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I’m very glad that I went back to cooking finally.  The udon noodles and bread were very good but I needed something more substantial and special.  I felt pretty bad for my busy husband too, though he would gladly eat pasta with broccoli and peas/beans every day.  A broccoli tofu sandwish would make a good snack for him.  After I made the first comeback soup - potato quinoa chowder, he commented, “now that’s something that smells really homemade.”  I was very happy to hear that.  I got the recipe from Laura Jesser’s “Eden in the Kitchen”.  Do check out Laura’s blog which is full of wonderful photos and great recipes.
The only thing I did differently is to use bok choy instead of cooked kale and I didn’t puree half of the soup at all.  I love the soft little chunks of potatoes in the chowder.

This is a very simple dish.  We’ve been really busy so I haven’t really cooked.  I’m still trying to get back into our regular routine.  Somehow I was craving for some Japanese noodles and nothing beats the easy-and-simple-yet-flavorful udon noodles.

Udon Noodles with Bok Choy and Seaweed
(serves 1)

1 pkg. udon noodles (cooking time according to the package instructions)
5 cups water
8-9 dried shiitake mushrooms
1/3 block extra-firm tofu, cubed
4 cups of baby bok choy, roughly chopped
Some Japanese seaweed (any type you like), torn into pieces
1 1/2 Tbsp. white miso
1 1/2 Tbsp. dark soy sauce
2 tsp. toasted sesame oil

1. Add dried mushrooms to the water in a pot and cook together.  Bring to a boil and then lower the heat to medium.
2. Add tofu cubes and stir in the miso.  Cook for 2 minutes.  One minute before everything is cooked, add bok choy.
3. Turn off heat when the noodles are done.  Add soy sauce, sesame oil and seaweed.  Stir.  Serve right away.

* Feel free to adjust all the ingredients to your own preference

(@#$@#!ing WordPress ate my first draft… I am royally cheesed, but will re-edit this again because I was really proud of what I had written… so now to recreate it…)

OK, since today was a snow day (and I mean SNOW DAY, 12-ish inches of blowing white stuff everywhere!), I’m once again punting and going with something I cooked. Once again this is a red pepper dish, but that uses up my red peppers, so I don’t expect to see many more of these. I also am including a Bonus Recipe at the end - but first, today’s dish, which I will call…

Red Pepper Curry Rice

I threw this together while making lunch today, since the kid can eat mac-and-cheese, but I can’t. This is another recipe that avoids dairy (I am lactose intolerant) and “white starch” (since I do not do well with high glycemic index stuff.), and this can also be made vegetarian (though I didn’t make it that way myself).

Prep Time: 10 mins

Cook Time: 10 mins

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp peanut oil (or canola oil)

1 yellow onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, diced

2 red peppers, diced

1 tsp curry powder (Penzey’s Hot Oriental Curry Powder is the best!)

1 Tbsp Soy Sauce (or Tamari, if you prefer)

1 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)

1 tsp Siracha (Thai Hot Sauce) (optional)

Cooked chicken (optional)

2 cups cooked rice (Quick Cook Brown Rice preferred - see Bonus Recipe at end!)

Directions:

Heat oil in medium frying pan over medium heat. (Peanut oil is recommended for a more asian flavor, but canola will do as well.) When oil is hot, brown garlic and onions for 1-2 minutes. Add red peppers and sautee for 4-5 minutes, until peppers are cooked through. Add curry powder, soy sauce, and red pepper flakes and.or Siracha sauce, if desired. You can also add chicken at this point, if you want some protein (I used 2 drumsticks or 1 thigh). Cook for a few minutes to mix flavors and cook down the soy sauce a bit.

Serve over rice, with additional soy sauce and/or Siracha if you like.

Bonus Recipe!

