Curried Black Bean and Sweet Potato Skillet

Just keep some cooked quinoa in the fridge, it makes life much easier. Or freeze it in 1 cup increments.

4 cups of sweet potatoes, chopped up

1 red onion, diced
½ a jalapeno, diced
3 cloves of garlic, chopped up
2 bell peppers (any color will do)
1-15 oz. can of black beans, drained and rinsed
1 bunch of Swiss chard, stemmed and chopped
1 cup of cooked quinoa
½ cup low sodium veggie broth
2 tsp of olive oil
1 tbsp of curry powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a large non-stick sauté pan. Stir in your onions and jalapeños and allow to cook for about five minutes. Stir in the sweet potatoes, curry powder, a pinch of salt and half of the veggie broth. Once everything is well combined, pop a lid on and cook for about six to eight minutes or until your sweet potatoes are just about fork tender.

Add the beans, quinoa, Swiss chard, and peppers and season with salt and pepper. Pour the remaining broth in to the pan before popping the lid on and allowing to cook for another five minutes or so or until the greens are wilted and the beans are heated through.

Eat up and enjoy!!

Quinoa. Eat some

Super simple quinoa side/main dish. Also good for breakfast, late night "i just want a bite of something"

You need:

Baby bella mushrooms, cut into 4 or 6 pieces
2 leeks. Cut up and washed
Olive oil
2-4 cups cooked quinoa

Optional:
1 carrot shredded on a cheese grater
spinach

Saute the leek in olive oil until translucent. If you're adding the carrot do it once the leek is done, give it a good stir. Dump in the mushrooms (and spinach), saute for a quick minute, then add quinoa by the cup until the veggie/quinoa ratio is what you're looking for. Salt to taste.

Barley Pilaf/stuffing

Ingredients

• 1 whole Long Island Cheese Pumpkin (optional)
• 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
• 1 Tablespoon Butter
• 1 cup Barley
• 3 cloves Garlic, Minced
• 2 cups Chicken Stock
  
• 1 cup Water
• 1 whole Bay Leaf
• 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
• 1 Tablespoon Butter
• ½ cup Hulled Sunflower Seeds
• 1 whole Onion, Chopped
• 1 whole Granny Smith Apple, Peeled And Chopped
• 1 cup Frozen Chopped Spinach
• 1 dash Rice Vinegar

Preparation Instructions

To toast the barley:
Heat 1T Olive oil and 1T butter in a small dutch oven or thick bottomed sauce pan over medium heat. Once the butter is melted, put barley in and increase heat to high. Stir frequently, until the barley darkens and begins to smell nutty.

Once barley is toasty, reduce heat to medium. Add the 3 cloves garlic, minced and stir for another minute or so, until the garlic is fragrant.

Add the 2 cups stock, 1 cup water and bay leaf to the barley garlic mixture and turn down to a simmer. Cook for 45-60 minutes depending on your barley.

NOTE: If stuffing a pumpkin, at this time cut the top off and scoop out seeds and stringy flesh. Replace the top, place pumpkin in a pan with 1 inch of water and bake at 350 until easily pierced with a knife. (40 minutes or so)

Once the barley is done, remove bay leaf and discard. Remove barley pan from heat and let sit.

Put remaining 1T Olive oil and 1T butter in a pan, and toast sunflower seeds the same way you did the barley. Add onion and apple, and saute until translucent. Add frozen spinach and cover for 3 minutes, until spinach has cooked and can be easily mixed with onion mixture.

Mix sunflower seed/onion/apple/spinach into barley. Barley may have clumped a bit in sitting, just fluff it with a fork when you add everything else in.

Add dash or 2 of rice vinegar to taste. Doesn’t need much, just enough to finish the dish.

Serve as is for a side, or spoon stuffing into roasted pumpkin and return to 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes to allow flavors to meld. Transfer to pretty plate and bring whole pumpkin to table. To serve, scoop out some pumpkin flesh with the barley mixture.

