🥬 Vegan vegetable soup in half an hour. 9/18/19

Tonight is supposed to be chickpea stew but I have vegetables calling to me, so, change in plans! Here is how to get homemade vegetable soup on the table fast. Cut up the onions first. Turn your pan on medium low and add some olive oil. Dump the chopped onions in, add a little salt, and let them sweat. Cut up the garlic, carrots, and celery next. When the onions are translucent pop in the garlic and stir it around. When you can smell the garlic, put in the carrots and celery to cool the pan down and keep the garlic from burning.

In other words after the onions and garlic start preparing your vegetables from the hardest to the most delicate. Add salt along the way and give it a stir every few minutes. Add the vegetable stock at the end and turn up the heat to get it all simmering. In my soup, in addition to what I mentioned above, I added green beans, black eyed peas, snow peas, broccoli, parsley, and tomatoes. By the time I added the last delicate ingredient, the hardest ones were almost cooked through. The final simmer cooks them all perfectly. At the end I added a chiffonade of spinach.

WW points – 1

Vegetable soup

 

Posted in American, Easy, Kitchen tips, leftovers, Legumes, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian, WW points | Tagged | Leave a comment

🍗 Three cup chicken 9/16/19

One thing I am learning from keeping track of everything I eat is that I have been eating in a pretty healthy manner except between 5PM and 7PM. Between those hours John and I would drink our glasses of wine and eat hors d’oeuvres. All very civilized, but while I did not gain weight from doing this, I also did not lose any. So I have substituted iced tea in for wine and tasty popcorn for other less healthy snacks. Now all I have to do is keep this up!

Tonight’s dinner is 3 cup chicken. We used one chicken breast cut into bite-sized pieces and cooked it with ginger and garlic in dry sherry and soy sauce sweetened with a little brown sugar. It is finished with basil leaves and scallions. We served it over some of the brown rice from yesterday and had steamed broccoli on the side.

WW points – 9

Three cup chicken, brown rice, broccoli

 

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🥬 Red lentils with brown rice. 9/16/19

Here is a couple of cool things about red (actually coral colored) lentils. They turn yellow when you cook them! They cook really quickly, in about fifteen minutes! So if you are hankering for a quick vegan meal, sauté some chopped onions, garlic and ginger, add the lentils and veg stock, and spice it up with turmeric, cumin, and cayenne. Then with 15 minutes of simmering, it’s ready! Add a little non-fat plain yogurt on top to make it look fancy. I had mine with brown rice but if you are short on time, pita will do.

WW points 5 (4 for rice, 1 for olive oil)

Red lentils with brown rice

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Weekly menu. 9/15/19-9/21/19

Hi, I am back! John and I have taken a vacation while I was pondering over what to do with my blog and we got back yesterday. Many thanks to the folks who stopped by even when I was not writing anything.

Here is what I have decided to do. This past year I have taken a few falls which has made my adventuring more precarious. In addition to a bad knee I have also wrenched my back, and torn the rotator cuff in my right shoulder. I still have not decided whether to have the surgery on it. It means a long recovery with iffy results.

In order to help my knee and back and be more mobile for a trip with our daughter for her birthday in March, I have decided to lose some weight and be serious about the rehab exercise for my back and shoulder. I am going to take a look at the new WW plan which has totally been revamped since I worked for them years ago. If I decide to go that route, I will start including a point count for the dinners we make. I imagine this will all start around September 22.

Also to be a good citizen of the earth, I will try to increase the number of vegetarian or vegan meals a week. I am hoping to include an emoji that will identify the type of meal easily.

 

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Having a little break. 8/28/19

Hi my fellow vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, and omnivores!

I am on a little break right now and plan on resuming with my almost every day dinner ideas that I cook up with my husband, John, around the middle of September.  I really appreciate the time you take to read my posts.

I am trying to decide whether I should post less often and not repeat previous dinners. Or should I continue with adding recipes? I have begun to include more recipes in my blog. Since we do not tend to always use written down recipes, trying to come up with a faithful reproduction is hard! Did I put in a dash, a pinch, or a quarter teaspoon? Originally I was trying to work on weight loss. Do I want to continue with that? Should I get a fancier set-up for my pictures? So you see I feel like I am at a crossroads.

Maybe I will come up with some answers during my little break. Maybe not. In any case look for my next post mid-September.

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Vichyssoise – a summer potato soup. 8/22/19

There are two components to tonight’s dinner, a Mediterranean salad and a French soup. There is some question as to whether vichyssoise is a French or American creation. Potato and leek soup served hot has been around in France since potatoes became popular in Europe. But was it the Americans who came up with the cold version? Who knows!

My Mediterranean salad consists of Romaine lettuce, cucumber chunks, our abundant orange cherry tomatoes, olives, feta, and oil and vinegar. In Italy you are never given a recitation of salad dressings to choose from. Plopped down on the table is a set of oil and vinegar and salt and pepper. Dress your own salad!

