It’s the Season for Soup

When it’s cold outside – I like to make soup. Here’s my general technique:

I check my refrigerator and pantry – picking a protein and vegetables. And then I think about the broth.

The protein is generally something left over that I need to use up (like roast or lunch meat) or frozen edamame, or nuts (dry roasted peanuts or soy beans or my favorites). Sometimes I use quinoa as the protein source.

I try to pick veggies that will hold up to being in soup. I particularly like carrots and Brussel sprouts and bell pepper…and some of the stronger greens like beet tops or kale. I still have frozen whole tomatoes that are excellent thawed to enrich winter soups. Sometimes I cut up sweet potatoes to use instead of carrots. Onions and garlic can be cut up fresh or added in dry form. If I use them fresh I like to sauté them before adding the broth. In fact – many of the veggies can be sautéed before the broth is added.

Broths can be made a number of ways. I sometimes start with whatever is hot in the tea pot (tea, ginger water, cinnamon water, etc.) then I add seasonings or a bouillon cube…or let the meat I am adding provide the flavor and seasoning. My favorite seasonings (other than garlic and onion) are oregano, thyme, basil….or curry.

I don’t make cream soups very often but that doesn’t mean I don’t have thick pureed type soups. I like butternut squash soup with curry seasoning. Two ways to prepare it: 1) cook the squash directly in the broth and then mash it in the pan or 2) use squash cooked previously that is already pureed when I add it to the broth. The bright green of edamame added as the protein makes a very colorful soup…..or dry roasted peanuts if the bright colors are overwhelming.

Enjoy a warm bowl of December soup!

Beautiful Food – November 2015

There are so many beautiful foods to choose from this time of year. It seems like there are bright colors at every turn.

The salads have the orange of sweet potatoes or carrots…the dark green of parsley or cilantro…the magenta of watermelon radishes…even the cheese and boiled eggs in this salad are colorful! The whole is as beautiful as it is tasty.

And the salsa made with end of season bounty of tomatoes, cilantro, onions, hot pepper, garlic, and onions…gets just a spike of citrus from a lemon (peel and all). The colors and flavors blends together to contribute to several kinds of meals and snacks: salads, stir fries, tacos, chips….

And what about all the root veggies this time of year: white turnips, watermelon radishes, sweet potatoes (ok…I cheated a little – the green is a broccoli stalk rather than a root vegetable)…all in one stir fry. I add a little water when I first start cooking them to make sure they have enough cooking time to soften. Again – the appearance of food makes a big difference in the appeal of the meal.

New this month – and something I look forward to every years – is the arrival of pomegranates in the grocery store. I buy at least one a week. The seeds always look like little jewels to me; the color meshes well with the season. And they are my favorite afternoon snack until the season runs its course sometime in the early part of next year!

Missing the Weekly CSA Share

This is the first week I don’t have a CSA share since the season ended last week and won’t start again until next June. It feels odd to not have the bounty of fresh veggies coming in from that source. I am intent on getting every bit of goodness out of what is left --- wondering how long I can go before I’ll buy veggies from my grocery store’s produce section. It won’t be this week certainly.

The refrigerator was so full that the ‘cool’ actually got a bit cooler and some of the greens froze…so I used them in soup and stir fry. I still have lettuce, spinach, radicchio, and cabbage for salads…lots of root vegetables (carrot, turnips, sweet potatoes, and radishes) for slaw. I have peppers, pac choi and tatsoi for stir fry. I’m trying to eat the most fragile veggies first.

I thought the cilantro might degrade first so I made salsa with it (using tomatoes and hot peppers from earlier in the CSA season and frozen). I love the blend of the veggies with onion, garlic, and half a lemon. I use salsa for more than just tacos; it becomes salad dressing and stir fry sauce…a drizzle on the top of soup.

There is still a butternut squash, small white potatoes, and garlic along with a lot of sweet potatoes that don’t take up any room in the refrigerator and will be edible for quite some time.

I’ve got dried thyme and parsley/carrot tops that will season foods into the winter too.

The big lesson learned from the CSA is how good vegetables can be. I am a little spoiled with getting them the same day they are picked so I choose carefully in the grocery store during the offseason. I don’t try to eat the same all during the year. During the winter I like to have warm meals so I tend to eat a lot less salad type greens and stick with the sturdy greens (kale, cabbage, pac choi) that hold up well in stir fries or soups. Sometimes my grocery store has organic greenhouse dandelion greens and that is a treat in winter!

Beautiful Food - September 2015

I decided to do a monthly post on ‘beautiful food’ and am finding that it easy to select foods that are luscious looking and tasting to me. I thrive on variety! Our CSA prompts some of the variety; in September the tomatoes were still abundant and we had sweet potato leaves one week. Somehow eggs were prevalent in my diet than usual this month. So here’s the top 4 ‘beautiful foods’ for September:

This month I enjoyed toasted pita wedges with homemade orange/lemon marmalade (recipe here),

Egg salad (hard boiled eggs and hummus in a food processor until ‘spreadable’) wrapped in sweet potato leaves (only available for a short time, just before the sweet potatoes are harvested at our CSA),

The jewels of small tomatoes,

And eggs in a nest (recipe here). I went a little overboard on the ‘nest’ so this was a hearty dinner!

