Stuffed Manicotti

Tonight I got to come home early, so I was able to make manicotti for dinner.

Last night, J and I made up the cashew cheese to use as the base for the stuffing. I took the recipe from Dreena Burton. I don't have truffle oil (really, who does?), so I used 1 heaping spoonful of nutritional yeast instead, and used 4 T of water. My blender sort of conked out though, and wouldn't blend, so I think my cashew cheese was a little less smooth than anticipated. Still tasty though! I stuck it in the fridge last night after making it with J.

Tonight, I cooked the manicotti (1/2 package, 7 pieces) according to the package directions. Well, two of the manicotti fell completely into pieces and another in half, so I think I got some faulty manicotti there. But I made it work with the five I had left. (Next time I'm looking for some large shells instead. Much less of a chance - I think - of them all falling apart on me.)

While my manicotti was in the water, I pre-heated the oven to 365 and I chopped and fried (in 2 T of olive oil) the tastiest (and funniest-looking) mushrooms. J and I picked them out at the farmers' market last Saturday (got to get ready for tomorrow morning!). I also chopped up a bunch of cilantro from last week's farmers' market buy. I took two handfuls of the cilantro and the fried mushrooms and added them in a large bowl to the cashew cheese, stirring with my wooden spoon. I took the manicotti out of the water after their allotted seven minutes and set them aside, saving the water. Then I stuffed the manicotti by hand -- none of that whole trying to use a spoon for me! I placed the five manicotti in a glass pie pan and covered them with basilico tomato sauce (that I got on sale last week). Then I baked the manicotti for 20 minutes.

While the manicotti was baking, I got the water boiling again. I washed and cut up the head of purple broccoli that J picked at the farmers' market last weekend (sensing a theme here?) and put it all in the boiling water, covering the pot. (Not all was in the water; some boiled, some was steamed.) The water, when the broccoli was finished, was purple, and some of the pieces of broccoli were no longer purple.



So, here's what tonight's dinner was for me, D, and J. Stuffed manicotti and broccoli. D said that it was good and he would eat it again, so I consider this a coup. ;) J ate it all ... eventually. I think she was put off initially because we told her it was pasta and cheese, but it doesn't look like the mac and cheese dishes I make for her! Like I said though, she ate it all, so everyone wins tonight. Yum!

And, I have leftover cashew cheese with cilantro and mushrooms because those two manicotti died in the pot. I ate some with triscuits as a snack after I got the two babies to sleep and I've put the rest in the fridge for a snack tomorrow or Sunday.

Heirloom Beans

This past week, I discovered heirloom beans (on the internet, not in real life...yet!). Same idea as heirloom tomatoes, with which everyone is familiar, but BEANS!

I found a few sites that sell heirloom eating beans to the public. I'm placing a (pretty big) order with Rancho Gordo today that includes I think 10 different types of heirloom beans. I'm going to check out Becky and the Beanstalk for ideas on cooking with them.

Rancho Gordo (California)
Native Seeds
Seed Saver Exchange
Phipps Farm (California)
Zursum Beans (Idaho)

I like this idea of preserving beans. And from all that I've read, they should taste much better than the standard bean. They cost more (obviously) and the shipping can get to be expensive, but hopefully the taste will be worth it. Also, I'm going to keep my eyes and ears out for some East Coast heirlooms. I read about heirloom beans in NC and Tennessee, but didn't find any information on buying them. And I'm pretty sure that the beans sold at my farmers' market, while organic, are not heirloom. (They sell kidneys, pintos, garbanzos, and black turtle beans. Those are all standard beans.) Maybe I can make it out to the Union Square farmers' market during the week some day and see if any heirloom beans make an appearance.

J helped me pick through and soak some organic black turtle beans last night. I wanted to make a black bean chili today, but was not up to cooking the beans this morning (I just wanted to stay in bed), so if I make the black bean chili, it will be tonight. Oh, did I mention I want to include orange (sweet potatoes or winter squash) to make a Halloween-themed chili? I really need to get on that tonight! :)

Golden Orange Soup

Well, the squash coconut casserole takes on a funny smell/taste after the first day. Still tastes good, but the smell is weird. I think it's the sage. J wouldn't eat much of it today at lunch, but she did eat the chili! D said she was "nursing her orange juice the whole time" but she ate a whole bowl of chili. :)

I ate another serving of the casserole, with plenty of black pepper and salt, for dinner. Lots of pepper totally masked the "sagey" taste/smell, so maybe it just needed more salt and pepper? Something to consider for the next time. I started dinner with this salad -- fresh tomatoes (thanks to my m-i-l), clover sprouts, chopped golden yellow squash, and the remainder of my nut sauce. Nutty and yummy.

