It's been really cold lately, so today's lunch was comfort food.
The chili was a quick chili I made last night after dinner. I made it with half faux-burger and half soyrizo. I love soyrizo. It's hard to find around here, and when I found it in a store I don't normally go to a couple weeks ago, I bought all they had. It's wonderfully spicy and is wonderful in chili. It's also equally tasty on bread with melted cheese. Yum!
I also made cinnamon baked apples. Just because they're really, really good. :)
(Yeah, lots of pics lately. But there's no garden to take photos of, so you get pics of other stuff. :)
Kay is still unsure about the new couch. But she's getting used to it. Especially as it's a good place to cuddle up and get warm. It's hard when you're a horsecoatshar pei and it's under 20° out!
I've not had good luck with quail eggs from the Asian market in the past, but I decided to try them again. And they were good and hardboiled up very nice. Plus, they're awfully cute.
And, they're way lower in calories and such than chicken eggs. However, you can get much of the same egg flavor with less egg if you use quail eggs. Plus, did I mention they're cute?
When I was peeling my tangerine, I managed to get some big pieces, and because I just bought some itty-bitty cookie cutters, I made little farm animal cutouts to grace my lunch.
Finally, we have enough seating in the living room for more than just me and Jeff! Yay! We can have guests and actually all be comfortable!
Jeff built the body, and it's not quite done yet, but he ran out of space in the basement to build stuff. I covered all the cushions myself. It still needs a few more pillows, but I ran out of the fabric I wanted to use, so I need to get some more to finish. The pillows look much better together in person. Weird.
The long arm has storage (you can see a couple baskets there along the side), and the short arm has a cut-out for the heating vent (partially hidden by the cephalopod). The red fleece marks out the dogs' spot. They are still both uncertain about it, but they're warming to it.
This contest thing is fun. It's making me spice up - ha! - my usual boring lunches. I don't think I'll win, but I'm having a blast participating!
Amazingly, most of this lunch was made with stuff I normally keep around the house. The only thing I had to buy specially was a plantain. There's cauliflower with chipotle salsa and goat cheese, black beans & rice, plantains & mangoes with butter, rum, cinnamon & coconut; and sweet potatoes with orange juice, green onions & red pepper.
I seem to be back into cooking lately. Sometimes I can't be bothered to even make a burrito. This weekend, I pulled out the cookbooks and cooked a lot.
Since I'm still working on the Mr. Bento contest (and having even more fun coming up with vote-worthy entries), I decided to go with a theme for today's lunch: wold cuisine. I knew what three of them would be. It was the fourth one that was hard. But then I found it: veggies in peanut sauce from Africa.
The sauce is actually peanut-tomato, and that frightened me a bit. But it's really, really good! And it made twice as much sauce as we needed, so I just froze the rest, and it'll make a good meal next week, maybe. Quick, too. Making the sauce is the time-consuming part; the veggies cook in under ten minutes.
The cake is another one from that Small Batch Baking I mentioned last week, and this cake is fabulous! I'll definitely be making more of these. Actually, tonight I plan to mix up batches of the dry ingredients and put them in ziplocs in the freezer, ready for mixing with the wet ingredients for quick cakes.
The baby focaccia is from a batch I made with toppings of all sorts. This was the most photogenic. :) And the spicy potato cakes are my answer to Thai fish cakes. They're not perfected yet, but I'm close!
3.5 cups old fashioned rolled oats and/or other grains 1/4 cup wheat germ (optional) 1/4 cup canola oil 1/4 to 1/2 cup honey (to taste) 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp ground ginger 1/2 cup slivered almonds or chopped macadamias 1/4 cup dried shredded unsweetened coconut 3/4 cup dried mango, chopped small
1. Mix the oats, wheat germ, oil, honey, spices, and almonds together. Cook in a 300 oven for 25 minutes, stirring every five minutes, or until lightly brown.
2. After 20 minutes, add the coconut and stir well. Bake for five more minutes.
3. When it's nicely browned, remove from the oven and add the mango. Cool completely. Stores in the refrigerator for two weeks, if you can make it last that long. :)
I've needed a new bag for work for some time now. My old one is fine, but it's getting ratty, and it's just not big enough for my bigger bento boxes.
So I made a new one.
This one is made out of two remnants (the inside is a dark pink) and two ribbons from clearance "make a belt" kits from Jo-Ann's. Click on the photo for a better view, if you're interested.
Of course, I don't go back to work until Tuesday, so I'll have to wait a bit to use it. I think I'll manage. :)
It's gray and dark and cold ... it's time to plan the garden for spring!
Jeff got me seeds as a present - I had marked some I wanted in a catalog and he bought them for me. This year, we're expanding the garden, plus adding a cutting garden so I can have flowers to bring inside, too. We have here:
But some of the stuff is very early, like the lettuces, radishes and other greens. They can be replaced after it warms up with tomatoes or cucumbers or something else. And some of the veggies can be container-grown on the patio or even in the front of the house.
Some of the flowers are going to be in a specific bed in the back garden, but I think I'll spread them around a bit, too, just to brighten the place up. Since we finally killed the ground cover on the hill on my side of the front yard, there'll be plenty of space for these annuals while I figure out what I want there permanently.
I got a book from the library called Small-Batch Baking, and I was inspired last night to make cake.
