Making Stock

Day 6   All this cooking takes a lot of dish washing and I have no dishwasher.  I dream about having one.  Just like the Anne Taintor  housewife magnets "I dreamed my whole house was clean..."  Someday I will have one.

Day 7  Making stock:    Creating lovely meals with lots of vegetables means lots of vegetable trimmings- don't let them go to waste - make stock.  The tomato cores, herb trimmings, outer layers of onion,  carrot ends, green tips from scallions and the ribs or stems from kale can all go into a big pot with about a teaspoon of  pepper corns , some thyme and dill, a few bay leaves, a celery stalk or two and some smashed garlic.    Just don't add anything moldy or slimy that has degenerated from  vegetable to UFO ( unidentifiable fridge object) and make sure it's been rinsed so there's no grit. Now you have complete control over what's in your soup stock. Most cookbooks recommend not using  a lot of carrot peels or broccoli family remains as these can make the stock too sweet or too bitter but experiment as you wish. 

I'm thrilled to be using my new garlic press and my new strainer today.  The garlic press worked like a charm and I'm happy to report it was very easy to clean as well.

  I found them at my favorite local culinary goods store Stock on Hope St.  www.stockpvd.com
Cover these leftovers with water and simmer away for about 20 minutes.

  Then let cool and pour through a strainer to filter out the vegetable dregs.
Pour into airtight containers and label and date them.  These will keep in the freezer 6 months and in the fridge 1-2 weeks. Now you have stock of your own to make soup.

The Joy of Cooking has all sorts of recipes for stock from vegetable to seafood and  meats. The herbs will vary depending on what your base is and what your purpose is.  Tamar Adler has some wonderful words on this and using other bits and pieces in her book  An Everlasting Meal. It's really wonderful to get a second life out of all these unused pieces of vegetable and if you have a compost bin you can reuse the vegetables a third time to make compost ( just to be clear if you are making stock with meat or seafood those veggies should not go to the compost after).
The broth I just made is so yummy I'm having a bowlful now!

Day 5

Day 5

I'm running late from work.  Having just missed a bus, I had a long wait for the next one and was just too tired to walk.  A quick snack I thought.  And then "oh no, what can I eat?"  I went to Starbucks and grabbed a bag of Sweet Potato Chips. The internal monologue : They can't have that much oil can they? It's the Food Tastes Good company, they make good stuff. My belly roars just feed us the freakin chips already before we self implode.

I devour the chips in seconds- they are sooo good and sweet and salty and oily and hey they are really sweet and oily! Post devouringI look at the bag- added cane sugar and quite a bit of oil. There's a funny taste in my mouth  a strange combo of oil and Guilt ...
Happily when I get home Himself confesses that he had teriyaki tofu takeout for lunch that definitely had oil in it and I mention the chip consumption.

And then I made one of our favorite dishes Black Beans and Quinoa...

This dish takes 20 minutes.

Ingredients:
1 cup  quinoa
1 can black beans
Cumin
1 can Muir Glen Fire Roasted Tomatoes with green chilies or chipotle
1 avocado
1/2 a yellow onion
2-4 cloves garlic to taste
 1 cup baby spinach or chopped kale

 Into a saucepan  pour 2 cups water and  1 cup Quinoa and bring to boil . Reduce heat to simmer and cover.  The water will be absorbed and the quinoa cooked in about 20 minutes. Check  once or twice to make sure it's just simmering. Remove from heat when done.

While the quinoa cooks, saute some chopped garlic and onions in a tiny bit/2-3 tablespoons- of water or veggie broth about 5 minutes then add in the tomato mix and the black beans and  cumin to taste - I tend to use close to a tablespoon of cumin.
 Simmer this while quinoa is cooking.  When the quinoa is done, stir the cup of greens into the black bean mixture.  Serve the black bean mix on top of the quinoa and mix then garnish with avocado.  if your goal is weight loss use less avocado.  Himself gets a small portion of avocado whereas I, who need to maintain my weight, get half the avocado and the remainder goes to my leftovers  for lunch on Day 6.

Variations: spring onion and cilantro.  Add these as garnish or in place of spinach and onion.  Here's a picture of the dish with the spring onion and cilantro.   For extra heat add in different chilies or a dash of hot sauce.  Tabasco Chipotle is oil free.

Day 4

Day 4 

Snow is falling  and I had the afternoon free.   This pretty much never happens so I'm gleefully in the kitchen making a huge batch of granola.   I'm trying out Robin Mather's recipe for oil free granola. It's from The Feast Nearby, a beautiful book about eating locally, bartering and preserving on a budget.www.thefeastnearby.com 

To make the granola you dry roast the rolled oats in the oven and then dry roast the nuts whole and then grinding them after they cool.    Any seeds or dried fruits used should not be baked but instead added in after the oats are out of the oven .   I followed her recipe to the letter choosing vanilla and agave as my flavoring and sweetener.  The granola is delicately nutty in flavor and I will add cinnamon and nutmeg to the next batch.

Granola: