More Beans n' Rice: Gallo Pinto

We plowed through the Lovely Lentils and Brown Rice, so there's not enough for our power lunch tomorrow. Having spent 2 weeks in Nicaragua long long ago, I have fond memories of my favorite part of nearly every meal, gallo pinto. Apparently also popular in Costa Rica, where it's made with black beans instead of red, gallo pinto is like the national dish (I guess Costa Ricans like it with a fried egg). And it's usually totally vegetarian, despite the fact that it's named after a chicken (it means speckled rooster-- because of how it looks). So tonight I made up a big batch of this and can't wait until I can eat it tomorrow!!!
Gallo Pinto

1 c. uncooked rice
1/2 c. onion minced
2 cloves garlic minced
1 ts. cumin
1 ts. coriander
1/2 ts. ground ginger
Saute these together in 2 Tb. veg oil until the rice is translucent. Then add 2 c. water, cover, and simmer until rice is cooked.

At this point, I dumped the rice into a big bowl, heated 1 Tb. veg oil and sauteed some diced hot/sweet pepper
*among the recipes I found, this was a bit vague, so I ended up using 1/2 a serrano diced finely for heat and about 1/2 a green bell pepper for flavor)
then I dumped the rice back in and added 2 c. cooked black or red beans and 2 Tb. vegetarian worcestershire sauce (this approximates some kind of sauce that can only be found in Nicaragua or Costa Rica). Heat through and finish with 2 stalks of green onion finely chopped and 1/4 c. chopped cilantro.

I'm gonna garnish it with some sliced avocado. I can't wait.

Veg Broth from Scratch and Perfect Protein Lunches

Because school is back in, and Fall is my favorite season, and I am very fond of soup, Zips decided we ought to try our hand/paw at making our own veggie broth from scratch. I am delighted at how delicious and rewarding it was. We looked at many recipes online, and decided we were just going to take a whack at it and use whatever we had. So we chopped a whole onion, several carrots, some celery, 2 zucchini, a leftover sliver of cabbage, 3 or 4 parsnips, 3 mushrooms, a sweet potato, a couple of yukon gold potatoes, a couple spears of asparagus, and a bay leaf. Well, we heated these in a little olive oil at the beginning, and just piled in veggies as we chopped them up. Then we added about 16 cups of water. (That's right! Clear water!) and boiled it all for about 2 hours. I found some whole peppercorns and added them about an hour in.


Here it is at the beginning, and a little later once everything starts to jive a little:

After the first hour, it starts smelling maddeningly delicious. It is no longer water with veggies in it, but magical homemade elixer! It could probably have continued boiling, but I couldn't take the sweet torture for long. So I scooped out all the veggies after it cooled, and poured the broth into some freezable containers. We are thrilled! This has totally inspired me to make a vegetarian french onion soup from scratch. I can even make my own bread!
And in our continued search for perfect foods for our busy school days, we needed to concoct something for Thursday Lunches. Thursday is our killer day this semester, as we have to be on campus, essentially, from 11:30am to 8:30pm, (with a break between 1 and 3) We HAVE to bring us some vittles that will keep the candle burning. So I looked up a bean and rice dish, since they offer a complete protein. Now, lots of folks have a recipe for Lentil and Brown Rice Soup/ Stew/ Cassarole/ Salad. I don't know what I was looking for, so I kind of cobbled together several things that looked good to me. The result: delicious!

Lovely Lentils and Brown Rice:

1/2 onion. diced
1 clove garlic minced
2 Tb. olive oil
1 carrot finely diced
2 celery ribs finely diced
3/4 c. uncooked brown rice
3/4 c. dry lentils
3 c. veggie broth (even better if made from scratch!)
1/4 c. roasted pine nuts
2 Tb. fresh cilantro chopped
2 Tb. fresh mint chopped
juice of 1/2 lemon
sprinkle of ground coriander and black pepper

Heat up the oil and add things in the order listed. Give the veggies and aromatics a little saute before adding the rice and lentils. After adding the lentils, thrown in the broth and bring to a simmer. Cover it and give it a stir once in a while until the liquid is absorbed (about 30-40min.) Stir in the pine nuts and the fresh herbs. Season to taste, and squeeze the lemon in at the end. Zips liked with a diced fresh tomato mixed in. I'm thinking I would like it with something like raisins or dried cranberry cooked in... I'll keep you posted.

Good for complete protein, good for fiber, and good for Zips.

