Sweet Potato Squash & Garbanzo Soup with Kasha

Yesterday's dinner was a hearty, thick stew. I made the soup separate from the kasha, and served them together, making a thick, stick-to-your-ribs stew that was quite filling. I had forgotten how much I liked kasha. You could always cook the kasha with the soup, but I liked the separateness of the two. I think it led to the vibrant colors: This soup was very brightly colored -- yellow and orange vegetables in deep yellow broth, bright greens, red kasha.

Ingredients
Soup:
2 sweet potatoes, scrubbed and cubed (from the farmers' market)
1 sweet yellow onion, chopped (from MOM's)
1/2 head of garlic, minced (from the farmers' market)
1 long delicata squash, cut in half, seeds scooped out, and chopped (ditto)
1 large gold potato, scrubbed and cubed (not Yukon, I can't remember the variety that we picked at the market on Saturday)
1 head of greens, thinly sliced (from Kira's farm stand. She said to use it like spinach, so I did)
1 cup vegetable broth
1 T extra virgin olive oil
3 cups water
1 cup garbanzos + 1 cup garbanzo cooking liquid
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp poultry seasoning

Kasha:
1 cup dried kasha
2 cups water
1/4 tsp sea salt

What to do
For the soup:
As you cut the sweet potatoes and potatoes, put them in a large soup pot with the water and vegetable broth.
Add the garlic and onions as you cut them.
Add the garbanzos and cooking water, the olive oil, and the herbs. (Because I knew that I was going to use some salt in the kasha, I didn't put any in the soup. You might want to put some in the soup.)
Cook, covered, over medium heat until the vegetables are soft and the broth is a lovely deep yellow.
When the vegetables are soft enough for you, turn off the heat and add the greens. Cover the pot again and let the soup cook the greens for you.
Keep the pot covered until you are ready to serve.

For the kasha:
Rinse the kasha well and remove any blackened grains. Place in pot with 2 cups of water and seal salt. Stir, cook until all the water is absorbed. I did this right before serving, so that the kasha was warm.

To serve:
Place some kasha in a bowl, then ladle soup on top. Sprinkle with nutritional yeast. You can serve it like that or mix the kasha into the soup, making it a stew.
Enjoy!

Peanut, Sweet Potato, Barley, and Bean Stew

I used up the last of my Rancho Gordo Lila beans in this stew. So good! :)

The impetus for this stew was my sweet potatoes. After being away for five days, one of my (newly bought) sweet potatoes decided to rot. :( Dave just put my bag of sweet potatoes in another plastic bag, and I wasn't able to do anything about it until late Friday night when I got home from work. So, late Friday night, I cleaned and cut off bad spots from my remaining sweet potatoes, and ended up peeling two. (Do I know how to start a weekend or what?) I wanted to use the peeled potatoes up before anything else weird happened with these sweet potatoes, so I used them to make this stew.

The stew uses barley, because J asked for barley while we were looking at the different grains on the table. She chose barley over this cool-looking burnt-umber colored rice I got at Fairways, standard white and brown rices, and kasha. I'm sure any other whole grain would work in this stew too. And next time I'll probably make it with a different grain, because Dave thinks that J has a hard time eating barley (she chews is slowly).

My inspiration for including the peanut butter was J and our breakfast this morning. I made us some Bob's Red Mill 10-grain cereal and she wanted me to add peanut butter to our hot cereal, in addition to our standard soy milk, pumpkin seeds, pecans, and dried cranberries. It creamed up really well and the little chunks of peanut tasted great in the cereal. So, I thought, why not try it in the soup. Not to mention that every recipe I've ever seen for African stew includes peanut butter and sweet potatoes or yams!

The main part of the stew is the beans. The delicious, and now finished, Lila beans.

