dinners – Peaceful Reader

Holidays

{G.G.had to take a panorama shot before
we ate thus annoying her siblings just a bit}

I hope everyone had a very merry winter break. We had a lovely holiday together with all three kids at home. Kaylee came from Brooklyn, Tristan from Iowa City, and Groovy Girl emerged from her lonely only child funk to enjoy her siblings. It’s tough to be the youngest.

I’m enjoying this last little bit of break by catching up on sleep, on a few shows I like (This Is Us, Empire, and Atlanta), and end-of-the-year reading, more about that in my next post.

My refrigerator is full of leftovers so I do NOT have to worry about cooking for a few l-o-n-g days. Everything I made for our Christmas meal was fantastic! This is unusual my friends. Normally something goes wrong just by the law of averages. Prepping in the two days before helped me immensely. It’s a little weird to spread recipe love before you’ve actually made them so here is what worked:

Turkey brining is always the way to go. I brined it outside for about 24 hours in my grandmother’s crock with snow packed around the outside. I let the gorgeous 12-lb bird air rest in the fridge. It cooked in about 2 hours and it was very tender and flavorful with a crispy skin. I also thanked the bird for giving its life for us to sustain us. To counterbalance this meat at our table Tristan’s vegan girlfriend brought a Gardein turkey roll with it’s own gravy and it was good also. We’ve always loved to mix up our meals and almost everyone tried some of the turkey roll. I did not follow Emeril’s brining recipe to a T; just simplified it to the bare minimum. I did stuff the turkey as per his recipe though.

Wild Rice and butternut squash-huge hit. I will make this again and I have enough leftover for lunches. I forgot how much I like wild rice. The whole carrots-delicious as well.

I did a trial run on the sweet potato dish from Thug Kitchen and while I liked it, I didn’t think my people would love it so i scrapped that recipe for simple baked then smashed together. No brown sugar, no marshmallows; just the deliciousness of sweet pots. Love ’em.

Brussels sprouts were amazing. I just cleaned them, halved them (except for little ones), tossed them with coconut oil and olive oil, sea salt, pepper, and roasted them on a baking pan. They were good although I would have preferred them crispier. It is a fine line between almost burning them and crisp and I’ve crossed that line before. I served them with shaved parmesan on the side.

Clam Chowder was a huge hit on Christmas Eve but the oyster stew not as much. I don’t know if it was the recipe or just something I did; it was lacking the wow! factor.

Enchilada breakfast dish made everyone happy I think. It might have been the mimosas though. But you have to eat and I did play with this recipe adding in our regular green enchilada sauce and made only a 1/2 batch of the heavy cheese sauce. I didn’t need it to be THAT cheesy. We had a whole plate load of toppings as well; sour cream, avocados, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, and our own family-made salsa)

I love it when meals come together. It makes everyone happy to sit at the table and know that we are blessed to share food in the same space for just a few days. We are ready to rock another year even when we are not in the same place.

Books and food and so many other tidbits

Dance has taken over our life and when we are not at dance Groovy Girl is on my computer working on homework. 9th grade honors classes are pushing her and keeping her busy.

School has me super busy as I’m constantly tweaking lessons and working with our young leadership team. In between and sometimes because of school I’ve been reading some great books. Hansen’s 6th grade book club just finished The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich. This book is underappreciated. A few libraries in our district don’t even have copies!

It is a beautifully written story of a young Ojibwa girl and her family as they rotate through the seasons. The accelerated kids in my book club thought it was interesting and the book brought forth a lot of discussion.

At home I finished The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald; a fresh fun story about a young Swedish woman who travels to Broken Wheel, Iowa to meet her bookish pen pal. By the time Sara arrives her pen pal, Amy, has died. The very small town rallies around her and the results are often strange and bittersweet. I enjoyed this tale for its quirky cast of characters and all the book trivia.

My husband and I sometimes read books to each other and we recently finished The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. This is a psychological thriller and I’ve seen a lot of up and down reviews. We enjoyed it and love trying to figure out where the story is going. This one kept us guessing for a few plot twists. Next up we are going to read a classic thriller by Nancy Price-Sleeping with the Enemy.

