Veg Up!

If I see a recipe on line that involves veggies, I will share and try it and continue to fuss with it until it's mine. Yes, combining vegetables and herbs and spices with additions of flavorful oils or nuts will send your palate dancing in the street.

However, let's be real. Fresh vegetables cost as much as meat these days. So, unless you can grow them, or have a constant supply from your local farmers, you are stuck using frozen ones.
This recipe will work with frozen veggies.


Easy Minestrone

Ingredients for four servings:

Two cups of assorted vegetables/fresh or frozen
One cup/can of beans, any type, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup of olive oil or half oil, half butter
Two Tablespoons of chopped aromatics such as onions, garlic, chili peppers, lemon zest...
Sprinkling of cheese
Bread
Salt and pepper to taste

Saute' your chopped aromatics in the butter/oil mix until fragrant, one, two minutes. Add your vegetables and saute for another minute or two until flavors have combined. Add the beans until warmed through. Taste and adjust with salt and pepper and lemon zest.

Voila', your minestrone is ready to be eaten in less time that it takes to warm up a frozen dinner. Add crusty bread and you have a full meal.

When you have too many veggies...

If you have fresh veggies, you can't just let them sit around, hoping they cook themselves. You need to do something with them or you'll have to dump them. The first instinct is to saute' them in olive oil, chopped garlic and red pepper flakes until soft and aromatic.  You can eat them all, or pop them in the freezer and reheat on a week night when you have nothing else in the fridge.

Or, you could steam them and serve them with a sauce.
Make your own, or use your favorite jar from that specialty store.

Here are two of my favorites. I add grain like Bulgar or orzo, plop in a bowl, add the sauce on top, and there is a quick weeknight dinner. For protein, you could add nuts, or slivers of cheese, or the leftover chicken you meant to use.

Lemon and Olive oil sauce (topping  for fish, vegetables, even pasta)
Place everything in a blender:
Juice and zest of two lemons
2 Tablespoons of good olive oil
1 clove of garlic, minced
1/2 bunch of Italian parsley, chopped fine
salt
pepper

Any leftover can be refrigerated for a few days.

Asian sauce (over rice, or any grains and vegetables)

2 Tablespoons of soy sauce
1 T. sesame oil
1 T minced ginger
1T minced garlic
1 T lime juice
Mix in a Mason jar. Write the ingredients on the lid and you can reproduce this sauce in a flash.

Enjoy!

Caponata

Caponata or Ratatouille, is not a special occasion dish. Yet, most of us make it  occasionally, when someone in the family hungers for it. And, when most of  the main ingredients happen to be around. Not that it is difficult or time consuming.
Not that it needs special techniques or tools.
The only specialty item on this cutting board are the salted capers. You don't need them. But, next time you go shopping, pick up the salted plump variety. They had a certain flavoring that is hard to describe. Sicilians swear by them.

Actually, it is one of the easiest and most forgiving dish to prepare.
I just cooked a batch this morning to accompany my eggs; and had enough to freeze away for those impromptu meals when all I want is a savory vegetable stew to dip my bread in.

Ingredients:
1/2 an eggplant, cut in chunks
one zucchini or yellow squash, in chunks
one small onion, diced
one green pepper, diced (I had small peppers)
one tomato, in chunks (I have used canned tomatoes)
capers, chopped
one garlic clove, mashed
one bay leaf or thyme sprig
one Tablespoon of vinegar (I used balsamic)
two Tablespoons of olive oil
1.4 Cup of water
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the onion and pepper until soft, about five minutes or less.
Add the rest of the ingredients except the vinegar and water. Cook at slow heat for five more minutes. Add vinegar and a tablespoon of water. Add salt and pepper to taste. If the dish needs more cooking, add a bit more water at a time until all vegetables are soft.

Easy meals series: Stuffed vegetables

Take stuffed peppers:

These peppers are filled with a mix of herbs, breadcrumbs and meat.
But many other vegetables can star as the main course.
Use your leftover cooked vegetables and blend with some fresh herbs and olive oil for a quick pesto.
Use the same blended vegetables and herbs with breadcrumbs and you can layer all kinds of vegetables in a vegetable casserole.
Squash, zucchini, potatoes, they can become a layer of goodness between your breadcrumbs. Try them and enjoy your veggies. Sprinkle the top with parmesan cheese, and broil for a couple of minutes before serving.