Beautiful Food - August 2015

With the bounty of fresh veggies in August, it is easy to prepare a beautiful plate - full of color, great flavors, and nutrition. One of my favorites is a large heirloom tomato with cucumber….a little sprinkle of salt and a few leaves of fresh oregano.

Apples are often not so good in August because it is just before the new harvest. I had a bag of apples that should have been great for eating fresh but they had too many brown spots - so I made a huge apple crisp to use them up. I modified the recipe to give it a summer flavor by replacing the cinnamon with lemon and mint. And I replaced the flour with flaxseed meal and teff flour since I already had them on hand.  There is beauty in the ingredients, the big skillet in the oven, and the finished product! I always like the hint of red in from the cooked apple skin.

Topping:

• 1 cup oatmeal
• 1/4 cup flaxseed meal
• 3/4 cup teff flour
• 1 cup brown sugar
• Pinch baking soda
• Pinch baking powder
• 1/2 cup olive oil

Apples+

• 2 lemons
• 1/2 cup fresh mint leaves (or 1/4 cup dry mint) --- optional
• 10 cups apples
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1/2 cup water

Spray the pan with cooking spray. This recipe will take a large one!

Process/grind the oatmeal if you want a fine texture topping. Combine topping ingredients in a bowl and mix with a fork until the lumps are small.

Cut the ends from the lemon and then cut into 8 wedges. Take out the seeds. Put the wedges (pulp and skin) into the food processor along with the mint leaves. Process until pureed.

Use the slicer on the food processor to slice the apples. I cut an apple into 8 wedges, cut the seeds/core and any bruise away, then start the food processor. Drop the apple wedges through the smaller opening in the top of the processor to get even slices (this was recommended in the booklet that came with my Cuisinart food processor).

Heat the oven to 350⁰ F.

Place the apple slices with the lemon/mint pulp into the pan. Use a spatula to distribute the apples and lemon/mint evenly in the pan. Sprinkle sugar and flour over the apples then drizzle the water on top.

Arrange the topping mixture on top of the apples.

Cook for 45 minutes.

Enjoy just out of the oven or cool from the refrigerator. It is good any time of day - for breakfast, snack or dessert!

Homemade Zucchini Hummus and Orange Marmalade

I have discovered two recipes recently that are so easy to make at home that I won’t be buying the equivalent in the grocery store any time soon.  Both recipes are the ones I will make again and again this summer - the 'condiments' of Summer 2015!

Zucchini Hummus

(This recipe uses zucchini rather than chickpeas. A version of it was included in a newsletter from the Gorman Farms CSA on the first week zucchini was included in the share. I modified it slightly - part of joy of cooking as far as I'm concerned.)

1 cup diced raw zucchini

1/3 cup tahini butter

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

2 cloves garlic minced

2 teaspoon cumin

Salt to taste

Put everything in a food processor and process until smooth. Refrigerate and use as dip or salad dressing!

Some variations I am going to try:

• Add fresh basil or mint or both (since I have them growing in deck pots)
• Season with no-salt seasoning blends
• Add lemon or orange zest
• Add a little extra tahini or some olive oil for better salad dress consistency
• Add 1 tablespoon flaxseed meal for thicker consistency

Orange Marmalade

Cut the ends off an orange. Cut into wedges, removing seeds. (Option: If you have the skin and pulp of a lemon after making zucchini hummus, cut it up and add to the orange to make orange/lemon marmalade!). Process in a food processor until skin and pulp are reduced to small bits.

Place process citrus in a small saucepan. Add 1/2 cup sugar and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Set timer for 15 minutes and bring to boil on high heat then the lower the heat to simmer.

Cool. Place in a glass jar with a tight lid (I use a wide mouthed jar that salsa came in). Refrigerate.

I enjoy marmalade in warmed pitas (small) or on toast. It is a wonderful salad dressing either alone or combined with olive oil. Use as a component of dressing for carrot/raisin or celery/apple/raisin or spinach/strawberry salad.

Flaxseed Sprouts

I am sprouting flaxseed to add to salads. It takes 4-5 days during the winter months but might take less in the summer when the house is a bit longer and the house warmer. Here is the way I do it:

• I only want to grow a single serving at a time (i.e. have sprouts in a salad every 4-5 days) - so I start with 1 tablespoon of seeds.
  
• Soak the seeds overnight.
• You will notice that the seeds swell with soaking. Drain using a fine mesh strainer. Place in a covered bowl.
  
• Rinse and drain at least once a day. The seeds should stay moist. The seed husk spilts on some seeds and tiny white sprouts will appear on many within 3 days.
  
• Add them to a salad! Not all the seeds have to have sprouts to be yummy. Sprouting flaxseed is ‘sticky’ so it will adhere to other salad ingredients better than the dry, unsprouted seeds. 

Growing my own sprouts appeals to me and this is an easy way to do it. Flaxseed is nutritious to begin with and sprouting makes them easier to digest…and absorb all the goodness.

By the way - sprouted flaxseed is good as a topping for soup as well!