Pesto Pizza and Oven Fried Green Tomatoes (but not together)

Today's big adventure was some homemade pizza made with some pizza dough from Trader Joe's. (I've never bought a plastic bag of dough that I can stretch out and toss up in the air. How fun!) I know it's practically un-american for me to be a little ambivalent about pizza. I'm just not a rabid fan. As a teenager, my parents always encouraged me to have pizza parties (feed friends cheap), but I was not and still am not that excited about pizza.

But PESTO pizza is a whole other story! The short version: I made a pizza for everyone in the family. Green chiles, bell pepper, onion, mushrooms, and less cheese on one. No mushrooms and more cheese on another. And green chiles, onion, bell pepper, and tomato on my homemade pesto version. *drool* I can't WAIT to make pizza again!

I know all the components of Pesto, but didn't measure anything out, so here's my guess-timated recipe:

I Love PESTO

2 cloves garlic
1 packed c. basil (washed)
1/4 c. pine nuts
1 Tb. olive oil
1/4 c. parmesan cheese (I didn't have the fancy grated kind, so I used the kind that comes in a green plastic can from Target. It worked just fine)

I just put everything into my mini-food processor that I've had since undergrad and whizzed away. I processed everything in the order listed. Once I put some olive oil in, everything incorporated really well.

Now that school has started again, we're trying to prep a lot of our meals so everything is a healthy, hearty no-brainer when we get up... when we get home... when we get munchie. (While my goal is for these to be healthy, it is absolutely essential they be no-brainers, since I'm a complete zombie when I wake up and also when I get tired!) This weekend we're excited to pretend summer isn't over yet, so we made the pizzas, tonight I'm making soy yogurt for next week's breakfast smoothies. And we're going to try making veggie broth from scratch. Zips just discovered the blog Vegan Yum Yum who has a link to this Fat Free Vegan blog ("sinlessly delicious" I love it), both of which I have bookmarked. So we're going to try Yum Yum's vegetable broth. I'll post more when we have more to show for it.

AND I'm so excited to try baked green tomatoes! I'm thrilled. And perhaps tomorrow, after we go to the local grower's market, we'll have some green tomatoes to bread and bake. Zips is over my shoulder finding recipes for vegan quiche, tempeh potato breakfast patties, vegan paella, seitan stir fry, chickpea spinach soup... we already have designs to make a blackened cajun chik'n dinner tomorrow. SO I have a feeling I'll be posting again real soon.

How Feist made dancers disappear...

While sprucing up my blog, I clicked on the Feist video for 1234 and am still in love with both the song and the seemingly improvised, endearingly kooky (intentionally graceless) choreography (gives me hope that I could appear in a music video). I love that it's one amazing continuous single shot. I love how flawless the timing is, and I still wondered how they did the trick at the end where all the dancers disappear (and I always imagined a director with a megaphone shouting "Purples! Go! Now reds and yellows! Go! Now everyone! Fall down!"). After a little searching, I found this making-of video. Scoot the slider to about 2:10 and you'll get to see the whole thing:


via videosift.com

Local Veggies for the Broken-Hearted

This week marks the end of summer "vacation" and the beginning of fall semester. Before it gets too crazy again, Zips and I darted out of town for one last weekend adventure, and ended up in Albuquerque for their downtown farmer's market, and up to Santa Fe for a sweet vegetarian restaurant and a delightful French documentary.

We stayed the night at a hotel in downtown ABQ that I wouldn't recommend-- to anyone. ever. unless you want insomnia and a broken spine-- but the only perk is that when we stepped out of our door Saturday morning, the Albuquerque Farmer's Market was literally across the street! It was so lovely to see piles of produce in addition to local crafty stuff. There were apples, grapes, peaches, eggplants, onions, bell peppers, garlic, carrots, potatoes, O MY!

My heart breaks that our garden won't yield a tomato larger than a ping pong, and that our only thriving investment is a sweet basil plant that heroically refuses to die. How magical that these things grow. How tragic that they won't grow in our backyard! In any event, we splurged on peaches, some grapes(!), a bunch of purple carrots (purple!), some crispy, tart apples (that look like they actually grew on a tree, not in some lab somewhere), and a lovely bag of yukon gold potatoes. I am so jealous of the potato lady. Growing potatoes was my favorite!

The traffic at the farmer's market seemed to come to a dead standstill at the tent belonging to Blk Bird Pies-- an adorable couple who were selling all manner of tiny pies, and also servings of Watermelon Papaya juice, and lemonade with purple basil (the third was hibiscus-something or other, we'll try it next time!). We saw everyone carrying around and sipping these juices, so we had to come back and try them. They were so delicious, and I'm now utterly obsessed with the idea of infusing some thai basil or lavender or something the next time I make a lemon shake-up!

