Seared Broccoli with veggie burger and fried slice

for two on a night when leftovers cover some, not all.

Seared Broccoli

1 head of broccoli

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 clove garlic, minced

a splash of olive oil

a few pinches of salt (to taste)

Fried Slice

1 bagel (halved for two thin slices)

1 teaspoon rosemary

1 teaspoon thyme

splash olive oil

1/2 tablespoon feta cheese (optional)

2 veggie burgers (I am partial to spicy black bean burgers or the like)

Cook veggie burgers in a large nonstick frying pan. Meanwhile break down broccoli into halves of florets. Once burgers are done, turn up heat and add some olive oil. Toss in broccoli and cook until one side is a rich brown. Toss broccoli around in the pan with a wooden spoon and add pepper flakes, salt, and minced garlic. Continue cooking broccoli without moving it until it browns on this second side. Toss and repeat until all the stems are bright green and florets are the color of bread crusts. Remove broccoli from pan and add more olive oil. Toss in the rosemary and thyme before dropping in the bagel slices. Fry until golden on each side. Serve fried slice topped with burger and feta on top and broccoli on the side.

Vegetarian Chili with meat substitute

Thanksgiving is getting so close and even though I've planned out the entire menu, developing recipes and shopping lists still evades me. I hope to get that done this weekend. Instead of working on that today, I developed a new chili recipe.

I love vegetarian chili. Even when I ate meat, I always found vegetarian chili to be better than meat chili. I don't know why, but it's almost universally good which you can't say about many foods (sans chicken strips which I can't eat anymore, damn it!)

This recipe is different from my other chili recipe because it isn't based on expanding a canned chili and has a meat substitute in it.

I recently tried Boca Meatless Ground Crumbles. They were fabulous. They were everything I'd ever wanted ground meat to be. I've always liked the idea of ground meat, but not the flavor or texture. Vegetarian crumbles fit the role of ground meat much better than meat does.

Ingredients

1 package vegetarian crumbles (Boca and Morningstar both make nice versions) or however much is equivalent to 1 pound ground meat

1 can of petite diced tomatoes (a can with chilis and lime juice can be very nice)

1 can black beans (or pinto beans or kidney beans) well rinsed

1 clove garlic

1 t cumin approx.

1 tablespoon tomato paste

about 1 cup water approx.

1 vegetable bullion cube (can substitute 1 cup vegetable broth for water and bullion, if desired)

red pepper flakes to taste

1 t dried oregano

1 T margarine

1 T flour

In a cast iron skillet, cook the veggie crumbles according to package directions. Remove them from the pan and start a roux. Over medium heat, melt the butter. Wisk in the flour and cook until blond. Wisk in the liquid from the tomatoes until the mix is smooth, then add the bullion, tomato paste, spices, and water. Stir in the tomatoes, black beans, and veggie crumbles. Serve with cornbread, rice, or crackers.

Thanksgiving is Coming Soon.....

For my newly vegetarian family, I had to come up with a Thanksgiving menu that would feel special and leave no one wanting. I deconstructed our favorite Thanksgiving dishes and created a new menu that would compliment a vegetarian protein rather than being centered around turkey.

Baked potatoes became latkes with applesauce. Sweet potatoes are still roasted but are served in thick slices drizzled with sage butter. Carrots roasted in the pan drippings are roasted in butter and cinnamon until they caramelize. As a main dish, I will serve roasted red onions with vegetarian sausage (store-bought because thanksgiving is already hard enough) with onion gravy. I'm also planning on serving a vegetarian approximation of my family's favorite stuffing, cranberry sauce, and our favorite pies.

I have several meat-eaters attending our thanksgiving and after conferring with them and my family, we decided that serving salmon would be a good compromise. It's a special protein, but isn't a huge piece of meat to have in the house. Another option would be a turkey breast or thigh, but I didn't want to handle poultry after giving it up.

Before lunch, I'll be serving soy egg nog, cashews, chex mix (despite the fish in the worcestshire sauce, we just couldn't give this up), an apple tart, a little relish plate, and some cheese. The relish plate will include kalamata olives, peperoncini peppers, pickled cucumbers, and sliced fresh cucumbers.

My family loves having potpie with thanksgiving leftovers, so the day after, I'll make a vegetable potpie. Potatoes, peas, carrots, and corn will be tossed with gravy and baked in a flaky pie crust. I'll use the vegetarian version of my Easy Peasy Chicken (or Vegetable) Potpie. I'll leave out the chicken, substitute vegetable stock for chicken stock, and add corn. This pie is nice hot or cold as leftovers.

I'll be working over the next couple of weeks to keep developing these recipes and doing small practice batches. I'll post them, when I've perfected them.

Broccoli Fettucini

Lately I've been flavoring olive oil to make the most of my calories. If I'm going to put it on something, I might as well enjoy it.

In a few tablespoons of olive oil, I saute 1 t red pepper flakes for a few seconds before adding 1 t dried crushed rosemary and then one large clove pressed garlic. At the very end I add 1 t dried basil.

