Saturday Stew

This stew was excellent! ...and probably deserves a better name than Saturday Stew...



I wanted to use up some of my veggie stores before going to the farmers' market. J and I put this stew together in the morning between making/eating breakfast, getting A to sleep for a nap, and heading out to the market, where we of course bought lots more vegetable goodness.

Ingredients
1 big tomato (mistakenly bought or given me by one of the farmers last week), chopped
1 cup cooked black beans
1 golden squash, sliced into rounds and then halved or quartered
1 small butternut squash, peeled and chopped
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 1/2 cups Brussels sprouts, halved
6 small red potatoes, scrubbed and chopped
1 cup wild rice mix
1 no-chicken vegetable bouillon cube
water
olive oil

What I did
I started by chopping the onion, heating up my huge LeCreuset, and warming the oil. Then I sauteed the onion for a few minutes.
J picked out six of our little red potatoes, which I then scrubbed, cut the eyes out of, and cut up.
I peeled the butternut squash, scooped out the insides, and cut it up. I then cut the rest of the veggies. I had already "peeled" (not quite the right word, but I'm not totally sure what to call it) the Brussels sprouts earlier in the week, so I just had to cut them in half.
I added the veggies as I cut them to the pot, where I had already add the water and two bouillon squares. This process took an hour or so, between all the other stuff we were doing. I kept it on low-medium heat.

Maybe 15 minutes before we left for the market, I added the black beans and J helped me add one cup of a wild rice mix that I got at MOM's last time we were down in Maryland. (I kept wavering on adding the black beans, because I really wasn't sure about black beans with potatoes and squash. I decided that I needed to use them, and they were the only cooked, non-frozen beans that I had on hand, so I put them in. I don't know why I was so wary about adding them -- they were excellent in this soup, and provided a nice contract to the whites, reds, and browns of the rice, and the orange of the squash.)

We left it on low heat on my simmer burner and spent 1 1/2 hours at the market getting all sorts of fall vegetables from Evolutionary Organics and a NJ farm (hello way too many green and yellow beans!) and some Freekah and spelt flour from Cayoga Pure Organics, listening to Cajun zydeco music (two fiddlers and one accordionist), and stopping off at the Brooklyn Public Library to drop off and pick up a book.

The apartment smelled delicious when we walked in. J asked for some more zydeco music; I didn't have any on my iTunes, so we settled for some South American, and got ourselves some stew for an early lunch (it was 11:40). Not only did is smell like it should be eaten again and again, it looked gorgeous! So many colors and textures! One bowl each of thick, filling stew later, J and A were ready for their naps. Ahh...sleep...full tummies...



I gave J this stew for lunch on Sunday, adding more water to it when I heated it up on the stove (the rice had soaked up all the broth). It was just as delish and possibly more filling the second time around (I ate the bit that didn't fit into J's bowl). She's got probably three more servings for meals this week. Yum.

Saturday Farm Fresh Lunch

It's Saturday! Yay! And I'm at home with the kids. Yay!

Breakfast this morning was a sweet potato muffin for J and an apricot scone for me from the Body & Soul stand/van at the Farmers' Market. The muffin was moist and yummy as usual, but they've changed the way they make them, adding apricots to the muffin instead of just on top of the muffin.

J does not like apricots. Normally, I can just take the one or two off the top and then she will eat without help (yay!). But not today. Today, she took a few bites and then came upon another apricot! So, instead of J eating all on her own, I had to take out each apricot and give her un-apricoted pieced. Breakfast took a little bit of time...

The apricot scone is not something I will be buying again unless I have jam with me. It was very dry and heavy...not very scone-like. I try something other than the sweet potato muffins every other time we get breakfast there. As usual, today's wasn't very good. Oh well.

After we finished breakfast, we did a little bit of market shopping, buying two tiny gourds for J, some winter squash from the organic farm, and some purple broccoli, Brussels sprouts, yellow zucchini, and yellow wax beans from another farm. Then a quick pit stop at home and off to the playground for the Halloween party! J was a ladybug and A a giraffe. It rained, so there weren't a lot of kids, and the sing-a-long/story time and parade didn't happen, but J had a great time!

