Unexpected Christmas Cookie!

This weekend, I tried out a vegan chocolate sauce as a crepe-topper with mild success. Then, tonight, craving something pepperminty, I tried to figure out how to make my first gluten-free christmas cookie of the season. What followed was more successful than I anticipated (and easy and fast!):

No-Bake Chocolate Peppermint Macaroons (V, GF)

1/4 cup (or more) sweetened flaked coconut
1/4 cup oats
1/4 cup coconut oil
2T dark chocolate cocoa powder
Agave nectar to taste (I think I used 1-2 T)
Peppermint extract to taste

In a bowl, mix sweetened, flaked coconut and oats. Press into a small plate lined with wax paper (I made a little envelope of wax paper...just wing it).

Heat coconut oil in a small bowl for about 1.5 minutes (until melted), then slowly stir in cocoa (mix well - the cocoa can clump up easily). When mixed, add peppermint and agave until you reach the desired sweetness and flavor. Then, pour chocolate sauce on top of your coconut/oat mixture and use the wax paper to distribute the sauce through. Wrap up and place in refrigerator for 10 minutes or more to harden the coconut oil. Remove, unwrap and cut up into pieces. Makes one piece of "macaroon bark" about 5" square.

My carnivorous father LOVED them, so I hope you will too.

Gluten Free Mini Pumpkin Cheesecakes

I have been long absent from this blog, both because I've started a new, tiring job and also because I have been delving into the world of gluten-free living, which has seen me spending many of my evenings with nachos in hand.

However, for Thanksgiving, I wanted to make something I could eat with my favorite ingredient (pumpkin!), so I experimented today since it was a snow-day in Seattle. (Certainly NOT as exciting as my from-scratch pumpkin pie experiment from last year, but whatever). These little guys are great for gfers and non-gfers alike.

Gluten Free Mini Pumpkin Cheesecakes

Before prepping: preheat oven to 350F. Make sure cream cheese has been softened (leave out on counter for 4+ hours before baking) before getting started.

Load a muffin tin with wrappers and place one mini gluten free ginger cookie (Mi-Del brand from Fred Meyer is delicious!) or vanilla wafer flat side down in the wrapper.

Filling:

• 1.5 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1 cup pureed pumpkin
• 2 eggs
• 1/8 cup sour cream (1 big spoonful)
• 3/4 cup sugar (1/2 white, 1/2 brown)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

First whip cream cheese until fluffy and smooth and then add rest of ingredients and beat for another few minutes. If not yet smooth and fluffy, transfer to a blender and blend out the lumps (works very well, actually). Pour batter into muffin tins (almost full – it won’t rise). Bake for 25-27 minutes at 350F.

Topping (optional):

• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• Splash of vanilla

Beat ingredients together (I used a wire whisk on my kitchenaid and it worked nicely). If desired, pull out cupcakes 5 min early, spread on a thin layer of topping and put back in oven for the remaining 5 minutes. Cool, then let set up in fridge overnight. I sprinkled a light dusting of cinnamon on the top of each mini-cheesecake as they were cooling.

Makes 14 large mini-cheesecakes. Enjoy!

slow-cooking

This is my premier post on the "eat this" blog. Please don't judge too harshly - but i took a picture, so i thought that might offer me a few bonus points?

So, I just cooked a whole chicken for the first time last night/today (ok, in June - it took me awhile to upload the picture). I just moved into a house where I'm a live-in companion with a couple of adults with developmental disabilities - which is neither here nor there, except that upon moving into a new house / taking charge of a household, I inherited a number of food items (and other things) I might not have chosen to purchase myself (like many packs of bologna and hot dogs, cans of beefaroni, a box of 36 hamburger patties, etc.). This is a bit of a curse and a blessing - while at first I was a bit confounded at how I would manage to get all of this food out of the house without throwing it directly in the garbage, I have since welcomed the creative challenge.

One of the items was also a whole chicken - something I've never tried to cook before because it kind of grossed me out, and because I've never felt like I've had an occasion to do so, but something I nevertheless "believe" in - cooking and eating the whole chicken, versus purchasing a whole pack o' breasts (which I actually just did, in case the whole chicken thing didn't work out). And after my friend Jennifer crock-pot cooked a whole chicken when I was with her in England last summer, I was inspired by her and her husband's Chris commitment to slow and local food (of course this inherited chicken was not local - clearly grocery store brand).

So, I decided to go to trusty allrecipes.com to see if there were any pointers or recipes about how to go about this task. And lo and behold, one of the recipes for "whole chicken crock pot" was Chicken Spaghetti, which I was also planning to make soon.

In that recipe, it simply said to place the chicken in a slow-cooker, cover with water, and add some salt and pepper. Could it be that simple??

Yes - well, close.

