I love semester break. As a college instructor, it allows me to get more time to sleep in (if the dogs let me), re-commit to my exercise routine (I never really left it, just don't have enough time to do as many sessions as I'd like), and cook. Since I became a vegetarian right about the time this past semester took off, I haven't had nearly as much time to experiment with new recipes this past two months and change as I'd like, and especially since my cookbook retinue has just about doubled since then as well.
Over break I plan to spotlight a few of my new favorite recipes and cookbooks, as well as hone my repetoire. This week I am planning to cook through several recipes of seitan and compare, as well as start working on a little project of mine... collecting all my favorite, regular recipes in a binder for easy access. Each recipe has to be time tested (cooked at least 3 times) before landing a slot.
Today I'm making my favorite veggie split pea soup, a recipe from Robin Robertson's Vegetarian's Meat and Potatoes Cookbook, with a side of Brussels sprouts. Mmmmm. Both of these are new favorites from this year as well.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Favorites from 2010
I have done a lot of growing as a cook and a person over the course of this year. I discovered I actually liked vegetables. And salad. I became a vegetarian. I lost 17 pounds. I started doing theatre again after an absence from the footlights of over 13 years. I've taught some of my favorite classes so far and grown as a professor. I got a new puppy. It's been a grand year.
Yet since this is The Picky Gourmet and not The Picky Actor or Picky Prof, I've decided to recap some of my favorite new dishes that I've picked up this year.
Today I'm starting with what might be my favorite new comfort dish that I discovered this year which is as healthy as it is tasty, Colorful Kale Salad.
I've written before that my hubby and I decided this year to purchase a share in a CSA for the first time, and I learned a lot from doing so. I was forced to find recipes to make use of veggies I may not have decided to bring home on my own, and sometimes more than one or two recipes, in the case of veggies that seemed to come by the pound or the bushel. This is one of those recipes.
The original recipe came from a book called Greens, Glorious Greens by Joanna Albi and Catherine Walthers. It is a great little book that I found a variety of recipes for the generous greens I got this May and June, but Colorful Kale Salad, with a few tweaks, has by far seen the most action in my regular kitchen rotation. I now wonder how I ever lived without kale.
You start out with a large, flat and shallow pan. I use a cup or so of garlic broth, but the recipe uses water. I find that the garlic broth adds just a little extra depth of flavor, though when they were coming in our share too, I used a cut up garlic scape in water. Boil the water, and put in it the corn from about 1 cob and 1/2 cup of shredded or matchstick carrots. Place the lid on the pan and let it steam and simmer for 5 minutes. Then lift the lid, and place about 3 1/2 to 4 cups of kale on top, place the lid back down, and let it steam for 4 minutes. When it is done, serve right away with a slotted spoon to allow any leftover broth to remain in the pain, and sprinkle sea salt on the top to taste. This really makes enough for 2 or 3 as a side dish, but I put it all into a mixing bowl and eat it all at once. It's comforting, and cooked without added fat.
Kale has become a common ingredient in my kitchen, and although at first I thought I'd be overwhelmed by the stems I collected and froze to add to veggie stock, which I make home made weekly, I also discovered that my dogs love them too. When I cook kale they gather around my feet hoping for scraps. Any stems I reserve for stock which are left on the counter are liable to be stolen from that counter the moment my back is turned.
That is probably my favorite new dish of the year, especially when considering the nutrient to calorie ratio, but as I continue to reminisce, who knows what dishes might appear?
Yet since this is The Picky Gourmet and not The Picky Actor or Picky Prof, I've decided to recap some of my favorite new dishes that I've picked up this year.
Today I'm starting with what might be my favorite new comfort dish that I discovered this year which is as healthy as it is tasty, Colorful Kale Salad.
I've written before that my hubby and I decided this year to purchase a share in a CSA for the first time, and I learned a lot from doing so. I was forced to find recipes to make use of veggies I may not have decided to bring home on my own, and sometimes more than one or two recipes, in the case of veggies that seemed to come by the pound or the bushel. This is one of those recipes.