David’s Quick Cook Brown Rice

This is a recipe I came up with because my system really doesn’t like “white starch” like white rice, but I hate waiting for brown rice to cook. The rice ends up maybe a bit chewier than “normal” brown rice, but when it’s mixed with good toppings (like the dish above), I don’t even notice…

Because the whole point is to get more fiber in the rice, look for brown rice that has more fiber in it - you can find varieties with 3-4 g fiber per 1/4 cup serving (even cheap “house brand” brown rice can have this, even when Riceland, etc. may not…)

(Amounts for rice and water are given in proportions so that you can adjust for how much rice you want to make. Note that 1 part dry rice usually leads to 2 parts cooked rice, so 1/2 cup brown rice plus 3/4 cup water will end up as 1 cup cooked rice.)

Ingredients

2 parts high-fiber brown rice

3 parts water

1 Tbsp oil (peanut for Asian dishes, olive for Mediterranean dishes, or canola for whatever…)

Directions:

Measure out rice and put in pan, then water and put in pan. (If you do it this way, then you can use the same measuring cup for both without ending up with wet rice stuck in the cup…). Add oil, cover the pan, and place over high heat until it boils. Once the pan boils over, take the lid off, stir the rice, and then turn it down to MEDIUM-HIGH. (Yes, that’s medium high, not medium or low - this is where the quick cook part comes in.) Put lid back on pan tightly, and cook for 20-25 minutes, until the water is all boiled off… and voila! You have real brown rice in just 25 minutes!

By day I am an academic matchmaker, which is to say, college counselor. Tonight I helped give a presentation to my school’s junior class and their parents. I tell them that one of the ways they can help themselves in the college search process is to focus on those elements over which they have some control. This is a challenge. For many students, it’s easier to think about the fact that there are more high school seniors this year than there were last year, or about that C they got in AP Biology last year. Making a commitment to boring stuff like starting early, visiting schools, and meeting deadlines is harder, somehow. If you can be one of the students who submits their material on time, works with a good proofreader, and writes thoughtfully and from experience about what they like in a particular college, you’ll be WAAAY ahead of most people, I tell them. It should be easy, and for some students it is, but for many more… you can see it’s just not going to work that way for them.

Then there are the parents, who want instructions of a different kind. They want the recipe for admission to (insert impossibly selective nationally recognized school here). What they don’t understand is that recipes for admission to these schools don’t exist. The students who are achieving at that level are instinctive chefs, not cookbook readers. They’ll poke around in the local market, bring home some fresh spinach without any particular plan, remember an citrus-based dressing they once had on a salad somewhere, poke around in the cupboard, call a friend to ask about whether ginger thaws well, and come up with a amazing salad while still talking to their friend, in a conversation that by now has moved on to whether Obama will figure out a way to back out of his categorical resistance to mandates. No one can tell you the recipe to follow. What you need to follow is the thread of your life. (See William Stafford’s The Way It Is.)

I’ve been way too busy to make much of a creative effort again. I still have to think what to do for the third day. But anyway, here’s the improved recipe for a whole wheat bread made with the bread machine. The good thing about this recipe is that there is no refined sugar in it. I only used pure maple syrup.

To make a 1.5 lb loaf

1 cup+1.5 Tbsp. soy milk
2 Tbsp. canola oil
1 tsp. salt
1.5 Tbsp. maple syrup
3 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/3 tsp. bread machine yeast

OK, out of a bit of desperation, I am going to use some cooking I did today as my thing, just so I can make sure I have today covered. The first is what I threw together for brunch, the second was for a late lunch.

Ad Hoc Pepper Pasta Sauce

This was thrown together on the fly for a late breakfast one morning, using what I had on hand. (I would normally never use Oscar Meyer bologna for a dish like this, but the kids ate all the pepperoni during the D&D game the previous weekend…!) This dish has no dairy, and uses high fiber whole wheat pasta to reduce the glycemic index of the final result.

