Quick meal ideas from Connie

Connie is an entrant in the 6-week challenge and sent me this email:

I don't like the creamy dressings so this fits the bill for me.I boil some red beets and save the juice.   Mix the juice with favorite vinegar and about a quarter cup of pure fruit juice.  I used apple-grape.   I have used pomegranate.   Pour that over the beets.  I add sliced onions, a few whole cloves, a verysmall clove of garlic tooI then add a bit of water to cover.  Pickled beets from my youth.  I love the juice so much that I use it for my salads.The other quicky is I put a package of frozen organic - no salt - veggies with a container of no salt organic veggie broth.  I added what spices I had on hand and other left over frig veggies. In about fifteen min we had a great dinner.  Sure beats not eating right when you are in a hurry.  Fast hot soup on a cold evening.  

This sounds interesting to me.   I will give it a try.  

food lately

I've had lots of visitors lately and was busy at work so didn't have much time to post about food.  One of my visitors liked my food and asked me to post the recipes.  I didn't use any recipes,  or write down what I did, but I did snap a few photos.  So hopefully I can re-create them from the photos.  It was more of a method than a recipe which I can describe here.

The meals lately usually consist of beans, greens, salads, and corn on the cob, pretty much all locally grown.  and fruit for dessert (not so much local).    The beans are prepared on the weekend and frozen into daily containers.  Right now I have two batches in the freezer.  One is made with "runner cannellini" beans from rancho gordo.  This is what they looked like after soaking--gigantic!

 I cooked them up with mushrooms and onions.  They are creamy and yummy.   The other batch of beans I made with yellow-eyed beans (I don't see them listed right now on the rancho gordo site), and carrot juice, onions, mushrooms, and a little unhulled barley and black rice--really good!  I describe how to cook this up here.

That's the beans.  Then for the most of the veggies, I've been using kale, collards and herbs from the garden (basil, rosemary, chives, dill, cilantro--no rhyme or reason to this besides it grows well), and local produce from the co-op or garden which lately has been summer squash and zucchini and eggplant.  If I use the white beans, I add tomatoes from the garden.  I cook up the veggies in the pressure cooker while the corn on the cob is prepped and boiled.    After the veggies are done, add the beans and 1-2 Tbsp of seed mixture.

Here are some beans & greens:

Here's another batch served up with our usual corn on the cob and sliced tomatoes:

Salads consist of lettuce, maybe some cabbage because the local cabbage is real sweet right now, fresh garden tomatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, summer squash, bell pepper, occasionally broccoli from the garden, maybe peas or edamame, and dressing made from a little fresh squeezed orange juice (optional), vinegar (d'angou pear, riesling raisin or a good balsamic) and seed mixture.  Here's today's salad (with cabbage and spinach, forgot to buy lettuce):

We often add some Penzey's no-salt seasonings to the veggies, salads, corn and tomatoes.   Our favorite is mural of flavors, but we also have been trying out sunny paris.

Sometimes instead of greens and beans, we'll have fresh green beans from the garden and salad and corn.  I'll combine the green beans with potatoes and herbs for housemate and guests.

Here's something I made up one night when I was concerned that my guest might be tired of greens and beans.  This was a vegetable curry:

I didn't have much in the fridge so the vegetables were summer squash and cabbage, onion, mushroom and frozen peas.  It looks like there's a potato in there too.  I don't usually make potatoes for myself but I probably thought the guest would like it.   Eggplant would have been good too.  Now I know from experience that curry without salt and sugar tastes bitter and bland.  Since I don't use salt, I needed a sweetener.  I had banana and frozen mangos which I thawed.  I cooked up the squash, cabbage, onion, mushroom, and potato in the pressure cooker with about, 1 tsp of curry powder and 1/2 tsp of garam masala.   Then added the peas to cook in the hot veggies as they cooled.  I blended up the water that the veggies cooked in with 1/2 banana and some seed mixture (1-2 Tbsp).   Then pulsed it with about 1/2 cup mango.  Added that back to the veggies.   As usual, we had this with corn on the cob.  This recipe was a big hit, which is funny because I just made it up spur of the moment.

I think that describes everything except my latest yummy breakfast which I'll describe in my next post.  I also like to eat raw veggies:  carrots, kohlrabi, and sugar snap peas.  Today I added some lime and cilantro but I don't think it's worth the bother. They are great all by themselves.