Mediterranean salad

Going through my vegetable drawer in the fridge I notice two leeks, two potatoes, and a half an onion. It is my inspiration for vichyssoise and I make the soup first thing this morning while it is still cool.  I will post a recipe here but everything is approximate. After cooking my soup and blending it, the color is a lovely creamy white. I chill it until dinner and garnish with thyme and chives.

Vichyssoise garnished with thyme and chives

Marymom’s Vichyssoise
Ingredients approximate. Serves 4

1 tsp. butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
2 leeks, white and light green parts only, cleaned thoroughly and sliced into rings
2 peeled russet potatoes, diced
2-3 cups chicken stock, enough to cover vegetables
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
salt to taste
Fresh herbs for garnish

Melt butter in oil. Add onions. Season lightly. Cook over low heat until translucent. Add leeks and potatoes. Season lightly again. Cook vegetables together for a few minutes. Add chicken stock to cover vegetables. Bring to boil. Lower to simmer. Simmer for about 25 minutes until the potatoes are tender. I covered it partially during the simmer. Let cool somewhat. Stir in milk and cream. I used a stick blender to purée the soup but I think a blender probably would have worked better. Adjust seasoning (it needs quite a bit of salt.) Chill. Serve cold with an herb of your choice.

 

Posted in Easy, French, Mediterranean, Recipes, Vegetables | Tagged , | 1 Comment

A really ugly looking dinner. 8/20/19

We have a lot of Aunt Ruby’s German Green tomatoes so I made tomato sauce. About two weeks ago I ruined it by putting in red tomato paste turning it into brown sludge. Why not make my own tomato paste out of green tomatoes and then I could have this brilliant green sauce. Well, no. That is not how it works.

Just cooking the tomatoes makes them kind of pea green.

Cooked green tomato pulp, not too pretty

Then when I slowly (for 8 hours!) boiled down some of the sauce to make tomato paste it ended up looking like this.

Ugly green-ish tomato paste

After I put in the browned meat it got even worse!

Horrible looking meat sauce

However, since I had spent the better part of a day making this monstrosity we were definitely going to eat it! Once it was on the pasta the color seemed to disappear and it did not look nearly as bad. Our daughter pointed out, though, that it also had no tomato flavor. I have two containers in the freezer and once those are gone, no more green spaghetti sauce!

Finished product—no green color and no tomato taste

 

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Chicken dinner. 8/19/19

Today is my older sister’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Peggy! She is coming for a visit in October. I am looking forward to it. I had such fun with my younger sister a few weeks ago. I anticipate a great time with my older one as well. I did not get in much cooking, though.

Just plain old boneless, skinless chicken thighs on the grill tonight cooked by John. I made cole slaw and cherry tomatoes with oil, basil, and Trapani sea salt.

Grilled chicken thighs, cole slaw, and cherry tomatoes

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Light clam chowder. 8/18/19

Wow, did this come out well! In fact it is so good that our daughter ate it for breakfast this morning. Granted this is not exactly summer fare but it has been pleasant here for a few days so I thought I would make this on a cool day and then make vichyssoise for the hot days ahead. They share some of the same ingredients.

Although I do use 1/4 cup of cream in the soup, I think it would be almost as good with no cream at all. The pancetta gives it a nice undertone but next time I might just use olive oil and see how that works out. This is originally a Gabrielle Hamilton recipe but I have simplified it so much that it really bears little resemblance—for instance hers has real clams, guanciale, and 3 cups of heavy cream!

Marymom’s Light Clam Chowder

Marymom’s Light Clam Chowder
Makes 4 servings

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 ounces finely chopped pancetta (Volpi makes a prechopped pack of two)
1/2 finely chopped onion
1 rib celery finely chopped
1 leek, white and light green parts only, cut into discs and washed well
2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes cut into cubes
1 sprig tarragon
2 springs thyme
6 oz. white wine
2 cans chopped clams with liquid
2 bottles clam juice
3/4 cup milk (reg or 1% or 2%)
1/4 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper
toasted rustic bread

Heat the olive oil.  Add pancetta. Saute until brown. Remove only pancetta and leave the pancetta fat in the pan. Add the onion, celery, leek, potato, tarragon, and thyme. Cook until the onion and leek are translucent.  Add the white wine and let it steam off. Add only the juice from the canned clams and the bottled clam juice. Simmer until the potatoes are cooked.  Add the cream and the milk keeping the mixture below a simmer. Add the clams and pancetta. Heat through on low. Check for seasoning and add salt if needed.

Ladle over a piece of rustic bread that has been toasted.  Grind pepper as desired on top.

Posted in American, Pork, Recipes, Shellfish, Vegetables | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Weekly menu. 8/18-23/19

This week’s menu starts with a couple of re-dos. Last week on Friday and Saturday we were supposed to be having chicken thighs and clam chowder but it was too hot and we just did not feel like cooking. So this week and Sunday and Monday we are trying them again. After all, I bought all the ingredients last week and they need to be used!

Friday night is a date night for John and me after which I am going to be on hiatus for a bit. I’ll drop in occasionally with some tidbit but otherwise I am on blogcation.

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