Home for lunch: farm-fresh lunch!


Ingredients

Fresh from the market -- 6-7 Brussels sprouts & 1/2 medium golden yellow zucchini
From the fridge -- 1/4 cup cooked french lentils (from the risotto day) and 1/2 cup cooked couscous
1/2 tsp Italian herbs olive oil

What I did
Slice 6-7 Brussels sprouts very thinly. Cut medium golden yellow zucchini in half length-wise, then take one half and cut it into into thirds width-wise, then into small square-ish pieces.
Add olive oil to heated Le Creuset; when warm, add the Brussels sprout strips and small zucchini pieces and Italian herbs. Saute for a minute or so, then cover and let cook.
I should have added a little bit of water here, but got caught up with fixing J's Unicef Trick-or-Treating box, and smelled that it needed some water.
Race back to the kitchen (fortunately our apartment is small), add some water and stir. The Brussels sprouts and zucchini had just started browning, not burning, so it actually turned out pretty good. I added some more water with approximately 1/4 cup of the reserved lentils from earlier in the week and 1/2 cup of cooked couscous from the fridge. (Yay for having extra grains and beans cooked in the fridge!)
I turned down the heat to 4 and let it all cooked together for another 5 minutes or so.

J and I ate this yummy farm fresh lunch while A had some smashed roasted sweet potatoes and squash.


Now we are enjoying some hot chocolate (I found out yesterday that the Whole Foods in Manhattan sell vegan marshmallows, so I will be buying some soon) and watching Kiki's Delivery Service, J's favorite movie, as we hide inside from the rain.

Braised Brussels Sprouts and Asparagus with Beans and Couscous

For dinner Thursday night, I made braised Brussels sprouts, asparagus, and beans with couscous. My mom also cooked a super-sweet acorn squash that I stuffed with couscous and yellow zuchinni sauteed in earth balance.

Ingredients
~1 lb Brussels sprouts
1 large sweet yellow onion
handful asparagus
1 can kidney beans
1 can pinto beans
salt
pepper
olive oil
Earth Balance

1 package whole wheat couscous
2 T Earth Balance
3 cups water
Mrs. Dash no-salt spice

What to do
First, wash the Brussels sprouts and remove the hard/damaged outer leaves. Then slice them thinly (3-4 cuts per sprout). This takes a while, but it's worth it.
Second, chop the onion into small pieces.
Third, wash and break off the hard ends of the asparagus and then chop the asparagus into 1/2 to 1 inch pieces.
Warm a pan on the stove and add olive oil and Earth Balance when warm. When the oil and butter is heated, add the onion and saute for ~five minutes.
Meanwhile, put the water in a separate pan to boil and add a little salt. Once it's boiling, add the Earth Balance and then the couscous and cook for two minutes. Turn the heat off and add as much as little Mrs. Dash (using what I have here at my mom's!) as you like. Mix the spices in and cover the pot to allow the couscous to steam and use up any remaining water.
Back to the onion pan. Add the strips of sprouts and pieces of asparagus and stir. Cover the pan and let everything cook for 10-15 minutes (until the sprout strips and asparagus are bright green). Add a little water if needed to keep from burning and stir a few times. Add salt and pepper to season.
Rinse and add the two cans of beans (~3 cups beans). Cook for another five minutes or so, until all is warm.
Serve the sprout strips, asparagus, and beans over the couscous with extra salt and pepper for everyone to season as they wish.
This was enough food me me, D, J, KA, B, and Mom for dinner. With leftovers. It was pretty tasty.

For the acorn squash, I sauteed some golden yellow zuchinni that my mom got at the farmers' market in Towson with Earth Balance, added some broken up pecans, and stuffed the squash (also a mom's purchase from the farmers' market). These acorn squash were super sweet and tasty.