I'm Not a Simple Girl...

I think we may have hit a road block. Things have been going great in the kitchen. No REAL mishaps and those that did occur were never all that detrimental to the flavor of a dish.

But I've lost my zest.

It's not that I don't like summer foods, it's just that I like almost every other season's food that much more!

Salads? Meh
Popsicles? Sometimes...
Chilled soups? Vomit-ville

I like hearty warm meals. Meals that make you feel as if you achieved something after you finish eating them. Maybe you're sweating, maybe you need to lie down, but you definitely should not need to put on another layer because your body temperature has decreased.

Sad face.

I went to Terry Walter's "Clean Food" cookbook again and found the recipe for a White Bean Salad with Roasted Tomatoes and Arugula and although the dreaded word "salad" was right in the title, I thought the "roasted" would overcompensate.

I revelled in the fact that I would be using my oven and my new cooking dishes.

Unfortunately, this salad failed to deliver.

Maybe that's because I took some liberties that I shouldn't have:
-First of all, my weird grocery store did not have arugula. I used Romaine.
-Matt hates fennel. Scratch that, Matt "claims" to be allergic to fennel and says that his throat gets itchy when he comes into contact with it. So, even though I LOVE fennel and think it's a great addition to many dishes, I have to suffer through finding a subsitute. I found out that celery is sometimes used as a substitute, so I did that.

The verdict: Not so good.

Maybe it's because I need more flavors in a dish or maybe it's because I hate large slices of onions, but this just really did not appeal to me at all. We ended up serving this on lettuce and dousing it in Italian dressing.

At least it wasn't ketchup.

It was a pretty dish, however.

Here it is with our own adaptions:

For those of you with a more "mature" palate than mine, here's the recipe for the White Bean Salad with Roasted Tomatoes and Arugula.


2 sweet onions, cut into wedges (Walla Walla or Vidalia)
1 fennel bulb, halved, cored and chopped
5 carrots, chopped
Extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
8 tomatoes, halved or quartered depending on size
3 cups cooked great northern or navy beans
6 cups arugula leaves

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

In glass baking dish, combine garlic, onions, fennel and carrots. Drizzle with just enough olive oil to coat vegetables evenly. Toss with sea salt and plenty of pepper. Roast uncovered 20 minutes or until just tender. Remove from oven, fold in tomatoes and beans and return to oven to roast an additional 10 minutes or until tomatoes are soft.

Remove from oven, cover individual plates or large platter with fresh arugula, top with bean and vegetable mixture and serve.

Serves 4

Beet and Snap Pea Salad

I've never been a HUGE salad person. Even though I generally like to eat colder food (like, chili to me tastes best the morning after, still cold, like pizza), a completely COLD salad does not tempt me. Lately, however, I've been trying to expand my horizons. My work has an awesome salad bar that always stocks some of my favorite salad fixin's: chickpeas, black olives, spinach, and of course, PICKLED BEETS! I love pickled almost anything, but pickled beets might be one of my favorite foods ever. I seriously put almost an entire jar of those bad boys on my salad and savor every last one. So delicious.

Well, I didn't make pickled beets, if you're wondering. Not yet at least.

But I DID make a beet salad with the hopes that continuing my obsession with beets into the roasted area might be a good idea. After my weekly trip to the farmer's market (Saturday mornings=my idea of heaven. Trip to the farmer's market, trip to the bakery...bliss), I had managed to pick up BOTH of the star ingredients to this salad.

I found this recipe for "Golden Beet and Snap Pea Salad" from the "Clean Food" cookbook that Maris gave me for my bridal shower. It looked simple enough, except that I had to ROAST BEETS...which seemed terrifying.

I had a few snafus doing this one, which I'm pretty sure made the final outcome less tasty than what it should have been.
-I used regular beets, not golden ones (you know, the red ones that stain your life for 2 weeks after you work with them)
-I was feeling rushed, so I didn't boil the beets long enough, so they ended up being way hard.
-Matt was supposed to do the blanching of the snap peas...no comment.
-Didn't have fresh dill, so used dried dill. Didn't exactly know how much to use and am pretty sure we didn't put enough in.
-Frisee was called for. No idea what that is. Leafy greens I think? Didn't do that.

*Sorry for the poor quality picture. I'm not a photographer, but I'm still pretty sure that beets are about as unphotogenic as I am.

All in all, we ate this as a main course and it is definitely a side dish. Matt loved it, I felt like I was beet up (get it?) afterwards. I never thought a person could eat too many beets, but you can, and I did.

Here's the recipe from "Clean Food" by Terry Walters

Golden Beet and Snap Pea Salad

Ingredients:

4-5 golden beets
2 cups snap peas
2 cups frisee

DRESSING:

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
1 tablespoon maple syrup (we substituted brown sugar, for obvious reasons)
Juice of 1 lemon
Coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

Place whole beets in large pot of boiling water and cook until tender throughout when pierced with knife (about 20 minutes). Drain water and set aside until cool enough to handle. Holding beets under cold water, gently push away outer skins. Cut away root ends and any blemishes, slice into wedges and set aside.

