Rainy Days and Sundays

It’s been a weird weekend weather wise - cool (in the high 60’s to low 70’s) with periods of rain, then sun, then rain, then sun … well you get the picture. We had a great BBQ at my nephew’s house on Friday (thanks Corey and Orlean Miller for hosting us) and we got to see my other nephew Patrick, his wife and my great nieces and nephew - it was a lot of fun and the food was delicious. 

On Saturday Dan did his volunteer gig and I stayed home, picked up the house and made banana bread; it’s his favorite. Then we went to a new vegan restaurant in St Paul called J Selby’s - the food was fabulous. 

We started with buffalo cauliflower wings, which were served with vegan ranch and celery sticks. For dinner I had the Mediterranean bowl with falafel, quinoa, cucumbers, onions, kalamata olives, kale and topped with a tahini dressing - it was awesome. Dan had vegan tacos, which he was not enamored with because they had too many potatoes - but he said it would not stop him from going to the restaurant again.

Fast forward to Sunday - it was cloudy and rainy in the morning so we headed to the movies to see Wonder Woman. If you ever watched the Lynda Carter version you should definitely go see this movie - I love it when a strong woman can take charge and save the world. There are great performances by Gal Gadot (Diana), Chris Pine (Steve Trevor), Connie Nielson (Hippolyta) and even Robin Wright (Antiope). 

After the movie we worked in the garden and then I finally got around to thinking about dinner. I was again one of those no measuring evenings but it was tasty. A while back we were at Costco and then we giving out samples of edamame noodles - the texture and taste were wonderful and I thought it would be a great alternative to regular pasta. I had forgotten about them until I was baking on Saturday when I opened up the pantry and found them right next to the sugar.

Ingredients:

1/2 head of cauliflower - broken into florets

1 crown broccoli - broken into florets 

1 onion - peeled and cubed

1/2 yellow pepper in chunks

1/2 orange pepper in chunks 

3 handfuls of spinach (from the garden)

4 cloves garlic

1 handful of edamame pasta

Directions:

Place cauliflower, broccoli, onion and peppers on a sheet pan (I used my Pampered Chef large bar pan), drizzle olive oil over the veggies, mix and then season with salt and pepper. Roast for approx 25 minutes, turning half way through.

In a sauce pan bring water to a boil and add the pasta, cook for 4 -5 minutes, drain and then place in a bowl. 

In a saute pan add 1 Tbsp of olive oil and garlic saute until light brown, add spinach, 3 Tbsp water and sprinkle with nutmeg, stir until the spinach is wilted. 

Add spinach/garlic mixture to the bowl with pasta and toss. Add the roasted veggies and toss again. Top with feta and serve.

Camille and I say thanks for stopping by!

Movie Night

Once a month we get together with our friends Gerd and Maria to catch up, have dinner and watch a movie. It’s a nice way to keep in touch and they are happy to try some of my food experiments some of which turn out and some well not so much. 

I’ve been trying to perfect my vegan cashew cheese; each time I make it I tweak the flavors just a bit; sometimes I add more garlic, sometimes I change the herbs and sometimes I add more/less nutritional yeast to give it a cheesy flavor. I think the batch I made this week was quite tasty and may be my go to recipe going forward. 

I recently acquired the Pampered Chef RockCrok Stand, which turns the amazing RockCrok into a slow cooker. What’s cool about that is that you can use the RockCrok on pretty much any surface. So I was able to brown the onion and veggie crumbles in the Crok on the stove then add all the other ingredients directly into the pan, put it in the stand and slow cook it for 4 hours. Can you say fewer dishes to wash - I can.

I’ve been hungry for Calico Beans lately - for those of you who are not familiar with the dish it involves meat, bacon and beans; pork n beans, kidney beans and traditionally lima beans. As a vegetarian (who occasionally eats fish) this just wouldn’t work so I took a standard recipe and replaced the meat with veggie crumbles, the pork n beans with southern beans (vegetarian) and even though I like lima beans not everyone likes them so I substituted butter beans - the result was delicious - but we forgot to take a picture - ugh. 