I made plain yellow cake (because I had all the ingredients readily available), with a cream cheese coconut frosting (that I made up myself because I was too lazy to get the book back off the shelf when it was time to frost the cakes). I topped it with toasted coconut, mostly so it would look better in the photo. :) They turned out pretty good. The cakes themselves got a smidge over-done, but that was my fault, not the recipe's.
I'll probably make another couple cakes to determine if this is a cookbook I want to buy, but I'm guessing it might be. I'm thinking a baby chocolate cake layer cake with strawberry preserves and buttercream frosting. And maybe a little carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.
Other stuff in the lunch is spinach salad with egg, a polenta nest with balsamic steamed greens, and steamed "cheddar" cauliflower with red peppers.
So you might be seeing more lunch photos because there's a contest over on the Mr. Bento Porn photo pool at flickr. I know I won't win, but it doesn't hurt to try.
This is today's lunch (which I actually made last night and photographed at home). The rice noodles with veggies and sauce are one of my favorite treats. Especially since they're usually leftovers from spring roll making, and therefore, quite simple. I'm doing it in the opposite order this time, with spring rolls on tap for tomorrow with the leftovers from this.
(Click on the photo if you want more exact details on what's in the lunch. I'm too lazy to type it all. :)
It's been warm here lately. Like in or near the sixties.
I'm not complaining about this. In fact, we just got our gas bill, and it's pretty great, actually.
But it's confusing the garden something fierce. We have both crocuses (left) and forsythia (right) thinking it's spring.
But never fear, the temperature is dropping, and tonight we're supposed to have snow, even. Maybe a half and inch of accumulation. I have to say, I haven't missed it one bit.
Of course, February is usually the worst weather month in central Ohio, so there's still plenty of time for nastiness.
I successfully made granola for the first time yesterday. I've tried to make it in the past, but I either have burned it or not cooked it long enough. This time I stirred it every five minutes and paid very close attention to it.
That's four types of grains, ground flax seeds, wheat germ, almonds, raisins, sultanas, currants, cranberries, honey, and spices (cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, allspice, and cloves).
The hardest part was not eating it all while it cooled down enough that I could put it away!
You don't know how exciting having a new fridge is. Our previous fridge was harvest gold and older than me. It had wire shelves that made stuff tip over if you looked at it funny, and it was impossible to clean. Plus it was small - only 14.5 cubic feet. Our kitchen is small, but not that small!
But now, we have a new fridge, and it's divine. I didn't want a stainless steel one, but it was a $1,500 fridge that we got for $700 at ApplianceSmart (who we highly, highly recommend). And it was a bottom freezer, which I very much wanted. So we got it. And with the black and white linoleum on the floor now, it doesn't look too bad.
We actually got the fridge yesterday, but I waited until today to take the photos, since we had no food in the fridge. But I went shopping today, and now it's full - or at least close to it. It's 19 cubic feet, which is plenty big for two people and two dogs.
The freezer is actually smaller than our previous one, but since we have a freezer in the basement, too, it's no big deal. We have plenty of space for ice, dog treats, bird food, and basic everyday frozen stuff.
We're getting a new fridge on Friday- yay! - so we need to try to empty out the fridge as much as possible by then. Since I had yesterday off as well as the first, I made a good start on it, including making a more grown-up version of mac & cheese.
4 cups short whole wheat pasta, cooked (about 2 cups dry) 1 Tbsp olive oil 1/2 cup onion, diced 1/2 cup red, yellow and/or orange peppers, diced 2 cups fresh spinach (or 1/2 cup frozen, thawed and drained well) 1/2 cup frozen peas (optional, but tasty!) 2/3 cup diced tomatoes (optional, but tasty!) 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper 1 tsp thyme 1 Tbsp flour 1/2 cup low-fat cottage cheese 1/2 cup low-fat milk 1 cup cheese, 2-3 kinds, grated or crumbled, of your choice* 1/2 cup wholegrain breadcrumbs
1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Boil pasta accoring to package directions to al dente.
2. Cook onion and peppers in a large pan until they are soft. Add spinach and peas and cover until spinach wilts. Remove from heat and stir in salt, pepper, thyme, and flour.
3. Mix together cottage cheese, milk, and cheeses.
4. Lightly oil a 6-quart casserole, then mix together pasta, onion mixture, and cheese mixture. Sprinkle breadcrumbs on top, then bake, covered, for 15 minutes. Remove cover and bake for another 15 minutes.
*Suggested cheeses are extra-sharp cheddar, Jarlsberg, Asiago, Parmesean, mozzarella, goat cheese, and Gorgonzolla - but use what you have or your imagination!
I don't know how this started, but for New Year's Eve dinner, I make Jeff a Cornish hen. I've made them for at least five years now, each time different.
This year, I mixed butter, salt, and some rosemary that is miraculously still alive in our garden and stuffed it under the skin. I rubbed the stuff that wouldn't fit onto the outside of the skin. Jeff said it turned out really nice and juicy and tender. Not bad.
We also had sweet potatoes with orange juice and spring onions, balsamic swiss chard, semi-caramelized onions, and mashed potatoes with parsley that has also miraculously survived outside. Pretty tasty.
Then, I fell asleep on the couch. Oh well. Happy new year!
It's been really cold lately, so today's lunch was comfort food.
