Potato Dough Makes the World a Brighter Place

I’ve been really pleased with the way my summer cooking has been going. My biggest coup by far has been my mastering of the making and use of potato refrigerator dough. This versatile foodstuff is just the best. I’ve used it to make burger buns, hot dog buns and dinner rolls. I even drizzled leftover dinner rolls with margarine and cinnamon sugar to make a yummy addition to a birthday breakfast.

My recipe is basically this one with the changes Ruthie mentioned plus one change of my own, I used all whole wheat bread flour. That's the key for me. Store bought whole wheat buns are so expensive. That may be the best reason of all to give this recipe a try. It's so easy to shape a few buns when the dough is already mixed and waiting.

As Ruthie mentioned, I didn’t need to punch it down daily. I also found it needed a longer rising time than the original recipe called for. I feel such shame confessing this but I used mahed potato flakes. There, I said it. Stone me if you must. I’m a huge fan of everything from scratch but baking potatoes in the absence of a microwave in the summer is not my idea of a good time. Plus they carry the mashed potato flakes at the local discount grocery store.

The meals themselves have largely been the ones from the meal plan I put together a few months back. I still can’t believe how much time and mental energy having a meal plan saves. I like the way a meal plan gives me ideas but invites variation. For example, I made baked seitan but instead of making jerk seitan with it, I made BBQ seitan. Simple? Yes, but very effective and tasty too. Now go, look in your fridge, cabinet or garden and make a substitution. Start small, substitute some collards for spinach (in cooked recipes only or you'll be sorry. It's a memorable mistake that you'd only make once!)

I’ve been very adept at combining several days of leftover bean dishes and making veggie burgers. The leftovers have included Cajun black eyed peas, Cuban Black Beans, Brilliant Baked Beans (From How It All Vegan) and BBQ Chickpeas. My only mistake in combing them was pureeing them too much and making the texture a little too gooey. A potato masher would have done a better job. (Is it odd that a potato masher should come up right after I confess to not using one a mere paragraph ago?)

I’ve discovered a real PMS snack pleaser, try combining dried unsweetened cherries with dark chocolate chips. No cooking, just toss them together in a bowl. You can try conning yourself into thinking it’s healthy just because you’re eating fruit. Then again, if you’re PMSing, you probably don’t give a hoot if it’s healthy.

In the fruit and veggie department, the CSA and farmers market have been our primary source. I just discovered a woman in walking distance who has a farm stand set up in her front yard. I'm planning to head her way toward the end of the week when my fridge begins to look empty in anticipation of the next pickup.

Lima Bean Bake

Ruthie asked for the Lima Bean Bake recipe that I mentioned here. This recipe was inspired by a recipe in Miserly Mom's by Jonni McCoy (Terry's Lentil Rice Casserole to be precise). I like it because it doesn't use tomato. Don't get me wrong, I love tomato in all its many forms. It's just that you can't have it in every meal and maintain any kind of a pantry.

When I make this, I triple or quadruple the recipe because we love leftovers and there are so many of us.

Katie's Lima Bean Bake

Combine in a greased casserole dish that has a cover:
about 2 cups cooked lima beans (you can use a bit more or a bit less)
1/2 cup uncooked brown rice
2 onions chopped
1 Tbs dried basil
1 Tbs dried oregano
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp seasoned salt, optional
2 Tbs nutritional yeast
2 tsp dried dill
1 Tbs dried parsley
uncooked chopped veggies, your choice (I've used beets, carrots, celery, kale, collards or anything else I have on hand.)

Stir all the ingredients and add enough water or vegetable broth to cover the mixture. Cover and place in a preheated 350 degree oven for about an hour and a half. I serve this with biscuits and the Mighty Miso gravy recipe from How it All Vegan. If I don't have mushrooms on hand, I skip them and it comes out great anyway.

Although I haven't tried it, I would imagine this would work well in the slow cooker or solar oven as well.

Beans on the Brain

My kids like chickpeas way more than the average chickpea fanatic. Just yesterday Leen came home from school and made this perennial chickpea favorite.

