Got a cookbook? Swiss Chard

The other night I ended up spending a very enjoyable couple hours thumbing through my cookbooks. Something I'd never done before. It started with a quest to find a way to prepare swiss chard.  When I was a little girl, we had a garden and had swiss chard growing in it, but it was either a different variety or we picked it and ate it when it was young and tender.
The chard I got in my D2D box were huge leaves with thick stems, so I needed some help!

The Internet had no idea either, so I started digging in all the cookbooks that I never use but had to buy because they were so beautiful! Julia Child had nothing to offer, Betty Crocker was stumped, Better Homes and Gardens could offer no advice. What's a girl to do? Then I saw it. A thin little book with an unappetizing picture of spaghetti bolognese on the front.

I always figured it was the grossest picture to make your appetite plummet before you opened it to find a recipe to make for the diet. And there on page 148, a recipe for sautéed greens and it was perfect!

So, by the time I got home from a birthday party at the park...I was exhausted. Needless to say, cooking wasn't on the top of my druther list but eating was.  Yay for the fridge full of veggies!  So, I diced an onion and some garlic up real quick and threw it in a skillet for a few minutes while I chopped up the swiss chard.  Threw the chard in and had a fairly appetizing pan of greens.  Recipe compliments of an old Weight Watchers Cookbook I found buried under a stack of random recipes in the cupboard.

It also has a roasted root veggie recipe that I think will be great later this weekend for the beets, potatoes & carrots.

The Best Cookbook I own is Vegetarian Betty Crocker

This is the best cookbook I own. If you can find it in the store, get it, even if you're not vegetarian!  It's full of gorgeous recipes and pictures that don't call for much of anything exotic.

True, it is not gluten free, but many of the recipes are, by nature. The others, I have found you can substitute gf grains pretty easily.  Pastas come in gluten free versions that work perfectly instead of wheat.  Quinoa or rice can be substituted in for couscous.  I also think that Suzanne Somer's version of parmesean croutons are a great sub for wheat ones!

I tend to steer clear of any sandwich and pizza recipes since I'm not all about paying for gf bread, or making it myself, for that matter.  But, I could see easily subbing out an Udi's pizza crust or sandwich bread on any of them.

I was flipping through it the other night due to the fridge overflowing with produce and came up with 20 recipes that I want to try, like today.  I could really make them all but that would take about a year. A couple I've made in the past and loved are on the list.  One of them has a very memorable (for me) story.  It's not exactly happy or sad - just memorable. It goes with the Autumn Harvest Salad recipe and involves a bad date with my favorite boyfriend's roommate and one of my best friends drunk on my couch.  Stay posted, it's a doozy. I'll tell you about it when I make this:

Comfort food

I'm bad. Despite a fridge full of fresh veggies, I am sick again this week so I turned to comfort food.  By comfort, I mean food that has proven never to make me sick and even tends to calm the acid stomach.

So, I was able to keep up with my yogurt and fruit breakfasts

and one day I had a latte and cookies for a snack (don't judge! my tummy hurts)

Then, I was super considerate of my neighbors in cubeville (not!) and actually  popped a can of Kippers to eat with rice cakes for lunch

Did I take the can to the kitchen trash after I was done, you ask? No, I didn't feel up to walking that far.  Some of my coworkers think I have questionable personal hygiene and possibly am in need of antibiotics now, as the smell lingered all afternoon!

For dinner I had my happy standby, tater tots and marinara for dipping, plus a random cherry tomato that needed to be rescued from the giant Romas trying to steal its self esteem (don't tell me you don't make up stories about inanimate objects!)

Today I have managed to eat a tub of greek quinoa throughout the day.  yeah, I packed it in the feta container, so what? It's green y'all!

and right now, I'm snacking on a  bowl of frozen cherries because I'm dying for a little something sweet

If I have dinner, it will no doubt be leftover tater tots from yesterday, possibly covered in cheese. Unfortunately, as I write this the woozy mounts...

Pink Truck - how cute is this?

I just had to share that this is probably the cutest wine bottle I've ever seen.  The wine was good too.  Very drinkable and not too strong.
Please ignore the bucket, it's just there for aesthetic purposes.

It's here! It's here - my Door 2 Door Organics

Fingerling potatoes - these are new to me but they sent me a recipe so I'm totally psyched!

There is even an avocado (this will be the true test, if I go back for more).

Barfycat couldn't resist a couple bites of red lettuce.  I chased her down, as soon as I snapped a pic, of course!

I had to wash everything right away so it's ready to eat (on the run?).  Guess what?  There was dirt and sand in everything!  Like it came from a real garden...I can't remember the last time I had to wash dirt off.  Pesticides and coatings, sure! But dirt - how novel  :-)

I have so many veggies, I hope that they don’t rot before I can eat them all. I think I have enough for a month.