First, I had to take off the plastic of course. Then, my grocery store chicken had a plastic bag o' innards stuffed inside, which I took out, and simply threw in the trash can. Mind you, I'm still new at this - I wasn't quite ready to deal with the mysterious bloody mess in that plastic bag. I'm guessing it was livers and gizzards, but I'm not sure.

Then, I simply placed the chicken in my crock pot, covered most of it with water, added some salt and pepper (and a dash of cumin and basil or something, just because I figured salt and pepper couldn't suffice for seasoning), and set it on High.

I cooked it on High for a good hour or more, turned it over (since I hadn't covered it completely with water) then went to bed with it set on Low.

In the morning, it was already tender, but some of the meat looked a little pink, so I turned it on High for 30 more minutes or so, and was gone again for the morning, so I turned it back down to Low (you can tell I have a very high-tech crock pot). By Noon, the house smelled of chicken and when I put a fork in it, meat practically melted off the bone.

So, I drained off a small container of broth, let the rest go down the sink, and went to work pulling all that good meat off the bones. I used a fork mainly, with the occasional help of a butter knife - it was that tender. I put the meat in a casserole dish I later used for Chicken Spaghetti. There were a few liver-y looking parts that were kind of gross to touch, and I had to watch out for a few smaller rib-like bones, but other than that, it was pretty easy to get it all apart. 15-20 minutes, later, I had this:


As follow-up to the crock-pot chicken adventure, you'll be interested to know that the other 1/2 of the pulled chicken that I put away in the fridge was eaten overnight by one of my housemates/clients. He loves a midnight snack - sometimes to the detriment of future meals I have planned for the rest of us.

Since said chicken adventure, I have crock-potted the pot roast that I also inherited - pretty good results as well. I've crock-potted beans at least once I think too, and I've decided that'll be the only way I'll do dry beans in the future, because I can't seem to get them to cook in a regular pot for the number of hours it says on the bag.

Happy slow-cooking!

when friends come into town...

...cooking no longer seems pointless!

A good friend of mine and Katie's from college came to visit Seattle this weekend and I got the cooking bug!

We started off with cinnamon belgian waffles:
(makes 6 servings)

2 eggs (beat well first untill fluffy, then add rest of ingredients)
2 cups flour
1 3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup veg oil
1-2 T brown sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 t salt
1 tsp vanilla

Then...it was time for the main event: whole wheat oatmeal bread!

1 cup oatmeal
2 cups boiling water
(mix and let sit until lukewarm)

then, stir in the following:
1/2 cup molasses
1/4 cup veg oil
1 T salt
4.5 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 packet of yeast prepared earlier with 1/2 cup of warm water @ 100 F (stir and let get started for 10 minutes)

-knead dough for 10 minutes, adding some flour if needed
-ball up, rub with a little veg oil and cover
-let rise 1-1.5 hours (until double size) in a warm house (~80 F) or an oven that has been pre-warmed (put on low for 5 minutes, then turn off and put dough in)
-punch down and shape into loaves or rolls (make sure to grease pans with crisco)
-let rise again 30-45 minutes and bake (rolls for about 20 minutes at 375, loaves about 20-25 minutes at 325-350)
-enjoy! soooo amazing. I brushed the top of the rolls with olive oil, which was even better.

Then, we topped it off with a little tofu stirfry with garlic, green onion, broccoli, olive and sesame oil, soy sauce...but, you're all better at stirfrys than I am, so I won't post any other details.

Happy Easter!

Who doesn't love TJs?

I don't know if you ladies are near a Trader Joe's, but I've found as a teacher and a vegetarian (well, pescatarian) that I can subsist off of their whole wheat naan/hummus, whole wheat pizza dough and frozen options for that quick lunch or lazy dinner.

I used to think that TJs could do no wrong: cheaper produce, healthier choices and local options. But, then I tried their frozen soyrizo quiche and I had to take a step back. Then tonight I had another disappointing frozen option, so I thought, I wonder if the ladies at Eat This have tried other frozens I haven't and could save me some disappointment and money?

With that, my favorite frozen foods from TJs:
-Thai shrimp gyoza
-Cheese tamales
-Cheese enchilada
-Paneer tikka (their garlic naan is fantastic, too)
-Soy cream vanilla

And the ones to miss:
-Cheese/soy quiche (it will make you cry)
-Vegan Phad Thai with Tofu
-Curried Lentils (not horrific, but not awesome either)
-Breaded Cod (again, not terrible)
-Soy cream vanilla/mango mix

That's what I've got so far...most of these are probably just preferences, but I stand fully by my quiche statements. Please add to the lists if you care.

Food (Supposedly) From the Homeland: Korean Vegetable Croquettes

Funny, that I seem to only post about Korean food despite never really having eaten much Korean food before the age of 18. Oh well.

In accordance with one of my Spring Break resolutions (cooking real food made of things that don't require an ingredient list on the back of the box), I chose this Korean side dish as my first triumph. Whether or not this is really anything like anything served in Korea is up for debate, but I'm sure the woman from Goshen, IN who contributed this recipe really knows her stuff (probably not).