Ingredients
1 cup dried Lila beans, soaked overnight or two nights
2-3 in piece of Kombu
water
2 T freshly ground organic peanut butter
handful of whole organic peanuts
2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into small cubes
1 cup pearl barley
1 square no-chicken vegetable bouillon (optional)
1 bunch Vitamin greens

What to do
Soak the beans. (Start on Friday night, get too busy on Saturday to make anything, and finally get to cook them on Sunday.) Cook the beans in a large pot with the Kombu. If the beans need more water as they cook, add boiling water to the pot to keep the beans from getting hard.

After the beans are finished cooking, add the sweet potato cubes, barley, and peanut butter. Add enough more water - everything should be covered. Don't dump the bean cooking water -- it's the broth for this stew. The barley will soak up a lot of water as it cooks, so make sure to add enough. Also, you can add the bouillon if you are using it now. You can add the peanuts now or right before serving, up to you. ( I added them earlier so that they could cook with everything else. I was also not sure if I would get to add them otherwise, as my little A was requiring lots of attention and nursing.) As the stew cooks, stir it regularly to break up the peanut butter and the bouillon and distribute evenly throughout the stew.

While the stew is cooking, chop the greens (including stems). Put them in a pan with some water, cover, and sweat for 5-7 minutes, adding water as needed to keep the greens from scorching.

To serve, put the stew into a bowl and top with the greens. See J's bowl below. That's her cheesing it up for my cell phone camera (we can't find our camera since our trip to Maryland! Have you seen it?).

Thoughts
If reheating, you'll probably want to add more water, as the barley continues to soak up the broth. We have one serving left of this, which J will get for a meal this week.

I have the coolest kids. J asked for the greens for her snack this afternoon (D asked, J, do you want a cookie. J replies, no, I want greens!). And A had some of the greens for dinner tonight. Heehee.

Three Roots & Beans Soup

My attempt at a cute name for la soupe du jour. :P The soup has three beans (yellow wax beans, green beans, and pink Lila beans) and three root vegetables (golden beet, Yukon gold potato, and red potatoes), along with some other yummy ingredients.

This morning was an early morning. Not because I had to get to work early (like Friday and Monday), but because the girls have gotten used to waking up early with me. We just need to adjust their other sleeping times to make up for the hour they are losing in the morning.

I asked J, as we were making breakfast sandwiches with the pumpkin biscuits, slices of Tofutti cheese (orange for J, white for me), and Yves faux Canadian bacon, what she wanted to do. She wanted to make soup! So, we made soup, in the slow cooker.

I dreamed of minestrone for some reason last night. This soup is by no means a minestrone (not sure what makes a soup a minestrone...must figure that out...), but it's a very full (and hopefully filling) soup.

Ingredients
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 small red onion, chopped (part of our Fairway haul)
1 large clove garlic, minced (EO)
1 golden beet, chopped (EO)
6 small red potatoes, chopped
1 medium Yukon gold potato, chopped (Fairway)
1 - 1/2 lbs green and yellow wax beans, ends snapped off and broken into 1 - 2 inch pieces
1 cup tiny orange/yellow tomatoes (J picked them Saturday at the market)
beet greens, washed and cut into small pieces (EO)
5 cups water
1 square not-chicken vegetable bouillon
1/2 cup pastini (stars!)
1 cup cooked Lila Rancho Gordo beans (grown by Mexican farmers participating in the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc Project)
Splash of apple cider vinegar

What to do
It's a slow cooker soup, so bring out the slow cooker and plug it in. Put it to hot. W hen it's a little warm, add the olive oil.
Chop the onion and garlic, and add to the warm pot and olive oil. Stir.
Chop the root vegetables and add to the pot. Stir.
Add the water and the bouillon square. Stir.
Wash, trim, and break the yellow and green beans into 1 - 2 inch pieces, and add to the pot. Stir.
Wash and add the tomatoes to the pot. Stir.
Add the Lila beans. Stir.
Take the beet greens off the stems (J helped here), wash them, and cut them up. I used kitchen sheers because I was holding A by this point and couldn't use a knife. Add the greens to the pot. Stir.
After 10-15 minutes (give the greens time to wilt), add the pastini. (Add more water if you think you need it at this point too.) Stir.
Add the splash of apple cider vinegar. Stir.
Wait until lunchtime, and serve!




