weekend cooking – Page 6 – Peaceful Reader

Weekend Cooking and lemon love

My mother has given me a subscription to Eating Well for the last two years. I like it but it is much more meat oriented than I need. I do enjoy the get healthy articles and the pictures are lovely but Vegetarian Times still rules at my house.

When Eating Well arrived yesterday I did my normal quick perusal and found a beautiful article about lemons; it made me dreamy for warmer weather in a state other than my own. Lemons bring forth thoughts of California, Arizona; two places I’ve been lucky enough to pick lemons fresh from the tree, that pungent, beautiful smell as you snap it from the tiny limb.
Melissa Pasanen has obviously had a similar experience as she shares in her article “When Life Gives You Lemons” (Feb. 2011/p. 52).

She writes; ” I know what to do with bushels of zucchini and a cellar full of turnips, but when life gave me loads of lemons I was almost overcome by the riches.” I know what to do with overflowing baskets of tomatoes and zucchini but when I buy one lemon from the grocery store it is a treasure-imagine if I had a tree out back-there would be fresh lemonade everday. Melissa goes on to explain how a temporary move to New Zealand brings her to an abandoned lemon tree down the road. She now has access to free lemons any time she wants and she comes home with a new appreciation for the yellow orb.

I share today the one recipe I may make today from the article:

Lemon-Cranberry Muffins
Makes: 1 dozen
Active Time: 25 mins./Total: 1 hour

1/2 cup plus 2 T. sugar divided
3/4 cup nonfat yogurt
1/3 cup canola oil
1 large egg
3 tsp freshly grated lemon zest
2 T. lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups white whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup cornmeal, med. or fine stone-ground
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups cranberries, fresh or frozen (thawed), coarsely chopped(food processor)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Coat 12 cup muffin tin with cooking spray or line with paper liners.
2. Whisk 1/2 cup sugar, yogurt, lemon, oil, egg, 2 tsp lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla in a medium bowl.
3. Whish flour, cornmeal, b. powder, b. soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add the yogurt mixture and fold until almost blended. Gently fold in cranberries. Divide the batter among the muffin cups. Combine the remaining 2 T. sugar and 1 remaining tsp. lemon zest in a small bowl. Sprinkle evenly over the tops of the muffins.
4. Bake muffins until golden brown and they spring back lightly to the touch, 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool for at least 5 more minutes before serving.

(187 calories per muffin, 7 grams of fat)

Can’t you just taste the burst of cranberries with the zesty lemon flavor!
Yum.

Eating Well website
The article link is here: When Life Gives You Lemons
This post is part of Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme…anybody can play along with your own food-related post.

Divine Intervention and Weekend Cooking

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads-click and read her wonderful post on Ina Garten’s Vegetable Tian

Yesterday was a crazy Saturday for this family. I was up at 6:00 to get Teenage Boy to school by 6:30 so he could get on the bus for a jazz competition. I had to follow the bus because I am “never” given the paper with the details of these events. When asked, Teenage Boy said, “oh, yah it’s in my locker.” A few days before he told us the event was in Union (a town 1 1/2 hours away) but because God gave me some sense I changed my original plan, which was to drive to Union using GPS and meet the bus when it arrived into town, then follow it to the school. I changed that plan just two blocks away when I flipped a u-turn and drove back to his school and calmly waited for the bus to leave. Divine Intervention as the event was only 20 minutes away at Union H.S., in a different small town-the complete opposite direction of where I would have been had I not turned around. I’m not pointing fingers at anyone but it would be so nice to get the facts, man!

After the event when I spirited him away from the competition I took him to IHop(not exactly the haven for local, organic or healthy food but it was for the Boy) for breakfast and some quiet time together. I knew our next event; a big funeral at our church, was going to be diffiuclt for the boy as the funeral was for a 96-year-old man; a mentor to Teenage Boy so I listened to my German grandmother whispering to me “Feed Him.” Yes, grandmother I’m still listening. While he and I were at jazz and breakfast, my husband had Groovy Girl at skating and by 10:20 we all met up for the funeral. To make the day even more thrilling my mom was in town so we could celebrate her birthday. Mom and I spent the late afternoon at a sweet Italian place having drinks and calamari. It was delicious, fun and we had a great waiter.