Low fat high fiber and delicious salad thing

I'm eating this by the pound. It's a little drastic on the GI system at first but I'm convinced I'll get over it. Anyhow, it's delicious, interesting and pretty which counts the most. It might be my new go-to for parties and tailgating at polo.

Supplies:

• 1 Kohlrabi. Medium size. Google it, it's a good one to know.
  
• 1 Beet, same size as your kohlrabi, or 2 small ones Golden beets might be prettier in this. I'm undecided.
  
• carrots. Don't be shy
• Kale. A bunch. there is no science to kale, just know that it shrinks way more than you think. Maybe a bunch, or just less than half a bag. Whatever makes your skirt fly up.
• Balsamic vinegar
• Agave or honey
• Flaxseed oil. Optional but adds a delicious nutty yumminess
  

Get a cheese grater if you're cheap, a mandoline or food processor if you're fancy. Grate the carrot, kohlrabi, beet (incidentally, any of these is also delicious atop a real salad and makes beets palatable even though I find them vaguely gross in big pieces)

Steam the kale for 10-15 minutes. strain, rinse with cold water and squeeze the hell out of it. Then put the green lump on your cutting board and chop the shit out of it. Small pieces are key, and you don't want big stems. The big stems are like impossible to digest. I won't tell you how I know (you're welcome)

Mix the kale with the beet, kohlrabi and carrot mixture. Pour some balsamic, some agave and some flaxseed oil on top. I can be no more specific that that, to each their own, etc. Don't overdo it though, you can't take it back!

Toss well.

Go to town.

White bean, sausage, chicken and kale soup

Kale was on sale this week. Expect to see more recipes forthcoming.

Whatchoo need:
2-3 Sausages (spicy italian work well here, sweet italian would do)
Bone in skin on chicken breast
Cannelini beans (2 cans) (could also use northern beans)
Onion
Garlic
Rosemary
Crapload of Kale
Optional: Frozen corn, white wine.


Whatchoo do:
1)Cook the chicken
Put the chicken breast in some water (2-3 Qts) and boil. Reduce heat and simmer for a while (hourish). This will be the soup base, and it will also cook the chicken. I would toss in a bay leaf, any old onion parts you have and some BTB or salt. However, last night I realized I had roughly a million quarts of chicken stock in my fridge, so instead of cooking the chicken in water, I cooked it in chicken stock. This stock was flavor fortified and I recommend this technique.

2) Walk away. Seriously. Clean the kitchen or something, no need to do anything while the chicken cooks.

3) when the chicken has been going for an hour ish and is falling off the bone, remove to a plate to cool. Strain the stock through a fine mesh something or other and rinse the pot. Return stock to pot, put on low heat and add Canellini beans and some rosemary if you want. I also added some frozen corn, which worked well but it would be fine without.

4)remove sausage from its casing and crumble into a skillet. Brown sausage on Med-High heat.
When done, add to stock. Give it 5-10 minutes for the sausage to meld, then taste for salt.

5)Chop onion into your favorite shape, and cook in the sausage grease until translucent (note; If there's a ton of grease, pour some off but dont get crazy. This is the sum total of the fat in your soup, live a little) Add some garlic for a minute, then add it all to the soup.

6)Now you have a choice. You can but certainly don't have to deglaze the pan with some white wine and reduce that by half and add to stock or you can skip this step.

7) Stem, wash and chop kale. I leave bigger pieces, but I'm rustic. Once the soup and everything you've added are hot, turn off the burner and add the kale. Stir to submerge everything, let the kale wilt for a couple of minutes then serve.

8) collect praise.

Ignore me if you want, I'm not going away. aka. awesome and fancy stuffed squash

Cook bitches!

This weekend I spent way too much time cooking this. It was delicious, but leave out the chestnuts and get a different squash unless you like pain. It really was yummy though. I'm working on visually pleasing* as well as delicious dish ideas because Jeff's mom is coming to town and I need to cement my spot on the mantel.