Thoughts
Any bean would probably work here. I had made these beans up over the weekend and have been eating them as I need beans. They are quite good, with a depth of flavor that I'm not used to in my normal beans. That's why I paid the big bucks for them though -- the taste of RG beans is supposed to be outstanding!

The apple cider vinegar is to combat the bitterness of the greens. I know that J likes the greens (we've eaten them before), but I cook them with a splash of vinegar to take the bitter edge off. So, I added that splash to the soup. Should work.

I ate this soup for dinner. By the time I got home tonight, as you can see from the pictures, the soup was more of a stew. I think that D must have left it on high for most of the day and not turned it to low or warm after lunch. Oh well. Still delish! :)

Quinoa Stuffed Squash

Monday night for dinner, I made stuffed squash for me and D. (J ate some golden orange soup.) I also sauteed up some swiss chard and kale that I mixed up with some quinoa, and made some baby red potatoes.



I needed to use up some more of the golden orange soup from last week (it's getting on in age there). That's actually what inspired this whole meal. D had made J the soup for dinner, and I was looking at it thinking that it would be a good base for squash stuffing. I had been dreaming about stuffed squash all day at work. Dream, meet the means.

Ingredients for the stuffing
1 cup cooked red quinoa
1 cup golden orange soup
3 Swiss chard leaves
1/2 pomegranate
1/4 cup golden raisins
1-2 T pine nuts

Ingredient to be stuffed
1 carnival squash

What I did
To start, while feeding J dinner, I rinsed and cooked one cup of red quinoa. I think the red quinoa is just so pretty. Rinsing is essential, as I've learned. It takes the bitter coating off the small grains, so that they taste MUCH better!
I also washed, rolled, and julienned three mixed Swiss Chard leaves. I then quickly and lightly microwaved steamed them (one minute at 5 power). First ingredient into the bowl.
Looking around the kitchen, I wanted something sweet and thought, raisins! I pulled out my organic golden raisins and put approximately 1/4 cup into the bowl of stuffing wonders. Then J added some to her soup. And some pine nuts (I had already taken those out of the fridge to add to the squash.)
I had a pomegranate that my mom bought me, sitting on the table, just waiting for something to be made with it, so I used half it, scooping/pulling out the little pom gems and any juice that came along. More sweetness and a little bit of liquid.
I added a cup of the golden soup to my bowl of stuffing wonders.
(Sometime while preparing the stuffing and cooking the quinoa, I pre-heated the oven to 410F.)
I cut the carnival squash in half and scooped out the seeds and string. (It did not want to be cut! J thought it would be funny to keep poking me as I was struggling with the huge knife and the not-to-be-cut squash. It was not funny.)
When the quinoa finished cooking, I took one cup of it and added it to my bowl of stuffing wonders -- chard, raisins, pom, and golden soup -- mixing everything together well. (I saved the rest of the quinoa for other purposes.)
Then I spooned the mixture into the squash halves, topped each with some pine nuts, and placed them in my brownie/roasting/all-purpose pan with a bit of water (maybe 1/2 - 1 inch). (I had enough of the stuffing mixture left to fill another squash half. I saved the stuffing for J to have for lunch today.)
I popped the pan in the oven right before I went to put the girls to bed. If I was going to be in the kitchen, I would have covered the squash with foil for the first 20-25 minutes of roasting, but I didn't want to give D any more complicated directions than, take out when the timer goes off.
I set the time for 40 minutes. This is another step that I would change. I would set it for 50 minutes instead, or maybe even 60. D turned off the oven after the 40 minutes (I was still getting the girls to sleep), but didn't take the squash out. I don't know how much longer they sat in the oven, but it was all good. [I would add the extra ten minutes because, although everything was cooked, the squash (bottom) could have been a little more tender. Just my preference. :)]

