A Very Vegetarian Thanksgiving...

     So you guys know I totally love me some Thanksgiving sides, but I realized I haven't posted any main dishes for vegetarians, so I thought I'd do one up.  And then I decided to do a couple more sides.  Because whatevah, I do what I want.  For those of you with ovens full of turkey, this vegan bean dish is perfect for the slow cooker!

Slow Cooker Herbed White Beans

1.25 lbs bag of Emergo (aka white runner) beans, pre-soaked, other options are cannellini, navy beans*
6 C water
1 tsp butter
1/2 C chopped scallion
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 3-inch sprig rosemary
3 2-inch sprigs thyme
6 leaves fresh sage
2 tsp.salt
pepper

Quick-soak the beans in salted water by bringing them to a boil, turning the heat off, and letting them sit for an hour.  Drain.  Melt butter in a pan and cook scallion till soft.  Press in garlic and cook till fragrant.  Pour beans into crock pot, add water and salt, stir, then add the rest of the ingredients.  Cook for 8 hours.  (Cooking time/water ratio may vary with different beans)

*If you decide to sub another kind of bean, be cautious using kidney beans in a crock pot, they can make you very sick if they are under cooked.  Using a modified quick-soak method on red kidney beans is the ideal way to make sure you have removed the poison, making sure you boil them for 10 minutes before leaving them to soak.

Roast Green Beans with Balsamic Thyme Reduction
Yield: 6-8 small servings

2 lbs fresh green beans, stems and strings removed
1 Tbs sea salt
1/2 C balsamic vinegar
2 sprigs thyme
1/2 tsp honey (optional)
1/2 C raw pecans

Preheat oven to 350°.  Rinse greenbeans and drain slightly spread them in a single layer on a baking sheet.  Sprinkle with salt.  Bake greenbeans for 10-15 minutes until beans are tender, but not too browned.  Timing may vary depending on how wet they are when they go in.   On a smaller separate tray, spread a layer of pecans and bake for 2-3 minutes until roasted.  They will burn easily so keep an eye out!   In a small pan, add vinegar and thyme and heat balsamic until it boils.  Stirring constantly, to keep from burning, boil vinegar until it thickens and becomes syrupy.  It doesn't take long.  Sweeten with honey if you'd like.  Pour reduction over beans and stir to combine.  Sprinkle with pecans.

     Most people know how to make mashed potatoes and there are tons of recipes and discussions on the best potato type out there so I won't bother.  Instead I will give you a good ratio for making as many mashed potatoes as you need no matter how large your guest list.  Incidentally, this ratio applies for mashed cauliflower, turnips, rutabagas, or even sweet potatoes.  Mix it up a little this Thanksgiving!

Ratio Mashed Potatoes:
1/2 lb potatoes per guest
3 Tbs milk per 1/2 lb*
1 tsp butter per 1/2 lb
2 tsp sour cream per 1/2 lb (or plain yogurt)
1/4 tsp salt per 1/2 lb
1/8 tsp pepper per 1/2 lb
chives, parsley, thyme, or rosemary as garnish
*liquid ratio may vary depending on potato type

Peel, cube, and boil potatoes until tender.  The smaller the cubes, the faster this will happen.  Drain.  Mash with a potato masher or use a ricer.  Stir in milk, butter, sour cream, salt, and pepper.  Taste for any adjustment.  Top with garnish when serving.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!  I'll keep you posted on my heritage bird adventure!

Flame All The Things!!

     This morning I sat on my porch and sorted cucumbers.  I love preparing food outside.  There are some veggies that really should only be prepped outside.  I love to sit on the porch shucking corn, or snapping beans, or shelling peas.  It gets me out of my Summer kitchen and into nature.  The kids often leave me alone, unless they want to help, so I get a quiet time-out surrounded by a warm breeze, buzzing insects (we have a lot of dragon flies), and twittering birds.  I can watch the squirrels raid my ornamental cherry tree and scrabble around on the outer twigs of our maple trees.  The soft snap of beans punctuates the solitude.  I am often a little disappointed when I'm done to have to go back in to the heat and clamor of the kitchen.

