That's what happens when you try to post at midnight.

Fellow food lovers: I'm sorry I barraged you with family photos. I meant to post those to our family/personal blog, but alas, I woke to find I had shared them with you all instead! I do hope you have a Happy Easter, and eat something delicious. If you haven't discovered the food blog Smitten Kitchen yet, I commend it to you -- make some of her strawberry rhubarb compote to celebrate spring!

Happy Easter!

TVP? We'll see.

I've been doing a lot of this lately:


Why?

All you need is love, right? And, nothing says LOVE like TVP and black bean (with peppers and onions) nachos in a heart-shaped pan! Saute it all together with some TJ's taco seasoning and olive oil (TVP has no fat, unsurprisingly), top with Tilamook Cheddar and put into the oven at 450F for 5-10 minutes - voila! Dinner!

Pairs nicely with a gin and tonic (Bendistillery gin, of course).

Now, if I could only figure out how to abate TVP gas, we'd be in business...

Experiments in Polenta-Land

Happy New Year, all!

My year as a high school teacher continues to nudge me away from the kitchen and towards frozen delights from TJs or snack-dinner (a term coined by Katie VL's little nephews when I was down visiting over the holiday).

However, every once in a while, I get inspired. A few weeks ago, two dear friends had me over for dinner and we feasted on amazing beet and avocado salad and baked polenta with goat cheese. I vaguely remember hearing about polenta once before in my life, but I had no idea that it is an Italian grain made of cornmeal (are you thinking what I'm thinking? Gluten-free!). You can buy it at TJs in a little polenta-log, make it yourself, or buy it elsewhere, I'm sure. It's affordable and organic at TJs, so win-win. Tonight, when I came home after an 11 hour day with almost no sustenance and a shot voice, I was looking for something to make with polenta that gave me protein, veggies and a new taste. What I came up with was completely an accident, but I loved it and will make it again soon.
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Pesto Polenta with Shrimp and Pan-Fried Veggies (gluten-free)

Place polenta slices (1/4-1/2") onto a cookie sheet and into an oven at 350F, topped with parmesean cheese. Bake for 20 min.

While baking, pan-fry 1/4 red pepper and 1/2 zucchini (sliced) and a large handful of spinach in an ample amount of olive oil. Add shrimp (or any meat you desire, I suppose) and continue to fry. Now, for the magic: season towards the end with black pepper, a spoonful of pesto, a hefty sprinkling of parmesean cheese and a few tangy sun-dried tomatoes. Mix around and coat with pesto while finishing your pan-frying.

Take polenta slices out of oven and place on a plate. Top with the veggie/shrimp/oil mixture which will be absorbed by the polenta, enhancing the flavor of everything. The polenta should be slightly crispy on the outside, which is delicious.
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Serve with wine to drink and Seu Jorge's album, Cru, as accompaniment for your elegant meal. I will be finishing my evening with my favorite Italian chocolate: bittersweet Perugina.

Salute!

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!