So, I can't rely on leftovers for J to eat tomorrow. I have to make something new, even though I'm supposed to be working (I'm reading cases, yes I am!). I have a meal planned for when I have some time this week, but tonight's not it. She likes my mom's pea soup, so I thought I'd make that...but I don't have any green peas. So, I'm making a golden soup for her. It's based on a recipe I found years ago (maybe 2000?) in my food co-op's newsletter (I think) and my mom's great pea soup. I had yellow split peas on hand, but no parsnips (required for the circa-2000 pea soup recipe), and didn't have the green peas (required for my mom's recipe). I like pea soups because they are easy to put together, easy to cook, and taste great! Here's my new recipe:

Golden Orange Soup serves 8 (I am ambitious!)


Ingredients
1 lb organic carrots, peeled and chopped (2 1/2 - 3 cups)
2 cups frozen chopped celery (prepped before we went to Maryland a few weeks ago)
1 lb split yellow peas, picked over
8 cups water
4 bay leaves (I grew and dried these myself!)

What To Do
Teach D how to pick over beans, peas, and lentils, looking for small stones and any weird looking beans. (Take them out!) Put peas in large LeCreuset.
Peel and chop the carrots. Take the celery out of the freezer and portion out 2 cups. Add both carrots and celery to LeCreuset.
Add 8 cups of water and stir everything together. Add the bay leaves.
Turn on to medium heat and cover. Cook for an hour or so, uncovering after 30-40 minutes. Stir as needed to keep everything cooking and keep the peas from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Also, remove foam as needed. The peas should start to fall apart after approximately an hour. (Work in kitchen and enjoy the yummy smell; remember to stir between cases.)
Take bay leaves out and puree soup with immersion blender. I missed one of the bay leaves, and ended up with little pieces of chopped bay leaves after blending.
Enjoy with salt and black pepper. :)

Thoughts
This could be made in the slow cooker too, but we still have chili in it, so it wasn't an option for me.
I have to find my mom's pea soup recipe! :) Fall and winter mean pea soup. And chili. And pea soup. I feel like my mom's recipe had another spice or something in it that added to the taste of the soup...Mom?
And I really wish I had someone to share cookies with! I can't justify making cookies because I will eat them all up...just like I do with the bags of chocolate chunks that I buy every time I find them at the KeyFood...

Vegan Food Pyramid

check out this vegan food pyramid!

Beans and Chili!!!

Saturday night, I "dreamed" about making beans while I put the babies to bed. So, once they were finally asleep, I got out the beans and started them soaking:

2 cups garbanzos
1 cup small kidneys (or small chili beans)
1 cup pintos

Sunday morning, I cooked up the garbanzos and kidneys. 2 cups dried garbanzos are supposed to need 8 cups of water (plus one strip kombu) to cook. My pot only held the soaked beans and four cups of water, so I had to keep adding water as they cooked. 2-3 hours for garbanzos, so they were the first beans to start. (Lots of foam to scoop off!) Then, I started the kidneys. 1 cup dried kidneys to 3 cups water and one strip kombu. The soaking took away a lot of their bright red color, and the cooking some more. The kidneys were done in a little less than an hour and a half, before we left for the day to see a kung fu competition in Queens. The garbanzos got put on hold while we were out, and the pintos soaked some more.

When we got home around 6 Sunday evening, I finished up the garbanzos (another 20-30 minutes) and started the pintos. 1 cup dry pintos to 3 cups water and one strip kombu. They made the water really dirty looking...but seemed to cook just fine.

Why was I making beans? Well, two reasons. One: CHILI!!! Two: I don't have any canned beans any more, just dried beans, so I needed to make some and freeze them so I can actually cook during the week! :) I made the chili up this morning for D (and maybe J if it's not too spicy) for lunch. And lunch for me tomorrow!

Total yield from my four cups of dried beans:
5 1/2 cups cooked garbanzos (3 1/2 to the freezer)
2 1/2 cups cooked kidneys (1 1/2 to the freezer)
2 1/2 cups cooked pintos (1 1/2 to the freezer)

Slow Cooker Chili
2 cups cooked garbanzos
1 cup each cooked kidneys and pintos
1 small yellow onion, chopped
olive oil
1 large (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes
1 large (28 oz) can fire roasted diced tomatoes
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp Mexican chili powder
1/2 tsp + more ground cumin
some shakes paprika
2 small bay leaves

What to do
Turn the slow cooker on and add the olive oil. Add the onion once it's a little warm; add the spices. Stir together and let the onion and spices heat up for a few minutes if you can. Add the beans and tomatoes. Stir well to combine everything. Put the cover on and leave the slow cooker on high. Head off to work. Hope D remembers to turn it to warm at lunchtime! (He did!)