For fruit, I usually buy what's in season and on special (discounted that is).  Lately it's been delicious organic cherries, both from Washington state and our own Door County.  Blueberries have been on special too.  And grapes occasionally.  Earlier we had a fabulous strawberry and raspberry season.  They are both still good, just no longer on special.    Local watermelons and muskmelons are in season now.  Fresh figs are available (from California).    We are getting peaches from Door County which are wonderful.  I'm sure I'm missing something. There's so much to choose from right now.  It's a great time of year.  I think the cherries are my favorite though---they are really good right now.

Green and Gold Dessert

If I called it peas and corn and vinegar, you wouldn't want it.  But just try it once with exactly these ingredients:

1/2 cup Sno Pac Organic sweet corn (the sweetest frozen corn I know of)
1/2 cup sno pac organic peas
1/2 tsp D'angou pear vinegar

Combine the corn and peas in a bowl.  If frozen, microwave 30 seconds to thaw.  I like to eat mine partially frozen but you might like yours warm so microwave however long you want.  Stir in the vinegar and mix it up.   Now eat some.  Doesn't it taste good?  Isn't it surprising how good it tastes?

Quick Banana Bread

A while ago I posted a recipe for Instant Banana Bread.  Here's a slightly more complicated version.  It's verging on too complicated for me but I have a really low tolerance for complicated recipes.  This still qualifies as simple and in the "lazy chef" category.  You can make as little or much as you want, which is what I like about it because I would be too tempted by a full loaf of banana bread.

Ingredients:
some manna bread, multigrain is good.
some sliced ripe banana
some dates pitted
shot of vanilla (1/4-1/2 tsp depending on taste and how much bread you are making)
sprinkle of cinnamon (1/8-1/4 tsp)

Here's everything in a bowl:

Grind it up in a food processor.  Smash into a pan.  I didn't make much so my bread is going to be sideways--it's only about 1/3" thick in this pan:

Bake in the oven.  Here's where I wasn't sure what to do.  I did about 300 degrees for about 15-20 minutes.  I wasn't trying to cook it, just heat it and dry it out a bit so it would be more bread like.  I cut this into 3 pieces that looked like slices of banana bread!  It was pretty good.  Let me know if you try this and like it or have suggestions for improving it.

Super Easy Date Nut Balls

I posted a while back a recipe for Date Nut Balls.  But these are a little too complicated for me and dirty too many dishes.  I've become the "Lazy Chef."  I find that easy recipes can taste as good as complicated ones.   I came up with a real easy way to make these.  It requires coconut date rolls, which are smashed dates rolled in coconut shavings.  The key is, someone has already smashed up the dates for you.

Ingredients:
some nuts and/or seeds (I used raw cashews)
coconut date rolls
optional:  a little vanilla and/or some cocoa powder

Grind up the nuts in a blender or coffee grinder--can be as fine or chunky as you want.  mash into the coconut date rolls and roll into balls.  It only takes a few minutes and it's easy to clean the blender/grinder.  How easy is that?!   It's super good.  You can make as little or much as you want.  Here a photo I snapped after eating too many of them:

Instant banana bread

I didn't snap a picture.  This was just fun to do and tasted good.

Ingredients:

1 piece of manna bread

a few slices of a ripe banana

That's the minimum amount of ingredients.  If you want it more rich-tasting, you can add one or all of these things:

small amount of chopped date or date syrup

small amount of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, chopped walnuts, pecans, or some other nut/seed

Mash everything together.  Reshape into a piece of bread.  Enjoy.  You might have to eat it with a spoon.  I just thought of something--you could toast it in the oven for a few minutes.  It tastes like banana bread to me!  

Corn, walnuts, and coconut

This is a nice little dessert for me. It might sound odd, but it's good. The trick is to get high quality sweet corn; otherwise, it's not dessert.