For the side greens and quinoa, I was inspired by a recipe for Swiss Chard in Dreena Burton's Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan.
I saved the rest of the chard and kale that I could (that's what I get for forgetting about two bunches in the crisper!), washed and dried the leaves, rolled and julienned them. I heated my saute pan, added some sesame oil, and when it was warm, added the greens and some salt and pepper. I sauteed them for 2-3 minutes, then turned off the heat and added a bit of Bragg's and some more sesame oil. When I put them on the plates, I added in some more red quinoa and mixed together. (The Bragg's was a bit overpowering without the quinoa, so note to self: don't use Bragg's next time. Buy some tamari.) D and I ate dinner as the night wore on, adding in some sourdough bread (thanks Rita!) with Earth Balance and Tofutti cream cheese and the baby red potatoes slathered with Earth Balance. All together, very filling. But I should have made the potatoes with everything else, so that we could have been filled up at one sitting. Lesson learned, to be employed next time. And the stuffing was quite delish - toasty pine nuts, splashes of juice in the pom seeds, softened raisins...

Braised Greens and Pinto Beans

Sunday night, after finishing off my creamy cheezy sauce from last week with some pasta for dinner last night, I made up some greens and beans for me and J to eat Monday.

The photo is in my sunny office window looking out over midtown Manhattan. The waffle building...what a wonderful morning sight.
I had meant to make up some bulgar or barley this morning to have a full meal, but ended up making smoothies with J and changing lots of diapers. :P

Ingredients
1 large bunch organic greens from the farmers' market (can't remember the name of these ones)
1 medium yellow onion
2 large cloves garlic
2 cans organic pinto beans
salt & pepper
olive oil
apple cider vinegar

What to do
First, wash the greens and shake off the water. Then, cut out the middle hard stem. Place a few leaves together and roll up. Repeat until the bunch of greens is all rolled up into various rolls and all the stems are in the compost bag. Slice the rolled greens thinly (like slicing a zucchini) and then cut the slices in half or quarter (depending on the size and how large you like your pieces of green).
Chop the onion. I tried using a method I saw on a blog a few weeks ago, which worked relatively well. Slice off the top of the onion. Peel away the outside of the onion as you normally would, but don't cut off the end/bottom of the onion. Slice carefully down towards to the end, being careful not to cut through the end. Then, do the same thing perpendicularly. The end should still be on, and the onion have grid-shaped cuts. Then, slice parallel to the end of the onion, giving you a nice small dice of the onion.
Mince the garlic.
Heat a deep pan that has a cover. Once warm, add the olive oil and let that warm up before adding the onion. (Medium high heat)
Add the onion and saute for approximately three minutes, until getting translucent and soft.
Add the garlic and saute for another minute or so. The onion and garlic should be wonderfully fragrant.
Add the greens, mix, and cover. Reduce the heat to medium low. The greens are going to need approximately ten minutes to cook. During this time, stir to make sure that they don't burn or scorch. Add a little water if needed. At about the seven- or eight-minute mark, add a splash of apple cider vinegar (it takes away the bitterness - if any - of the greens).
While the greens are cooking, rinse the beans in a colander in the sink. Pick out any that look suspicious (like really dark or small or anything).
After the ten minutes are up, add the beans. Add a little bit of salt and pepper. Cook, uncovered, for 3-5 minutes.

Update: I ate the braised greens and pinto beans for lunch today with some saffron rice, long broccoli flower-things, and pea pods (thanks to my friendly cafeteria for not putting any animal products in them today). Very yummy. I ate it cold, and don't think that the temperature made any difference to the taste. I think that I might add a little more pepper next time, but I'm very judicious with it when making food for J after that first cheezy quackers attempt.

Sesame Chard Quiche

I made this quiche on Sunday for dinner (with leftovers for meals this week).

The original recipe called for button mushrooms and broccoli. I used shiitake mushrooms and red swiss chard.

The crust is whole wheat pastry flour with corn meal, sesame seeds, vegan shortening, and water.

The filling is tofu, nutritional yeast, onion, garlic, ginger, mushrooms, chard, tahini, Bragg's, freshly ground nutmeg, and sesame oil.

J helpd with the filling and sprinkled the sesame seeds on the top all by herself!