Quickie Chickpeas
Put a little olive oil in a pan, dumped in some chick peas and seasoned salt and let it all brown for a few minutes. Eat and enjoy! The trick is to use just enough olive oil to prevent sticking but not enough to make your fingers greasy should you choose to eat with your fingers.

This is essentially an "I'm too hungry to wait" version of Chickpea nibbles from How it All Vegan.

Although the boys love this concoction, they were begging for some homemade hummus. Sadly, I had plans to use the remaining chickpeas in a stir fry last night. Not to worry another big batch of chickpeas are soaking as we speak.

Speaking of last night's stir fry, I essentially used the quickie chickpea recipe (if you can call that a recipe) and added some onion powder and balsamic vinegar. Once they were browned, I removed the chickpeas from the pan. I gave a quick toss in the pan to some mung bean and broccoli sprouts (less than a minute). I mixed the sprouts and chickpeas together. I deglazed the pan with a bit of water to get all the yummy bits that were left behind. I poured this over the chickpea-sprout mix which I served over bulgur.

In other bean news, I created a kidney bean spread that was inspired by a recipe from The McDougall Program for a Healthy Heart. This is a classic case of not having all the ingredients in the house and coming up with something yummy in spite of it.

Katie's Kidney Bean Sandwich Spread
2 cups cooked kinedy beans
3 Tbs nutritional yeast
2 Tbs lemon juice
1/2 Tbs tamari
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/4 tsp seasoned salt

I mashed everything with a potato masher but a whirl in the food processor would work well also. I thought it tasted bland at first but after sitting in the fridge overnight the flavors seemed much more pronounced.

When I was little, my dad used to call me Katie Sue Beanie, perhaps he could sense my impending love of beans even back then?

Successfully Using What's in the Freezer

Here's the ultimate tightwad, no additional energy expended way of keeping your coffee warm on a cold winter day.


But what, you may ask, is your coffe mug sitting on?

The wood stove of course! A girl's got to keep her coffee hot. BTW all you tea drinkers, I've put my tea bag into a mug of water and heated that here as well.

I thought I'd take a few moments and give a run down on how my efforts to use what was in the freezer were going. Before getting started I have to confess, I bought onions, carrots and four tomatoes.

I'm really pleased with the fig spice cake and the healthy fig date cookies that I made. The recipes were simple and everyone liked them. I'm itching to try Chile's fig butter recipe. It was in Thursday's comments but just in case you missed it, here it is. (And go check out her blog, NOW!!) Thanks for the recipe Chile!

Chile's Fig Butter

1/2 pound ripe figs
1 1/4 cup water
1/2 c water
1 1/2 c sugar
3/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp each: allspice, cinnamon, cloves
2 tsp vanilla

Wash figs, de-stem and quarter.
Simmer in water until soft.
Puree in blender.
Return to saucepan, using additional 1/2 c water to rinse out blender and add to pan.
Stir in sugar and dry spices.
Bring to a gentle boil and simmer for 20 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

I loved the sweet and sour bean sprout recipe from the NY Times Natural Foods Cookbook. We ate it first as a side salad. The next night, I drained off the liquid, the sprouts leach water overnight like fresh cabbage in coleslaw, and used it to season some tvp. I served the tvp with the sprouts inside a crepe. It was easy and delicious. For family members who thought the combination of seasoned sprouts and seasoned tvp was too intense, I gave the option of using unseasoned sprouts.

Today I'm trying the broiled sprout patties. Overall, I'm thrilled with sprouting! It's easy to feel like you have a green thumb this way! If you haven't tried it, what are you waiting for??

The plethora of parsley in the freezer found its way into the vegetable broth recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance. It lends a buttery flavor to the finished broth. Of course, I used the veggies I had and left out the ones I didn't. I also left the veggies in, mashed them with a potato masher and served this as a soup with rice. Then I used the leftovers in split pea soup. Both were excellent.

But there was still more parsley in the freezer, so I made tabbouleh. Hence the four out of season tomatoes I bought which I fear I'm going to eco-hell for buying. The recipe I used called for pouring boiling water over the bulgur and letting it sit 45 minutes before draining. I had never done this but it worked perfectly. That's an energy saving cooking method I intend to use again. (BTW, on a similar not, Chile's method of letting steel cut oats soak overnight and then cooking only briefly in the morning is so superior to the crock pot method I've used. You really must try it.)

