2J casserole

Ode to potato.

Beans/onions/marinara sauce. Note my new pan.

We've called this 2J casserole for years -- cheesy, I know -- for Jake and Jamie's casserole, but I'm constantly changing the recipe, adding this or that. It's a dish I've often taken places -- to on-campus potlucks, Thanksgivings, house parties. No one ever seems to be allergic to anything in it, and it's easy to make. I think Jake is the actually mastermind behind this one; he and his Washington D.C. roommate once made it up and the recipe has stuck around now for...9 years:)

Here is tonight's version:
Boil three sliced potatoes in a large pot.
Then saute a shallot, 1/4 white onion, and some minced garlic in extra virgin olive oil in a medium-sized pan for a bit.
Soon, add garbanzo and kidney beans (I use half a can of each), the majority of a can of tomato marinara sauce, and finally, the boiled potatoes.
Add Morningstar tofu crumbles (I just cut up a veggie burger tonight and added it to the mix). You may want to add a carrot or two, broccoli, red onion, celery, fennel, whatever your pleasure...Enjoy!

Post-running treat

Forgot to mention this from a while back. This idea is from this month's Runner's World: dip a banana in a flavored yogurt (I prefer Stonyfield's organic vanilla) and then roll in chopped almonds and freeze. Delish. No pic. But delish.

Yellow watermelon

Neat-o.

Ch-Check It Out

This morning we ate blueberry pandowdy. I like saying this word, but why pandowdy? Why not call it panfrumpy? Panweighs a lot? What is it? The Joy of Cooking explains that the origin of the word is unknown. Not much of an explanation, is it? Well, if you are looking for a light, healthful recipe, look elsewhere. If you like baking with butter, keep reading on;)

The crust (JOC calls it "Deluxe Butter Pie" crust):
Sift 2 1/2 c of all-purpose flour with 1 1/4 t of salt. Add 1 cup of unsalted butter (This is two sticks of butter. Don't think about this too much). Add 1/4 chilled vegetable shortening (I had no vegetable shortening so I used olive oil & it worked). Work the dough until it's pea-sized then add 6 T cold water. Role into a 9-inch square and put in the fridge for a bit.

The filling: Combine 3 pints of blueberries, 1/2 c brown sugar, 3 T all purpose-flour, 1/4 t cinnamon, 1/4 t salt.

Spread fruit mixture in an unbuttered 8-inch pan, cover with the dough, and tuck the dough into the dish. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, remove the dish, reduce the heat to 350, and cut the crust into 2-inch squares. Now, the messy part! Spoon the hot filling over the top of the crust, submerging it in the blueberry juice with a spoon. Put it back into the oven for another 30 minutes and then let cool. Enjoy!

Saturday

The usual: Omelet: 2 egg whites, 1 whole egg, garlic, onion, cheese. 1 potato: chopped, boiled, then fried with onion and garlic.

L-O-V-E

Nora Ephron, the lovely and funny and occasionally irritating Nora. I wanted to sit and stew in gloom for a while after reading I Feel Bad about My Neck. I can quote passages from Heartburn from memory. I don’t get her obsession with perky Meg Ryan, frankly. But I just read her essay, “Potatoes and Love: Some Reflections” – and she’s done it again.

I do not long for potatoes like Nora, or like Jake, my husband, or like Shirley, my mother-in-law. But I do pursue this relationship between food and love.

I remember months when I lingered over half a fucking Lender’s bagel for a tiresome amount of time. A calorie was never just a calorie then, and I had committed many foods' nutritional information to memory. Those were bleak times, and not about love. Not even about like.

Today cooking is often about love: baking thick peanut butter cookies or blueberry tarts for no reason at all, cooking rice and beans or frying cheesy omelets to make sure we get enough protein or calcium, tasting things I’d once have squirmed in my seat over – and that includes both pastry dough and asparagus.

What do you eat or drink or bake or cook that feels like love or something like it, dear reader? Red wine? Paper thin chocolate crepes? A garlic marinara sauce?

On Not Following Directions

Why is it that when I step into Office Depot -- this time to fix a printer -- my ears ring, my heart races, and my blood begins to boil? People probably think I'm a pretty calm chica but some days I walk around with a match under me lighting me on fire. Ka-boom! I decided to cool off the other night with some cooking. The chopping of onions to a little Liza Minnelli does wonders for shaking off anger.