The other happy discoveries for the weekend were, in addition to the fact that The Screen at the College of Santa Fe was playing the enchanting documentary, The Beaches of Agnes, we ate at the equally enchanting Tree House Pastry Shop / Cafe.

It is an all-organic, entirely vegetarian, local food restaurant. Like D'Lish in Sedona, it was such a luxury to look at their menu board and know I could order anything!

For whatever reason, I played it safe and ordered the Black Bean Quesadilla-- I've never dreamed of putting black beans inside a quesadilla-- but it was really good!

But Zips won hands-down for this tempeh-lentil-hummus wrap and salad. After a weekend of sketchy dining out, this was the real winner. She was generous enough to share it with me, and neither of us was hungry for the rest of the night!

We're going to try to duplicate it in our future lunching endeavors! The Tree House is also a full bakery that does wedding cakes and the like, so we had to splurge for cupcakes: chocolate and caramel with pink sea salt (in the cutest little boxes ever).

We packed them up and had dessert at a picnic table in the railyard arts district, where an artist's market was packing up for the day. Hopefully this marks a sweet beginning to our new school semester.

Breakfast of Champions

In more concerted efforts to have more healthful breakfasts, especially with school starting again next week, we discovered the joys of eating quinoa in the mornings. Zips found a fantastic recipe for Quinoa Porridge (sounds so English, I know..) Ours involves plain cooked quinoa soaked in an equal amount of soy milk (1 1/2 cups feeds both of us) overnight and heated in the morning with a drizzle of honey, a sprinkle of orange zest, some dried cranberries, and some chopped walnuts. It's like oats or grits and a complete protein to boot!

Baked Tortilla Chips from Scratch!

(Okay, okay, it's more like Baked Tortilla Chips from Tortillas!) One of our greatest vices in the summer is chips n' salsa-- especially fresh, spicy homemade pico de gallo or a batch of salsa from a local restaurant (that I can buy by the quart in their shop!) with fresh tortilla chips from another local restaurant. We've discovered how shockingly easy it is to bake these at home, and they absolutely fulfill my crunchy chip jones.

Baked Tortilla Chips:

Lightly brush or spray veg oil onto 6" corn tortillas (I'm sure you can use flour, I'll take photos if I do that too)
Sprinkle a tiny amount of fine salt onto tortillas (optional--I used fine popcorn salt)
Stack tortillas and cut into quarters.
Lay these out on a baking sheet & bake @ 350 for 10 minutes, flip them over and give them about 5 more minutes. Watch them carefully, as they burn easily. Then indulge. *crunch*

Making Indian from scratch

Zips and I have a been watching BBC America during the mid-mornings because How Clean is Your House and You Are What You Eat are a couple of our favorite shows-- certainly the most motivating to both do chores around the house and eat well and exercise. In fact, we just bought Gillian McKeith's books You Are What You Eat and the Food Bible. This morning, nearly a week into trying to follow a more Gillian McKeith-like food lifestyle, we hit a food lull (no idea what to fix today), and in the meantime, Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares came on with an episode of Ramsey fixing up an Indian restaurant in Nottingham called The Curry Lounge. Lamenting our current promise not to eat things like ghee (mmmmmm) and naan (ooooooooh), we wondered if we could scrape together enough change to hit the local organic-friendly Indian buffet, and then I said, why don't I make us something? SO I hit up a couple of recipes online for a good Chana Masala (this is adapted largely from a recipe purportedly taken from a cookbook called Heart Healthy Indian), and when I couldn't find my garam masala anywhere, I also found a recipe for that made up of spices I already have! I think a real version of this would involve whole spice pods dry roasted together and ground, but I'll wait until I have a spare coffee grinder to use as a spice grinder. Until then:

Easy Garam Masala:

1 Tb. cumin
1 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1 1/2 tsp. ground cardamom
1 1/2 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg

I measured everything out and then poured it into an empty spice jar and shook it until a uniform color. Smells like HEAVEN!

The Chana Masala recipe is a little more fast and loose, I cobbled together two recipes (so I could use just one can of garbanzos), then tweaked them so I'd have more sauce, and added a small potato and a carrot.

So I chopped 1/2 an onion and put it into a food processor with
2 tomatoes from a can of whole tomatoes + 1/4 c. of its juice
1/2 serrano chile (use the whole thing if you think you can take it!)
1 inch ginger peeled and chopped
3-4 garlic cloves peeled

Process these together until a nice tomatoey liquid paste forms.