But the real food I want to share is what I made the night before (Friday) for the funeral luncheon. Mom, husband and I were watching Winter’s Bone (four stars) when at 10 p.m. I infamously said, “oh, I need to make bars” quickly followed by “and I have no eggs.” My egg supplier (another teacher) is having chicken troubles but have no fear I googled bar recipes w/out eggs and viola-this recipe popped up. Love it when the internet actually gives me what I want.

I made the bars in 15 minutes (during the last part of the movie) and had tons of compliments at church. Seriously, that never happens to me-my family can laughingly tell you because usually my stuff is labeled the “healthy” or “meat-free” stuff-making it much less worthy in their church lady eyes so a compliment was HUGE!! I had three ladies ask me for the recipe and they were joking with me about how they didn’t want to put my bars out on the table so they could just eat them in the kitchen…big score for me. I’ll be humble though and just graciously share it here with you. Cookie Madness, the blog that produced these wonderful egg-free bars is now under my peaceful food blog roll, which grows everyday. ______________________________________________________________________________________________

Brown Sugar & Honey Pecan Bars

Crust:

1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed (light)
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut up

Filling:

1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/4 scant teaspoon salt (omit if using salted butter)
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed (light)
3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon whipping cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cups coarsely chopped, lightly toasted pecans.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8 inch metal pan with non-stick foil or line with regular foil and spray with baking spray. (I doubled the recipe and used a 9 x 13-inch pan) Covering it with tinfoil made it so easy to lift bars out and easy clean up)

Prepare crust. Combine flour, brown sugar and salt in food processor and pulse 3 times to mix. Add butter and process until mixture is crumbly – it will be really dry. Pour over bottom of pan and press tightly. Bake for 20 minutes.

Prepare the filling. In a heavy saucepan melt the butter. When the butter is completely melted, stir in salt, brown sugar and honey. Simmer mixture for 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in cream, vanilla and pecans.

Pour the pecan mixture over crust and spread evenly. Bake on center rack for 18 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool on a rack for at least an hour. To quick-cool, let them cool down as much as possible then shove them in the refrigerator.

Lift foil from pan and carefully cut into bars. I like to trim off the edges, cut the bars into 8 rectangles, then cut each rectangle into a square. It’s easy to do this if you have a big cutting board and a Chef’s knife.

Makes 16 squares (or 32 bars, if doubled)
____________________________________________________________________________________________

They were perfect chewy bars and great for adult events. My kids are not nut lovers unless it is ground up and called peanut butter.

This post is dedicated to Harold L. Brock-we thank you for your life lessons, your inspiration and for finding the light inside Teenage Boy. We know it will be alright, thanks to you. Peace.

****Honesty Disclaimer: Family….I am well aware that we actually fit more in our day than just these listed events but if I tell my one reader about the mid-year graduation, TB’s two soccer games and the bluegrass music event Daddy played for after the funeral-it will just seem like we are crazy!!

Weekend Cooking-A casserole of sorts

I don’t have a recipe for a casserole-I’ve never made a casserole after having far too many of them growing up but too me a casserole is an odd mixture of things together and that is what I have for today’s Weekend Cooking post.

Thursday night was my stepdaughter’s last night home with us as she wanted to get back to Chicago to see friends. For a special dinner I made Pad Thai. It was the best we’ve made in awhile so I have that recipe to share. Plus my brother called this morning asking me what to do with the leftover ham bone he had (frozen) from his Christmas dinner. We talked it over and decided making soup would be the best option for him and his 6-year-old son, except he didn’t think split pea soup would work. In my Soup, A Way of Life by Barbara Kafka I found a chicken soup recipe that adds ham-which is perfect for my meat-loving brother! Two meats in one soup-Hot Dog! I have that recipe to share right here-Chicken Soup with Chinese Flavors. I can’t wait to hear his success story with this recipe.