     As far as actually cooking outside goes, I usually leave it to my husband and it is usually limited to hamburgers on the grill and hot dogs over a campfire with a s'more or three thrown in for good measure.  Last weekend the boys decided we needed a camp out.  We had promised them one in the yard last Summer, but it was generally rainy and awful last year so we put them off.  But last weekend it was beautiful and the idea of camping out had been coursing through their little brains for weeks so we finally relented.  I decided that I had had it with charred veggie dogs.  It was time to cook actual food over honest-to-goodness flame.

    All previous experiences I'd had with foil cooking involved me up all hours with howling indigestion from undercooked potatoes so I nixed them immediately.  Otherwise, I had a bunch of produce I had harvested from my garden and a handful of things from the farmer's market.

 My husband still manned the process.  For the record, this is not how you're supposed to do it.  You're supposed to let the flames die down and cook over the hot coals.  But the sunlight was fading and we didn't have the time or patience for that.  These worked out great.

 Veggie packet with tofu, hubby had chicken wrapped in bacon over his veg., the best pasta salad I've ever had from my local butcher of all places, chips, and corn on the cob, also cooked in foil.

     Foil peaches: These stayed in the longest, about 40 minutes.  They were slightly under-ripe.  I sprinkled a little Sucanat and cinnamon on them and called it good.  They would have been better had they been ripe, but the cooking time would have been way, way shorter.  We liked them plain and tried them with a toasted marshmallow, too but it would have been better with vanilla ice cream.

 Can't have flame without a marshmallow in it at this house.  I swear, they'd cook them over birthday candles if I'd let them.

This is why they aren't allowed to cook them over birthday candles...

Tofu Veggie Packet
Yield: 1
1/4 block tofu
4 purple podded pole beans, cut into 1 inch pieces
2 radishes, cubed
1/8 C chopped onion
1 clove garlic crushed
2 Tbs cubed trumpet mushroom
1/8 C peas
1inch piece thyme, or rosemary
olive oil spray
Salt and Pepper to taste

Fill a sheet of tin foil with the veggies and top with tofu.  Spray the tops of the tofu with the oil and salt and pepper to taste.  Bake over coals for about 20 minutes until veggies are soft.

*If you want to do the chicken/bacon version, slice a chicken breast very thinly into about 1/2 inch thick strips.  Wrap a quarter piece of bacon around each slice and place on top of the veggies.  No need to spray this packet with oil.  Cook until chicken is done about 20-30 minutes.

Best campsite in the state.

 A little early evening light show.

We had a pretty rough night.  The boys slept fine, but I was freezing and of course, no matter how flat the campsite, I always end up in the morning tangled in my sleeping bag with my feet half-way out the door and a rock in my ear.

Clearly when I say "we" I mean "I."

     But the food was good!  It got me totally pumped to try more things on a campfire.  I even went out and bought a grate today!  I might even do some of the cooking next time, who knows?

I Do Not Think it Means What You Think it Means...

     When I was in college, I went to an art show during which the artist gave a long speech detailing her inspiration behind each piece.  She used the word "serendipitous" a lot.  Like a whole lot.  Like maybe she had just learned the word and enjoyed how it felt in her mouth.  It became clear that what she often meant was "spontaneous."  It didn't detract from her work, it was just a funny little quirky thing that makes people human.  And it made me think of Princess Bride, and that's always a good thing.  The meal I served last night was genuinely entirely serendipitous.

     Wilson Fish Markets is our favorite place to buy fish.  They catch it and sell it almost immediately.  Last week, my family feasted on a coho salmon the leftovers of which became salmon cakes.  They will stab each other with forks for salmon cakes made with Wilson fish!  This week, the market was super busy and by the time I got there, all they had left was smoked salmon.  I thought, why not?  So I picked my guys up a section of maple smoked salmon.  Serendipity.

