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." :-)