Then my Vegetarian Times magazine arrived last night with a beautiful photo of lasagna on the front cover! I’m a sucker for lasagna recipes so I will be trying this recipe for Kale lasagna this week. I’ve shared two of my favorite lasagna recipes; Eggplant Lasagna and the newer, Spinach and Feta Lasagna. so if you are looking for something delicious to cook this weekend, any of these lasagna recipes will make you happy! The interesting thing about the Kale recipe is it is made in an 8-inch baking pan so it will be smaller-not as many leftovers, which sometimes can be a good thing but might be just perfect to feed my family with a side salad or some fruit and bread-don’t ever forget the bread here.

Okay, here is the star of the week, Vegetarian Pad Thai:

1 pound Asian Rice Noodles
1/4 cup soy/ Tamari sauce
1/2 cup lime juice
3 T. peanut butter
2 T. hot sauce
1/4 cup sugar
1 block tofu
1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 T Sesame oil
1/2 cup bean sprouts
1/4 cup crushed peanuts
4 scallions, sliced

1. Cook noodles according to package directions.
2. Whisk together soy sauce, peanut butter, lime juice, sugar, and hot sauce.
3. In large wok, sautee tofu, onions and garlic in sesame oil.
4. Add cooked noodles, peanut butter sauce to wok, stir well.
5. Top with sprouts, chopped peanuts and scallions. Serve hot.
6. I added fresh chopped basil at the table.

It was delicious and we had enough for lunch leftovers the next day.
Served with fresh bread and a spinach salad.

What’s in your “casserole” for the weekend??

Happy Cooking and reading!
Check out other Weekend Cooking posts at Beth Fish Reads.

New Year's Day – Black-Eyed Peas

How many of you eat black-eyed peas, a symbol of prosperity, for the new year? It is a family tradition for us. Each year I’ve tried a new recipe and it isn’t always easy to find one that is meat-free. This one I found in a recent parade magazine in an article about Katie Lee from The Early Show. It was easy to make and tasted great.

Hoppin’ John

serves: 6

1 T olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 15-oz cans of black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained
1/4 cup vegetable broth or water
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley, minced
Cooked rice
Shredded white cheddar
Hot sauce (optional)

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, red bell pepper, and garlic. Saute until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes.
2. Stir in black-eyed peas, broth, salt, and pepper. Reduce heat to low; cook 10 minutes. Stir in green onions and parsley.
3. Serve over cooked rice and garnish with cheese and hot sauce.

My Tweaks: I soaked a bag of black-eyed peas from the bag instead of using cans. Like lentils, they are easy to soak and cook. I did not add green onions and I used parsley instead of cilantro (flat leaf parsley) only because I had parsley from another recipe. I didn’t add parsley to the recipe but put it on the table as a “condiment” so my kids could add it if they chose. Same with the cheese as Groovy Girl is not a cheese lover. I used brown rice and my husband and I added hot sauce to our bowls, which added just the perfect amount of spice.

Cheers to prosperity in 2011.

Teenage Boy said “why do we keep eating black-eyed peas for dinner?-it hasn’t worked yet.” This led to an interesting discussion of how many different ways prosperity appears in our lives if not in cash form!
Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and I’m late in posting because I took a three hour nap after church. It felt great and must be my way of shoving my head into the sand as my holiday break comes to a close. Tomorrow it’s off to work we go!
This is what comes up when you google the peas…

What a holly, jolly Christmas so far

The holidays started officially for us yesterday (thursday) as we hosted 6 young girls, ready to do some holiday baking. Groovy Girl had her first cookie bake-off. They poured, measured, cracked the eggs, learned the “scoop and sweep” flour method as she took them through her mini-baking lesson. This is the same girl who two years ago “hosted” her own cooking show, which I taped but never got uploaded to a computer because the dog ate the Flip camera.Yes, that was not a very merry moment. Her friends had a wonderful time as they made cookies and watched The Polar Express while they cut out, baked and decorated the cookies. Decorating and eating ranked the highest in fun factor. I think gumdrops were being eaten as fast as I could cut them up. I love to listen to children talk; they are generally so uninhibitated and yesterday was no exception as they shared their own baking experiences and knowledge with each other! Hopefully, we’ve begun a new tradition with this holiday party.

