Grace and Ben

Ben is trying out a new paleo diet in which he only eats foods his ancestors ate. I don’t quite understand it, but I like reading blogs where people record exactly what they ate each day. Kind of interesting. So I think I will try it.
This morning, I drank 6 oz. of coffee (french press), 2 (12 oz.) cups of earl grey tea and ate 2 hard-boiled eggs (no seasonings).

For lunch, I ate 1 large grapefruit and 1 cup of cubed rutabagas that I baked over the weekend and about 6 oz. of pheasant meat (also leftover from weekend exploits). The pheasant had been baked whole and rubbed with olive oil, orange juice and ground black pepper and stuffed with a cut-up orange, a few cloves of garlic and some parsley. This afternoon, I have consumed 3 more 12 oz. cups of tea (1 teabag of english breakfast from Trader Joe’s and 2 teabags of green rooibos from Numi).

This evening, I  ate 3 unsalted, roasted almonds, 15 raw almonds, and 2 raisins and a pheasant wing. I also toasted 1/2 cup of flaxseeds. They are really good toasted. I took the raw flax seeds and put them in a pan and waited until they popped. I learned to cover the pan in the future. The seeds fly everywhere (like popcorn). I decided to the try the can of wild caught pink salmon I got from Whole Foods. Not bad!  I’m feeling very good. I like consuming less salt and sugar than I was eating previously.

I have several short-term personal goals: lose 4 pounds before Joyce’s wedding in April, get my hair cut and dyed before the end of March.

This recipe is from All-Recipes.com. I like it because it doesn’t require many fresh vegetables (which are hard to keep around in my kitchen). Just onion and garlic. Everything else is non-perishable.

Spiced quinoa

Ingredients:
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp curry powder (can be omitted, but i like the smell)
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup quinoa
1 1/2 cup vegetable stock
1/2 cup raisins soaked in hot water for 5-10 min before using in dish
1/2 cup pinenuts, toasted before using in dish (see photo)–beware pinenuts cost $8 for a handful. must have been a very bad harvest this year. I omitted this ingredient the first time I made this dish and it tasted just fine.
1 can garbanzo beans (my favorite!!!), rinsed and drained

1. Saute onions and garlic in olive oil in a saucepan. Add quinoa, salt, pepper, curry powder, cumin and cinnamon. Then add vegetable stock.
2. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 min.
3. Mix raisins, garbanzo beans and pinenuts into the quinoa. Enjoy!

How can a dish that contains no butter taste so buttery and delicious?

I cooked braised lentils tonight, adapted from a “Braised French Lentils” recipe found in Annie Sommerville’s cookbook Everyday Greens.  Somehow, through this French-inspired cooking process, my lentils began to taste like smooth butter! How is that possible?

Here’s the recipe for you to try and discover the secret to its buttery richness:

Ingredients
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 yellow onion, diced
1 tsp minced garlic, minced
1 medium carrot, diced
1 celery stalk, diced
1/2 cup red wine (very important!)
1 cup lentils (plain old cheap green lentils from Eddie’s supermarket)
4 cups cold water
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs fresh thyme
3 fresh sage leaves (maybe this is the source of my buttery flavor?)
salt and pepper

Instructions:
1. Heat oil in a large pot. Add onions, 1/4 tsp salt, pinch of pepper and cook over medium heat until onions soften (3-4 min). Add garlic, vegetables, 1/4 tsp salt and pinch of pepper and cook until tender (5 min).
2. Pour in the wine and cook until the pan is nearly dry (4 min)–this step is critical!
3. Add lentils, water, bay leaf and herbs and simmer until beans are completely tender, but still hold their shape (45 minutes). Taste and add more salt and pepper if desired. Remove bay leaf and bare thyme sprigs and serve.

Don’t try to bake a whole wheat yeast bread without a breadmaker. Make Bittman bread instead.

I learned this lesson last weekend as I tried to knead my very hard dough. It was painful and I sweated a lot (and had to wear high-heeled clogs so I would be tall enough to knead my bread at my kitchen counter). Today, I made a bread from a recipe published in the New York Times by Mark Bittman. It was much easier and tastier. I made a slight alteration to the recipe by not using corn meal and increasing the wheat flour content. The quickbread is delicious!

Ingredients:
PAM for greasing breadpan
2 cups buttermilk ($0.99 at Giant supermarket)
3 cups of whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup molasses

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 325 deg F. Grease loaf pan with PAM.
2. Mix together dry ingredients (flour, salt, soda). Stir molasses into buttermilk. Add liquid ingredients into dry ingredients and stir to combine (just until flour is not powdery on bottom of bowl–has a very dry consistency). Pour into baking pan.
3. Bake for 45 minutes (until toothpick comes out clean). Cool on rack for 15 minutes. Then enjoy (I had raspberry jam with mine!)

I tried a new recipe today. It was nice to cook again. I haven’t cooked much since before Christmas. I ate lots of delicious midwestern cuisine (turkey, ham, sweet potato pie, rice pudding, green bean casserole) in La Crosse. When Ben and I were in Chicago, we tried banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches) at the new French market in Ogilvie and we ate amazing tacos at Paul Kahan’s new joint Big Star, followed by a nice dessert of wines/champagne/cheese/cake at Volo. Anyways, onto my new recipe. It was an adaptation of a meat-containing recipe in allrecipes.com but I eliminated the meat and substituted brown rice for white rice (which prolonged the cooking time, but tastes amazing!).

Middle Eastern Rice with Black Beans and Chickpeas

Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup uncooked brown rice
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground tumeric
1/4 tsp ground cayenne pepper
2 cups veggie stock (I made from scratch)
3 cups garbanzo beans (equal to about 2 cans), drained and rinsed
1 cup black beans (I made from scratch)
1 bunch chopped fresh cilantro
1 bunch chopped fresh parsley
salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
1. Heat olive oil in saucepan over medium heat. Stir in garlic and cook for 1 minute. Stir in rice, cumin, coriander, tumeric and cayenne pepper. Cook and stir for 2 minutes, then pour in veggie stock. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 1 hour.
2. Gently mix garbanzo beans, black beans, cilantro and parsley into the cooked rice. Season with salt and pepper.

fabulous recipe! This is the best quinoa recipe I’ve made thus far. Thanks to allrecipes. I know Ben doesn’t like corn (for philosophical reasons), but I think this recipe will taste fine without it.

Quinoa and Black Beans
Ingredients:
1 tsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
3/4 cup uncooked quinoa
2 cups vegetable broth (I used one can of Swanson’s)
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste (don’t oversalt, the veggie broth has lots of sodium/flavor)
1 cup frozen corn kernels
2 (15 oz) cans black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Directions:

1. Heat oil in saucepan over medium heat. Stir in onion and garlic. Saute until lightly browned.

2. Mix quinoa into saucepan. Add veggie broth. Season with cumin, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper. Bring mixture to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 20 min.

3. Add frozen corn and simmer for 5 min more until heated through. Mix in black beans and cilantro. I didn’t use canned black beans, but I had cooked dried black beans (following Joy of Cooking) before Christmas and frozen it. After defrosting, I added about 3 cups of my black beans and it was very tasty.