I've been adding this to vegetables, tofu, and that sort of thing, but I wanted to make a pasta, so I came up with this Broccoli Fettucini (with no alfredo sauce what so ever). The flavored oil, parma, and sausage are rich enough that this replaces traditional fettucini alfredo quite nicely.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon flavored olio (from above recipe)

1 package refrigerated fettucini

1 large head of broccoli (fresh please, not the mushy frozen stuff)

1 vegetarian sausage patty per person (I suggest Morningstar, but use your favorite)

a little parmesan cheese. get the good stuff.

Cook the sausage and pasta according to package directions and the olio according to my directions (for this recipe, if you don't have the pepper flakes, pepper works instead). Once the basil is added to the oil, put it 2 T of the pasta cooking water. This will disperse the seasonings more evenly through the pasta. Cut up the broccoli into small florets and cook it in the sausage pan with a lid on until it turns bright green. Also chop up the cooked sausage. It should be about the same size as the florets. Toss the pasta with olio first, then add the parma, and, finally, top with the broccoli and sausage.

Granola: a Multipurpose Whole Grain

I like to serve granola with yogurt and a variety of sliced fruits for a light dinner or with milk for breakfast. I used to buy it boxed, but all the brands I looked into were high in fat and refined sugars. I haven't tried the Kashi granolas yet, but even brands that advertise being healthy often contain things that I don't want to intake into my body or feed to my family. So I make my own most Saturday mornings. It technically keeps all week, but I find myself making more because it's a popular meal or snack in my house. For my recipe, I include the sorts of nuts, fruits, and spices that my family likes, but you can change it up as much as you like.



Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

On a greased cookie sheet with raised edges, toast 4 cups of rolled oats in the oven. They don't change color much, but they get fragrant and turn a little tan. When they are fragrant, add a 1/2 cup sliced almonds and 1/2 cup chopped cashews. Continue toasting for about five minutes. Add a 1/2 teaspoon of cardamom and a nice grating of nutmeg to the oat/nut mixture. Stir it in well before adding 1/2 a cup of brown rice syrup (or honey). Mix the syrup in until all the oats are slightly sticky and the sweetener is evenly distributed. Cook for ten minutes. Stir the oats and cook for ten more minutes. The granola will not feel granola like when you remove it from the oven. The oats will be more crunchy than if they hadn't been cooked, but the rice syrup will harden as it cools. It's important for in to cool on the pan in order to get nice clusters. When you remove it from the oven, you may wish to stir in 1 cup chopped dried fruit (I like pears, apricots, and cranberries). Do this before the granola hardens or just stir it into the clusters later.When removing the granola from the pan if you've got a "fish scrapper" (the sort that's no good for fish, but wonderful for everything else) this worked wonders getting the granola off in clusters. otherwise a spatula or even a metal spoon works ok.

Changing Habits, part 2

Whole wheat pasta. What ominous sounding words those are! From the name to the odd color glimpsed on the shelf of the store, there are so many things influencing customers against this mild, tender, easy to eat whole grain. It cooks two minutes longer than ordinary pasta and doesn't go well with white sauces, but we shouldn't be eating white sauces anyway. One of my friends begged me to try it and I did, buying it grudgingly, sure that it would be uneatable. I over-cooked it. I haven't over-cooked pasta since I learned to cook. Aldente has always been that important to me. But I was convinced that it would be tough and grainy feeling. I was so wrong. I tossed it in a tomato pepper sauce and topped it with basil and could hardly tell the difference. I was even more surprised when the kids ate it up! Underneath that red sauce, the slight difference in color wasn't a big deal. I was absolutely shocked. This is really worth a try. Whole wheat pasta comes in all shapes and sizes now in most supermarkets, so try it in all the different ways that you cook other pastas. Always pair it with bold flavors and it will never let you down. It's great in Asian style pasta salads with soy sauce and steamed vegetables or pasta casseroles with tomato sauces work or spaghetti and tofu meatballs.

Changing Habits, part 1

With three lactose-sensitive kids, my family drinks a lot of 100% fruit juice. Not just orange juice at breakfast, but also throughout the day and at lunch and dinner. When Julia got her first cavity, it was a big shock and I realized how awful this habit was. So we started drinking juice only at meals and then moved to only at one meal per day. Now it's cut almost entirely from our diets. At first, we didn't know what to drink, but the answer was fairly obvious. Soy milk has become a larger part of our diets and is a favorite at breakfast and with snacks. This has a lot of protein, calcium and vitamins, but also contains calories and fat. Our brand has 110 calories and 3.5 grams of fat per cup, so I like to limit it at about three cups a day (breakfast, 10 o'clock, and 3 o'clock) which certainly isn't enough hydration for a whole day. Some of us like hot tea sans honey or sugar which is another good option. The best innovation, however, in this process was when we began chilling water in those old juice pitchers with lime, lemon, or even orange slices. The fruit-infused water is much less sugary than juice, doesn't have the calories of milk, and is very satisfying on a hot summer day. It's been a convenient way to change our lifestyle and be sure of staying hydrated all summer long.