Four days ago I needed to make a treat for my daughter’s school party; luckily we still live in a school district that allows homemade snacks and that no one in her class is allergic to peanuts because we whipped up these delicious Double Peanut Butter Cups thanks to Kathy at Bermudaonion. I didn’t take a photo of mine (there is one with the recipe at Bermudaonion) but the Christmas platter came home empty and she told me several students had seconds.

In my family it is tradition to have oyster stew on Christmas Eve but my husband is allergic to certain types of shellfish so when I got married I had to throw the tradition out. We’ve done clam chowder for the last few years but I’m never quite satisfied with what my clam chowder tastes like compared to what I’ve eaten on my travels to the East Coast. This year I tried a brand new recipe from Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook, which I also discovered thanks to a Weekend Cooking post at Bermudaonion. As soon as I read her post about this cookbook I knew it was the perfect Christmas gift for my mother-a cookbook collector and brunch lover. I found one last copy sitting on the shelf at my local Barnes and Noble, which, sadly, is our own local bookstore. Local trumps indie when your making that last dash for gifts. My family is totally okay with receiving books for gifts that have been “test” read by the giver so I spent hours perusing the contents of this fabulous book. I still plan to give it to my mom with the straight up knowledge that I may have to borrow it from time to time. I’ve already tried two recipes from it-both were delicious and I just ooooh’d and aaahhhh’d as I looked through it. This will be on my list of must-eat eateries when I visit NYC. Thank you Kathy for brightening my holiday cooking TWICE!

If you missed out on getting yourself something merry this season, buy it here-Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook

Enjoy the ~~video~~ (never did get the video to upload after three days of puttering with it)now, photos of the baking party. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good day, filled with roasting fires, a few perfect presents, time to read and a dinner table filled with good food. Don’t you just love a young girl who bakes in a huge string of pearls.

Weekend Cooking-Is it still the Weekend?

Here it is the evening of the weekend and I’m just getting to my food-related post for Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads. I look forward to this event all week and I have been online a lot this weekend, Christmas shopping on Shutterfly, building calendars for my Mom, my in-laws and my other parents in AZ. They are gorgeous, combining a wide variety of photos from this past year-our trip to Michigan, their visits here, and Teenage Boy’s Alaskan fishing trip as well as all the usual Halloween costumes, and a few of the cute cousins thrown in!! According to Shutterfly they should still make it by the 24th. Considering I started assembling them on Wednesday night that’s not bad but I’m really hoping it’s true. I hate to have worked so hard on something only to have them come December 31st. I am joyful they are finished and that part of my “shopping” is done!!

Weekend Cooking:

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day is one of my most treasured recipe books-you can tell by all the sticky notes fanning out from the book. I love making fresh bread ‘cuz it goes with every meal, especially in the winter when many of my meals are soup-related or hearty.

Here is the general recipe so you can try it too:

The Master Recipe: Boule (Artisan Free-Form Loaf) [edited down just a bit]

3 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 T. granulated yeast **did you know you can buy yeast in bulk at your local organic store-how great is that**
1 1/2 T. kosher, coarse salt
6 1/2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour, measured with scoop-and-sweep method
Cornmeal for pizza peel [I do not have a pizza peel~I put the cornmeal on my baking stone; I have one stone in the oven and one I use as the peel]

Mixing and Storing Dough

1. Warm the water slightly: It should feel just a little warmer than body temp., about 100 degrees F.

2. Add yeast and salt to the water in a 5-qt. bowl or, preferably, in a resealable, lidded but not airtight plastic food container or food-grade bucket. Don’t worry about getting it all to dissolve. [My mom just gave me an early Xmas gift, at T.giving, this square dough container from King Arthur Flour–Thank You, Mom]

3. Mix in the flour-kneading is not necessary. Add all the flour at once, measuring it in with dry-ingredient measuring cups, by gently scooping up flour, then sweeping the top level with a knife or spatula; don’t press down into the flour as you scoop or you’ll throw off the measurments. Mix with a wooden spoon, until it gets to difficult, then use your own wet hands. Don’t knead-just incorporate the flour so everything is uniformly moist.