     Whitehorse Meadows Farm specializes in blueberries.  Especially things made out of blueberries!  They are new to the market this year.  I've got a bag of their frozen blueberries in my freezer that I'm judiciously doling into smoothies and a couple of weeks ago I bought some of their Blueberry Mango Chutney.  This little lady here, serendipitously suggested serving it with fresh salmon, which of course, I had just bought from Wilson.  My husband said it was a perfect pairing.  Since he was first introduced to Indian food in the late 1990's he has been looking for the perfect mango chutney.  He said this was the closest thing he's ever had to the original one he fell in love with all those years ago!  I do believe they have found a loyal customer!

     Maharlika Farms is a great place to get unusual produce like long beans, and Chinese okra as well as the normal market produce fare.  They also carry chicken and duck eggs.  She is always ready with a recipe for unusual ingredients.  She looks at you a little suspiciously and says, "You know how to cook this?"  I love it.  She wants everyone to appreciate her produce to the point of making sure they prepare it properly.  She's the one who taught me how to cook Chinese okra, something I will be forever grateful for because that stuff is awesome!  It was finally ready this week and I bought some.  For the dinner I had planned for today, I was thinking I'd like some long beans, but she was out (busy market and all) so I settled for regular green beans instead.  Serendipity.

Maple Smoked Salmon with Blueberry Mango Chutney and Cilantro Green beans

And so begins the winding and serendipitous tale of the cilantro green beans:

 

     When I was plating this up for pictures, I thought the beans needed a little something to fancy them up a bit.  (Now, here's a little food photography secret for you: Not everything you see in pictures is what you think it is.)  When I was plating it and deciding it looked boring, I thought a little dill would be the ticket since it typically pairs so well with beans and fish.  But I didn't have any dill.  As it happens though, in my garden, I am growing cilantro for the first time.  You may know how much I disliked cilantro when I first started writing this blog, but recipes like the Thai Curry Soup and Garlic Herb Sauce have been slowly changing my palate over the last couple of years.  When cilantro is about to go to seed, the leaves change and become frilly, delicate little things that look a lot like dill leaves.  So I thought, "Well, it looks like dill, it'll probably taste OK, I'll just tell 'em it's dill."  I don't like doing that sort of thing, because usually what you see is exactly what you get in my photographs, so I hope you'll forgive my momentary lapse.  After I did my shoot, I started thinking... Hmmm... cilantro might actually be pretty good with the curry in that blueberry chutney... So I tasted the beans.  And I didn't hate it.  And I tasted them again.  And I liked it.  And I tasted them again and I ate the whole thing with my fingers before I even put the plate on the table!  Cilantro goes really well with green beans!  Who knew?  And cilantro green beans apparently go super well with maple smoked salmon and blueberry mango chutney!  My husband loved it!  So there you go, if it hadn't been for you lovely people out there in Internetland, I literally never would have made this!  SeRenDIPityyyyyyyy! And here it is...

Cilantro Green Beans

1 lb fresh green beans

1 sprig cilantro seed shoot (or two regular cilantro leaves), minced

1 pat butter

Wash and prep green beans (all I did was pinch off a few stems).  Steam beans until tender but not smooshy, about 5-10 minutes.  Plate and top with a little butter and sprinkle with cilantro.

I hope you have a serendipitously wonderful day today full of spontaneity and inconceivable deliciousness!

Getting Chili...

We've had stunningly beautiful but really, really cold days here in the Pacific Northwest this past week.  As my Grandmother used to say, "I'm cold as a frog!"  A constant supply of soup, baked goods, and warm drinks have been issuing from my kitchen lately.  Last night's offering was 4 Bean Vegetarian Chili.

 

I started making chili like this in college when my Mom sent me a recipe that looked pretty simple.  Just open a bunch of cans, dump it all in, and boil it for a while.  Since then, I've refined the recipe some.  I no longer buy canned beans and I use tomatoes I've canned myself.  I added jalapeños too to give it a little bit of heat.  Uh, and I changed the spices, too.  So basically, nothing is the same except it's vegetarian and it has beans in it...

A lot of this recipe is easily substituted.  The small sweet peppers can be replaced with a green pepper and you can add any bean you want to this really. White or cannellini  beans would be great in this, for example.  I have made this with hamburger for friends who simply must have meat in their chili, and I used to use vegetarian "beef" crumbles in it before I cut back on meat substitutes.  Nobody really misses either of those, but you can certainly add them if you want.  The hamburger I would fry up with the onions and peppers, and the soy meat should be added toward the end of cooking time.  Also, I made this one on the stove tonight, but this is an excellent slow cooker meal.  Just add all the ingredients to a crock pot and heat for 6-8 hours.  

