Thankful

I always think of Thanksgiving as the kick off to the holiday season. This year we spent Turkey day with my father, his wife and her family. There were all the traditional dishes, turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, a scalloped corn dish, rolls and of course pie; pumpkin, pecan and apple. 

After spending the afternoon with my family Dan and I headed over to the local movie theatre and saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in the most luxurious recliners I’ve ever experienced a movie in - move over barcalounger this theater has you beat! I am an avid Harry Potter fan and while this movie is not about the Potter clan in any way, it is a great story and as I understand there will be 4 more installments - personally I can’t wait. 

We headed back to Minnesota early Friday morning to spend some time with Dan’s family and his daughter Mary who was visiting from Madison, WI - it had been a while since we saw her - it was so good to catch up and hear about what she’s been doing - she’s been busy. She was polite enough to oh and ah over the pottery we made in our last class - the girl is a gem. 

On Saturday we ventured with the thundering herd (aka Dan’s extended family) to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum to see the Bruce Munro light show. It was a creative mix of light and landscape and Dan’s mom dubbed it “Awesome”. I truly enjoyed wandering around with the family, most of our nieces and nephews were in town; we talked, we caught up with each other and we enjoyed the art. After the show we headed over to our favorite Indian restaurant (all 18 of us) and had a delicious meal complete with mango lassi’s, samosas, lamb, chicken, eggplant and a host of other dishes. 

Today has been a mix of cleaning, organizing, shopping (grocery and holiday), writing (nearly finished with my NaNoWriMo) and cooking. The freezer is now defrosted, the refrigerator cleaned, 3 holiday gifts purchased, and groceries in the house. The hot tub is ready for soaking and I tried out a new recipe. 

I was chatting with my brother-in-law Brian about gardening and he mentioned that they were a little disappointed they didn’t harvest all of their kale before the frost - oh but wait kale is frost resistant - which reminded me we still have a boat load of kale and collard greens waiting to be eaten!

I found a recipe a while ago, which had brown rice pasta, collard greens and shiitake mushrooms. I’m not a fan of pasta in any way shape or form, so I decided to use one of our butternut squash, spiralize it and use it for the pasta. The result was delicious. 

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of tamari or soy sauce

1/4 cup of maple syrup

1 Tbsp. of rice wine vinegar

2 - 3 T olive oil

1 lb of shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, sliced

3 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped

a large knob of ginger, finely chopped

1/2 lb of collard greens, stems removed, and thinly sliced (about 4 cups)

1/4 cup of finely chopped peanuts + more for garnish

1 small butternut squash spiralized on medium noodle

Instructions: 

Peel, seed and spiralize 1/2 of a small butternut squash, toss with olive oil and roast at 400 degrees until edges are slightly browned. 

Combine tamari/soy, maple syrup and rice wine vinegar; whisk to combine and set aside.

While squash is roasting, add 1 T of oil to the pan, stir fry shiitake mushrooms  for a few minutes and then remove from pan. Add 1T oil to pan with garlic and ginger stir fry approximately 1 minute until fragrant and then return mushrooms to the pan. Add soy/vinegar and maple syrup to pan, reduce heat to low, cover pan and cook for 2 - 3 minutes. 

To the mushroom mixture add collard greens and stir until wilted, remove from heat, cover and set aside. 

When squash noodles are done, put on serving platter and top with mushroom/collard mixture, sprinkle with chopped nuts and serve. 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend - thanks for stopping by!

Holiday Countdown

Happy Thanksgiving week! I’ve been absent from my blogging for a few weeks. It doesn’t mean we haven’t been cooking up delicious food because we have. It’s actually been a couple of things first I’m doing NaNoWriMo again this year and second we’ve been busy with work, family going to pottery class, bookclub, and hanging out with a museum meet up I’ve joined; at the end of the day I’m beat. 

For those of you who do not know what NaNoWriMo is, simply its National Novel Writing Month, you write a 50,000 novel in 30 days. It has to be fiction, not published before and  you cannot write the first word before November 1st. You can ponder plot and characters beforehand but you cannot write. 

This week the holiday season kicks in and Dan and I are heading to Fargo to spend it with my Dad, his wife and her family. We’ll have a traditional turkey dinner with mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, home made rolls, and pie. Both Dan and I are looking forward to seeing everyone.