About 20 years ago my mom used to make a meat-and-rice combo and it struck me that I could do something similar with Morningstar tofu crumbles. First I sautéd 1/2 a yellow onion and a shallot in some extra virgin olive oil. Then I added a diced zucchini, carrot, and green pepper and squirted in a T of lemon juice. Then I added 1/2 bag of the tofu crumbles and some garlic marinara, which I let stew together for another 5 or so minutes. I then added a couple T of extra chunky salsa. Is this weird? Probably not the way mom did it. Then I made 1.5 c of brown rice and stirred it all together. Not bad, and it distracted me from my lame printing problem for a bit.

A friend recently told me that when I'm in the kitchen I don't follow directions. The thing about not following directions is that sometimes it really works, and sometimes it just doesn't. At all. The same goes for life, no?

Hummus

So I'm a kitchen sink hummus kind of girl, not sticking to any particular recipe but just throwing in what feels good. This is what felt good yesterday:

2 cans of uncooked chickpeas (I wash them in a colander first)
1/4 diced yellow onion
2 cloves of minced garlic
juice from one large lemon
extra virgin olive oil (eyeball this)

Not bad. No complaints heard, anyway:)

And...Jake gets serious about onion goggles (an awesome discovery - he heard about it on NPR)

Sangria

This recipe is adapted from an old New York Times magazine recipe. Cut four peeled peaches in half and remove the pits, and then cut the peaches into small cubes. Puree them in a blender or Cuisinart. Add 1/4 c sugar and blend again. Then pour this puree and 1 bottle of white wine (I used a Sauvignon Blanc from Trader Joe's) into a bowl, stir and refrigerate overnight. The next day add another cubed peach, 1-2 lemons cut into slices, and 1 c of fresh blueberries.

Yum. I could drink this entire mixture. In fact, I may have.

Zucchini and Chocolate

Well, I saw Julie and Julia last night. The reviewers are right -- Meryl steals the show (surprise). Amy Adams played Julie Powell too meek, in my opinion. Powell is a firecracker, and her prose is funny and honest, if you haven't read her yet. My two cents.

So after the movie, all fired up about cooking, I came home and experimented with zucchini and chocolate, tweaking this recipe, mostly because we were out of butter and nuts. I used cooking oil instead of butter, soymilk instead of milk like usual, and to make this a completely vegan recipe, you could also use vegan egg replacement powder -- available in many health food stores.

Voila! It smells heavenly. Now I just need to frost it.

A better photo! Taken by friend and photographer Jay Fram (expect better pics from me soon, too):

Ball park food

I made a quick box of red rice and beans (just add water and cook for 25 minutes) last night and then boiled a few tofu "hotdogs" and cut them up and added them to the mix -- voila, veggie fare for the ballpark. When a security officer checked my purse at the entrance of Busch Stadium, he called it a suitcase. Vegetarians don't travel so light?

A few photos from the game:

Pizza!

A friend recently told me about her pizza making nights with crust from Trader Joe's. So the other night I finally got around to trying it. We dusted the whole wheat crust with extra virgin olive oil and then spread a layer of basil marinara on it, then added a layer of low-fat shredded mozzarella and cheddar cheese (not all St. Louisans salivate over processed provel cheese), strips of green peppers, chopped mushrooms, 1/4 c diced red onion, a couple cloves of minced garlic, and sliced black olives. We popped it in the oven at 425 for about 12 minutes. So, not a lot of cooking here, but worth mentioning b/c it was the best pizza I'd had in a long time (and quite healthy).


Jake experiments cutting the pizza without a pizza cutter.

Lovely Laura enjoys a slice..

Tomorrow's challenge: what to take to the ballgame that's vegetarian, doesn't spoil, and satisfies? (Ha, Jake just pointed to himself)

Cherry & Apple Crepes

I came back from North Carolina this morning. After a long week, it was great to see Jake, the cats, and cook in our kitchen once again. So I tweaked a Mollie Katzen recipe because we were out of eggs:

Crepes:
1 cup plus 2 T soymilk
1/2 t vanilla
2 T sugar
1 T butter or margarine
dash of salt
1/2 c white flour
(mix dry ingredients first, then add wets and mix. then drop into hot, lightly oiled omelette pan. flip! then let cool while you make filling)

Filling: 1/2 cup cherries (wash and remove pits).
1/2 apple -- shredded
1/4 c cottage cheese
cinnamon to taste
(mix ingredients together)

Voila (I like to add a t of powdered sugar for a more finished look:

Photo is blurry due to shaking hunger!

No cooking, just eating:(

I'm in North Carolina this week for research and I REALLY miss cooking. It's quite muggy in Durham, but the research is going pretty well and I've picked up some fun cartoons to share with women's studies undergrads this fall, too. Sex humor is the best.

Okay, since you definitely don't want to see photos of what I've been eating (Skittles and Lender's bagels), I'll post a couple of pretty but hot as hell Duke campus.