To prepare snap peas, pinch stems and pull down to remove ends and strings. Place in mixing bowl and blanch with boiling water for 30 seconds. Drain and rinse with cold water. Return to mixing bowl, combine with beets and set aside.

In small bowl, whisk together all dressing ingredients, pour over beets and peas and toss to combine.

Arrange beets and peas on bed of frisee and serve.

Brussel Sprout and Cranberry Salad

I'm back from Texas. If any of you follow me on twitter, you know that I was quasi-scandalized by the most recent trip down South (ok, not really, I was just out of my element and had cashew nightmares...shudder), but I'm back and will not be flying anywhere until my honeymoon in a month!

Yea, I know, I still have to drive to Iowa and Wisconsin between now and then, but let's focus on the positives here, ok folks?

Hawaii...sandy beaches...not a cashew in sight...

Anyways, I had the sudden realization that I would be wearing a bathing suit in less than a month. This realization caused me to binge shop for a bathing suit on jcrew.com and then swear to eat salads between now and then.

I sent the bathing suit back. So you can only guess how my salad diet is going.

In all honesty though, I don't really believe in the traditional understanding of dieting. I haven't weighed myself in almost 5 years (yup, I even ask the nurses NOT to tell me what the scale says when I get my yearly checkups), and am generally pretty happy with the way I look. Sometimes I struggle, but most of the time I realize that I'm not willing to give up eating pizza and ice cream, so therefore, this is how my body is going to look. And I'm ok with that. I try to do some form of exercise almost every day, but if I miss a run or yoga class, I am pretty forgiving.

Some might call this lazy.

I don't :)

ANYWAYS, back to the salad. I decided to give Skinny Bitch another chance and thought that a salad was a relatively easy option that was hard to screw up. And the salad option they had in the book sounded AMAZING.

"Pomegranate and Brussel Sprout Salad." I love brussel sprouts and I love pomegranates...WINNING.

Unfortunately, the salad I ended up concocting had little resemblance to the one described in the recipe.

Here's what I did wrong:
-First off, couldn't find any pomegranates. I should have maybe decided to do something else when I realized a title character was going to be missing from the recipe. I used some dried cranberries instead.
-I forgot the tofu. But I'm ok with that because I think the intention of including the tofu was to trick your eyes into thinking you were eating feta. I don't like tricks or surprises.
-Didn't have roasted hazelnuts, used raw.
-Didn't have mirin, so used sherry again.

The colors, I tell you, the colors!

Despite all of the substitutions, this was DELICIOUS! The dressing especially was great. I loved the cranberries and can only imagine what pomegranate seeds would have done to the recipe, so I highly recommend this one.

Here's the recipe for "Brussel Sprout and Pomegranate Seed Salad" adapted from "Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook."

Ingredients:

-3 cups brussel sprouts
-1 cup thinly sliced radicchio
-2 cups chopped romaine lettuce
-1/4 dried cranberries
-1/2 cup orange slices (I used clementines)
-1/4 cup chopped hazelnuts
-1/4 balsamic vinegar
-1 tablespoon soy sauce
-2 teaspoons sherry
-1/4 cup olive oil
-1 garlic clove, minced
-1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
Pepper, to taste

Directions:

Steam the Brussel Sprouts 3 to 5 minutes, or until soft (this took me like 10 minutes for some reason). Place in a colander and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking. Cut them into quarters. In a large bowl, toss together the Brussel sprouts, radicchio, romaine, cranberries, orange slices, and hazelnuts.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, sherry, oil, garlic, and rosemary, for the dressing. Heat a small frying pan over medium heat and pour in the dressing, cooking until the mixture begins to bubble. Add to the salad and toss. Season with pepper, to taste.

Bread Salad

It's no secret that the "salad" is maybe my least favorite type of dish around. Although I am able to put together a pretty mean dish from a salad bar, I am almost ALWAYS underwhelmed by salads you order at restaurants and salad recipes. Unless your ingredients are at the exact MOMENT of their most PERFECT stage/flavor/texture, I find myself bored. Then I end up dousing the stuff with dressing or add-ons, which sort of defeats the purpose. All of this is not to say that salads and those who eat them are inherently boring...it's just that I think my palette (is that the right spelling?) is too immature to fully appreciate what I'm eating.

So, when I saw this recipe in "Supermarket Vegan" for Grilled Tuscan Bread and Summer Vegetables, I was intrigued. Grilling vegetables is always great. And if the vegetables bored me, at least there would be bread.

I know it's not summer, but I learned something new a few days ago. I learned that eating vegan for one day is STILL better for the environment than eating local/seasonal for the entire week! This is not to say that people should stop TRYING to eat locally and seasonally, but I haven't purchased a banana in over 5 years, and it's my favorite fruit.

The deprivation is killing me.

In order to really get a variety in this vegetable heavy diet, I can't just eat brussel sprouts for an entire season.

Anyways, enough of that.

This was a delicious and colorful meal.

Here's where I screwed up:
-I completely forgot the onion. Just plum forgot. Still was good though.
-I mixed ALL of the oil in at once, rather than making the marinade with only 3 tablespoons of the oil. Therefore, I brushed the marinade/dressing on the vegetables rather than just olive oil. This was ok, but really, way too much olive oil. I'd half this next time.
-Couldn't wait 20 minutes to let it all blend together. Too hungry.

