and we particularly love pancakes. Since I spend the weekends perfecting my pancake craft, I thought there would be no better way to celebrate than sharing these delicious breakfast treats.

I found a recipe for this "Pumpkin French Toast Brulee"in a local New Jersey newspaper. I was quite hesitant to try "newspaper food," but by all accounts it turned out delicious. I will not even attempt to post a recipe here, in case anyone who ate it is reading. Let's just say that both whole milk and cream were involved. Oh, and 8 or so eggs...


As previously mentioned, pancakes were also served. Here I am working at my craft. Special thanks to Eliza for buying us that wonderful griddle for our wedding. It has tremendously improved my pancake-making ability.


Everyone claimed to love the pancakes. Three varieties were on the menu: chocolate chip, banana chocolate chip, and blueberry. All were made with buttermilk. Luckily for me everyone was pretty much stuffed by the time the blueberry ones were finished, so I indulged in quite a few.

We also served up some delicious "spicy home fries" from our favorite Bengali cookbook. I had planned on offering eggs to order as well as waffles, but the amount of food was already as much as many could handle.

The drink of the night was coffee, mostly Irish. We recently discovered St. Brennan's Irish Cream but had some Godiva stuff as well thanks to Kelsey. Tony did a little research on real "Irish coffee" and brought a bottle of real Irish whiskey.

It was a fun night and hopefully we can do it again in the near future. Congratulations to the Jar for remaining gainfully employed!

Doughnuts from Strangers

On a recent expedition to the great Midwest, I was faced with a moral dilemma.

I was on the way back from a late-ish concert with some friends, D and T. We were feeling like we were way too old be out that late (approximately 11pm) and just wanted to catch the next train home. What could go wrong at a metro station late at night, you ask?

A group of middle aged football fans who had been partying way more than us crashed our lethargic wait for the train. A very nice (very drunk) man who was charged with carrying the doughnuts for the group had obviously tired of this grave responsibility and begged us to help him out by taking a couple. D and I showed no interest whatsoever (obviously raised to avoid taking candy from strangers), but drunken doughnut carrier found a friend in T. He perked up when offered a doughnut and somehow ended up with the entire box. Needless to say the rest of the group was quite miffed when they saw T on the train with their doughnuts.

Would you eat doughnuts from a drunken but harmless middle aged man you had just met on the train? I thought that I wouldn't... and didn't all night. But the lure of those glazed, sugared, trans-fat free doughnuts was too much for me when I awoke in the morning. I ate two train doughnuts. This is a shame I must now live with forever...

Pancakes!

Pancakes are one of my favorite breakfast foods. I've tinkered with this recipe to make it lower in sugar and fat. Spread peanut butter over your finished pancakes for extra protein.

Ingredients
1 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
1 large egg
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vegetable oil

In a large bowl mix together flour, baking powder, and sugar. In a separate bowl beat the egg and stir in the milk and vegetable oil. Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients, taking care not to stir too much. Pour 1/4 cup (for smaller pancakes)or 1/2 cup (for larger pancakes) onto a greased griddle or pan. Flip when the pancakes start to form bubbles and serve with maple syrup or peanut butter.

Variations:
Chocolate chip pancakes - just add 1/3 cup of chocolate chips to dry ingredients
Banana pancakes - add 1 mashed banana to wet ingredients
Chocolate chip banana pancakes - add both!