I made the butternut squash soup, the potato and swiss chard dish and the butternut tabbouleh from my last blog post. All were delicious. Later tonight I’m going to make my stepmother’s zucchini bread for my husband because I have two that are oversized from our school garden. First I’m going to relax with some friends, music, and wine. Just the way to spend a Friday night. Groovy Girl made me dinner also; a veggie wrap using gluten-free wraps from Aldi. Something she watched a YouTube video about…

I’ll have to work harder to wrestle the computer away from her so I can write more before the month closes out.

Enjoy the weekend!!

Weekend Cooking; Ribbons of Kale

Last week I wrote about my Farmer’s Market shopping spree and through the week I’ve made a few recipes with my produce. I discovered two new recipes for kale and I made my children eat beet greens (they didn’t eat a lot but they ate some). I researched kale and found 9 reasons to eat kale and if you click the link you can read them also. Loads of fiber, antioxidants and vitamin K.

Lentil Soup with Ribbons of Kale
(adapted from Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson)

Slow Cooker size: 4-6 qts
Cook Time: 8 hours
Setting: Low

1 T. olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 celery rib, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 1/4 cups dried brown lentils, picked over and rinsed
6 cups vegetable stock or water
1 T. tamari or other soy sauce
Sprinkles of Sea Salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 to 5 large kale leaves, tough stems removed

1. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, celery, carrot and garlic, cover and cook until softened, 8-10 minutes
2. Transfer the cooked vegetables to a 4- to 6- qt slow cooker, add the lentils, stock, and tamari; cover and cook on Low for 8 hours. (this is where I completely veered off recipe and made the entire thing in the same large saute skillet-apparently I LOVE heating up my kitchen in the heat of the summer) Season with salt and pepper.
3. Meanwhile, or beforehand, tightly roll the kale leaves up like a cigar and cut them crosswise into thin ribbons. Cook the kale in a pot of boiling salted water, about 5 minutes, and add to the soup when ready to serve.
I served ours over brown rice and I didn’t boil the kale down. I just popped it into the lentil mix about 10 minutes before eating and it wilted enough for us. It was yummy!

Second kale recipe:

Tuscan Kale with White Beans and Garlic
(The Garden-Fresh Vegetable Cookbook by Andrea Chesman)

1 cup dried cannellini (white kidney) or great Northern beans (I had garbanzos on hand-used them instead)
6 cups water
1 onion, halved (I like onion so I diced it and kept it in the bean mix)
2 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 pounds of kale, stems removed and leaves chopped, 16 cups lightly packed)
8 ozs smoked turkey or ham, diced (optional)
Sea Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 T. olive oil
4 large garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (optional)

1. Saok the beans for at least 8 hours in plenty of water to cover. Drain the beans.
2. In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, combine the beans with the water, onion, thyme and bay leaves. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer partially covered, until the beans are tender, approximately 1 1/2 hours.
3. Remove and discard the onion, sprigs of thyme and bay leaves. At this point beans could be refrigerated for up to 1 day before continuing the recipe. Bring the beans and their liquid to a boil. Add the kale and the salt and pepper to taste. Simmer, stirring down the kale every few minutes, until the kale is tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in the meat, if using.
4. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a small heavy skillet over very low heat. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant and soft, stirring occasionally for about 5 minutes. Do not let garlic brown. Mash the garlic with a fork. Add the hot pepper flakes, if using.
5. Pour the hot oil mix over the beans and greens and serve immediately.

I mentioned that our dinner had kale leaves in it and he said…oh, hmmm, that sounds good-I’ve heard kale is really healthy! Wow. Needless to say everyone ate both recipes and I went ahead and bought more kale at the market today. Also we had some ham from a local farmer so I did cube that up, heated it, and put the bowl on the table for our occasional meat eaters to add to the own plates.

My own garden has baby eggplants growing, okra (we’ve already eaten 5 pods from our two plants), tomatoes, basil, two kinds of peppers. This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme; anyone can play along with a food-related post. Click her link to see her review of Danyelle Freeman’s new book Try This.