4. Allow to rise: Cover with a lid (not airtight). Do not use screw-topped bottles or mason jars, which could explode as dough rises. Allow the mixture to rise at room temperature until it begins to collapse, approximately 2 hours. Longer rising will not harm the result. You can use a portion of the dough now if you like. Fully refrigerated wet dough is less sticky and is easier to work with than dough at room temperature. Best to refregerate a day first before working with it.

5. Baking Day: Sprinkle pizza peel with cornmeal. Sprinkle the surface of your cold dough with flour. Pull up and cut off a 1-pound [grapefruit-size] piece of dough, using a serrated knife. Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add a little more flour as needed so it won’t stick to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go. Most of the dusting flour will fall off; it’s not intended to be incorporated into the dough. The bottom of the load will seem a bit bunchy but it will flatten out during rising time. The correctly shaped final loaf will be smooth and cohesive.

6. Rest the loaf and let it rise on a pizza peel: Place shaped ball on the cornmeal-dusted pizza peel. Allow the loaf to rest on the peel for about 40 minutes. Depending on the age of the dough, you may not see much rise.

7. Twenty minutes before baking, preheat oven to 450 degreesF., with a baking stone placed on the middle rack. Place an empty broiler tray for holding water on any other shelf that won’t interfere with the rising bread.

8. Dust and slash: Unless otherwise indicated for another recipe, dust the top of the loaf liberally with flour, which will allow the slashing knife to pass without sticking. Slash a 1/4-inch-deep cross, “scallop”, or tic-tac-toe pattern into the top, using a serrated bread knife. [This is where the photo in the book really helps…]

9. Bake with steam: After the 20-minute preheat, you’re ready to bake, even though your oven won’t yet be up to full temperature. With a forward jerk, transfer loaf from one stone or peel to the hot stone in the oven. Quickly but carefully pour about 1 cup of hot tap water into broiler tray and close the oven door. Bake for 30 minutes or until crust is nice and brown. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

10. Store remaining dough back in your refrigerator in lidded container and use over the next 14 days. That means each time you make a delicious dinner-it just takes a few minutes to have fresh bread with your meal. YUM!! It looks like a lot of steps but it is really quite easy. If I can handle it; anyone can handle this recipe. Make this part of your holiday baking.

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Spinach and Feta Lasagna wins over chicken

The chicken was tender and good but the hands-down favorite at last night’s dinner was The Grit Restaurant’s lasagna so I decided I would share the recipe here so everyone else could make it too! Today was our day to eat leftovers and my husband and son both ate the leftover lasagna, which I had planned on taking for lunch tomorrow-that’s how good it was. I was really incredulous since they are the big meat eaters!! Now I will be combing through this cookbook looking for other delicious recipes to tantalize them.

Spinach and Feta Lasagna

6 ozs lasagna noodles, freshly cooked
4 quarts water
1/2 block firm tofu, crumbled
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 cups crumbled feta cheese
1 pound frozen spinach, thawed and drained
4 cups Grit Marina (I used two jars of organic sauce-no time to make the sauce, this time.)
4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
3/4 cups freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 tsp dried parsley, oregano, and basil

Preheat oven to 350. Oil a 9 x 13 in.baking dish.
Boil lasagna noodles in water until barely tender; Drain and seperate the noodles, set aside.
Combine tofu, soy sauce, mustard, pepper, feta cheese and spinach in a large mixing bowl.
Lightly coat bottom of prepared pan with marina sauce. Cover the sauce with layer of noodles, running the long way. Spread 1/2 of spinach-feta mixture, 1/3 of the marina sauce, and 1/2 of the mozzarella. Cover with second layer of noodles and on up, repeating but this time put the noodles crossways (so you have to cut them to make them fit). Cover with a third layer running the longway and top with remaining marina. Sprinkle with Parmesan and parsely mixture. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until well browned on top. Cool slightly before serving.