Korean Vegetable Croquettes
(From Extending the Table)

Mix together:
1 cup potatoes, coarsely grated
3/4 cup carrots, coarsely grated (you can actually use any veggie you want, but carrots are recommended)
1/2 cup onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced (or, if you're me, more)

Make batter of:
3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup water

Stir batter into vegetables.
Heat in skillet 1/2 cup oil.
Drop vegetable mixture into hot oil by teaspoons or tablespoons depending on size desired. Fry until browned on both sides. Drain on paper. Serve hot.

Now, if you're like me (afraid of fire, oil, and geometrically afraid of fire and oil together), you'll likely not use all 1/2 cup of oil at once. However, if you don't, you'll probably end up using it all eventually, as the oil cooks off the pan (and soaks grossly and artery-cloggingly into the croquettes because it's not hot enough and you have to let them sit in the oil for like 3 minutes). Bottom line: go big or go home (but be careful) - heat that sucker up with enough oil that the croquettes can sit in them and fry up quickly. Also, small is good here - they'll cook a lot faster.

I dipped mine in a little Teriyaki sauce (which, unfortunately, was not home made), water, and Sriracha (made by the Asian gods of awesome). I also cooked up some rice and stir fried some asparagus and chard in a little soy, water, sugar, ginger, sesame oil, and garlic (a la Kim circa 2006).

Then I thoroughly covered everything with more Sriracha (= the best).

Sociable Soups

This year for lent I decided to invite folks to join me for dinner and a time of reflection every Wednesday from Ash Wednesday till Easter. I've really enjoyed intentionally setting this time aside to share a meal with others. What I haven't told my weekly guests is that they are also my excuse for trying new recipes...

The first week I tried this soup from Didi Emmons' Entertaining for a Veggie Planet (the second chapter of this cookbook is titled "sociable soups" hence the blog title...) :

Butternut and Ginger Soup

1 Tbs oil
2 onions, chopped
1/4 c peeled and minced fresh ginger
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 2lb butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 13.5 oz can of unsweetened coconut milk
1 tsp of Asian chili sauce, or more to taste
3 Tbs of chopped fresh cilantro
salt and pepper to taste
3 Tbs peanuts, chopped and roasted for garnish

In a large sauce pan, heat the oil over medium heat, Add the onions and saute, stirring occasionally until soft, about 7 minutes. Add the ginger and garlic, saute for 1 minute more.

Add the squash, coconut milk, and 5 cups of water. Bring to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the squash is cooked through 20 minutes, Remove from heat.

Using an immersion blender, puree the soup. Add the chili sauce, chopped cilantro, salt and pepper. Garnish with peanuts and cilantro, and serve!

Delicious!

It's never a bad time for molasses cookies

Apparently I've been on a cooking/baking roll lately. I tried a molasses recipe today to take to a party, and they were a huge hit! I finished off the leftovers on my drive home (whoops). They go down easily :)

Molasses Cookies (my new favorite, I have to say)

• 3/4 cup margarine, softened
• 1 cup white sugar (or 1/2 c brown and 1/2 c white)
  
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 cup white sugar (for rolling the cookies)

Mix all ingredients together and cool dough in fridge for 1/2-1 hour. Preheat oven to 375F and roll dough into 1 inch balls and roll in white sugar. Place a couple of inches apart and don't flatten. Bake 7 minutes for nice, gooey cookies, and 8 minutes if you like your cookie a little more done. The bigger the cookie you want to make, increase bake time slightly (my last sheet was 1 1/4 inch-ish and I baked them 8.5 minutes, I think). Cool and enjoy! This recipe will make about 4 dozen small cookies (and you'll eat them all).

Simple and delicious

Hello! Hope you are all enjoying 2010 thus far.

On Sunday I was cooking dinner for a friend and I wanted to make something quick yet tasty (don't we all). I knew I wanted to do something rice and beany, so I just went to allrecipes and saw what I could find. Haitian rice and beans is what transpired, and, I shit you not, best r&b I've ever had! Who knew cloves could make them taste so great?

My version of the above recipe:

3 Garlic cloves, minced
3 Green onions, chopped
Olive Oil
1 can of TJ's kidney beans (20 oz)
3 cups water
1 cup white rice
thyme, parsley, cloves, salt and pepper (I just winged it like I always do, maybe ~1 t of the first 3 and s&p to taste)
2 bay leaves
2 chopped dried mexican peppers

I sauteed the onion and garlic (I would use more garlic next time and add other sauteed veggies into the mix to make it a whole meal - maybe peppers and mushrooms?) in the olive oil, then added the drained beans and cooked that mix for a couple minutes. Then I added the water and rice, stirred and then added all the spices last. Simmer until the water is gone and there you go (take out bay leaves, though they may be difficult to find!).

The whole thing maybe took 30 minutes - so easy and really amazingly great! Enjoy!