This is a great one to feed a crowd as it makes enough for 8 or 9, easily!

4 Bean Vegetarian Chili
1 Can garbanzo beans (1/4 lb dry)
1 Can black beans (1/4 lb dry)
2 Cans pinto beans (1/2 lb dry)
1 Can kidney beans (1/4 lb dry)
1 Tbs Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 medium to large onion, roughly chopped
1 large jalapeño, sliced
7 small sweet peppers, sliced
3-4 large cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne powder
1 jar of tomatoes (or a can)
1 Tbs tomato paste
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

If you use dry beans, soak them overnight separately and boil them each until they are cooked through or do them in a pressure cooker.  I cooked the kidneys and pintos together for one hour and the black beans and garbanzos together for 30 minutes.  Don't worry if something comes out a tad underdone, as you will be cooking all of it for another hour at least.

Once you've got your beans taken care of, heat the oil in the bottom of a large, heavy-bottomed stock pot and sauté the onions and peppers until the onion begins to brown.  Add the garlic, chili, cumin and cayenne and stir until the garlic is fragrant and the spices have bloomed (just a few seconds).

Deglaze the pan with the juice from the tomatoes and then add the tomatoes to the pot. Add all the beans and stir to combine.  Stir in tomato paste and salt and pepper.  Adjust seasonings to your taste, keeping in mind everything will be simmering for some time.

Bring everything to a boil, stir and reduce heat to a simmer.  Allow to simmer uncovered at least an hour stirring occasionally.  Once the liquid has reduced by half, the chili can be served.  The longer you let it simmer, the more the flavor will develop and of course, this is even better the second day!

Notes:
Serve this with shredded cheddar cheese, crackers, corn chips, olives, sour cream, cornbread or avocado or any combination of the above.  Also, a dash of ginger will serve to insulate you from any "musical" properties so many beans my induce in your GI tract without changing the flavor noticeably. 

Review:
My boys are crazy about this stuff!  The jalapeño adds just enough heat to let you know you're eating chili without being so overpowering the kids can't eat it.  If you're not serving it to sensitive palates add more, by all means, or do like I do and sprinkle a little over the top for adults!

02/01/14 UPDATE:
Hi folks!  I've got another great healthy Super Bowl menu this year if you're interested!

Y'all Got No Idea...

I'm about to lay on you two of my very favorite foods of all time.  

Get ready.

These are Anasazi Beans:

And this is Garlic Herb Sauce:

When people say "Awesomesauce" this is what they're talking about.  Even if they don't know it.

When you add rice to them you get this:

Holy crabnuggets, Metromon.  

     My next door neighbor, Nancy, turned me on to Anasazi beans a couple of years ago.  They were a favorite from her youth and she asked me if I'd ever seen any in the crazy stores I go to.  I hadn't.  These suckers are hard to find.  Then one day I ran across some and took her the very last in the bin (about half a pound).  Late last year, I actually found these beauties mislabeled as black eyed peas at a Fred Meyer nearby and then suddenly, my favorite grocery Central Market, Shoreline started carrying them!  I am in bean heaven.  (And so is Nancy!)

     Anasazis taste a little like pinto beans, but sweeter and the texture is so smooth.  There's hardly a comparison, really.

     I have only found these in bulk bins.  If you can't find them in the store, anasazibeans.com has them for $1.00 a pound.  They are totally worth paying shipping for, friends.

     Cook Anasazis like you would any other bean, soaking them overnight or doing a quick soak and then boiling them until they are soft.  They cook a little bit quicker than pintos.  These took 45 minutes unsoaked in the pressure cooker.  For this recipe, if you can't find Anasazis, try kidney beans.

     The sauce is a homemade version of one I buy from my farmer's market.  It's not perfect, but it's pretty darn close.

