Cooking away the cold ...

(updated)

LINK TO COOK BEHIND THE APRON
I have noticed other blogs I enjoy reading have been posting their 28 cooks "coming out". I did mine a few days ago, but wanted to add a link to it again.

Now back to food (my favorite subject)...
It is really cold here ..... like below zero cold and I'm not talking wind chill. BRRR! I live in an "extreme" (winter and summer temperature differences) weather area. As I was contemplating the ability to complain I decided to look through past blog entries to find warming thoughts, here is a link to a post I made in July when the thermometer was reading over 100 (and no not dry heat). I won't complain anymore. Instead I will begin to think different warm thoughts ... like crock pots and soup. The crock pot is god send, I love warm comforting food when I get home. Yesterday I made a recipe from Bryanna's Oct-Dec 2006 newsletter called LOCRO (a squash and vegetable stew). She didn't make it in the crock pot, but I did. I had it on low all day (about 8 hours) and it worked well. I used 2 3/4 cups mixed vegetables instead of the recommended corn and peas. I also made seasoned brown rice in the rice maker and refrigerated it for quick micro heating when I was ready to serve. Although the recipe looked simple and didn't stand out as exciting, it was excellent.... even DD said this is pretty good. It is pretty colorful too. I have a basket of four more butternut squash I want to use up so I'll be trying more recipes with them soon.

ON TO LUNCHES (Can you tell I'm having fun with these?)
This is a whole grain English muffin sandwich with one of Bryanna's crock pot steak patties / roasted red pepper and onion, a romaine salad with sprouts/ red pepper/ purple onion/ currants, homemade apple pie filling sprinkled with homemade granola, and "sushi" pickles that I made using a recipe from the book Summer in a Jar by Andrea Chesman. The pickles are made with large thin slices of ginger root and carrots and tastes just like the little pink pickled ginger slices on a sushi bar (yum).

The steak again only cut up with some seasoned brown rice, romaine salad with sweet corn relish (Andrea Chesman's book again, homemade using my home grown garden gooodies too), home canned pear slices that I didn't grow (no pear trees here) but bought in abundance from an organic Amish farmer, and strips of roasted peppers and onions to add to my rice and steak. The little red container has balsamic dressing for my salad.

Today's lunch. If you turn your head like you would to read a smiley you will notice that this lunch has a container of Stacey's pita chips, roasted red pepper dip from Marie Oser's Soy of Cooking, romaine salad with carrots and sprouts, a sorta trail mix container including roasted peanuts/sunspire m&m's/ currants, along with a banana which I intend to use as a "poker" to pick up the "trail" mix.
NOTE: The red pepper dip called for 2 cloves of garlic. I used two fresh cloves and let my magic bullet mixer whip it with the roasted red pepper, seasonings and tofu smooth. The garlic has come back to haunt. I really like to taste of this so the next time I make it I will roast the garlic with the red pepper.

Thanks to the Oser cookbook and then confirmed by Megan the Vegan I have been hankering mushrooms. My new Oser cookbook calls for ground chicken style gimme lean, which I have never bought before and I didn't want to make any from scratch so, I then decided to have something different for supper and prepared the mushrooms to use another time. I then remembered the mushrooms I made some time ago using brussell sprouts so I looked it up and decided these are what I would try again . . . . here's the link to my previous entry about them and ia link to the recipe included.

Since I bought a 24 ounce package of the nice stuffer size mushrooms I had plenty of stems and 1/3 of the package which I could make into another dish. A dish like Oser's creamy mushrooms sauce over pasta. I actually left the recipe out and asked DH to make it so supper would be ready when I got home tonight. We'll see how it turns out, DH is a sweetheart and said he would however I will c hop the carrots and onions this morning as a time saver for him this evening. I'm looking forward to it, will share pictures later.

No pictures of the pasta because DD chopped the carrots into a salad with romaine and used up the sliced mushrooms I had planned for the sauce also before DH could get on the pasta. Last night we had pita pizza and salad NOT the pasta. I also still have the mushroom caps for stuffed mushrooms, but intend to use them soon.

Black bean soup de-gassed... Read on

FEIJOADA LEFTOVERS: SOUP
I like this as much as I like feijoada (Brazilian Black Beans)! Basic seasoned black beans and rice with a salad isn't anything wonderful to photograph and neither are it's leftovers which is what this soup was created from ... but it's so pretty (in my humble and often argued against opinion) with the little sweet potato cubes and choped greens poking through. I ate myself a few bowls today. I served it along side some steamed brussel sprouts that I salted and sprinkled with balsamic vinegar. Humble and pleasing. . . I know a common ordinary vegetarian "po" man's meal (if he can grow sweet potatoes, that is). I used the Feijoada recipe from Bryanna Clark Grogan's Fiber for Life Cookbook (p. 115). In a footnote below the recipe she mentions the leftover idea for making the soup I did (only I didn't have leftover rice).

This meal was different than others because there were these two acorn squash that have been sitting around my kitchen screaming, "use me!", so they got just that today. I roasted 'em and stuffed 'em with my stew (temp 375 for 1 hour on old black ccokie sheet).

A dallop of soy sour cream to complete. Yum! That will teach those two old squash.

DE-GASSING BEANS
Here's a tip I picked up from Countryside magazine, it's about homesteading which I enjoy reading even though I do love every modern convenience I own. Someone wrote in with a question on how to de-gas beans and many people responded, some with ridiculous suggestions. One person wrote in claiming to be a chef at a Chacago upper class mexican restaurant, he said that he used the herb EPAZOTE when he cooked beans and customers have commented on how the food at his restaurant didn't make them gassy unlike other places they have eaten. This got my attention! I found the herb at Penzey's spices and use it regularly... I won't say it cures, but does help alot. I use double the serving portion listed on the spice bag and always follow a bean meal by eating a few slices of candied ginger.

Also, if my meal was distressing I drink a cup of fennel tea, made simply by soaking 1 Tbsp fennell seed in very hot water until it gets flavorful, stir and sweeten with stevia. I made ice tea with this in a quart jar also, 2 Tbsp seed in a tea ball soaked in hot water. Leave on the counter until room temp, refrigerate, drink as you please... I do this regualrly when I serve alot of beans and in the summer when we have alot of cabbage family veggies. DH now enjoys my brew and knows why I do this, before he just thought I could digest better than others (tee hee!).