The tabbouleh was delicious as well. I served it with Navajo Fry Bread topped with sprouts and homemade hummus from the Vegan Lunchbox Cookbook. Its a slightly milder recipe than others out there but my family loves it.

Now to dig a little deeper and see what else is lurking in the freezer...

There's No Room for Leftovers This Week!

Here's what happens when you don't feel like winding up with a lot of leftovers.

Half of the lima beans that I put in the slow cooker Sunday night became the Beans & Pasta recipe from Good Recipes for Hard Times, a very non-veg but nifty cookbook. I didn't have the celery called for in the recipe so I tossed in some bok choy instead. I also used scallions in place of the onions in the recipe. The final insult to the original recipe writer was, I omitted the pasta. I have plenty of pasta but I wanted to try making polenta and serving it with this recipe instead.

The end result was a tasty soup, the pasta would have made it less soupy. As for the polenta, if I hadn't added an extra 1/4 cup of water to it, it would have been great. Instead it was just ok. I knew I shouldn't add the extra water but I just couldn't stop myself! It was super simple to make. I will definitely try this again.

The remaining limas got mashed into a bean salad which we had on bread for lunch. I just used a bit of nayonaisse, garlic powder, onion powder, relish and a squirt of mustard to season the beans. Everyone seems to like this.

Now what to do with the leftovers of these two meals???

For dinner tonight, I cooked some barley in the leftover bean soup and I made whole wheat crepes. I served the leftover soup, now not water at all thanks to the barley,inside of the crepes. That's an awful description but it tasted really good.

For dessert, I put a tiny bit of water into a the practically empty jelly that was in the fridge. I took the remaining crepes, sprinkled a bit of powdered sugar on them, rolled them up and drizzled the jelly over them. These were good but there was an ongoing debate about whether cinnamon sugar would have been better than powdered sugar. Personally, I lean toward cinnamon sugar.

As for the leftover bean salad, it will be demolished by lunchtime tomorrow.

Loving All the Lentils

Since we have a plethora of red lentils in the cupboard, our dinner the last two nights has included them. I've used the lentil recipes in The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery for inspiration. These recipes really call for brown lentils but I'm finding the red ones work pretty well too.

First, I tried her Honey Baked Lentil recipe substituting maple syrup for the honey. The recipes combines ginger, dry mustard, chopped onion and soy sauce with the lentils. It is topped with the maple syrup before baking. Despite my initial skepticism, this was quite a hit.

Next, inspired by Carla's Sloppy Lentil recipe, I sauteed several carrots and two cloves of garlic and then placed them in the slow cooker. Then I added dried red lentils, chopped green onion, 2 bay leaves, tomato puree and boiling water to just cover the whole mixture. I cooked this on high for 5 hours and before serving added a bit of tamari, basil and oregano. I served this over bulgur and it too was quite good.

The results have been so positive, I'm tempted to keep going. The Lentil Walnut & Rice Loaf and Ruth's Lentil Burgers are next up. I'm enjoying the adventure of living out of the pantry!

I did get a chance to try the Bean Hash recipe that I mentioned last week. I wound up using lima beans that I discovered in the back of the cabinet rather than the butter beans and black beans that the original recipe called for. This was simply because I didn't have any butter beans or black beans.

I thought the hash needed a bit more spice but overall everyone liked it. The texture of the Bean Hash was really good. Sometimes I think getting the texture right is the greatest challenge of vegan cooking. I'm anxious to try more of the recipes from The Bean Gourmet Presents the Greatest Little Bean Cookbook by Tom Chasuk. His pizza recipe sounds very intriguing.

Speaking of Beans

I just found a cookbook called The Bean Gourmet Presents the Greatest Little Bean Cookbook by Tom Chasuk. This is one quirky little cookbook. He uses beans in everything from breakfasts to beverages.

I used his quesadilla recipe as the inspiration for the quesadillas I made tonight. I used his combination of spices and cooking technique. I used vegan cheese and I added chopped tomatoes because I like them and so do my kids. It really was delcious.