Ingredients:

High quality sweet corn, fresh or frozen

chopped walnuts

spoonful of unsweetened coconut shavings

Combine in a bowl, heat in the microwave until warm. This follows a similar theme as my sweet pea snack and berry dessert.

this week's food

This week got hectic so meals took a backseat. Fortunately or unfortunately I had a fair amount of bananas, soy milk, and walnuts, so I continued my ice cream obsession. When I ran out of berries (Monday morning), I had the still wonderful banana walnut ice cream (Monday night and Tuesday). I went overboard on both days. oops. In a way, it made Wednesday easier because I wasn't hungry and I had a huge deadline. I can work from home if I want, so I got up at 7 am, walked 10 feet to my home office, and sat in my chair grading job applications until 9:45 pm. I got up every once in a while to make herbal tea, or decaff green tea, or grab a carrot or lettuce or cabbage from the fridge. Talk about a sedentary day, body wise, though it was a marathon brain-wise. But I didn't need much food. It paid off, because I made the deadline and we had a productive 2 hour telecon this morning and accomplished what we had planned. Then I thought, time for a well-deserved break! So I threw together some food, and went swimming followed by ice skating with my good friends, whose ages range from 4 to 61! Both were wonderful!

So here are the meals I had today: Before the telecon, a serving of veggie bean soup (from the freezer, thawed overnight). Then to get me through the rest of the day, I made a quick salad from everything left in the refrigerator: lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber, baby bok choi, apple. no salad dressing, just thought of it as finger food--didn't even bring a fork. And I made a big bag of sliced carrots and celery. Here's a picture of the goodies and the almost empty fridge that resulted:

I eat a lot of raw carrots because we get really good local carrots at my co-op for several months of the year. They taste kind of like candy. Carrots are probably the most calorie-dense raw vegetable that's enjoyable to eat (potatoes might be calorie dense, but they aren't enjoyable to eat). This is a good thing because you can't survive on raw veggies for long if you don't get enough calories. I would have added nuts but I wasn't that hungry after the beans. I nibbled on this before and after swimming. Then this evening I went grocery shopping for my weekend trip and stopped at a fast-food joint with house-mate. I dumped my blackberries and frozen mango on the rest of my salad at ate that while house-mate enjoyed her hamburger and fries. My fast food meal was also quite good.

Some readers commented that they are interested to see what I do for simple meals. Well, this is about as simple as you can get. I feel pretty lame posting about it, but this sort of quick and easy stuff works for me.

"cheesecake" rollups?

This is so simple and yummy, it's mindboggling. If you try it, let me know if I'm crazy to think this is good. I've been enjoying delicious frozen sweet corn lately in beans, and delicious pignolias (Mediterranian pine nuts) in my salads. The pignolias are creamy and to me have a cheeselike quality. I thought, what if you combined the corn and pignolias--then you get sweet and cheesy creamy, or cheesecake. Then what do you put it on? Well, I don't really want a sweet crust because you might overwhelm the taste of the corn-nut. So I just wrapped it in a warmed corn tortilla. This is a sprouted version that only includes corn and salt. Now the salt is a problem. I only had 1 tortilla last night and I can feel the effects of it today. I'll have to search for another brand.

Ingredients

1/3-1/2 cup frozen sweet corn thawed.

1 Tbsp pignolias.

1 corn tortilla

Now it's kinda hard to blend this small amount so if you can double or triple the recipe, you can blend the frozen sweet corn in a food processor, or blender. But I managed to do it in a food processor. Also, the kind of sweet corn I buy is really sweet. It is so sweet I think it must not be good for you! So if yours isn't so sweet, you might want to add a smidge of date syrup to it.

Thanksgiving pudding

If I named this according to the ingredients, it probably wouldn't be as appealing (mashed carrots and bananas anyone?). But this is super easy and for me, as yummy as pumpkin pie. This was inspired by a couple of other recipe ideas: A reader of this blog pointed out that she likes using steamed carrots rather than canned pumpkin in her Thanksgiving desserts. Well, we get really good local (sweet) carrots here so I thought that is a great idea! And a recipe on the Fuhrman forums uses banana instead of dates as a sweetener so I thought I'd try that.

Ingredients:

2 large carrots, steamed until tender

1 very ripe banana

1/2 oz chopped walnuts

pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon to taste (about 1/4 tsp?).

Mash the carrots, banana and spice with a fork. Stir in the walnuts. Eat heated or cooled. If you want it sweeter, add some date syrup (or dates soaked in water and mashed). This will probably be a weekend treat for a while.