I used:
1 Jarrahdale squash (picked because it's big enough to stuff and pretty enough to put on the table and serve out of). You could do a couple of smaller ones (acorn), or also a turban squash or a fancy french squash for pretty's sake.

1 package of sun dried tomato sausage from Whole Foods
Forbidden rice (also from whole foods)
Onion
Garlic
Thyme
Chestnuts

Ok, this takes some time. This is special occasion food. I've even added a new special occasion tag for it.

Put the chestnuts flat side down on the counter and cut an X in the top. If you don't do this they will explode. (cool but not necessarily desirable)
Put the Chestnuts and the whole squash (seriously don't even try to fuck with this thing raw. It's fortified) in the oven at 350. The squash should be on a pan of some sort for easy handling.

After 15 minutes -or when the skins are peeling back from the Xs- take the chestnuts out.

Leave the squash in there.

Start cooking the rice.

Saute the Onion in some Olive oil until translucent on medium heat or so. Add the garlic, and after 1 minute, add the sausage meat, removed from it's casing and increase the heat. Stir occasionally, and poke to break up the meat. Commence peeling and cutting up the chestnuts.

Once the sausage is browned, add the chopped chestnuts to the dish and cover so they can continue to cook and absorb the sausage grease which is delicious and good for you.

Take the squash out of the oven, and be careful its HOT<- fact. Put some gloves on, cut off the top- be generous, you want a big opening. I just hacked the whole top off so it was flat, and then pull out the seedy bits (put them aside to cook later like pumpkin seeds if you want)

I also scraped out some of the interior flesh to make room, putting aside what I get into a bowl. (if it's not soft, toss it in the microwave for 2 minutes while you do this next part)

Mix some rice with the sausage stuffing until you get your desired ratio. I like a little rice, just for looks.

Spoon the sausage/chestnut/onion/garlic/rice into the squash. Now mash the removed squash innards, mix with a little cayenne and some butter and put on top of the stuffing. Put it all back in the oven to cook until the top is browned. 20 min or so. During this time, your squash will also ooze squash juice into your stuffing and vice versa, so it gets extra tasty. Don't be impatient.

*you'll have to take my word on the visually pleasing. I had a hard time last night, I cut the shit out of my thumb, broke 2 glasses and dropped purple rice all over the kitchen. Wrestling with dog ensued. In all the excitement I forgot to take pictures. I suck.

Very complicated and fancy carrot soup.

No, for reals. It took ages to make but was so worth it.

You'll need:

1. 4-5 heads garlic (seriously)
2. 2 medium potatoes
3. a f*ckload of chopped carrots. I think I used 12 or something. Maybe you should think about halving this recipe. Or freezing some.
4. 1 Onion, diced
5. Olive oil
6. Stock, chicken or vegetable. Homemade makes a big difference here but you can use some BTB. Use less than they say though, you want less salt in this than normal soups.
7. (optional) squash of some sort. I used half an acorn I had in the freezer, mostly because I needed to make room but it worked out pretty well.
   

How to:

1. Wrap each of the heads of garlic in tinfoil (individually) and put in the oven at 350 for an hour.
2. If you're using it, also put the squash in the oven. Face down in a pie plate full of water, or face up if you want brown roasty goodness.
   
3. While that's going, cut up and boil the potatoes until soft.
4. Put some olive oil in a pan (5 Qt Le Creuset dutch oven rip off recommended) and saute the onions for a bit until soft
5. When that's done, add your stock and your chopped up carrots
6. Cook all this for 30 minutes or so, until everything is mushy.
   
7. Take the garlic out of the oven and let it sit for 10 minutes or until cool enough to handle
8. Same with the squash.
   
9. Then squeeze all the garlic out. I know of no trick to make this fast, if you have one please share
10. Scrape out the squash innards with a spoon and toss into the pot with the carrots, etc
    
11. Add the potatoes and garlic to the pot.
12. Use an immersion blender or a regular blender to blend it all together. I like a thick soup. If you prefer, you can thin to desired consistency with more broth.

I accompanied this with oven roasted brussel sprouts and rosemary focaccia. It worked well.