I'm anxious to try his Bean Hash recipe since corned beef hash was a favorite of Jim's way back when. From what I've read so far, the ingredients are common and there is minimal prep and cooking in all of his recipes. This might be a good one to take out of the library for any bean newbies out there.

Pantry Overload with an Update

So far the spending freeze has been a ho-hum affair. One thing I've discovered along the way is that I have a ton of non perishable food in the house, probably too much. A side benefit of our decreased spending is that we will wade through some of this excess and reclaim some storage space.

There are certain staples that we just go through by the truckload, mainly whole wheat bread flour, whole wheat pastry flour, and oatmeal. These turn up so frequently in our cooking that I need to stock up on at least every other month if not sooner. Most other dry goods I don't need to buy more than once every 6 months or so (bear in mind I buy these in 25 or 50 pound bags.) You would think after buying in bulk for so long I would have this down to a science but its still just a work in progress.

We are running low on veggies and soymilk, as I suspected we would. I'm going to head outside and pick some dandelion greens before Jim mows the lawn. It always freaks the kids out when they discover that I've harvested our own dandelion greens yet they don't blink when we bring them home from the CSA. Ultimately, as long as I do it before any school children arrive home they're fine with it.

I used some of the sprouts yesterday. I'm not sure if its my imagination but I swear they were crunchier than the sprouts from our winter sprouting. The reamining ready sprouts will be used in sandwiched tonight. I defrosted what I thought was apple butter but it turned out to be broth from seitan (remember back in the old days when we boiled seitan???) I'll be using it to make Red Lentil Spread. I did eventually find the apple butter and I'll use that in a dessert, although I'm not sure what. I think I'll peruse the Use It All: The Leftovers Cookbook for ideas.

In gardening news, our currant bushes have sprung to life over the last few days. They look like they'll be very productive this year. I'm really pleased, epsecially considering the traumatic uprooting they endured this time last year. I'm anxious to see how the blueberries are doing.

UPDATE:
I've just stumbled upon the socially acceptable way to gather dabdelion greens without having your teenagers moan and groan about all the ways you are ruining their lives. All you need to do is send out one of their younger siblings to gather them for the "guinea pigs"! Of course you have to actually give some to the guinea pigs and this excuse won't work as well unless you have guinea pigs.

Cuban Black Beans & Black Bean Soup

I love when the leftovers of one meal naturally lend themselves to become part of the next nights meal. This Cuban Black Bean recipe into Black Bean Soup is a great example of this.

Cuban Black Beans
Combine the following:
1 tsp olive oil
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced

Cook 2 minutes over medium heat and then add in:
2 tsp chili powder

Cook for 1 minute stirring constantly. Add in:
4 cups cooked black beans
a pinch of sugar
1 bay leaf
3-4 cups water, enough to cover beans

Simmer over low heat uncovered for 15 minutes. Remove bay leaf and add:
2 tsp cider vinegar
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp hot pepper sauce

Use a slotted spoon to serve this over rice with salsa.

This recipe inevitably leaves you with a lot of leftover broth, as well as some beans, a bit of rice and a bit of salsa.

Black Bean Soup
In a medium sized pot I combined all the leftovers from the above meal (broth, beans, rice, salsa and any veggies I have served with it)

Add:
chopped carrots
cilantro
container of tomato paste
1-2 tsp of powdered vegetable broth

I heated this until the carrots were tender and viola, super simple black bean soup.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all! I always feel a bit introspective this time of year. Whenever I'm alone, with four kids this usually means when I'm in the shower, I find myself taking a mental inventory of the last year. No matter what my feelings are on the events of the prior year, reviewing them helps me plan for the upcoming year.

I'm especially pleased with the way holiday gift giving went this year. For the most part, everyone kept it low key. Since there are so many of us, my siblings and I drew names out of a hat for gift giving. Our spending limit for these gifts was $20-$25 and this made for some really thoughtful and creative gift giving. It helps that most of us have the "keep it cheap, ow it hurts to spend that much" gene.

I got my sister, Mary, a 1 year subscription to The HomeEconomiser Newsletter $12 and I pre-ordered her a copy of America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money $10.36. Certainly, its not the right gift for everyone but Mary and I tend to really be on the same page about finances.