On Friday we’ll head back home and get ready to spend time with Dan’s family. We’re going to the Bruce Monroe light show at the Arboretum and out for dinner - it’s gotten very good reviews - it should be a great time. We’ll probably spend the rest of the weekend catching our breath and then move into a fully packed December. It seems like we don’t have a free weekend from now until January. With that being said, most of it is filled with family, good friends and fun activities so no complaints here. 

As far as food goes, we’ve been cooking up all of our favorites; soup, field roast vegan sausages, roasted root veggies (complete with parsnips and turnips), of course enjoying the squash from our garden. I’ve finally found a preparation for kale that Dan likes and it’s super simple. 

1 -2 T olive oil

8 cups shredded kale

2 - 4 cloves of fresh garlic (depends on how much you like garlic)

nutmeg - to taste

crushed red pepper flakes - to taste

salt 

Heat the olive oil in a large pan and add the kale. If it doesn’t all fit in the pan don’t worry  as it cooks down you can continue to add it. Toss in the garlic, nutmeg, salt and crushed red pepper and heat until it is all wilted. I usually take it off the stove, cover and let it sit for a few minutes. 

I’ve also been experimenting with single crust pies. I’m a big fan of fruit pie which generally comes with a top and bottom crust. While I do love my carbs I’m trying to eliminate them as much as possible; some days are more successful than others. 

I had some apples that I mixed up with the lemon, brown sugar, cinnamon, etc. in the freezer that I was originally planning to make into a pie for movie night but things got behind and I had to use plan B - which was chocolate so there were no complaints. 

Since they were already thawed I needed to use them so I decided to make a single crust apple pie and to be honest I liked it better than the traditional 2 crust apple - more apple flavor - less crust I think it’s a winner. 

I’m thankful for all of the things in my life a loving family, talented and fun coworkers, friends and good health. Wishing everyone a happy and safe holiday weekend. 

Changing of the Guard

It’s officially November, I know this because I started writing my NaNoWriMo novel. For those of you who don’t know what that is - it’s National Novel Writing Month. It occurs every November and the goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, which translates to about 1700 words each day. This is my 5th attempt and I’ve finished 4 times; so far so good. Of the novels I’ve written there are 2 I’d like to go back and edit - who knows maybe publish but that is for another blog post. 

It’s also time to start prepping for winter, raking the leaves, cleaning out gutters, putting on storm windows (yes I know its an old house) and putting the gardens and flowers to bed. If you’ve been following this blog you know that 2016 will go down as one of our best harvests ever - actually I picked the last of the tomatoes off the vines last night and I noticed that I am still swimming in collard greens and kale, gotta do something about that this weekend. 

Yesterday was a beautiful fall day, not too crisp, clear blue sky and some of the trees are still sporting beautiful color. After work Dan and I took a walk around the park and then hurried home so we could start mulching the leaves - OK Dan got out the mower and mulched the leaves, which put me on kitchen detail. 

I had a block of tofu, which I bought a bit ago and I was going to use it to make sofritos but I never got around to it. I found a recipe while browsing through Pinterest and I realized I had all of the ingredients - plus some additional ones, which I wanted to add. Luckily for Dan it was a curry, which is his favorite. 

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp coconut oil

1 large yellow onion, finely chopped

2 fairly large garlic cloves, center germ removed and crushed with a garlic crusher

2 tbsp ( or more! ) fresh ginger, grated

8 - 10 dried apricots, diced

4 tbsp curry powder

1 - 2 tsp numeric

2 cans coconut milk

2 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed - for those of you who are purists - and you know who you are - you can cook your own from scratch.

1 package of tofu, patted dry and cut into cubes

3 cups packed baby spinach

2 tsp coarse sea salt

Heat the coconut oil in a wide pot on medium heat.

Add onion, garlic, ginger and apricots and sauté for a few minutes, until the onion is translucent and soft.

Add curry powder and mix it in well with the rest of the ingredients. Allow the spices to toast for a minute without letting them stick to the bottom of the pan. Add the coconut milk and season with sea salt, mixing well.

Add the rest of the ingredients (except for the spinach), let it come to a boil and reduce heat to a low simmer. Heat for 5 to 8 minutes to absorb the flavors and the coconut milk has become a creamy sauce. Turn off the heat and add the spinach one cup at a time until wilted. 

Serve with basmati rice and fruit. 

Thanks for stopping by