I do usually make my own sauce when I make other lasagnas but this time since I was preparing another meal practically with the chicken/roast potato combination from Jamie Oliver, I just didn’t have the time. I also used fresh parsley mix on top and I did not have any dry mustard so I just squirted in some stone-ground mustard from my refrigerator-it worked out fine. I never preheat my oven until I’m almost finished with a recipe-it just doesn’t make sense to have it on for the 30 minutes or so it takes me to make a recipe. Viola-it was easy to put together and even easier to eat!
Our evening with friends was great even though it was snowstorming outside. We were toasty warm inside with our wine, food and holiday music playing. Our Christmas entertaining is off to a fantastic start. Through the weekend I did manage some reading; I finished Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Rosnay and stared the Everafter by Amy Huntley, which I am fascinated by! I need to review Sarah’s Key as well as A Curse as Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce.

Buy The Grit cookbook at their website-you won’t be disappointed!!

I am an IndieBound affiliate and some of my links will take you there. I’ve earned nothing as of yet from this association but one can always have hope.

In other news-we have a two hour school delay so I wll be sleeping in and reading in my toasty bed. I may pad down to the kitchen and whip up some German Pancakes for my children if I feel up to it. I would love it if they would just cancel the whole day-it is FREEZING out there!

Next week’s topic-fresh bread!

Holiday Traditions

Teenage Boy, Groovy Girl and two friends, after tree search.

We always get our tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving at a lovely tree farm, Kris Kringle’s, and they serve hot cider and have a fire in an outside pit. It makes for a lovely few hours and two years ago we invited another couple and their children to join us, so we’ve added to our celebration.

That is what I love the most about the holidays-it seems we make more time for friends and family. We are having friends over tomorrow night just because we ran into them recently at my husband’s play and decided we needed to get-together for dinner and before Christmas is really upon us. They are coming for dinner tonight and I’m making a chicken. If you’ve ever read my sidebar list it says I’m a vegetarian that eats locally-raised meat (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver changed my mind) but not frequently. I met a farmer (through a friend) who raises chickens and other cute farm animals as well. He started doing it 10 years ago for just the same reason I didn’t eat meat-he didn’t trust what was happening to our corporate- produced meat sources. I’ve only been back to eating meat about a year now.

I digress-this post is supposed to be about food and friends-not cute farm animals, who might be friends also. My mother used to make this rosemary and goat cheese chicken so I searched around a little last night, looking for something similar and came up with a roast chicken recipe at Jamie Oliver’s website. He, like Kingsolver and Alice Waters, is making a difference in how people eat and I admire the work he’s doing with the British school lunch program. That would be my dream dinner party-cooking together with Barbara, Alice and Jaime! Thrilling!!

Tonight will have the roast chicken, mashed (home grown) potatoes, spinach and feta lasagna, brussell sprouts and a small salad. Half the group is vegetarian thus the reason for the lasagna which comes from this fabulous cookbook from The Grit, in Athens, Georgia. We’re starting off with champagne, with pomegranite seeds tossed in and will move on to a lovely bottle of red, which I haven’t purchased yet or I’d mention its name as well. Thinking about wine makes me think I should check my old version of The Wine Trials to find a perfect (and reasonable priced) wine!

Could I mention any more food links? Well, most definetely Yes!, but I’ll stop there. This is how things go at my house-inviting two people, one couple, for dinner has led me to all these dining spots, recipes and brought up all these whirlwind ideas.Like now my mind is thinking about a post debating hard copy cookbooks vs. online. My mind on food. Don’t ya just love the holidays!! Tonight will be filled with good conversation and good (hopefully) food and my mind will chill.

Happy eating and reading! Cheers.

p.s. last week’s Morrocon-Style Lentil and Chickpea soup was a huge hit with my family. We ate it simply, soup and fresh-baked bread. Yum.

***This food-related post is linked to Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Pop over there and read about Crescent Dragonwagon, a writer of children’s books and cookbooks, and her new Cornbread book. My husband might need this for a Christmas gift. He loves cornbread but makes it from a box. Hmmm.