What we did get a picture of was my spiralized cantaloupe salad with mozzarella, a  little prosciutto and mint. I picked around the prosciutto - it was quite tasty! If you don’t own a Spriralizer you could simply cut the melon in chunks it would taste the same but I really like the look of the threads of melon with the cheese and meat. You can get the full recipe with beautiful photos and a video on how to spiralize a cantaloupe from the Inspiralizer blog. 

I followed the recipe exactly (surprising right) and the result was delicious.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 teaspoon honey

1 tablespoon freshly chopped mint

1 medium cantaloupe, peeled

Mozzarella approximately 1/3 of a ball of fresh mozzarella cubed

~2oz prosciutto 

Instructions

In the bottom of a large mixing bowl, whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, honey, mint and season with salt and pepper.

Set your Inspiralizer to Blade C. Load the cantaloupe onto the Inspiralizer and spiralizer until you start hitting the seeded interior. Scoop out the seeds and continue spiralizing until you yield about 4-5 cups of noodles. You can keep going and save the excess for future use or you can stop spiralizing, cube the cantaloupe (or keep whole) and save for future use.

Add the cantaloupe noodles to the bowl along with the mozzarella and toss well to combine.

Plate the cantaloupe salad on a serving platter and add in the prosciutto. Serve.

Thanks for stopping by!

Family - may we love them, enjoy them and belong to one

It’s been a rough month; my father passed away, we’ve paid our last respects at his funeral and I’ve been processing what is next - it’s been hard. Like most of you, I’ve thought of my parents as immortal - but of course we know they are not - they are human just like we are. They will live and die in the same way we will; sometimes quickly and sometimes painfully. But the most difficult thing to reconcile - I’m the older generation - moving down that path and I’m not sure how I feel about that. 

A couple things about my Dad - he had a great sense of humor, his laugh was infections and he told the best stories; the most memorable were about his karate belt - they were legendary. I recall as a child asking him over and over to tell me the karate belt story; they came in multiple variations but the story generally had a hero who was totally surround by some enemy, had the misfortune of losing most of his gear (except the karate belt, which he wore) and in the end it was the karate belt that frightened the enemy and saved the day.

We are now back on track and cooking up a storm - I’ve been incorporating fish into our meals every so often - because I enjoy a well cooked piece of salmon/tilapia and because it is a healthy alternative. I’ve also been searching for recipes that don’t take an hour to make because after i work and workout it’s close to 6 and if it takes me an hour to make dinner we are eating at 7ish - not my fav but it’s better than 9 right?

I’ve seen a number of “sheet pan dinner” recipes and after looking in the fridge I decided to give one a go. I started with french cut green beans, an onion in quarter inch dice, peppers sliced, fresh mushrooms and a couple of pieces of tilapia. 

I’m going to start by apologizing because this was one of those dinners where you cook but don’t measure. What I can say is I used the following ingredients:

Veggies

1 handful of fresh french cut green beans

1 lb fresh mushrooms

1/2 large red pepper - sliced

1/2 large yellow or orange pepper - sliced

1 large onion - diced 

2 pieces of tilapia

Marinade:

Olive oil 

Garlic - most likely 4 cloves

Low sodium soy sauce

Grated ginger

And I prepared them accordingly:

Rinse and clean the green beans and put them on a stoneware pan (I used my Pampered Chef larger bar pan)Clean and quarter 1 pound of fresh mushrooms - add to pan. Wash, quarter and derib 1/2 red and 1/2 yellow (or orange or green) pepper. Clean and dice an onion into 1/4 to 1/2 inch

Place each veggie in a separate row on a sheet pan, pour marinade on top and toss all veggies with marinade. Cook veggies in 425 degree oven for 15 minutes. Remove from oven add fish, toss in marinade and cook until is opaque and flaky @ 10 minutes. 

Serve and enjoy!

Love the people around you, there are no guarantees in life and every day is a gift.