Despite the fact that this meal was a salad, and salads usually strike me as being easy and fast to prepare, this took awhile and was not necessarily something that was easy to whip up on a whim. All the flipping and roasting was quite intense...

Here's the recipe for Grilled Tuscan Bread Salad and Summer Vegetables Grifrom "Supermarket Vegan":

Ingredients:
-4 1/2 tablespoons olive oil (yowza that was alot...)
-2 tablespoons lemon juice
-1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
-2 large garlic cloves, 1 finely chopped, 1 peeled and cut in half
-1/2 teaspoon salt, plus additional to taste
-Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
-2 medium bell peppers (about 6 ounces each), preferably 1 green and 1
red, cored and seeded, and cut into 1 1/2 inch wide strips
-2 medium zucchini (about 6 ounces each), preferably 1 green and 1 yellow,
cut lengthwise into inch thick slices
-1 medium red onion (about 6 ounces), cut into 1/4 inch thick rounds (I
forgot the onion and it was still good)
-6 ounces Italian bread, cut crosswise into 1 inch thick slices
-2 medium vine-ripened tomatoes (about 6 ounces each), coarsely chopped
-1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
-Italian seasoning, dried oregano, and/or crushed red pepper flakes, to
serve (optional)

Directions:

Prepare a medium-hot charcoal or gas grill, or preheat a broiler (I broiled). Position the grill rack or oven rack 4 to 6 inches from the heat source. If broiling, lightly oil a large baking sheet and set aside. Alternatively, place a stovetop grilling pan with grids over medium-high heat.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk together 3 tablespoons of the oil, lemon juice, vinegar, chopped garlic, salt and black pepper until thoroughly blended. Set aside.

Brush both sides of the bell peppers, zucchini, onion, and bread slices evenly with the remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons of oil; sprinkle the vegetables lightly with salt and pepper. Set aside the bread.

Grill or broil the vegetables until browned and tender, working in batches as necessary. As a general rule, cook the bell peppers 3 to 4 minutes per side, and the zucchini and onion 2 to 3 minutes per side. Place the vegetables on a baking sheet (another baking sheet, if broiling) as they finish cooking.

When all the vegetables have been cooked, grill the bread until lightly browned, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Cool slightly, and then rub one or both sides with the cut sides of the halved garlic. Tear bread into bite-sized pieces and transfer to a large bowl. Cut the grilled vegetables into 1 inch pieces and add to the bread bowl, along with the tomatoes and basil. Add the reserved dressing, salt, and black pepper and toss well to thoroughly combine. Let stand 20 minutes. Toss well again and serve at once, with the optional seasonings (if using)passed separately.

Mango+Black Beans=True Love 4eva

It's no secret that certain fruits are wonderful complements to Mexican-inspired dishes. My favorite salsas ALWAY include mangoes (is there an e in the plural of this word?), or peaches or something of the sort. So when I was perusing Veganomicon before going to the grocery store, the recipe for "Quinoa Salad with Black Beans and Mango" really spoke to me. So I headed out.

I've been on a fast from Whole Foods for about 3 weeks now (3 weeks of abstaining will ALMOST cover how much money I spent there on that one trip), so I've been having to succumb to the realities at my local grocery store. Unfortunately, one such reality is that this store does not carry Quinoa. I keep looking for it every time I go, but it never appears. It's really surprising because each trip I find a more specific and random ingredient that I can't imagine more than one can is sold of each year, but whatever, it's my reality. I ALMOST went and visited the Customer Service desk to put in a request, but then I chickened out. I don't want to be that crazy girl who requests the crazy thing especially since I was dressed like a hobo and had already reached my maximum amount of time to be spent at a grocery store before freaking out.

So, long story short, I had to make this dish without Quinoa. I substituted with some whole wheat Jerusalem Cous Cous which I assume has less nutritious goodness than Quinoa, but whatever.

I also am still confused as to what the difference is between scallions and green onions, so I used green onions. I googled this conundrum and unfortunately, the websites I found said that they are basically the same thing...so, if you have any info on this subject, send it my way.

Oh yea, and I used olive oil, not grapeseed.

So pretty!!!

All in all, this was a nice dish but I would suggest cooking it in summer. Also, it was REALLY onion-y and I don't know if that was because I was using green onions and not scallions, but I would half the scallions if I were to make this again. I'd also add a jalapeno because I like spice. This is a great leftover lunch though.

Quinoa Salad with Black Beans and Mango from Veganomicon by Moskowitz and Romero

1 mango, peeled and diced small
1 red pepper, seeded and diced as small as you can get it
1 cup chopped scallion
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons grapeseed oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups cooked quinoa, cooled
1 1/2 cups black beans, drained and rinsed (a 15-ounce can)

Directions:

Combine the mango, red pepper, scallions, and cilantro in a mixing bowl. Add the red wine vinegar, grapeseed oil, and salt and stir to combine. Add the quinoa and stir until everything is well incorporated. Fold in the black beans. Serve immediately or let it sit for a bit to let the flavors meld.