Whole Wheat Quesadillas

A couple years ago I spent $20 at Target on a quesadilla maker, a fun tool that makes your quesadillas crispy. This is a mid-week treat: we filled ours with refried beans, strips of baked tofu, lettuce, mild salsa, and a blend of shredded cheeses. YUM.

Watermelon Gazpacho

Although it's been raining and gloomy so far this week (and most of this summer), I still feel like cooking something summery.

I’ve always loved gazpacho. The lightness, the sweetness, the coldness. I was on the elliptical reading Glamour this morning when I saw a recipe for watermelon gazpacho and I knew I’d have to try it. Immediately. However, I’d forgotten the recipe by the time I got home. I did a bit of Googling, tweaked a recipe and came up with this:

2 c cubed watermelon
2 c orange juice
1 T olive oil
½ diced red onion
½ diced large tomato (I prefer beefsteak tomatoes)
2 minced garlic cloves
1 diced cucumber
basil, salt and pepper to taste

Puree ½ c watermelon with the orange juice and oil, then add to the rest of the ingredients and stir. SO GOOD! I love cooking with orange juice this summer. Pretty to look at too, though I probably should have pureed this more.

Enjoy! Now, I'm off to tutoring. I'm a little nervous. When I tutored last week, one student asked my religion, my marital status, and my political allegiance. And this has to do with reading comprehension how...?

Vegetable Medley

Tonight Jake came home from his golf weekend so I made a vegetable medley, throwing together a dish from several boiled red potatoes, some broccoli, a few eggplant cutlets from Trader Joe’s, cauliflower, a strip of red bell pepper, ¼ of diced yellow onion, one clove of garlic, three mushrooms, and a handful of cooked chickpeas. The eggplant seemed to hold it together. I mixed it up in a pan with a couple T of olive oil and a 1/4 c of cheddar cheese. Jake put ketchup on everything, of course.

I could barely eat because I was still so stuffed from a cooking class earlier today I attended at Kitchen Conservatory – we rolled and cut our own pasta! Gorgeous ravioli and fettuccine from scratch. A glass of wine in the afternoon. Grilled salad! Such fun. I also went online afterward and ordered a few things I’ve been lusting after for a while: a pasta maker, a rolling pin, a colander (since I had set mine on fire), a pizza cutter, and a garlic press. Expect more pasta recipes!

Pasta Memories

My mother made multicolored fusilli when we were kids and I was very afraid of eating the green pasta. I left a small pile of green curlicues when I finished eating.

My friend Debbie taught me to cook spaghetti at her house when no one else was home yet. We were in the sixth or seventh grade, and the stove was a mystery to me -- boiling water intimidated. I was in awe that she knew how to use a colander and heat up sauce. You mean....kids could cook?

For a long, long time, I ate pad thai a few times a week for dinner from a delicious restaurant a block away from home. I still know the exact price of vegetarian pad thai with tofu. The owner gave me ice water while I waited to pick it up. This restaurant fed us when we worked late, a blessing really. And then one day, I just couldn't eat it anymore. Now I want my noodles home cooked, my tofu baked instead of fried.

I know, how is it possible I have a blog about carbs and I have not yet written about pasta? I'll tell you why. My husband -- though a real smartie-pants -- thinks pasta cannot possibly be good for you. Despite the years of eating pad thai!

Anyway, here is something like a dish I ate as a kid. I use bowtie pasta instead of fusilli (to avoid the scary green pasta, of course).

Pasta Salad:

Cook your bowtie pasta (or any shape you find aesthetically pleasing). Mix with raw broccoli, diced onion (I used a yellow onion but red is prettier), black olives, and garbanzo beans -- eyeball the amounts, depending on how much broccoli you like and how much pasta you have made. Toss in dressing (this serves enough pasta for 2): 2 T olive juice, 1 T olive oil, 1 clove of minced garlic, 1 and 1/2 T orange juice, 1/4 t basil, 1/4 t oregano, pepper to taste.

Other ideas for pasta salad: bell pepper, cheddar cheese. Hm, any other ideas? Bueller?

(***In other news, my husband Jake confessed that he voted five times for more potato recipes in my poll to the right. Cheating! This reminds me of when I submitted my photo to http://howoldareyou.net and then voted on my own age several times, lowballing it quite a bit).

Pretty olives and Bowtie Pasta:

Do Not Use Splenda to Make Frosting

Hershey's Brownies with Cream Cheese Frosting. Looks and sounds good, right? Not so much.

A lesson learned: Do Not Use Splenda to Make Frosting. Blech.

Thankfully, I left half the brownie pan untouched, the half we will eat this weekend.

Does anyone else have Splenda horror or success stories?

In other news, thanks so much to Astra Libris for the shout out in her amazing cooking blog: http://foodforlaughter.blogspot.com. My blog would never have happened if not for Astra's inspiring posts, her many modifications for vegetarians, her gorgeous photographs & enthusiasm for cooking. Love this woman, ever since I met her back in, oh, 2001. Check out her lovely recipes and writing -- I'm waiting for the book!

A Simple Salad. Reeaallly Simple.

A few slices of tomato.
Cheddar and swiss cheese.
Diced avocado (1/2 avocado).
Salt and pepper to taste.

Voila! Eating on pretty plates is the best.

Don't forget to vote on the poll to the right: Which recipes would you like to read more of?

Grab bag dinner

Tonight I threw whatever I felt like eating into a pot. (Of course, sometimes...often...what I really feel like eating is the icing off of cake. Or a piece of Godiva chocolate. Or the icing off of cake.)

But tonight I tossed a 1/2 cup of sliced mushrooms, a small can of mandarin oranges, a carrot, a package of Trader Joe's teriyaki-flavored baked tofu slices (so much easier than working with firm tofu in my opinion), a handful of walnuts, half an onion, 2 garlic cloves, and 1/4 c of red pepper slices into a pot. I then cooked these items -- first the onion and garlic and then the rest -- with 1 T olive oil, 1 and 1/2 T soy sauce, and a splash of orange juice. I was skeptical at first, especially about the walnuts. Jake looked pretty disappointed in the mandarin oranges (especially since he has an aversion to fruit...yes, all fruit).

But it was awesome over brown basmati rice.


Delish.

Little Italy NYC

So we just got back from NYC visiting my brother-in-law -- a great trip. I didn't get to take as many photographs of food in NY as I'd have liked -- perhaps I was distracted by endless stimuli.

I did, however, capture a late lunch we had in Little Italy that I would like to recreate at home: roasted red peppers, feta, olives, tomatoes, & crusty bread. White wine. A.maz.ing.

Fried Butternut Squash

Among other things (a veggie burger and frozen potato perogies). All fried in a few T of olive oil. Our dinner tonight! For a healthier plate, skip the perogies. Good stuff -- Trader Joe's chops up the butternut squash so that it's ready to go when you are.

Alas, no blogging for a few days -- will be out of town. I'll miss cooking! Will take pictures of food. And people. And places. Expect updates by the weekend. xo

PB cookies

I’m making these for a friend who is watching our little gatos while we are out of town. I love how pretty peanut butter cookies look when you mash them with the back of your fork before they bake.

I used this recipe.

In other news, tomorrow I'm interviewing for a summer job making jewelry. I feel like I'm in high school! Too bad the company that hired me to teach the ACT isn't getting much work...so few clients paying megabucks for their kids to improve their test scores?