In food news, I got a request for my chickpea scramble recipe. I thought I'd already posted it but apparently I hadn't. The chickpea scramble is basically my Potato Scramble recipe with about 4 cups of cooked chickpeas instead of potatoes. Here it is:

Chickpea Scramble
4 cups cooked chickpeas
2 onions, chopped
any or none of the following: chopped carrot, chopped broccoli, chopped kale or any other chooped vegetable
1/2 cup tamari
1 Tbs. nutritional yeast
1 Tbs. maple syrup

In a heavy pot, I'm partial to cast iron, brown the onions in a little olive or canola oil. Add the chickpeas and the optional items. Whisk together last three ingredients and pour over chickpea and onion mixture. Add water to just cover, bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook covered about 25 minutes. To make it thicker mash 1/2 of the chickpeas before serving. Serve as is or as a crepe filling.

Cajun Red Beans and Rice

This recipe was posted Jennifer C. on the Healthy Vegetarian Crockpot Cooking yahoo group last week. It was very easy and very delicious. I've put my substitutions in parenthesis. As always, most of my substitutions are based on using what I have in the house rather than making a trip out to the store.

Cajun Red Beans and Rice

1 pound small red beans
1 tablespoon boullion (1 Tbs All Season Blend from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook by Joanne Stepaniak)
2 tablespoons Cajun seasoning
Several dashes of hot sauce (I skipped this and let everyone add their own)
2-3 bay leaves
2 small onions
1 green bell pepper (finely shredded kale)
5-6 stalks celery (1 celeriac and some chopped collard stems)
2-3 cloves garlic
Salt
About 6-7 cups of water (I used boiling water because I was nervous the beans wouldn't cook up by dinner time).

Serve with:
fresh parsley, minced
prepared brown rice

Dice the veggies very finely. Throw everything into a pot and let it
simmer for several hours (or throw everything into a crockpot and let
it cook 7-8 hours). Once the beans are very tender, remove several
scoops of them and purée them to make a paste. Or just put them in a
bowl and mash the heck out of them. Stir them back into the pot. Serve with brown rice and fresh parsley.

I cooked this in the slow cooker and didn't bother to mash or puree the beans. The result was a yummy dinner with minimal effort. If you're wondering why I used kale in place of the pepper but collard stems in place of the celery, it was because I had already used the leaves from the collards in something else and the stems were just sitting their in the fridge. I also find that collard stems work best in a long cooking recipe since they tend to be tougher than kale stems.

Last night I discovered that one of the teenage girls I recently hired is a veggie also! Isn't that a happy coincidence.

Pasta & White Beans with Chunky Cheezy Vegetable Sauce

I wandered into the kitchen last night with only the vaguest plan for dinner. In knew I had white beans already cooked and that was about it. I put a pot of water up to boil and took out my container of Instant Cheez-It dry sauce mix from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook by Joanne Stepaniak. A plan was developing!

I mixed a double batch of the Instant Cheez-It sauce (1 cup of mix to 2 cups of water) and added a dash of olive oil to it. I put this over medium low heat, whisking every few minutes while I began chopping some very iffy looking tomatoes. I then chopped some roasted red peppers and a fairly huge amount of kale, saving the stems for another time. Once the Instant Cheez-It sauce began to thicken I tossed in the tomatoes, peppers and kale.

By this time the water had boiled and the pasta was already cooking. Just before the pasta was completely cooked I added the already cooked beans to the boiling water to heat them. Once the pasta was tender, I drained the bean/pasta mixture.

By then the cheez sauce was thick enough and the kale was wilted, so I mixed it into the pasta/bean mixture. The result was unbelievably good. No complaints about taking leftovers for lunch today!

More Crockpot Cooking

Yesterday's crockpot concoction of seitan (with broth), quartered potatoes, cubed pumpkin and kale was so delicious that I decided to do a variation on it again.

Last night I put chickpeas in the slow cooker. In the morning I drained them and added the last of the broth from the seitan, chopped stems from collards and sliced fennel. I let this cook all day on low. Right before serving I added some uncooked whole wheat couscous to absorb some of the excess liquid. It was really delicious as well. I really like the flavor the fennel added.