Here’s what I got:

1 big bunch Swiss Chard
1 BIG bunch Spinach
1 head red leaf lettuce
1 lemon
7 roma tomatoes
2 large zucchini
2 large cucumbers
1 avocado
4 heads of garlic
2 HUGE onions!
3 huge carrots
3 big red beets
3 lb bag of fingerling potatoes

I put one of the cucumbers to use right away coupled with some cherry tomatoes I had left in the fridge to make a nice greek quinoa salad for dinner – with a Bard’s GF beer. Yum! Beer good. Greek good. Cocoa happy!

And my fridge is really full:

I'm so excited to get my veggies!!

So, I got this coupon for half off a box of organic fruit and/or vegetables - delivered by a company called Door to Door Organics.  I had heard of them before and was tempted to try it, but it seemed expensive and I had no references to tell me about their experience.  But, for $17 I was willing to take the risk.


I know it's premature to blog about it but I just can't wait for it to get here!  It's supposed to come tomorrow.  I'm expecting something like this:

Red Turnips: 1 1/2 lb

Fava Beans: 1 1/2 lb

Zucchini Squash  1 lb

Yellow Onions: 2 lb

Yams: 2 lb

Roma Tomatoes: 1 lb

Red Kale: 1 

Green Leaf Lettuce: 1 

Eggplant: 1 

Cucumbers: 2 

Carrots with Tops: 1 

Broccoli: 1 

Lemon: 1 

Avocado: 2

This box is usually $32 and to be honest, I've been too lazy to hit up a WholeFoods or Natural Grocers to see if I could buy all of this for less.  Why, you ask? Because I also find value in getting groceries delivered right to my door on a regular basis.

Have you ever tried to fight with the old people at the store on a weekend afternoon? B.R.U.T.A.L.  I hate going to the store to find that they are out of what I went for and then have to stand in line for 30 minutes to buy the handful of other stuff I picked up so the trip wouldn't be a total waste.

More perceived value on my part: help planning meals.  They send different produce each time and a sample recipe.  I'm excited about this!

I have my hopes up here, people!  I'm hoping that I get a beautiful box of veggies so that I can continue to use their service and make my life easier.  If it's bad, I guess I'll chalk it up to learning experience.

Here's hoping!!

Ricotta spinach puffs

I did an experiment, prompted mostly by the fact that I had a partial container of ricotta cheese open in the fridge...for over a week.  So, I came home and said to Barfycat, "What do I do with this ricotta?" She was no help but after perusing my fridge contents I decided to put together some ricotta cheese puffs.


In a skillet: dab of butter, 1/2 onion diced, 1 clove garlic minced, basil, oregano, S&P.
Mixed up in a bowl: 2/3 package of ricotta (about 5-6 ounces), 1 egg.  Then add the skillet stuff and a pile of spinach.


Spooned into a muffin pan:

Baked at 375 for 20 minutes, then put asparagus in to roast for 10 mins at 475:

Yum!

A little unwellness

I've been feeling poorly this week, not much to report in the fun food way!

I mostly kept going with the overnight oatmeal, bananas and rice cakes.

One day I had kippered snacks and rice cakes, which very much reminded me of this guy:

Fish and Rice Cakes guy

And of course, my spinach salads, which I would die without!

Mmmm Oven Roast

I'm so excited about this meal!!  So, I got a roast at the store - one of those with a lot of fat marbled around in it so I knew that it should go in the oven, not the crockpot so all the fat could get all frittery.  Someone told me I should put it in the crock pot but I didn't listen and we are so glad! There are no pictures because I forgot to take them, and then after it was ready we were too hungry to wait - and I forgot.  Nonetheless...I will continue.

So, I sprayed my pyrex baking dish with nonstick and sliced up a couple small onions and minced up 2 cloves of garlic, very fine and sprinkled them around in the pan, reserving some of the onion slices for the top.  Then, I put the roast on top of the veggies and sprinkled pepper generously and some salt too, then put the rest of the onions on top.  Covered it in foil and put it in the fridge for the next day.

I  baked this baby at 365 for about 90 minutes.  The foil kept all the moisture in so there was a good amount of fat and water in the bottom of the dish.  I also had broccoli to roast so I cranked up the oven to 450, threw it in with the uncovered roast for 15 minutes.

My dinner guests had not yet arrived so I simply turned off the heat and let the food stay in the oven. Here's the best part.  When I took out the roast, all the juices had cooked off and the outside of it had browned up beautifully!  I had the perfect roast.  It was browned on the outside and juicy and tender on the inside.  

Snacks snacks snacks

I'll tell you right now, I'm tired of cooking!  The "Raw" food diet is starting to appeal to me more and more.  Not just because you don't have to cook anything but also because it seems very healthy.
But, I'm a sucker for roasted veggies now. I'm seriously hooked.

My point though, is that I've been doing a lot of snaking lately.  Cottage cheese (low fat!) with Adzuki bean rice chips...

Honey Nut Chex and canned peaches. Yes, I was out of milk, almond or otherwise so I used the syrup.

Cinnamon Chex for dinner

Sliced avocado on my Amy's enchilada dinner.

Pretty much anything I can eat directly from the package.  That's been my last few days. Aren't I cool?

But I really need some soup!