Seriously, Have a Happy Saturday!

What's Cookin'

What a lazy Saturday I’ve had. Somedays you just want to curl up and stay inside. Today was one of those days except we started out with ice skating at 9:00, had a brunch date with some distant cousins in town and had to do a little Christmas shopping for school families. I did get to spend the afternoon home and somehow I lost my bag with my book in it for the entire afternoon so I didn’t exit to my room to read like I often do on a lazy Saturday. I ended up knitting (and napping) to some sappy tv Christmas movie my daughter was half watching as she played around the family room. While I’m sad about not reading-I’m reading Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay-it was nice just to hang loose. The book is very good but not an easy read so taking a break was okay except I have a sappy Christmas book to read for book club Monday night.-gotta get going on that one also and I’m having trouble mixing the two.

This is what I’m making right now to feed my family tomorrow. Lazy but prepared is my motto.

Morroccan-Style Lentil and Chickpea Soup

1 T. olive oil
1 med. sized yellow onion, chopped
1 small carrot, chopped
3 small garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 tsp. peeled and minced fresh ginger
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom
1/2 cup dried lentils, picked over and rinsed
One 14.5-oz can plum tomatoes, drained and chopped (I just used diced)
1 1/2 cups slow-cooked or one 15.5-oz can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
6 cups vegetable stock
1 T. fresh lemon juice
1 to 2 tsp. harissa sauce, to taste, plus more to serve
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot, and garlic, cover, and cook until slightly softened, about 5 minutes. Add the ginger, tumeric, cinnamon, cumin, and cardamom, stirring to coat the vegetables.

2. Transfer the onion mixture to a 4- to 6- quart slow cooker, add the lentils, tomatoes, chickpeas and stock, cover and cook on low for 6 hours.

3. About 10 minutes before serving add the lemon juice and harissa and season with salt and pepper. A small bowl of harissa may be placed on the table for those who want to add more. (I’m not adding the harissa-a spicy chili mixture as it will make it too spicy for my children) if you want the harissa sauce recipe leave me a comment and I will get it to you.

This serves 6 and I’m hoping for leftovers so I can take it for lunch a few days this week.
Rewritten from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker .
This is part of Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads.
Happy Cooking and Reading!

Beets, Beautiful Beets!

Beets are a favorite root vegetable here at this house. I know this is rare. I have other friends, even farmer’s market-type friends, who turn up their noses at the lovely beet. The beet is nice and simple. I roast them with their skins on, olive oil drizzled, just enough so they don’t stick to the Corning Ware dish. The outer skin just rubs right off except you are trying to get it off while they are steamy hot! Once I get them peeled I sprinkle with some sea salt and serve them piping hot. Sometimes a small dollop of sour cream adds to the eating experience. We’ve been eating them frequently as they were easy to find at our last remaining markets.

Beets and Jitterbug Perfume go hand-in-hand. I started rereading Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins this week for my fourth book in the 451 Challenge, which finishes up at the end of November-I’m in a bit of a book-reading crunch as I have to catch up by two books (The Everafter and A Curse Dark as Gold) for my long distance book club and have to read My Abandonment by Peter Rock for my other book club. I hope to get all four of these books done before Thanksgiving.

This book has been one of my favorites since I read it the first time in my early twenties. I’ve read most of Tom Robbins books and his other’s are good but this one takes the cake or well, the beet! It is a love story that transcends the normal confines of time and place. It entertwines several lives, including a few mythical characters, from New Orleans, Seattle and Paris and they all come together over perfume, immortality and beets. Yes, beets.

From the beginning:

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

and another three paragraphs about the wonderul characteristics of beets!
The beet is unusual for sure and Robbins’ choice of this blood red veggie adds much charm as the beet is a character in this novel as much as any other.

Are you a lover of the lusty beet?
Have you read any Tom Robbins?

This post is connected to Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads.
Here’s a great post about the nutritional value of beets at The Lunch Box Bunch.