If you can handle leftovers.

When you are ready to clean out your refrigerator, about every other week in my family, and you have bites of this and that you saved because they were too good to throw out, you are ready to make one heck of a frittata with all the stuff.

The secret to making this concoction is not what you have, because here anything goes, but how you combine it all.  If you don't have eggs and cheese, this won't work as well. I had leftover green beans, roasted onions, potatoes, carrots and artichokes.


Anything goes frittata

Ingredients
Vegetables, and starches you have in the fridge.
6 eggs
Grated cheeses/any type. I used Munster and mozzarella
3/4 C milk or cream
Salt and pepper
A pinch of dried or slivered fresh herbs
1 T olive oil
2 T butter

Turn your oven to 350F.

Cut up all your vegetables. If you have potatoes and pasta, be sure you cut these as small as your veggies.  In a medium bowl, break your eggs, mix your grated cheeses, add milk and begin pouring your cut up veggies until the mixture is thick but still runny.  If you still have more veggies, add more eggs and milk. Add salt, pepper and herbs and mix.

Heat up a medium-oven proof pan on the stove. Add your oil and butter and swirl it around until all sides are coated. Take a tablespoon of your mix and drop on the hot pan as you would a pancake. Turn it over and finish cooking.  This is your test spoonful. Go ahead and eat it up. At this point, go back to the original mix and adjust the ingredients. Your palate will tell you if you need more salt, more herbs, more cheese, etc...After that, pour the rest of the mixture in the hot pan and place the pan in the oven for 25'.  When almost set, turn the broiler on for a few minutes, until the top is poufed and golden.

Serve hot or cold, as breakfast, or lunch, with a fruit salad and toast points.

Home-cooked just like Mother's.

Have you craved for food you had as a child, and have not found any restaurants preparing them?
I do. I crave for simple fare, like this dish, beans and greens, for instance.
I crave for home-made pasta, little orecchiette with a simple tomato sauce.
I want to sit down to eat a big bowl of home-made soup.

To have any thing I really want I must take time to prepare the dish myself.

Beans:
I buy bulk beans from bins in the local grocery store. (This year I may purchase heirloom beans and plant them) You can soak the beans overnight, and the cooking will be lessened. Or, rinse your beans in cold water and place them in a big pot, covering with water, two inches above the beans.  Add four cloves of garlic, with skins on and a bunch of herbs tied with a string. Rosemary, thyme, oregano and bay leaves, for instance.  Bring to a boil, and lower heat to a simmer. Cook for a couple of hours at the simmering point, and watch the pot. When the water has been absorbed, test the beans by pressing one of them against the pot. If it squishes easily, it is cooked. Now taste. If cooked, add salt and pepper to taste and squish out the garlic from their skins.  If not cooked through, add a cup of hot broth and continue to simmer until cooked. Remember, do not add salt until the beans are fully cooked.

You now have a pot of beans to use in a couple of dishes.
The one in the picture is beans and chard.  Saute' the chard leaves until soft, in olive oil, chopped onion and garlic and hot pepper flakes. Add a cup of beans, and let the flavors meld.  Eat as a thick soup.

Or, add a cup of cooked rice, and you now have Minestra di riso e fagioli.
Or, add a cup of cooked pasta and you have Minestra di pasta e fagioli.
Add carrots and celery to the olive oil saute', cook until soft, then add chopped tomatoes, cook some more, add chopped cabbage and the beans with broth, and you now have Minestrone.

I hope you make a home-made meal from scratch for your mother this weekend.

Happy Mother's Day!

Want to drop some pounds?

Let's be honest: the holidays are meant to be indulgent.
And so they are.
And we all feel our waistlines because of that.

So, off to the gym, or, in my case, to clearing land, take long walks in the rain, and clean house. Exercise is the best way to shed weight.