Garlic Herb Sauce (AKA Awesomesauce)

1 1/2 C Cilantro

1 C Parsley

3/4 C Mint

3 very large cloves of garlic

5 Tbs good quality Olive Oil

2 Tbs Lemon Juice

1/4 tsp Salt (heaping)

1/4 tsp. Tabasco sauce

Toss the garlic in a blender and buzz until it is chopped pretty well.  Add lemon juice, salt, and 2 Tbs olive oil and blend until garlic is liquified.  Add herbs, remaining oil, and Tabasco sauce and blend until all the herbs are very finely chopped and the sauce forms a watery paste.  

Notes:

• This is best if you let it mellow in the fridge overnight, but you can use it right away if you need to.  
• This sauce will easily keep a week or more in the fridge, if you don't use it all up the first night!  
• Depending on the strength of your ingredients you may want to modify the amount of herbs you add.  The cilantro and mint I bought when developing this recipe was pretty mild.
• I love this sauce as a dip for pretzels and on warm potatoes or cold ones as a potato salad!  I've also used it to perk up hummus and I bet it would be lovely in some cream cheese as a spread on crackers.

Anasazi Beans and Rice

3 C cooked Anasazi beans

3 C cooked rice (I used Jasmine but brown rice would be healthier)

2 Tbs Garlic Herb Sauce

Salt and pepper

Basically, you cook the beans and rice and mix it all up with the sauce.  Add more sauce if you like and salt and pepper to your own taste.

Review:

My husband and I love this, though I find it hard to believe anyone can love this as much as I do.  My eldest asked for extra sauce on his rice and he begs for pretzels to dip in it.  My youngest wouldn't touch the green rice with a 10 foot pole.  So that's where it stands in this house. 3 to 1 in favor of Awesomesauce.

The Cake is a LIE!!

 

My boys are big fans of the game Portal.  Their Dad brought home an inflatable turret a few months ago and they just had a cow about it.  They begged for a Portal birthday party and I said, "YES!"  My regular readers probably won't have any idea what to make of all the geeking that's about to go on up in heah, so I'll try to explain as well as I can along the way.  Oh, and it should also be said that I've never played the game nor have I seen the game played because when I watch it, it makes me want to zook.  My inner ear does not like first person games.  Everything I know about Portal I've learned from accounts by my children, my husband, and online.  This is how it goes:

OK, so like, you're in this science experiment, right?  And you have this guide named Wheatly. 

And he's all good until he turns bad or bad until he turns good or whatever.  There's a companion cube.  You love it.  It has hearts on it. 

You use a gun like this to shoot holes in the walls.  Sometimes they have blue flames and sometimes they have orange flames.  They look sorta like this:

These portal mirrors were an ingenious find!  My husband put these together with mirrors and rope lights from Home Depot.

 and this:

Our friend Sam showed up with this because he is fraktastically awesome!

and this:

When you shoot a hole in one wall and shoot a hole in another wall, you can jump through one and come out the other one because of this, like, space warp type thing.

An old Ikea tunnel with painted entrances worked pretty well!

One more note about portals:

If your birthday candles fall into a portal, they come out on other cupcakes!  It's happening everywhere people, you should really be careful about that...

Sometimes you're in a room with turrets.  They shoot at you.  Fortunately, these don't really...

The place where the testing occurs is Aperture Laboratories.

Propulsion Gel and Repulsion Gel... do... something...?

This gel (a.k.a. gak) was made following this recipe.  I used Wilton's gel coloring to get the orange and aqua.  Be careful with the blue, though.  That stuff stains like nobody's business.  I found those little tins for .99 cents at Michael's.  A wise man once said, "We're throwing science at the wall here to see what sticks."  This stuff will definitely stick in the name of science.

Though, in the game, the gels will rot your skeleton, this next gel (a.k.a. Jell-o) is much more user friendly!  (It probably will only rot your teeth.  Most likely...)

Push up containers and stand came from Amazon.

The man who is putting you through all these tests is named Cave Johnson, CEO of Aperture Laboratories.  Also, apparently, he has a hard time putting his name tag on...

It could be because his assistants were all blindfolded... 