Thoughts
The Mexican chili powder, that I bought (at KeyFood) when my last chili powder ran out, is super spicy. And I mean SUPER. This chili, like my last, ended up too hot and spicy for J. I made it extra tomatoey (note the two LARGE cans of tomatoes) just for D, who loves beans and tomatoes. I had two small bowls (one is in the photo) of this for dinner, along with a bowl of the coconut squash casserole. Very satisfying dinner, and plenty of leftovers for lunch and dinner later this week.

Butternut Squash, Sweet Potato, and Spiral Casserole

I needed something yummy to make with my butternut squash. And I needed to use up some of my roasted veggies from last week.

Ingredients
olive oil
1 medium-large organic sweet yellow onion, small dice
1 organic butternut squash (~3 pounds), peeled, seeded, and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
3/4 cup pieces roasted sweet potatoes and orange squash
1 14-oz can organic coconut milk
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1/4 cup Red Star vegetarian support nutritional yeast
1 tsp dried sage
12-16 oz organic tri-color spiral pasta
1/2 cup pecans, chopped and toasted
spelt bread crumbs

What to do
Tear up four slices of going-stale spelt bread that we got a while back at the bakery up at the farmers' market. Make small pieces (very small) and spread out on cookie sheet. Heat oven for 2 minutes at 250, then turn it off and place the cookie sheet with bread crumbs inside.
Heat large LeCreuset. When warm, add olive oil. When the oil is warm, add the diced onion and cook, stirring often, until soft (5-7 minutes). Add the butternut squash, coconut milk, salt, and pepper and stir. Cook for ~20 minutes, until the squash is soft. Add in the nutritional yeast and sage (crumble the sage between your fingers before adding it). Add the roasted sweet potatoes and squash and combine well.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to the directions and drain it.
If you are like me and making this all late Sunday night for lunch on Monday, here's what to do next:
Transfer the coconut squash mixture to the casserole dish that you will use to bake. Once the pasta is cool, put it into containers that can go into the fridge. Put everything into the fridge for Monday morning.
Chop the pecans. Get some sleep.
Wake up Monday morning.
Transfer the spelt bread crumbs into a bowl with J's help and let her put the pecans on the cookie sheet. Heat the oven to 365 and put the cookie sheet with pecans in for 5 minutes.
Microwave the coconut squash for 3-5 minutes on power 5 (so that you can mix it together with the nuts and pasta.
Transfer everything to the big LeCrueset again, and mix the pecans, coconut squash, and pasta together. Then put it back in the casserole dish. Wipe the edge. Let J cover the top with the spelt breadcrumbs.
Leave for D to bake (365 for 30 minutes) for lunch. J ate is for lunch and liked it, according to D.

I ate it for dinner -- YUM! This dish was very yummy (yummier than my photo shows). The different squash and sweet potatoes were delish. The pasta soaked up most of the sauce. The sage added an unexpected flavor kick.

Besan Crackers

I based this recipe on the quackers crackers recipe from Have Cake Will Travel that I've made before. I wanted to try it with besan and also wanted to see about making them gluten-free and more protein-packed. We had crackers with vegan cheese and wax beans for dinner tonight.

Ingredients
2 cups besan (chickpea flour) (got a large bag at Desi Bazaar in MD last week)
2/3 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp black pepper (should have used more)
2 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) Earth Balance
1/2 cup + 1 T soy milk

What To Do
Help J measure and combine besan, nutritional yeast (sprinkles!), pepper, and salt in large bowl. Let J mix and get besan on table. Clean up.
Let J add the Earth Balance stick, then cut it into the besan mixture with a pastry cutter. J tried to help with the cutting-in too, but it didn't work so well...I ended up finishing it up. It's ready for the next ingredient when it looks like coarse meal.
Then, add the soy milk and combine until dough forms. We started off mixing it with a wooden spoon and quickly turned to my hands instead.
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Split dough into two pieces. Roll out the first piece of dough on a parchment paper. I made this one pretty thin as I wanted crunchy crackers. I cut everything with my pastry slider thing into square and rombuses/rombi?, then transferred them all to a cookie sheet and baked for 18 minutes. J helped me spread them all out and added her finger prints. :P Roll out the second piece of dough while the first set of crackers is baking. The second I made thicker, and J helped me roll it out and cut. This set had lots of J fingerprints in it. We also made five large oval/circle-shaped crackers. I baked this set for 15 minutes. I also added some extra pepper on top of 1/3 of the crackers when they were baking (after eating the toasty first set and thinking, man these need more pepper!).