Then in a large saucepan, I put the other 1/2 onion (diced) with
1 small potato diced
1 carrot peeled & diced
2-3 bay leaves
saute until onion is translucent then add the tomato/onion/ginger/garlic/chile mixture & stir. (**note: Because Zips and I like plenty of saucey gravy to eat with the rice, at this point I actually went back and doubled the tomato/onion/ginger/garlic/chile mixture and added it to the veggies). Then add:

1 tsp. red chili powder
1 tsp. coriander
2 tsp. garam masala
1 15oz. can of garbanzo beans.

Heat together (I put the lid on) 7-10 minutes, or until your basmati rice finishes cooking! Garnish with cilantro leaves. We ate it with brown basmati rice (which I had never tried or cooked before)-- and it was hearty and fine. It smells SO GOOD in here! This has given me a boost of confidence in other Indian cuisine favorites that I have never attempted. Something with lentils next time, I think.

Black Bean Burgers and Sweet Potato Fries (bonus!)

The Chicago Diner, which Zips and I only visited once (alas!), has a fully vegetarian menu which prompted both of us to try things we'd never think of making at home. Having devoured their amazing black bean burger with sweet potato fries, we're both obsessed with the idea of flying out there to eat it again. In lieu of a pair of plane tickets, we went looking for recipes to test drive, and landed on these. The fries were AWESOME (even if we didn't get them quite crispy), and the burger was DELICIOUS (but a tad wet-- I used a little store-bought breadcrumbs to even out the texture). We loved them both:

Black Bean Burgers:

1 slice whole wheat bread -- torn into pieces and pulsed a couple times in food processor. Then add:
1 grated carrot
1/4 c. cilantro leaves
1/3 chopped onion
1 tsp. cumin
1/4 tsp. salt

Pulse these together in the processor a until combined (but not mush!) Then add:
1 15oz. can of black beans, drained and rinsed

Pulse with other ingredients until combined and the beans are chopped up (but not mush!). Of course, you want to shoot for a burger-y texture. Scoop out into a mixing bowl and add

1/4 c. prepared chunky salsa (I used some from our favorite local mexican restaurant. caliente!)

Mix into beans with your hands. If it seems too wet (as mine did-- the first burgers fell apart), at this point, add a little bread crumbs. I think I added about 1/4 c. This didn't seem to throw off the flavors at all.

The recipe I found divided the mixture into 4 burgers of equal size. This seemed too big for me, and so I divided it into 6. Heat some extra virgin olive oil in a large pan and fry about 3 minutes on both sides until browned. We served them in pita pockets with garlic aioli (see below), onions, lettuce, tomato, and avocado slices.

Sweet Potato Fries with Garlic Aioli

Okay, the garlic aioli is embarassingly easy-- just 2 garlic cloves grated into 1/2 c. veganaise.

The sweet potato fries involve just a large or 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into fries, then place into a mixing bowl and drizzle

2 Tb. olive oil
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. coriander
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. dried parsley
and some pepper.

I combined all the spices together and then tossed them into the fries until evenly coated. Lay the fries out in one layer on a baking sheet and bake at 425 for 15 minutes, flip, and give them 20 more minutes.

Zipper approves!

Altered T's

Zips has bestowed upon me a task to spruce up some t-shirts with spiffy vintage iron-on decals for the new academic year. Namely to turn throat-clutching crew necks into more shapely v-necks. Given this daunting undertaking, and my own marginal sewing skills, I thought it really necessary to figure out how. SO, to practice:

I've got this unglamorous, boxy speed racer t-shirt that I bought on a whim in the men's graphic t-shirt section at a target some years ago (before that appalling live-action movie). I wore it a couple of times, but mostly relegated it to sleepwear because I was always swimming in it, although the ringer neck always choked me no matter how much I tried to stretch it. SO, I found a couple of lovely specific tutorials on altering tees (hilarious, short video) and converting them to v-neck (scroll down a little, lots of photos). I have a couple of american apparel tees whose fit I love, so I traced the cut onto the big tee with a sharpie and went at it with a pair of scissors, lugged out my handy dandy Singer, and VOILA!

I'm not sure the v is quite centered, but at least I'll be able to wear it out of the house without being mistaken for a 9 year old boy! It didn't take long either. I'm going to go rummaging for more oversized tees that I can fix up. In the meantime, Zips is well pleased. I'm going to need a couple more practice tees to build up my confidence before I lay hands on one of her Fleetwood Mac and Purple Rain t-shirts!