Your reward for battling sarcastic robots, turrets, and GLaDOS in the name of Science is a wonderful cake.  Unfortunately, along the way you find out that the cake is, in fact, a lie.  Until the end, when you find it and it isn't anymore.  It's a chocolate cake with cherries.

Or is it?

That's right, folks.  This cake is a lie.  Meatloaf, mashed potato filling, bean frosting, mashed potato "whipped cream", and cherry tomatoes on top where those lovely cherries should go.  More about how I pulled this feat off later...

Meanwhile, everyone knows scientists in the future drink from juice pouches turned backward to look more "science y."

They also love hummus and carrots and mini quiche.

These hobos test subjects are definitely up to the task of being subjected to tests.

 

Our little test subjects got to go home with a bag full of gear and a couple of portals as well as a tin of Propulsion or Repulsion Gel.  You can buy a bunch of Portal swag at Think Geek, but my husband knows someone who knows someone (possibly Cave Johnson?) and scored us a bunch of this stuff for free.  I got the idea for the gels from Pamela Smerker who threw her very own super-awesome Portal party last year.

Guests at our party were serenaded by the sweet sounds of selected tracks from the Portal soundtrack and Still Alive by Jonathan Coulton.

And now back to that "cake."

     A wise man once said, "They say great science is built on the shoulders of giants - not here. At Aperture we do all our science from scratch; no hand holding."  And that wise man was Cave Johnson.  To honor his great (and wise) spirit, I shall give you a little hint about how I made this cake, though I'm afraid there really isn't a recipe.

The Cake is a Lie Portal Cake
Meatloaf:
     I made two round cake pans full of meatloaf.  It used 4 pounds of ground beef and two onions.  I made a gluten free cake so I substituted the contents of 1 (3.5 oz) bag of pork rinds ground in the food processor.  It sounds weird, but it's an old low carb diet trick that I used many times when my hubby was on the Atkins diet.  You can't tell, really.  It worked out to about 2 cups of crumbs.  I used 1 egg for every pound of meat and put the rest of the ketchup that was in the bottle, probably about 1/2 C.  Salt and pepper.  I baked it at 350° for about an hour, until the center reached 160°.

Filling:
     The mashed potatoes are just regular old mashed potatoes with butter and salt and milk and a little pepper but not enough to give anything away on the outside decoration.

Frosting:
     The hardest part was the frosting.  Traditionally, meatloaf cake is frosted with mashed potatoes, but the Potal cake is chocolate.  Mashed potatoes aren't brown.  On Thursday I had an epiphany!  Refried beans!  I spent a day testing the best way to color the beans to make them look like chocolate.  Soy sauce tasted funny and Worcestershire sauce wasn't dark enough.  Black beans didn't work either.  Finally, I consulted my favorite message board over at Baby Center for help.  Baby Center user ~*downwithNCB*~ suggested Kitchen Bouquet as a darkener.  Kitchen Bouquet FTW!  The flavor was a bit meh, so I hid it with Worcestershire sauce and raw garlic.  Worked like magic, folks!  For the beans, I cooked a pound of pinto beans in the pressure cooker because I wasn't sure how much frosting I'd need.  I probably could have done it with half a pound.  When the beans were done cooking I let them sit in the fridge overnight to firm up.  The next day, I reheated them slowly on the stove with no extra water while the meatloaf was cooking.  I pureed them with a hand blender and added Kitchen Bouquet until it looked "chocolatey" enough.  Then I added Worcestershire sauce and pressed about 2 cloves of garlic until I couldn't taste the KB anymore and the bean flavor was pretty well masked.  Salt and pepper to season a little more, and then I slathered it on the cake!

Review
People loved it!  I only heard one adult say, "I'm not sure I can eat this!  It looks too much like chocolate cake!"  I am never sure with meat dishes of course, but I badgered my husband to give me the honest-and-for-real-truth and he says it was pretty good!  I wasn't sure how the beans would be with the meatloaf, but nobody complained and my eldest son has been pestering me for leftovers all day, so I think it must have been OK!  The only drawback is that it really does look so much like chocolate cake that now I want to make one...

5 and 7 here we come!  Onward for Science!!