Ingredients:

2 red bell peppers

1 green bell pepper

3 cloves garlic

2 small red onions

1 Tbsp Olive Oil

Thyme, Basil, Parsley, or other Italian spices

4 oz bologna, salami, pepperoni, or similar meat (FYI: one slice commercial bologna = 1 oz)

4 oz (2 servings) whole wheat pasta (spaghetti, linguine, etc.)

Directions:

Dice garlic and red onions, and set aside together in a bowl.

Dice peppers, keeping some seeds if you want some extra heat, and set aside in a bowl.

Cut bologna or other meat into small pieces, about 1/2″ squares.

In a medium pan, heat Olive oil over medium heat. When oil is hot, add onions and garlic, and sautee until tender, about 5 mins. (You can also do this over med-high heat for as much as 10 mins to get the onions more carmelized.)

When onions are cooked as you want them, add peppers, and sautee until cooked, about 7-10 mins. (Be sure to turn down the heat to medium if you did the carmelized onions…) Add spices at this point if you prefer a more mellow flavor; for a stronger taste, add them with the meat in the next step.

Once peppers are cooked through, add the meat, stirring briskly to mix in into the rest of the dish. Continue cooking for another 5-10 minutes, depending on how you want the meat done.

Cook pasta according to package directions, and drain in a colander afterwards.

Serve pepper dish over the pasta, it should provide at least two servings worth. (One could add parmesan cheese as well, but this is contra-indicated for the lactose intolerant… *grin*)

Chicken Pepper Pasta Soup

This recipe uses the makings from the Ad Hoc Pepper Pasta Sauce to “zing up” some chicken soup, and adds whole wheat pasta for some high-fiber carbs. A balanced meal in every bowl! (Well, at least on the way there…)

Ingredients:

3 quarts (12 cups) chicken broth (the real thing is much preferable to boullion for this recipe)

One batch Ad Hoc Pepper Pasta Sauce (see above)

8-12 oz whole wheat pasta

8-12 oz chicken, deboned and skin removed (I used 1 thigh, 2 wings and two drumsticks)

Hot sauce (optional)

Directions: 

Cook pasta according to package directions and drain well in a colander.

Bring broth to a boil in a medium soup pan (~1 gal). Add Ad Hoc Pepper Pasta Sauce ingredients, deboned chicken, and cooked pasta. Continue cooking for 5 minutes to let flavors blend. Add hot sauce, if desired.

Enjoy!

Unfortunately, my first entry is a little lame. I simply created a dish from my pantry and fridge, out of necessity. It was very yummy and satisfying, but not like what I planned - I had wanted to write something about my favorite books for the first entry. But I was too busy to sit down for a couple of hours to organize my thoughts. I’ll try harder in the next few posts.

The Really Everything Casserole
(serves 2-3) - feel free to adjust the amounts of the ingredients according to your pantry situation

3 Tbsp. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cups chopped celery
1 Granny Smith apple, diced
1 stale roll with sunflower seeds, cubed
1 small carrot, peeled and diced
1/2 zucchini, chopped
3/4 cup English peas (pea pods), ends discarded and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 cup quinoa
2/3 (14 ounce) can butter beans
1 tsp. sage
3/4 tsp. rosemary
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
3 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1/2 tsp. salt

1. Over medium-high heat, heat up the olive oil for a minute, then sauté garlic, onion, celery, and apple until everything is lightly caramelized. Add zucchini and pea pods and sauté for a minute or two.
2. Add bread cubes, sage, rosemary, cinnamon and black pepper. Cook for 3-4 minutes until bread gets toasty. Add quinoa and mix well. You should see most vegetables and bread get coated with quinoa. Cook for 2 more minutes.
3. Preheat the oven to 350F.
4. Pour in the vegetable broth and stir well. Bring to a boil and then cover to simmer for 20 minutes. When the quinoa is mostly cooked, add butter beans. Cook for 5 more minutes. Add salt to taste.
5. Bake in a deep casserole dish for 40-45 minutes.

See this and more vegan recipes (and other stuff) in my Vox blog.