The next best thing, is to let your environment help you with your addictions. I just heard about a study of veterans and drug addiction. The study pointed out that our environment triggers responses in us all the time, helping us into comfort zones. To break our addictions to whatever gives us trouble, we need to change the environment. Think about where you eat, where you shop, what you grab automatically and make some changes there.

But, for today, fill your plate with vegetables.
On the menu, bitter greens over pasta

Ingredients:
3 Tablespoons of olive oil
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1T chili flakes
1 bunch of bitter greens, rapini, kale, cabbages, arugula, lightly blanched
1/2 head of cauliflower, blanched,

Saute the garlic and the chili flakes for a minute. Add the greens, and stir fry until soft, but still crunchy.  Serve over linguini. Drizzle some extra virgin olive oil and lots of parmesan shavings.

If you are still hungry, after an hour or so, serve a cheese and fruit plate.

Easy on the digestion.

I'm going back to foods I knew as a child as my health and hubby's health seem to prefer these meals.
Burgers? Nah.
Fries and soda? Nahhhhhh!
Pies and cakes? Twice a year in my household we had sweet somethings, Christmas and Easter. The rest of the time, fruit was our dessert.

Vegetables as the main dish!

As a child in post World War II in Southern Italy,  our meals were mostly vegetarian, and meat was a treat for times Dad brought home a few birds he hunted, or when a neighbor exchanged his pork for our olives.  We were not vegetarians by choice.  We grew our food, and lived off of our harvests.  If we had a great harvest of olives, we could buy a fat pig, slaughter it, and cut it up for sausages and salumi. 

Lamb, chicken, or rabbits graced our table a few times a month.

My digestive system feels so good eating mostly vegetables.
So, protein, carbs are carefully selected to accompany the main dish.
Our lunch today: Stuffed artichokes.

Ingredients:
Two large artichokes
1 slice of bread, toasted and crumbled into
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 oz of pancetta, or 1 strip of bacon
1 medium onion, chopped
1 bunch of parsley or mint, chopped
1/4 cup of olive oil
1/2 C water
1 C of fresh peas
salt and pepper


Trim the artichokes and parboil in acidulated boiling water.
Drain upside down while you prepare the stuffing.

Stuffing:
 In a frying pan, saute the pancetta or bacon until rendered. Scoop out the crispy bits and set aside. (Omit this step if you want the dish to be vegetarian or vegan.)
Add the onions and saute until translucent. Add garlic, parsley or mint, bread crumbs, peas and pancetta and stir together.
Taste and add salt and pepper.

Stuff the artichokes.  Put them in an oven proof dish. Drizzle  olive oil over the whole thing and add  water to cover the bottom of the dish. Cover with foil and bake in a hot oven, 375F for 15 minutes.

Serve with grilled halibut and an orange for dessert.

The cook controls health!

No matter how your family likes to eat and will eat outside your home, the cook is the main person to determine what the family gets fed.

The health and general welfare of everyone in your family depends on you, the cook.
How you shop, what you feature, how you prepare the food, how often you serve that meal, all these decisions will impact the health of your entire family, including future members' as well, because the example you set will influence your own children's and grandchildren's methods and ways.

Today, I want to talk about our ingredients, what we feature in our meals.  I've already listed some of these things in my ten rules for food consumption. As the white/eggplant and cheese pizza above indicates, serving more vegetables will improve your family's health right away.

Vegetables are under-appreciated. Most cooks think first of all about the main entree, the meat. Then, they think about the accompaniments.  In Italy, when I was growing up, our first course, the minestra was usually a concoction of vegetables with a starch, pasta or rice or...

I grew up featuring vegetables, until I married. Then, meat became the main melody. My husband's family grew up on a ranch, in Montana. Their meals were prepared for people who expended a great deal of physical energy.  They needed lots of calories and protein.

It turns out that the Mediterranean diet is heart-friendly. You too can adopt it easily with just a few changes:

1. feature vegetables
2. include legumes such as beans, peas, garbanzo, lentils, etc.
3. incorporate whole grains
4. use lean sources of protein as fish, poultry, game

My vegetarian pizza is easy to make and can change with the seasons. Add tomatoes, zucchini, green peppers, mushrooms. Use whole wheat flour and make your own. Search my Pizza in a Jar recipe and you can have pizza any time.