The original recipe came from a book called Greens, Glorious Greens by Joanna Albi and Catherine Walthers. It is a great little book that I found a variety of recipes for the generous greens I got this May and June, but Colorful Kale Salad, with a few tweaks, has by far seen the most action in my regular kitchen rotation. I now wonder how I ever lived without kale.
You start out with a large, flat and shallow pan. I use a cup or so of garlic broth, but the recipe uses water. I find that the garlic broth adds just a little extra depth of flavor, though when they were coming in our share too, I used a cut up garlic scape in water. Boil the water, and put in it the corn from about 1 cob and 1/2 cup of shredded or matchstick carrots. Place the lid on the pan and let it steam and simmer for 5 minutes. Then lift the lid, and place about 3 1/2 to 4 cups of kale on top, place the lid back down, and let it steam for 4 minutes. When it is done, serve right away with a slotted spoon to allow any leftover broth to remain in the pain, and sprinkle sea salt on the top to taste. This really makes enough for 2 or 3 as a side dish, but I put it all into a mixing bowl and eat it all at once. It's comforting, and cooked without added fat.
Kale has become a common ingredient in my kitchen, and although at first I thought I'd be overwhelmed by the stems I collected and froze to add to veggie stock, which I make home made weekly, I also discovered that my dogs love them too. When I cook kale they gather around my feet hoping for scraps. Any stems I reserve for stock which are left on the counter are liable to be stolen from that counter the moment my back is turned.
That is probably my favorite new dish of the year, especially when considering the nutrient to calorie ratio, but as I continue to reminisce, who knows what dishes might appear?
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Changes
It wasn't a tough decision to make, and looking back, it seems as if I was headed there all along. About a month and a half ago, I became a vegetarian.
How is this a pre-ordained path? I'll re-examine for you some of the steps that led me here. Keep in mind that I'm a picky eater to begin with. There have been a long list of things that I don't eat. I don't like eggs, and will only ate them when they disappeared into a baked good. Most times, I don't like ground beef. Chicken is often prepared in very boring, tasteless ways. I hate fish. I don't like sausage, and refused to try things that have sausage in it.
Additionally, I knew that animal products are generally high in fat, lower in nutrient density, and combine that with the poverty I experienced in my twenties, I am not as experienced in cooking meat, and tried to add to my anorexic cooking skills and repertoire with vegetables more than with meat. I did this by venturing into vegetarian, and even vegan cooking. I owned no fewer than 4 or 5 vegetarian/vegan cookbooks when I went veggie, and already was experienced enough to have favorites out of each book. My CSA membership this summer took me a bit further into these experiments as well, forcing me to cook more with veggies.
Finally, I love animals. I love my dogs. One of my hobbies is reading books about dog behavior and psych, and a lot of these books also add info about the intelligence, emotions, etcetera, concerning other animals including the kinds of animals that we eat in the standard American diet. This has slowly added to my knowledge of those animals, simmering away at my conscience. I read a couple books about pigs in particular. But when I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safron Foer this fall, I finally could not take it any more. The explicit passages about the common practices in slaughterhouses and the factory farming industry pushed me the rest of the way. As I sat crying about how live pigs are tortured by slaughterhouse workers, it was time. I became a vegetarian.
I have been experimenting with more new recipes, getting more new books, and learning a lot about nutrition as well as cooking in general. I've dropped another couple of pounds. I've learned about the American food supply system things that I wish I didn't know. But as I look back on the last few weeks, I don't miss meat. I've cut eggs out of my diet as well, and am still eating cheese and sour cream, but I'm trying to eat less of them, and attempting to find alternatives as much as I can. I'm not ready to be vegan yet, but I'm doing something now rather than nothing at all. I'm glad to have a kinder diet, a healthier diet, a greener diet.
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